SenegalEase

Child's Pose

2011-09-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter made a trip to southern Sudan, where he took the now iconic photo of a vulture preying upon an emaciated Sudanese toddler near the village of Ayod. He snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away.
Carter eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but he couldn't enjoy it. "I'm really, really sorry I didn't pick the child up," he confided to a friend.
Consumed with the violence he'd witnessed and haunted by the questions as to the little girl's fate, he committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning three months later.

This is my poem based on the photograph in tribute to Kevin Carter.

Child's Pose

I've wiped the lens
with the edge of my shirt
over and over again

each time hoping
to find her
digging grubs from the coolness of mud.

Or sifting millet
with agile fingers
looping through the grains.

Haunched
on strengthened knees,
feet anchored to the ground,
circled hands cupping drops
from the catalyst of rain.

The sharpness has faded,
the background obscured,

but her pose
remains unchanged.

Laid down on the trek,
did she long for the womb,
the fluid float of a weightless embrace
to carry her once again?

Or maybe she sought
to sink beneath
the stratum of clay
to entwine with roots
that would keep her
until Spring.

Earth, too parched to absorb another child
rejected her hunger,
and offered her up

crouched limbs,
caged spine,
bones bracing and
biding

as the talons and lens approached.

The scavenger,
patient and poised,
stilled to her flesh and the
vapored stench
of urine, bile and bowel.

I willed it to advance,
spread wings
just once.

And I waited.

Not a squawk, not a twitch
not a breath, not a click.
A war of observation,
there was no retreat.

The few steps I could have taken
were a vastness bridged by fear.

She held her pose,
too weak to accuse.

I never saw her eyes.

Forgive me.

I'll reside unseen
in the negative space
where the air
leaks promised sleep.

Pluck: A Poultry Tale + Recipe

2011-06-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

"The best way to execute French cooking is to get good and loaded and whack the hell out of a chicken. Bon appétit. "

— Julia Child

There was a time not so long ago when, if I didn't feel like cooking, I would drive a good distance from our house in Savannah to The Fresh Market to pick up dinner. On those evenings, I would grab a basket, walk straight past the wooden tables displaying woven wicker crates bursting with gigantic blush pink apples, baby spinach and arugula. I would shoot past the acrylic, lift-top candy bins and the international chocolate shelf, the artisinal cheese display, the barrels of aromatic coffee beans and the nut grinding station, then weave my way through the biscotti and imported "biscuits" aisle, which brought me to the gourmet deli section. And that's when I would smell it. What I had come for. The rotisserie chicken.

Oh, how I miss that rotisserie chicken: White Wine Herb, Lemon Rosemary, Butter Garlic, Honey and Thyme or Natural (which, they should call "elegantly simple", for that is indeed what it is.) I loved to watch them turning ever- so-slowly on their sabers, the top one dripping it's flavorful cooking juices onto the one below, creating a cascade of savory essence, basting, coating, dripping until each golden droplet suspended and finally splattered and sizzled into the pan below. Watching this process, I theorized that the chicken on the very bottom must be the most flavorful and tender, as it had received all of the drippings from the rungs above. On those occasions when I timed it right and could pick my own chicken right off the rotisserie, that's the one I chose. My piping hot, herb-encrusted chicken nestled inside the foil-insulated bag in my basket, I would wind my way back through the vegetables and fruits (ok, and maybe the international chocolates) to complete my dinner. Those were the days.

In Senegal, I usually dig a chicken out of the freezer chest at our local grocery and dump it into an insulated bag (to keep it cold this time) as quickly as possible. Those suckers are really, really cold. And heavy. Then I met a Senegalese man who raises and sells organic chickens. I ordered one to be delivered the day I was having a dinner party. I would be making Zuni Cafe's famous Roasted Chicken and Bread Salad for one of Richard's new clients and his wife.

On the morning of the party, I was on a roll--I had decided that this time, I was not going to let myself get stressed out. Instead I would be organized, ready, cool and calm. I would have dinner prepared, the table set, my kids bathed, the animals fed and the kitchen cleaned, leaving myself enough time to actually shower and have a much-deserved glass of wine well in advance of our guests arrival at 7:30.

All was going well. I had the bread salad ready at 2:00, or as ready as possible, as the final step is to pour the hot pan drippings over the cubed and grilled bread chunks and then toss with arugula. I had the table set, dessert made, the wine chilling, the green beans trimmed and the orange gremolata ready to pour over the beans once they were cooked. All I needed was the chicken. At 4:00, just as I was putting Sunny and Jamie in the bath, I heard the clip-clop of a horse cart pull up outside. Yes, the chicken. I ran and opened up the gate and there indeed was my organic chicken man, right on time.

He pulled an old rice bag from the back of his cart and reached inside, pulling out a fully-feathered, just killed bird.

"No, no, no", I said, shaking my head. "There must be some mistake. The chicken I ordered is plucked, cleaned and has no head or feet," and, I thought to myself, doesn't look like Ginger the Hen in "Chicken Run" which I had unfortunately watched with my kids the day before.

He laughed and tried to hand me the chicken, but I backed away. "Madame," he said, "you ordered a chicken and that is what I have brought you. You're lucky I killed it for you." With that, he carefully placed the chicken at my feet, got back in his cart and clopped away. I ran after him, hauling the chicken along by the feet, shouting, "but how do I get the feathers off?!! Wait!! Don't go!!"

In situations like this one, (i.e. an entire three pound chicken that needed to be de-headed, de-clawed, plucked, "voided", washed, prepared and roasted in two and a half hours), I have been known to succumb to something akin to Tourette's Syndrome. Sunny and Jamie ran outside with towels on to see why Mommy was standing in the courtyard shouting obscenities, holding a dead chicken by the neck.

"Get your father on the phone, now! . . . Please."

As I tried not to hyperventilate, I heard Sunny, who loves nothing more than to push the #1 button on my cellphone to call her Papa, leaving Richard a message:

"Papa, it's me, Sunny. You better get home soon. Mama's cursing at a chicken. She used the really bad word."

I frantically Googled "how to pluck a chicken". A surprising number of results popped up. I decided to skip the Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church video on YouTube entitled "Ms. Dudley Shows How to Pluck the Chicken" because it was seven minutes long and I didn't have seven minutes. I did however bookmark it for later viewing. Scrolling down, I learned fairly quickly that one only need place the chicken in a pot of boiling water and let it sit until the feathers loosened and could be easily removed.

While the chicken sat in it's pre-pluming bath, I thought it would be a good idea to sample the wine. Two glasses later, I reached into the pot, pulled out the chicken and realized it would be easier if I got the neck/head and feet off first. I somehow managed to do this rather smoothly, finding the joints easily. That accomplished, I took a deep breath, reached into the pot (which had now cooled slightly) and began ripping feathers out. The downy ones came out quite easily, but the wing feathers were more stubborn, so I asked Jamie to please find my eyebrow tweezers. By now, our three cats had become very interested in what I was doing and had climbed onto the counter and were pacing like circus tigers. Tweezers in hand, I began to tug at the more difficult quills. As my hands were wet, I was covered in chicken feathers which were plastering themselves all the way up my arm. Sunny had pulled up a stool next to me and was cheering me on. "You're doing a great job Mom." She kept asking me if I didn't want another glass of wine.

At 6:00, the chicken was naked as a . . . well, you know, and I braced myself for removing the innards. I got a scrap bowl out, cut the skin around the cavity and reached in. I don't know that I could identify what I pulled out, but I placed it all in the bowl to cook later for the cats. I scrubbed my hands, arms and the chicken clean, inside and out, and placed it in a roasting dish. It looked just like it was supposed to! I felt triumphant, giddy, plucky even!

Just as I was popping my beautifully dressed and tressed chicken into the oven, one of the cats snatched the entrails out the bowl and trailed them across the counter, down the hallway and up onto Sunny's bed where she proceeded to gnaw on them ferociously and howl at me viciously if I tried to get near her. The resulting mess topped my 'grossest thing ever' list, Sunny's bed had to be changed and Sunny herself needed lots of comforting. She feared that her favorite Hello Kitty sheet (ironic, don't you think?) would never be the same. And, I found, I needed another sip of wine.

Twenty minutes later, I had just enough time to wash my face, brush my teeth and throw on a dress and some lipstick. My cheeks already had that healthy 'just plucked a chicken in record time while downing a bottle of wine' adrenaline glow, so I skipped the blush. The chicken was starting to smell pretty good and, although the recipe doesn't call for it, I basted it with the remainder of the wine bottle I had so thoroughly sampled. When Richard arrived with our guests, who I was meeting for the first time, I wanted to drag him into a corner and tell him everything that happened, but I would have to save it for later.

Somehow, I got dinner on the table. I nervously waited as our guests took their first bites. No one said anything, so I quickly scooped up a forkfull of chicken and bread salad and was relieved that it had turned out well, really well. The woman turned to me and said, "this chicken is absolutely delicious. Did you use white wine?"

You could say that.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Actually, it was excellent, which is why I'm sharing the recipe. If you want to impress someone or simply cook the best roasted chicken dish you've ever tasted, you should give it a go. I didn't read the recipe carefully in advance--the chicken is supposed to be brined two days in advance--oh well. This is a link to my absolute favorite cooking blog and the recipe. Enjoy. Oh, and Bon Appetit!

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/12/zuni-cafe-roast-chicken-bread-salad/

Stories of Serendipity Part II: The Mechanic

2011-06-10T03:31:00.001-07:00

When we first moved to Senegal, many fellow expats warned us not to trust the Senegalese, to keep our distance. A give and take relationship was impossible, they assured us, because the Senegalese, gentle as they may seem, were not culturally capable of a reciprocal friendship. I remember thinking, whenever I would hear such admonissions, and they were frequent, that surely these expats were missing something. They weren't looking deep enough, not able to invest in the time and patience it must take to build a relationship. It seemed like a gross generalization, a dehumanizing one, for all of us. And so, I chose to ignore it.

This story proves them all wrong. It happened to my husband Richard, on a recent ordinary day, which is of course when serendipity is most likely to strike. On this particular occasion, serendipity (such a feminine word) was ushered onto the scene by her ever-watchful companion, karma.

The Mechanic:

A 25-year old Toyota Landcruiser possesses lots of charms, particularly when you live in Africa. Talk about rugged. Talk about sturdy. Talk about able to get us home on a mud path laden with crater sized, rain-drenched pot holes. For all of these reasons and more, we love our car. And everyone knows that an old car, one without computer controls or online manuals, needs a veteran mechanic. A trustworthy mechanic who knows his engines and isn't afraid to take them apart. It took us a long time to find Babou, but we knew he was the one when he listened to our car the first time and said, "she's sick. I can fix her." No technical mumbo jumbo, just a straightforward prognosis with a fair price. He is a professional and an expert--someone we trust.

And so, over the last few months, we've recommended him to friends, acquaintences, business owners--anyone in need of a good mechanic. Word of mouth is how most good news travels here and it's always feels good to know that you are helping all involved.

One day this week, Richard travelled to a remote village to work with an elderly Haitian architect who has built an artist colony. He needed help completing the design and execution of a natural pool, one that uses aquatic plants instead of chlorine, to filter impurities. It wasn't a big job, but one that Richard was happy to work on out of great respect for this gentleman.

As Richard was leaving in the afternoon, he got as far as the next village and realized he didn't have much gas. He pulled over to see how much money he had in his wallet- he would need the equivilent of $20 to get him home. To his great horror, he had forgotten his wallet at home. As he stood outside in the morning heat leaning against the car, wondering how he was going to get home, he pulled out his telephone to call me. No credit. (Cellphones in Senegal work on phone cards which you replenish as you go). He didn't even have the gas required to travel back to his client.

Just then, he heard someone call his name. As he turned around, he saw Babou trotting across the street.

"Babou, what are you doing way out here in the middle of the week?", Richard asked.

He pointed across the street to a car on the side of the road. "I have a client who lives in this village. His car broke down this morning and he called me to come fix it."

They were both a long way from home, on the same day, in the same village, on the same street, at the same time.

Richard felt great relief at seeing not only a familiar face, but a friend. He could wait until Babou had fixed the other car and catch a ride back home. He'd somehow have to get back there to pick up our car, but he'd worry about that later. He was about to explain his predicament when Babou patted him on the shoulder and said,

"I'm so glad to see you. I was going to stop by your house later this afternoon."

"You're welcome any time Babou, but why did you want to see me?"

"I wanted to thank you. You've recommended so many clients to me lately and it has helped my business greatly. I'm no longer struggling. I can sleep at night. You have helped me more than you know."

"Please" he said, "take this as my way of thanks. I know it's not much, but maybe you can buy some gas with it."

With that, Babou handed Richard $20.00.

Stories of Serendipity Part I: The Yellow House

2011-06-07T04:10:00.000-07:00

"All things are ready if our minds be so."
Shakespeare

I've been thinking alot about serendipity lately. And I'm not the only one. I hear stories all the time about people crossing each other's paths, resulting in a significant exchange, leaving both people with the distinct impression that they were meant to meet, for reasons big or small. Hearing about these stories is serendipitous in itself. It's hard to deny that some intangible force, be it God, Allah, Buddha, the Universe, or wherever we place our faith, helps us work things out together. I might be wrong, but it seems to me that these events tend to occur in direct proportion to our current personal and global fragility. Times are tough and scary. Tragedies touch us either personally or distantly, but we hear of or read about them often. The good news is, if we listen, we will also hear about (or hopefully experience) chance meetings, small miracles if you like, that lend a bit of grace and purpose to our day. And so I would be so bold as to altar Shakespeare's quote to read: "All things are ready if our hearts be so."

Here is one such story, Part I:

The Yellow House:
There is a young Senegalese man who often sings at the top of his lungs in what I presume to be a mixture of Wolof and Arabic. Sometimes he wanders out in the bush behind our house, slowly weaving among the giant Baobob trees. But most often he can be seen outside a nearby uninhabited house, wedged into the corner where two outside walls meet. He sings every day, but always at different times. Most days, I'm ashamed to admit, I want to wring his neck, or ducktape his mouth. There is nothing beautiful or particularly comforting about his singing. In fact, it's rather annoying. But nonetheless plaintive.

This morning I went in search of eggs. As I was walking along the dirt path towards the village, the singer began to wail. I could tell by the direction of his voice that he was in his usual spot, a spot I could not avoid. As uncomfortable as I was, I would have to pass him on my way to the boutique. I have always avoided direct contact with this young man, preferring to glimpse him off in the distance. Afterall, anyone who sings that loudly in the middle of nowhere has to be a little off their rocker, right?

As I approached, he suddenly stopped singing, which for some reason made me feel guilty. I had always envisioned a crazed, desperate individual with frantic eyes. Instead, here stood a calm, if not a little embarrassed, young guy wearing surfer shorts and a Bob Marley t-shirt. I said hello and told him not to stop singing on my account. He shuffled his feet a little and looked down at the ground. It was if he knew I had mocked him. I suddenly needed to make it right between us.

"What exactly are you singing about?" I asked.

"My problems," he replied. "I sing to Allah, but only when there is wind. The wind carries my voice and the echo carries Allah's message back to me."

"That's lovely," I said. "Does it really work?"

"Sometimes."

As I couldn't think of much more to say, I asked his name.

"Moustapha Diouf."

"Nice to meet you, Moustapha Diouf. My name is Ellen."

He half-bowed but did not move to shake my hand, which I took to mean that we had gotten close enough for one day. As I turned to continue along the path, he said,

"Allah has a message for you too."

I stopped. "Oh, really?" O.K., I thought, so the loose screw diagnosis was accurate afterall. Maybe Jim Morrison's got something to say while you're at it, buddy. But I had stopped, hadn't I? I, the jaded Catholic who was hard-pressed to define her "beliefs", had been stopped in her tracks by the possibility that I had a pending message . . . from Allah. At the moment, if felt oddly comforting.

"What is the message?" I ventured.

"I don't know, but you'll find it at the yellow house." And with that, he took up his singing again.

The yellow house is an old, wooden, barn-like structure that is a small miracle in itself in that it stands at all. I don't know how old it is, but I often marvel at the fact that termites haven't devoured it. I pass it every day. It's beautiful in an inexplicable way. But, I thought as I walked along, if Moustapha is right, today it will have new meaning. I walk past the house slowly, peering towards the windows, listening. But I don't really believe, not really. I stop, continue on, circle back. Nothing. No one. I linger in front for a few minutes and then decide to try the door, which is around the back. There is no door. The house, afterall, is abandoned. No one inside, only fallen boards with exposed rusted nails, shreds of faded fabric. I am suddenly crying. It's like someone has just told me there is no Santa Claus. No Santa, no Easter Bunny, no Tooth Fairy, no God, no Allah. No Magical Yellow House with even the smallest tibit of Wisdom.

I continue on to the boutique where I go every day to stock up on sundries. Abdou tells me he doesn't have any eggs yet and to try the boutique a little father along in the village. I trudge my way through a sandy street I am not familiar with and spot the boutique up on the left. As I am about to enter, a little boy runs up to me and sticks out his hand. "Bonjour toubab," hello, white lady. He is about four and offers me a sturdy handshake and huge smile. This cheers me up, so I buy him a piece of candy inside the boutique, but no eggs. They haven't been delivered yet. When I step outside, the little boy is across the street, leaning against the wall. He has a deflated bicycle wheel in his hand and is studying it carefully, trying to find the hole. He sees me and there is that big smile again. When I hand him the candy he throws his arms around my legs. I ask him where he lives. He points to the gate and says, "fi, kai fi", here--come with me," and drags me through the gate. Inside, there is a large courtyard filled with chickens and a few goats. There are plastic buckets filled with laundry in different stages of soaking and a woman in the corner, who I assume is his mother, busy packaging the fresh eggs she has collected this morning. She stands to greet me and says, literally translated, "you are welcome here." I finally take in the house behind her, which is small . . . and crumbling in places . . . but clean and bright. . . . and a lovely shade of yellow.

On my way back home, my eggs tucked into my knapsack, I look for Moustapha. I want to share what happened to me. I listen for his voice, but he is nowhere to be found. The wind has died down.

Noah's Ark: Penning About Pets

2011-04-06T07:13:00.000-07:00

Several months ago I was browsing the submission guidelines for online literary journals and I came across one that caught my eye. The editors threw out terms like "out-of-the-box prose" and "non-linear thinking" which would "blow their run-of-the-mill fiction-dulled minds." It all sounded great. This was it, I was ready to submit my short story . . . until I came across the following guideline, the last on the list, written in large type and flanked with annoying little asterisks, emphasizing it's weight:

****PLEASE REFRAIN FROM WRITING ABOUT YOUR PETS, OTHER PEOPLE'S PETS, OR ANIMALS IN GENERAL. NO ONE CARES***

Get PETA on the phone! Alert the ASPCA! This is an outrage! I thought of the many books I had read as a child and into adulthood where an animal had been the main character, had conveyed a lesson about love, patience, loss, companionship, trust and perserverence, books I loved and will pass on to my children:

Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, Black Beauty, All Things Bright and Beautiful, Sea Biscuit, The Cat Who Came For Christmas, just to name a few. Animal Farm for crimminy's sake! Would they have given Orwell a "thanks, but no thanks," simply because there was a pig in his story? Disney/Pixar even got us to flip for a rat with a passion for fusion cooking. Log on to YouTube and you can choose from over 650,000 animal videos. So how could this so-called reputable literary journal say that no one cares about critters?

Just to piss them off, I sent in a story called "Mittens and Me", about a little girl who spends weeks coaxing a small abandoned kitten out of a hole underneath a garden shed, engendering it's trust with small bits of bread soaked in milk only to have the kitten's neck viciously broken by the family dog. The crux of the story really isn't so much about the pain the little girl suffers at the loss of the cat (and the betrayal of the dog), but the family drama that ensues as each member struggles with the decision about whether or not to keep the dog. Arguments break out, alliances are tested and a parental decision is made that may or may not have lasting impact on the relationship between the siblings. I had started the story as a joke, but in writing it, it became more complex, took on a different shape. Probably because it was true.

I named the cat "mittens" because she was grey with white paws and I was eight years old. And I wanted to give the dog away because he had destroyed something more important than the cat. With one primal, instinctual act, he had snatched away my innocence. This was of course not his fault, being a dauchsund and therefore a ratter. He simply didn't know any better. But at the time, I had assumed he was capable of a higher form of thinking and feeling. How could he? was all I could think. I took it personally. And though we never really talked about it, I will always feel guilty that, in the end, my parents decided to give the dog away. His banishment was an indulgent and shoddy trade-off for the pain that my brother and sister suffered, a resentment that hung like thick smog around our house until one day, it was all forgotten. Or maybe we just moved on, filing the event away as part of the fabric of our family's make-up. And that's where the story lies. But without the cat and without the dog, there is no story.

"Mittens and Me" was promptly and not so tactfully rejected with an adviso from the editor: "Next time, please take care to carefully read our guidelines." I had expected as much, but still defend the notion that what we consider good literature, or maybe just a good, sentimental read, can and probably does contain a few stories relating to animals. The human experience, from the beginning of time, has always been, and I hope always will be, accompanied and enriched by our four-legged friends. Just today, I read an article about a dog who had been separated from it's owner during the Tsunami in Japan and was recently reunited with her. Maybe, amidst all the human tragedy we face in the world, all the senseless rage and destruction, we can allow ourselves to take comfort in such a reunion.

All this has me thinking about starting a literary journal (or blog) soley dedicated to stories (fiction,creative non-fiction, poetry and photography) about or relating to animals in the wild or pets. What do you think? Do you have a story to tell?

Saliou's Shoes

2011-02-22T03:51:00.000-08:00

In a small village in Africa there lived a woman of little means who awaited the birth of her second child. On the night of the full moon, during the harvest, the woman was visited by a prophet in her dreams. He told her he had been sent by Allah and spoke in an ancient tongue, pulling the words like ripe fruit from the koran he held in his hand. Her child, the prophet told her, would be a boy sent to earth to serve Allah. No harm would ever come to this child or her house if she allowed him to fulfill his purpose. When the child turned ten, she must let him go out into the world. The woman was frightened by the vision in her dream, but being a faithful servant of Allah, she took great pride in having been chosen as the vessel. The great rains came the night she birthed the child and she suffered greatly, but she did not complain about her gift, for that was how she saw him. The boy was kind and gentle. But he did not speak. It was said that if he glimpsed a person's soul through the window of the eyes, he would know all, good and evil, which lived within a person. Therefore, he was greatly revered in the small village.The woman took good care of the child until he went out into the world at the age of ten, as the prophet had predicted. The child was often seen in the village walking barefoot along the roads. One day he met a white man, who measured his bare feet and promised to buy him shoes. When the rains came, the man left, but returned one day and presented the boy with a beautiful box. Inside was a pair of leather sandles, and the man put them on the boy's feet. The shoes fit him perfectly and the man smiled brightly at the boy. The boy smiled back and looked deeply into the man's eyes before continuing his walk. The man watched him go. The boy stopped several children as he made his way through the village and asked them each to try on his beautiful new shoes. When he had found a little boy whose feet fit the shoes, he buckled them onto the child and walked away . . .

I first met Saliou about two years ago, shortly after we came to Senegal. I pulled up to the bakery one morning and was about to open the car door when a small, smiling face appeared suddenly in the window. "Oh, hello", I said. He didn't respond, but hopped up onto the runner of the car and crossed his small arms carelessly at my open window, still smiling and cocking his head a bit to the left as though offering his cheek for a kiss. He then looked me straight in the eyes, an unusual intimacy for a Senegalese child to bestow upon a white person, especially an adult white person, and one he had yet to meet, officially. As he gave no sign of wanting to move, I suggested he get down so I could get out of the car. "Aaahhh," he said, drawing out the word, which I took to mean that he thought it was a good idea. He jumped down and made a sweeping gesture towards the bakery door, a gallant (and I realized later, practiced) move, as though it were his and he was inviting me inside. He was barefoot and his clothes were threadbare and stained. Judging from his height, I guessed he was about nine or ten. His eyes , which were bright and clear, seemed familiar somehow, and his mouth was unusually large (or was it just the effect of his easy smile?), the teeth square and slightly brown near the gum.

"What's your name?" I asked first in French, then in Wolof, when he didn't answer. He tapped one finger lightly on his chest and opened his eyes wide. "Yes, you, what's your name?" At this he looked up at me and then back to the ground. "Mangui tudou 'Ellen,' I offered. He closed his eyes firmly for several moments, the long lashes fluttering, as though he was considering what my name might look like before committing it to memory. Then he gathered the fingers of his right hand to his thumb and swept the fist towards his mouth, took my hand and pulled me towards the bakery door. "You're hungry, I guess," and there was that smile again and something like a grunt of relief. That was when I understood that, although this little boy could hear, he didn't, couldn't or refused to speak.

The yeasty smell of fresh-baked bread, creme-filled pasteries, egg-washed brioche and baked apples filled our noses, while Saliou's eyes feasted on the glass case filled with paper doilies proffering early morning delights as more were being pulled from the oven on large warm trays. We were greeted with friendly smiles and nods. No one seemed to be surprised that I was holding Saliou's hand (this child I had just met) and they all said hello to us as though we were a common, familiar sight. Saliou pointed enthusiastically at several pasteries, but as I only had one small coin, enough to buy a baguette, I said no, no, no to him. Throughout his persistance, he never stopped smiling. Once we were outside, I broke off a large piece of the warm bread and gave it to him. He nodded several times, held his hand up for a high-five and walked off. He stopped briefly at the edge of the parking lot and handed the bread to a little girl who was crying and pounding the ground with her fists as her mother re-tied her sarong which had blown off.

I saw Saliou frequently from that first day on, always on his way somewhere, always stopping to greet someone with a hug, a slap, a high-five. Everyone knew him. I began to notice that he had a perfunctory vocabulary of signs which he used to communicate with people. I also came to understand that he was able to speak, as he parroted words and phrases that he found amusing. "Sailou," I said one time, "your pockets are inside out." "Pockets. Inside. Out", he repeated, giggling as I tucked the empty white pouches back into their folds. Someone told me later that he did this on purpose to let people know he didn't have money for food, his very literal sign for empty pockets, pocket's empty.

Saliou would often spot me as I was going into the grocery store and help me do my shopping. He would throw his arms around my legs by way of a greeting, then take my hand. I'd tell him three things to go get and he'd return and dump them into the basket, smiling and proud. "What's next?" his eyes would plead. Or if Sunny and Jamie were with me, I'd make it a game of who could get their item fastest (without running) and off they'd go on the count of three. Saliou invariably won. On one such shopping day, we were waiting in line to check out when a french woman who was standing behind us said to Saliou, "little boy, you shouldn't be running around barefoot. Where are your shoes?" He looked at her, then at me and took my hand. Giving me a disdainful onceover, she loudly demanded, "why don't you buy him some shoes?" I didn't know what to say.

The next time I saw Saliou, I asked him on a whim to take me to meet his mother. I wanted to talk to his family, assuming he had one. I wanted to ask if I could buy him some shoes. "Ana Mama?" I asked him, pulling his arms gently from around my legs. "Ana?" he repeated. "Yes," I said. "Where is your mother?"

"Mama," he said and reached up and touched one of my breasts. "No, Salou!" and I batted his hand away instinctively and covered my chest. He seemed confused and hurt by this and I felt immediately ashamed, because, of course, this was the most basic and innocent sign for mother. The breast and underneath it, the heart. "I'm sorry," I told him. "It's alright. Let's go find Mama." Taking my hand, he walked hurriedly through the village along the main street and led me into the Cyber Cafe. He ran to a French woman behind the counter and she kissed him on the head.

"Bonjour Saliou," she said, winking at me. "What kind of trouble are you up to today?"

"Hello," I said and shook her hand. "Are you Saliou's mother?" I asked, thinking perhaps he was of mixed race or had been adopted (the same assumption the french woman had made about me in the grocery store). She laughed kindly and said no, that she knew the family and sometimes looked after Saliou. I wondered what she meant exactly and was about to ask when the phone rang and she indicated that she needed to take the call. She tossed Salou a piece of candy, which he put in his pocket before he led me outside.

"Saliou," I reprimanded, "I don't have time for this. Where is your Mama?" He frowned, mocking my expression and then spread his smile exaggeratedly, as if to say, 'chill out, lady' and pointed down the street. We now progressed slowly through the village as I waited each time he stopped to greet people he knew. His pockets began to fill up: a small box of matches, a tissue for his nose, a small toy car with the wheels missing, a clothes pin, the piece of candy, a coin or two. He finally stopped at a small fruit stand that I was familiar with. He sat down on the bench next to the Senegalease woman whom I had bought fruit from many times. She handed him a banana and playfully pinched him under the chin. "Ooowww" he said and entwined his arm through hers. I said hello and asked if she recognized me. "Of course," she said. "You like mandarines. How are you, Sourna si?" We exchanged pleasantries for a minute and then I ventured, "So, I didn't realize you were Saliou's mother?" She looked at Sailou who was looking for something under the table. "I'm not," she said, "but I've known Saliou since he was born. He is a very special child." I had heard him described this way many times before.

We had walked from one end of the village to the other by now and I was feeling exasperated, ready to abandon my idea of meeting Saliou's mother. He was leading me on a goose chase. I bought some mandarines, said goodbye and turned to make my way back through the village. Saliou caught up to me and began pulling me in the other direction. "Salou, this isn't a game." When he looked at me, the smile was gone. And in the absence of that smile, I saw for the first time ancient eyes that belonged not to a careless child, but to a burdened soul searching for small evidences of kindness. I looked away from those penetrating eyes, but I had seen it, the sorrow. I took his hand again and he led me towards the Art Centre. We entered the main breezeway where several young artists who were working on large paintings looked up at us. Salou turned to me and put his forefinger to his lips. Silence. I nodded. Yes, Salou, we must be silent.

He opened doors and walked with authority through a maze of studios until we reached the last one at the back of the building. He opened the door and inside were two Senegalese students working on life-sized paper mache figures and another in the corner rythmically gliding his hands across a Jembe drumb. And with them was Barbara, an Italian woman I had recently met and liked very much. Saliou ran to her and she picked him up and saddled him on her hip like a baby, his arms wound around her neck, his head neatly lying in the crook of her neck. And then I understood. Saliou had many mothers, women who took care of him in large and small ways. And when he had touched my breast earlier, he was letting me know I was one of them. When Saliou went over to play the drum with his friend, I asked Barbara how she knew him and she explained that his real mother worked for her and was a close friend. Barbara was putting Saliou's older sister through school and had paid for his education until the school refused to teach him. They couldn't provide the extra attention he needed.

"But, what's wrong with him exactly?" I asked.

"Nothing, technically speaking. No offense," Barbara said, "but you're not the first white person to take an interest in Saliou. He's been seen by an ear, nose and throat specialist, a speech therapist, a psychologist, has had brain tests, hearing tests, tests for learning impairments. You name it. Salou's father was an alchoholic before his mother left him and came to work for me, and although I don't know all the details, he must have seen and heard some pretty horrendous things at an early age. I think perhaps he has suffered a trauma, but there is nothing pysically wrong with him.

"But why is he always on the street, barefoot and dirty? Why does she neglect him? Why doesn't his mother take care of him? Why doesn't she buy him some shoes?" I was angry at this woman, even though I had never met her. As one mother to another, I hated her and I began to cry. It was then that Barbara told me the story, his mother's belief that he was sent to earth to serve Allah in some special way.

When I had finished talking with Barbara, Saliou walked me back through the village to my car. He held his two fists out and turned them, like he was turning a wheel, his way of letting me know he wanted to go for a ride. "No, Saliou," I said. "I can't take you to today. I have to get home and make dinner." As it was, I had spent much more time than I had planned. Sunny and Jamie would be waiting for me. I got in the car and he closed the door for me and as he did, he left greasy, black fingerprints on the white car door just below the window frame. Not smudges, but clearly visible traces of the lines and arcs of his unique and complex humanity. On the drive home, I thought about the incredible story that Barbara had told me and the many ways I've heard Saliou described: retarded, mute, an indigo child, special. And now an instrument of Allah. Was there any truth to his mother's story? Did she really have a vision? Did she really believe he was sent by Allah? Or was it a means of not having to take responibility for a child who didn't speak, a child who reminded her of pain. I would never know. I thought about his smile and how I would describe him. And one word came instantly. Free.

Walk With Me, Leah

2011-01-09T05:02:00.000-08:00

I woke at dawn to the sound of the muezzin calling the faithful to the mosque, as I do every morning. There is a rotation of three male voices and I never know which one will call me back to consciousness. To my relief, today it is the one I call "The Gregorian" because his chanting has a delicate, clear cadence, the kind that can ellicite calm and touch you in that small hollow under the breastplate, that odd place that beckons a quick breath. Certain Gospel voices can do this to me as well. There are lots of people who can sing, but not all of them get the message across. Like the other two muezzins, who are doing their job, but lack conviction and passion. On the mornings when they shout "Allah akbar" from the turret, it sounds like a call to obligation, but this morning, as I hear The Gregorian, I imagine the men in their robes, walking from all directions toward that voice and I am almost tempted to dress and walk to the mosque myself, just to see, to be led. But then I remember, women are not welcome in the main part. So instead I pick up the small notebook that sits beside my bed where I write down those "urgent" things that need to be recorded in the middle of the night and head to the kitchen for coffee.

Yesterday I was starting to feel the impending sadness that January 9th brings, because it is the day my close friend, Leah, died two years ago. Richard noticed and said, "Ellen, if you want to be happy, you have to start to forget." I got angry and demanded how he could possibly ask me to forget her. He said, "What I mean is that you have to try to forget the sorrow. As long as you sit with the pain, she isn't with you. But if you can figure out a way to honor her, she'll be next to you." Richard is not always so philosophical, but from time to time, he offers up just the right wisdom. Like small baubles which float to the surface, they have escaped the buried wreckage. Like all of us, he has had his own share of life's collisions . So at some point in the middle of the night, I decided to write down the pain I felt over her loss. I wanted to let it out, get it down, so that I could think about how I would honor her instead. The small light on my phone wasn't working, but I wrote anyway in the dark, scralling over the page, letting the tears come, knowing I would be able to decipher my own handwriting in the morning, as least get the meaning. But as I sat at the kitchen counter this morning, and opened the notebook, I saw that the page was blank. Only impressions were left. The ink in my pen had gotten caught on a philament of dust and all I had managed to record were scratches and traces. The page was scarred. I stared at it for a long time and then I began to write this piece.

I will honor Leah today by taking a long walk. One of my fondest and last memories of her was our Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Chicago the year before she died. It had been some time since we'd seen each other and we had a lot of catching up to do. She had emailed me frequently during the training period. "Congrats on getting up to 6 miles . . .10 miles . . 15 miles . . . Don't forget to buy dry-wick socks . . .I saw that you reached your fundraising goal, congrats . . . see you next week." Leah was a life coach long before she put a professional label on it. She was all about setting goals, getting through the hard parts, laying stepping stones, celebrating victories. She was also someone who didn't let you get away with much. I remember a Sunday at her apartment while we were at Duke. I was insecure, immature and ravenous for acceptance and approval. I started talking about one or another girl who I seemed to run into at all the parties, who was always perfectly quaffed, wore a different outfit every time and seemed to always say the right thing . . . but she wouldn't give me the time of day. Leah stayed silent while she listened and then at one point looked off to the right and up to the ceiling as though she were waiting to devine the right response. Finally she looked right at me and said softly, "why are you spending so much time talking about this girl, when clearly she isn't worth it? You've got plenty of friends who love you, you're smart, you're beautiful. It sounds to me like maybe you're jealous, which you shouldn't be. That's all I'm saying." And she didn't mean,' don't read into it any further', she meant 'that's all I'm saying' as in, 'end of conversation, 'cause I ain't wasting any more time on this and neither are you.' I called it the "Leah mirror." She had a way of holding the truth up in front of you without making you feel judged or defensive and in a way, Richard did the same thing for me.

Leah wanted to come to Senegal. I will honor her by taking a long walk. I will show her. Maybe I will turn right and walk along the red dirt road that leads to the sacred Baobob trees, where the path is covered with fronds from the Flamboyants which have started to shed. It will be chilly at first and I will be sure to breathe in the scent of drying grasses and the small ground vines that hold purple wildflowers. I will smell the morning fires from the small Peul huts off to my left, wave to the women hunkered down over their steaming pots. I will listen to the "tchik, tchik" of the shepard leading his cattle to pasture. I will continue on until I reach the fields of bissap crops, ready to be harvested, those crimson petals that when boiled down to their essence, can heal. Or maybe I will turn left and walk through the brushland towards town. A fire last week burned all of the brush and the earth is scorched underfoot. It releases small clouds of black dust and shows my footprints perfectly. I have been here and I will go there. It will start to get hot, so I will take off my sweater and let the sun warm my shoulders and face. I will pass small groups of Senegalese children on their way to Koran school. Dressed in bright colors and carrying their Korans tightly to their chests, they will stop talking when they see me and smile. Some will say hello, others won't. I will hear one of them say, "toubab denge Wolof", the white woman speaks Wolof. I will smell their bread filled with spiced lentils, wrapped in brown paper, which they will eat outside on the stoop before entering the building. Next I will begin to see the houses that have been started and left unfinished until more money comes. They are signs of hope that the future will be built upon. Then, as I move further into the village, I will stop and talk to Samba, who owns the small bodega where I buy flour and potatoes, garlic, spices. He will be sitting just outside playing checkers with his friends at a rickety wooden table. He always wins and never cheats. I owe him 50 cents from a week ago, but he never has change, so I will buy something I don't need and hand him $1.

I might even walk all the way to the sea, wind my way down the rubbled lane between the brown house with the orange roof and the green house with the brown roof. Then I will have to jump off the sea wall because the waves have eroded the stairs. I will stop for just a minute to take in the vast expanse of the ocean and sift through the shells that have been deposited by the tide. Pocketing my favorites, the welks, I will feel them against my leg as I walk. The vendors will be out by then and I'll pass ancient women with skin like blue night carrying bundles of clothes, baskets of beaded necklaces and shell earings, African dolls, Pareos. I will stop and greet them. The wind will circle up under their long patterned skirts as we talk and I will catch a glimpe of foot, flat and smooth from decades of sand. I will buy something, a trinket, because they will walk much longer and further than me today. I will add it to the shells in my pocket as a reminder of today. Soon, as the tide rises, I'll take off my shoes and walk in the water, which will be calm at that hour and starting to warm up. The salt will sting my skin as the water pulls away but each time it comes back, it will soothe.

As I head home, I'll hear a song, that voice, the muezzin calling for mid-morning prayer, my breath catching again. Leah will hear it too because it is calling her. I'll want her to come home with me, stay a little longer. But I'll let her go, knowing there are many others who need to walk with her today, and always.

Right Under Our Noses

2010-10-11T11:46:00.000-07:00

I remember hearing a rumor many years ago that the rather eccentric Yoko Ono shared the litter box with her cat. I don't know if it's true, but apparently she claimed it was a better way to deal with human waste than flushing gallons of wasted water into a septic system and that the resulting melange could eventually be used as compost to grow vegetables. She claimed that if we weren't careful, water would become precious and perhaps even scarce. She was concerned about the environment way before it was a hot topic, which of course, at the time, placed her in the category of alarmist, tree-hugger, hippie and in the minds of many, just plain crazy. I myself didn't give the rumor much credence. I did however succumb to a vivid mental image of this petite, almond-eyed woman squatting over a litter pan while humming "she came in through the bathroom window", much to the dismay of the feline patiently waiting it's turn.

We have two cats here in Africa and no litter box, because, well, they go outside in the dirt. However, we do have what is known as a dry toilet system. This would be the moment, if you are feeling uncomfortable, to hit the back button on your computer and see what your other Facebook friends are up to. I won't be offended, I swear. However, if you are even slightly intrigued, you might learn something. American culture, in particular, has placed a big taboo on any reference to the fact that all living things eliminate what they eat and drink. While browsing the children's literature section in Barnes and Noble while pregnant with Jamie, I remember being shocked at seeing a book called, "Everybody Poops," not because of it's contents, but because someone finally had the courage to write about it. The need being served by this book-- to help children understand that the process is nothing to be ashamed of-- is indication enough that somewhere along the line, we dumped (no pun intended) our bodily functions into the "we don't talk about that . . . EVER" column and it has stayed there. Don't get me wrong, I'm not espousing bringing it up as a topic at cocktail parties or rotary club, I just want to share what I've learned about the entire cycle as it relates to energy.

Those of you who are familiar with our project in Senegal know that we live bill-free in a house constructed with earth, get our water from a well, our electricity from a wind-turbine and solar panels, and grow our own organic vegetables. We've recently added a chicken named Ratatouille and a turkey named Gusteau to the picture, but not for consumption purposes. The chicken gives us eggs and the turkey acts as a natural anti-pesticide, spending his days picking at termites and other predetors to our produce. He occasionally steals a lettuce leaf or two, but we forgive him this. Although they don't have much personality, I'm not ready to raise poultry that will end up on our table. I still prefer to purchase it from our local chicken farm. Much to my surprise, when I didn't know what to make for dinner the other day, Sunny very plainly said, "why don't we eat the chicken." She's five and understands perfectly where her food comes from, which could easily lead me down another path or up onto my soap box with another topic, but let's get back to dry toilets.

Joseph Jenkins wrote a book, first published in 1995, called "Humanure" in which he details the virtues of dry toilets (see link below). The title itself may be off-putting, but the concept is simple. You place a receptacle, ok, a bucket, under a standard toilet seat (he gives you the plan for building it) and when you've done you're business, you cover it with a layer of saw dust, straw or any other natural material. When the bucket is full, you place the contents in a compost retainer (also detailed in the book) and layer it with food waste, i.e. fruit and vegetable peels, egg shells, coffee grinds, plant trimmings, anything biodegradable. The only stipulation is that you don't use dyed toilet paper. After about a year, enough time to allow any toxins or harmful bacterium to dissipate, you have one of the richest composts imaginable with which to grow organic produce. I skimmed the book cursorily when Richard first suggested that we adopt this system (since we don't have running water, we didn't have much choice) and promptly threw it at him while launching a tirade about the numerous ways in which he has ruined my life as I knew it. When we moved into the house, I was told I had two options: I could walk outside in the brushland and hide behind a bush, if I could find one, or I could try the dry toilet system. To his credit, he built a handsome throne of concrete, spent a fortune on a lacquered wooden seat and promised to be the "emptier." To the unsuspecting eye, it looked like every other toilet, minus the handle and water tank. We used a mix of peanut shells and millet shucks as our choice of coverage. To my begrudging surprise, there was only one pungent odor eminating from our bathroom--it smelled like fresh ground peanuts. We've been using this system for almost a year and, like most routines in my life, it now seems natural. Richard laughs when he hears me touting the virtues of dry toilets. Once addicted to creature comforts, I am now, you might say, a convert. In general, our project has opened my eyes to an array of "green" choices, some I was already familiar with, others completely new to me. Read on.

We recently called in a specialist on renewable energy, Pierre-Jacques, a frenchman who has lived and worked in Senegal for the past 26 years. We needed help finding a way to power our cold production, having considered both solar and gas-powered refridgerators, and wanted a professional opinion on which was the most energy efficient and cost-effective. After he asked us a myriad of pertinent questions and toured our house, he said, "you've had the solution all along, right under your noses. You just haven't been harvesting it properly." He went on to explain that by placing our dry toilet waste in an air-tight cistern along with a small percentage of cow, pig or horse manure, we could produce enough methane to power a full-sized refridgerator/freezer and our gas oven! He said this so matter of factly and non-chalantly that I asked him to repeat himself. "Sure," he said. " It's called Biogas. I have all the plans because it's what we do at our house and I can tell you it works." By running gas tubing from the cistern to the two appliances, we can produce cold and heat by recycling our waste. He went on to explain that by "harvesting" the methane, we were also preventing it from dissipating into the environment, which is what happens when it's placed in an open-air composting unit. I immediately thought of all those problematic cows out there in the world shamelessly releasing their gas into the universe and wondered aloud if there wasn't a way to harvest it. Imagine the energy problems we could solve! Pierre-Jacques laughed, but explained that, in fact, China, India and Brazil are already doing it, on a large scale basis as well as individual (see attached link). The best part about his suggestion is that our composting efforts won't be lost because what remains in the tank after the methane is distilled can be emptied periodically into our compost, making use of all the elements of the system.

I was curious about the person to output ratio. In other words, would the four of us be able to produce enough methane to keep the appliances running constantly? Pierre-Jacques, who spouts out statistics and technical information with the finesse of a poet, told us that output is usually proportional to the needs of the family. However, because I like to cook and entertain for others, we'll add a small percentage of animal manure to augment our methane production. We'll be installing our new system in a week or two and I, for one, don't care how the fridge gets cold, I'm just looking forward to popping open an ice cold beer!

We were so impressed by Pierre-Jacques' savvy, knowledge and experience, that we've gone into partnership with him in a new business called "Oxygene Consult." Richard will provide ecological architecture and design services while Pierre-Jacques will consult on alternative energy solutions for individuals, businesses and non-profit organizations. I'll admit that our project is an extreme one. Not everyone is willing or able to implement what we've done, particularly a dry toilet system. But here in Senegal, we may be able to at least raise awareness and at best provide solutions to real energy problems, not to mention financial instability for a population that suffers from extreme electric bills, frequest power outages and the high cost of gas. And of course we hope that those who can afford the "tradtional" methods will want to go natural because of the environmental benefits. Who knows. For now, it's actually fun being a part of this crazy project of ours. After all, it really is a working lavoratory . . . I mean laboratory.

http://humanurehandbook.com/index.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMreH1YUs90

Measuring a Year

2010-08-16T05:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a year since we came back to Senegal to live. A date on the calendar, August 12th, tells me practically that this time has passed, but I perceive it more in the details of our ordinary life: the length of Sunny's hair, the height of the banana trees in our yard, the changing light of a season returning with it's own frank announcements-- the rain, humidity thick on the skin, green, everywhere, green soothing over the fissures of a typically parched land. The scent of mangoes, hanging heavily from trees along the roads, tells me the rainy season has circled back around. Mangoes the size of a child's forearm, with the fluid aftertaste of coconut and pineapple. They are plentiful and cheap and find their way into almost all of our meals. I sense the passage of time in the ease with which I walk through the village where we live, if not quite looked on as "one of us," I am by now a familiar face, "one among us", not African, but no longer a stranger. Seynabou, Maty, M'Baye. There you are. We know each other. "Nengadef, How are you?" I frequent the fish market, which once terrified me, with its long, crowded, narrow allies, navigating through rain puddles, blood-soaked ice crates, discarded heads and scales, tangled fishing line with shards of lures. I am no longer shocked by the potent, briny smell, the din of loud bargaining over waves crashing into the port just beyond, shouting over tables, fish passed over heads, flapping sea water. Who has carp? "Madame Americaine," someone is tugging at my sleeve, "come, come, urchin, monkfish, carp, pas cher." Women crouched on low, rickety wooden stools, expertly gut and fillet my fish before I can count out the now familiar papery bills. I pick out the coins, recognizing them by color and weight. I thank the vendor in Wolof and move out from under the rusted tin roof into the hot sun, pushing past on comers and barefoot children selling plastic bags. It is my last stop before the bakery to get bread and my canvas bag is now heavy. This has become a familiar, natural routine. I don't think much about our surroundings, our daily lives, and this also tells me that a good deal of time has passed, that our lives have settled upon us. Then there are the subtle negatives of absorbing time. The talibes, the young boys who beg for alms and food to pay for their religious education--when did they stop tugging at my heart and become a common detail in my day? At what point did I begin to regard the many sellers who approach me with their wares as a nuisance? It takes a year.

Many people have taught me things this year and I have met some extraordinary individuals. Aminata is one of them. She is in her early fifties, tall and broad shouldered, with braids woven tightly to her head. She was raised in a small Peul village, in a one-room hut with a straw roof, no electricity and no running water. The Peul are nomads, and one of the poorest tribes in Senegal. The men are shepherds, raising and selling sheep and cattle and the women keep the village. Aminata's job as a young girl, in addition to tending the morning fire at the center of their hut and sweeping the dirt floor, was to fetch water at a well over two miles from her small village. She would walk with several other girls on the same path every day, an empty plastic bucket on her head on the way there and a heavy sloshing burden on the way back. They could not afford to waste any of the precious water, so the return trip took much longer, with careful steps and watchful eyes straining to detect obstacles, necks balancing the buckets, aided only by a small piece of cloth flattened on their heads to soften the load. As the years went by, Aminata began venturing further and further away from her village and beyond the well, until one day she reached the shore and spotted, there in the port, a sailboat. She visited the port almost daily from then on and watched how the boat's owner cared for the deck and wrapped the sails, how the boat rocked and bobbed with the tides, swayed and calmed with the changing winds. She already knew how the water in her bucket reacted to the movements of her body and she became fascinated by both the principle of buoyancy and the idea of conducting herself towards a new land. She decided she would one day set sail on such a boat. But she was carried away on the current of her own life and cultural restraints and was married off at a young age to a man she didn't love and had two children. Still, whenever she had the chance, she would steal away to the port to watch and dream. Not having been educated, she began to teach herself how to read, write and speak French in secret. These would come in handy, along with her other life skills, when one day, years later, she would no longer deny her calling. She took her children, who were now older, to her mother, left her husband and talked her way aboard a large sailboat as a volunteer crew member. She had observed and asked questions, watched and listened over the years and she sounded knowledgeable enough to qualify. She ended up, over the years, becoming an expert navigator and charter, who has sailed around the world twice and is a seasoned traveller. She met her second husband, a Frenchman and avid sailor in the port of New Caledonia and they divide their time between Senegal, Morocco and France. As she says, "I am, after all, a nomad at heart." After I admired her coffee one day, she took me to the outdoor market the next morning, where we purchased raw beans from the Cote D'Ivoire, showed me how to sift and resift them in order to extract small pebbles and other debris and demonstrated how to slow roast the beans myself. They double in size as they swell and darken in the pan and give off an odor when they are freshly ground that puts Starbucks to shame. She also taught me to make pizza crust, Moroccan flat bread with rosemary and sea salt or stuffed with garlic, parsley and cumin. I learned from her how to tie a simple sarong in ten different ways and how to roll off several authentic phrases in Wolof that would get me in or out of any situation, depending on my objective. But mostly, I learned from her story about the shear power of the human spirit and it's need to be free. And about persistence and not giving up. She wants me to teach her English when she returns from France, which will be for me a great pleasure indeed.

It has been a trying year for us, as it has been, to varying degrees, for most people I know. For our part, our efforts to overcome the "crisis" became less about economizing than learning how to do more things for ourselves, becoming more independent. We built a house with mud, erected a wind-turbine to produce our energy and brought our water from the ground well with a hand-pump. This all now seems natural to me as well, although it took some getting used to and the path to where we are now has not been without it's obstacles. When we returned from the states on August 12th of last year, we found our house in near ruin. The previous six months of hard labor, ingenuity and creativity on Richard's part had left us convinced that we needed to make a bigger commitment to Senegal, so we went back to the US to put our things in storage and rent our house in Savannah. We had received phone calls that the rain had done "some damage", but none of the people we had left in charge were honest enough to relay the extent or send us photos, which in hind-sight was probably a good thing--if we had known, we may have abandoned the project. Now we found ourselves back in Senegal with very little money and no house to live in. I cried and felt the ruin deeply, while Richard began drawings to fix the house and work with what was left. We destroyed the entirety of the first vaulted roof because we were unsure of its stability. Next Richard constructed a pitched roof with palm beams and a plaster of mud, straw and Lyme, which we then planned to cover with metal roofing. During this part of the reconstruction, we planted an organic garden, erected the wind-turbine and went back and forth to our shabby hotel where our gated window faced the beach . . . and the fishermen's tables where the day's catch lay in the sweltering heat to dry. When we finally moved into the earth house, we realized within the week that we had not been sold palmwood, but datewood, which is much less expensive . . . and prone to termites. Our second roof was infested and needed to be torn down--it was beyond treatment. We had lost money, time and labor and worst of all, had been cheated by the wood vendor who vaporized as quickly as his beams. Once again, I felt we had been cheated. I asked why us, why now, how to move forward ? I posed these questions to no one in particular as my faith had been challenged and it appeared that no one was listening anyway. Was this how other people, whose lives had been upturned, felt in the void? While I examined and analyzed our lives, turning to look at every angle of every decision, trying to pinpoint the precise moment when the universe sent us spinning into orbit (or did we do that ourselves?), searching for the axis on which we could set it all right, Richard was busy researching our third, and final roof option. Persistence. Determination. We decided that a flat, cement roof would provide the best protection, and although not in keeping with the ecological spirit of the house, would be solid and durable. In order to compensate for using cement, we would cultivate on top of the roof, which would both expand our garden capacity, create a micro-climate to cool the house and provide a roof terrace from which we could appreciate the view of the nearby lagoon and baobab trees. We spent months eating our own vegetables, my homemade pizza and watching our finances dwindle to a halt, while continuing construction on a shoestring, with only two helpers. Richard spent weeks working unfathomable hours in order to put a roof over our heads before the rain came. During this time, many people began to visit our project, both Senegalese and expats, and ask questions, which we hoped would lead to more work for Richard. In the meantime, our children blossomed and so did their knowledge of gardening, French, Wolof and human relations in general. We had succeeded in building a self-sustaining life, with no bills and limited expenses. But, knowing that the money would eventually run out and the rain would inevitably come, had left us feeling anxious despite our accomplishments. I decided to stop asking questions and breathe, work, allow a little faith back in.

In the second week of July, the night after the last roof was finished, the skies darkened and it rained. Richard and I didn't sleep that night, worrying about the earth walls and how they would stand up to the wind-driven storm, about whether the new roof was well-sealed. Morning sun showed us that our third and final roof was the right choice, as a full house inspection gave no signs of weakness. The following week, Richard was hired to build three more ecological houses. Contracts were signed and deposits were given. We were under consideration for a grant to produce three wind-turbines for remote villages without electricity, those like Aminata's. We went out to dinner, the four of us, and clinked juice cups to wine glasses as we listened overhead to the storm clouds releasing thunder and lighting and more rain. Since then, we have continued construction between rain falls while Richard has juggled his other projects, planted new crops and rejoiced in our current good fortune. We are among the few expats who chose to stay during the rainy season, which is considered the least desirable. For us, it has been a time of warm ocean waves and rare walks through high, green grasses, of cups of afternoon mint tea shared with Senegalese friends, of pelicans, flamingos and heron migrating to the lagoon, of lingering visits to artisan workshops, where the purchase of one beaded necklace threaded with a single shell can satisfy a little girl and the artist equally.

The morning of August 12th, Abdou, my favorite of the building team, came over to shake my hand as he always does. He is short and child-like, with bright eyes and broken front teeth which only exaggerate his smile. He is from Ginea-Bissau and has come to Senegal to work in order to send money back to his family. "Abdou," I said, "today is August 12th. It's a very important day." "Yes," he replied. "Today is the beginning of Ramadan, a time for fasting and contemplation." I felt embarrassed that I had forgotten this. "It is also one year today that we returned to find our house destroyed," I said. "Look at what you've accomplished. Look at what we've done together." He looked over my shoulder and studied the house, but all he said was "oh," as though he too had forgotten something important. He had not let go of my hand since he shook it. We were both aware of this, but it felt appropriate. After a few moments, he smiled at me, looked up at the sky and gestured towards a room half-finished. Then he dropped my hand to begin his day, this very important day.

Can We Please Go Back?

2010-01-11T03:02:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, Richard asked me how I wanted to celebrate my birthday this year. I snapped back that I didn’t want to have it at all, that I just wanted the day to pass by like any other day. My response was both indulgent and self-pitying, but he didn’t press the issue. He understood that I hadn’t said this out of any egotistical denial of aging, but rather an avoidance of the losses that this time of year represents. We buried my father after his long battle with cancer on this day over twelve years ago. In the days immediately following his death, I had been brought along on the strangely swift current of people coming and going, of the preparations that took place, the heating up of casseroles, of the details of his funeral, of the need to assure others that I was OK. And then there was the nature of our relationship to try to make sense of--it had been complicated, difficult at times. I had talked endlessly on the phone with my closest friends, hashing out once again the details of his illness and final few days. It wasn’t sudden, I reminded them. I was OK.

Until I no longer was. It wasn’t until the limousine pulled away from the grave site, until it was all “over”, until I looked back to see the coffin being mechanically lowered into the ground, that the loss of my father finally hit me. It occurred to me in that instant that he wouldn’t be able to breathe underground. There was no air. It would be dark. The weight of the earth. The depth. How would he breathe? We couldn’t just leave him there! Stop! He had no way to breathe. I don’t know if I said any of this aloud or not. I also don’t remember who (apart from Janet and my mother) or how many people were in the limousine with me. What I do remember is the feeling of suffocating and then being strangely ashamed that I had cried out, as though I had lost control of some intimate bodily function. We needed to go back. Can we please go back?

Because my father in the end was on heavy doses of morphine, he alternated between belligerence and extreme vulnerability (both uncharacteristic). He had been moved to the Gunnum Suites at the University of Richmond hospital, luxury quarters for terminally ill patients, which he mistook for a hotel (befittingly, given his career in the hotel industry) and had difficulty understanding why we were allowed to leave “the grounds” while he was confined to his hotel room. He complained often of the quality of the room service (with good reason) and balked at all visitors outside of the family, proclaiming the concierge highly incompetent. His management skills appeared intact, overriding all other derangements, real or imagined. On a visit to the hospital the week before he died, New Year’s Eve, he asked my mother and I if we would stay the night. He was afraid to be alone, he said, perhaps intuiting the approach of the end. Despite the circumstances, there had been champagne and hors d’oeuvres that we brought from home, candles and Glenn Miller. We rang in the New Year, the three of us, and it began to get late. My mother, who avoided driving at night, needed to be taken home. The nurse said they couldn’t accommodate both of us, but I could stay on the sofa if I liked. In the end, I went home with my mother. I often wonder what we would have done, my father and I, had I stayed. Would we have watched TV, talked about previously taboo subjects, like his impending death or our relationship? Would I have helped him into his pajamas, plumped his pillow, rubbed his feet, watched him sleep? I will never know. Can we please go back?

Today also marks the one year anniversary of the death of one of my closest friends, Leah. I learned of her passing on my birthday last year, two days after her death. My friend Hester had tried in vain to contact me several times in Senegal over those two days, having bravely taken on the task of informing many of Leah’s friends. I’ll never forget her words: “El, I’m sorry, but I’m not calling to wish you a happy birthday. Leah died.” In that moment, I lost all sense of the way the world was supposed to function, of the natural order of things. Friends didn’t die. Friends went along the parallel time line with you, sometimes moving ahead, sometimes lingering behind, but ultimately arriving at the same points in time when we could look back together and take stock of both our shared experiences and our separate worlds. This had always been my assumption and I had counted on it fiercely, had envisioned it clearly, had lived it several times: a New Year’s Eve in New York (I don’t remember the year), a Duke reunion, several weddings including my own, a girls’ weekend in Savannah, a walk for Breast Cancer (a shared success and one of the best and sadly last memories I have of Leah.) Leah, if she had the time and the financial means, was always up for taking a plane to wherever she needed to be for these gatherings. I realized after she died that I had made few such efforts in her direction. Although I think she would say I was a good friend to her, I had been very much on the receiving end of our friendship. For this reason and for the more selfish one of needing to see her one last time, I flew from Senegal to Michigan for her funeral. I thought of how my mother used to insist, in my adolescent days when friends came by the dozen, that I would be lucky to count my closest friends on one hand when I reached adulthood. She was right and I had just lost one of my rare and treasured five. Can we please go back?

My memories of Leah sometimes get jumbled up. I have no sense of direction and a continuum sense of time, which makes it impossible to give exact dates, only general periods to my memories. The details are crystal clear, but the time is vague. When I think of her, it reminds me of the six-week tour of Europe I took with my friend Janet before college--a new city or countryside, art museum or monument every few days. All those privileges--I remember them all, I just can’t tell you where they took place. I am saturated with years of memories of Leah, which leaves me with a strong sense of her, an essence really, that I carry with me. This essence of Leah can be distilled even further into a constant but gentle reminder to be more like her, to be kinder and more patient, to push myself, to push obstacles out of my way, to move forward, at my own pace, but certainly to move forward. Take our house here in Senegal, for instance. “Keur Leah”, as it was named long before it was begun, though it was nearly ruined, is going back up, one brick, one mud frame, one day at a time. It has reinvented itself. How closely it resembles Leah’s persistence, how apt it’s name. Still, when I first saw the devastation upon our return, it felt so final, like we had failed. What if we had stayed through the rainy season? What if we had taken more precautions, protected it’s walls, anticipated more accurately? Can we please go back?

My illogical thinking, in wanting to avoid my birthday, was this: if my birthday wasn’t approaching, then I wouldn’t have to think of my father. If I didn’t celebrate my birthday, then Leah didn’t die a year ago, Hester didn’t call to tell me, I didn’t fall to pieces and board a plane to say goodbye. I could just let the anniversary pass and the day after, well, it would be the day after. Can we please skip forward? Because today I can’t breathe. The answer is no. Neither can we go back. I feel this acutely as I think of Leah today. I feel her absence, mourn her loss, as I will every year, and not just on this day. But there is that essence of her again, calming me, getting me past and through the pain. Were she here with me, she would say something along the lines of, “remember but don’t dwell.” She would also say, about milestones and even ordinary days, “celebrate me, celebrate you.”

2009-11-15T08:23:00.000-08:00

Often at night as I drift into sleep, my reflections are accompanied by native drums in the far off distance. They provide a rhythmic backdrop to my thoughts, a circling back over the events of my day. More often than not, they usher my worries about tomorrow into the night air as I focus on the “tah tah bi tum, tah tah bi tum” of two, four, maybe six palms sliding across tightly strung goat hides worn smooth by repetitive sweeps. Sometimes, I think about who the musicians are and why they are beating their tam tams. Are they communicating a coded message to the universe? Talking to their God? If so, what are they saying? Are they lamenting their hardships or celebrating their fortunes? Of course, the magic lies in the absence of words--the drums carry different messages for us all. I like to think they are offering up a prayer of sorts, one that says something like, “Life is hard at times, but thank you for another day. May tomorrow be bet-ter, bet-ter, bet-ter.” At least, this is what the drums convey to me and I try to heed their call, try to employ gratitude for the good things that have come our way. As the difficult stuff inevitably floats into my mind, the hard-put questions, the worries, there is something about the constancy of descending and ascending hands that answers back firmly: “stop, stop, stop.”

I went back to school recently. Not to learn, at least not directly, but to teach English to pre-schoolers at the Kalan International School here in La Somone. The night before I started, beckoning sleep, my stomach fluttered and my mind flustered and posed all sorts of doubts and apprehensions amid the distant drums. I was nervous on behalf of Jamie and Sunny, who would also be starting their first day of school in Africa. How would they adapt, culturally and linguistically, with new children, the French they barely spoke and two or three words of Wolof? And what about my new role? Was I equipped to teach small children? One ordinary day, an acquaintance had said, “I’m thinking of starting a new school here. Would you be interested in teaching English?” I can’t say why, but it was as if I had been waiting my whole life for this question to be asked. “Yes” was my answer, spoken with unwarranted confidence. But on this eve of dawning actuality, I began to question myself. Before raising my own, my experience with children was limited to semi-regular babysitting as a struggling post-college New Yorker. I remember being terrified on one particular evening when I arrived to sit for a little boy and was greeted with his two additional friends and a craft project that his mother had laid out: construction paper, scissors, glue, glitter, the works. A wrench had been thrown into my normal routine of Mickey Mouse and mac ‘n cheese. As she wove through the chaos of three grabbing, crying three-year olds and made her way casually toward the door, panic flooded every cell in my body. “But, what are we doing with all this?” I shouted above the din. “Whatever you feel like,” she called over her shoulder. “By the way,” she added just before closing the door behind her, “the TV’s broken.”

I don’t remember the specifics of how I got through that night, but the memory of feeling incompetent and unprepared rushed back at me as if it were yesterday. As I layed awake trying to imagine how I would feel in the morning as I greeted sixty-five children, the drums mocked, “knock, knock, knock” . . . “Dumb, dumb, dumb” . . . "thrum, thrum, thrum."

The air was cool and a light breeze flapped the flags around their small wooden poles on that first morning at school as I stood holding hands with Jamie and Sunny (perhaps a little more tightly than I should) waiting for things to start. The flags represented the various nationalities of the students: Senegalese, French, Belgian, Iranian, Lebanese, Spanish, Brazilian, American (my own two) and Guinean. In my mind, I rehearsed the simple song I had made up to initiate my students into the world of English: (to the tune of ‘Frere Jacques’)
Good morning,
good morning
Everyone,
everyone
Now it’s time to learn,
now it’s time to learn,
English, English.

I had finally allowed sleep to come after the song came into my mind the night before. I had been so satisfied with this simple ditty, which now, in the light of day, seemed inadequate to me. Soon, the children began filtering in, clinging to their parents. I stood frozen beside my children knowing that I needed to let go, just simply step into, my new role as teacher. And then someone tugged at my dress and a new part of my life was set in motion.

That first day passed in a whirlwind of tiny unfamiliar faces and chaotic attempts at structure amid the heart-wrenching cries of children wanting only to return home to their parents. Within twenty minutes of arrival, three children had set off a crying chain that quickly rose to a crescendo of utter devastation. Seeing my colleagues and myself as nothing less than prison wardens and the school as colorful captivity, the children’s resistance was exhausting. Our schedule for the day went out the window at 8:15 a.m. Any attempt at organization gave way to the constant need to pick someone up, pat them on the back, wipe their nose, whisper comforts into their ears, and hope for the best. The crying went in waves with small periods of calm interspersed between bathroom trips, snacks, hand-washing and one disastrous attempt at a craft project (which felt all-too familiar). The director of the pre-school division, a petite and lovely woman from Belgium, lost her color early on but never her composure. I watched her carefully as she moved easily and assuredly from group to group, handling each situation with aplomb, in hopes of learning something from her. Getting through the day became a question of survival. My biggest struggle became understanding the Senegalese children as they spoke to me in Wolof. At one point in the day, when no one was available to translate, I decided to wing it. Afterall, I wasn’t a complete novice--I had a solid base in Wolof. After I asked a little girl to repeat her request three times, I triumphantly handed her a glass of water. I discovered quickly that what she had really asked for was to be taken to the bathroom. The results of my mistake were disastrous, both for her dress and my left shoe. Never again would I mistake “saou” for “n’dor”!

I understood early on that first day, that for some of the Senegalese children, this school represented a world of new opportunities for them. When I presented a little boy with a basket of crayons and asked him to choose one, he looked up at me curiously and asked, "are they salty or sweet?" For many, this first day of school meant the first time they had played with a toy or held a crayon in their hand, heard a language other than their own, seen or touched a book, held hands with a white person. How much we take for granted, how much we have to learn.

As with all new experiences, the anticipatory anxiety, the way in which we play out scenarios in our minds, express fears, imagine outcomes, is always more stress-inducing than the actual event. I suppose this is our way of preparing our psyche for a worst case scenario, of exposing our insecurities so that we are prepared when faced with adversity. But somehow, when we are in the present, living the new situation, we always get through it, often exceed our own expectations. Maybe even surprise ourselves. And if we are lucky, laughter has been a component of our day and lightness allows us to continue with a new grain of confidence.

As the weeks have gone by, somehow, it has all come together. There is a familiar structure and routine, laughter has replaced the tears of the unfamiliar and learning takes place despite differences in skin-color, culture, capacity and language. Sunny and Jamie have adapted to their new school with astounding ease, communicating with their new friends in a myriad of ways. I have found an unexpected confidence and joy in teaching these children, who like tiny sponges, soak up all we have to teach them with endless thirst. Although my role is to teach, there is an inevitable symbiosis that has taken place. My French and Wolof have improved tremendously, my understanding of the nature of children has expanded, as has my patience, my creativity and my capacity for love.

While my days are ushered into night atop the slow, steady refrains of drum notes filtered by the wind and the waves, I am reminded of the undeniable strangeness of living in Africa and I in turn feel like a stranger. But the morning tells a different story. In the morning, as I stand holding the door open, welcoming sixty-five small children to school, sixty-five smiling portents of the future, I am reminded sixty-five times that there are no barriers to learning and loving. Sixty-five times, small fingers grasp my own and I am greeted by each small voice in English . . . “Good Morning, Miss Ellen.” And the message is clear and hopeful: we are one, we are one, we are one.

The Song of Our Losses

2009-09-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

I said goodbye to the earth house today. I wasn’t planning a farewell, just a short visit to assess the damage after a series of particularly violent storms. Just as quickly as Richard patched what the rain took away, another storm would beat against the walls, tearing down his work. We layed awake at night in our hotel, listening to the rain fall, trying hard to escape the vivid images of tumbling earth. Each loud crack of lightening represented further leaks in the walls, widening fissures in our hope. Unable to muster the courage to face further ruin, it had been over a week since Richard or I had driven to our land. When I arrived, the fence, woven of thin strips of wood, had been blown to the ground by the wind. I had to sidestep large, deep craters filled with water to get a good look. As I took in and made a survey of the sweeping damage, I realized it would only take one more hard rain before the few remaining walls joined the fallen sections melting away on the ground. An exquisite, small, black bird with a red breast sat not far from me, my only company, singing beautifully. I tried to shoo him away, but he was steadfast and stubborn, insistent in his dissonant song, content to bathe in a rain-filled hollow of rubble.

We learned recently that this particular rainy season has been the worst in fifteen years, causing major flooding in several areas including the city of Dakar, where children have drowned, factories have collapsed, and septic tanks have overflown into the streets. You won’t read about this in any newspaper, but I witnessed the effects firsthand earlier this week on a day trip there. It took nearly two and a half hours to reach the inner city due to road reconstruction (a trip which normally takes an hour). As we rounded a corner at the edge of the city, I saw a large open area where several small buildings had collapsed, now filled with small, colorful pup-tents. Laundry lines had been strung across and tacked to non-functioning electrical poles in neat rows, holding up the newly washed clothes of who knows how many. A tin roof had been erected over a common outdoor kitchen where women crouched over small gas tanks, humming (or praying, I wasn’t sure), working together to feed numerous neighbors. These were people recently made homeless by the storms, people who had gathered their resources together and organized a small village. I am often amazed at how the Seneglese have the ability to make their misfortunes a communal concern, coming together quickly and efficiently to, if not solve their problems, at least adapt to them as a shared burden. If many hands make light work, perhaps many hearts can hold hardships at bay. I often wonder if other African nations share this ability, if perhaps they have evolved towards the survival of the masses over survival of the individual. When things beyond their control overtake them, they simply move on, together. It felt strange, after dodging flooded roads and crumbled cement, to arrive at the “centre ville” of Dakar with its’ pristine palace walls drenched in bougainvillea, it’s motionless guards dressed in what looked like red velvet and white plumed hats (in this heat!). Downtown Dakar, with it’s foreign embassies and fashion shops, patisseries and French restaurants could have been any large city, and like any large city, the problems pool to the outskirts.

While we’ve watched the house slowly slip away, our relationship with Zorro, our only Senegalese friend, has paralleled the demise. Many expats have warned us not to trust the Senegalese, have stated in no uncertain terms that they will steal, lie, cheat and betray you the moment you turn your back. What an awful thing to tell a newcomer, what a sad prediction to fathom, what a vast generalization to make about a people so prone to generosity. The intricacies of this culture are still too new for me to condemn any new acquaintance and so I proceed with each individual, trusting until I have reason not to. In my short experience here, I have learned that what the expat “toubabs” say is not entirely untrue. However, they fail to understand their part, yes, their contribution to this relationship with the locals. If I were to voice this, these same said foreigners would be appalled, but let’s face it, there are always two sides to every story. The Senegalese are used to a history of transient relationships with foreigners. We come, we buy up their land, use their labor to build our homes, hire them for our ventures, promise lasting devotion and a steady stream of income. . . and inevitably leave. Sometimes, we leave for only a season, sometimes for years, sometimes never to return. And while we are gone, there are mouths to feed, children to cloth, and work to be found, money to be made, however it can, in order for them to survive. And hopefully, if they are lucky, we will come back or at least be replaced by a new wave of transient relationships. I have come to understand that the Senegalese live very much in the moment, day to day, week to week. Consequences are hardly a consideration (nor should they be?) when your children have nothing to eat. Arrogantly, I assumed we were immune to these types of relational faults. One French person, when he saw that Zorro was our constant companion, had the nerve to tell me, “just wait, he’ll betray you too.” My solitary thought at the time was . . . never. I was wrong.

I sensed it quickly after our return from the states, perhaps even at the airport. As we came through the glass security doors which separated us from our old life, he ran to us, practically knocked us over to take us into his arms and then just as quickly retreated into the more practical task of piling our bags onto a cart and pushing them towards the car. He was distant, reserved, unfamiliar. Or maybe I knew it even while we were packing up our belongings in Savannah but couldn’t face what it would mean to our relationship or to our future here in Senegal. The tone of his sporadic phone calls alternated between exuberant pleas for us to return to all the possibilities awaiting us (which he elaborately embellished) and accounts of how difficult life had been since we left. It was as if he was desperate without us and placed his every hope of recovery on our return, but knew that we would discover that he had done something in our absence that could hurt us. When we got back, he would promise to come help us, but would never come, never call. Then, unannounced, he would show up the next day with a meal that his wife, Ami, had made for us. He never stayed for long.

About two weeks after we returned, Richard tried to talk to him, but he refused. Thinking that my relationship with Zorro was somehow particular, Richard suggested that I might have more success. As I sat with my Senegalese friend in a dark room (the electricity had gone out), I asked him to talk, told him that we loved him. Perhaps because I couldn’t see his eyes, he felt safe. Like a small child, he laid in my arms and cried, relieved and anguished tears. All he could say was, “I just wanted you all to come back and now I’m afraid you’ll leave. I’ll talk when Ramadan is over. Then you will know.” But don’t we already? I realized he indeed had a confession to make, but needed first to ask forgiveness from his god, which seemed justified to me in that moment in the dark.

This afternoon, as I sat on the ground in front of a pile of broken walls, I let myself understand that Zorro had abandoned our house, had downplayed the damages prior to our return, fabricated a story about a musician who wanted to film his new video within our walls. He had used our car as a taxi, driven strangers thousands of miles to put food on his table and never once thought of the consequences. But had we thought of the consequences of leaving? And still, he wanted to ensure that we would come back, that things would be the same. But they aren’t, nothing is. He is still a part of our lives, knowing that he has proved both sides of the equation right. Sure enough, he did all those things the expat said he would. Sure enough, he still loves us. And so we rename this loss, molding a different form out of the odd remaining pieces.

I came to the earth house, alone, for the first time today. Each time we’ve come to face the truth here, I’ve held back my shock, my regrets, my fears and yes, even my embarrassment, all for Richard’s sake. How could I break down in the face of his courage, of his total conviction that he can rebuild, create an even better house? “At least I did it”, he said once. “ At least it existed.” But now, because I am alone, because I don’t have to be brave for anyone, I cry, relieved and anguished tears. I find it interesting that the joyous events in our lives ask to stand alone, to be revelled in and savored all on their own like an only child, while the losses prefer to keep each other company,. At our weakest moments, they call to each other to come forth and vie for our grief. “Hey, you think this is bad,” they say, “remember me? I nearly ripped your heart out.” As I sat there, finally free to cry for the ruin of our house, I thought also of how Zorro was slipping away from us, receding daily like these walls, followed closely by the pain of strained or lost relations, recent and past. I allowed my father’s long suffering from cancer to come forward (that most stubborn and persistent loss) and was quickly joined by Leah, the freshest of my losses, Leah, barely scabbed over, stolen in one short night. There were more that followed and I gave them each their turn, grieved anew for my collective absences until I was brought back to these crumbling walls and myself sitting on the damp ground. Some voice in me, the one that emerges when the calm catharsis sets in, borrowed from Richard, “at least they existed. At least they mattered.” Yes.

When I lay awake at night and think about how we will emerge from our setbacks here, I don’t envision a phoenix miraculously rising from the ashes. I know better. But maybe if we are lucky, there will be a smaller bird (or two, or four), not unlike the deep, red breasted one I saw today, one who won’t alight too quickly, one who can salvage the smallest of threads, steal a souvenir. One who can take it’s daily comings and turn them into something of a song.

The Beauty of the Underbelly

2009-09-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

A word of caution: this entry is fairly graphic and shows the raw side of Africa. If you have children who are prone to looking over your shoulder or if you like to share my writing with them, you may want to keep this one to yourself . . . or not, depending on your perspective.

This morning, as I was walking to the bakery along the dirt road with Sunny, something caught my eye to the right, a shiny something that refracted the sunlight overhead. I looked. And in that fraction of a second that drew my attention, a large machete sliced open the throat of a living steer. The two Senegalese, one holding the cow as it lay on its side, the other wielding his knife so expertly, both looked up at me, momentarily distracted. Their look was neither startled nor apologetic. It simply acknowledged my unexpected presence. I must have made a sound, some small leak of soul escaping through my fingers, although my hand instinctively flew to my mouth to silence it for Sunny’s sake. The animal, by contrast, lay very still and quiet, the blood leaving it’s body at an astonishing rate. I could tell this beast was still alive, it’s eyes placid and resigned, but still very much in the world. I willed it to Cry out! Protest! Accuse! because I couldn’t, not on it’s behalf. This was food, afterall, for many people. I wondered if it’s vocal chords had been severed on purpose to lessen the degree of assault on human ears or if an animal of this nature merely accepts it’s death with dignity, knowing that struggling against it wouldn’t alter the final outcome. Either way, in the end, I was thankful that my ears (and Sunny’s) had been spared the unimaginable sound of this massive animal’s parting.

A very different glint by our shared sun had thankfully attracted Sunny in that same moment to the opposite side of the path. While I had witnessed this animal’s initiation towards death, she had seized upon a scattering of sequins fallen from the loosened thread of a colorful prayer shawl. She hopped forward picking up the trail of teal, gold, fuscia and saffron and held them in her cupped hand like found treasure, oblivious to the scene unfolding to her right. For just a brief moment, I felt a selfish and urgent need to show her the cow so that someone, anyone, could share in the horror of it with me. But I herded her forward instead, shielding her from that particular reality. Had my eyes not caught the glean of the machete, just as it was raised, at that perfect angle where the sun could wink off the steel blade, I believe I would have passed unaware. The entire scene, the empty dirt lot, the fawn-colored steer, his earthy textured horns, the shells, straw, sticks and rocks, all melded together in a bland spectrum of brown common to a field of nothing in particular. Even the men would have remained in my peripheral vision, which would assume they were going about their business, whatever that was, as I went about mine.

But I had seen it, the slaughter of a cow, and I still needed to hold my daughter’s hand, admire her new-found sequins, walk to the bakery and buy bread, greeting villagers along the way. It’s not that witnessing an animal’s death hadn’t made an impression on me. It had. But not as much as I would have thought. In this context, given the surroundings, I knew it was a necessary action. I led us on a different route home, wondering what they would do with the cow next, how it would get “processed”, where it’s remains would be disposed. (Later that day, curiosity having gotten the better of me, I passed by the site. There was no trace of animal or man, only a small raised mound of dirt, the contents of which I could only imagine.) Our time here has slowly allowed us an understanding of basic needs being met, of a culture where everything from praying, to corruption, to basic survival, to putting food on the table is there for the seeing if we choose, or haplessly witness. There are also luxury hotels and an entire village rife with convenience, where the underbelly is hidden out of sight for those who choose not to see. I understand perfectly. It's sometimes hard to swallow.

The upside of the total exposure we've chosen is that my children now know that the chickens they chase down the road are the very same we roast in the oven. Jamie has assisted in the process of scaling and filleting a fish that he puts directly in the pan for me to saute. They know that the seeds we brought over in our suitcases will one day become the vegetables and fruits they will eat. I remember visiting a farm as a child, watching the milking of the cows and understanding for the first time that the cartons in the refrigerator at home actually came from an animal. We, as a nation, are so far removed from our food sources that we can easily ignore anything that took place before they reached the grocery store and eventually our table. Seeing a cow being slaughtered is not something I recommend, however, most people are unaware of the misery our steaks and mcnuggets went through before they got neatly packaged for us-- being raised shoulder to shoulder, fed antibiotic-laced grain, devoid of sunlight and an instinctive, genetically sound diet. I know I’m generalizing and that the trend towards food education, organic choices and fair treatment of animals is a growing part of the American conscious, however, unless you are a farmer or tend a flock of cattle, you will be spared the nitty gritty.

My children sit next to women with babies at their naked breasts and watch intently as they take this most basic form of nourishment. They don’t blink an eye, having so far been spared too many cultural taboos, while my eyes remain averted out of respectful and ingrained habit. They ask me questions that I might never have answered if they had only glanced a baby’s head ducked under a baggy T-shirt. Our whole family has become immune to most of what seemed shocking when we first arrived: people sitting cross-legged on the ground, eating from large bowls with their fingers; women herding flocks of filthy goats from their small yards; those same goats eating tin, plastic, filament grain bags, even glass; men walking arm in arm, or hand and hand, signifying nothing but deep friendship; women carrying large basins balanced on their heads filled with laundry, grains or fruits, babies bound tightly to their backs with brightly colored cloth; the devout lying prone in prayer on a woven mat in a corner of the grocery store because it’s time to pray. These are all things that are so foreign to us, to our ways of behaving and thinking, that they are hard to look at in the beginning, let alone understand and accept. After a time though, they become an important part of the whole beautiful tapestry of the Senegalese culture and it’s people. The way I was raised, the things I was exposed to are not better or worse than what we see here, just different. There is no shame in either. All I can do is try to work the two together so they make sense for my children and most importantly, not impose my own beliefs on the Senegalese. I’m trying hard.

I’ve even come to accept the groups of children who walk along the beach with sticks or rocks in their hands, ready to defend themselves against the packs of stray dogs that invariably approach them. When the two bands meet, the dogs bare their teeth, growl and lower themselves to the ground, menacing these children, who in turn will beat them with the sticks or throw the rocks at them until they part ways, sometimes calling a truce, sometimes leaving a wounded dog, other times a bitten child. Interestingly, I’ve noticed these dogs don’t approach or threaten us and have even been known to roll over submissively, leaving me to wonder which came first: the aggressive dog or the aggressive child? It doesn’t matter, this is their long-standing relationship and I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon. I tried once, and only once, to intervene, to gently tell the children not to hit the dogs, to just keep walking, arrogantly assuming that my adult (and superior) wisdom would break the spell. They listened to me in my broken Wolof, dropped their rocks and sticks and walked on slowly, glancing back at me for assurances. They were unarmed, but the scent of their fear still drifted over to the dogs who charged them from behind. In the end, it was me who threw the rocks. I have tended to the wounds of both a child and a dog on different occasions, wiping away the blood, disinfecting the marks, bandaging the aggressions. As an outsider, I simply cannot take sides.

The Sliding Scale of Sacrifice

2009-08-28T03:13:00.000-07:00

My friend Renee recently offered to send us books and popcorn in the mail, the two things that she knows will sustain my sanity and my children’s, respectively. It’s been two weeks now that we’ve been trying to procure a post office box in the nearby city of M’Bour, but like everything else here, you need an inside connection to make it happen. It turns out we have one. As fate would have it, our friend Zorro’s second cousin is the Assistant to the Manager of General Sorting, who apparently has some influence with the Director of the Processing Department. Score. Or so we thought. The paperwork alone involved in securing the right to send and receive mail in Senegal is downright mind-boggling. “We don’t want to adopt the P.O. box”, I told Zorro, “just foster it for the time we’re here.” Apparently, we’re still under consideration.

When I enthusiastically thanked Renee for the popcorn suggestion on Jamie and Sunny’s behalf, she asked innocently, “You have a microwave, don’t you?” The “PussshhHah!” that inferred my “are you kidding?” response sent spittle onto the computer screen (we were skyping). As I began describing what we were living with, or without, I realized we had indeed embarked upon somewhat of a survival adventure, albeit a mild one. There are many people here who live with much less than we do, in conditions far worse, and certainly less sanitary. What I did realize, as I was describing our necessary inventiveness, is that most of us humans are quite adaptable when faced with less than ideal circumstances and that we were among them. It’s not that we’re suffering. Far from it. We have three meals a day, comfortable beds and a roof over our heads which happens to pitch out over a breathtaking beach on the Atlantic, whose waves lull us to sleep at night. “You should really write about this,” said Renee.

Let’s begin with the hotel kitchen. “Le Rayon du Soleil,” (the ray of sun) as our small Inn is called, boasts a rather well-equipped kitchen. There is a large refrigerator with an adequate interior freezer compartment, several nice prep counters and a commercial-grade oven with four gas burners, a separate deep frying section and a pizza drawer. The day I first wandered into this homey kitchen with it’s quaint round wooden breakfast table, I knew I would willingly assist Daba, the cook, as sous-chef every night if she would have me. My culinary fantasies got fast put up in the larder when I noticed that Daba wasn’t setting foot in the kitchen. She was squatting outside over a low pot set on a small gas tank which was making more noise than a blow torch. While the smells emanating from that pot were undeniably wonderful, I couldn’t help but thinking of my dashed dreams of cooking in that kitchen: two women, one American, one African, side by side over simmering pots, dicing this, chopping that, exchanging techniques, recipes, small talk, united across continents and cultures by the universal act of nourishing our loved ones (and the occasional summer client who would surely savor the melting pot.)

“What’s wrong with the oven?” I asked tentatively.

“Nothing,” she replied defensively. “It’s an excellent restaurant-grade gas oven. No one else, not even the French restaurants, have this good of an oven.”

“If it’s so good”, I ventured, “why aren’t you using it?”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “Because last year when there were no clients we sold the oven furnace to get money for food.”

“Oh . . . Well, can’t we replace it?”

“Not unless you’re planning a trip to France any time soon.” So that ended that.

Now on to shopping. The aisles of the local grocery store (which are patronized almost exclusively by “toubabs”, or white people) serve as a good barometer for everything else that’s going on, or not, at any particular time of year. In the produce section this week, which in fall and winter hosts an impressive array of vegetables and fruits, I found only a few wrinkled potatoes, a smattering of bruised apples, some potent sprouted garlic bulbs and a small basket of large dates, I think, left over from the week before. The IMPORT section (OK, so it’s my favorite) was utterly void of triple cream French cheese, cured Italian ham and Swiss yogurt. Packaged cookies were nowhere in sight and milk was past it’s due date. “What’s going on?” I asked Umi, the impossibly beautiful Senegalese owner of our local grocery store. “Did the delivery trucks get stuck in the mud?”

She laughed at me and glanced around the store. I was the only patron there. In fact, she and I were alone. Her staff was nowhere in sight. “Ramadan starts today.” She explained. “Few people work during Ramadan, so nothing can be delivered. I only stay open for the few toubab clients who are around, like you. I can’t bring in a lot of produce because it won’t get consumed. We don’t eat during Ramadan. It’s a fasting period.” It looked like I would need to get creative with her offerings for the next several weeks.

For one month, the ninth month in their calender year, the Muslim people refrain from eating, drinking, smoking or any other such consumption from sunup until after sundown. This includes water. It is permissible to rise at 5:00 am, before the call to morning prayer, to eat a small meal, but the daylight hours are to be passed in quiet repose and contemplation of Allah. (Pregnant women and nursing mothers, the elderly and infirm are exempt. Children strive to complete as many fasts as possible.) The month of Ramadan is considered penance for all the sins one has accumulated during the rest of the year, a fast which theoretically cleanses the body, so that one is free to in turn purge the impurities of the soul. I hate to think of the general health consequences of daylight fasting. In the past few days, I’ve witnessed more marital arguments, fist fights (the Muslims are typically non-physical) and general crankiness than ever before. Even the stray cats and dogs are on edge, deprived of the left-overs they would normally receive. Blood sugar, it appears, is immune to religious dictates.

I knew girls in college who sinned aplenty during the week, only to head to church on Sunday to wipe the slate clean, the religious equivalent of “I’ll start my diet tomorrow.” Their means of recompense seems like a get out of jail free card to me compared to the austerity of Ramadan. I admire the Muslims’ adherence and dedication to written creed and respect their decision to honor Allah, but I am by no means prepared to follow the fast out of solidarity. However, I’m also not one to flaunt my exemption by religious choice and so I find myself sneaking the gas burner into our apartment pre-dawn, squatting over the burner to heat water for coffee and scramble a few eggs as the sun comes up. We eat sequestered indoors, quietly, hoping the smells and jostling of pans won’t set off contempt for our irreverently full stomachs. If I happen to come back from the grocery store (with my bruised apples, large dates and pungent garlic), I skitter back to our rooms quickly, head down, keeping my purchases discreet.

Coinciding with the austere month of Ramadan is the violence of the rain storms. While the mortals have been accumulating their transgressions, the skies have been storing up rage, heat and humidity. Into the silent void that is particular to lethargy and spiritual contemplation, the storms come fiercely, especially since they originate and gather force at sea. Since our windows open out onto the beach, the impact of the crashing, churning angry waves and the deafening thunder that accompany it, make for a pretty intense storm. Anyone who has seen a Broadway production which featured rain as an integral part of the plot knows what I mean. Cue lightening stage left, (the entire theatre up to the balcony lights up) cue thunder stage right (a clack, although you expected it, jolts you from your seat). Cue rain patter ( surround sound) and you want to open your umbrella right there in row 22C. Storms in Senegal have the same effect. They are a theatrical production.

The electric company also appears to be fasting during Ramadan, conserving precious gas during the day, (i.e. no electricity) and allowing it only at night when electricity may be needed to cook the one meal of the day and ceiling fans are essential if one wants to sleep. (Did I mention that airconditioning is a luxury known only to certain expats and luxury hotels who can afford the outrageous electric bills, despite the outages, in addition to a generator which is needed at least a third of the time.)

I spent this particular day of Ramadan outside in a quiet contemplation of my own--that of our dirty laundry. I wash it by hand in a large basin filled with water and suds and hang it to dry in the sun. Kem, one of the girls who works at the hotel, could certainly do it for me, but I hesitate to tax her energy during the fast. Besides, the whole process takes less time than most rinse cycles and is surprisingly satisfying. There is no sarcasm in my statement about contemplation. Washing clothes by hand with no distraction is a great way to be alone with your thoughts, spiritual or otherwise. An added benefit is the muscles that get used. Who needs a membership to the local gym (hypothetically speaking) when washing clothes, squatting over a gas tank and carrying heavy grocery bags has made me aware of muscles I never knew I had, or could hurt so much.

There are a few who do not adhere to the fasting rules of Ramadan, namely manual laborer, like the small crew working with Richard to repair the earth house. I asked one of them about it today and this was his response: “My commitment to Allah lies in my heart, not my stomach. If I don’t eat, I can’t work and if I can’t work, I won’t make money to feed my family when Ramadan is over.” Practically speaking, this made perfect sense to me.

My curiosity about Ramadan, my desire to understand these people’s willingness to give up basic nourishment in honor of their God made me take stock of the small luxuries we ourselves have given up. Ours are not sacrifices, just inconveniences and ones that have us thinking differently about energy consumption, both physical and practical. I suppose it’s easier for me to do things the simple way here both because I don’t have a choice at the moment and because its’ the norm. If everyone else had a washing machine, I’d surely feel put out. But I don’t, not here. The spiritual punctuation to witnessing Ramadan is that I am thankful for what we do have.

Zorro is the one person who I can talk honestly and openly to about the Muslim religion. I like to debate with him on certain issues, which always leads to a deeper understanding of something I might otherwise have judged superficially. I am certainly capable of getting up on my high horse and trotting him onto a soapbox, (which if opened would contain a rather terse op ed), in order to make my opinion known. But I am here to learn. Today I asked him if he thought Ramadan still made sense in the modern Muslim world. He said for some it still did and others not (I thought of the laborers.) I guess my need to challenge the concept of fasting is born of my personal fears not only about deprivation, but forgiveness. I wondered aloud if there might not be a sliding scale for Ramadan which correlated directly to the degree of one’s misdoings, as in, sin a little, partake in food; sin moderately, drink water and so forth. I even went so far as to suggest that one could reasonably and consciously fast reversely. Why not give up the temptations that might lead to sin or focus on doing good deeds throughout the year so that the penance of Ramadan would be unwarranted? He pondered this for a moment, his willingness to consider other’s ideas one of the things I love most about him. But finally he explained that sins, transgressions, whatever we choose to call them cannot be easily defined and the gamut is too wide to categorize and chart on my theoretical sliding scale. He told me I was thinking practically about a spiritual subject, which seemed incongruous to him.

“Plus," he said, "we are all human and therefore prone to mistakes. Trust me when I tell you that it is easier to abstain from eating than sinning.” Food for thought, I’d say.

Flight of the Ephemerals

2009-08-20T07:15:00.000-07:00

There is a restaurant in the village that we take the kids to when they are in need of the kind of comfort that only a good pizza can provide. This establishment makes a respectable one: fresh tomatoes, black olives, ham, oregano and Emmenthal cheese, baked crispy and thin in a half-moon brick oven. To the delight of Jamie and Sunny, who are allowed to watch the preparation, this cooking method yields a finished product in less than ten minutes. Although they have a full menu offering a variety of options, whenever I inquire about anything other than pizza, I am told “we are out of that tonight, Madame.” So pizza it is.

The proprietor of this establishment is a 50-ish Frenchman named Jacques who has a thick shock of white hair and a penchant for Hawaiian shirts and Pastis. On this particular night, he has clearly overindulged and is asleep at a table outside when we arrive. We approach gingerly, not knowing whether to clear our throats loudly, or turn around and leave. Thankfully (for us, not him), the young Senegalese waitress, Fatu, emerges and slaps him on the side of the head, shooting us a look of familiar disgust. He sits up abruptly, his bloodshot eyes rolling about, attempting focus. “Oh”, he says. “I was wondering where you were.” I can only imagine by “you”, he meant any clients in general--the restaurant was empty.

“Right ziss way, my Merican frenz” Jacques says with an exaggerated wink in my direction. Scrutinizing the room as though he is hard-pressed to find a table, he ushers us to one near the open door, hands two large menus to Sunny and Jamie and pulls out my chair to seat me. As he leans in, my nose is affronted by an afternoon’s worth of Pastis and stale cigarettes. He returns a few mintues later and places eight wine glasses on the table.

“I don’t think we’ll be needing all those glasses,” Richard says. Jacques looks at the four of us, then the table and finally says, “Oui, oui, oui, pardon,” removing one of the glasses. This man is clearly drunk. Careening to the bar, he puts both hands around the cup of coffee Fatu has poured for him as though it were a bouy in the middle of the ocean and letting go would mean certain death.

Several tables fill up over the course of our meal and the place takes on a convivial ambiance with layered notes of several languages. I can discern the two most obvious: French and Wolof, but also catch bits of Italian, a cockneyed British and Serer, the language of Cassamance, to the South. I love this about Senegal: the small cosmos that gathers at any given moment. Tonight it is unexpected in this rainy season, in this little-known eatery with it’s checkered table cloths and plastic palm tree salt and pepper shakers, it’s poorly rendered murals of Africans running to catch the bus with baskets of fish on their heads, their noses, breasts and feet large and characatured. But it feels comfortable at this moment, this one seemingly ordinary evening.

As night comes, several winged bugs begin drifting in through the open door. They are silent and delicate, resembling dragonflies, with a thorax and two sets of wings, but a short rounded body. Soon, there are twenty or thirty hovering around us, landing on the table, on our shoulders, taking off again towards the ceiling. No one seems concerned but us. Jamie, who is particularly bug-phobic, is standing on his chair, screeching and waving his hands about, ducking the onslaught. Jacques comes over and says, “don’t worry, it’s just the 'ephemerals'. This will all be over in a few minutes. Just watch.” Perching on his barstool, he gestures at the swarm, as though he has arranged this spectacle for our entertainment. Sunny wonders aloud if they are fairies.

Apparently, these insects are born during the rainy season and live for a single day. Not many people get the chance to witness their struggled, short life span. It takes them the better part of a day to hatch and they are fully formed only at dusk. Tonight, they have come to our restaurant, attracted by the single bright overhanging lamp near our table. They ascend slowly and purposefully, their wings beating furiously towards their beacon. Just as they reach the summit, they lose their top set of wings and fall fast to the ground, where they struggle for a minute or two, then exhausted, they surrender and die. The life cycle that we are witnessing is narrated to us by a man sitting at the table next to us. I ask if these insects exists elsewhere and he tells me he doesn’t know. He has never left Senegal.

We find ourselves riveted, cheering them up and on towards the light. “Go, go, up, fly!” As they fall, Jamie, who is no longer afraid for himself, but deeply sad on these creatures’ behalf, tries to catch them before they fall in hopes of saving them. But nature would have it otherwise. Jacques is right. Within minutes, these beautiful ephemerals have lived their short lives and their bodies lie motionless on the floor. Only their delicate, transparent wings remain, floating through the air, taking flight again, independant of their host, on the current the ceiling fan provides. They descend slowly only to be lifted again into the air.

As we leave the restaurant, we turn to see Fatu sweeping the remains of the ephemerals out the door along with the sand and crumbs of the day. We walk home through the village, greeting people on their stoops who hope to catch that last cool breeze before retiring for the night. Predictably, the electricity has gone out and the street is dark. But there are candles everywhere illuminating the dark path and the stars are bright and numerous. It strikes me that we all seek the light, all of us, to different degrees. It is essential to our being.

Jamie takes my hand in the silence and says, “Don’t be sad, Mama. At least they got to fly.”

Return to Senegal: Tomorrow is Tomorrow

2009-08-16T08:03:00.000-07:00

We have returned to Senegal in the midst of the rainy season, a time when tourists and expats flee en masse, escaping the heat and daily storms. These foreigners describe the summer months here as savage and unrelenting, both in terms of the weather and the mood. The locals remain silent when they overhear their most precious and abundant season described this way. I have even detected a smile or two, suggesting that it was perhaps they who perpetuated the rumour in the first place. Naturally, we disembark with both curiosity and trepidation. According to some, we are moving to Senegal at the worst time of the year.

It is still dark when we land, the air damp and hot at this early hour, portending a scorcher of a day. But for the moment, as we drive from Dakar towards the coast, there is a breeze that brings familiar odors through the window--bread baking, spices, car emissions, burning trash--which all combine to signal that powerful olfactory recognition of a place and a people I know well. I breathe in the acrid smells willingly as the morning sounds of a city coming to life join in and the light begins to peak on the horizon. As we drive from crowded Dakar along the coast towards La Somone, we pass workers hanging from overflowing communal buses, reaching down to take bread from the children who sell it along the roads. As the sun comes up, I hardly recognize the Senegal that I left behind less than three months ago. I was introduced to this country as an arid landscape, charred brown and void of vegetation, where only the hardiest of weeds dared make an attempt at survival. However, what I see now resembles a lush tropical island--the result of constant, torrential (and nourishing) rain. We pass tall, bright green palm trees and an acre or so of the most beautiful flowering ground cover--large frangipane-like leaves with delicate fuscia petals. “What is that incredible flower?” I ask Zorro, our friend/brother/assistant (who jumped up and down when he saw us at the airport, knocking over our baggage to get to us.) “It’s just a weed,” he says dismissively.

Locals on the side of the road are collecting the abundance of mangoes that have fallen from their overloaded trees. We stop to buy some (twelve for the equivalent of two dollars) and marvel at their size. Their mass is matched only by their luscious odor, a sweetness that cannot be contained and oozes from it’s shell, like the sweat that begins to bead up at my hairline. Even the ocean seems transformed, turned bright blue by the welcome overflow of it’s water table, it’s tides churning up waves quickly and confidently. Everything, it seems to me, has come alive. It is a bright and beautiful day, our first day in Senegal.

We stop first at the project site, a brave decision on Richard’s part, as we have learned that the rain has done extensive damage to one part of the earth house. When we pull up, our faces fall. The same storms that have aided such beautiful growth have ravished the house. One section, the pillar that holds up the majority of weight for the outside corridor, has literally melted to half it’s original girth. (Unbeknowst to us at this time, it will fall in two days, taking with it half the domed ceiling.) Was nature really capable of vandalizing our house this way? I can only tell you that what I saw resembled a boxer after eight rounds. Huge areas of missing plaster exposed the bare, bruised earth walls and thick layers of mud spread down from the roofs, staining the pristine white lime a muddy, frothy pink--the color blood turns under a running faucet. In painful contrast to the ruin we found were the seedlings we had planted in the courtyard. They had flowered and proudly showed off their flourishing. They had clearly taken round one. And if we didn’t act quickly, we would lose the fight altogether.

It took Richard, who is more resilient than I, only a few hours to turn what I viewed as a tragedy into a potential positive. I thought of our dwindled budget and wondered how we would possibly finance what needed to be fixed. I saw this situation as an impossible and cruel failure. He saw it as a learning experience. We had been convinced by a local mason to construct the pillars from earth bricks rather than using the rammed earth we used for the walls. This turned out to be a huge mistake, as these walls had remained completely intact and solid. No erosion was visible. Richard came up with a plan. This setback--four months of reparations--would actually speed our original goal of training the locals to build with earth. They will help us repair the house while we train them and then, borrowing from the Habitat for Humanity model, we will help each of them build their own earth houses. It may take several years, but it is the sole solution both from a practical and financial standpoint. For now, all we can do is protect the house from what remains of the rainy season, and begin rebuilding again mid-September. We have a few weeks to endure the storms. How bad could they be?

After we left the site, we headed to the hotel where we will stay for the next several months, a small, no-nonsense “campement” on the beach in La Somone. We arrived to find 30 or so young Senegalese who had taken over the hotel for a day and night of fun on the beach, a last bash before the month-long austerity of Ramadan begins. This is typical practice for the youth from Dakar to pool their money and escape the city fumes for the relief of the ocean. They had brought everything necessary--music, food, lights, bathing suits and were setting up a rather impressive stage for fun. At that moment, it felt like an annoyance to me. I needed to side-step their smiling faces and swaying bodies. They contrasted too strongly with my own mood, heavy with uncertainty and fatigue. I dropped Richard off at the earth house with tarps that we had bought at Home Depot and travelled with, not knowing that the majority of damage had already taken place. We had asked a friend to take care of our cat while we returned to the states and the kids were anxious to pick him up--the perfect excuse to stay away from the hotel. After we profusely thanked “popcorn’s” host, we headed to the car under darkening skies. Just as I turned off the main road towards the brush land to pick up Richard, the skies opened and a rain like none I’ve ever seen began to fall in heavy sheets. I turned on the windshield wipers only to have the rising wind rip them promptly from the car. The rain seemed to bring with it an extraordinary heat that fogged the interior windows, but we were far enough onto the dirt road that stopping would surely mean the car would get stuck. Puddles were quickly forming and the rain beat so hard I could no longer see. I grabbed a baseball hat which Zorro had left on the front seat and rolled down the window. With my head outside the driver’s seat window, I searched for the turnoff toward the house, but couldn’t find it. Mistaking other dwellings in the distance for our house, I made several false turns while the kids persistently asked why I was driving all over the place and the cat protested loudly at the rain coming in the back seat. I finally spotted the house and turned onto what I thought was a cleared path.

With the house in plain site, I slowly advanced, proud that I had managed to navigate the car in the storm. Richard came out and waved his arms frantically at me, sharing my relief that I had made it. As the rear wheels spun and protested, I realized it was a warning wave, as in “stop, you’re about to hit . . . a mud trench.” I was stuck, 50 feet from the house, in a ditch, with the rain pounding down and covering the rear left tire like an elephant in quicksand. After many attempts at digging the mud away from the tire, several locals passing by tried to help us. It was a valiant effort, but it was clear that the car was going nowhere on this particular night. We called Zorro who said he would try to pick us up in a taxi if he could find one willing to risk it. Then the battery died on the cellphone. As they were leaving, one of the Senegalese who tried to help us said, “Today is today. Tomorrow is tomorrow.” All we could do was wait. And wait. And wait. It was now 9:00 pm and Sunny and Jamie’s dwindling lack of patience and increasing hunger told us we should begin to walk the two miles back to town . . . with a bag of groceries and a mad cat in the pouring rain.

I have to say that it’s times like these when children really shine and show us that their means of perception and tolerance are far superior to ours. Knowing that Popcorn would not appreciate the pelting rain and try to run for it, I emptied the contents of my purse, a wooden handled clutch, and shoved him in, receiving several retaliatory scratches in the process. We walked, heads down against the diagonal rain, in the pitch dark towards town, Richard leading the way, gingerly guiding the kids around puddles and thickets with each hand. I followed behind with the bag of groceries in one arm and the cat-purse in a death grip in the other. I knew I had to get that cat back to the house safely if my kids were ever going to speak to me again. Proceeding through the mud, flipflops were lost, clothes got caked and a cat, wishing he had stayed with his interim keeper, got his head repeatedly shoved back into a space half his size. But all the while, the kids took this as an awesome adventure, hearing the loud croak of a giant African bullfrog for the first time, jumping through vast and deep rain puddles freely, trusting that Richard (Captain Africa) knew the way back. All I could think of was the bottle of wine in the bag I was carrying, at that point at least as precious as the cat in the other arm. As the muscles in both triceps began to scream with fatigue, I weighed the consequences of letting either one drop. They were equally unthinkable so I renewed my resolve to continue.

When we finally made it back to the hotel, exhausted and soaking wet, the party was going full force and loud music greeted us at the door. Several young men beckoned us to dance and a beautiful girl brought us rice pudding on a tray. I shook my head no, but she insisted on sharing, which she did with a smile. I suppose she saw in our bedraggled faces that this day had not been kind to us. “Kai lek” she said. “Come, eat.” I delivered the cat to his new home, poured myself a large glass of red wine and returned to taste what would be my dinner. The sweet creamy rice felt comforting and tasted of childhood simplicity. As we settled in, the music finally reached my ears with it’s authenticity and it no longer sounded outside the realm of our day. I thought of our house, of how we would bring it back to life. For now, I would have to let go of the questions, of the whys and hows. We had survived this day, and I suppose our new friend was right. Tomorrow is tomorrow.

Leaving the Shore: version II

2009-07-12T09:00:00.001-07:00

I am not a risk-taker by nature. Most people would say that's a ludicrous statement. I am, after all, about to board a plane to Senegal, Africa, for a six-month family sabbatical. I have agreed, reluctantly, to accompany my husband, an auto-didactic architect, to a country where there are no building codes so he can construct an earth architecture house with no pedantic constraints. Though he has researched this alternative building method with passion and aplomb, I realize early on in his presentation to us that this is really about a basic need to play with dirt, which appeals wildly to our two small children. He has always tended to color outside the lines, which to him were blurry to begin with, however, this particular divergence seems to be the manifestation of a mid-life crisis, albeit an admirable one. Relieved that it hasn't involved a size two, twenty-two year old blond (my antithesis) or a long unquenched desire to play electric guitar (my nemesis), I agree to support him. I hear the adventurer that I long to be say, "Sure, honey, that sounds exciting. Let's do it." What I am really thinking is, "over my dead body." And that's exactly what I envision: my malaria-stricken form, sweaty and prostrate on the bed, surrounded by my teary children reaching out to touch me one last time, their small fingers widening the holes of our faulty mosquito net.

These macabre visions are unfortunately nothing new. Where Richard sees the beauty and potential in the open flow of living something unknown, I imagine the thickness, the dark what-ifs that we may not have control over. I can't help it. As hard as I try to dive into life the way my husband does, I am more likely to be waiting at the side with an outstretched fluffy towel when he resurfaces. But I trust him, his instincts and talents, and so I almost always acquiesce to the bigger decisions in our lives, like moving to Africa. I credit myself with at least recognizing the value of being led out of my comfort zone from time to time. It's the smaller, seemingly insignificant choices that always pose the bigger problem for me, the ones that are my decision alone, that don't effect anyone else. I tend to be the one who sits on the sidelines and watches, who stays behind (because someone has to), or if I do go, to be the slightly resentful designated driver.

For this particular adventure, I volunteer to pack for everyone, not out of kindness, but because I am terrified of what might be forgotten should anyone else do it. My knowledge of Africa has been authored, filtered and pre-packaged by the American press and I can only conjure up insurmountable images of sick, skeletal children, flies buzzing at their sticky eyes, razed, burned villages, women in dire need of a sympathetic god. But Richard assures me that Senegal is a diverse, democratic and stable country where we will be welcomed, a country of progress and equality. Everyone there is poor by our standards, but tragedies are managed and gorillas (both Pongidae and human) tend to exist in the more tropical regions of Africa, far from our arid and peaceful destination.

Two weeks after we arrive, Richard has fully adjusted, my children have nearly adopted, but and I am still somewhat adjacent to this new culture. We decide to take a short trip with six French friends to the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal's only functioning area of protected waterways. After surviving a four hour drive along the hot sand route to avoid traffic and vertebrae crushing potholes, I sit outside our solar powered eco-hut taking in the views while my husband and children nap. This gives me a chance to reflect on the arsenal I have packed. I run the list through my mind: insect repellent, anti-itch, anti-nausea, anti-diarrheal, sunscreen, snacks, vitamins, extra water, toilet paper, clothes, flashlight, candles, matches. Yes, I am comforted by the prophylactic protection I have provided for myself and my family and I begin to relax. As I sip on a bottle of filtered spring water imported from France, I hear laughter echoing from the river basin down below and decide to explore. Our friends have all changed into their bathing suits and are splashing in the river. Because it is low tide, there is an area of open shallow water and then a large part of basin lies exposed. I watch as they swim across the river to the delta and begin to walk among the birds and close to a large cluster of dense mangroves. Their distant voices call to each other and travel up the slope, reaching me long after the words have dissipated. On a whim, I run back to our hut, strip and search for my bathing suit. I will join them. Exhilarated, I pull out ziplocks filled with gels and creams, clothes rolled around glass containers, shoes stuffed with socks to avoid a potential hiding place for scorpions. I reach the bottom of the bag and then search through the second small duffle which I already know holds mostly food reserves. I sit down hard on the floor as the realization comes: I have forgotten my bathing suit. But this is Africa and so I uncharacteristically ad lib. Donning matching underwear and bra and a large beachtowel, I run down the path, descend the rickety stairs and come to a halt. By the time I get there, they have already swam back and are lying on the beach, panting out their enthusiasm. "SOU PEAR" one says as he passes me on the stairs. "C'etait incroyable" another rasps, wiping droplets from his flushed cheeks before bounding up the stairs with the others.

Oh, I think to myself, I missed it. Maybe next time. As their voices fade, Africa and I are alone for the first time. I let the towel go and walk into the river to wet my feet. I can't see the bottom. The air is starting to chill and I am tired. Dangerous, perhaps. My book is waiting. It's just as well. Still, I can't help but take one last look across to the wide expanse on the other side. Is the shore near or is it far? The flat bottom of the river is bubbling up visibly in the distance, birds hovering, some picking their way along the massive flats, mangroves swaying at the edge of the shore, waving to me. I look back down at my feet in the water, inch in a little further. Sun descending. A small current swirling and chirping. Something darting between my ankles. Feet in the water isn't much, I think. A small shiver. And I dive.

Dream Catcher

2009-07-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

We all have messages that we have carried forth from childhood, ideas that our parents repeated time and time again which infiltrated our consciousness and became like genetic myths, familial foundations. Like a dream catcher, I guarded the most important of those ideas and filtered them as I went through my life, letting the ones that seemed irrelevant or untrue fall away as I shaped my own opinions, made my own choices and discovered my own truths. The one message that stuck, the words that guided the first twenty years of my adulthood, came from my father. “Do what you love and success will follow.” It sounded simple enough. Only I got it all wrong. Not that the message itself was faulted, it served my father well--he was a successful businessman and hotelier. But I had assumed that, by “success”, my father meant money, and that his model of success would help shape my own. The only problem was that pursuing what felt natural to me wouldn’t necessarily bring me the paychecks I envisioned. Because my passions erred on the creative side, I was constantly at odds with myself. I wanted to be a writer, an artist. But I was young and my words were trite, my story ordinary and unformed. Young girl moves to New York after college and instead of creating art, sells it. Writes on the side, but doesn’t yet have soul or depth or material to draw from and the rejection letters begin to pile up. It was a fresh life, a struggled beginning. I eventually opened my own business, a textile showroom that specialized in hand-made fabrics. Ah, finally . . . success. It was a beautiful business with a shaky financial model and it failed, miserably, within three years, ushered gently to ruin by the financial repercussions of 9/11. What went wrong? Wasn’t I doing what I loved? Well, not exactly.
When I looked closely at my life, I had accumulated things, had a resume, was an entrepreneur. But I wasn’t happy and I didn’t have much money. And so I began to think about my father’s message, “Do what you love and success will follow.” As I married and had two children, I began to understand that success comes to us in many forms. For me it came with the realization of a dream and the subsequent learning that came from it's failure. It came as I saw my children grow into miraculously unique individuals and continues daily as I guide them, stepping gingerly out of their way. It came as I learned that being kind to others in the smaller ways that may not seem significant actually set us on a path to greater generosity. Our recent decision to return to Senegal in the hopes of building earth homes for those less fortunate than us came naturally but unexpectedly.
That first six-month venture took us by surprise. We left the United States with the idea that we needed to construct something solid and sustainable for our future. Our personal economic situation mirrored that of the world's global crisis and we saw the writing on the wall. We were fortunate enough to have gotten a small windfall from our textile business. It was a gift that held more promise than we knew. With that check, we had two choices. The first was to stay in Savannah with few pending opportunities and watch the money dwindle within months. Our lifestyle had been authored in more prosperous times and we knew we could no longer sustain our habits. Or we could take a portion of those funds, go to Senegal and build an earth house that would be all ours. No mortgage, no bills (off-the-grid energy and water meant a self-sustaining environment.) It would mean giving up small luxuries like a washer and dryer, dishwasher, TV and countless others we take for granted. But it would also mean discovering another culture, exposing our children to the "otherness" that could assist their world view. And it would mean that Richard could realize his dream of building something from nothing. So we left. And we built. And we learned that what we were doing could help countless others. We could train them to build with earth and solve an enormous housing crisis. Success had come to us in the form of a simpler choice, seeing that we could help others by doing what felt right.
What we didn't know was how rich we would become. Rich with a sense of accomplishment, rich with ideas, rich with support, rich with culture. A richness of welcoming greeted us in the Senegalese people and stayed with us daily, grew into friendships, partnerships and encompassed us with it's growing familiarity and hospitality. We were given an understanding of the true richness of the Muslim religion, of it's family-based value system and focus on selflessness, kindness and generosity. Too often we take what we are told by the press as "the truth", only to be shocked by the realization that we know nothing, that there is an altogether different truth that shares the stage with the extremist's version. Sadly, this more important and widespread Muslim truth takes backstage to our fears, which in today's world seem to be ravenous, insatiable and fed all too often. Our fears have become obese. But we are learning, I believe, to be hopeful once again, to re-evaluate our needs and let go of what isn't important, holding on to what really matters, like family, love, spending time face-to-face with friends, taking stock of our lives. We witnessed this hope in the response we got from posting our video, "A Turning of the Soil." The support and encouragement we received from friends and strangers alike was astounding and helped me to understand that we are doing the right thing, that I have achieved success and a sense of purpose in this venture with Richard. I have achieved fulfillment on my own in being able to write again. I have achieved a larger love in my desire to return to Africa. This is just the beginning of a nascent chapter in my life and how exciting that I have only an outline of what's to come!
Unfortunately, there are a handful of people who do not support me, who have criticized our choice to go back to Senegal, who don't (or refuse) to see that it really isn't a choice, but a responsibility to follow through with our ability to help others. They attempt to debunk the illogical reasoning behind the decision. There was no decision--Life has led us to this place. Finally I am happy and fully able to understand my father's message. More importantly, I am able to employ my dream catcher, holding on dearly to those who support me, fiercely guarding my belief in myself, in Richard's talents and the merits of this project and letting go of those who doubt and fear. In the center, where the eye of the dream resides, I will continue to hold my father's message "Do what you love and success will follow." And I will add to it and repeat to my children time and time again, "Live your dreams, both big and small. They are your greatest gift to the world."

Leah on a Cloud

2009-05-01T04:22:00.000-07:00

Leah seems to be very present in my life at the moment and so she is permeating my writing, as well as my thoughts, memories, dreams, even conversations. I can't say why, but I trust that she is helping me work through her death in such a way that I don't feel her loss so deeply. She seems to be ushering me into a new phase of acceptance and I no longer push the feelings and memories down in fear that they will rip me apart. To the contrary, I welcome the visions. For me, they are keeping her alive. It's as if she's saying, "wait, see, I'm still here. I didn't go anywhere. I can still help." When she passed away, my children tried to comfort me and at the same time, make sense of death in a general way and of her loss in particular. Because death to all of us, children and adults alike, asks us to suspend all rationale and seek our own understanding of it's meaning, they each did so in a different way, befitting their individual personalities. They had met Leah and she had made a lasting impression on them. I remember very specifically that she had treated them like people, spoken to them levelly, listening as she always did with real interest and attention. I try to do the same for them these days. It's not my strongest quality, but it's a destination I will reach because I know how good it feels to know you are heard. Leah taught me that.
The following is a conversation I had last night with my 4 year old daugher, Sunny. I think it's worth sharing:

Sunny: "Mama, I don't want my kitty to be sick because then she might die." She begins to cry.

Me: "Oh, sweetheart, your kitty isn't going to die. She just has a little cold. She'll be just fine, I promise."

Sunny: "Will she won't die because she's just a baby and babies don't die? Is it not her time?"

Me: "No, it's not her time. She has a long kitty life ahead of her."

Sunny: "But it wasn't Leah's time and she died. She wasn't old."

Me: "Yes, that's true. She was still young, but her heart was sick and so she died."

Sunny: "Is she sitting on a cloud in the sky?"

Me: "Is that how you picture her?"

Sunny: "Uh-huh."

Me: "Then, yes, that's where she is. On a cloud in the sky."

Sunny: "If my kitty does die, can she go sit on the cloud next to Leah, so she can be petted."

Me: "I think that's an excellent idea."

Sunny: "Mama, will Leah come back in the Spring?"

Me: "Yes and no. She won't come back as she was before. We won't see her and talk to her like before. But when you see flowers bloom and birds sing, you'll know she's there. Her spirit is in all the beautiful things in the world and here in Senegal like the ocean and the baobab trees and our earth house. Leah's spirit lives in all the things we love."

Sunny: "Mama, I think Leah lives in pizza. . . and on a cloud in the sky."

Un pain, Deux Madeleines

2009-04-24T01:20:00.000-07:00

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own.
And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.”~ Dr. Seuss

About fifty yards from our house in Senegal is a small boutique-- a shanty really--with a bright blue door. It is no bigger than my closet at home, but much better organized and filled with an astounding array of sundries ranging from matches and batteries to spices, detergent, clothes pins and onions. It has a small refrigerator filled with butter, milk and cold drinks, a dirt floor and a narrow counter behind which stands Boubakar, the young man who serves us with a big gap-toothed smile. Flies buzz about, deranged by the current of air the single fan provides against the dusty heat, but no one seems to mind. We wait in line every morning, lingering in the doorway, exchanging greetings. "Naka suba si?" How are you this morning? "Dafa tung." It's very hot today. Several hours before any of us wake up, before the kingfishers and starlings begin their morning chorus, the bakery truck delivers fresh baguettes to the boutique, a flour sac full of them to be exact, to entice us from our beds. For me, seeking our morning bread, "le pain quotidien," spread with fresh salted butter and raspberry preserves, is the ritual that starts my day. Madeleines, those light and delicate French cakes, are Jamie's morning preference. Plain and unassuming, not too dense, not too sugary. One is never enough, but three is always too much, so he has settled on two as the perfect satiety. He eats them with relish, wakes up thinking about them even before he is fully in the day.
I began taking Sunny and Jamie with me to the boutique when we first moved here. Still in their pajamas and sleepy-eyed, they would silently hide behind me while I placed my order. "Un pain et deux madeleines, s'il to plait." One bread and two madeleines, please. Over time, the kids began to look forward to our morning outing, their comfort level and familiarity with Boubakar, with the boutique and with Senegal increasing daily. The hands that once clung to my shirt tails, now hung comfortably by their sides or reached out to shake someone else's. The eyes once stubbornly lowered to the floor, now took in and reflected back their surroundings. The timid voices and resistant ears that once clung to their native tongue, now tested new words in French and even Wolof. The six months that we have been here have allowed my children to venture out of their comfort zone and wade into, not just a new culture, but an understanding of themselves in the larger world, their significance as individuals. This time has given them a measure of independence and an appreciation of a world that is different. All we did was show it to them, but they have made it their own, taken possession of it, found their way into it, grown from it's offerings.
One day recently, Jamie woke up and got dressed on his own. He came out of his bedroom and announced that today he was going to the boutique all by himself. An early riser, he usually lingers the morning away watching the waves roll in and listening to the birds chant as they tree hop, while Sunny still dreams in the deepest hour. Today was different. There was determination in the air and a new sense of confidence. "Where are my shoes, Mama?" I found them for him and bent to help him put them on. "No, no, I'll do it myself," he said, as he took the shoes from me and smiled. Who was this assured little boy? When had he found himself and put aside his fears? I hesitated to let him go by himself, my motherly urge to protect him welling up inside like the tide rising against the shore. I took a good look at my little man, his eyes fixed, his demeanor calm and confident. "Can I have some money?" he asked next. "Well . . . sure," I said, and handed him a coin. "What do I say again, how do I say it?" I told him in French, he practiced once, and nodded. "Don't worry, I'll be right back", he assured me. I suppose he glimpsed what I was feeling in my expression, a mix of pride and loss. Not a painful loss, but one that had taken me by surprise, one I recognized as the first of what I knew would be many small letting goes. My first born, my baby boy, woke up a little person today, with a direction in mind, a goal to be met and a place to go. And I wasn't needed, wasn't invited. I followed him outside, but he waved his hand over his head, shooing me away, gaining distance. He didn't look back. Once he was outside the gate, I ran to the wall to make sure he was Ok. I watched him walk slowly, purposefully, but without hesitation toward the boutique. From a distance, I spotted several people waiting in line. The heat from the morning sun was just overtaking the night's chill and as it penetrated, Jamie shielded his eyes from it's glare. My sun, my son, I thought to myself. Just before I turned to go back to the house, I heard his barely audible voice repeating and receding from my own: "Un pain, deux madeleines. Un pain, deux madeleines. Un pain . . ."

Keur Leah

2009-04-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

Construction on our house is coming to an end. In a few short weeks, Richard and the earth team will stop the building process and begin the laborious procedure of covering the walls with layer upon layer of lyme and palm oil. The long awaited rainy season is imminent. It will give clues to it's arrival, they tell us, with thicker air, softer skin, fewer micro-dust tunnels whirling down the open corridors, and skies that will fade from blue to a full spectrum of grey. It will tease those who have planted their crops, anxious for the first drops to inaugurate the growing and feeding cycle. The abundance of produce will help relieve the absence of money from tourists. One day someone will say "today, it will rain," and inevitably, it will. We will be gone by then and so our job is to protect what we have built so that, when we return, we can continue. The growth will resume.
Now that the mounds of dirt and wells of mud have reunited to form their walls as Richard intended, I can see a real house, imagine walking from room to room, living a life there. Before we leave, this house, which started as an idea and now has a presence, needs a name. There are no street names or numbers to identify homes here in Senegal. The wealthy French give their large beach-front villas monikers like "Eucalyptus Shores", and their friends successfully pick their way along the sandy lanes until they see the large, bold letters on the surrounding walls outside the security gate. The locals simply identify their homes by their family name. "Keur" in Wolof means both "heart" and "home", so a typical Senegalese house might have a small sign outside the front door which says "Keur Diop" or the heart and home of the Diop family. We first started thinking of names for the house when it was still Richard's dream drawn up on paper, before we ever set foot in Senegal. But the hard lines of a computer rendered plan couldn't possibly have hinted at the soul of this house, couldn't have told me how I would feel standing in it's rooms, envisioning it's future.
When we first decided to come to Senegal, I remember calling my friend Leah to tell her. Senegal was a place that was important to Leah. Her love of Africa was immense and she wanted to discover as much of it as possible. Among her many accomplishments, she had served as Director of Development for Asheshi University Foundation in Ghana. She had done substantial fundraising from their offices in Seattle and had visited the University in Ghana as a strategic consultant. We had long, in-depth phone calls during which she reiterated her desire to be a political ambassador to Africa one day, a role I feel would have fit her perfectly. Ciss, her boyfriend of many years, was a native of Senegal (a lovely fact that has never been lost on me) and together, we concocted dreams of long visits split between his family and our house, converging the coincidences of her world. She was the most diplomatic person I have ever known. She was optimistic, pragmatic and yet a dreamer in the most extraordinary ways. That's why I knew she would be a champion of our project. In addition to her desire to experience Senegal, Leah was very sensitive to the environment. Her dream was to one day build an eco-house with a small footprint, a house that was a responsible reflection of who she was--solar panels, geo-thermal heating, a green roof planted with water filtering species. A house of her own that was comfortable and beautiful on the inside, discreet and unpretentious on the outside. Much like Leah herself.
"That is just soooo cool," she said when I told her on the phone. I could feel her smile. "An earth house, I'm just so impressed. When can I come? No, first I want to hear all about it." I knew she meant it. She was the person who taught me how to listen--patiently, lovingly listen. She interrupted me only when she couldn't contain herself and needed to know something in further detail. "Now wait. So explain how the bricks are made." After an hour, I hung up feeling like we had made the best decision of our lives, her support and enthusiasm lifting me up to a place where all my nagging doubts lay in a puddle in the past. I could only envision our future as Leah saw it--and it no longer felt scary. She had brought sense to it, extracted it's virtues and grandness and held them up for me to see. This was perhaps Leah's greatest attribute--her ability to break down what felt like huge barriers to our dreams and successes. How many people did she help realize their potential? I hope to find out one day. She made her living as a life and business coach, but those of us who were fortunate enough to know her as a true friend, or sister, or daughter, know that she served as a catalyst for great change in our lives at least once. Helping me put aside my fears about this adventure in Africa and promising it's success was her last great gift to me. She passed away, suddenly and unexpectedly, on January 9th, three weeks after I arrived in Senegal.
There are days now, very few, when I don't think of her. That's what time and our ability to heal will do. Then there are those moments in the void, when I realize she will never come to Senegal, that I will never see her again, and I feel cheated, for me and for her. But mostly, I sense her spirit near, in the way I look at things differently since her death. I think less about what I have lost and more about what she gave me in the 25 years I knew and loved her. All those collective memories, conversations, shared experiences, inspirations that make up a friendship are like a pleasant aura that stays with me. All I have to do is turn to it and she is there, reassuring me once again that it will all be ok, that ideas and dreams are meant to be lived. I feel her spirit every time I sit down to write and the words just won't come. "Well, you can't just give up," I hear her say. And so I don't.
And neither does Richard when the work gets hard and the days get long. It all seems so obvious now in a way it couldn't have before we lost Leah. Our house here, with it's simplicity and bare beauty, it's openness to possibility, feels to me like the essence of Leah, like I could turn the corner and she would be there, admiring the openings toward the sky. It is our sanctuary, her sanctuary in Africa. In her honor, and with the promise that its walls will echo with her laughter and its doors will welcome with her arms, our house will be called "Keur Leah"--Leah's heart, Leah's home. It was built from the earth, and one day, many years from now, when it is no longer inhabited, it will be broken down to it's basic components, back to the earth. I think Leah would have liked that idea.
"When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die."
~Mary Elizabeth Frye

The Answer: a Follow-up to "The Broken Vase"

2009-04-02T01:15:00.000-07:00

"Forgiveness is the needle that knows how to mend" ~ Jewel

When you live in a foreign country, cultural differences are often hard to surmount, especially when we come to a relationship with preconceived notions of how the world should function, of how people should behave. I am certainly guilty of imposing my own morals on others, of judging other's actions as either "good" or "bad" according to my deeply ingrained value system. But what if there was another possibility, a different way of esteeming others that allowed us to suspend our own beliefs and simply wait for an answer?
Aysa returned with Sorna two days after we confronted her with her theft. We welcomed her and all sat down at the table . . . waiting for her answer, the one we expected, the truth as we knew it. For me, it seemed like the only way to mend what was broken. I was obsessed with hearing her say it . . . that she had stolen from us. I felt like a juror who had all the pieces that led to a sure conviction, but wanted a confession to ease that sliver of doubt that plagued me in my sleep. But she didn't give me what I needed. She neither admitted her wrongdoing nor apologized. She trembled, she cried, she bristled at our insistence, our prodding for the truth. Bou, her accuser and best friend, remained steadfast, telling us once again what he had seen her take from our house. She obviously felt cornered by us and betrayed by Bou. And yet, she only explained her difficulties at home, tears streaming down her face, anger in her voice. Her mother was expecting again, a difficult pregnancy which only added to her depressive tendencies and kept her in a silent torpor. This will be her sixth child. At that moment, all I wanted to do was cross over to the other side of the table and sit next to Aysa in the witness stand, put my arms around her and retract my verdict. Instead, I told her that I understood how scared she must feel, that if she could find the courage to tell us what happened, there would be no consequences, only forgiveness. She remained silent. We asked her to consider her relationship with Sunny and Jamie. For their sake, we hoped she could learn, could move forward with a second chance to be a part of our lives. We told her that, above all else, she and Bou needed to work out their differences, preserve their long-standing friendship. Emotions were high, polluting the air above us all and so we decided to leave the table and let the day pass, unresolved. Aysa sat on the beach ten yards from Bou. They didn't speak. Richard was pensive. I felt sullen and frustrated. Zorro was emotionally taxed and tired from translating. Jamie and Sunny ran on the beach, unaware of our problems. I proceeded to plague Zorro with questions, certain that he had the answers. I was seeking his cultural and spiritual point of view as a Muslim. Surely he understood her better than I. Why had she stolen, why had she refused to admit it? What was she scared of? He explained that stealing is one of the worst offenses in the Muslim religion and is highly punishable. She was terrified of the consequences. More importantly, he wondered why it was so imperative for me to have all the answers. He suggested that perhaps there was no resolution, that the truth lay in our individual ability to just forgive. He left me with this, literally, and took Richard back to work on the house.
Later that day, in the afternoon, I saw Aysa and Bou talking quietly on the beach. I wondered about the shape of that conversation, about it's path. These were children who were calling to each other across their divide, a lie on one side and a betrayal on the other. Red rover, red rover, let Aysa come over.
After they talked, Aysa asked me if she could borrow a small woven mat. When I handed it to her, she took it outside and laid it on the ground. Through the open door, I saw her gather all the children--Sorna, Bou, Jamie and Sunny. She lined them up in two rows and led them to pray namaz together, Jamie and Sunny unquestioningly following their rhythmic movements. Stand, kneel towards the sun, sit back on your heals, touch your forehead to the ground, one foot up, then the next towards the sky. Their grace as a group, their uniform movements, their individual reasons, were like watching a slow dance: show your humility, ask for forgiveness, reconcile your differences. As the only witness, I stood watching silently, reverently. My answer had finally come.
"Allah Akbar," I heard Aysa say. "God is great."

The Broken Vase

2009-03-26T02:41:00.000-07:00

“Trust is like a vase.. once it's broken, though you can fix it, the vase will never be the same again.” ~ Unknown

I tried hard yesterday to recall the times I've stolen something in my life. I came up with two. It took a lot of searching through those shameful memories that we file away in a dark place in hopes that the good things, the souvenirs of honorable deeds and proud triumphs will stack up high enough to render those past mistakes inconsequential and powerless. But try as we might, the good sits only slightly in the forefront, shielding the bad like a dutiful, protective older sibling. Hide your darkness and you will certainly shadow your light.
The first time, at twelve, when my mother refused to buy me press-on nails, I stole some from the pharmacy. I remember vividly the intense thrill of putting them in my pocket unseen. Look to the left, look to the right, in your hand, now hide them. I'm breathing a little easier, shaking a little less. Now move toward the front door casually. No! buy something. A piece of candy, so you don't look suspicious. How daring. It's right here in my pocket and you have no idea. Smile. Pay for the candy. Say thank you. Leave. Keep walking down the street. No one following you. Freedom. Exhilarating! But now what? I remember crumbling with guilt half way down the street with the forceful realization that I'd stolen from the pharmacy that belonged to the parents of a good friend. And how would I explain my long nails to my mother? I hadn't thought this through. I had them, but I would never be able to wear them. At home, as I studied the small tube of glue and the beautiful, graduated sizes of milky plastic ovals through the unopened package, I hated my mother all over again. I couldn't win this one. So the next day, I took them back, or rather, snuck them back, reversing what I had done the day before--taking them out of my pocket, placing them on the hook, once again unseen. The single night that I spent with them under my pillow was torturous.
The second time, I was in my early twenties, working at my first job in an art gallery on Madison Avenue. I had helped edit our first published collection of 19th and 20th century paintings and the book was selling like hotcakes. One day, a client came in when the owner was out and bought three copies. He handed me $150 in cash and left. As I held the money in my hand, it felt comforting, it felt like a solution, like it belonged to me. It was me after all who worked tirelessly cataloguing, assisting the editor, typing, typing, always typing and retyping. And it was me after all who had sold all the books-- caressing the cover, holding the heavy book up to flip the pages, memorizing the most beautiful ones, saying something important about the oeuvre of each artist, then snapping the book shut and laying it on the table, always leaving the art lover wanting more. I had sold dozens and I was good at it. But I was underpaid and underappreciated. My rent was overdue. I didn't know how I would pay for lunch. This was a well-deserved tip, I told myself. I don't remember feeling overly guilty at the time, and yet this second and last memory of stealing had been stuffed way in the back of my mind, right alongside a small pile of painful regrets.
I had needed to conjure up these memories, this part of myself of which I am not proud, in order to see myself as human, far from perfect. I needed to remember that we are all weak at times, that situations can take over our animal instinct to survive, temporarily taint our principles. Mistakes can also propel us forward if we are willing to learn from them. I was trying to understand why Aysa and Sorna had stolen from us.
After months of building a relationship with these girls, the oldest of Jamie and Sunny's friends, we asked them to sit with the kids while Richard worked and I ran errands. It was the first time we'd given them such responsibility and they seemed so proud and eager to prove their capability. We went over house rules and safety and I left, feeling like our relationship had moved in an important direction. When I got home, the kids regaled me with details of a walk on the beach and a cache of unearthed kitchen tiles they had found on the beach. We counted them together and marveled at the different hues of blues--aqua, azure, sky. In the afternoon, Zorro drove the girls home and noticed a white plastic bag on the floor between Aysa's feet. He glimpsed containers of yogurt, a package of cookies, other items from our house. When Aysa saw him looking, she closed the bag quickly. He said nothing and dropped them off. Struggling with how to tell us, he spoke with Bou, who had also been at the house that day. Bou confirmed that he had seen them take things from our kitchen and put them in a bag, which they then hid outside. He said it wasn't the first time, and that money had been taken. We were astounded. The next day, we confronted the girls and Aysa denied all of it, going so far as to blame Sunny and Jamie for eating what was missing. She explained Bou's confirmation away, citing jealousy and child-like malice. I wasn't buying any of it . . . and yet there were doubts, sad refusals in my heart to believe. I asked them to go home, told them to think over what had happened and come back when they were willing to talk. I held back tears as I watched Aysa walk away, proud and confident, defiant, turing her head to look at me with disbelief in her eyes. I spent the rest of the afternoon turning the details over in my mind. Maybe Zorro had made a mistake. But hadn't I seen Aysa quickly put something down when I walked in the kitchen last week? No, it couldn't be, she would never do that. She didn't need to. For months now, I'd been giving her things to take home with her, food that I knew we wouldn't eat--a few carrots, greenbeans, leftover pasta, cookies, vanilla sugar, sachets of tea. I knew that things at home had been difficult for her. Richard had hired her father to help them make ends meet. We were doing all we could to help her and her family. Any yet, the things she had taken were not necessities, they were things that we had and she wanted. In the end, I had to succumb to the reality that these girls who I loved had betrayed us, had stolen from us and damaged what we had built together. It was true and it broke my heart. If only they'd asked, I would have given them anything, anything they wanted. Didn't they know that? Couldn't they feel it?
Now that the trust is broken, the relationship has also suffered, been wound back to the beginning, because I don't really know who they are, maybe never did. Instead of asking myself why they did it, I asked myself why I had done it--stolen twice all those years ago. I tried to put myself in their place, understand the motivation, feel the fear of being caught and the stronger fear of the consequences that would follow an admission of guilt. They were wrong, but they are also human and therefore forgiveable. But reforging this relationship, piecing it back together has to come from first an admission, first the truth, always the truth. By admitting to myself that I was once no better than they, I had found the first piece of the broken vase. If they come back to us with their own shard of truth, maybe we can move forward. In the meantime, I'll be waiting with my small tube of glue.

A Sunday With the Breakfast Club

2009-03-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

This is a simple story about a Sunday that started like any other: coffee brewing, children sleeping, needing an extra layer until the day warmed up. Richard had left to fill another necessary day, building another necessary wall. As I was pulling flour, milk, butter, baking soda from the refrigerator to make pancakes, I dropped an egg. It shattered on the floor quickly, the yoke landing mostly on my foot, the sticky whites pooling around the base of the refrigerator. I leaned against the counter, already feeling defeated, and counted the broken pieces of mottled brown shell. There were seven.

Several weeks ago, The Breakfast Club, the seven children that lived behind us in Barbakar's house--Jamie and Sunny's compass point in a foreign world-- were abruptly separated. Four of the girls, Aysa, Sorna, Nabu and Jhimbal, all sisters, had moved back to their father's house in the next village over. When we met them, they had been temporarily living with Barbakar and his children. Their father had been out of work, and having only girls, there was no son, no prodigy, to supplement their income. He had felt enormous shame at not being able to feed them, which led to arguments and the ultimate resolution that his wife and children should live with Barbakar (a cousin) until he could once again put food on the table. Barbarkar had resented their presence. Their mother was depressed, sleeping like a child, curled on her side most of the day. Displaced and lacking supervision, they had gravitated to our family and our house. I like to think they sensed the structure they would find, that the closeness they witnessed pulled them towards us, rather than the shear proximity of our houses. When we learned that the father was a mason by trade, Richard employed him to work on the earth house, a solution that helped Richard, provided money for this family that we loved and allowed the girls to return home. It was the right thing to do, and yet there were tears when I drove them to their house, their belongings filling two plastic laundry baskets. When they left, Barbakar felt relief, both financially and emotionally. We felt the void, the negative space, the absence of noise. Barbakar's children stopped coming to our house as well, sensing the bond had been broken, that worlds had shifted. Once a complaint of mine, I missed the mess, the maze of children that I picked my way through during the day, setting out crayons and paper, stooping to pick up wrappers, tripping on toys, the incessant washing of plates and cups. As a mother, I felt my nest had been picked apart, that I had guarded people who weren't my own and their sudden absence felt like too much room. Jamie and Sunny suffered too, but like all children, their resilience moved them forward and they found their way without their friends. We all did.

The egg got cleaned up and I was finishing my first cup of coffee when there was a knock on the door. Too early. I thought how strange it was that someone would be here on a Sunday before the sun was fully up and considered not answering it, but the knock was persistent. When I opened it, the four girls were standing there with huge smiles on their faces. They were leaving with Barbakar and his children that afternoon for a three day religious pilgrimage and had decided to spend the day with us. No notice, no warning, just there on our doorstep. Hearing their voices, Jamie and Sunny woke up and ran to them, disbelief in their groggy eyes. There were screams, hugs, lots of jumping up and down, hand-holding until the initial surprise wore off. Bou and Alisahn came over from Barbakar's house. Hunger ensued, and one batch of pancakes turned into three. They had never seen or tasted a pancake and at first were tentative. But who can resist homemade pancakes with lots of butter and raspberry jam, plates full of them, sticky fingers and red-stained faces. There was a walk on the beach and the building of a sand-castle, the children easily finding their familiar rhythms again. Richard and Zorro came home for lunch, which Aysa and Sorna had offered to prepare, and we all sat around the table, passing spiced shredded chicken and rice, green salad and bright orange clementines. Richard invented a rap song in Wolof, to which everyone added their own phrase and the laughter felt like deja vu, so familiar were the components of it.

Next came the laundry, three tubs full of warm suds and dirty clothes, bubbles blown around, which became less about cleaning clothes than about hit and run splashing. They all helped me put the clothes on the line to dry in the afternoon sun, a gesture so familiar and precise that it took less than five minutes. Many hands make light work. Many children make life light.

We said goodbye to them in the afternoon as they headed off to Magal, a destination not unlike Mecca, for which they had dressed in their finest, most beautiful clothes. I hugged them goodbye and wished them a safe trip. They will be back in three days, but I have no idea when they will knock on my door again. I tasted tears on my lips-- a taste of something I am not ready to swallow. Soon the time will come when we take a plane. We've hinted at lasting commitment, offering to send them all to school next year, promising that we will return, that our relationships will resume, that we will not forget them. We have told them, showed them, that we are invested. They have made no such promises. They know from experience that it's not wise, that their world is the axis, and that we will come and go despite their stasis. They are impenetrable this way, and I suppose for their sake, it's best if they let us go with as little sentiment as possible. I am all too aware that the time we are spending with them can never be repeated in exactly this same way, despite our assurances. So I will savor this Sunday and this photograph. Every once in a while, we are given the gift of a day that unfolds unexpectedly, nothing extraordinary, just a day that feels different from the others, a day that, as it is revealing itself, engraves it's essence onto our consciousness as part of a collection. Pay attention to these days, they are memories taking shape.

Note: For background information on The Breakfast Club, read my earlier post of the same title.

The Policeman: A Little Story About Karma

2009-03-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

My son, Jamie, has been fascinated with policemen since he was first able to understand the concept of everyone having a specific job to do in life. For a four year old, his sense of right and wrong is well-developed, and being a sensitive soul, even the slightest injustice is intolerable to him. He feels everyone's pain, and so being on the good side of life's struggles seems to bring him some semblance of control in his ever-expanding world. He spends a great deal of time searching out the proverbial "bad guys" that lurk in his imagination and around our house. He almost always ends up exterminating, or at least incarcerating them and letting us know that he has done his job well, protected us from certain and imminent danger. "Hi, I'm a polis. But Dont' worry, ok", he'll say. "There was a super-duper bad guy in the garden with an alien head and lots of goopy web stuff, but I got him for you. You're safe, ok. I put him in the jail over there and he can't come out until he says he's sorry."

His fascination with the men in blue has been a consistent one. This past Halloween, when all his friends were donning Dracula capes and superhero leggings, Jamie chose to be a "polis" in his navy cap, gold badge and light blue button-down shirt. He insisted that I iron this shirt and that the top button be closed. I watched him tuck the shirt in as best he could and lightly touch the neck again to be sure it was turned down. He smoothed his pockets, tilted the cap back just so and smiled that shy, proud, heartwarming grin he gets when he feels things are just so, that he has reason to be confident. Did I imagine it, or was he standing a bit taller, a little straighter on that morning before I took him to school? The New York cynic in me suggested he carry a styrofoam coffee cup in one hand and a stale doughnut in the other. The specific joke was lost on him, but knowing me as well as he does, he rolled his eyes, sensing my sarcasm, and explained that he didn't like doughnuts and he needed his hands free. Now there's a thought.

The "Gendarmes" in Senegal took Jamie's admiration to another level and added to it a heightened awareness and understanding of their authority. They are formidable figures, with their very dark formal uniforms, shoulder sashes and berets cocked sideways on their head, a decidedly French influence. Resembling more military police than traffic cops, they are occasionally armed on the main roads, and, as we have discovered, almost all are on the take.

On a recent road trip, Jamie was on the alert, spotting them on the side of the road way before we could discern their forms. "Papa, I want to see more polis, show me more polis, is that a polis over there?!" This was his version of "are we there yet?" and it was an incessant, nerve-racking tick, one that drove me to actually say, "You don't want me to come back there, Mister! Just stop it. You'll know it when you see one." We'll get there when we get there. The return trip was no less emphatic except that he fell asleep for a period of time. As we were turning onto a main road, what had been, until now, merely that mythical figure on the side of the road, actually flagged us down. Had we been speeding? Was the car registered? Did we have all our papers, passports? My heart pounded that strange, guilty-for-no-reason adreneline through my system as Richard rolled down his window to speak to the man. I wasn't listening, I was trying to discreetly wake Jamie up, less he miss this grand opportunity. Before I knew it, this hulking policeman had crossed in front of the car and was standing at my window, silent, his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, Ray Bans burning my already hot cheeks. What? Confused and suddenly terrified, I turned to Richard. Through clenched teeth and in English, Richard explained that we had done nothing wrong, he just wanted a ride. Oh, I sighed in relief. A ride. No big deal. I got out of the car and pulled the lever for the seat to move forward, giving access to the back seat and stood aside. "Voici," I said and swung my arm forward, ushering him into the rear. Richard shot me a look that managed to convey this to me: This is Senegal, stupid, a Muslim country. A woman doesn't ask a man, let alone a possibly armed authority, to sit in the back seat! My own wide-eyed return look said: But, but, but, I was only thinking of Jamie, how happy he'd be to have a real live policeman in the back seat with him! To add insult to injury, Sunny pointedly refused to move over beside Jamie, forcing this huge man to sit in the middle, on the hump, with his knees pulled into his chest, between two small children. One, who completely turned her back to him and braced her feet against the door in protest, obligating him to cross his arms to accomodate her extended presence. The other turning his entire body towards him, staring up adoringly in his face. "Hi" Jamie said to him. "Mama, there's a polis in the backseat" he whispered loudly in English, smiling at me as though this was our secret.

As we drove on, the significance of this man in our car began to sink in and I discovered I was outraged. After asking the man if he spoke English and hearing that no, he didn't, I gave myself license to commence my tirade in that now private language. How dare this man use his authority to pull us over and then demand a ride. How corrupt, how rude, how unacceptable. And then to sit in the back seat in smug silence was just, just . . . Richard stopped me and pointed out that he couldn't possibly be comfortable, probably hadn't seen the kids in the back seat when he pulled us over, and that, to Jamie, this was akin to having Elvis in the backseat. I knew he was right, but nonethless sat in huffed silence for many miles, resenting this man's presence in our car. As I was rehearsing what I would like to say to him, should I ever muster up the courage, the steering wheel began shaking violently and Richard no longer had use of the gears. The clutch was out. He pulled the car to the side of the road and we all looked at each other for a long moment. And then it hit me--karma was in play. Ok, now I get it. This is why the policeman flagged us down, so that he could help us when our car broke down! Wasn't karma wonderful! Wasn't fate structured so beautifully! Weren't we lucky to have the stars aligned in our favor! As relief flooded over me, the policeman leaned forward over the hump and told us in French that he would be leaving us now and catching another ride. The blood left my face as I realized he was abandoning us in the middle of nowhere and then it returned just as quickly as I realized HE'S ABANDONING US IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! Coward, opportunist, ingrate! With nery a "merci", he climbed out and started waving down other cars. As I watched him climb into one of them and disappear from sight, I felt that life was just unfair, there was no such thing as karma and there were certainly no heroes. I was pouting like a child. But Jamie kept on smiling and said with total conviction that melted my heart, "Don't worry, Mama. He's a polis, he'll save us." I couldn't bare to explain the truth of this situation to Jamie, couldn't possibly derail his belief in the good within us all.

Through the grace of a cellphone and a saavy mechanic who walked Richard through a simple rig-up, we were back on the road within fifteen minutes and life had floated back to it's familiar equilibrium, a breeze blowing in through the window, the afternoon air cooling us. My heartbeat was just returning to steady and we were nearing another populated intersection, when we were pulled over a second time by another policeman. This time, Richard, the level-headed one in this relationship, had had enough for one day and began mumbling unpleasant expletives in French as the policeman approached. This one didn't want a ride, he wanted to know where the fire extinguisher was. We didn't know, but it certainly wasn't in the car and we knew full well that no car in Senegal was equipped with one. This was a ploy and a rather obvious one. After examining our papers, he explained to Richard that this was indeed a serious offense and that he would have to detain us . . . unless we were willing to part with the equivilent of $30.00, which we didn't have. As he was asking us to get out of the car, another policeman walked around the back and began talking to his commerade. Double trouble, I thought. Until I looked closely at this familiar face and realized it was our hitch-hiker! Through some cosmic twist of fate, his second ride had just dropped him off at this same crowded intersection, right in front of us, at this very spot, and he had recognized our car. He explained to our arresting officer that we had helped him by giving him a ride and that he was to leave us alone and let us go on our way. As I was explaining this to Jamie, our policeman reached in the window and shook Jamie's hand, held it for a moment. Perhaps he had felt Jamie's admiration in the car, had understood that his presence had meant something to this little boy. "See, Mama, I told you he would save us." As we pulled away, taking the road that would bring us home, I realized this experience had taught me two things. The first was to have faith in people, to allow for possibility without proof, to believe in the way my son believes, that people are inately good, or at least redeemable, but not always on our terms. The second thing was that karma, divine intervention, however we wish to call it or define it, does exist. People do cross our path for a reason, and If you are open to the idea, their cause will have an effect, however big or small, lasting or fleeting. My own little polis, with his pure intentions and naive belief in human goodness, was certainly sent to teach me, certainly sent to rescue me from all sorts of dangerous misgivings.

Graceful Arches

2009-03-04T08:42:00.000-08:00

"I'll bridge these hills with graceful arches"~ Frank Lloyd Wright

There are many reasons to build a house, to erect walls, provide shelter, house those people and those things important to us in life. I suppose we each have that one true thing in our life that we need to accomplish. Not simply an attainable goal that builds our confidence and our credibility, but something driven more by our soul's desire to create, to leave behind something worthy, something that reflects who we are at the stripped-down core. Whether that one thing, our personal thing, is understood and appreciated or otherwise questioned doesn't matter--it is the process and the result that brings our passion to it's satisfactory conclusion. For my husband, Richard, that one true thing is an Earth House, built of rammed earth and earth bricks, coming to life on a parcel of land in the brush of Senegal, Africa. His decision, the why and the where, was not sudden. When I look back on the progression of this project, I can see the seed germinating. It started with Richard's adolescent hand in refurbishing his mother's ruined farmhouse in Brittany and was fueled by his adult desire to lead a more sustainable life, to skim the extraneous from our lives. Land was purchased; books about earth architecture appeared; long discussions about the efficacy and merits of building in Senegal ensued; plans were drawn up. His catalytic inspiration came from an Egyptian architect of the 1940's and 50's named Hassan Fathy, who was mocked and dismissed by his peers for building with earth techniques, but was ultimately honored for having instituted "architecture for the poor" on the continent of Africa.

One of the biggest problems plaguing the people of Senegal centers around housing. Land is passed from generation to generation, sometimes as part of a marriage dowry, more often as legacy. But because cement and iron are costly materials, they cannot afford to build homes on their land and as a consequence, many Senegalese find themselves selling the land for monetary gain, forfeiting their inheritance as well as their independence. This is one reason why households are overcrowded with more generations than their modest walls can accommodate. At one point, as is still true in more rural areas, building with earth was the norm. Those people who moved closer to a large metropolis found themselves caught up in the web of status, wanting to be accepted and revered by their neighbors. French influences brought more sophisticated, but not necessarily better, building materials which were comparatively expensive and the "old ways" of building gradually became a chapter in history. They didn't forget, they chose as an urban society to move forward, as we all have, in every nation, following an integrated path that we were told was superior to the simple one we were on. And like the Senegalese, we are all beginning to understand that what worked so well before, what we abandoned in favor of "progress" wasn't so disposable after all. Cement holds in heat; earth walls keep the interior temperate. Modern toxic paints are expensive and require substantial maintenance; active Lyme costs nothing and repels insects and dust. Most importantly, the dirt that we excavate gets molded into the walls that surround us . . . using all, wasting nothing, costing little, lasting lifetimes. The prodigal French son has returned, and he's come to make amends, to resurrect the past, in the form of a modern mud structure. Richard hopes that this house will serve as an example to the native Senegalese that they can afford to build a house and it doesn't have to be round or utilize thatched straw roofing. It can make sense in it's usage and purpose and still be beautiful, breathtaking in fact.

This is where Richard's one true thing bridges the gap between the needs of this society and his personal need to build something beautiful and lasting. This is the crossroad where building becomes architecture, where construction becomes creation and where a house becomes a home. This is where Richard's soul comes into the equation, where the individuality of his mind's eye intersects with the trajectory of the golden rectangle, where his calculations are made, not just to keep the vaulted ceilings from collapsing, but to make sure the afternoon light comes through the half-moon windows to reflect their rounded shape on the corner-edged floors. It is where the direction of typical winds is taken into consideration, so that breezes move the light linen curtains. It is where doors open to view their adjacent arches vined with Bougainvillea, where exterior abbey corridors provide a walkway that takes us from one room to another, but on the way, makes us stop and listen for ancient voices in their monastic slopes, to be humbled by their austerity. This house will endure, for us, for our children if they so choose. For now, at this phase, there are only half walls that hint at what's to come, but they are beautifully textured and sturdy, thick as trees, cool to the touch, smelling of the ground. I love to come on site in the afternoons to congratulate the team of twelve workers for the day's progress and to walk the paths between these arches that Richard himself has built. Their framed earth bricks, cured by the sun, climb up and lean on each other for support, in the way that we do in uncertain times. Sometimes I wish these graceful arches could stay as they are, their reaching silhouettes more like ruins than beginnings. When I look at them lately, I can see that they were always meant to be here, that we were always meant to come.

Leaving the Shore

2009-02-27T01:47:00.000-08:00

"Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore" ~Andre Gide

I am not a risk-taker by nature. Most people looking at my life from the outside would say that's a ludicrous statement. I am, after all, in Senegal, Africa, having agreed to follow my husband here because he is the explorer in this relationship and I am the often reluctant, fearful follower. Where he sees beauty and potential in the open flow of living something unknown, I imagine the thickness, the dark what-ifs that we may not have control over. I suppose somewhere between us lies a balance that allows him to reign in his blind excitement and permits me to slowly explore my unwarranted fears. I trust Richard, his instincts and his talents, and so I almost always acquiesce to the bigger decisions in our lives, like coming here. I credit myself with at least recognizing the value of being led out of my comfort zone from time to time. It's the smaller, seemingly insignificant choices that always pose the bigger problem for me, the ones that are my decision alone, that don't effect anyone else. I tend to be the one who sits and watches, who stays behind (because someone has to), who reads a book and watches the fun out of the corner of my eye.

At the beginning of this week, we took a short trip to the Sine-Saloum Delta along the Saloum River, which is Senegal's only functioning area of protected waterways. We accompanied a family of eight--French friends of ours who have a vacation home not far from ours and who had visited this area before. The 4-hour drive took us through a changing landscape of arid bushland to a river surrounded by tropical forest and dotted with small, mostly unpopulated islands. Along the way, we passed flat-land salt paddies that stretched to the horizon, their white crystals collecting around the edges of the marsh basins. We decided to take the sand route that ran parallel to the cattle-laden "highway" after an hour long obstacle course of vertebrae-crushing potholes. For the kids, skidding through the sand in our 4-wheel drive Landcruiser was better than any amusement park ride. Monkeys skittered among the low bushes and, apart from a few intermittent cars, we were alone for most of the time, the other members of our caravan having passed us long ago in their modern minivan. Every hour or so, we would start to see women walking along the side of the road, indicating that we were approaching a village. As we slowly drove through these densely populated areas, the children would run to the side of the road to wave and smile at us, jumping up and down, sometimes dancing, shouting "toubab, toubab" (a non-derogatory word meaning simply "white people".) Sunny and Jamie would lean out the window, their arms stretching towards the children, sometimes grasping small fingers for a moment as we passed by. We stopped for fresh clementines, bread and Baobab fruit, otherwise know as "monkey bread", which naturally heals and prevents all sorts of stomach ailments. When we arrived in the village of Toubakouta, it was mid-day and very hot. We shed most of our clothes, keeping only what kept us decently covered and waited for the pirogue boat which would take us to Keur Bamboung, the island that would host us at its eco-lodge. After loading the boat with provisions and overnight bags, the half-hour ride to the island along the Saloum river left our group silent. We meandered through crystal waters framed by miles of lushly green mangroves as dolphins accompanied the wake of the boat. Once on the island, a donkey cart was loaded with our belongings and our tired children, while the adults and older children set off on foot for a two-mile hike to the other side of the island where the camp sat. We were welcomed at the main lodge with cold drinks and then led to our round huts made of earth bricks and thatched windows and ceilings. There are six in total, each perched on the precipice overlooking the river and equipped with a water tank, solar powered lights and surprisingly comfortable beds. Nothing to do, no sounds save the occasional human voice, tropical birds and monkeys. As Richard and the kids rested, I sat outside taking in the views and reading a book. I heard laughter coming from the river basin and decided to explore. Our friends had changed into their bathing suits and were down below splashing in the river. Because it was low tide, there was an area of open water and then a large part of the basin was exposed. I watched as they swam across the river to the delta and began to walk among the birds and close to the mangroves. On a whim, I ran back to our hut, stripped and threw my bathing suit on, then ran down the path, descended the rickety stairs to the water to join them. By the time I got there, they had all swum back and were laying on the beach, panting out their enthusiasm. Oh, I thought to myself, I missed it. Maybe next time. As they climbed the stairs and their voices faded, I walked into the water to wet my feet. I couldn't see the bottom. The air was starting to chill. I was tired. I was alone. My book was waiting. It was just as well. I looked across to the wide expanse on the other side. Was it near or was it far? The flat bottom of the river bubbling up visibly, birds hovering, some picking their way along the massive flats, mangroves swaying at the edge of the distant shore. Then I looked back down at my feet in the water. I inched in a little further. Sun descending. A small current swirling. Something darting between my ankles. Feet in the water isn't much, I thought. A small shiver. And I dove.

The Breakfast Club

2009-02-16T04:05:00.000-08:00

I have always wondered what it would be like to have a large family, a house bustling with kids, forever in my way and yet catching me on the brink of losing my patience with some antic that brings me back to laughter. I have that family in my life right now, although I know they have only been lent to me. They are not mine to keep. I call them 'The Breakfast Club"-- seven Senegalese children ranging in age from 4 to 14 who live behind our rented house on the beach. They are the various children and grandchildren of Barbakar, the guardian of our property. It's hard to say how old Barbakar is, but I'm guessing he must be in his seventies. He is tall and lean, with deep, blood-shot eyes that betray his hardships and a thin smile that attempts to overcome them. He is responsible for feeding, housing and caring for over 20 people who live with him in his small but clean house. There is constant activity emanating from those walls, people coming and going, hellos and goodbyes at the door, waving down the street to so and so, arguing amongst themselves. The din that reaches our ears is another language altogether, one mixed with foreign words and unfamiliar intonations. Sometimes it is soothing, other times disconcerting. In the interior courtyard, there are several stray cats and 10 goats that help dispose of fish carcasses, food scraps and all sorts of household debris. There are two wobbly newborn goats who I call "thing one" and "thing two" and when they bleat for their mother's milk, you'd swear you were hearing a small child's cry. Sometimes it is. Either way, my adrenaline flows and I have no way of knowing if I am responding to animal or human stress.

Who lives in Barbakar's house? His family tree is a complicated one to decipher. Each time I try to figure it out, I get lost in the labyrinth of his relations. All I know is that he's in the middle somewhere, growing old in the hot sun, providing shade to the others and spreading roots that can barely be contained. If you ask any of these children how they are related to the others they will tell you "he is my brother" or "she is my sister," although it isn't true. They also have no idea how old they are or on what day, in what month or in what year they were born. What for us is a an identifying piece of information engraved in our memory, is to them birth facts recorded in a family ledger. Because the Muslim religion condones polygamy, Barbakar has at least two wives that we know of, one of whom lives with him. Two of the oldest children are his by this wife, two appear to belong to the wife's sister, who abandoned them, and the rest are grand-children or second cousins as best we can figure. None of these details matters to any of them. They share a roof and a life and so they are family.

Their infiltration into our own small family came about gradually. In the beginning we would glimpse them all hiding behind our fence, too shy to be seen, but young enough to be heard. Their whispers would turn to screeching laughter once we turned our heads. They would run away but always come back in the afternoon, this time walking on the beach in front of our house, pointedly ignoring us. I spoke to the oldest one, Aysa, on a day when the others weren't around and asked her to come up the stairs. She shook our hands and smiled at Sunny and Jamie and left. Somehow that small gesture broke the barrier and served, in her mind, as an invitation to put the games aside and enter our lives. She is the steward, the responsible party, the leader of the pack. These children, though always clean and well-mannered, do not attend school and are left to their own devices during the day. For a 14 year old, Aysa manages very well, caring for these children, dressing, feeding and commanding good behavior. But she is still a child and I love to see that side of her, her bright laughter when she occasionally lets go of her responsibilities. But even when she plays, braiding Barbie's hair or putting the doll's small clothes back on the right way, I can see that this is not really fun for her, but rather her need to keep things orderly, her constant attempt to put things right.

Besides Aysa, according to age, the children are: Sorna, Bou, Alisahn, Nabu, Leinda, and little Djimba who is exactly Sunny's height and size. I call them The Breakfast Club, because shortly after we met Aysa, she began bringing them over every morning on the early side. They would shake our hands and then we would all sit quietly outside, taking each other in, not quite awake or comfortable with each other, culturally or linguistically. I began offering them whatever we had leftover from our breakfast: heals of bread, pieces of cheese, half a fruit, butter, jam, cereal, milk. The food would disappear within minutes and they would wake up a bit, relieved to have food in their stomachs, and the day would unfold. Over time, the silent handshakes were replaced by big smiles and small touches and eventually hugs and kisses. Once afraid to cross the threshold, they now enter without knocking. Like any friendship, time brings about deeper levels of feeling and familiarity, expectations and habit. After three months of knowing them, the once shy, silent group now moves in and out of our house individually, with total ease and confidence. They are always here. There are games, books being read, walks on the beach, fish and crabs brought back and dissected, hair being braided, clothes being washed, songs being sung, running, jumping, dancing, cuts to be healed. Jamie and Sunny have welcomed them as much, if not more, than Richard and I. They share more easily, dare more often, give without hesitation. The few occasions that they have been invited into Barbakar's home have given them an understanding of otherness, of basic needs barely being met. It's not so complicated for my own children to recognize that their friends don't have what they have and because they love them, they want to help. Sunny and Jamie, who once refused to share that last cookie between them, now hand that cookie to someone else. They have given these children their own toys, clothes and simpler things like unusual shells, rocks or flowers. There is an easy give and take that I love. Sometimes, Aysa will ask me to give her oil, flour and sugar. But she returns later that day with the Madeleines or beignets that she has baked for us. We often play Senegalese music for them on our ipod and they try to teach us impossibly limber dance moves, arms and legs flailing in all directions. Like any family, there are also lines that get crossed, barriers that are tested and must be re-established. There is always a point in the day when I tell them its time for them to go home. But before that time comes, we all mark the end of our day with a walk on the beach before the sun goes down and that's when I feel this family the most. I never know who will take my hand, who will bring me a whelk's shell, where we will go, what tomorrow will bring.

Our egos, as privileged people, tend to derive great satisfaction from helping those less fortunate by giving them what we think is missing from their lives. In most cases, foreigners who visit Senegal (or any impoverished country) feel the need to give money, to buy them what we think they need. They will ask, and because we feel something akin to survivor guilt, we will give. I've learned that this is a dangerous habit, solving only a need in ourselves to fix what feels uncomfortable. Money has little value here and the gesture is soon forgotten. It is spent too quickly because it is already owed and when it becomes expected, it becomes poisonous. What we have built with these children--relationships, love, trust--feels more like human currency and the rewards have been pure and numerous, not just for them, but more unexpectedly for us. They have given us a return to basic ways of relating, taught us that our worlds are divergent and similar at the same time, helped us to eclipse our cultural differences, and reminded us how to love each other a little bit better with a lot less complication.

Photo #1 Left to right: Aysa, Sunny, Sorna, Alisahn, Jamie, Bou

Photo #2 Jamie & Bou

For those of you on Facebook, look for more photos of The Breakfast Club on my page.

Fish Sticks: The Reason and the Recipe

2009-02-09T04:18:00.000-08:00

Before we came to Africa, where everything is distilled to its simplest form, my children believed that fish sticks came from the ocean intact, washed up on the shore waiting to be packaged in bright yellow boxes of 18 or 36 by a slicker-clad salty Sea dog. All you had to do was heat them up, put them on a plate, blow on them a bit, then eat them. Goldfish crackers also fell into this category, because, well they're fish, although both my kids had a hard time explaining why they weren't soggy or why they didn't taste like fish for that matter. Apples and oranges and all forms of produce came directly from "the grosswie", or more specifically "Fetch Mawket". All forms of cookies and cakes were made inside hollowed trees by buoyant, pudgy elves, save the exceptional cupcakes from their favorite bakery, those of course being made by winged kitchen fairies. I needed to teach them a lesson. The home-made chocolate chip cookies that I began whipping up for them elevated me to miracle-worker status in their eyes. "Wow, mom, did the elves teach you how to make these?" No, dears, a prison-bound, insider-trading megalomaniac home-maker named Martha Stewart did.

This is of course the shared fault of the proliferation of child-targeted TV ads and my laziness when it came to shopping for and preparing their meals. Actually, because I let them watch commercial laden children's shows (but never while eating!), it's entirely my fault. Shame on me. Our willful ignorance as a consumer society became glaringly apparent to me once I was removed from it. We've forgotten the origin of our food, the growing cycle, nature's generous involvement in what we put on our plates and in our bodies. Instead we rely on other people, often large profitable companies, to tell us what to eat, what's "good" for us and what to avoid. Preparing a meal has never been easier (just look for the red heart symbol in the frozen food section) and because EASY is an option nowadays in many areas of our lives, its what we fall back on most of the time. Hey, I'm not judging anyone. I am as guilty as the next person and I'm a cook. But while I painstakingly toiled over Blanquette de Veau for the adults in my life, I was dulling my children's tastebuds (and general health) with boxed protein, pre-sliced, pre-packaged veggies and treats that enticed more for the cartoon characters on the outside than the taste itself.

So being in Senegal, where a meal isn't so evident either in terms of procurement or preparation, felt like the perfect opportunity to remind myself, and educate my children, about where our food comes from. Hand in hand and without intention came a second reminder about waste and how fortunate we are to have three meals a day. One morning in a remote seaside village we were visiting, my children saw about 10 young Senegalese, resembling more a soccer team than a group of friends fishing, haul a huge net out of the ocean and pick through it, keeping the larger fish. We made a game out of searching for the unwanted, too small or not so perfect ones and hurriedly flinging them back to the ocean, thereby rescuing any number or Nemos in one single day. After our task was finished (and we took it very seriously), my children began looking at the fish that lay in the buckets and many questions ensued about non-blinking eyes, gills, fins, and tails, heads and bones. We watched another round of net fishing and headed home. That night my son requested fish sticks for dinner. Coincidence? I think not. "I don't think we can find those in Africa," I said automatically, picturing the frozen box with longing on behalf of my son who missed what was familiar. But wait! There was fish to be had, and bread crumbs, and so I decided to try a homemade version. After he wrinkled his nose because they didn't look exactly the way he remembered them, and after a fair amount of prodding, Jamie tried one and then another and after two plates full, proclaimed that they were the best he'd ever had! So maybe I can't multitask while the frozen, mass-manufactured kind heat in the oven, but in the end, it didn't take any more of my time. And I was familiar with every ingredient that went into them~monk fish instead of fish parts and no flavor enhancers. Just good 'ole fashioned food, the way we used to serve it. Hmm, I think I might be on to something. Here's the recipe. It's simple and it ain't just for kids.

AfricanEllen's Homemade "Batons de Poissons"

Serves 2 hungry kids and 2 adults

2-3 fillets of fresh Monk fish (or any other firm fish)

1 cup of flour

1-2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/2 cups plain breadcrumbs seasoned with salt & pepper (I made my own using leftover stale bread)

2 tablespoons (+) of vegetable or olive oil

lemon or lime slices

Cut fish fillets into small, thick strips about the two inches long.

Fill three shallow pans in a row of the flour, the egg and finally the breadcrumbs.

While you heat the oil over medium heat in a large saute pay, prepare the fish.

Dredge each piece in the flour, coating both sides. Shake off excess.

Now dip the floured fish in the egg to coat both sides.

Finally, dredge the fillets in the breadcrumbs.

Place the fish pieces in the hot oil until nicely browned on both sides, flipping after about 4 minutes.

Squeeze the lemon or lime over them and serve with rice and a fresh green salad.

Hook, Line and Sinker

2009-02-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

There comes a time in every relationship when the rose-colored glasses begin to fog up or get salty and gritty from constant wear. It only takes something small, some imperceptible shift and we begin to clearly see forgivable faults in that person (or place), tiny fissures in the pristine facade that we ourselves constructed. After all, no one is perfect, no place without it's secrets. And when we focus back in again, after digesting the imperfections, we may even find the new vision charming, particularly if we are in love.

My experience with Ousmann, the fisherman, was like a huge windshield wiper on my heretofore untainted view of Senegal. He came sauntering down the beach one day and introduced himself as the brother of Ballah, the cook at our neighborhood French restaurant. Ousmann provided all their fish and since I had eaten said fish on many occasions, I knew it was fresh and very tasty. He told us he made his living this way, fishing tirelessly at night and selling his catch to "a select few clients" the following morning. Wow! I felt privileged and proud, like my local connections had yielded a back-stage pass to "people in the know in Senegal." We began buying fish from him on a bi-weekly basis, and each time he came, he would linger a little longer, telling us his story. As he casually puffed on a cigarette, we learned how he came to be a fisherman (his Dad had been one and taken him out on long hauls at the tender age of four), his favorite fish to catch (Bar, because it was the most challenging) and how his life was hard (exhausting hours alone on his Pirogue boat, a single unreliable light to guide his way and his line through the perilous night waters). I wasn't sure if I appreciated his fish or his stories more, but Richard and I came to anticipate his visits. A novice fisherman, Richard relished the details of Ousmann's technique and wanted to know if he could go out on the boat with him sometime. "Inshallah" was Ousmann's only response. "God willing." So the weeks passed and we congratulated ourselves on our Mediterranean diet and our resourcefulness. I began to notice that Ousmann was a remarkably precise fisherman, catching exactly what we wanted at exactly the moment we wanted it. "Next time you catch some sole", I'd say," we'd love a few small ones." Or, "Gee we haven't had red carp in a while." "Wouldn't some monk fish be tasty." The next morning, he'd bound up the steps, catching his flip-flop on the last stair and voila . . . sole, red carp, monk fish! A talent this rare is hard to come by and so we praised him for it. He promptly raised his prices citing inflation, lack of tourists, the need to buy a new rudder for his boat. Oh, well, that's the price you pay for a personal fisherman, we rationalized.

Shortly after one of Ousmann's morning deliveries, I ran into his brother, Ballah, on the beach and thanked him for introducing us to our fisherman extraordinaire. We were so pleased with him and were awed by what an amazing talent he had. He must be so proud of his brother given the long nights Ousmann spent on his boat, sacrificing so much to follow in their father's footsteps. Judging by the smile on Ballah's face, I was touching on family honor. But that smile crept slowly into laughter and by the time I had finished touting his brother's accomplishments, he was doubled over on the ground, unable to speak. He raised his hand to indicate that he would be with me in a moment, when his fit had subsided. I wondered if Ballah was epileptic. I started to laugh along nervously, because, of course, that kid of belly-aching joy is contagious. "What?" I asked finally. "What! My face grew serious as Ballah explained between renewed bouts of laughter that their father had been a welder and that Ousmann had never been on a boat in his life. The only thing he had ever tried to catch was a woman and that had not been successful. He didn't know how to swim and the only reason he knew the difference between a monkfish and a carp was because that was what the purveyor handed him when he bought it at the fish market. And resold it to us. For twice as much.

Ousmann the fisherman promptly became Ousmann the lying, stinking bastard! I huffed and puffed my way back to our house, seething. I had been had, cheated, lied to, taken for a lousy tourist. But as I began recounting the story to Richard, I started laughing because the story was funny. And as I laughed, I forgave. Still smarting the next day, Richard confronted Ousmann and asked him why he had done it? "I thought it was what you wanted to hear," he said, and continued down the beach with his cooler full of bought, not caught, fish. I thought about the real fisherman who had provided all of our dinners and wondered if he was any where near as colorful as Ousmann. Hadn't he entertained us? Wasn't that worth something? Perhaps the romance was over, but I had believed because I had wanted to be wooed. I had no one to blame but myself and the rose-colored glasses I had willingly placed before my callow eyes. And what I had seen was a fisherman, what I had heard was his tale. Ousmann's lure had been his lore and I had fallen for it . . . hook, line and sinker.

End note: I mentioned Ousmann in an earlier post, back when I believed he was a fisherman. This picture was taken yesterday. We came to an arrangement where he still brings us fish from the market from time to time. But there are no more stories.

Marabouts and Magic and Grigris, Oh My!

2009-01-30T11:49:00.000-08:00

The Muslim culture in Senegal is steeped in mystery and mysticism, belief in the potency of magical spells and the power of thought and prayer. In essence, these ancient religious mores take root in what we know as voodoo, still practiced in many parts of the world, including the United States. For you Savannahians, think Minerva, the root doctor, in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Here, the Marabout, or religious leader, is at the highest rung of the brotherhood hierarchy and the one who is sought out to heal all sorts of ailments, ranging from a hang-nail to a life-threatening disease, emotional tribulations, general angst or even marital problems. Both physical and spiritual troubles are treated with equanimity and there is a basic recognition that the two are intrinsically linked. Body and soul are one--energy is transmitted from one to the other in a life flow that must be addressed simultaneously. To me, it seems closely related to both Chinese and Ayurvedic ways of treating the system as a whole, with a dash of magic thrown in for good measure. The Marabout is both priest and medicine man and his importance is not to be underestimated. I have witnessed many suffering Senegalese consult their religious leader before even considering a visit to the local conventional doctor. At first I thought this was simply a monetary issue. The Marabout subsists on alms and people are asked to pay what they can afford or what they feel the visit was worth. A trained physician, on the other hand, might charge the equivalent of a months' salary. This is certainly an issue for many, if not most, Senegalese, however, as I have learned, it is not the primary reason the Marabout takes precedence. It is because he is highly trusted and many times, efficient. It is because faith is stronger than medicine and it is because this is what they have been taught generation after generation.

Marabouts often prescribe a grigri, an amulet that protects the wearer from harm or brings good luck, prosperity or improved health. It is made by the Marabout himself and is considered sacred. Grigris are typically encased in cloth or hide and strung on a custom-fit cord that is worn around the waist. However, it can also be made loose to plant in the ground to guard property and bring about positive consequences. The grigri contains a concoction specific to its purpose and person and may contain any combination of herbs, oils, stones, bones, roots, hair, or grave dirt. Most are made to bring about peace, although I am told they can be quite effective in warding off or hexing the occasional adversary. Now that you have a bit of background, here is my personal story about a Marabout, some magic and a grigri.

A few weeks ago, a very close friend passed away suddenly in the middle of the night and when I learned that she had died, it rendered me taciturn, dumbfounded and depressed. Alternately the tears would pour, my heart would pound, then barely seem to beat. I felt heart-broken and very far away. When I learned the details of her funeral, my friend Hester helped me book a flight back to the States and my departure was set. I had to act. I had to move. I had to go there and say goodbye. It felt like a step I could make. The flight was scheduled to leave at 5:00am the next morning. My husband was sad for me and because he loved Leah in his own way. He was hit hard by the precarious nature of life and nervous about my flying across the ocean, twice. So he took me to see a Marabout and I didn't resist. Our friend Zorro drove us out into the country to see "the old man", a well-known, hard to get an appointment with, mystic Marabout who had helped him many times. As the villages became fewer and farther apart and the Baobob trees replaced electrical poles, I fell asleep with my daughter on my lap, red dust settling in on our hair through the open window. When the car pulled to a stop, we were surrounded by goats and curious children. It's very possible they had never seen a white person, let alone a family of four. They tried to follow us as we went inside a rickety door. We passed through a courtyard full of people and were asked to take off our shoes as a sign of respect before entering the room of the Marabout. Zorro pulled the curtain back and I saw the old man sitting on the floor on a prayer rug. He wore a pale blue "boubou", a typical religious robe and a white head cap. As he gestured for us to sit in front of him on a brightly colored woven mat, his feet were curled under him in such a way that I thought his legs had been amputated. But then he rocked forward to greet us and I knew he had just been sitting this way for a long, long, time. He looked at us for a suspended moment and then he began to pray, repeatedly fingering a string of beads and chanting in whispered Wolof. I scanned the room: it was his personal bedroom. Far from the somber sanctuary I had envisioned, I took in garishly embroidered red poly curtains at the window, green satin sheets on his bed and a Jimmy Hendrix poster taped to the crumbling wall with blue duct tape. It was the first time I had felt the urge to laugh in the two days since I had lost my friend. It was just too absurd. I felt his eyes on me and he finally spoke. Zorro translated in French: "I am sorry for your loss. Your friend is at peace." Now there were tears and I began to listen. He told me that I would depart and return to Senegal in comfort and safety and that I would meet someone, (or perhaps more than one person) at the funeral who was meant to cross my path. I would heal and my friend's spirit would guide me. He saw nothing but love and longevity in our small family, prosperity in our business and goodness in our hearts. My children listened intently, although they understood none of what was said. It was his voice that commanded their attention. It was both low and loving and in combination with his soft sunken eyes, let them know they should be quiet. They sat with their legs tucked under them, hands folded in their laps, mimicking his posture, in a near trance. After a long period of praying, he finally spoke to Zorro and began to make grigris for us. He reached behind him into several dirty plastic bags, pulling out pinches of this, finger fulls of that, carefully placing the mixtures in small sachets of waxed paper. He then sealed each one in his hand and spoke to it, or at it, I suppose infusing it with his intent. Isn't that what magic is? The smells were foreign and a bit disconcerting, but I didn't ask. Now it was time to leave. I bowed, feeling this man merited such a gesture. Richard paid the Marabout something which brought a smile to his face and he took my hand, placed the grigri in it and wished me well. I thanked Zorro and my husband because somehow I did feel better. I held the talisman in my hand and felt that someone with a connection to a higher power had understood my fears and my pain and had conveyed them to the Universe, or God, or Allah and had received confirmation in return that I was worth being protected.

Teranga and The Communal Dish

2009-01-27T03:04:00.000-08:00

"Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly" . . . M.F.K. Fisher

I realize this is starting to resemble a food blog, something that will not be lost on those who know me well. I am certainly a foodie and a passionate cook. However, this entry is more a glimpse into the Senegalese culture than a study of their kitchens, although the two are closely intertwined. "Teranga" in Wolof means "hospitality, brotherhood and the art of sharing" and the Senegalese are famous for it. They welcome foreigners and kin alike into their country, their homes and their hearts. Homelessness does not exist in Senegal (except in rare cases of mental illness or drug abuse) due to the two principles they prize most: family and generosity. There will always be someone willing to help someone else, bring them into their home, feed and care for them. Although food is sometimes scarce and poverty continues to varying degrees, few go unfed. The concept of a small nuclear family is unheard of, the average household feeding as many as 15-30 people, including parents, children, grandparents, cousins, brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles. When a meal is prepared, there must always be enough to feed the unexpected friend, religious leader, village elder or passerby who happens to wander in for the meal. The solution is the communal dish, prepared with a "stretch" base of rice or cous cous and served with vegetables, spices and usually fish, chicken or beef. Since I arrived, I have been fortunate enough to sample the communal dish in the homes of several new found friends, but it wasn't until Richard and I hosted lunch at our house that I truly understood how spiritual this meal was. Several weeks ago, we decided to invite the Earth House team, their children and a few friends for a Sunday of rest and repast at the beach. I immediately thought of potato salad, chips and salsa, burgers 'n dogs on the grill--you know, a good ole' fashioned BBQ. As I was making my shopping list, Richard looked over my shoulder and let out a little yelp. "These people wouldn't know what to do with a hot dog," he said. "Besides, most of them are Muslim, they don't eat pork." Oh well, so much for showing them a slice of Americana! I felt deflated until he explained to me that it would be much more a statement of appreciation if we provided them with something familiar-- a communal dish served with a side of Teranga. OK, I was on board. Just one small problem. I didn't know how to make it! Our friend Zorro's wife, Ami (pictured above), came to the rescue. She agreed to "let me watch" the lengthy preparation of a typical dish called "Tieboudienne" made with fish, root vegetables and lots of garlic served over copious amounts of spiced rice. As I helped Ami peel carrots and Manioc, I asked her why the communal dish was so important. She explained her ingrained belief that food is meant to be shared, that a meal feeds both the body and the spirit and that eating in numbers only increased the benefits. The more people who ate from the dish, the more grace bestowed upon it's partakers. How cool is that? When Emeril asks his Food Network audience, "Can you feel the love?", he is barely scratching the surface of this concept.

Ami spent the entire morning peeling, sauteing, boiling, simmering and watching over her enormous pot with all the love and attention of a gardener tending to seedlings. The result was a meal I will never forget. It was served in large, shallow bowls flanked by eager eaters hunkered down on their haunches. This meal is usually eaten with the fingers, but after several sad attempts and a few snickers from my neighbors, someone handed me a large spoon and I dug in with fervor. But what struck me more than the intense flavors was the camaraderie and joy that bubbled up to the surface. We all felt it--all 25 of us. As predicted, there were lots of leftovers which we promptly delivered to a nearby dwelling less fortunate than ours. Giving back a little Teranga sure felt good.

Home Delivery

2009-01-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

I lived in New York City for 16 years of my life so I know all about home delivery, especially of the food ilk. On my very first evening in my very first apartment, alone and 21, I was petrified, stupefied and hungry. I took the elevator to the lobby of my apartment to talk to the one person who looked approachable, my doorman (look for more about doormen in a later post!) "Where is a good place to get something to eat around here?" I asked. He pulled out a large manila envelope from under the front desk and handed it to me. "You had a long, busy day," he said. "Why don't you order something in?" Those words and that stack of menus changed my life forever. My understanding of home delivery had been limited to the occasional late-night, oops forgot to eat, oops drank too much beer, oops can't remember who I made out with, Domino's Pizza in college. But this, this was different. Grilled Cheese and Tomato? Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Mexican, burgers, blintzes, bagels, eggs at 10:00pm? It was a dream come true for a tired working girl . . . which is why I gained 10 lbs. in my first six months in New York. Big City, Big Butt!

The stretch of beach in front of our house in N'gaparou, Senegal, offers an all together healthier daily delivery option. At about 9:00am, Aisha and Sarah stroll down to our house, always beautifully dressed and smiling, carrying bright, plastic buckets filled with fresh fruits and vegetables on their heads. I usually don't see their approach, but hear them call to me in a lovely lilting duet "Ellen, Na nga def?" It's my favorite moment in the day, one that has become a familiar ritual, to see them smiling, exchange greetings and news (Aisha's cousin got married last week), and choose what strikes me on that particular day. They almost always have perfectly ripe pineapple, the reddest grapefruit and gigantic melons, along with small gold potatoes, non-waxed cucumbers, petite and delicate onions. They are the most expensive "marchands" because they have the freshest produce. However, I hand them the equivalent of only about $8 and watch them gracefully bend their lower bodies in order to set the baskets back on their heads. With a promise to see me tomorrow, god willing, with straight backs and long floor-length skirts, they perform a dance, as their arms reach up to balance their wares, and then, always to my disbelief, they remove their hands and walk down the stairs, swinging their arms, with nary a worry on their strong, slim shoulders.

I wonder what Ousmann, the fisherman, will bring me today?