Senegal, May 2007 - #6

Salut tout le monde!

How are all of you? This is my sixth and possibly final update before I fly back to the Western
world in three weeks. I cant believe how fast this semester has gone by! I am caught between wanting to go home tomorrow and wanting to stay for another four months. It has been so incredible!

In the first few weeks that I was here in Dakar, a family member came to visit from France where he is the chief surgeon in a hospital. We were talking about the differences between the West and
Africa, and he told me that I would discover that here, I exist, and in the US I don't. At the time
I brushed it off as another common generalization about how the West is bad, which seemed to abound in the beginning of my stay. But yesterday while I was riding in a car rapide with my friend Kate, I finally understood what he meant. We were talking about how we are going to miss the car rapide, and I was saying how it always feels like a little community every time I get on it. And then the apprenti (the guy who collects the money) came up and we paid him, and I realized that he knew both where I had come from and where I was going without having to ask, because I had checked the destination before getting on. All of a sudden, I completely understood that I existed for him, however temporarily, as a personality traveling from one place to another. Once you step onto a car rapide, you become a character in the story of that commute. And the same goes for so many interactions. When bargaining, you take on a character, and become a complete entity for the vendor, as he or she is for you, for the moment that you interact, and I think I am finally able to understand the feeling of existence that he was talking about. It was the most incredible feeling of love and gratitude that I have had for this place since Ive been here. I feel like I can now come home understanding some fundamental part of the place Ive spent the last four months. I feel like Ive learned something I needed to learn here.

On a less philosophical note, I have been doing an internship with ENDA Tiers Monde going around to different groups of young Senegalese and hanging out with them. In the mornings I visit homeless young men and help give them first aid (band aids, icy hot, etc.) with Modou, who works for ENDA. In the evenings, I visit different groups of maids who are taking literacy classes together and learning to do different crafts like embroidery and sewing. The maids are my favorite because they are so enthusiastic and excited both to be learning and also that I'm there to hang out with them. The first time I went, one of them taught me how to embroider, and I think it was fun for them tohave me come in and not have any of the skills they were cultivating. They range in age from 14 to 30, and are incredibly sweet. Last night, one of them told me she was going to make me a dress despite my protests, and then when she found out I was leaving the 16th she assured me that it would be done by then. It is so refreshing for me to visit these women who are not well off but are doing something about it, and are incredibly generous and warm. It reminds me not to make my judgements by the people on the street who ask me for money or who insist on exchanging phone numbers and marrying me. I think Ive finally figured out how to navigate through Dakar to find the things that are beautiful.

I also flew to Cap Verde for Spring break, which was one of the best vacations Ive ever had! I went with five other friends and we island hopped around the country, which is a collection of volcanic islands, although only one of the volcanoes is still active (and we didnt make it to that island). We went to the most beautiful beaches, and hiked down a mountain on San Antao into an incredibly lush green valley full of terrace farms and sugar cane. They speak creole there, and portuguese, but the closest we had was Lucy's Spanish. All the same, we got around, and even hung out with some grog makers who showed us how the cap verdian rum (grog) was made and gave us some to taste, mmm. Even though Ive never been to South America, I felt like I was there, or in some small southern European town, full of cobble streets, brightly colored houses, and incredibly warm people. It was so relaxing, and just what I needed when Dakar was starting to wear on me!

Ba ci kanam! (See you on the flip side, in Wolof)
Becky