It could just be another mefloquine morning, but I woke up to dreams flying around my bedroom, and my heart feeling heavy with the weight of two years in front of me in Senegal, in Mouit, in this very hut of mine. Fortunately, Tom Robbins has been keeping me realistic about putting too much onus on anything other than the present with wise words from Only Cowgirls Get the Blues:
“For the most part, however, Sissy had joined the ranks of the Unhappy Waiters and Killers of Time. Oh God, there are so many of them in our land! Students who can’t be happy until they’ve graduated, servicemen who can’t be happy until they’re discharged, single folks who can’t be happy until they’re married, workers who can’t be happy until they’re retired, adolescents who can’t be happy until they’re grown, ill people who can’t be happy until they’re well, failures who can’t be happy until they succeed, restless who can’t be happy until they get out of town; and in most cases, vice versa, people waiting, waiting for the world to begin.”
Lord knows I don’t want to be part of that mix. Besides, my thoughts were quickly interrupted by the morning orchestra of barnyard noises, crackly radio broadcasts and routine loogy-hacking by my father Adama just outside my door. Sleeping-in at my compound means staying in bed until 8AM, and I made it just shy of 7:30AM.
One of the sheep in the livestock pen at the other corner of the yard just didn’t want to stop whining, and I can’t say I could blame him. The poor guy has all of 12 inches of slack in the rope tied around his front leg and spends most the day stepping back and forth, side to side, exercising his hoof’s worth of freedom until the slaughter next month for Tabaski.
I think it was Bernard Malamud who postulated that the human spirit or character is strengthened by suffering. I think he was right. Suffering, or at least quiet tolerance for discomfort is a theme in my village that the people offer with a smile and happy “How are you?” and the sheep offer with a “Baah” described above.
My sister Marietou, for example, the one who has been complaining about a toothache for the last week, finally showed me her tooth and yikes! Between two of her top left molars, a hole big enough to fit a pea into gaped wide open with decay, her nerve hanging out in the breeze. My first thought after seeing this was more a gut reaction, a wince in fact, than an actual thought. My second thought was that if I have children and they ever wine about going to the dentist, I’m going to smack them. Marietou’s aunt Fatou prepared a tonic with some sort of root mixed with water for her to drink. Medicine, not surprisingly, is called “garab” or literally “tree” in Wolof.
After lunch I decided that I needed to get a little time alone and went to the park. I walked along the river and found a nice spot where, after taking a good swim, I dreamed up money making schemes and life scenarios for when I get back to the US. Meanwhile a guy about my age appeared out of the bush to go drift-net fishing, the extra slack of his line held in his teeth while he threw the net into the current. With every couple casts, he carefully picked out one or two small fish and put them in a cloth sack tied around his waste, keeping his catch fresh until going to market. Snapping a photo of him, I felt a little guilty. He’s not some novelty or zoo animal after all, but I wanted to remember him and the contrast between him working in the water that I use to recreate and relax.
As I returned to my village, I passed by three older fishermen who were sitting under the shade of a thorny tree on the beach, drinking attaya. One of them was carefully sewing his pants where they had ripped, one attended to the bed of coals in the sand heating the tea, and the other man, the oldest, looked at me with a piercing gaze that only an old man can produce. His eyes had a ring of blue around the cornea, not a normal site and one I couldn’t help but stare at as he sized me up.
We talked about how the fish in the river were smaller and fewer than before the canal had been built, and the men complained that most of their friends had gone to Dakar or the Gambia to fish or find work as a result. I asked if they had a boat, and they motioned to what looked like a miniature pirogue, a model, maybe a boat for kids to play with. But splintered and weathered, the five foot vessel was obviously a work horse. In the two seconds it took for me to turn and look at the boat, I found myself conflicted about my thought earlier in the morning of trying to get a deal from the owner of the nearby campement, the ZebraBar, to see if I could rent his windsurfing gear. Fisherman number two handed me my glass of attaya while the old man told me that it was good I am here to work because these are poor people and they need help.
“For the most part, however, Sissy had joined the ranks of the Unhappy Waiters and Killers of Time. Oh God, there are so many of them in our land! Students who can’t be happy until they’ve graduated, servicemen who can’t be happy until they’re discharged, single folks who can’t be happy until they’re married, workers who can’t be happy until they’re retired, adolescents who can’t be happy until they’re grown, ill people who can’t be happy until they’re well, failures who can’t be happy until they succeed, restless who can’t be happy until they get out of town; and in most cases, vice versa, people waiting, waiting for the world to begin.”
Lord knows I don’t want to be part of that mix. Besides, my thoughts were quickly interrupted by the morning orchestra of barnyard noises, crackly radio broadcasts and routine loogy-hacking by my father Adama just outside my door. Sleeping-in at my compound means staying in bed until 8AM, and I made it just shy of 7:30AM.
One of the sheep in the livestock pen at the other corner of the yard just didn’t want to stop whining, and I can’t say I could blame him. The poor guy has all of 12 inches of slack in the rope tied around his front leg and spends most the day stepping back and forth, side to side, exercising his hoof’s worth of freedom until the slaughter next month for Tabaski.
I think it was Bernard Malamud who postulated that the human spirit or character is strengthened by suffering. I think he was right. Suffering, or at least quiet tolerance for discomfort is a theme in my village that the people offer with a smile and happy “How are you?” and the sheep offer with a “Baah” described above.
My sister Marietou, for example, the one who has been complaining about a toothache for the last week, finally showed me her tooth and yikes! Between two of her top left molars, a hole big enough to fit a pea into gaped wide open with decay, her nerve hanging out in the breeze. My first thought after seeing this was more a gut reaction, a wince in fact, than an actual thought. My second thought was that if I have children and they ever wine about going to the dentist, I’m going to smack them. Marietou’s aunt Fatou prepared a tonic with some sort of root mixed with water for her to drink. Medicine, not surprisingly, is called “garab” or literally “tree” in Wolof.
After lunch I decided that I needed to get a little time alone and went to the park. I walked along the river and found a nice spot where, after taking a good swim, I dreamed up money making schemes and life scenarios for when I get back to the US. Meanwhile a guy about my age appeared out of the bush to go drift-net fishing, the extra slack of his line held in his teeth while he threw the net into the current. With every couple casts, he carefully picked out one or two small fish and put them in a cloth sack tied around his waste, keeping his catch fresh until going to market. Snapping a photo of him, I felt a little guilty. He’s not some novelty or zoo animal after all, but I wanted to remember him and the contrast between him working in the water that I use to recreate and relax.As I returned to my village, I passed by three older fishermen who were sitting under the shade of a thorny tree on the beach, drinking attaya. One of them was carefully sewing his pants where they had ripped, one attended to the bed of coals in the sand heating the tea, and the other man, the oldest, looked at me with a piercing gaze that only an old man can produce. His eyes had a ring of blue around the cornea, not a normal site and one I couldn’t help but stare at as he sized me up.
We talked about how the fish in the river were smaller and fewer than before the canal had been built, and the men complained that most of their friends had gone to Dakar or the Gambia to fish or find work as a result. I asked if they had a boat, and they motioned to what looked like a miniature pirogue, a model, maybe a boat for kids to play with. But splintered and weathered, the five foot vessel was obviously a work horse. In the two seconds it took for me to turn and look at the boat, I found myself conflicted about my thought earlier in the morning of trying to get a deal from the owner of the nearby campement, the ZebraBar, to see if I could rent his windsurfing gear. Fisherman number two handed me my glass of attaya while the old man told me that it was good I am here to work because these are poor people and they need help.
posted by Nat Parker | 3:24 AM
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