t-minus four weeks

Four weeks.  I'm actually not sure what this countdown "means," only I can't help thinking about it.  Here's what it might mean:

Only for more weeks until...

...I will return to being unremarkable when I walk down the street.  I won't get hit on or honked at with even half the frequency I've gotten used to here in Dakar.  I will no longer be a "superstar," as Ousmane describes it, and I will no longer have "all eyes on you" (another Ousmane phrase).

...I will no longer be able to go outside and immediately find all kinds of street food within a few steps.  Like cafe touba, toasted corn, jaff (peanuts), fresh fruit and veggies, cookies, and thiakry.

...I will return to a land that serves coffee in big cups, not little plastic ones.

...I will no longer watch the "PUB" (publicite) announcements swirling across the TV screen every 20 minutes, before and after every advertisement.  I will be able to watch movies--and watch them in English.

...I will return to drinking tea with milk and honey in the mornings, and not Nescafe.  I will eat whole-wheat bread.  (So many other dietary changes...)

...I will no longer eat dinner outdoors, in the courtyard, around a big communal plate with a fluctuating number of my brothers and sisters; no longer hear their jokes and stories.  I will no longer hear Wolof spoken regularly, for that matter.

...I will return to where everything is green.

...I will no longer have warm, sunshine-y weather, all the time.  I will no longer have to take malaria pills, either.

In front of the Bay Fall fabric for sale in Saint Louis

I write all of this so that you might understand how conflicted I feel about returning to the States, to home.  To help with this understanding, you should consider reading some of the myriad impressions of my fellow study abroad students.  I've included links to their funny and fabulously-detailed blogs below.

In no particular order:

• Elisa Loeser - "Elisa to Dakar"
• Claire Harter - "l'experience senegalaise"
• Colleen Schneider - "Cross Cultural Communications"
• Emily Matthews - "SchwaSenegal"
• Carlee Forbes - "Carlee in Dakar"

We're all sorting through our experiences here in this simultaneously public and personal medium.  For me, it's been a strange process of self-discovery through self-presentation.  And, of course, to remember--but I keep a separate diary for that.  I hope to present Senegal to you, but present it with my personal "slant"--the way Emily Dickinson says to tell the truth.

untitled

Originally, when I named this blog "Danville to Dakar," I was going for the alliteration only.  That, and the idea was a catchy one--young woman from small-town Vermont goes to big-city Senegal.  Cool, right?  But over the course of the semester (over 3 months, now), I've come to have a deeper understanding of my own choice of title.  I alluded to it in my post about Things that I Day-Dream About, but I didn't properly explain it there, and so I'll try to do so here.


When I say that "these ideas and images flash vividly through my mind," I mean it.  Sometimes, it's like a living dream: I'll be sitting in class, paying half-attention (the lectures are 3 hours long, remember), and then, suddenly, I'll remember what it feels like to be standing on the deck at home in the evening looking out at the mountains.  Or walking up Eastern Avenue in Saint Johnsbury.  Or taking AP Exams at the Academy in May.  Or...any number of random sensations, almost all connected to Vermont (rarely Yale or New Haven, I'm afraid).  Some are based in a specific memory, some not.  Most have to do with summer--I think because I feel like I'm living in such a summer-like environment here, though it's hardly spring in Senegal.


I've really been steeped in Vermont.  Will I get the same feelings about Dakar after I've returned?  Will I, like Ousmane Sembene, think of "O pays mon beau peuple"?  


The title of Sembene's book returns to me often.  Though I hate to generalize in this way, I do find that the Senegalese are, in general, a very beautiful people.  Not always in the physical way, but the whole "aesthetic"--the effect of a thickly-patterned skirt clinging to the narrow hips of a young woman, walking steadily but slowly in skittering flip-flops, balancing water on her head; or the older men sitting in the sidewalk shade of a tree on low stools, waiting for the ataaya heating in a tiny blue kettle settled on the coals nearby.


Of course, there's an American "aesthetic," too, which I think about in a curious, wondering way, like a fantasy land.  I know places exist where everything is clean (too clean?), up-to-date, and well-lit.  I've seen them.  Places like malls, or certain restaurants and glamorous homes.  Places in America.  More on this contrast later.  

We took a horse-drawn carriage (caleche) tour of Saint Louis.

This is the intrepid horse who pulled one of the three carriages, and the Pont Faidherbe.

Now, a brief update: I returned yesterday afternoon from a trip to Saint Louis with WARC--a much more comfortable ride in an air-conditioned bus--and I was so tired I went to bed at 9, after ataaya and ngalax.  Today, I've been shopping with Ousmane in the Colobane market, and now we're waiting for lunch. It's hot and sunny.  I have no classes today (Monday), and none tomorrow, because Wolof is finished and there's been a cancellation of my Islam class, and I've begun (slowly) to research my final History paper.  All is well.