Written 16 September 2013
Today seemed like a day of opportunity. Opportunity to learn and to discover. Opportunity to understand and ask questions and listen. Opportunity to laugh and sit and come together and be a part. Opportunity to take time, to think, to rest. Opportunity to greet others and build relationships. Opportunity to work hard and observe and make it something.
Just so much possibility. Every thing I do here in these first days feels full of possibility. Possible relationship, possible routine, possible memory, possible connection.
And I sit here, writing, resting, being quiet after this day of opportunity and I have a surge of feeling at home. And there will be days when this will be hard. There will be days when the opportunities will seem distant, the possibilities difficult. Because that is life and this is life and so it shall be.
And I’m just loving the challenge. I can feel myself improving. Improving at French, improving in Wolof (that’s pretty easy for me to do at this point), improving at conversation and connection, improving at being at ease, improving at sharing and speaking and telling my story even when I can’t find the words.
The fading sunlight plays against the blue sky and the light breeze of morning and evening returns to cool us all down.
I am a “bridegroom married to amazement” (Mary Oliver, When Death Comes).
That is life and this is life and so it shall be.
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In my 20 years of life, I have been on doxycycline as an anti-malarial drug for ten months in total, not counting the next seven of my life. I calculated. I have taken a lot of doxycycline. At this point, I should be an expert.
But on Monday night, just a couple hours after I wrote about this day of opportunity, my expertise was overtaken by my exhaustion and I forgot the rules, taking my doxycycline with little water and immediately lying down, thereby allowing the medicine to burn my esophagus and render me fairly sick and incapable of eating much at all, especially not hot, spicy, heavy Senegalese food.
The past two days, I lived out my writing: ‘there will be days when this will be hard. There will be days when the opportunities will seem distant, the possibilities difficult’.
When I am sick, no matter where or how seriously, I revert to a child where all I want is to be at home being coddled and cared for by my parents. And believe it or not, but it is very difficult to explain to your host family, in French, that you burned your esophagus because you didn’t follow the rules so must only eat soft things and no, it isn’t at all because you didn’t care for me well and no, another mango won’t make it better. And believe it or not (I didn’t for a while), but it is not physically possible to be the girl who wakes up at 6, who attends classes in French for 8 hours a day (including 2 hours learning Wolof in French), who comes home to watch Mexican soap operas dubbed in French with her family while maintaining a constant flow of conversation, to attempting to eat even 1/8th as much as the Senegalese during the 2-hour dinner process, who reluctantly extracts herself from the family at 11:30pm, who attempts to wash of some tiny portion of the ever-present sweat of Senegal and write a few words and read a poem all before sleeping for less than 5 hours to wake up at 6 and do it again, all in extreme heat and humidity. Turns out, that’s not physically possible to keep up very long, as I discovered on Tuesday when I listened to my parents and allowed myself to rest, resulting in me sitting a solid 12-hour nap.
So the days were hard. I missed my parents and apple sauce and the English language and being able to take a sick day without fearing that I would lose precious, new relationships with my host family and air conditioning and being able to be fully understood and the opportunities and possibilities seemed distant and difficult.
That is life and this is life and so it shall be.
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They made me soup around the bowl.
They made me eggs and warm bread when I couldn’t eat the traditional ceebu jenn lunch.
They bought cable television because “it’s not good what’s happening in Colorado so Callie needs to be able to follow the US”.
They turned up the radio as loud as it could go when they found out I liked the song “We are the World” as it was playing.
They made me soup around the bowl. In Sénégal, lunch and dinner are eaten as a family around one common bowl, sometimes with hands and sometimes with spoons. It truly is community through food.
Usually, this is rice or millet or pasta or lentils or bread with fish or meat and vegetables. This is not usually vegetable soup. The Sénégalese eat a lot and they eat heartily. This is not usually vegetable soup.
But because they knew I was sick and could only eat soft, light food and because they wanted us to be able to eat together, they made me vegetable soup around the bowl.
That is life and this is life and so it shall be.
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Written 18 September 2013
This is hard work. There’s no one, at least no one who is trying, who can’t say the same. But it has its rewards.
I’m content in a different, more real, way.
That is life and this is life and so it shall be.
callie daniels-howell 