I apologize for my long absence from this site, realizing it is August already and perhaps you’ve given up on me, but I assure you that I am in fact still in Senegal!
Many of you close to me know that the reason I did not write during most of July is not because I was overloaded with work or laid up with dengue fever, but because I spent that time doing something I did not think I would be able to do until next spring.
Yes folks, it’s true…
I went back to the United States of America.
My trip was made possible by the letters A and E and the number 13…
Just kidding :) So many people chipped in to help me come home for three weeks, I cannot thank them all enough. Family and friends, some of whom I was able to see while I was stateside, some not, but all of whom I love dearly and whose kindness I appreciate more than they can know. You know who you are!
I’ve been back in Senegal now for two weeks already, having arrived feeling refreshed and calm, and ready to jump back in. Good thing, because I spent my first week back helping to organize and prepare for a two-day conference of Environmental Education and Health Peace Corps Volunteers which then took place last week at my site, and entailed welcoming fifty PCVs and a handful of PC staff to my town and then ensuring they had everything they needed to successfully house and feed and train them, from Monday night through Thursday morning. I ended up with some overflow, hosting four friends (three EE and one Health PCV) at my house, and only yesterday did the last guest leave for Dakar, leaving me fairly exhausted but glad it had all gone remarkably well.
Now I am at the point where I have time to sit and assess where to go from here. For the first time seemingly since the week before I left for the States, I have time and space to myself to just think. I went back to America for a few reasons, not the least of which was to remember why I’d come to Senegal in the first place. Now that I’m back, and this work summit is over, I am looking at the coming months and formulating plans. Where do I go from here? What is the next step? And I’m just talking for the next few months here. Where I will go next year when my commitment here is fulfilled is still very much up in the air.
While I’m looking forward, I’ll let you look back. Before I even got to the airport, I had left site a week earlier to spend a weekend with my original Thies village host family for a baptism party, and then a few days with a good Senegalese friend’s family in Dakar. Now instead of simply summing up my experience of going back to the U.S. after over a year spent in this developing West African country, the following are some excerpts from my journal, to give you an idea of the range of my reactions, all candid, to the wonderful and surreal fact of my trip.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Saturday June 20, 2009
I’m sitting in a car waiting for two more seats to fill up before we can leave for Thies. Amazingly I ended up only paying 200 cfa for my huge bag, and though it’s already past 9 and I ideally wanted to leave two hours earlier, I am currently content to arrive in Thies whenever we get there, because I know no matter what my family there will be happy to see me. My beautiful yeere [clothing] is tucked carefully into my small backpack, folded into a plastic bag just for extra safekeeping. I ended up leaving the heeled sandals I’d bought for Tabaski, deciding it wasn’t worth lugging them around and that knowing the village is all suuf [sand] - I just didn’t want to. I’ll wear my gold Reef sandals instead, even though they’re not as fancy.
The reality of going on vacation is finally settling in, as I am actually all packed and here at the garage, having left my family at the side of the road next to Ndeye Siga’s breakfast shack, amidst well wishes and promises to greet all my family for them. I am really going to America. Really really really.
The reality of going on vacation is finally settling in, as I am actually all packed and here at the garage, having left my family at the side of the road next to Ndeye Siga’s breakfast shack, amidst well wishes and promises to greet all my family for them. I am really going to America. Really really really.
Monday 6/22
I feel like I need some time bu large to write about everything I felt and saw when I went back to my village, to my family in Keur Sadaro. My mind is full of them, and the trip to Thies and then Dakar, and I feel like the last few days have been moving in slow motion, as I feel acutely aware of every moment, taking everything in, feeling lighter and lighter every day as I shed layers of obligation, leaving work behind and stop trying to think about 10 things at once. I only have a few concrete things I know I’m coming back to, and the rest I’ll figure out when I’m back, next month. But for right now, I am in the moment, I’ve the sensation that time is advancing slowly to give me time to get it all done before I go, and yet… at the same time it’s Monday already, and I feel like it was just Friday.
Monday 6/29 3 am
There’s so much to say. For starters, I made it back to [my home town]. It’s pretty much the same as the way I left it…
It’s not as strange to be back here as I’d imagined it would be.
But it is weird. America is weird. I don’t know where to start talking about how I feel right now - like I’m back in this comfortable place, but it’s not my home anymore. I mean I kind of knew that that’s how it would be, but it’s weird […] To feel like “where I’m coming from” is literally so different now.
It is so green here. There’s green everywhere.
It’s raining again right now, and it’s perfect.
I love the rain.
This house is so cluttered - there’s so much STUFF everywhere, in every nook and cranny, I feel SURROUNDED.
I had ice cream twice in the last two days and I wasn’t really thrilled by it. I think I’m over ice cream.
I keep thinking about what [my Senegalese friends] would say, do, react to if [they] were seeing all this right now. What would [they] think of the Farmer’s Market. Of my aunt’s house. Of this house, where I grew up. Of this town.
People are fat here.
Everyone’s in their cars, not out on the streets.
It’s big and spread out.
It’s not as strange to be back here as I’d imagined it would be.
But it is weird. America is weird. I don’t know where to start talking about how I feel right now - like I’m back in this comfortable place, but it’s not my home anymore. I mean I kind of knew that that’s how it would be, but it’s weird […] To feel like “where I’m coming from” is literally so different now.
It is so green here. There’s green everywhere.
It’s raining again right now, and it’s perfect.
I love the rain.
This house is so cluttered - there’s so much STUFF everywhere, in every nook and cranny, I feel SURROUNDED.
I had ice cream twice in the last two days and I wasn’t really thrilled by it. I think I’m over ice cream.
I keep thinking about what [my Senegalese friends] would say, do, react to if [they] were seeing all this right now. What would [they] think of the Farmer’s Market. Of my aunt’s house. Of this house, where I grew up. Of this town.
People are fat here.
Everyone’s in their cars, not out on the streets.
It’s big and spread out.
Tuesday June 30
I’ve been gone from Senegal for 5 days now and I’ll admit I’m already kind of missing it. As sad as that sounds… I thought I’d be thrilled to be back here in America, in my childhood home, with my family and friends. But it’s weird, because I am not the same person I was when I was here the last time. I don’t have a life here now. My life is THERE now.
Tonight on the way home from the movies I made M. stop with me at Hess’s gas station just to go in and see what they had, and discovered that approximately half the shelves in the entire store were stocked with various forms of CANDY. I proceeded to stand in front of the biggest candy aisle for at least 5 minutes, pondering the best sugary snack choice to make, overcome by options, until I finally chose a Reese’s peanut butter bar-type thing to go along with the Sour Patch Kids I’d already chosen. But then I spotted the coffee corner of the store and M and I decided what we really wanted was iced coffee, so after a complicated process… we managed to mix ourselves satisfactory iced coffee drinks, at which point I decided I didn’t really want the candies after all and only paid the Indian guy at the counter for our two drinks.
It is strange to only have to take one shower a day, and to go to bed smelling as good at night as I did in the morning, strange and wonderful. It is strange to look at a 6-foot-wide display of candy and not to have an overwhelming desire to eat any one of the options in particular.
Tonight on the way home from the movies I made M. stop with me at Hess’s gas station just to go in and see what they had, and discovered that approximately half the shelves in the entire store were stocked with various forms of CANDY. I proceeded to stand in front of the biggest candy aisle for at least 5 minutes, pondering the best sugary snack choice to make, overcome by options, until I finally chose a Reese’s peanut butter bar-type thing to go along with the Sour Patch Kids I’d already chosen. But then I spotted the coffee corner of the store and M and I decided what we really wanted was iced coffee, so after a complicated process… we managed to mix ourselves satisfactory iced coffee drinks, at which point I decided I didn’t really want the candies after all and only paid the Indian guy at the counter for our two drinks.
It is strange to only have to take one shower a day, and to go to bed smelling as good at night as I did in the morning, strange and wonderful. It is strange to look at a 6-foot-wide display of candy and not to have an overwhelming desire to eat any one of the options in particular.
Friday July 3
This whole being away from Senegal is very weird, and I feel like I’m forgetting my Wolof, and people’s names in [site], and what my purpose is there... I miss feeling like I knew where I stood in life - even if I felt like I didn’t like where that was, at least I knew where I was. Two more weeks of this seems like such a long time. Dinaa fatte sama Wolof yepp! Dama ragal. Bilaahi. Xam naa suma demee foofu, suma gnibbee dina gnewat, InchAllah. [I’m going to forget all of my Wolof! I’m afraid. Swear to God. I know when I go there, when I go back it’ll come back, God willing.] Because it’ll be everywhere. And I know I should be relishing this, and I’m trying to. I’m taking in all the creature comforts, being cold, watching it rain, sleeping on a soft bed without a mosquito net and enjoying the quiet. I’m enjoying my hair not going anywhere throughout the day, and getting to spend time with my sisters. I’m enjoying eating what I want, when I want, and not being given any crap about when I wake up or how much (or how little) I eat.
This house has hardly changed since I was last here over a year ago […]
I don’t know what to say, except right now Senegal seems more real to me than this does.
All of this - there is so much extra.
Extra stuff, superficial stuff, it’s so easy to get caught up in it. In Senegal, there’s hardly any extra stuff. It’s the bare minimum. The essentials rekk [only]. And people have good lives, happy lives.
Was it Emerson or Thoreau who went to the woods to live? I can’t remember, but I know that’s why I went to Senegal. To live. And I feel like that’s where I’m finding life, what it really means to be alive. As much as it sucks sometimes, as I’m sweating through my clothes after just stepping out of the shower, or breathing in exhaust fumes off a Dakar street, being there makes me feel like I’m actually living my life, instead of just watching it pass me by from the comfort of a well-insulated middle-class American view. We are given so much as Americans, I feel like most of us don’t know how to make the best of it, and we’re always wanting more. It’s so true that being happy isn’t having what you want - it’s wanting what you have.
What am I going to do after Peace Corps? Everyone here is asking. I don’t know.
This house has hardly changed since I was last here over a year ago […]
I don’t know what to say, except right now Senegal seems more real to me than this does.
All of this - there is so much extra.
Extra stuff, superficial stuff, it’s so easy to get caught up in it. In Senegal, there’s hardly any extra stuff. It’s the bare minimum. The essentials rekk [only]. And people have good lives, happy lives.
Was it Emerson or Thoreau who went to the woods to live? I can’t remember, but I know that’s why I went to Senegal. To live. And I feel like that’s where I’m finding life, what it really means to be alive. As much as it sucks sometimes, as I’m sweating through my clothes after just stepping out of the shower, or breathing in exhaust fumes off a Dakar street, being there makes me feel like I’m actually living my life, instead of just watching it pass me by from the comfort of a well-insulated middle-class American view. We are given so much as Americans, I feel like most of us don’t know how to make the best of it, and we’re always wanting more. It’s so true that being happy isn’t having what you want - it’s wanting what you have.
What am I going to do after Peace Corps? Everyone here is asking. I don’t know.
Monday July 13, 2009. 11:30 am
The good news is that I’m really looking forward to going back to Senegal (and have been for about a week). The bad news is that I’ve been spending a lot of money, and still have to spend more on sarice [presents] for Senegal, which I’m both excited about picking out and dreading giving out upon my return (along with the inevitably numerous questions of “ana sama sarice?” [where is my present?]) Oh well. It comes with the territory.
Good news: I have done almost everything I’d wanted to do while I was here, and I’ve eaten just about everything I really wanted to eat. In the process I’ve discovered that: I can take or leave ice cream, TV, and driving a car, that any of them can be enjoyable but that I don’t really crave them when they’re not around.
I’m really enjoying the all-around quiet, good coffee, and the cool temperatures, and the ability to sleep any time day or night without waking up all sweaty.
Today is our last full day of all 3 of us girls [sisters and me] together […] I did not expect to be able to spend so much time with my girls on this trip - it really has been fabulous.
So has the ability to totally forget about work for these few weeks. For the last year I haven’t been able to do that, even when I traveled I was always still in Senegal, with my work in Senegal never far from my mind. I think that’s what I needed most of everything - a mental break.
You know I think I miss it because that’s where my life is right now. That’s where I belong, where I have a place. I don’t have a place here right now. I got the chance to taste what it’s like, to see what I’d been missing. And it’s all still here. Not much has changed in a year. And by the time next year rolls around I doubt much more will have changed.
I know that before I left I was telling myself that I needed to go back to America so I could remember why I’d come to Senegal. And since I’ve been back in the States I’ve been constantly with D or M and haven’t really had much alone time to reflect on that. But I feel it all kind of coming together, all the reasons why I went. And the reasons why I went in the first place are not necessarily the same as the reasons why I want to go back now. I know that.
I want to go back now and DO a few things before I have to leave next spring. I want to go back now to keep challenging myself, to keep learning. I want to go back to see how those darned Environmental Olympics went, if they went at all. I want to go back to formulate a better plan for an EE club for this coming year […] I’m excited for our EE/Health summit, not just because we get to be hosts, and because all my friends will be there, but also because of what I hope to learn from it. And I am also just a little bit excited to start thinking about what I might be really interested in doing when my 2 years are up. But I need time and space to myself for that, and I know both of those are waiting for me back in Senegal.
Good news: I have done almost everything I’d wanted to do while I was here, and I’ve eaten just about everything I really wanted to eat. In the process I’ve discovered that: I can take or leave ice cream, TV, and driving a car, that any of them can be enjoyable but that I don’t really crave them when they’re not around.
I’m really enjoying the all-around quiet, good coffee, and the cool temperatures, and the ability to sleep any time day or night without waking up all sweaty.
Today is our last full day of all 3 of us girls [sisters and me] together […] I did not expect to be able to spend so much time with my girls on this trip - it really has been fabulous.
So has the ability to totally forget about work for these few weeks. For the last year I haven’t been able to do that, even when I traveled I was always still in Senegal, with my work in Senegal never far from my mind. I think that’s what I needed most of everything - a mental break.
You know I think I miss it because that’s where my life is right now. That’s where I belong, where I have a place. I don’t have a place here right now. I got the chance to taste what it’s like, to see what I’d been missing. And it’s all still here. Not much has changed in a year. And by the time next year rolls around I doubt much more will have changed.
I know that before I left I was telling myself that I needed to go back to America so I could remember why I’d come to Senegal. And since I’ve been back in the States I’ve been constantly with D or M and haven’t really had much alone time to reflect on that. But I feel it all kind of coming together, all the reasons why I went. And the reasons why I went in the first place are not necessarily the same as the reasons why I want to go back now. I know that.
I want to go back now and DO a few things before I have to leave next spring. I want to go back now to keep challenging myself, to keep learning. I want to go back to see how those darned Environmental Olympics went, if they went at all. I want to go back to formulate a better plan for an EE club for this coming year […] I’m excited for our EE/Health summit, not just because we get to be hosts, and because all my friends will be there, but also because of what I hope to learn from it. And I am also just a little bit excited to start thinking about what I might be really interested in doing when my 2 years are up. But I need time and space to myself for that, and I know both of those are waiting for me back in Senegal.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
