(re)adjustment, continued

[NOTE: I began this post yesterday, a Sunday.]

Dad's making spaghetti for dinner.  I sit fresh from a (hot) shower in my room, at home in Vermont, on my laptop with wireless internet, looking out onto the garden and the bushy green rhubarb, and listening to the washing machine whirling away downstairs.  Dakar is almost unimaginable...almost.

Dad with the green watering can,

the afternoon that I got back from the airport

Sundays are always tired days in Dakar.  Saturday night is for staying out late, and Sunday morning is for sleeping in.  Aysha and Fana get up and take (bucket) showers in their separate bathrooms around noon; Ousmane and Djim might well keep snoozing until lunch, around 2 or 2:30 in the sunny courtyard.  Then back to nap some more, watch TV, talk on Skype, drink ataaya, maybe go to the beach to do "fitness."  Dinner every other week is ngalax, which requires no real cooking.

Never had I ever appreciated Sunday as a day of rest until I experienced it in Dakar.  There's no one out in the streets.  Some stores don't open, though the downtown is still doing business.  Nothing could be considered demanding, pressing, or urgent on a Sunday.

Packing my suitcase to come home

I keep one clock on Dakar time: 4 hours ahead.  Jet-lag hasn't really gotten to me yet.

I've already gotten several phone calls: from Ousmane, from Nassouri (former guardian), and from Mamadou (a fruit-seller at the end of the road my house is on).  I'm incredibly complimented that they have made the effort.  Phone calls to the States are expensive, and all they seem to want during our brief conversations is to hear that I'm home safely and to make sure everything is going fine ("ça va?").  Keeping in contact will be both a joy and a responsibility.  I'm frustrated that my cell phone plan doesn't include international service, so I'll be looking for more ways to use Skype--both to call cell phones and to use through my cell phone.  I have these connections, and now I begin the work of maintaining them.

View from the plane, sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean

I haven't really tried to explain the experience yet to anyone.  I've been shy--not reaching out to contact my friends the way I should.  I just got back from "Africa."  How to describe it?  That's really the purpose of this blog: to distill my thoughts and to serve as an introduction to the whole idea of studying abroad, "Africa," and even "America."  The best I can do is to encourage everyone who has the ability to go, and for a period longer than a vacation...and then, go back.

impossible cookies

I've now been home for about 24 hours.  The air smells really good here.  I'm working hard to not accept everything here as normal, working hard to keep the familiar strange, the strange familiar.

Things I Have Done in the Last 48 Hours that Would Have Been Impossible/Unimaginable in Daily Dakar Life

• had Dunkin' Donuts coffee, in a big cup
• used American money
• used a pay phone
• got in a car and rode on roads that had lines, speed limits, stop signs, and traffic signals
• ate a peanut-butter (crunchy) and jelly (apricot) sandwich on whole wheat bread...and ate pork (a meat not eaten by Muslims) roast for dinner, with rhubarb pie for dessert; french toast with maple syrup for breakfast; pasta with asparagus pesto for lunch; crackers with cheddar cheese; fig newton cookies; pasta with scallops and goat cheese for dinner.  More food-related things: drank tap water, had a glass of wine (also not done by devout Muslims), used a microwave, ate on a separate plate
• wore denim shorts above the knee, in public
• threw my clothes in the laundry machine, and then in the dryer
• slept on a mattress
• turned on the faucet and expected there to be water
• listened to NPR

I am also amazed by how many shades of green there are in this part of the world.  And how everyone here has a car.  And how early we eat our meals--lunch at 12 noon instead of 2:30, dinner at 6:30 instead of 9:30.  Eating on separate plates feels downright hostile.  I haven't yet showered--I'll do that tonight--in order to keep a bit of Dakar dirt on my body.

As I unpacked, I thought: "Is this all I brought back?"  Even with so many heavy bags, I just didn't feel it was enough.  I could not, did not, bring all of Senegal back; I cannot, will not live a Senegalese life here.  But I am not yet ready to resume my old one, in the old way.  I want to keep sharing--my food, my time.  I want time and money to be spent, not saved.  I want my days to be full as they were in Dakar...nothing really to do but find someone to do nothing with.  And I wasn't exaggerating when I told my family in Dakar that I was used to having 200 people to greet every day, and that I would soon only have 2, my mom and dad.  It is hard to go suddenly from talking with every member of my family every day to being restricted to Facebook and Skype.  My cell phone has no international plan.

And it is lonely, even as I already have friends who have reached out to talk with me, meet up and catch up.  I do want to see them, and in the way Senegalese people meet and welcome friends and visitors into their lives...so easily.  You don't "go out of your way" to do something for someone in Senegal; it's as if you exist in order to do that for that other person, and therefore, doing it doesn't disturb your life's course.  If you're eating, you invite everyone within hearing to eat with you (and no one ever says "no," but "merci, bon appetit" as a way to refuse).  If you're making tea, it's your responsibility to know how many people are near in order to prepare enough.  You live your life in constant accommodation of others.

More thoughts on all this later.  Now it's time for pictures, food-related.

Incredible diversity of cookies and biscuits.  Some candy thrown in.

Biting into a Biskrem cookie.  Yum.

Chocopain and Nescafe on the breakfast table at home

The egg rolls (called "nems") served at our going-away party at WARC.

Eaten wrapped in a lettuce leaf, then dipped in sweet or spicy sauce.

Fataya, also from the WARC party.  Also yummy.

I do feel, being here amongst all that made up my life before, as if I'm waking up from a Dakar dream.  Because four months is both long enough to live naturally, and short enough to not compare to all the years I spent not in Dakar, I have to reconcile the two.  As do all of us study abroad students.