Tuesday, May 4, 2010

genn rekk (just get out)

The days are rushing by.
Barely a week left before I have to pack up and leave this town.
My head is spinning, and all of a sudden it's goodbye. I don't want to say it.
Wish I could slip out quietly in the night, grab by bags, slide the keys under the door as I steal away.

Genn rekk. Bagne wakh kenn. Dem.

But I can't do that. (Just get out, not tell anyone, go.)
As hard as it is, I have to say goodbye. I just wonder if I'll have the time to see everyone I want to before I go. More than that, if I'll have the energy to.

Each time I shake another person's hand, each time someone else says "really? you're leaving?" I feel a little part of me tug and wrench. I fear if I keep on saying goodbye all the little tugs will combine to pull me to pieces.

Yes, I waited until the week before leaving to tell most people I know that I'm going. But in this country, it's not like you send out a memo a month before an event. You invite people to meetings the day before, or at most a week in advance. If I had told people a month ago that I was leaving town this coming Monday, most of them would forget way before then, and I'd just have to remind them again, making saying goodbye all the more painful. Now people are accusing me of surprising them, of not caring enough to give them advance notice that I'm leaving. It's not that, I tell them, though they're not really listening because they're too busy scolding me for my indifference.

I know a part of me waited so long to say goodbye because I didn't want people to treat me any differently these last few weeks. I'm the kind of person who doesn't want to bother other people, who hates people fussing over me. Leaving, I have learned, has instigated people here to start telling me how much they will miss me, how great I am, how my Wolof is so great now it's a shame that I'm just going to leave and forget it all, how I shouldn't go, etc. etc., and it just makes me embarrassed and tired all at once. I know I should be flattered, and I am, but I still wish they could just be happy for me that I will soon rejoin my family and friends and country. I know it's hard for them to see it that way, but the few people who can are the easiest ones to say goodbye to.

Part of me feels terrible, being bitter about leaving, but there are so many reasons that make it hard. Take the people, for instance, who ask if here is not good enough for me, who say derisively that I must be in a hurry to go back to America if I'm so happy about leaving Senegal. I'll never be able to make those people understand why I can't stay. I have just another six days here in Joal, but part of me wishes I were leaving tomorrow, that I could just get it over with already.

Once I leave town I'll have a little respite in Dakar, Alhamdulilah. Two weeks to relax a bit, see any sites I haven't yet seen, spend time with some of my best friends. But then soon enough again I'll have to say goodbye to more people I care about.

I've been warned that this is only the beginning of the heartbreak.

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