When I consider my life in Senegal overall, it can essentially be divided into fourths:
– ¼ part: deep, personal, growing, reflective, change-the-way-you-approach-every-day life moments which from moment to moment big and small can be both entirely challenging and entirely enlivening and of which I write and speak often.
– ¾ part: moments where you find yourself saying “wait, what? How did I come to find myself in this moment right now?” and usually the answer is “I have no idea, so I might as well just live it joyously”, which from moment to moment big and small can be both sternum-bursting in their quantity of love and gratitude and mind-boggling in their quantity of bizarre-ness and often both…moments such as:
- sometimes you find yourself pretending you are a paying guest at the Radisson Blu – what is said to be the fanciest hotel in West Africa – so that you can talk to their information desk about where one might be able to purchase a “petit baobab”
- sometimes you find yourself, un-showered, wearing unwashed clothes and dirt-covered shoes, being sleep-deprived and so clearly not someone who can afford or is fancy enough for the Radisson Blu, walking through the pristine, polished doors with Chinese businessmen all around you, repeating to yourself “confidence is key” and smiling along as the staff keeps referring to you as ‘clients’
- sometimes you find yourself having to explain to Marie, the Radisson Blue information desk employee, that “yes, I do indeed mean a tree. Petit baobab as in petit tree, yes.” And that “yes, I do indeed wish to purchase this petit tree to take to England” and that “yes, I am aware it’s cold there” and that “yes, I am aware it will have to travel in my suitcase there” and that “yes, I am aware it’s a weird present” and that “no, I was not aware there were two different types of petit baobabs, as in petit trees”
- sometimes you find yourself getting very defensive when both Marie and Mohammed, the florist, ask you “really?” when you explain to them that logically, you will be purchasing and packing not one but two “petit baobabs” in your suitcase and that one of whom will be finding his forever home in fairly-chilly Surrey, England while the other will be continuing on to currently-frigid Kalamazoo, Michigan and so you need to know how best to ensure their survival and what the best watering regimen is outside of their normal desert-like climate
- sometimes you find yourself with said “petit baobabs” as in “petit trees” gift-wrapped (even though you have three weeks before you give one “petit baobab” away and four weeks before second “petit baobab” reaches secure land and both “petit baobabs” have to get on a plane between now and then) with frilling plastic and a very nice red bow, walking down the busy streets of Dakar with people shouting at you: “beautiful gift! a taste of Senegal!”
- sometimes you find yourself in the pitch black on a bus in the middle of a field in rural Senegal at 2:30AM and then the lights come on and you realize you’ve been sitting next to a man for the past 30 minutes without being able to see him
- sometimes you find yourself at 8:30AM receiving a text that says “I just saw a dog eating a cat and then I went to school and got tear-gassed” and your reply, without hesitation, is “oh, Dakar memories”
- sometimes you find yourself eating couscous in the dark at a wedding which everyone else but your family has left, after having just sat in the same plastic chair drinking whisky with your host dad for 8 straight hours, dancing along to the music and looking around and thinking “I love these people surrounding me so very much” and also “where did this couscous come from and why are we the only ones eating it when we are in actuality only distant friends of the groom’s sister”
- sometimes you find yourself squashed into the trunk of a bush taxi with 2 other full-grown people, a cement bag full of bread, and a 64-inch flat screen TV
- sometimes you find yourself in the process of changing clothes (aka not wearing a shirt) when you hear a lot of commotion outside and then suddenly your host dad knocks on your door and says “the minister (as in prime) is here to greet you”
- sometimes you find yourself anxiously pouring boiling water down the drain at midnight because you weren’t paying attention and poured the grease you used to cook chicken bones for your host dad straight into the sink after you tried to have a big moment with your host family by making Thanksgiving dinner which really turned out to be one of the more gross meals you have ever eaten in your life and laughing and saying to your British brother “welcome to America”
- sometimes you find yourself reading about Buddhist meditation practices as you sip a bowl-full of Nescafe while Cape Verdean salsa music is playing on the radio and your host aunt is talking about the ‘frigid’ 70 degree temperatures and you, in your fleece jacket and wool socks, are agreeing with her
- sometimes you find yourself eating dinner at 3:30AM on Christmas eve and then you find yourself watching babies in 3-piece suits dancing at 4AM and then you find yourself salsa dancing with your host papa at 5:30AM
- sometimes you find yourself thigh-deep in a river, wearing jeans, clam hunting for your dinner
- sometimes you find yourself sitting down to your daily lunch of rice and fish around the bowl with your family and at the precise moment when your host dad says his normal “bon appetit!”, Let’s Get it On by Marvin Gaye starts playing on the radio and proceeds to be the only-awkward/hilarious-to-the-two-anglophones-at-the-table soundtrack to our meal
- sometimes you find yourself in a taxi you paid way too much for, driving to a mass at a monastery in the middle of nowhere which you are already 45 minutes late for, chatting in French and Wolof about the differences in independence movements between the French, British, and Portuguese colonies of Africa with your driver
- sometimes you find yourself eating breakfast and casually saying “oh, I hate when that happens” after your friend has just told you she thinks she swallowed a mosquito again
- sometimes you find yourself sitting in a small shop with your hands in a bucket of cold water on Christmas eve getting your first-ever-in-life pedicure and manicure because your host family told you that you need to ‘get pretty’, listening to Ludacris’ inspirational song My Chick Bad on the radio, and casually watching out the window as a cow is slaughtered in the middle of the road by five men with machetes
- sometimes you find yourself sitting in a fancy Lebanese restaurant in the middle of Dakar with your USA parents, surrounded by smoking French tourists eating hummus and your first fajita in five months
- sometimes you find yourself galloping into the sunset on a tiny white horse surrounded on all sides by wispy, hazy, Senegalese bush, sturdy and strong baobab trees, and laughing friends and you wonder a little bit if you were transported into a movie
- sometimes you find yourself simultaneously helping to tie knots in the rope which is now connecting your small, wooden, dilapidated (and now motor-less) pirogue to the small, wooden, dilapidated pirogue in front of you which is somehow still trucking along and which will now tow you through the thrashing ocean back to shore while you are also hurriedly bailing buckets-full of water which is steadily rising up around your calves (unclear if the water is coming from the multiple holes in the bottom of the boat or from the massive waves crashing on top of you or both) off the side of the boat and suddenly considering whether the last time you saw your dog will indeed be the last time
- sometimes you find yourself on your 6-story, under-construction rooftop at 4AM, laying on the rubble-filled cement, looking at the stars with family forms around you saying “it’s both odd and wonderful to think about this moment being in my life memory bucket”
… and so, so many more.
And when I think of my life in Dakar in this ¼ reflection and ¾ joyous uncertainty way, I can’t help but just smile over the last 5 months and laugh and say jërejëf (thank you) for it all.
callie daniels-howell 