clementines

Sometimes you are knocked off-guard.

We’re sitting squished in a bush taxi, heaps of baggage, literally heaps of bread, tea, coffee, sugar, butter, choco-pain, sardine paste (all the necessary fixings for a stand up Senegalese breakfast) are piled on top of us. We are traveling to the village of Ngueth outside of Palmarin outside of Joal outside of Mbour outside of Saly outside of Dakar.

And we are complaining. Not whining, really, just sharing with frustration our feelings of listlessness, of being done and ready to move on, of feeling trapped and aimless in our final, unstructured weeks in Dakar.

And these are very sincere sentiments, stemming from desires to adventure beyond the city, desires to feel more fulilled and less selfish, desires to feel again stimulated and challenged, desires to move forward with the growth and many lessons our senegal experience has given us.

Ans so we are complaining. And we are lamenting our conflicting and confusing feelings about leaving this place, this experience, this self. And we’re saying we’re ready and we’re feeling guilty for counting down days and for focusing on family we will soon see and places where we will soon step foot rather than on those who surround us on this soil on which we stand in this moment. We’re saying ‘if it weren’t for our families, we would be completely done’ and w’ere saying our hearts are already hurting as we think about saying goodbyes. And we’re ready to move forward and we’re saying we’re afraid we will leave behind all the growth that has come from being in this place.

And so we’re complaining and we’re lamenting and our feet are falling asleep under the literal, physical weight of my family’s generosity and I’m talking about how if I could move my arms right then, I would put a band-aid on the scrape I just acquired getting into said bush taxi because I can feel the blood running down my leg and we laugh because there’s nothing we can do about it.

And I look out the window and there are two boys by the side of the taxi. They are maybe 8 and 10 years old, are see-every-bone-in-your-knees-and-elbows skinny, and are wearing pilled and dirty clothes that could have been hand-scrubbed at least 200 times between them. They are holding the plastic bowls, recycled choco-pain or butter tubs usually, which are quintessential of Senegalese street boys and are used to collect what food, money, or other small things they are able to beg for throughout their day. The taxi driver has just placed two rotting, old, shriveled clementines into each of their bowls. The boys are joyously and ravenously clawing into the pieces of fruit, handing each other wedges as they hurriedly pull them free and are taking turns scraping off the small flecks of fruit which remain before throwing the peels onto the ground and starting on the next small, orange ball of leftover, cast-away, given fruit.

It’s unclear if they are eating with such speed and franticness for fear of the fruit being stolen, for hunger, for the two or for something entirely different, unknown.

They finish the fruit, leave a pile of torn peels on the ground by the taxi, and move to the next car where they begin to tap on windows, hold out their hands, and shake their now-empty buckets.

Sometimes you are knocked off-guard.