I spent the past week in Richard Toll, a small town in northern Senegal as a part of my “Senegal River Valley” class. We spent the week visiting various agricultural projects taking place in what is one of the most fertile region of otherwise flat, sandy, and dry Senegal; we learned about sugar cane and saw rice paddies and visited a pastoralist village in the arid Sahel region of the Sahara desert and observed and listened.
We lived with families for the week and were given our afternoons and evenings free with the charge of experiencing and discovering life in more rural, non-Dakar Senegal. My friend Abby and I lived with the Diaw family whose home was filled with children, kindness, and warmth. We passed much of our time on the flat roof of the home, lying about on mats with the children as we drank ataaya, conversed in a happy mixture of French and Wolof, and were in awe of the brilliant stars.
It was a beautiful week.
And for me, it was also a very emotional week. The slower and softer life outside of Dakar reminded me so much of life in Kenya, making me feel both more comfortable and happy just ‘being’ than I had felt before in Senegal and also more homesick and nostalgic for Kenya than I had felt before. I felt and struggled with an all-too familiar discomfort of beginning connection and relationship only to pack up and leave, both happy for the opportunity and uneasy as I flit in and out of lives. Outside of the busy city life of Dakar which had been growing increasingly difficult for my introverted self who often prefers to speak through silence, I felt so happy and full, not just for the quiet of Richard Toll, but for the opportunity to realize I have something to miss in Dakar, to realize the family and the home place I have formed and the importance which they hold for me.
And so these are my reflections as I went through the week. They are raw, they are unpolished, they might not even be comprehensible. But this is what I was feeling and thinking and living out and rather than summarize them or work them into some sort of finished ‘something’, I would rather share them as they are and hope that they speak in some way.
I am exceptionally grateful for this week and the reflections and grace it has given me:
Written 4 November 2013
I wish I could be here longer so that I could ease into the rhythm of this family. I can feel the small things all around me and I am almost overwhelmed by wanting to take them all in.
I miss this feeling of slowness; this feeling of opportunity for deep connection. I hadn’t realized how fast I was going until we were left with an empty day in front of us and were told to discover.
I want to take advantage of this time because it feels so unlike anything I’ve experienced in Dakar, and yet so comfortable and familiar.
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Written 5 November 2013
Today for just a moment I felt like I was in Kenya. I was very much in Senegal, but my self felt like my Kenya self and that both saddened and enlivened me.
Today I participated/lived out the thing I love most in Kenya, followed by the thing I love least in Kenya: the being present to and forming relationship with family and children, and the quick departure from those budding connections.
Today there were things which brought me back to life in Kenya, making me both incredibly grateful to have experienced them, and incredibly sad to leave/have left them.
Today we talked about departure and it was both joyful and challenging to realize how little I want to leave here, to leave Senegal, to leave all of the family I have formed here.
And so I am a mix of emotions. I am missing my many homes. I am so happy and full to be sitting under the stars in this place. I am overwhelmed by departures – what sadness they remind me of, what sadness they gave, what sadness they hold.
“I don’t want to end up simply having visited.”
And I love this place already because I don’t feel like I am visiting.
But in being away from my Senegal home and feeling the ache of missing the family I have formed and feel a part of there, I see the ways I haven’t simply visited there, either and that helps me.
But I want to be open to and accept what I have here. I have the opportunity to make this something, even if short, and I need to take it. If this place reminds me of my Kenya self, I need to strive to BE that self.
I’d never though of my constant ache for Kenya as being home sick before until now.
But even if that’s what I am and even if that makes secret tears run down my face, I need to be present here.
I have this time, in Senegal, here, to be here. And I need to do that. I need to waxtaan (Wolof for hold conversation) and drink ataaya and sit with the women as they cook and hold babies and laugh and learn from others.
This is life and that is life and so it shall be; I need to strive to be my best self here, just as anywhere else.
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written 7 November 2013
Yesterday I cried out of overwhelming gratefulness. I have missed and needed that feeling, that perspective.
I am here. Under these stars. In this place. Welcomed by this family.
Welcomed by so much family. I feel a family among so many in this world, and that is overwhelming in its beauty to me. I have family who are my constant in the US. I have family who will always feel like home in Kenya. I have family growing here in Senegal who make me smile and know me deeply.
And so I am grateful to the stars of Richard Toll for reminding me of what I have, for forcing me to place myself on the map for showing me the richness of being here and of being here with others.
Because I am so blessed by goodness to have a life full of family. And I am just so grateful for the opportunities. For the life that has come my way.
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Today I rocked a sick child to sleep. Today I held him in my arms and cuddled him against me and wished for his comfort.
Today I felt determined and I took it and I did something for my experience and I took charge of my adventure and I lived some life as a result of it.
And I’m happy. Happy to be here. Happy to feel a family. Happy to be given perspective by the stars. So grateful and wanting to live it.
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Sometimes they’re right when they say that it takes being away from something to realize what you have.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
– Mary Oliver
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Written 9 November 2013
I feel like I need silence before I can fully reflect.
But I loved this week. I held and cradled and giggled. And even if it was short and the goodbyes full of sadness over the possibility for deepened connection, all I can truly be is grateful for the opportunity to love and to live this week.
“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
– Mary Oliver
callie daniels-howell 