Home Alone

The house is quiet. I am home alone. This is the first time since I left New York and the solitude of my sweet apartment—home sweet home since 1991—that I have been alone. And of course, the electricity has gone off, so I am without internet access. Translated, that means I am REALLY alone. And as soon as my battery runs out, even the distraction of writing my blog for later posting will be unavailable.

In New York, living alone is becoming a luxury for those who have enormous incomes or the province of those who have rent controlled apartments that they’ve lived in since the dinosaurs roamed Central Park. The city pushes people together. But in that mass of humanity, there are few markers that make it possible for individuals to find their own tribe…their own people.

Here in Dakar, I’m not often lonely. I certainly like everyone I’ve met. I even like some people that other people don’t like. It’s too much work to dislike people. It requires looking for reasons to personalize things that happen, reasons to stay angry when the time has come to “let it go.” In the final analysis, we’re all trying as hard as we can, we all have problems, everybody makes mistakes and everyone deserves a break. What’s to dislike?

But there’s a vast gulf between “good will toward man” and finding one’s tribe…where the language spoken, the costumes worn, the codes that facilitate communication are known by those who belong and the result is inclusion. I have not found those people in Dakar.

And tonight, all these years later, I find myself thinking about the kids in my hometown who were not allowed to be a part of the tribe, who were always the victims of childhood taunts, cliques and general unkindness. They never got a break. Ever. I wonder how they managed their loneliness then. Did our meanness build their characters so that they grew into adults with full, rich and happy lives?

I wonder if they would have some advice for me about how I might find my own people here in Dakar.