Day 20: Better already

It was going to happen eventually. I knew it. You probably knew. It was just a matter of time. I’m not sure of the precise moment, but it arrived yesterday, between 2 and 8 pm.

Initially, I had a twinge of distress. When Nathalie, Janette and I went to the European-style “supermarche,” I felt “out of sorts”. I loved looking at the cheese display and the beautiful butcher department…strolling through the snacks and sodas, the detergents and toilet paper, but as the afternoon wore on, my state declined. By 8 pm, I was hit full force!

HOMESICK!!!

Just to be sure, I checked Wikipedia:

Homesickness is the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from the specific home environment...The term is in origin a loan translation of nostalgia, a learned term coined in Baroque period medicine. The Oxford English Dictionary describes homesickness as a feeling one has when missing home. Feelings of longing are often accompanied by anxiety and depression. These symptoms may range from mild to severe. Homesickness frequently occurs when one travels and may be exacerbated by unfamiliar environments or foreign cultural contexts. Homesickness is especially common in youth. Young people may experience a sense of dread, helplessness, or separation anxiety on their first day of school, summer camp, or on a protracted summer vacation away from the family. Many first-year students at boarding schools or universities also experience homesickness.

It was time. I left New York on March 31 and have now been in Dakar for three weeks. I have experienced nothing but kindness and generosity of spirit. But I’m at summer camp, and I do have some longings: for my friends, for strong coffee, for long strolls down busy avenues, for conversations at 8 am in the Alice Tully Hall Café, for movies with my best-est friend, for my apple guys at the Lincoln Triangle market on Saturday, for chicken ceasars, for the 68^th Street Pier on the Hudson…and for pie.

OK. I’ve admitted it.

I feel better already.

Day 18: Do Overs

It’s so easy to live a life of regret and remorse. There’s so much we don’t know when we start out. Of course, we don’t know we don’t know. And when the adults who love us try to give us a few tips, try to ease the path…well, speaking for myself, I couldn’t hear anything they had to say.

I’D RATHER DO IT MYSELF! And wisely, they let me.

So, here I am 40 years later. I don’t question that the choices I made were right for me. I certainly don’t spend any time wishing that I had someone else’s life…or mistakes. But I no longer tell myself that the life I had was the best. It was my best, but not THE best. And I willingly acknowledge that I missed some of the big, important chunks of life.

It’s true. I have. The one that I’m most conscious of is family. As my niece grew up and now my great niece is growing up at a distance from me, as I’ve watched my friends with their kids and grandkids, as I’ve listened to their wisdom, which only comes from the experience of loving, protecting, caring for a child, I have felt that I missed out . Being around kids and being around family is irreplaceable.

But life is forgiving. And today, playing with Seal and his cousins at Mami and Papi’s, talking with Miguel about what he would like to do with his life, goofing around with the girls—Marie Do, Ayesha, Ida, Janette and Nathalie--I saw that this time in Dakar is my “do over.” I get to be surrounded by family, to witness their love, feel their support, be a loving presence.

Do overs. I’m all for ‘em.

Day 16: Maffa

I am not a gourmet. Or even a gourmette (the feminine…which I just made up). But what I lack in discerning palette, I make up for in willingness. Setting aside the three things I absolutely do not like and will avoid--raw onions of various varieties, raw garlic and Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup--I will try just about anything.

All other food types—animal, seafood, vegetable, fruit, dessert and pie, which is its own food group—I will try for sport and probably like. The best example I can offer is guinea pig, a native dish of Peru. While there in 2000, I picked out my own guinea pig from a good-sized flock that was wandering around in the kitchen of a private home, and later that evening, I ate him/her for dinner. Didn’t think it was particularly easy to eat or even very tasty, but I did it.

So, here I am in Senegal and it’s an adventure in eating. I’ve already told you about the katchoupa, which Mami served a couple of Sundays ago. And I’ve also tried yassa, which is a traditional Senegalese dish from the Casamance region in the south. It’s a spicy marinated chicken stewed with vegetables and served over rice. And last Saturday night, I had pigeon…yes, pigeon—not dove, not quail—pigeon…that bird we hate in New York City. It was a little like guinea pig…lots of little bones, not much meat and very little flavor.

Today, we had maffa for lunch. Imagine stew beef, simmered for a couple of hours in a thick, tomato-y peanut sauce…sauce so thick that it’s like liquefied peanut butter…served over rice. Paul admitted that it’s his favorite food and that we were having it while Nathalie was traveling because she thinks it’s not healthy. I think the doctor’s right, but like so many other foods that should be on the “do not” list, it was really, really yummy.

And just to show Paul, Suzette and Ieta how gutsy I really am, I ate it with the hottest pepper condiment ever to pass these lips: 15 on a 12-point scale! Even they eat it with caution.

And speaking of caution, Paul’s final word on maffa was that it causes coma, which really means you have to take a nap after you eat it.

Day 15: Girl Talk

With life, you just can’t know.

I stopped by the toy store for the usual afternoon French/English chat with Ayam. Only today, she said, no, the store was closing and she wanted me to come to her home. I hesitated for only a moment, and then let myself be led along the dirt streets of our neighborhood. Although to anyone from a developed country, it might not appear to be a wealthy section of Dakar, in fact, it is. The absence of paved streets and manicured lawns, accompanied by an absence of children with begging bowls, is an indication that we are in a high-end socioeconomic suburb.

Anyway, along the way, we picked up Ayam’s best friend Mary, who lives around the corner. Mary speaks fairly fluent English and is a commercial pilot. Twenty-eight years ago, she went to flight school in Ft. Worth, has a fantastic sense of humor, would have been a killer shortstop on any softball team, and—just my guess—would be really comfortable hanging out at Marie’s Crisis in the West Village.

Nicest part: Hanging out, just being one of the girls with Mary and Ayam, who really are the very best of friends. With life, you can't know. Sometimes you just gotta go.

Day 15: Swat!

Sleep. It’s a very good, very sweet thing, isn’t it?

Here, there is a ritual that accompanies preparation for sleep. First, comes washing off the day. Living seaside, moisture clings to the skin and along with it, the dust and perspiration of the Sahel, as this region of Africa is called. So, always, there’s a shower before bed.

Next step, before turning on any lights in my bedroom, all portals—doors and windows—that are without screens, must be closed.

Then, the mosquito net goes down.

If the lights are on and the mosquito net is up and the windows open…well, that would be an open invitation. Even one very small mosquito in the net with you in the dark is torture. Their finely tuned GPS expertly zeroes in on any exposed bit of skin…swat… slap…successfully dodging a flat hand and pillow. Finding a way between the sheets, they bite ankles and knees. If my nose is out for purposes of breathing, they dive down and bite whatever flesh they can find.

And that buzz…there’s nothing quite like it…a sound unique in all the animal kingdom. Like a drone….You can hear it coming before you see it, if you see it at all. And when the buzz stops, that’s when the biting starts.

Doesn’t matter where in the world you are…New York, Kansas City, Lima, Barcelona or Dakar. Damn mosquitoes are all alike. And I'm very grateful I have a net.

Day 14: Francais

For those of you who are wondering: no, I am not a fluent speaker of French. Not yet.

The very best thing that could have happened for my language skills is that Nathalie went to Switzerland for a week. Because she is our own personal United Nations, i.e., one of those enviable polyglot Europeans who speaks French, German, Spanish and English, when she’s around, she translates for everyone. In her absence, I have been forced…yes, FORCED…to speak French with Paul, Suzette, Ieta and even the woman who owns the toy store in the villa complex.

Ayam, la dame qui est proprietaire du magasin de jouets (the lady who owns the toy store), trades 30 minutes of French for 30 minutes of English on an irregular basis. She is much, much more fluent with English than I am French and has also had an interesting life as a Lebanese living in Francophone Africa, so we have more than a slight tendency to just yak in English. But every bit helps.

And yesterday, while Paul and I were on our road trip, we talked back and forth in an exchange of French and English. I had my dictionary handy for the big words like “return” and “shoe” and “postman”. I'm not completely clueless. I did remember "chaud" and "mouton" and "bureaucrat," all of which came in very handy. (See yesterday's blog.)

Today, Suzette and Ieta assumed the role of Grand Inquisitors. During lunch they quizzed me thoroughly, asking hard questions, like “Do you have this fish in the United States?”. In exchange, I insisted on teaching them useful American idioms like “Wowie Zowie!”

But I am making progress and have little doubt that within six months, I will be singing the well-known round, “Frere Jacques,” well enough that at least Seal will join me.

Day 13: Road Trip

This morning, Paul and I gulped down coffee and hopped in the car at 5:30. We wanted to beat the traffic to Kaolack (rhymes with Jack Kerouac), which is the town where Paul was born. We were more than halfway through our three-hour drive before the sun came up…not blindingly as it can and often does over the East River in New York…but as a white, translucent ball, emerging from the moist, dusty air that hangs over Senegal. The light diffused softly, a gentle luminescence, as the sun rises.

At 8 a.m., as we passed through villages, a few people were stirring. Herders were smacking their sheep and cattle on the haunches. Kids were hefting school bags bigger than they were. Women were strolling on the shoulder of the road with 10-gallon water jugs balanced on their heads.

An hour later, we arrived in Karolack, stepped out of the car and nearly fainted. It was already 35 degrees C, which is about 95 F. Our simple transaction-- a re-certification of Paul’s birth—required two hours, three buildings, four officials and what looked to me like a couple of bribes. All and everyone moved at an excruciatingly sedate pace, understandable given the heat and absence of AC. Most amazing was that the only proof of Paul Thierry Oliveira’s birth on June 29, 1965 was a simple entry in pencil in a very large ledger. Now, 45 years later, the pages were literally disintegrating from the heat and aridity or heat and humidity during the rainy season.

We did our business and left. I won’t comment on stopping to look at a flock of sheep, the three-hour traffic jam, an unexpected lunch at Mami and Papi’s or the massive fish market that filled our return itinerary. It was a long day. But as days go, this one was completely satisfying.