Snapshots

On 3 November 2004, I remember driving up to Boulder nervously, listening to Ben Folds Rockin the Suburbs to distract me during the drive. I was headed to Red Robin to meet up with an intriguing guy I had recently met. He removed his hat for dinner. He paid. He walked me to my car. He neglected to ask for a second meeting. And so Mike and I parted after juicy burgers and long conversation, neither of us certain of whether we had just gone on a date or not. As it turns out we had.

Soon we will upgrade to a new anniversary, a "real" one, if you will, but this is to say that I love you Mike, and going to dinner with you two years ago was the best choice I ever made. Here's to many more years of meals together!

But for now, I am indeed still in Senegal. My mother recently requested more photos, just to make sure I'm still alive. While actual pictures are not quite available at this moment, I do have some verbal snapshots of this past week. Two days ago, I returned from our second and final village stay, based out of Kedougou, the largest city in Southeast Senegal (See the maps below - thanks Mike!). Italicized are extracts from journal entries I made en route.

On 24 October I departed via bus for Kedougou. Once out of the city, I got a good long look at the savannah from my coveted window seat:
The landscape rushes by, endless green. The grasses and undergrowth have never scratched my ankles as I trod on them. I've never run my fingers over the bark of these trees, or stared into their branches at the sky beyond. I've never plucked their leaves to rub between my fingers and release their fresh scent. These plains are a cousin to those I know so well, and yet they are so unfamiliar. A farmer's head bobs above the green, the rest of his body hidden by his crops, his livelihood. Every so often appears a collection of roofs shaped like Hershey kisses, half-melted in the thick heat of the savannah. A life-long home to how many?

After a while:
To stretch our legs a bit, our group dismounted the bus to walk across the bridge above the Gambia River. Below, they were working. In Dakar, buckets are the all-purpose cleaning accessory: laundry, dishes, bath, etc. Here, it was the river. A young girl looked up to me passing above, and brightened her squinted face with a smile more warming than the mid-day sun, and waved. Next to her, a woman lost hold of a large pot she had been washing. She plunged into the river after it, surprisingly unhurried, and returned successfully to our cheers coming from above. The girl beside her had begun bathing, and was scrubbing vigorously her suds-covered body. Again, she looked up to me, again she offered her smile; it stuck with me as I returned to the bus with a warm satisfaction. I tucked her away into my memory. An hour to Kedougou.

When we arrived in Kedougou, we had a few days before dispersing into our village host families. During these days we as a group went on a couple of hikes, to my elation. The first hike was to the Beddick village of Etchwar, a half-hour jaunt up a good-sized hill several kilometers outside of Kedougou:
The brush was thick enough that, although there were others several paces before and behind me, there were moments when I felt alone in my surroundings. The heat pulsated as though the literal breath of God, whispered through the waving life surrounding me. The steepness abated and I turned a corner that stretched open the landscape. Gambia stood somewhere in the distance. There was a woman working her field, the children standing inside the spindly trunk of a nearby tree. I breathed in deeply the sweet scented air, and exhaled a prayer.

Our village stay began on our third day in Kedougou. We were staying in six villages of different ethnic minorities sourrounding the city. I and two of my colleagues were placed with the Peul Bande, members of the populous Fulani people, found in many parts of Africa. I stayed in a thatched-roof hut that normally housed the village cheif, Mamady Diallo. They called me Aminata. The village was called Boundoucoundi, and its people were wonderful. It's bugs were not:
I had chicken pox when I was little, I'm sure of it. I spent a part of my childhood in the forests of Connecticut, crawling with poison ivy. I spent the other part in the mountains of Colorado, in the company of mosquitos and ticks. Whenever I am around cats, my chin gets irritated. All this and yet, searching through all the banks of my accessible memories, it is confirmed that I have never before in my life been this itchy. The itchiness that I am experiencing at this moment is the kind that distracts attention from all else, transcending mild discomfort. Ankles, feet, hands, elbows, legs, back, neck, arms. I would like to cry. I would like even more to scratch. But somehow I retain the knowledge that to scratch as I desire would only result in losing an entire layer of skin. So here I dangle, thinking of nothing but how much I itch, and how unable I am to do anything about it.

When I was little, it was quaint to say, "Don't let the bedbugs bite!" Here, it is wishful thinking.

Here are some thoughts from after my stay:
Today, I returned from a three and a half day stay with the family of the village cheif of Boundoucoundi. My feet are covered all over with insect bites, and with a vague reddish stain on their bottoms from the clay-rich soil. I am struck with an intense emotion I can't quite account for. Nine-year-old Maimouna's smile as the passed between daily chores. Aminata Ba, first wife of the village cheif's oldest son and mother of two, looking simultaneously so old and so young at twenty-two. The cheif's eyes glistening as he played with his infant grandson. When I remember these images I feel the punch of tears forming. Why? They seem so happy, seem to have...enough. I will probably never see them again, but how much of a connection could I really have had with so few words exchanged? A passing visitor in a world so constant, a fleeting presence in a thousand-year-old village. Soon or in another century, the village cheif will pass his legacy on to Souleyman. The next day, the next generation, little Bala will have become an old man, and taken his father's place as village cheif. Maimouna will marry, have children God willing, and continue grinding corn as she does each day. Maybe they will remember me, maybe I will fade. But corn will be harvested, peanuts will be shelled, and babies born, as village life continues.

After a safari-like excursion to the 100-meter waterfall of Dindefello, skirting the Guinean border, we loaded all our stuff back onto the bus for the return trip. The distance we had covered in two days on the way out we ambitiously planned to cover in one day on the way back.
Locusts. Substantial creatures of impressive hopping ability. I examined the one a foot away from my face as I did the authentic-traveller-in-Africa business of the bush bathroom stop. At that moment, I thought of how convenient a thing a tail would be. One with a nice swatch of hair at the end--a weapon, a sheild. That, or a toilet.

A final snapshot from the long ride home:
Hershey-kiss huts again, in their perpetual state of half-meltedness, dotting the landscape. Only now, the thatched roofs no longer represent an impenetrable foreigness of village life. Like the fox's mnemonic wheatfields in St. Exupery's Le Petit Prince, the huts now pull my mind immediately to the sound of Maimouna's voice as she answered her grandmother's summons, or the taste of Souleyman's attaya tea. To bedbugs and cornmeal dinners topped with less-than-appetizing leaf sauce, to tickling small children or clumsily slicing ochra. To my Boundoucoundi.