February 28

It’s just past 7:30 pm, and as I come up to the roof of my family’s house to catch the last rays of light fading out over the ocean, I hear the dusk call to prayer sounding from the nearby mosque. Palm trees’ dark frames are silhouetted against the darkening sky and the cool evening wind carries the voices of children from up the sandy street as they kick around a ball. Half a block over there is a single lightbulb illuminating a foosball table, surrounded by boys, each eager to have a turn, and as the day turns into night the cloudless sky reveals the first sliver of a new moon. I look out at the sea, the horizon blurred now in darkness, and think about how many miles away is America, and how distant it seems from the reality I’m living.

I can barely make out the palm trees now, but the waves continue to break on the shore and the boys clack and conk their miniature footballers and a baby cries a few houses down. A megaphone mounted on a car passes by and fades into the wind, a sheep bleats, and a car honks from the road, half a kilometer away. And then, quiet. I look up to realize the power is out, only the second time that’s happened in the evening for several months. An almost daily occurrence in the rainy season, since the arrival of cool dry days we have become accustomed to having regular power again. But by the time I stop to think about it, I see the light in our courtyard, the street lamps power on, and the voice from the mosque loudspeaker calls the faithful for one last time today.

The wind is picking up, making me eager to go downstairs and put on a jacket, heat a pot of water to warm up my bucket bath and take a shower. Tomorrow is Sunday, a day I try to set aside to not do work, and I’ve been invited to lunch at my counterpart’s house. In the evening there’s a lutte, a traditional Senegalese wrestling match that I might go to, over at the middle school. I have a few lesson plans to look over that one of the teachers at the elementary school I’m working with prepared yesterday, and I might wash some clothes.

Brr! The breeze makes me shiver in my short sleeves and jeans, and I am enjoying every minute of the cold that I thought so many months ago was not even possible. What wonderful joy it is to step out of the shower these days and not immediately start sweating again! I missed actually wanting to wear layers of clothes. I know the hot season will come again soon, but for the time being I am reveling in my element, and laughing at the Senegalese who look so out of place bundled up like Eskimos in their puffy fleeces and gloves, at 50 degrees F. These hot season people don’t know what to do with the cold. “America is much colder than Senegal!” I tell them. But then it’s their turn to laugh at me, when they see me in my sweatshirt and jacket, hands in my pockets, elbows tucked into my sides. “Leegi miin naa tangaay bi!” I say, in my defense. “I got used to the heat!”