Jan 24

My house is not pretty. A single fluorescent bulb hangs dimly over a ratten 1950's deskbench. Surrounding us are layers of sloppily cement slathered grey cinderblocks, made of 75% sand and 25% cement, timekeepers of the weather, wearing them away, the sun, and time, and millions of people and animals, that corrodes and yakks everything.

The sand, a shabby carpet, riddles with animal poop, stumps, rocks, bare patches of clay. Everywhere one looks is the grey of the cinder-blocks, except one slender tree with red flowers, in front of Abdoulaye's front door.

My family is not "good" as Mamadou reminds me, that used to be a shared opinion before I lost my ability to decipher. Even the village thinks so, they're lazy, they're patron, they don't support many of my projects and most of them don't support me.

But what would people say about my mom at home? You're born into a family and you learn to love them.

I've seen myself only in the 2 year continuum of where I've come. Looking back on a life that I missed, I could only see the space behind me or the space left in front before I went back where I started. But I couldn't see where I've gone. This I can only see now, as I prepare to re-assimilate to my home, to the place I've longed for for 2 years-only to find I alreadylong for here and how many years will I have to count until I come back here, to this dream world, to the Island?

At this point, I've stopped seeing with double eyes. Someone said it the other day-something about the coming of the sister and suddenly, you just relax. Maybe its that I don't have to see it for her, for them anymore. A pair of eyes from the outside world, from the sane, from the indifferent, puts my own skewed views into perspective.

I now look at old pictures of myself, and besides gauging my weight, I look into my eyes to see how happy, how ubeeku (open) I look. Japan pictures-far from it-the look in my eyes- from their eyes (Senegalese) is scary.

Senegalese read people. There isn't so much else to direct your natural intelligence or curiosity, so watch out-things you would have never thought they notice-acutely-and will never forget. This is why the shocking fact that middle aged women dressed up as chickens can avidly watch a wrestling match. Every twitch of their bodies-they are there. Muttering tiny expressions as if their own bodies were feeling it.

I can read people more easily now. I not longer can see Senegalese through a looking glass but only as my family, my friends. No matter if they accept me as that, which I know many don't (how can they? I am...red...) I ache to be one with this society. This, I never did in America. So many parts of our society are cold and lifeless. So many empty eyes and expressions. I miss Chinese food. And my friends, as real as anyone here. But here I will miss the people.

I think through their thought chain, value their values. In talks with Americans, I have a hard time taking their side, which comes instinctively as a relief to others. I have failed to look at how far I've gone, into their society-it is concave not a straight line-and now Amerique seems farther away than ever.

I did have a moment today. A scary yellow dog with green light up eyes and four stiff metal legs covered up with mangy plastic-y plush fur. A mouth, just a slit where you could see into the mechanical brain, with a seriously frayed red ribbon for a tongue. His tail stuck straight out like an electric plug. Put in batteries and the eyes would light like a Halloween ghoul-bright! then fade away. The rest came out as a gritty hum, what could have been the ability to talk or shuffle its stiff legs.

But they loved it, their eyes softening and their voices cooing as everyone passed it around and gave it attention. Grown ups, teenagers, kids, babies. Xool-al muus bi, dafa rafet! It sold for 500CFA and they bought it instantly.

A useless toy, frighteningly hideous, thrown out by waa Amerik, finds a loving home in a little Senegalese village. On the verge of death, if you reached its bony body through its fake mandarin-colored fur you could tell this thing had been hit by a bus or worse-all its internal organs hopelessly smashed and disorganized.