Ba beneen yoon, Senegal

And...it's my last post in Senegal. I leave in less than seven hours to return the United States, and I'm pretty sure that this is the most anxious I've been since I arrived in Senegal. The room and house that I have called my home the last four months has been stripped of all my possessions - which are all wrangled in two large suitcases - and I am at a loss for what to do. I've been restless the past three days and I'm ready to simply apparate home and bypass saying goodbye to my family and friends here. Although in fact, I might as well be apparating - you step on board a plane and nine hours later, you have left everything behind and you are in a utterly different world. I have gotten to the point where I have realized how completely exhausting the last semester has been - I'm constantly on guard and on edge - every moment I am awake I am on display, I am being watched, I am being tested on my understanding both of the language(s) and cultural understanding.

I can't wait to go home, but I'm realizing that for every positive there is a potential caveat. Being able to understand the conversations around me will be a nice novelty, but will it simply overwhelm me? I can't wait to eat American food, but the thought of not eating yassa poulet around the bowl again is difficult. I look forward to the day when I won't be stared at and harassed for the color of my skin, but I am also sad that I will not longer receive the usual "nanga def?" from my favorite guard on the way to school.

I'm still processing my experience here. There are things that I love about Senegal. There are things I absolutely detest about Senegal. I think that I have possibly learned more about America than about Senegal itself during the time I have passed here. I never used to think of myself of having a great love of country, and still instinctively recoil from expressing it, but everyday I have been here, I have thought about how lucky I am to be American. I can leave the country whenever I want, I can go basically anywhere in the world. I don't have to defer to men - I can look them in the eyes and shake their hands. I don't have to get married if I don't want to. I can throw my garbage in a trashcan when I walk down the street. I can go to class in the morning without having to get up hours before to gain room in the classroom with thousands of other students. I can breathe clean air.

But it's more than that. I don't like the attitude that many who look at the African continent adopt, the idea that countries in Africa are somehow a boost for our own self esteem, a benchmark by which we can judge our own prosperity. It certainly gives one a different perspective to come to a developing city like Dakar, but I have always been aware that I was the one who chose to come to Senegal, that I am the student here. I am so thankful to have the means to be able to come and learn and live for a short while in a place that few Americans are able to go. I am thankful to have been welcomed into a community and a family who has taken care of me and taught me so much. I am thankful to have made friends who have been the greatest source of support and laughter.

And thus with two and a half hours left before I leave for the airport, before I start my journey back to the United States and the inevitable culture shock that comes with it, I say goodbye to Senegal. I will shake the hands of the host family with my left hand, not the customary right, so I will have to return to correct my mistake. In Wolof, there isn't a word for goodbye. The closest is "ba beneen yoon"- until the next time. So, ba beneen yoon, Senegal. A la prochaine fois, ba ci kanam, leegi leegi...I'll be back someday, inch'allah.

Sunday in Touba (through pictures)

Entering Senegal's holy city, Touba and the focal point of the Mouride Sufi brotherhood. This is the place where the Mourids' leader, Cheikh Amadou Bamba lived.

As women, we had to cover our heads and shoulders while we were in the city, especially around the mosque. This was unfortunate as it was a very hot, windy day as one can clearly see from my makeshift hijab blowing in my face.

As non-Muslims, we couldn't go inside the actual mosque, but we could tour the outside areas (shoe-less, of course). It was the most beautiful building in Senegal, and one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. I can't imagine what it's like when it is filled with people praying.

The windows and tile work is so ornate

Lamp Fall, the tallest tower. It was also the first to be built in the 1930s. Apparently there is a red light at the top that is a beacon for all Senegal's Muslim population.

The mosque with a person for scale (thanks, Warren). The construction is ongoing and funded by donations - often from the little talibes bowls. The brotherhood has a huge network of connections, especially control over peanut plantations.

Touba is so clean compared with most places in Senegal. It's jarring to see the beggars just outside when everything else seems so sterile.

108 days and 110 Malarone later...

For the past four months, the little orange bottle of anti-malarial medication sitting on my shelf has been a gauge. Before I left, the bottle was completely full - the pills and possibilities seemed both endless and terrifying. The first month, despite taking a pill a day, the bottle seemed to refill itself. I stared at the contents as if by will I could make time pass faster, could deplete the bottle more quickly. But somehow, it has become emptier and emptier without me realizing. And now, at day 108, I shake the bottle and the little group of pills rattles ominously. I'm almost done; the possibilities are disappearing out of reach.

I leave Senegal in ten days, and I have come to the realization that the only thing more difficult than coming here is leaving here. I'm realizing that the "later" that I've been referring to in my thoughts - the later when I'll buy this, I'll go to the beach, I'll try this flavor of ice cream, I'll make paper snowflakes with my siblings - has come to be now. There are only so many tomorrows left, and I've come to the rather frightening realization that there will simply be things that I will not be able to do or accomplish.

And the thing I didn't expect about all of this is how difficult it is to stay engaged the last weeks. Instead of wanting to absorb and do everything, I've been fighting the instinct to mentally check out from my life here. I have been gradually listening to more and more of my American music, reading more English novels, watching American movies, in unconscious preparation for going home. I've been trying to accustom myself to the fact that I will be leaving, so I don't take things for granted. I absorb the smells of the streets, the feeling of the breeze on the car rapide, the sound of the five am call to prayer and the low murmur of my host mothers' prayers.

I am torn between wanting to return to my family and friends and the U.S., a place of which my estimation has grown considerably in the last few months, and feeling a complete sense of loss at leaving a country and a home that I cannot say with certainty I will ever revisit. My host sister doesn't understand. She asks when I will come back, and when I say I don't know, she asks, "Christmas vacation? No, well, January then? So you are coming 'home' in February then?" It's difficult to tell her no. So I have began to respond in Wolof, "waaw, dinaa nibbi, inch'allah." Yes, I will return "home," if God wills it. Inch'allah.

American cravings, week 15 update

It's been a long time since I last posted. But  after Thanksgiving, Tamkharit, a research trip to the village,  two Marche Sandaga and one HLM trip, a cold, and countless Yogo Glaces, I'm still alive and attempting to stay mentally IN Senegal for the last 13 days I am here. However, this does not stop me from creating the following list of food that I will require upon arrival to the U.S. This post is aimed at you, Mom!

• orange juice
• fresh milk - not the French kind that doesn't need to be refrigerated and tasted vaguely of plastic
• sharp cheddar cheese - I've been living the past four months with "La vache qui rit" synthetic cheese spread. Enough said.
• pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, really anything pumpkin - I need to consume the fall that I missed
• apple cider
• candy canes - the Listerine mints here just don't cut it
• peppermint ice cream - the one flavor of ice cream that is seemingly impossible to find in Dakar
• ham - I'd rather never eat Senegalese "ham" again
• Cheerios - I'm not usually a cereal person, but approximitely 105 straight breakfasts of Nescafe and pain (au chocolat, au fromage, au confiture), I need to switch it up
• bagels
• chocolate chip cookies - especially if they are warm and melty
• chips and salsa/guacamole - one of the few types of food that is pretty impossible to find in Dakar. If someone opened a Mexican restaurant aimed at ex-pats in Dakar, they'd do a killing   

I've also started hallucinating a little about the first chai latte I will have upon arriving in the U.S. In my head, it sounds great, but in real life, at 6 am after a nine hour flight, I will most likely simply stumble off the plane in a daze clutching my bags suspiciously and wondering why no one has asked me to buy phone credit yet.