Question for my birthday: Do I like Senegalese people? ~JF

How can I even begin to answer this question? I have gone so far, given so much of myself...I love these people and respect them more than my heart can handle at times, not all of them, but I have made the effort to know those who sit on the sides.

I feel like I have crossed lines people would never cross-like sleeping in a mosquito laiden bed in between Fary and Coumba-like ever allowing myself to be under my elders or people I respect here. A racism subtle but that makes my stomach itch-makes me sad until my chest is heavy and my eyes grave. We treat them like children, like flies that we're here to regulate the problem-to be their parents-to criticize and gawk in awe at how they live.

What if I just want to be one of them? To walk along the isles in a dark corner dressed in deep, crunkling taffeta? To be entirely feminine sitting bejeweled upon a ridiculously updone bed picking at meat chunks out of a bowl? To be a child, rolling and running through everything-golden grass, people, grandma's lap?

What will I do without them in my life? Their smiles, their simple life. Don't read: paternalism, maternalism, belittling, exoticizing, orientalizing, ethnocentracizing, idolatizing, idealizing, putting them in a box, making them kitsch.

No. This is as real as it gets. I've lived with them in ways that most people wouldn't. I've crossed lines that perhaps betray myself and more so my people, my culture.