The Long Way Home, Part IV - Chicago

Me, in a paddle boat, on the way to Ngor Island.

On the blue line heading home from O’Hare Airport, I stare out the window as the train rattles along a raised track, dividing eight lanes of highway traffic.  Miraculously, the suitcase and djembe that I checked at the Iberia Airlines counter at Léopold Sédar Senghor airport three days ago appeared within minutes at baggage claim, intact, with orange British Airways tags labeling them "rush".  K tells me via email that the djembe she’d brought with her broke en route to Poland.  We meet at a café later where I give her the unbroken drum, and she presents me with a set of Polish nesting dolls as a thank you gift for transporting it.

Security at the Madrid airport was tighter than anything I’ve experienced. There had been the usual x-raying of bags and bodies, followed by standing in lines determined by gender, getting patted down, answering a series of questions, and opening carry-on luggage for inspection.  The plane filled achingly slowly - a number of passengers had been taken aside for more thorough screens, then wandered through the door of the aircraft bearing facial expressions that told of things that could not be un-seen.

It turns out that I missed a bad cold snap and a flu virus that had made the rounds in Chicago, and I’m grateful.  Things that have changed since I left: it’s now 2010; Conan O’Brien’s days at NBC are numbered (this really hits home, his new show started when I got laid off, and it gave me something to look forward to on days when there wasn’t much else going on);  I’ve received two more rejections from the same potential employer I’ve been interviewing with since September, bringing the total number of times they’ve rejected me to 4 (and in the coming months they will reject me twice more);  and my husband bought us new phones and a coffeemaker that can be programmed to turn on by itself in the morning.

My first week home I sleep like it’s the key to unlocking some ancient mystery.  I commune with my pets.  I’m even less capable of handling trips to the grocery store than usual – my sensory perceptions are overwhelmed by the sight and smell of food stacked eight feet high in cavernous aisles, sealed and wrapped in refrigerated display cases, most of it processed and packaged to the point where it no longer resembles its original ingredients, all of it accompanied by incongruous music piped in through overhead sound systems.  The cold Chicago weather, while comforting in its familiarity, feels willful and unnecessary.  

When people ask me about Senegal I answer in generalities: "it was amazing," or "it was challenging," unsure of where to begin or what to say.  The tiniest events have become large in my memory – someone handing me a choice morsel of food from the other side of a plate because it’s considered rude to reach across a communal dish, and rude to keep the best pieces for yourself; Ibou punctuating his sentences with “Che Yallaaaah,” and, after being taught how to say it in English, “Oh mai god”; the empty plastic water bottles that accumulate by the front door during our stay in the rented house; joking with my Polish roommates that they should invent a new dance based on their gastrointestinal distress called “The Toubab Two-Step,” comprised of alternately sitting on a toilet and kneeling in front of it; and Abdou’s perennial refrain to my questions – “this is Africa.”

My husband marvels at the objects and photos I’ve brought back with me, the stories I tell him, and the sounds I was able to record using somewhat dated technology (I still have to upload the files to our computer).   I take the last of my malaria pills – the prescription began a week before my departure, and I have a few left.

In the months since then, I’ve taken special notice of cab drivers; Idy had told us that a lot of Senegalese immigrants in Chicago drive taxis for a living.  I always overtip them.

The Long Way Home, Part III - Madrid

Thousands of displaced passengers wait in lines that snake around the multilevel sprawl of the Madrid airport.  Passengers stuck en route from one European destination to another appear far more harried than the passengers who’ve arrived from Dakar.  “We’re going to die here,” a French-speaking woman complains dramatically within earshot.  “Really?”  I think, “this seems pretty nice to me… people are waiting in orderly lines, customer service representatives are helping stranded passengers - in the order that they present themselves, no less, and information is being disseminated as it comes in...”  I spot my fellow passengers from the Dakar-Madrid flight; tranquil islands in a sea of irritated Europeans, but I’ve lost track of Ram.  A tall man in a kaftan turns to the woman behind him, points to his suitcase and then to his eyes, indicating that he wants the woman to watch his bag for him, then leaves to find a payphone or perhaps a toilet.  Unfamiliar with the sense of common interest that exists on the continent a couple hundred miles south, the woman bears a surprised expression as the man walks away without his property.  She watches the bag for a few minutes, her eyes darting around until she locates it's owner, then picks it up and marches purposefully in his direction, plops the bag down next to him, and stiffly returns to her spot.  I smile, remembering my own reaction when Idy asked me to transport luggage for him.
“I’ll have to look inside,” I said to him, “they’re going to ask me at check-in if I’ve received any packages from anyone else, if I packed the bag myself, and if it’s been under my control since I packed it.”  For emphasis I added: “And I’m not a good liar.”   

“That’s fine,” Idy said, not a trace of worry in his voice, “you can look inside, it’s just presents.”  The bag had been filled with brand new clothing with the tags still on them, and unopened toiletries.  He’d asked the favor casually, leading in with the question: “how many bags are you bringing?”  Now – wherever it was, I hadn’t seen the bag since I checked in at Dakar yesterday, it contained my clothes and items I’d purchased in Senegal.  I had a sweatshirt and a pair of long pants in my carry-on, my electronics, the two talking drums I’d bought from Malaal, and little else.  Even my toothpaste and deodorant are packed in Idy’s suitcase. 

I send M a text message: “So, looks like i'll be spending the night in Madrid, they had snow and it screwed everything up, 1000s of stranded ppl.”  I make my way to the front of the line, where an Iberia Airlines representative explains my options: I can stay here for two nights and get a direct flight to Chicago, or I can come back tomorrow morning and fly: Madrid-Barcelona; Barcelona-NY JFK; take a shuttle between NY JFK and NY LGA; and finally LGA-ORD.  "Um, make that 2 nights in Madrid," I text to M.

After receiving instructions to come back the next day to pick up my boarding pass, I go out into the drizzle and find the courtesy bus that winds it's way through Madrid and drops me off in front of the Hotel Tryp Atocha,where displaced passengers make an orderly line that reaches across the reception area, the front stairs, and out into the street.  I check in and weave my way through the maze of a hotel until find my room, which once again inspires me to take pictures.

S had my outlet converter and I was almost out of battery power; this is one of the only photos I took in Madrid.

The next few hours are filled with little luxuries: I run hot water into the cavernous marble tub in the en-suite bathroom, take a bath, then go downstairs to the dining room where a buffet dinner has been set up.  I help myself to a heaping plate of pasta, visit the dessert table twice, and head out into the drizzle to find a payphone.  I call M and we talk for 30 uninterrupted, unhurried minutes.  Then I go back to the hotel and watch Spanish TV until I fall asleep, and stay asleep for 9 hours.

In the morning I help myself to a complimentary breakfast that includes fresh squeezed juice and espresso, and navigate my way back to the airport using the clean, efficient Madrid Metro, where people are reading newspaper headlines about the recent unexpectedly snowy weather front.  While transferring subway lines,  someone asks me for directions.  I shrug, smile, and say: "no habla español," secretly delighted that I'm blending in with my accidental surroundings.   Last night's mayhem has dissipated at the airport, and it only takes a few minutes to get my boarding pass for tomorrow's flight home.  With the entire afternoon on my hands, I make plans to take in some art; M had told me - no, more like pleaded with me, to see Diego Velásquez's Las Meninas and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights at the Prado Museum.

The museum is walking distance from my hotel, but before paying a visit I take stock of the situation: although I've bathed, I've been wearing the same socks and underwear for going on three days, and haven't had access to toothpaste or deodorant; I have begun to look and smell like a homeless person.  I stroll the Calle de Atocha in search of inexpensive underpants, stopping at what looks like a budget clothing store.  "Buenos dias," the proprietor says to me as I walk through the glass doors.  "Buenos dias," I reply.  I locate a cheap umbrella and a 3-pack of argyle socks, but can't find underwear.  "Um..." I begin, while standing at the register, "do you have... sous-vêtements?" I say, trying the French word.  The proprietor doesn't understand.  "Underwear?" I say, patting my hips.  The proprietor watches my demonstration, walks out from behind the register, and picks up a pair of leggings.  "Oh," I say, "no, um... "  I pat by butt with both hands, hoping this will clarify my needs.  The proprietor's eyes widen, and he searches the aisles, returning with a 3-pack of white cotton underwear that look like they might actually fit me.  "Perfect," I say, "thank you... gracias."  Next I find a convenience store that has toiletries within easy reach, where I purchase a stick of overpoweringly manly deodorant, and a tube of gritty toothpaste.

I shower, brush my teeth, and apply deodorant like a civilized person, dress in the same pants I've been wearing and the one extra shirt that I'd rinsed out in the tub the previous evening, and head to the Prado, where I am overwhelmed by art.  M is the artist in the family, but I'm the one who gets to see this; I feel undeserving of the experience, and make sure to soak up as much as I can.  I'd seen depictions and reproductions of Las Meninas, but had been completely ignorant of Bosch until this very moment, and stare open-mouthed at the triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, my gaze moving slowly from one panel to the next, resting on something new and unexpected every time.  I'm equally impressed by the other Bosch pieces in the Prado collection, and Francisco Goya's Black Paintings.  I end up spending the entire afternoon at the museum, returning to the Bosch paintings before finally leaving the museum with the last remaining stragglers, employees in the the museum bookstore and cafe closing out their registers as I make my exit.

I consider making my way out into the rainy Madrid evening to find something more exciting than the hotel buffet - tapas y cerveza perhaps, but I've been enjoying my quiet, hermit-like existence after spending so much time surrounded by people.  I go for another pasta dinner at the Tryp Atocha, and spend the evening watching more Spanish TV and preparing for tomorrow's journey home.

October Already

I didn't post anything yesterday because the September Blog Challenge is over, and the piece I was working on didn't feel finished.  It made me feel kind of sad and lazy.  I liked having a reason to post something every day, even if sometimes what I posted was nonsense.  It kind of kept everything moving in my head, and forced me to notice things around me that I might not have otherwise.  Some good posts came out of it too.  I counted the number of posts I've written about Senegal - 15 so far, and I still have at least one more to go.  The first post I wrote that mentioned Senegal was back in March, and I'm still thinking of things I want to say about it; the September Blog Challenge really pushed me to write more about it, and I'm glad.  It was an experience I'm not likely to repeat, and this blog will give me a place to archive my memories of it.  Having taken very few notes while I was there, I wasn't sure how much I'd end up writing about it, and it turns out to be the biggest subject I've written about.  Once it's done, I'll have to figure out where else to turn my attentions, which will be it's own challenge.

September 30th - The Long Way Home, Part II - Léopold Sédar Senghor Airport

Across the street from the rented house I spent two weeks in.

The view from my hotel suite.  Compare and contrast.

It’s not until I wake that I see how luxurious the hotel I’ve been transported to truly is.  I have an ocean view from the patio of my suite, and breakfast is served in a restaurant with cloth napkins.  The buffet features eggs, sausage, waffles, and most importantly – real coffee.  There has only been Nescafé instant since my arrival; every morning Idy brought a pot of hot water and a tin of the dark, powdery stuff out to the living room floor, along with a box of sugar and a can of condensed milk.  Breakfast was always fresh bread from a local bakery, a chocolate flavored spread, butter, and fresh fruit.  I’ve been drinking the tea that I’d brought with me instead of instant coffee.  I never got a taste for the watery nothingness of Nescafé, but it seems to be a popular beverage in the city - vendors sell it from wheeled carts on sidewalks.  At the hotel, I fix myself a plate of eggs and join Ram - still dressed in his suit, at a table.  I’ve only slept for a few hours, but the hot shower I took – the first since arriving in Senegal, felt like an unquantifiable luxury, and put me at ease.

“You didn’t get dinner last night,” Ram says when I sit down.  There were containers of airline food waiting to be distributed in the lobby amid last night's frenzy, but I hadn't bothered to get one.

“I was so tired by the time I got my room key, I just wanted to go to sleep,” I reply.  It’s sweet that Ram is worried about my food intake, when clearly I have a pile of hot food right in front of me.  I can't eat much of it though, this western-style food is foreign to me now and sits strangely in my stomach. 

After our brief respite we repeat the previous night’s exercise of piling onto buses, and are transported back to the airport.  Having gone through security once already, we are routed through quickly.  There aren’t many officers manning the security checkpoints this early in the morning, and as I peer into an empty security booth I glimpse a computer with an unfinished game of spider solitaire on the screen.

Also repeated is the endless wait at the gate.  Tempers flare as the time drags, Ram breaks his cool exterior responding to a large man who insists that he wait his turn.  “I have been waiting,” he says in perfectly accented, pointedly angry French.  “I have been waiting here as long as you have.”  It's like watching Jean-Luc Picard dress down an insubordinate officer, only with a different accent.  Once everyone finally squeezes their way through the gate, there's a bus on the tarmac that we sit in for at least half an hour before it taxis us to the aircraft, followed by a slow, agitated climb up a staircase into the craft itself.  I wonder if I will ever get home.  It isn’t until we’ve all been seated for some time that we get an explanation for last night’s cancellation: there had been a snowstorm in Madrid, the region was unprepared for the weather, resulting in mayhem on the roads and airports.  No flights have been able to arrive or depart since late last night.  

Once we finally, definitively take off, exhausted passengers all around me cover their heads with airline blankets, the only parts of them visible are calves and feet.  Making my way down the aisle to use the bathroom I feel like I'm participating in some kind of performance piece, or anti-war demonstration where people drape themselves in cloth to represent the dead.  The bathroom is fetid and lacks toilet paper, but I've gained valuable squatting skills.  I proudly hover over the toilet receptacle, victorious in the face of filth.  I return to my seat serene;  I've successfully left Dakar, now all that's left to navigate is Madrid.

September 29th - The Long Way Home, Part I - Dakar

A uniformed woman at the boarding gate makes an announcement in Wolof, and the crowd bursts forth in her direction.  “Vous parlez Français?” I ask a woman near me.  She shakes her head no and says “Italiano”.   My time in Dakar has prepared me for this - the trip to the post office, for instance, where it took half an hour to buy 3 stamps, taught me all I needed to know about how fast things move here, and I’m able to keep a clear head as all semblance of order descends into chaos.  Earlier today I’d met Abdou for lunch, and then my cousin’s friend Ndeye.  Both of them met me later than our agreed upon time, which I’d grown accustomed to – schedules here are beyond flexible, but when I got back to the house at 8pm it turned out that I was holding everyone up.  It wasn’t clear that 8pm was a drop-dead deadline, and I was scheduled to leave for the airport with S, who had an earlier flight than me.  The power was out on the block, and everyone was sitting in the living room in the dark.  “We almost left without you,” S says to me.  I rush upstairs to my room to zip my bags shut – fortunately I’d already packed.  I leave several items behind, either because there isn’t room or because I don’t want to bother bringing them back with me:  a towel, a bottle of saline solution, half a roll of toilet paper, the shoes I’d worn for two weeks straight and were completely caked in dirt and red dust.  Malaal calls my name in thirty second intervals while I scurry around the room in the dark, scanning the space with the miniature flashlight that’s attached to my keychain.

I lug the bags downstairs: my backpack, the suitcase that I’d brought here for Idy – originally filled with gifts to distribute to his family, and a djembe that K had bought and then realized she didn’t have room to take back with her.  She’d bought two of them, and was stopping through Poland for a few days to visit family before heading back to Chicago, so I’d offered to take one with me – we don’t live far from each other. 

Our goodbyes are rushed.  Malaal, Mustafah, Ibou, S and I pile into the car with all our luggage, and head for the airport.   Malaal insists on making pit stops – first to pick up the missing stick that goes to a talking drum I’d bought from him, and then to his home to pick up a soccer jersey I’d asked him to buy for me once I grew weary of the haggling process.  “You can send the shirt and the stick back with Idy,” I implore, “S is very pressed for time.”  Malaal, in control at the steering wheel, will not be moved.  His tone is demanding and authoritative.  “You asked me to buy the shirt.  I bought the shirt, and we’re going to stop at my house to get it,” he says.  There is silence in the car.  “Do you have gum?” He demands.  S thinks he is asking out of concern for our comfort on the airplane, “no, I didn’t buy any for the flight,” she says.  “That’s not what I asked,” he says, his voice becoming sharper, “I asked – Do. You. Have. Gum.”  My discomfort piques; last night, at Malaal’s request, I had ridden along to the airport with my roommates to see them off, and on the way back he sat in the back seat with me where I thwarted his advances.  He’d put his arm around me, taken me by the hand, and asked “are you my friend?”   I’d repeatedly removed his hand from my shoulder, released my fingers from his, looked away from him.  We’d been in close proximity to each other for two weeks, and just last night had gotten into a deep discussion regarding the societal differences between the U.S. and Senegal – I’d said that I really liked how women could nurse their babies anywhere and everywhere here, and that children were included in every part of life, but I’d never meant to engender this kind of response from Malaal.  When I got back to the house all the lights were off and I had to sleep alone in the room I'd shared with my Polish roommates.

It was a rotten way to end our acquaintanceship, and now Malaal, for my benefit, was being difficult.  I can’t explain this to S, at least not right now, so instead I pat her on the shoulder and say “you’ll be fine.”  She recoils from my touch and says “you knew when we were leaving, and you know how things work here, you were in control!  I can’t miss this flight.”  Conversation stops in the car as Malaal, Mustafah, and Ibou strain to understand what is being said between S and I in English.   “I’m sorry,” I say to S, “if I were you I’d feel the same way.”  “Thank you,” she says, staring forward.  I watch the clock until we pull up to the departures area at Léopold Sédar Senghor Airport.

I check the djembe and suitcase at the counter, make my way through the long, slow line at security, and find my gate.  The seating area is packed.  I find an empty seat in the waiting area and ask the woman next to it, a blonde wearing khaki shorts, a knit top, and expensive-looking jewelry, if it’s free.  “It absolutely is not!” She says sharply, her arms crossed.  Her tone takes me by surprise, “are you…. joking?” I ask.  “I most certainly am not, my husband is sitting in this seat,” she says, and crosses her legs to match her arms.  I retreat to a wall, where a line has formed, and alternate between sitting on the floor and standing.   My flight is due to leave at 11:30pm, gets delayed until past midnight, and then the uniformed woman at the boarding gate makes the announcement. 

“I speak English,” a man who has been standing behind me for the past hour or so says.  He is dressed in a business suit, wears glasses, and speaks in a soothing tone with an accent I can’t quite place.

“Do you know what’s happening?”  I ask.

“I’m not sure,” he says. 

“I’m going to see if I can find out,” I tell him, “I’ll be right back.”  The uniformed woman is surrounded by passengers demanding information.  There is no semblance of a line, and she addresses people in a seemingly random order.

“What’s happened?” I ask her in French when she finally looks at me. 

“The flight has been canceled.”  She says. 

“When is the next flight?” I ask. 

“Same time tomorrow.” 

“What… what do we do?  Where do we go?  Do we stay here in the airport until tomorrow?”  I ask.

“I don’t know, the airline will be making an announcement,” she replies. 

I go back to the wall where the suited man is waiting, and relay the information, take my cell phone out and dial Idy’s number, but the call gets dropped.  I’d made arrangements with AT&T for service in Senegal just in case, but this is the first time I’ve had to use my cell phone since arriving here.  I try again but the call doesn’t go through, so I call my husband in Chicago and ask him to call Idy for me.  Eventually the calls to and from Chicago get dropped too, so we communicate via text message.  E’s flight home was later than mine, so I know that Mustafah and Malaal will be back here with the car at some point, but I’m not sure I want to ride back to the house with them alone; I’m not even sure if Idy is staying there tonight.  Another announcement is made – there will be buses in the parking lot that will take us to a hotel, the flight to Madrid has been rescheduled to 8am tomorrow.  The crowd surges toward the exit, and outside I see Ibou, having just dropped E off at the airport. 

“You need to come back?” he asks, searching my face.  I touch his shoulder, look him in the eye.

“thank you SO much for finding me Ibou,” I say, thinking about the odds of him actually finding me in this mess, “but the airline is taking us to a hotel.  I think it’s best if I go with them because they’ll have to make sure I’m back in time for the flight tomorrow morning.  Thank you Ibou, Thank you!”  And with that I re-enter the stream of people heading for the buses.

I find the man in the suit and we sit next to each other on the bus.  “My name is J,” I tell him.

“Nice to meet you, my name is Ram, short for Rambhujun” he says.  We engage in small talk: what we’re doing here in Senegal, how long we’ve been here.  Ram is originally from Mauritius, and works at the University of Bordeaux as a professor of business administration.  He was giving a lecture at the local university, and is due back home to teach.  The bus pulls up to a long, low building where everyone piles off and walks through a set of automatic sliding glass doors into the lobby of  the Hôtel des Almadies, a resort hotel.

There is one clerk at the front desk, and two hundred and fifty displaced passengers.  The crowd surges toward him like brokers at the opening bell on Wall Street, and the clerk starts handing out forms to whoever is the closest and the loudest.  I press my way forward to the reception desk, the crowd pushing me forward until I’m pressed against it.  I’m able to maintain my cool as long as I don’t look behind me, I stay holed up inside my mind and absorb the experience as if from a distance.  I hold my completed form in my outstretched hand, but the clerk ignores me in favor of louder patrons.   When he finally catches my eye and takes the paper from me, he flips it over and returns it to me – there was a second side to the form that I hadn’t filled out.   I fill out the backside of the form and hand it to the clerk again, where it is entered into a stack with two hundred and fifty others, in no particular order.  He is joined by a second clerk, who takes the stack of papers, and begins reading names and distributing room keys.

My name is finally called and I receive my key, which opens the door to an overwhelmingly opulent suite with a king sized bed, television, sliding glass doors that lead to a patio, bathroom that has western style fixtures, and air conditioning.  I am so amazed that I take photos of it.  I leave my cell phone on the nightstand and just before I fall asleep, at 3am, get a text from my husband:  Du u feel safe where u r staying? I'm feeling a little worried but not too much.  I reply: Its pretty swanky actually, by african standards, and theres an english speaking passenger whos taken me under his wing.

In four hours I have to wake up and get ready to pile back on the bus.  I climb under the luxuriously soft covers, and rest my head on unimaginably fluffy pillows – for the past two weeks I’ve been resting my head on a balled up sweatshirt, and sleeping on a thin foam mattress in a full sized sheet that’s been sewn together to form a lightweight sleeping bag.  It doesn’t take long for sleep to overtake me.

The fanciest bed I'd seen in weeks.

Compare and contrast.

September 24th - Dance Recital; Lunch with Abdou

Chadit and her dance troupe (Chadit in the center)

Idy's daughter and Chadit's son at the recital

Closeup of the beads and fabric

On our last night together as a group, we danced in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor to a small audience consisting of Idy and his family, Malaal, Ibou, our dance teacher Chadit, the drummers who provided live percussion for us at every dance class, and members of the dance troupe that Chadit works with professionally.  She outfitted us in traditional dresses and jewelry from her own collection; I wore a blue dress with bright stripes, a matching headdress, and two thick coils of multicolored beads that crossed my body from the shoulder to the waist, forming an X.  We danced in the open air in our bare feet, performing the dance that Chadit had taught us, and when the dance was finished we did it a second time - Idy and the others joining us at the end and forming a circle.  We took turns dancing in the center, showing off our best moves.  Later, at the house, Idy praised our performance in his understated way.  "That was good," he said, a small curl of a smile on his face as he watched the scene replayed on a hand-held video camera that K had brought with her.  Abdou stopped by the house; he had planned on attending the performance but had been called away by business.  Idy showed him the video and they watched together.

My roommates left for Poland that night, and I was once again alone in the room.  It felt strange, and I had trouble sleeping.  The next day I packed my bags and waited for Abdou; we had lunch plans.  He drove me out to his house, in a neighborhood where government officials lived.  After spending two weeks in the rented house, it was strange to see such relative opulence; his was easily the largest and most ornate house I'd seen.  He introduced me to his wife, son, daughter, and grandson.  Abdou has four grown children, and two grandsons; about half of them live in the house with him.  He kept his earbud on at all times; it seemed Abdou was always on the clock.  He took a call while giving me a tour of the house, and wore the apparatus while we ate lunch.  I misunderstood something that he said - he asked if I wanted to eat at the dining room table, or with "les gens."  I understood this to mean "with the people."  I wasn't quite sure what Abdou meant by this, and said that the dining room table was fine.  Apart from the time I went to dinner with my cousin's friend Ndeye, it was the only meal in Senegal that I'd eaten at a table with silverware.

Abdou's house

We discussed the Alliance Française, where Abdou had taught first my husband, and then me.  He asked what my fellow classmates were up to: Kim is now married and has two young sons; Caroline is in graduate school; Carla is studying to become a medical coder.  I mentioned my current teacher, Tim, who is American but speaks French like a native.  I said that Tim was learning Swedish, to which Abdou replied: "really, maybe he wants to marry a Swedish woman."  I almost choked.  Tim shows up to class wearing Hermès shirts, frequently breaks into song during class (he heavily favors Céline Dion), and openly discusses his personal life with his students.  To even the most casual observer it is clear that Tim does not want to marry any woman, Swedish or otherwise.  I marveled - if that's the right word, at Abdou's absolute cultural blindness to what for me is a very obvious fact.  Homosexuality is essentially not recognized in Senegal, and Abdou was unable to pick up on the fact that he had a gay colleague at the Alliance Française.

Abdou's grandson

I had noticed that in the absence of any outwardly visible signs of gayness, men were much more affectionate with each other in Dakar than in Chicago.  At the house one evening, over the course of a late night conversation, Malaal and Mustafah were both reclining on the mattress in the living room that Idy and his family used as their bed.  They lay on their sides, propped on on one elbow, so close to each other that they were practically spooning.  "Um... yeah, maybe he does want to marry a Swedish woman," I finally replied, not wanting to blow Abdou's mind.

In Abdou's courtyard - note that he is on the phone

Later he showed me the second floor of the house, where his family was eating, African style, on the floor; I now understood what Abdou meant by eating with "les gens."  "I didn't mean that I didn't want to have lunch with your family," I said, and suddenly felt very stupid.  I recalled a moment a few years earlier when Abdou had come to my house and made mafé, a stew made with peanuts.  He'd been fascinated by the fact that we kept animals inside our home.  I'd seen plenty of cats and dogs in Dakar, but none of them were pets.  They ate garbage, humped each other in the streets, and were treated as vermin.  More than once I'd secretly invited a cat to come closer, and Malaal would wave his cane at the animal and hiss.  Animals were only kept if they were useful - like the goats that Malaal and Chadit kept in a pen behind their home.  In my home, Abdou had asked about the decorations (of the antique banjo mounted on the living room wall he'd said: "that's an African instrument"), but he seemed most fascinated by our cats.  He asked what they were named, what they did, what they ate.  He told us about an uncle of his who lived alone and kept a dog, as if this were the strangest thing a man could do.  I thought he'd asked everything he possibly could when a look of deep concentration came over his face.  "Where do they go to the bathroom?" he asked me in French.  "Um, in a... a box, in a closet" I replied, and, not knowing the exact French words for it (we'd never studied this in class) said, "there's.... sand that they do their needs in.  Afterward... we throw it away."  "And it's in the house?"  Abdou asked.  "Yes," I replied.  Abdou's curiosity was not satisfied until I showed him the litter box.

September 21st - Gorée Island, Part II, Maison Des Esclaves

We enter the Masion Des Esclaves, a rust colored building with a large double staircase in the central room leading to a second floor.  The vendors who've followed us around the island don't follow us inside, and I am grateful for the solitude.  In my line of vision is a placard with the word Hommes above a doorway.  It isn't until I've walked around the periphery of the main floor and seen the placards above the other rooms: Femmes, Jeunes Filles, and Enfants, that I realize these are not restrooms, but holding cells that people were taken to, separated by age and sex.  This information drips down over me slow and cold, like someone cracked an enormous raw egg on my head. 

Our guide takes us to each room, describing the living conditions in each space.  Each room has it's own horrific story: "This is where the men were kept," our guide says as we stand crowded together in the small dark space I'd initially mistook for a bathroom, "they were lined up against the walls so tightly that at night they could only sleep by leaning against each other.  They were held here for a maximum of three months, after that they were weighed - if they weighed less than 60 kilos, they were thrown into the ocean where they were eaten by sharks; if anyone got sick, or no one bought them, they were thrown into the ocean and eaten by sharks.  Approximately 20 million people passed through this island on their way to slavery, and of those, 6 million died."  The number six million feels sickeningly familiar.

"This is where the young girls were kept,"  our guide says as we enter a room marked Jeunes Filles.  "They were picked based on the size of their breasts," he says, cupping his chest with his hands, "if they were big enough, they were sent to this room; if not, they were sent to the children's room.  The girls in this room were raped, became pregnant, and their mixed blood children were sent to live in a house on this island, becoming an elite class of métis who had status higher than their parents.  The slave girls never saw their children after giving birth."

"This is where the children were kept," our guide tells us in the room marked Enfants.  "Families were brought here," he says, pointing to Idy, his wife Fina, and three year-old daughter Mamie, "and separated.  The men were imprisoned in one room," he says, pointing to Idy, "the women in another," he says, gesturing to Fina,"and the children," he says, placing his hand on Mamie's head, "were kept in this room."  If there was ever a moment I am thankful that Mamie doesn't understand French, it's now.  "Families were broken up and sold to different buyers; in one family the father might be sold and shipped Brazil, the mother to a plantation in the American Carolinas, and the child to Cuba, never to see or hear from each other again."

Idy halts in his translation, his voice breaking.  "Oh God," he says quietly, then collects himself and continues.  I'd been anxious to see this place, and had been frustrated that Idy kept putting it off; watching him I wonder how many times he's had to do this, what it must be like for him to have to come here year after year and explain to a new group of people exactly how this building functioned, what it must be like to live so close to this place.  I suppose eventually you'd get used to it - as you might if you lived near a holocaust memorial site.  In some ways, we all live with the ghosts, genocides, and wrongs of the past; in my hometown of Chicago, the streets are mapped out on a grid system - the only streets that run at an angle are ones that were used as Indian trails.  The trails have long since been paved over, and the Indians have long since disappeared.  Chicago is even named for a Potawotami word meaning wild onion or wild garlic, but the Potawotami themselves were forcibly removed from Chicago in 1833.  There are no markers memorializing the Potawotami; coming face-to-face with the Maison Des Esclaves - an actual physical vestige of something that is at once so undeniably central to the story of America, and so completely despicable, is overwhelming.

Finally, our guide shows us La Porte Du Voyage Sans Retour, the gate of the "trip from which no one returned," where slave ships were docked and loaded with human cargo.  "Africans were complicit in the slave trade," our guide says, "they were hired by Europeans to capture other Africans, and were paid in rum."  I stare out at the ocean, my tiny struggles and discomforts dissolved into insignificance.  I imagine seeing a ship on the horizon, I think about all the people who've become part of the ocean I'm looking at, that it's the same ocean that runs along the eastern seaboard of the United States.  I walk into an empty room marked Chambre de Pesage, "weighing room," and quietly lose my composure, snuffling into my hands and hoping no one interrupts me.

I can't bring myself to take any photos of the Maison Des Esclaves, it feels disrespectful.  I take three pictures of the entire island: one of a gnarled tree stump; one of some rooftops; and one of a mother and child tending to their goats and cows.  The scene is so bucolic, you'd never know it was on the same island as the Maison Des Esclaves.

September 20th - Gorée Island, Part I, and Lac Rose

Waiting to board the boat to Gorée Island, I sit on a metal bench and watch a recorded message that runs on a loop demonstrating the proper method of hand washing.  There are places like Gorée Island up and down the coast of West Africa - former slave trading ports that have been converted into heritage sites.  The Maison Des Esclaves on the island was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1978.  I've been thinking about the island ever since I thought about making this trip five years ago, and in the past two weeks its importance has been reinforced in conversations with my old French teacher Abdou, and my cousin's friend Ndeye, who met me for dinner one evening.  "La il-le faut," you must go there, Abdou had said to me, pointing his index finger at my chest. 

Idy has hired a tour guide, a man in a blue kaftan with silver threads running through it and wire-rimmed spectacles; the arrangement is made just before boarding the boat.  It's only a 3 kilometer ride from the mainland, but even before we land vendors begin plying their wares.  "Bonjour madame," a woman says to me; "bonjour," I reply, and before I know it she is showing me pieces of jewelry and telling me to visit her shop on the island.

Sun-washed buildings painted yellow and rusty red make this place seem like a holiday resort, and for the 1,000 people who live here, it is simply home.  First claimed by Portugal in the 1400's, then Holland, Britain, and France, it was named Goeree by the Dutch, and approximately 20 million Africans passed through here in the 400 years that it operated as a slave trading port. 

We step off the boat and are followed relentlessly by women selling jewelry; they walk behind us and beside us like shepherds.  I keep my hands close to my sides, not wanting them to place anything in them.  They follow us up and down the hills of the island; stand in my peripheral vision as the guide explains the architectural significance of the buildings around us.  They sit when we sit, stand when we stand.  It's like having an extra shadow.  They are more aggressive here than other parts of Dakar, with the exception of the Lac Rose, where I didn't even want to open my bag to get my bottled water for fear that they'd think I was reaching for my wallet.  On the shores of Lac Rose, I lost my cool.  "Madame," one of them began, after having followed me for a quarter of a mile through the heat and the sun, "non!" I barked, surprising even myself.  This caused the woman and her companions to break into laughter.  "Non?!" she said, incredulous.  I looked away, ashamed and frustrated.  We were the only group of visitors at Lac Rose that afternoon, and the attention that was being focused on us wore on me.  All I wanted was to be able to walk for ten minutes in peace, to be anonymous outside the confines of the house.  I had pictured a bucolic respite from the gritty urbanity of Dakar, but there was none to be had.

The only way to escape from the vendors at Lac Rose was by sitting on the edge of a rickety wooden boat that looked like an oversized milk crate, while a guide pushed the vessel forward with a stick that reached the bottom of the lake.  The attraction of Lac Rose was that supposedly it looked pink from the naturally occurring salt on the lake bed that was dredged up and heaped into piles on the shore.  The day we went it looked dishwater brown, and ropes of dirty, salty foam washed up onto the shore.  Our navigator took me and three other women out to the middle of the lake, where a man stood up to his neck in water, pounding the salt rock beneath him with a pointed stick, scooping it up with a basket, and dumping it into a boat tethered to a pole.  "Does the salt bother his skin?" someone asked the guide, "they cover themselves in oil before getting into the water, and only work a couple days a week," he replied, "they only do that job for a couple of years - then they become guides, like me."

I will never again have cause to complain about my working conditions.  As it was, I was covered in SPF50 sunscreen, wearing sunglasses that just barely kept the blaze from my eyes, and wearing a hat with an enormous brim, and I could just barely tolerate the salt and sun that was reaching me.  I wouldn't have lasted an hour out there.

Bonus Post! Photos of Thies that I couldn't fit into the last one

Dancer 1

Dancer 2

Dancer 3 

I love this picture

I love this picture too

This boy kept following me and posing in ways that he must have thought would capture my interest.

Fixing us a huge meal.

Drummers

This shy girl came and sat on my lap without saying a word.

Two little girls.

September 18th - Thies

I am hot and sweaty; we've been driving on the highway in a rented van for the past couple of hours.  The van is filled to capacity - there's a narrow aisle squeezed between a row of one-person seats and benches that fit three comfortably and four squashed; once a row has been filled there is a collapsible seat that folds down between the two sides, creating a pokey, rickety seat for some unlucky person.  As usual, there are no seat belts.  I don't even look for them anymore.

Inside the van - note the falling apart ceiling on the right.

Another interior shot - note the photos of the driver's Marabou (spiritual adviser)

In front of Idy's father's home

Traffic inches forward, and on the side of the highway vendors sell batteries, bottled water, and phone cards.  They approach the vehicle, their hands inches from the open windows.  We exit off the highway and take a smaller road filled with pot holes that the driver swerves to miss, and drive past vendors selling meat in stalls - whole limbs of animals on tables in the open air, covered in flies that no one swats away.  The paved road ends and we continue on a red dirt road, a cloud of dust following us, until we approach a building in the center of the village Idy grew up in.  The moment the vehicle approaches, children start running towards it.

A young boy in Thies

Another interior shot

Interior of Idy's father's house

We descend the vehicle and are led to a building that is mercifully cool and dark inside, my eyes feel singed by the sun and my body weakened by the heat.  We are presented to a tall man with a lined face who is introduced to us as Idy's father; I can see the resemblance.  We're invited to rest in a bedroom off the main hallway.  Outside, children look in at us through the open windows.  I lie down on a rug and close my eyes, but my rest is interrupted shortly by a group of rangy teenage girls who fill the room and begin to dance to music playing from cell phones, pulling me away from the wall and asking me to join them.  Exhausted, I do my best to oblige, then find a moment to escape into the heat and sunlight of the outdoors.

I explore the compound; there are several buildings creating a kind of circle, and in the center several women prepare what looks like a huge meal.  On one side of the compound are a row of toilet stalls, which are comprised of a drain in a sunken hollow with foot-shaped indents on either side indicating where to squat.  There is no flushing mechanism, instead a colorful object that looks like a kettle rests just outside the stalls.  I've seen these kettles on the streets in Dakar and had misunderstood their functionality for several days; I thought they were pretty, and had considered trying to buy one to bring back with me.  The bathroom stalls are clean and airy, a lot more pleasant than the ones at the Centre Blaise Senghor, or the ones I've encountered on the highway between Chicago and Michigan, for that matter.

There are goats tied to fence posts, and at least one donkey, which appears on the road bearing the weight of a young boy.  I join my fellow travelers, who have found a place to sit just outside the main house, surrounded by children.   One little girl has installed herself on a lap; she is shy, but very comfortable where she is.  I find a spot to sit down, and momentarily I feel a strange sensation on my scalp, like I've backed up into some leaves.  I turn to see what it could be, and half a dozen children scatter behind me, giggling.  A boy who looks to be about seven or eight years old looks me in the eye and says: "Bic."  "Pardon?" I ask him in French, "donne-moi un Bic," he repeats.  He is serious in his request, no trace of humor on his face.  We were prepared for this; back in Chicago, the women who'd been on this tour before told us to bring gifts for the children: chap stick; hair-ties; pens; paper.  Idy collected them all and had distributed them from the van, where he held court like Santa Claus.  I don't have any more pens on me - I turned them all over to Idy.  "Desole," - sorry, I say to the boy.  He looks at me dubiously.  Later, Idy approaches me and asks if I have any more chap stick - I'd brought six with me as gifts and they were a big hit.  I don't have any more, and I quietly curse the moment at Trader Joe's when I made the decision to buy just six instead of two or three dozen; they came in packages of three for $2.49 each, would it have killed me to spend another $10 or $20?

Idy distributing gifts

I take my camera out, and immediately groups of children begin posing for me.  This is the only place we've been where people want me to take their picture, except for the women - who look at me and shake their heads "no" when I bring the camera to my face.  I hold my hands up and nod, and put the camera away.  The children, however, want to see their likeness on the screen of my digital camera.  One boy follows me from place to place, striking poses that he thinks will be interesting, in the hopes that I will take his picture.  There's a grown man who also wants me to take his picture; he poses with his son, placing the young boy on a drum. 

Father and son posing

We are called to dinner; our group gets a prime spot on the floor of Idy's father's house, outside the rest of the clan sits where they can.  We eat, and I am extra careful not to use my left hand - at the house in Dakar I've slipped once or twice, but it's understood that as visitors we don't completely understand the gravity of this offense, although Malaal once corrected S with unusual sternness.  S is a leftie, so this arrangement has been especially difficult for her to adapt to.  Afterward we walk to a small hill about a hundred yards from the house where drummers have begun to practice.  With light still left in the sky, the rest of the clan arrives, dressed to the nines.  There is dancing, and we are pulled into the fray - the teenage girls who had been practicing earlier take me by the hand and there is no refusing them.  A small child had planted herself on my lap and even this is no excuse; the woman next to me takes the toddler from me and I do my best to follow the dancing girl's lead; she stands across from me and looks me in the eye, I mimic her movements to the best of my ability, letting go of my inhibitions, and quite aware that all eyes are on me.  Moments earlier A had slipped and fallen while dancing, which caused quite an uproar.

When there is no light left in the sky some men bring loudspeakers and a microphone into the circle and begin singing praises to Idy, who enters the circle and dances to his extended family's delight.  I consider the fact that Idy is related to every single person in this village; I consider that this is where he came from, and that most of what he earns in Chicago is very likely sent back here.  I think about how much of the year he spends away from his family.  Entire villages, I've been told, have no grown men left - they've all gone to Europe or the United States to work, sending their earnings back home, some of them unable to return for years at a time.  I am sad and amazed and in awe all at once.  It is overwhelming, and beautiful, and exhausting. 

On the ride back to Dakar several older women ride with us part of the way; they talk and laugh, and break into song spontaneously, singing praises to Idy.

It happened so quickly...

Diouf

I'm not sure which I heard first - the sound of footfalls landing hard and fast behind us, or screaming.  We had spent a relaxed evening strolling through the neighborhood, and then went for a walk along the oceanfront.  We stopped at the statue of Diouf, Senegal's star soccer player, their Maradonna.  We took pictures of each other posing next to it.  We moved like an amoeba along the ocean's edge, stopping to look out onto the horizon, climb rocks, and take pictures.  Idy suggested returning to the house (why do I always remember these kinds of details after the fact?) but there was a drumming circle up ahead that we wanted to explore.  We ventured off the path, away from the street lights (the only streetlights I remember seeing in Dakar) and began hiking over a hill towards the music.  There were six of us, Idy and five women.  And then, and then... I think it was the screaming I heard first, and then the footfalls, although that's out of sequence.  Memory can be deceiving.  We had split into two groups - me, Idy, S and A in front, and a few yards behind us, E and K.  The sounds of running, the sounds of someone - or some ones, being knocked to the ground.  A heard something, and turned around to see this: her sister on the ground, an unknown person dragging her by the feet.  It was then that she started screaming, it was then that my brain was pierced with reality.

Diouf and friends

There were two of them in the dark with us.  "Run," A screamed, and then "RUUUUN!"  My pupils dilated, and I could see every tree root and pebble on the ground in front of me.  I ran as fast and as hard as I could to where the edge of the path met the highway.  There was nowhere else to run unless I went into the busy road.  I turned around and counted.... there were 1,2,3,4,5 of us - all the women were accounted for.  The instant that A began screaming, Idy bent to the ground and picked up a rock in each hand.  He threw one at the attackers, then ran towards them with the other.  Set against the dark blue sky, it was like watching wood cutouts in stop motion animation.  I could hardly believe that I was here in this moment, watching this, right here, right now, my dance teacher fighting off two assailants.  The attackers retreated, running back in the direction they'd come from.  Idy joined us at the lip of the highway.

"Cowards," he spat, his brow furrowed, "they were just kids."  "You're bleeding," I said.  "Your hand, and your face."  Idy touched his face where he'd sustained a small cut, then looked at his hand, where another small cut was visible.  "What about you?" Idy asked E and K, who'd been jumped.  K checked herself - a small tear in her dress, nothing more; E looked at her arm and for the first time noticed the trail of blood that started at her shoulder and ran all the way to her fingertips.  She lifted her ripped shirtsleeve and exposed the wound, an asterisk of open flesh.  I did exactly what you're not supposed to do when someone's been injured -- my eyes popped open, my jaw dropped and I slapped my hand to my wide-open mouth.  I might have said something horrible like "OH MY GOD!"  E, cool under pressure, said "let's not make it out to be worse than it is," closed her hand around the wound to slow the bleeding.  "Let's get back home," Idy said, and flagged two cabs down.

I got in a cab with S and E, S instructing her roommate to "breathe..."  The two of them breathed together, E closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, then exhaling slowly.  E's bleeding arm was next to me.  "I have a washcloth," I said, dug into my backpack and grabbed for it with shaking fingers.  I handed it to E and she pressed it against the wound.  The blue terrycloth turned red in an ever-widening circle.  E continued to breathe deeply, and I closed my eyes.  I felt lightheaded, as if it were me who was losing blood in the backseat of a Senegalese cab.

Fina wasn't home, Mustafah was watching Ma-Ibou and Mamie.  "Take them out of here," E said as the kids began drawing near with curiosity.  I nodded, led them upstairs with A and distracted them with crayons and paper.  Idy followed momentarily.  "We're going to the clinic," he said.  He kneeled and looked into his children's eyes, implored them to be good for me and the Polish sisters, then left the house with E, S, and Mustafah.

Mamie looked at me, opened her mouth and showed me what was inside -- the remains of a chewed up crayon, then closed her jaw tight.  "Spit it out!" I said, my hand in front of her mouth.  She would not be moved.  "Crache-le!" I said in French, hoping this would register.  The child would not respond.  "This is going to be a long night," I said, inserting my index finger between her lips until she opened her mouth and allowed me to remove the bits of crayon.

Our babysitting stint was mercifully brief, in what seemed like less than an hour everyone returned; E with a stitched up arm and a prescription for antibiotics, Idy with a bandage on his hand.  We spent the next hours rehashing the scene: the attackers had waited for an opportunity, we decided.  They watched our pack split into two groups, then made their move.  We'd started to feel at home, and become too relaxed -- in Chicago, we would never stroll along the lakefront path at night.  We'd become comfortable, too comfortable -- we drew attention; we were goofing off and had let our guard down.  "Well," S said to E, "if we weren't friends yet, we're friends now!"

Idy felt terrible, nothing like this had ever happened in over ten years of bringing people to Senegal for this tour.  When Fina walked through the door full of sprightly energy, he touched her arm, took her aside, explained in Wolof.  She was livid.  "It does something to me that this happened to you," she said to us, her eyes welling with tears, "and A -- you see your sister on the ground, you don't scream, you kick and punch!"  She said, taking a swipe at the air as she spoke.  "If I'd been there..." she trailed off, shaking her head.  Then she told us stories of how she'd defended herself in the past; how she was on a crowded bus once and felt someone get too close, reached into her purse for a razor blade, and cut the man before turning to see that it was someone she knew.

The second group of women were due to arrive -- two Swiss sisters, B and F, and their friend C, who were joining us for the second week of the tour, then heading north for some exploring on their own.  Unlucky as their timing was, we welcomed them and updated them on the events of the evening.  They moved into the room previously occupied by Idy and his family.  Restless and unsure of what to do next, we went to a neighborhood club and danced the night away to a live Cuban band.  We danced hard, sweating away our insecurities, metabolizing the adrenaline that had built up in our bloodstreams.  We counted our blessings: nothing had been stolen, E's purse was ripped, but nothing was missing from it; K's camera made a funny noise when she turned it on and off, but it still worked; K had bruises, but nothing more; we had another week to ease the shock of the evening's unhappy incident with newer, better ones.

We went to bed at 3:30a.m., a little shaken, a little wiser, a little more tightly knit together.

We've been here for a week, but it feels like much longer - Senegal contd.

taxi cab

We've been here for a week, but it feels like much longer.  After breakfast we walk to the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor for our dance class, or if we're feeling lazy we split into two cabs.  The fare is negotiated before we open the door to the cab, the price is bargained down by increments that sound impressive, but amount to less than a dollar.  The cabs are all dilapidated in one way or another -- the passenger side door doesn't open, or it can only be opened from the outside.  None of them have seat belts.  We pass a car that has no windows at all, two men riding in the front seats of a rusted shell that looks as if it might stop working at any moment.

Abdou in his home

There are no stop signs or traffic lights, but somehow the traffic circulates.  When Abdou, who was my French teacher in Chicago, picks me up from the house one afternoon, he points to a car in the parking lot across the street and says: "That was my first car in Dakar."  It takes me a minute to realize that he means that is the actual physical car he used to own, not just the same brand and model.  I grill him on all the things that don't make sense to me.  His is the only car I've seen that has seat belts.  "Why don't cars have seat belts here?" I ask. "This is Africa," he replies, as if this explains everything.  I continue in my line of questioning, which no doubt sounds infantile to him: "why do people throw garbage in the street?"  "This is Africa," he repeats, "if you tell someone not to throw garbage in the street they'll say 'why, is this your uncle's house?'"  At this he laughs, and I laugh along with him, although I don't get the joke.  He asks me how the trip is going.  "It's going great," I say, "but it's very different.  I thought I would be more prepared, having visited Morocco a few years ago, but..."  "This is Black Africa," he interjects, "this is different."  I'm dumbstruck by his pronouncement, and remain quiet for a moment.  Abdou has made a career as a journalist, and has traveled the world meeting dignitaries and interviewing heads of state.  He moved to the US with the idea that he could break into American journalism, "I thought I could get a job at the New York Times," he once told me.  When it turned out not to work out quite that easily, he turned to teaching.  He returned to Dakar four years ago, and runs his own PR firm.  He wears an ear bud constantly, and interrupts our conversation to take calls from clients. 

Car radios that work are tuned to loud music or talk shows.  There seems to be a penchant towards playing music loudly, no matter how cheap or tinny the sound system is.  One night at dinner the TV (which was only in the house for a few days) is tuned to a station playing music videos.  Fina joins us, and brings her cell phone downstairs.  Seemingly oblivious to the music that is already playing on the TV she begins playing a song on her phone and turns the sound up.  Music blares from vendor stalls on the side of the road, and from TVs in convenience stores.  One night we walk past a group of people watching TV out in the open, seated on folding chairs.

Our bodies are becoming used to the environment - some are having more luck than others.  My roommates both get upset stomachs; first A is up all night running to the bathroom, the next night it's her sister who's ill, then it reverts back to A again.  E has a bad reaction to her malaria pills because she takes one in the morning with breakfast just before dance class, and S gets sick from eating too much bread (she's allergic to wheat).  I keep expecting it to be my turn, but my body has reacted well so far.  I'm thankful for my gut of steel, or my luck of the draw, or whatever it is that's keeping everything in check.  I've learned to use very little water when I bathe, and very little toilet paper (we had to bring our own).  Our new-found habits are certainly more environmentally friendly, if not uncouth in western terms.  I joke that my mother would be so proud of me -- eating on the floor, sticking my hand right into communal plates of food.  Sleeping on the floor has gotten easier for me, but sitting cross-legged on the floor at dinner has gotten harder.  I shift and squirm at mealtimes, moving from one side to the other.  "What I wouldn't give for a table and chairs," I find myself saying to my roommates one night, just before drifting off to sleep.

The dancing is sublime, as I knew it would be.  It's not until after our first class that I feel like myself in this new place, my sweat pushing out any inhibitions and doubts I might have had about making this trip.  We practice our moves after dinner in the living room, Idy snapping his fingers to the beat and giving us notes on how to perfect our moves.  We're due to have a recital at the end of our stay, in the courtyard of the Centre Culturel Blaise Senghor.  We've watched other dance troupes practice there, moving with the grace and agility that comes from a lifetime of dancing.  From time to time we're invited to participate, the dancers approach the perimeter of the room where we are generally seated, take us by the hand, and pull us into their dance.  As with anything, if I don't think about what I look like while I'm dancing, I do just fine.

We venture out into the city as a group, touring the fish market, and an area known as the Village Artisanal where vendors have set up their wares in booths.  If a vendor catches my eye they speak to me, and sometimes take me by the hand, walk me into their shop, show me their wares and tell me they'll give me a good price.  Idy and Mustafah act as intermediaries for us, bartering and negotiating prices.  I end up buying some fabric; two miniature buses made to look like the Touba buses -- Renault vans that have been colorfully painted and are used as public transportation; carved masks depicting the seven days of the week; and three hand painted signs -- two listing prices for haircuts, one listing prices for the treatment of various medical ailments.  The highest price for a men's hair cut is listed next to the word "toubab" (white person).  I get home before I realize that one of the panels on the medical ailments sign shows a man farting, painted lines emanating from his buttocks into a cloud that is surrounded by flies.  Another shows a man vomiting, "look," I say to my roommates, "it's you!"

fabric

women's hairstyles

men's hairstyles

medical ailments

toy Touba bus

Touba, public transportation

vomiting

stomach ailments