These are the days

How do you start to say goodbye?
To people and places, faces and names. To habits and routines. To a job that is not just a line of work, but a lifestyle. To two years of friendships, familiarity, struggles and frustrations. To an identity - me, the Peace Corps volunteer.

I’ve had to say a few goodbyes already, to other volunteers who came into country with me two years ago. I will be one of the last ones to leave from my original training group, flying out on May 23rd to meet up with my sister to spend five days in Iceland, Inch’Allah, as long as the ash cloud clears up over Europe so I can actually get there…
But if all goes as planned I will leave Senegal that Sunday night, and then fly to New York with my sister on Friday the 28th. After so much time, I am actually coming home.

I admit I borrowed the Iceland idea from one of my best friends in country, who’s going there as part of her COS trip (as long as meteorologic conditions permit) after a somewhat whirlwind trip of continental Europe. In fact she’s been gone a week already, having called me last Thursday from the airplane as she was sitting waiting to take off. After being one of my closest American neighbors for two years, now I don’t know when I might see her again, especially since she’s lined up her next job in Alaska.
The permanence of parting is starting to sink in.

With only a month remaining until my own COS date, I am myself preparing to go away. Step by step, each day I move closer to readiness. With every report I write, each belonging I set aside to give away, and every day that passes, my head is lighter. But I know the paperwork and the physical baggage will be the easy part of all this.

I apologize if I haven’t been vigilant about keeping up to date with what I’ve been doing, if these episodes of my life have been sporadically posted and seem to lack rhyme or reason. I could write another post on my recent activities - about traveling to the southeast corner of the country to help translate for a free eye clinic, about celebrating Easter at the mayor of Joal’s house with my Muslim family and their Catholic relatives, or about the week I spent hosting the volunteer-in-training who will replace me at site after I leave next month. But this is my blog, my space for expression. And as another one of my dearest friends who I’ve already had to say goodbye to likes to say, “I do what I want.”

So instead of posting about any of that, when I was thinking about how to how to write about leaving, this song came to mind. Maybe you’ll think it’s cheesy, but I dedicate it to the influence and importance of friends, near and far. Especially friends who love cheese.

"These are the days" (10,000 Maniacs)

"These are the days"

So few of them left to me here. Only 17 more until I leave my site, then another 14 until I leave the country. Thirty-one days. One month - after 25. In my adult life I’ve never lived in one place or worked a job for as long as I have here. It just makes leaving this all the more daunting.

"These are the days we’ll remember"

I am trying to take everything in these last weeks, the sights and sounds and smells of this now familiar place. I’m taking time with my host family and friends, went swimming twice this week after so many days of forgetting I live at the beach, and am reminding myself of the reasons I’ll be sad to leave.

"Never before and never since, I promise / will the whole world be warm as this"

I woke up sweaty from my afternoon nap and had trouble sleeping last night when the power went out. Yesterday the dry harmattan winds were in full force, sweeping the sand up into the air and intensifying the oven grade temperature. But even if I won’t miss the physical heat, I will feel the loss of the kindness of hearts, that warmth of welcome that constitutes the famous “teranga” of the Senegalese.

"And as you feel it / you’ll know it’s true / that you / are blessed and lucky"

I have had the opportunity to experience so much here, and have gotten encouragement along the way from so many sources. Getting to not only see this country, but integrate into this different culture and way of life, has been an adventure for which I will be forever grateful.

"It’s true / that you / are touched by something / that’ll grow and bloom"

I hope that what I have learned here will stick with me, that I will be able to move on from here to take the best and worst of this time to push me to continue to develop and evolve.

"You"

Who I am has been forever affected by this experience. It seems cliché, but it is nevertheless true. As I move on from here, I will take Ngoné Ndiaye with me, even as I return to a place where I am known by another name. It’s not that I feel I spent two years being someone else - but maybe that in being here, I discovered another part of me.

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After writing this, I stumble up the sandy street under a half-full moon to the fruit stand at the edge of the road, buy bananas for tomorrow’s breakfast and take in the warm evening breeze. Back at my family’s house I take a bucket bath to cool off from the day, put on a light dress and listen to my sisters out in the courtyard playing with the neighbor’s baby, singing and sharing the day’s gossip. I take a chair out to join them, thinking that all too soon, my life will be different from this. So for then, I remember these days.