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.