Nanga Def? Senegal continued.

We have begun to settle into a routine; Idy's wife and two young children have moved in for the duration, taking the room across the hall where the Polish sisters were sleeping.   Idy announces this change in living arrangements as casually if he were telling me where to buy bottled water: "Fina and the kids are coming to stay here, so K and A will be moving in with you."  At this point these little invasions of privacy feel normal, and it suits me fine as I haven't been sleeping well, mostly because at night I sleep alone in a room that faces the cement front yard of the building.  There's an iron gate separating the property from the street, and if it's not closed properly the wind whips it open and closed all night long, the sound of metal-on-metal making its way into my dreams.

The Polish sisters slide their mattresses across the hall into my room, and I consolidate my clothing onto a single shelf of the closet to make room for their clothes.  Across the hall a queen-sized mattress is brought up from the living room, where Idy had been sleeping alone, and Fina tacks a swatch of fabric up on the windows, instantly transforming the vibe from temporary residence into the most beautiful room in the house.  In her enormous trunk she has packed a seemingly limitless supply of dresses, each more beautiful than the next, and changes clothes several times a day.  Also in her trunk is a supply of hair and beauty products: when we get changed to go out at night I slip into a clean t-shirt and the only skirt I packed, and apply a layer of Burt's Bees lip shimmer; Fina pulls her hair back into a bun and attaches a false ponytail, colors her eyebrows with dark pencil, puts on lipstick, hoop earrings, and changes into a new dress.  She hangs onto the crook of my elbow as we make our way to a club a few blocks away, shifts to put her arm around my shoulder, and I feel the heat of her body radiating out from her armpit.  She is 27 years old to Idy's 45, and the mother of two.  Their marriage was arranged, as is the custom in Senegal.  She was born on the island of Cape Verde, where she was raised Christian and spoke Portuguese.  She has since learned French and Wolof, converted to Islam, and is trying to learn English.  "See you later," she says to me, by way of practice.

Her wide forehead and caramel skin remind me of the singer Sade, and spending time with her makes me feel like I'm 18 years old.  She tells naughty jokes about men who practice polygamy (including what she'd do to Idy if he ever took a second wife), sneaks sips from my beer when no one is looking (which is only available in clubs, as far as I can tell.  I haven't seen beer, wine, or liquor of any kind in any stores), and has a laugh as loud and instantaneous as a bike horn.   In the living room she braids her daughter's hair, and then does the same to S and K.  I shy away from it, self-conscious about my fine hair and what it would look like if Fina tried to braid it in corn rows.  I imagine I would look like a cross between Bo Derek in "10" and the guy with all the pins in his head from "Hellraiser."

Mustafah is intent on teaching us Wolof, every chance he gets he drills us with new words and verb conjugations.  Foy dem means where are you going, mangi dem means I'm going, funyou dem means where are we going.  I write down a list of words in a notebook, and try to memorize them:

Nanga def - how are you
Mangi firek - I'm fine
Jaru jef - thank you
Nokobo - you're welcome
Dem - verb, "to go"
Mangi dem - I'm going
Bosuba - until tomorrow
Ba banenyo - until next time
Djin - fish
Cani - spicy fish
Yassa - a spicy fish dish, one of Fina's signature dishes
Thieboudienne - a dish made from fish, rice, and tomato sauce
Mafe - stew
No to do - what's your name
Mangi to do - my name is
Kai nyu dem - let's go
Fetch - dance
Nechna - good (food)
Safna - delicious
Safool - not good
Rafetna - you're pretty
Buguna - I like
Lek - eating
Neerna - good
Nan - drink
Balma - please
Maima - give me
Ndoch - water

Idy's six year old son, Ibou (Idy calls him "Ma-Ibou" to differentiate between his son and nephew of the same name) and three year old daughter, Mamie, indulge in the attentions and affections of the household.  One evening E and I find ourselves at home alone with them, and they command our attention, taking us by the hand or saying "Hola! Hola!" until we watch them perform tricks - somersaults and cartwheels, and I understand through context that "hola!" means "look!"  Ma-Ibou pats my shoulder to get my attention and begins singing a song: "Buppolo solda," he begins, then improvises the sound of percussion: "gingee dek, gingee dek..."  I recognize the tempo and the beat, and in a couple minutes realize I've heard this song before -- he's singing Bob Marley's Buffalo Soldier.  "Buffalo soldier," I begin to sing.  We make eye contact and I continue, he joins me on the vocalized percussion. "Gingee dek, gingee dek," we say together.  "Dreadlock Rasta.  There was a Buffalo soldier, in the heart of America..." 

Children are a fully integrated feature of life; two young girls cross the street and in the process get in the way of a motorcyclist, who weaves between them.  The older girl slaps the younger one across the cheek as some kind of punishment.  Idy and Mustafah don't hesitate to involve themselves, telling the girl who slapped not to treat her sister that way.  Another time, Idy stops a young child who is carrying a rock in his hand, and tells him to put it down.  "This one wanted to throw the rock to that one," he explains, and then laughs.  I've never seen adults take charge of children they aren't directly connected to, it makes me wonder how many of Idy's nephews are actually related to him by blood.  Perhaps Uncle is an honorary title for any adult male; I make a mental note to look into it.

The schedule is beyond relaxed; sometimes we don't eat dinner until after 10pm.  There is a lot of waiting involved in everything we do, and it extends into the outer world.  At the post office I wait for half an hour as a clerk turns the loose-leaf pages of a book of stamps, and I end up bringing the postcards that I'd meant to mail back home with me because there are no mailboxes in Dakar, if I want to mail something I have to go back to the post office, and that takes up too much time.  We learn to eat as much as possible at breakfast, because there's no telling when lunch will be.  Nothing works the way I expect it to - trying to contact people via cellphone is beyond frustrating.  I buy phone cards at the corner store where we buy bottled water by the six pack (we can't drink the water here, not even to brush our teeth), and it takes an entire phone card to figure out how to dial out properly.  When I do manage to get through to Chicago to talk to M, or other parts of Dakar to contact my old French teacher Abdou, who taught at the Alliance Française de Chicago until a few years ago, or my cousin Emilie's friend Ndeye, the connection is never reliable.  Calls get dropped mid-sentence, and phone batteries die quickly.  "Batteries don't last in Africa," Idy says, by way of explanation.  Suddenly the word "inshallah," spoken by everyone we come into contact with, makes sense.  It translates as "if God wills it," and people use it at the end of any sentence that has to do with the future, for example: we'll see you tomorrow, if God wills it.  Without a fully functioning infrastructure, anything and everything will happen if, and only if, you're lucky enough not to get stopped by some kind of obstacle.

E-mail is just as difficult as cellphones; we locate an Internet cafe, where for the equivalent of 50 cents I get 90 minutes of time, but the keyboard is incomprehensible.  It takes me half an hour to compose the following email to M:  

Subject:holy crap this is a messed up keyboard!

Im at a cybercafe and this keyboard is driving me cra< key:   Heres how it looks if I touch type:

Iù, qt q cybercqfe qnd this keyboqrd is driving ,e crqwy;  for instance theres no < key:

No end to the chellenges I tell you; but having an a,a

at first it seemed scary to the eye because the dilapidated appearance of the city would be a signal of danger in the states; but its not the same here; theres just not very good infrastructure:  Idys entourage is always with us in one form or another; and one of them always sleeps on the couch by the front door which felt strange at first; but Idy is just looking out for us:  Were learning to eat west african style sharing a big bowl and eating without utensils using only the right hand, you would probably have gone without meals for the duration.  Im sure its just as entertaining for the guides to watch us try to figure out how to eat this way as it is for us:  They;re all very friendly and are constantly trying to teach us Wolof; heres what I can say: nanga def; it means how are you:  also wow means yes:

very hard to find internet and to type heres where I would type a question mark if I could find it:

saw some really cool drumming today and dancing; to,orrow we have our first dance class: 

miss you and love you,
J

Idy's entourage really did protect us; on New Year's Eve I get freaked out by all the firecrackers being set off in the Place De L'Indépendance.  They're being thrown everywhere, and I realize that we are surrounded by a mass of humanity, five women in a sea of men, some of them purposely throwing firecrackers near feet so that people jump.  I'd gotten singed by one a few days earlier -- it had ricocheted off the ground, exploded near my ear, and grazed me, so my tolerance for pyrotechnics had already dissipated.  "I want to get out of here," I say, feeling the wall of men close in on me.  Ibou takes me by the hand and walks me back home, talking to me the whole way to keep me calm.  "Don't worry," he says, "lots of people don't like firecrackers."  When I get home Fina is there, and she corroborates.  "I hate firecrackers," she says, "I never go out on New Year's Eve."

Having Idy's family in the house creates a sense of intimacy that I wasn't expecting, and makes me feel a bit like a voyeur.  A week into our stay three more guests arrive from Chicago and take over the room they had been staying in, sending them back downstairs to the living room with the queen-sized mattress.  I come home one night to find them asleep, Idy shirtless and sleeping on his side, his arm around Fina.  I tiptoe up the stairs to my room, not wanting to disturb them.  Late one afternoon Fina gives Mamie a bath in the courtyard, and the little girl comes indoors wearing nothing but a towel.  On another occasion I come downstairs to find Idy kneeling on a prayer rug, facing Mecca.  These are intimate family moments I never expected to see, and it makes me reflect on my own family.

Every moment of every day is an assault on my senses - Senegal continued

Every moment of every day is an assault on my senses.  I feel like a child, I want to stop and look and ask questions about everything I see or smell or taste or hear.  There are moments that feel incongruous to me - Malal's cell phone ring tone is the break from 50 Cent's In Da Club, Ibou wears a knit cap when its 60 degrees outside because he feels cold, and out of the blue he says "what's up girl?" to practice his English.

There is no sense of privacy or personal property anywhere - Mustafah asks me what I'm drinking one morning, and when I tell him it's English Breakfast tea that I brought with me he picks up my mug without asking and takes a sip.  Then he takes my copy of The New Yorker and tries to read it.  "Université," he says upon landing on an advertisement for Columbia.  One evening I retreat to my room when Idy's wife, Fina, knocks on the door and asks me what I'm up to.  I tell her I'm reading a book and she hands me a bowl of vegetables and a dull knife.  After discussing Barak Obama with Ibou, I show him the photo of me and M in Chicago on election night that I have stored on my cell phone.  He takes the phone from me and starts playing with the buttons to see what other features it has.  Idy's three year old daughter, Mamie, who speaks only Wolof, walks into my room and makes a beeline for my contact lens case, picks it up and begins unscrewing one of the caps off.  I redirect her attention and bring her downstairs to find something else to play with.   These are all bizarre behaviors to me, but I grow accustomed to it.

Outside of the house the world is crowded and amazing, and our group of very white women accompanied by very black men is a constant source of attention.  There aren't many tourists in this part of town; the times we come into contact with other white people are remarkable in their scarcity.  We see a white couple on Avenue Léopold Senghor, prompting K to remark - in her Polish accent, "I forget I am white here."  We see the highest numbers of white people on Ngor Island, a tourist trap accessible only by boat that is covered in beach resorts and vendors who follow us, relentlessly hawking their wares.  They walk next to me with baskets on their heads, and sit with me when I stop to rest, bringing their baskets into their laps and pressing plastic jewelry into my hands.  I would buy some for my young nieces, but I know that opening my wallet here would be like scattering breadcrumbs in an aviary.  It is something I never get used to.

On the street near the house a young boy runs up to me, points his finger and yells "toubab!"  Idy tells me that this means "white person," and that it's not pejorative, the boy is simply saying out loud what he has just seen.  I do my best to accept my status as an obvious outsider; it would take months of living here before I came to be seen as a regular.

On the main drag of the city center there is much to be seen:  fruit vendors selling oranges that have been peeled to the pith with a knife, leaving marks that make them look like onions; paper cones of roasted peanuts; coconuts that have been cut in half.  The food vendors are the quietest salesmen we encounter.  Elsewhere the salesmen become a dense chattering mass, as when Ibou takes me to the currency exchange half a mile from the house.  He weaves through the crowds effortlessly, and I struggle to keep up.  I feel a hundred pairs of eyes on me as we enter a small building squeezed into the middle of an overcrowded block.  I hand Ibou $75, he speaks to a man standing behind an old timey cashier's window and gets 40,000 CFA in return.  Outside the building men walk close to moving cars while holding up cardboard display boards covered in cheap sunglasses, and my sense of being watched by pairs of unseen eyes intensifies.  I am overwhelmed by the density of foot, auto, and bike traffic, and Ibou takes me by the hand and leads me out of the crowds and onto the quieter streets near the house.

There are other things in the streets: garbage, curls of feces, men facing the wall using the street as an open urinal.  On a wall in three foot spray-painted letters is the phrase: "defense de pisser sur le mur" - "no pissing on the wall".  I think about this every time I re-enter the house, and wash my feet and hands.  There are goats, sometimes whole herds of them; women sitting by the side of the road doing laundry and nursing babies; one woman holds a cell phone to her ear as she squats on the ground, an infant suckling at one breast, the other naked and visible to all who walk past her - the very image of the first and third worlds colliding.  Children play in the street, and are carried on the backs of their mothers, who cleverly wrap them onto their bodies with colored cloth that matches their head wraps.   Chadit, our dance teacher while we are here, unfurls a breast and begins nursing her infant son in the middle of a lesson.  She demonstrates the dance moves with the baby latched onto her.  When she and Malal come to the house for dinner, they bring their three children with them, and when they become tired they fall asleep wherever they are, no sounds of adult conversation or laughter can rouse them.

The electricity cuts out in the neighborhood and Chadit and Fina finish cooking by the light of a miniature flashlight that I have attached to a key chain, and hook onto a nail in the corner of the impossibly small kitchen where Fina prepares three meals a day with help from the two young sisters who've been hired to help with housework.  The thin sisters walk through the house, wordless shadows among us, bending in half to throw wet rags onto the floor and walking backwards as they mop, their bodies inverted Vs.  I try to speak a few words of Wolof to them: "Jer-e-jeff," I stammer, trying to remember the word for "thank you."

The electricity is still out by the time dinner is ready and we eat by candlelight, seated on the floor in West African fashion, using only our right hands to scoop handfuls of food from communal plates.  There is a method to eating this way, the first night that we ate together a great show was made of demonstrating the proper technique of grasping a handful of rice with a bit of fish or vegetable inside it, squeezing it repeatedly until it holds together, and popping it into our mouths.  We were sloppy eaters at first, but have begun to get the hang of it.  The food is amazing - every day Fina goes to the market by the ocean and buys fish that's been caught in canoes earlier that day, then scaled and gutted by women who hold cigarillos tightly in the corners of their mouths as they pound away at their work.

When dinner is finished we sit in a circle as Ibou prepares attaya from gunpowder tea in an elaborate process that involves pouring it from a small kettle into an even smaller glass cup, holding them as far from each other as possible to produce foam.  The tradition is to drink three cups, and I oblige.  Ibou demonstrates the proper method of drinking attaya, holding the rim of the glass cup to the edge of his lips and sucking loudly to pull the tea up through the foam.  The loud sucking noise is a central part of the ceremony.  I mimic him, resulting in a great sputtering of gasps and coughs, which produces much laughter from the locals.  Among us, we speak several languages, and we begin a round of tongue twisters: E teaches "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck" in English; K teaches a Polish twister that sounds like "karo kara karope"; and Fina teaches one in Wolof.  The electricity returns at 1:20am, just as we are preparing for bed.

In my room, filled with three cups of gunpowder tea, I am unable to sleep.  I toss and turn, every sound setting off the nerve endings in my ears, until I give up and get out of bed.  Across the hall I can hear the Polish sisters chatting, and knock on their door.  I tell them I can't sleep, and they invite me into their room and offer me Polish candy, which I accept greedily - I haven't seen candy since my arrival.  K shows me pictures on her camera that she took in Poland just before coming here, they show snowy scenes of an impossibly pristine and quaint old world, and despite the wonders of this place my heart yearns to be somewhere that looks as familiar as Poland looks to me now.

More Senegal - sorry for the delay, thanks for your patience!

When I wake again, it's to the sounds of people yelling excitedly. I get out of bed and look out my window.  Across from the house, on the other side of a parking lot and a couple of dumpsters, is a wide, dusty soccer field.  Spectators sit on a concrete barrier watching two teams play, red dust following the players everywhere they go.  I look at my watch - it is 9:30am.  I cross the hall to the bathroom with my towel and toiletries.  There is no shower curtain in the tub, and only cold water comes from a fixture that looks like an old fashioned phone receiver, and rests in the tub on a handle.  I squat in the tub and hold the receiver above my head, and cold water runs over me.  The toilet has no tank attached to it, a bucket sits next to it for flushing.  After a brief shower I towel off and dress, and go back into my room; I am the only one awake in the house.

Last night I barely put my bags down when it was suddenly time to leave the house again, though it was already close to midnight.  "We were waiting for you," E says to me.  "Okay, um, let me just rinse my armpits and wash my face," I said.

We split into two groups, K and A in Mustafah's car; E, S and I in a cab with Malal.  I haven't eaten yet, so we stop at a late night restaurant on the corner of a dusty street that serves kebab sandwiches and canned bissap, a drink I'd read about in my guidebook that's made from hibiscus flowers and sugar.  I don't have West African Francs yet, so E spots me some cash.  I devour the kebab, and pass the bissap around for E and S to taste.  The cab takes us down darkened streets to a club called Just 4U that has a small stage and outdoor seating.  Mustafah and Malal collect our cover charges and pay the man at the entrance, and we make our way to an open table.  The instant I walk into the club I feel underdressed; all around me women are wearing outrageous clothing, their hair and faces done up, their feet delicately held by impossibly chic sandals.  On stage there's a singer, a man playing electric guitar, and two drummers - one playing a djembe, the other playing a tama whose notes grow higher when the percussionist squeezes it under his arm.  He plays it rapid fire, his fingers moving like bees.  A small group has gathered around the stage to dance.  Someone is wearing a t-shirt with the words "Fuck Pink" in sparkling letters, and on the wall behind the bar is a larger than life, painted portrait of Stevie Wonder; mouth agape, dark glasses, hair in beads. 

Malal orders a Gazelle beer for me, and then asks me how it tastes - he doesn't drink.  It's not the best beer I've ever had, but I like the label, and it's bottled in Dakar.  E and S have been here for a couple days, and are used to the time change.  They get up and start dancing near our table, drawing stares.  K and A arrived earlier today from Poland, and though they are travel weary, they join in the fray.  I'm in a daze, I sit with Malal and Mustafah and take in my surroundings.  "I'm in Africa," I tell myself.  I scan the club and feel a presence above me, look up, and realize I'm sitting directly beneath a palm tree.  It's late December, and I'm wearing a skirt and t-shirt.

Back at the house I realize that my legs are covered in tiny red pinprick dots.  "You were bitten by mosquitoes," Malal tells me.  "Really?" I ask, idiotically.  I hadn't felt anything, and these don't look like mosquito bites to me - they are small, flat, and red.  In the morning they have become raised, and I'm thankful for the malaria pills that were prescribed to me by the male nurse at the travel clinic at Northwestern Hospital, where I received inoculations against polio, yellow fever, and typhoid.

Catching up.... finally, more Senegal

I wake to the sound of a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer, his voice droning in my ear like a mosquito. I stuff my hand underneath the sweatshirt that serves as my pillow and retrieve my wristwatch - the ticking had kept me from sleeping so I removed it during the night. It is 4:30am. I have been sleeping on a mattress that is two fingers thick, ensconced in a sheet that has been sewn together into a kind of sleeping bag for the sub-Saharan by my dear upstairs neighbor in Chicago. I am alone in an unfurnished room on the second floor of the house that has been rented for our group. There are three bedrooms upstairs, and so far there are five of us here: K and her sister A are across the hall from me, S and E are in the room next door. Downstairs a man I'd never met before tonight is sleeping on a couch so that we won't be left in this house alone; he is a relative of Idy, my West African Dance teacher. Outside stray dogs bark in the lot across from the house, punctuating the air with short, sharp notes that underscore my solitude. The floors are veiled in a fine layer of insidious red dust that covers the city of Dakar, comes indoors on feet and wind, and no amount of sweeping can get rid of. I wash my feet a minimum of once daily, although it is a pointless exercise, the minute I step out of the tub my feet become covered in dust again. I've been in the country mere hours, but it feels like much longer.

I bought my airline ticket months earlier, I found a cheap flight from Chicago on Iberia that required a ten hour layover in Madrid. The plane from Chicago still had ashtrays embedded into the armrests and bulging, convex television screens that dropped down from the ceiling in the center row. It cost $1100 including taxes. I found the deal on Expedia on a Tuesday, the same day as my class with Idy. "You won't find anything cheaper than that," he said, "book that flight today." I went home and booked it, and the next day the price went up to $1800. I've been wanting to join Idy on his annual tour of Dakar for five years, and I figured now was the time: I'm unemployed so time is no object, and I found a flight that cost $700 less than normal.

My aunt and uncle have friends in Madrid who picked me up from the airport and took me on a whirlwind tour of the city during my ten hour layover. I couldn't sleep on the plane, and followed them around in a daze. First they took me to their home, where a lavish holiday breakfast had been prepared, including an entire leg of ham. There were three generations sitting around the table and I felt like an unscrubbed intruder in my red bandanna and traveling clothes. It was raining, I'd packed for Africa and was unprepared. The matriarch of the family lent me a raincoat for the day, I piled into a car with the patriarch, his son Javier and his daughter-in-law, and their four week old daughter. I remembered Javier from a trip he'd taken to the states several years earlier, he'd visited my aunt and uncle in Madison, and they came to Chicago for a couple days. He had a sharp memory of my husband because of M's tattoos, and remembered me well enough to recognize me as I exited the baggage claim area. We drove through the center of town, the patriarch pointing out significant buildings and historic sites. We stopped for coffee, and again for beer and tapas. When I felt loose enough I told the daughter-in-law that I hoped I hadn't roped her into taking her four week old out into the rain. She explained that she was stir crazy from staying home with the baby, and had been looking forward to my arrival as an excuse to get out. By the time they dropped me off at the airport again I was practically delirious with travel and sleep deprivation, I'd been awake for 24 hours.

I'd hoped to sleep during the flight from Madrid to Dakar, but my fellow passengers had other plans. It felt more like happy hour on a cruise ship than an intercontinental flight. At the gate in Madrid cliques had formed: there was a group of Italian tourists who had struck up a conversation with a man from Nigeria who wore a pair of shades on the back of his head. Their acquaintanceship carried over onto the plane. I was seated across the aisle from the Italians, and within minutes the Nigerian stood from his seat and walked through the narrow aisle of the airplane, bought rounds of airplane wine, and entertained his newfound friends. He leaned over on the armrest of the Italians, bending over so that his rear end invaded my personal airspace. He crouched down and stood up abruptly to illustrate a point in a story that he seemed to find quite hilarious, nearly knocking a tray from the hands the hostess who was trying to walk past him. I expected her to reprimand him, but all she did was sigh and move on. "Nanga def," he said, at the top of his voice, over and over, and I racked my brain trying to remember what that meant. "Africaaaah," he said, "c'est comme ca", and broke into a dance that involved crouching down and moving his ass in the air. I drifted in and out of a restless, unsatisfying sleep as the Nigerian sustained his in-flight party persona and leaned into me, practically sitting in my lap every time someone needed to pass him, and the passenger behind me engaged in behavior that seemed like he was punching the back of my seat at regular intervals. Finally I turned around and made eye contact with him, and saw that he was easily six foot five, folded into his seat like a letter in an envelope, a look of abject misery on his face. I returned my seat to its upright position and did the best I could to get comfortable. I gave up on sleep, read my Senegal guidebook, and breathed slowly.

On landing at Leopold Sedar Senghor airport in Dakar, I waited in line for passport control, manned by an official who scrutinized each passport and a security guard whose stared into the middle distance, an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. In the baggage claim area taxi drivers solicited rides. "Non merci," I said, negotiating my way through the tightly packed room. I was asked to drop my bags on a conveyor belt to be x-rayed before leaving the area, which seemed curious. On the other side I stared out into the crowd, looking for a sign of Idy. Finally a security guard approached me. "Are you J?" He asked, in English. "Yes," I said, surprised. "Your driver is here for you." I walked outside into the remarkable darkness. A tall man with a large round face approached me. "J?" He asked. "Yes," I replied. "My name is Malal," he said, extending his hand. Malal wore a kaftan and held a wooden cane. "I'm going to call my driver," he said, and lifted a cell phone to his ear. In a moment a car pulled up, and Malal began walking towards it in slow, labored steps punctuated by his cane. An aging man in a gray beard and a headdress approached me with US dollars in his hands, asking me if I wanted to buy West African Francs. My guidebook had warned against buying Francs from men like him at the airport, they gave a bad exchange rate. "Non merci," I said, and ambled along, my suitcase catching on a rock. Another man approached me with his hand out, offering to help me with my bag. "Non merci," I said again. My book had also warned against accepting any offers of help with bags, as they always led to an expected payment for the service. The man held his hands up as if to say "I'm just trying to help you out."

Malal opened the trunk of the car and dropped my bags inside. "Do you want to talk to Idy?" He asked. "Yes, that would be great, thanks," I said. Malal made the connection and handed the phone to me, and I heard Idy's voice, the first familiar sound I'd encountered since my plane took off from O'Hare the previous day. I peeked into the car and made eye contact with the driver, and introduced myself. "My name is Mustafah," he said, "welcome to Senegal." Mustafah looked about as tall as Malal, and had a long, handsome face with chiseled features. I climbed into the back seat, closed the door, and automatically reached for a seatbelt. I found the empty joint where one once lived, looked at the front seats where Mustafah and Malal sat, and realized they weren't wearing any. "Are there seatbelts in this car?" I asked. "No," Mustafah said, as casually as if I'd asked what time it was. We began driving to the highway, and I stared out the window at the scenery. The buildings on the side of the road looked dilapidated, and the highway was dark. It began to dawn on me that I was very far from home. "How did you know who I was?" I asked. "Idy described you to me," Malal said. "How was your flight?" Mustafah asked, and I launched into the story of the Nigerian party animal. Mustafah and Malal laughed, "Nigerians are like that," Malal said, "they drink and do drugs. In Senegal we are Muslim, we don't drink."

We exited the highway and began driving on city streets, and finally onto a dirt road. Mustafah pulled the car into a dark lot next to a row of dumpsters where a cabal of stray cats feasted on garbage, and cut the engine. "We're here?" I asked, my strained voice betraying my efforts to appear calm. The car was dark and there were no street lights, and I couldn't figure out how to open the door. Malal opened it for me, we got out, walked twenty feet and approached a metal gate. Malal opened it and I followed him into a cement enclosure in front of a building that had bars on the first floor windows. Malal knocked on the door and a hand opened it from the other side.

The hand belonged to Ibou, Idy's nephew. "Hibou?" I asked in French, idiotically. "Your name is Hibou, like the French word for 'owl'?" "No," he explained, his face an inscrutable wall, "like Ibrahim." He wore jeans halfway down his ass in the manner of American city kids, with three inches of boxer shorts showing, an ironed button down shirt, and had head full of short, knotted locks. The front door opened onto a livingroom that was furnished with a wood framed couch, a loveseat, and a queen sized mattress. Ibou led me upstairs to the second floor, where he introduced me to my fellow travelers and set up my bed with great care, covering the foam mattress in a piece of striped green fabric, and determining the best corner of the room to lay it down .

Going to the U.P., and getting tighter on the comment moderation

Later this evening I'll be heading up to Michigan for about a week and a half, and chances are I won't have much Internet access, so while I'll be writing, there won't be any posts for a while.

I also wanted to let you know I changed my comment moderation so that I have to clear your comments before they appear on the blog - this isn't because I don't love comments, on the contrary I ADORE them! Its just that lately I've been getting some really weird comments in Chinese, and when I get them translated in Babblefish they come out like this, for example:

Before the being frustrated person, do not discuss the self-satisfied matter; Before the self-satisfied person, do not discuss the being frustrated matter

This seems innocuous enough, but then there's always a link hidden in the comment in the form of an ellipsis that takes me to a page of Chinese ladies in underpants, and well, I'd just really prefer not to have that kind of content linked to my blog.

Have a good week, and I'll get back to posting soon.

JP

The Scavenger to Capitalism

My supervisor at the children's museum asked me if I wanted to end the assignment a week early so I could have time off before my full-time job started. I said I'd had plenty of time off, and we decided to take my last week (which is only Monday-Wednesday) on a day-by-day basis and see how much work was left to be done.

Over the weekend I attended CPR training at my new job, and was so taken by the fact that I'll be able to walk to work - in a part of Chicago that's so pretty it doesn't even look like itself, that I was loathe to get out of bed Monday morning to make the shlep down to Navy Pier. I told myself Monday would be my last day, but there was enough work left to bring me back Tuesday, and Wednesday too. I could have just punked out, but they'd been so nice to me there (they even gave me two trays of miniature cupcakes on Administrative Professionals day, can you believe it?), and it's always good to network with people who might be able to help you out down the road, so I came in for the full three days.

Wednesday morning I dragged myself out to Navy Pier one last time, savoring the view from the #82 Kimball-Homan bus as it coughed and farted its way south. This time of year the buds on the trees lining the avenue burst forth in a bright chartreuse, and I felt nostalgic knowing that this would probably be the last time I'd see them from the height of the #82. Just below Addison, the bus driver got into a yelling match with a car that was trying to make a right turn into the parking lot of Home Depot in front of her. Finally she let him go, saying "well, go on, before you tear somethin' up!"

I descended the bus onto the uneven and potholed intersection of Kimball and Belmont, and ventured underground to catch the blue line train. At the Grand Avenue stop I exited the accordion-doored subway car and ascended the stairs to the turnstiles, where a blue uniformed CTA employee stood, as he did every morning, greeting commuters with a wave, a smile and a genuine "good morning". Aboveground again, I waited for the #65 Grand Avenue bus, and rode it one last time as it wound its way east on Grand, then onto Illinois, underneath Michigan Avenue, and finally docked itself at the end of the line at Navy Pier. I wound my way through the maze of the children's museum, using my key card three times to gain access to both service entrance doors, and the door to the office suites above the third floor of the museum. At my desk I set to work on moving some electronic files onto a new server. The computer I was working on was unbelievably slow, I had to restart it several times because it kept freezing up, and I finally went to the food court to get some coffee while it rebooted.

I got in line at Starbucks (the only place to get coffee at Navy Pier, unless you count McDonalds) behind a group of students who looked like they were in the 8th or 9th grade. The kid in front of me, a doughy boy whose head bore an asterisk of hair circling the spot where his head had, until recently, been resting on his pillow, ordered an iced venti machiato. This struck me as the most ridiculous thing a 13 year-old had ever ordered - an opinion I firmly held onto until the kid behind me ordered a double chocolate mochachino. "I am not going to miss the atmosphere of Navy Pier" I thought, and mumbled something to that effect out loud as I added cream and two packets of turbinado sugar to my perfectly sensible 12 oz. coffee while the young machiato addict waited for his confection.

It was a gorgeous day, my computer kept freezing, and by noon I could restrain the urge to goof off no longer. I got my timesheet signed, faxed it over to the temp agency, and headed to Michigan Avenue to do some shopping.

After a year of self-restraint, I anticipated a full-blown shopping spree, but my habit of not spending turned out to be one that I couldn't shake. I browsed the shoes at Nordstrom, but just couldn't bring myself to spend $70 on something I could probably get online for half the price. I tried on a pair of dark-wash blue jeans, but couldn't justify the expense. In the end I bought things for M, since he hasn't gotten many gifts from me over the past year, and if anyone should be shopping on Michigan Avenue on a Wednesday afternoon jut for the hell of it, it's him. I bought him some fancy shaving products and some very expensive chocolate, and then, longing for a familiar anchor keep me from floating away in a vast sea of consumption, I headed to the Chicago Cultural Center.

A calmness came over me as I walked through the familiar doors of the mighty edifice, which was once the original home of the Chicago Public Library, and features - among other things, the world's largest stained glass Tiffany dome. The building has served as a resting point for me when appointments and interviews draw me downtown, and I'm so familiar with it at this point that I know where the best bathrooms are (2nd floor), I have a favorite table in the reading room (against the western wall, next to the display of Chicago Publisher's Gallery books), and I know the view of Millennium Park from the second floor gallery windows by heart.

You really can't beat the Chicago Cultural Center; they have free film screenings, free wifi, free art exhibits, and the only bust of a city planner I've ever seen - that of Ira J. Bach, 1906-1985, with the inscription "In developing a general plan, we must look at the city as if it were going to be entirely rebuilt, because a healthy city naturally rebuilds itself in the long run." You'd be hard pressed to find a more sensible, down-to-earth inscription on a bust. Mr. Bach's pinched face and stern molded haircut is not one that will ever be recognized by school children, or appear in profile on treasury-issued coins, but it makes me happy to know that his years of service (noted as 1940-1985) will forever be on display in this enclave, this quiet space on a sprawling avenue in the middle of America's 3rd most populous city.

I walked through the reading room, noting the admonishing word "Silence" that hangs on a wood panel one wall, and the anagram "License" that hangs on a wood panel directly across from it. I had some time to kill before meeting some former colleagues, so I walked up the double staircase to the second floor to see the current art exhibit: Christine Tarkowski's Last Things Will Be First and First Things Will Be Last. Her work included a dome inspired by Buckminster Fuller, and a room covered in broadsides made to look as though they had been printed long ago in obsolete fonts. "Thirsty woman," one began, "If you drink this water you'll never be thirsty again!" "Magic bullet faith cafeteria style 'service' I wanna eat from your buffet," decried another. "Praise the scavenger to capitalism bio/wind/hydro/solar the garbage man is the rational hero," said a third.

My mind settled on the message of the scavenger broadside - was this what I had become? Over the past year I've learned to make do with less, and have developed money saving habits: I get my hair cut for $16 by students at the Aveda Institute; I go bowling on Mondays, when it costs $1 per game at Diversey Rock 'n Bowl; and I'm a card carrying member of the Kerasotes five buck movie club. Shopping on Michigan Avenue made me anxious, it's basically against my religion at this point. I'd found my way back to a space where the only things for sale are a few trinkets in the gift shop, and the goods in the cafe on the first floor. In the corner of the room a 45rpm record spun on a turntable playing the same song over and over, a recording of people singing the words to the thirsty woman broadside. I stayed in the room for a few minutes reading posters, listening to music, and thinking about my near future.

The post that took almost a year to be able to write

I got a job. A real job. Not a temp job - although I've been doing that for about a month now and it's going well, and not as an enumerator for the U.S. Census, although I was contacted by them recently for work, but an honest-to-goodness nine to five with benefits. I start May 1st for training. In actual calendar time, I've been unemployed since June 1, 2009, although I was notified on May 12 and only came back into the office a couple times after that. Any way you slice it, its been about a year since I've been gainfully employed. I've probably written this list up before, but I'm willing to repeat myself - since May 12th 2009, here's what I've done:

• Participated in a mini-triathlon;
• Worked odd jobs as a babysitter, housecleaner, marketing study participant (I got paid $100 to talk about lotion for 90 minutes), and French language test-taker;
• Served in a volunteer capacity as: a librarian for the Alliance Française de Chicago; info desk staffer for Chicago's Green City Market; concert usher for the Old Town School of Folk Music; tutor for 826 Chicago; and construction worker for Habitat for Humanity;
• Traveled to France, Spain, Portugal and Senegal;
• Traveled to Boston four times, three times to Michigan, twice to New York City, once to Vermont, and once to Cape Cod;
• Became a staff writer at Gapers Block; and
• Interviewed for 11 jobs, 1 internship, and 1 informational interview.

Being unemployed has been so central to my identity over the past year that I almost don't know what to do with myself now that it's coming to an end. Although I'll be taking a pay cut from my last position, my new job is walking distance from my house, something I've always dreamed of, the people seem really nice, and the benefits are great. Since I'd already secured my dates for traveling to the U.P. next month, my boss is letting me take the time off, as well as a short trip to Austin in June that M and I recently planned.

Here comes the mushy part where I thank my wonderful husband for all the support he's given me over the past year - unemployment is generally considered one of the biggest stressors that can happen to a marriage, but over the past 11 months my husband has done nothing but encourage me to pursue all the crazy dreams that I suddenly had the time to follow. While he stayed home and worked, I spent most of my severance pay traveling to distant corners of the world, developed my writing technique, and connected with my community in meaningful ways through volunteering. Aside from one or two poorly timed cracks about not pulling my weight financially, he never made me feel bad about my employment status, or complained about having to cut back in areas like home improvement (which we desperately need) or postponing major purchases like a new car (which we need just as badly as a renovation of our basement). He's really pretty great, that husband of mine. I hope he never loses his job, but if he does I'll think back to my year of unemployment and all the experiences I gained from being able to take advantage of the time off, and I'll remember that none of it would have been possible without his support.

Thanks also to my network of unemployed friends: TS, who introduced me to $1 bowling Mondays at Diversey Rock 'n Bowl, and despite himself gave some of the sagest advice on the subject of unemployment; AP, who came as my plus one to numerous events; GV, whose acerbic sense of humor could pierce through anything; AB, who told me it would be the best thing to happen to me; and CF, who connected me with countless babysitting jobs that helped fill my pockets.

Of course, my employed friends were there for me this past year too: MamaVee, who convinced me to participate in a mini-triathlon; AM, who went to some of the best and some of the worst theater I've ever seen with me, and helped me to think of ways to write about it; HD, who kept in touch the whole time, and never treated me like I should feel sorry for myself; NM, who mailed me a birthday gift she'd bought in Bangladesh which was waiting to be opened when I came home from two weeks in New York and Boston right after I lost my job; DW, who always made time for lunch; and my upstairs neighbors, who included me in countless family dinners when I could easily have eaten alone in front of the TV while M worked.

At the risk of making this sound like a tiresome Oscar speech where the award winner has gone on too long so the music swells, causing the award winner to start talking really fast, thanks also to all of you who've read my blog and followed my adventures over the past year. Its great knowing you're out there, and I hope to keep telling stories that you want to read.