Reason #1 for wanting to go home, my beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful girlfriend Erica Maharg


In the park with some of my counterparts


Adama's first wife, my mom Fatou


Adama's second wife, my mom Tabara


Courtyard on Goree Island; the point of departure for thousands of slaves sent to Europe and America


Boys in my village playing in the garbage


Pont Faidherbe in Saint Louis at night


same guy today

These are some of my biggest projects with the park. A 30th anniversary commemorative poster and a six panel brochure that advertises the businesses and ervices offered by the Eco Gardes. (These are the DRAFTS). I worked to pull together the photos, write the text, and coordinate with my friend and colleague from the Sierra Club, Erika Alabarka, whose skills as an artist and graphic designer are quite simply excellent. The Eco Gardes and I are working on a marketing plan for the park where we will distribute the posters and brochures to travel agencies, hotels, and restaurants throughout Dakar and Saint Louis. We also hope to use this material to start a website for the park.

Another day in Saint Louis to go to the internet and connect with the greater world, only 300cfa for an hour of surfing. Getting change for any bill over 2000 cfa can be a pipe dream in Senegal and with only a 5000cfa bill in my pocket, I pay Abdoulaye the attendant up front, apologizing for not having anything smaller. My hour goes by in a flash, the air conditioning of the internet café putting me into a slight trance, and I gather my bag to get my change and go. Abdoulaye is conspicuously absent. The security guard tells me to wait just a minute, that he’ll be right back.

Now if there’s one certainty in Senegal it’s that if someone says a person is coming now or will be right back, what they really mean is, “Sorry pal, he’ll be back sometime in the next hour if he comes back at all.” And waiting, no matter how much fuss you make, is all you can do. There’s no other employee, no manager to ask for, just Abdoulaye, and he’s gone home for lunch with my 5000cfa ($10) in his pocket. I’m sure it’s not intentional, but I have to wait. The situation brings to mind a book called The Village of Waiting, written by Dan Becker, a former PCV in Togo who described what it means to “wait a little longer” for me as I prepared to go to Senegal. The security guard senses my impatience and asks if I’m in a rush. As it turns out I’m not, but it’s the point that matters isn’t it? I launch into a diatribe questioning how Senegal can ever expect to be competitive in a modern world economy when this business is the standard just as Abdoulaye walks in. I look at him and smile.

“Oh Nat! If forgot your change. Wait just a second, I’ll be right back.” This is 25 minutes after my hour on the computer had expired. I think the vein in my forehead must have popped out because Abdoulaye looked at me and said not to worry about it, that I could pay him some other time when I had 300cfa in change.

Stepping into the oven of outside, I shake my head out of habit at my inconvenience, but I’m 10 ½ months beyond being incredulous anymore. Before heading for the garage and back to the village, I decide I deserve an ice cream and cold drink. I’ve never had a sweet tooth, but the attaya turns you into a junky and it was the “ice” more than the “cream” that I’m really after. I head over to the Leader Price, the refrigerated boutique wonderland attached to a Mobil station, and Senegal’s closest thing to a Quicky Mart.

My first experience with a Leader Price was in Thies during my first two months in country. I walk into the shop, at home in the familiarity of junk food, drink cases, and fluorescent light. Then I hear, “Kai an!—Come eat lunch!” In the corner, the cashier and two gas station attendants are sitting on the floor around a bowl of thiebujen (rice and fish), business at a halt for lunch. Their polite gestures for me to join them are somehow lost in a culture shocked moment where I imagine three American Mobil station employees eating thieb and telling me to come eat lunch with them next to the bucket of Red Bull.

My vanilla ice cream bar with chocolate almond frosting is melting fast as I walk towards the garage and I get brain freeze through my teeth from eating it too fast. It doesn’t matter, freezing is better than boiling. The cars on the street start getting backed up and I notice a large group of people heading my way. A Catholic funeral procession it turns out, walking in the middle of the street behind a pick up truck with a coffin in the back. The people in the procession are block traffic as they go, unphased by the honk of a few frustrated drivers and greet each other as they make their way down the street. My ice cream all but gone, I look along the curb for an imaginary public trashcan and instead make eye contact with a crazy man crouched on the sidewalk masturbating. Slightly horrified, I pick up the pace and realize I’ve seen the same sight in Washington, DC. I think to myself it might just be easier to be mentally ill in Senegal than in our nation’s capital.

Back in the village that afternoon, I stop by the Zebrabar, my neighborhood campement that serves that cold treat that ice cream will never be—beer. I’m enjoying my book over a Gazelle, the bottle’s generous sweat being absorbed by my cardboard coaster. A few other customers are on the veranda, a Frenchman and his Senegalese wife with a friend, and two British guys about my age who have rented bicycles from Saint Louis and have made a day out of it. A blue Volkswagon bus with German plates pulls in with a big yellow sun and puffy, happy clouds painted on it. I hear the driver, the Dad of a family on vacation I guess, struggle in French to ask on of the employees where they can camp. They make a loop around the grounds, pick a spot, drive into it, then somehow decide against it and back out, moving a few yards further away. The mother and kids hop out and start to unload the van as the dad heads over to the counter to pay and get squared away.

Over the sound of the mother speaking to a teenage daughter and son, I hear a strange grunting and hissing followed by what almost sounded like a baby’s belly laugh. The othe customers are all staring in the direction of the van and I hear the mother yell, “Alexandra, cum heya!” I see a second daughter lumbering away from the van. She is disfigured, clearly developmentally disabled, maybe 13 or 14 years old. Her face is red and her features crowded. She is on a long green leash and I can see she’s wearing a diaper beneath her shorts. I swallow. Ndeye, one of the Zebrabar employees, calls me over and asks me to translate for the father. His English is much better than his French and I learn that he has always dreamed of driving from their home in Munich to Dakar and back. Two weeks into their month long adventure and they are spending a night or two in Mouit on their way back up to Mauritania. I explain the prices and facilities to the man and sit back down to my beer.

Another employee named Omar passes by and I stop him to talk about an idea he had mentioned to me about designating a landfill for the Gandiol region where we live, in a section of the sand quarry outside of the village. Martin, the owner of the Zebrabar, had showed up to my house a week earlier as I was having coffee, saying he needed my help to get his dump truck out of the mud. It had rained quite a bit the night before and the dump truck, a heavy duty 4x4 vehicle, had sunk to the axle in an area Martin passed through regularly on his way to the quarry for loads of sand. I helped him set a cable and winch to pull the beast out of the mud, and then followed him in his Land Rover to the quarry and back to the Zebrabar. Peace Corps forbids volunteers from driving but I wasn’t going to leave him in a bind. Omar road shotgun with me that day and remarked how amazing it was that every Toubab knows how to drive.

Back at the bar, Omar and I agree to talk further about his garbage plan with the Eco Guards at the park. I’m back to my beer again for ten minutes until he calls me over to translate again with the German family as they’re setting up their tents.

“Mansour I want you to tell them that I don’t know what is wrong with their daughter, but I know that if they take her to the marabout in Touba that he will be able to heal her.” Omar repeats this in French to make sure I’ve understood him. As he speaks, the father and mother look on expectantly, waiting for me to translate.

The transition from Omar speaking to me translating feels like an eternity passing in my mind. In the space of that disparate moment I am almost outside myslef admiring from a distance the awkward, culturally discordant dilemma in which I have been inescapably caught. What do you do in a situation like this? Clearly I don’t want to offend the parents or have Omar offend them, but he is genuine in his belief about the power of his marabout. At the same time I don’t want to insult Omar by explaining that in Western culture it is inappropriate to broach this type of subject. I also don’t want to betray everyone by lying or modifying what Omar has said. So I say it word for word as I feel blood rush to my face. The father responds defensively that Alexandra suffers from a genetic disorder that has afflicted her since birth. The mother calmly eyes her husband, nodding at an explanation I know they have given hundreds of times. I look down for a moment as the father speaks. My eyes trace designs in the sand, but I can see the father, Omar, and Alexandra all at the same time with perfect clarity. Did I do the right thing?

Before translating for Omar I try to explain to the father that the Senegalese believe without a doubt in the power of mysticism and the marabouts who practice it. This is a culture who wear “gris-gris;” talismen and charms to protect them from evil spirits and bodily harm. The Senegalese also are not raised to value “tact” as we know it. If you are fat they will say, “Man, you are really fat,” without reservation or shame. If I ever have a pimple on my face, people will come up to me, point their finger at it and say “Why do you have that button on your face Mansour?” In other words, while I was shrinking in embarrasment at Omar’s comment, he was simply acting normally and trying to help.

The parents, I hope, don’t take offense, and I try to remark at the differences in culture, laughing a bit sheepishly. When I translate for Omar I try to explain that for Toubabs it is taboo to speak so directly about sensitive issues, but he doesn’t grasp it. I try to rephrase what I’ve said but I start thinking to myself that I sort of agree with the Senegalese approach more. Maybe sensitive or taboo subjexcts wouldn’t be as embarrassing if we spoke about them.

Difficult or uncomfortable moments I think are often the most valuable, and I feel lucky to be be able to grasp the two perspectives to this situation in my culturally and linguistically hybrid position. As if to confirm my unique footing between my two worlds, I am back to my beer chatting with the British guys when the three women from the kitchen call my name. They have spread a mat on the ground with a bowl of thieb and even though I’m not hungry, they won’t accept no for an answer, so I excuse myself from the conversation and take a spot around the bowl. “Eat up Mansour, you’re one of the family.”

Last night was tougher than most. I crawled under the mosquito net covered in the usual sheen of slimy sweat and sand around 10PM. The air was absolutely thick, utterly stagnant. My sheet and pillow case absorbed the stream of moisture yet another night without complaint as I wrestled my way to sleep.

I’m in a big plane, maybe on my coming flight to Tanzania. The take-off is incredibly vertical, more like a rocket shooting into the air than an airplane. Suddenly the plane is falling at an equally abrupt angle, only we’re not crashing. We have to go back to the airport for something, something I’ve forgotten.

I wake sweating even more profusely than when I lay down, feeling like I am going to be sick. My stomach was the airplane and I parted the bug net to make my way to the toilet. I shivered as I removed the cover to the hole and counted the drops of sweat that fell from my nose into the darkness. I set my headlamp down next to me as I felt my dinner coming up. As I started to throw up I had the distinct feeling that it was a shame that I was losing the beef and rice that only a few hours earlier had been such a treat. Too much oil for the system, maybe the meat wasn’t the best. I poured water down the hole hoping I had enough in my storage bucket to refill the basin. I sat down on my cement stoop feeling better but still wishing someone could have been there to ask me I was okay. The stars winked at me and I laughed at my want for reassurance. The wind picked up and broke the humid air with a cool authority I was happy to submit to. My shutters flapped back and forth with the gusts and I shut them reluctantly, disappointed that the breeze that brought relief to my stagnant night also brought its own set of complications.

I wake the next day find out that my complications weren’t without company. A thief came to the village in the middle of the night with a gun and robbed Pa Fall, one of the wealthiest men in the area and the father of Modou, our local charettier, or horse cart driver, a guy that asks me to help him with getting a visa to the US whenever I see him. The thief held the old man up at gunpoint demanding his stash of money. As he took off, Modou chased after him and the robber fired his gun twice, grazing Modou’s shoulder and foot, but not seriously injuring him Thank God. The robber made off with a purported 16 million cfa, over $30,000. I learn all of this when my mother Fatou wakes me up from my difficult night, babbling her way through the story twice so I can understand clearly.

Only a few days ago Modou had smiled at me from behind his attaya rotted teeth asking me if I had been to the US embassy for him yet. I’ve tried to explain to him that since September 11th, it is increasingly difficult for people to get in to the country, particularly those with no money, no English, and no prospects. Though I’m sure the US government would officially disagree, it probably doesn’t help that Modou has an obviously Muslim name. Not to be discouraged, he put his hands over his heart and tells me that he was physically in pain at the news of the attacks on the US. He said he didn’t care if he had the chance to go to Spain, France, or Italy, that he wanted to go to the US of A or nowhere.

Poor Modou. Was my episode the night before somehow related to what happened with the thief? I couldn’t help but wonder. My gut, literally and figureatively, knew something was amiss. That a robbery at gunpoint would occur in my tranquil, unelectrified village with someone I know and speak to actually shot blows my mind. It is ironic because my father Adama and I had been having an ongoing conversation about his desire to buy a gun to protect the house and family from robbers. I kept telling him that I couldn’t believe there were robbers in Mouit, that most people were poor, and what would someone take, a sheep? Sure enough, only a few weeks earlier, someone had stolen three sheep from a Pulaar family in Ricote, the village behind Mouit; and low and behold one of our neighbors was sitting on a small fortune. It turns out that Pa Fall has many fields in cultivation and has hired help or field hands like Ibrahima and Alle who lived right next to me in our family compound. These workers would have been most likely to know that the old men didn’t use a bank, or so the villagers suspect.

It makes me wonder if a thief ever targetted the one American in Mouit, would he believe that I’m actually broke?

I went to the bridal reception of Aminta Tall tonight, one of the Eco Guards I work with at the park. She is 22, beautiful, and in school most of the year in Thies where her fiance works. Senegalese bridal receptions are a common oddity worth seeing. The bride is done up in white satin with more make up than a drag-queen, hair mesh or wig attached perfectly. The whole village it seemed was decked out in fancy clothes and seated or standing in the back of the local elementary school. A banquet table lined with white plastic chairs for the bridal party was adorned with cans of soda, vases of plastic flower bouquets, and apples stuck with lollypops and toothpicked olives and bread. Music was blasting at its normal Space Shuttle take-off decibel level, and I joined the other Eco Guards near the front of the room as we waited for Aminta and her entourage to arrive. There were about 150 people in the room, me as usual the only Westerner, the only whitey.

In situations like these I often get that all eyes on you sensation I would experience conducting a press conference or giving a speech in the US. It’s not nerve racking or odd, but certainly noticeable. Aminta shows up with five girlfriends in black dresses and two photographers. I am next to the reception table and as the group lines up for an initial set of photos, the lead photographer motions for me to join the group, not on the side but right next to Aminta in the center. I whisper hello and congratulations to her as I maneuver my way next to her. She is serious and for the most part unsmiling, something I’ve noticed all brides are like during these events. I wonder if this has some root in tradition or if being herded around for hundreds of photos throughout the evening is simply unpleasant.

Photos done, I make my way to the side and notice the photographer eyeing me again as he speaks to the DJ. He approaches and asks if I can help open the event. I say “What?” and he just nods and says, “Hang On.” He grabs Aminta and then motions me over to join her. I’m wondering this whole time “Where the hell is her fiance?” but it would seem it’s all about the bride. Aminta puts her arms around me and suddenly the theme song to “Titanic” starts playing and apparently it’s time for me to become Lenonardo DiCaprio and slow dance with her in front of the crowd. I can’t help but blush and smile, Aminta’s ridid expression be damned. But she catches the bug and starts giggling. The crowd applauds and cheers, and evidently the evening is officially now under way. I am led off stage by another Eco Guard and watch as all the the audience begins to line up for photos with Aminta, each person handing her an evelope with money in it. I slipped her some cash when we had our photo taken but didn’t think to wrap it up. I’ll know better next time. A cup of pineapple soda and a piece of cake round out my appearance at the reception and I head home for dinner.

After sweating my way through the post office and hoping “Inshallah” that my package to my girlfriend Erica will arrive unscathed, I turn the corner to the “Restaurant de la Poste” for a plate of rice and beef. The waitress greets me with a smirk as I settle into a plastic chair, the only customer in the room. I ask her how much a plate is and she says 1500cfa. I know the price is less than a 1000cfa and scoff at her saying, “How much is it really?” She says 1000cfa. I know immediately that she’s lying. Suddenly my hunger, heat, and fatigue at the morning’s efforts bubble up because I know intuitively and by plenty of experience that she is trying to take advantage of me. I walk outside to the post office guards who I know eat here on a daily basis and ask them how much a plate is. They look between one another and the head guard says I should ask the owner. Immediately I’m aware that they are suddenly in on the rip-off, not wanting to contradict the inflated price they must know I’ve been quoted.

I walk not back into the dining room, but straight into the kitchen, livid. There sits a big woman with a bowl of beef in sauce between her legs, the calm air of her everyday routine running the place not broken by my sudden appearance in her kitchen. She sees I’m upset and says the meal is 800cfa, to go have a seat. I grit my jaw intent on walking out, but I’m starving and the chance at eating something other than fish overrides my anger. I sit down and see that the waitress has already served a Senegalese man that sat down when I was outside. She isjoking with him about lying to me about the cost of my lunch. I lose it hearing this and call her a “Bitch” in plain old English, then go on to tell her in Wolof that discrimination is no way to improve business and that Allah saw what she did and will judge her for it. Invoking Islam was one thing, but I took it a step further and with my voice raised proceeded to tell her that I was going to see a Marabout, or Senegalese leader of one of the Muslim brotherhoods, and have a curse put on her. This is not an uncommon practice in the quasi animist breed of Senegalese Islam. She gasped at this and returned with my plate, not looking me in the eyes. “Bon Appetit” I say to the guy at the other table and eat away my anxiety bite by bite.

I grab a cab to the garage where I will get a bush taxi from Saint Louis back to my village. The “Bongo Garage” is a wasteland next to the railroad tracks with sewage lying stagnant between rows of white diesel spewing buses and orange/black Renault bush taxis. I stop at a vendor’s cart to get my family a “sariche” or gift to bring back from the city, a tradition that I never forget, particularly since my dad is village chief. A box of tea, a kilo of sugar, and a mosquito coil do the trick and I’m off to the corner where a set of familiar drivers and Garage bosses sit on a mat in the shade of a thatched lean-to. They all know me and invite me to sit with them until another passenger arrives and the taxi is full. One of the drivers, a guy about my age but probably 6’4” and 225 pounds asks me how my sex life is and instead of shaking my outstretched hand, grabs my crotch. I smack him and tell him he’s dirty and not normal to which the rest of the group agree in unison with laughter and nods. A girl next to me I don’t know starts pulling off my silver bracelet, saying, “Give this to me, give me a present!” I glare at her and she settles for hassling me to buy a bag of her beignets, the closest thing in Senegal to a donut hole.

The last passenger arrives and it’s time to go. It’s a Pulaar man with a goat on a rope. He and the driver wrestle the goat into the truck, slamming the lid three times before it finally closes and the bleating of bloody murder is silenced. Next to the Pulaar man is a woman breastfeeding her uncomfortable baby. Her shirt is pulled up over both breasts, maybe for an easier switch from one swollen nipple to the other. Our last passenger is an old man passing prayer bead after prayer bead through his calloused fingers, pronouncing a good old “Alhumdulilay” or “Thanks be to God” as we get under way. The driver honks at a dirty 10 year old boy wearing Osh Kosh Begosh overalls and nothing else, awkwardly maneuvering a bicycle twice his size. My mind flashes to childhood days of BMX dirtbikes and shiny new mountain bikes. I’m not sure if it’s guilt or nostalgia or some other emotion I feel, it all burns away quickly as the sweat rolls into my eyes. As we get out of town the driver passes one of the local police officers with wary eyes, but he’s lucky, the cop is busy extorting a bribe from an unlucky truck driver. These “traffic stops” are so routine that the efficiency of moving beyond presenting the presiding officer your lisence and registration to 1000cfa would impress any other would be extortionist in the different levels of the government’s bureaucracy.

I get to Mouit in one piece and my blood pressure drops. The village is not without its own set of challenges and annoyances, but they are slower and less in your face. I stop by the local hardware store to pick up some cement so that I can fix my cracked toilet, which is just a hole encased in porcelain that I squat over. The other night I dropped the metal disc I use to cover the hole when three giant cockroaches escaped from underneath, one making an impressive dash up my forearm and almost under my shirt. Luckily the shards of porcelain fit like a jigsaw so I should be okay. I spend the rest of the afternoon reading more of Jupiter’s Travels and imagine my own adventure around the world on a motorcycle.

I stopped by Abdullah’s silver shop to pick out a bracelet for my mom and was embraced with open arms and a wide smile. “My brother, my brother, how are you?” I tell Abdullah of my upcoming trip to Tanzania with my mom and he insists that I pick any bracelet and accept it as his gift to “our mother.” “This is a pleasure for me Nat, this is what makes me happy. You are not a friend. For a friend I make a good price, but for a brother, I cannot accept your money.” We switch between French and Wolof as we catch up on the events of the last month. He yells at his son from time to time in Hassanya, the dialect of Arabic spoken in Mauritania, and welcomes customers with his contagious charisma.