Amazing Grace

It's been one month since I left Senegal. A little over a month since I left Toubacouta. A little under a month since I left Dakar. In one month I have changed cities, houses, and families four times. I've been packing, unpacking, saying hello and goodbye and promising to keep in touch and promising to meet soon for tea or coffee or attaya. From small town to big city to small town to big city. Three different pairs of flip flops, two different ways to cook ceeb u jenn. Two five-hour drives and one eight-hour plane ride. Three or four languages. Two dance troupes, several songs.

I still haven't taken out my braids, that Sali and Roky gave me on May 1st, my last full day in Toubacouta. I'm still finishing up the bright blue pills that keep away malaria, and while I'm at it the vitamin supplements because let's face it, a college student's diet is probably just as healthy is four months of maffé and fried-egg-cheeseburgers. I still say "am ul solo" and walk down the street singing in Mandinka. I walk a lot slower now, too.

Abdoulaye called me today- I said I'd call him back. It's cheaper for me to call Senegal than it is for any of them to call me, and even if it weren't I'm the one that can afford it. It's still hard to understand phone French. I was shopping when he called, at Target. In the middle of the office supplies, picking out pens. Bic's. Said I was at the market because I don't know the word for "department store" in french. Picked up some froot loops and hot dogs, blank CDs, a notebook, a toothbrush. Walking down Nicollet all the people asking for money had written their own signs and didn't talk to anyone. It was drizzling. The busses that went by were nearly empty.

At Target I also bought this book "Boundless Grace", because it was the sequel to one of my favorite books when I was little- "Amazing Grace", all about this little girl who loves stories and wants to be Peter Pan in the class play even though she's a girl and she's black. The year I got that book I was Peter Pan for Halloween, and I remember feeling distinctly superior and more liberated than all the Tinkerbells I saw. I still remember some of the illustrations in that picture book, so seeing my favorite character, Grace, years later at Target pulled me up short. In this book, though, Grace likes stories about fathers because her dad left when she was a baby. Turns out Grace goes to visit him where he lives with his new family in the Gambia. The watercolor illustrations are gorgeous. She goes to the airport and is greeted by this costumed guy on stilts (http://www.biantouo.com/pic6.jpg) and then goes to her father's compound where she meets her Papa and his new wife and her kids, they go to the market where people carry their shopping on their heads. She goes to a fabric store and gets measured for a traditional Gambian outfit.

And this is how I know that the illustrator had to at least know someone who had been to west Africa. Because how else would Caroline Binch know that the green glass Sprite bottles have a different shape from the clear glass Fanta bottles when she paints Grace having a Fanta and her Nana having a Sprite, right in front of a hibiscus/bissap plant. And how the family's dog would wander through the yard licking out the calabash bowl stacked next to the big metal bowls under the mango tree. And in the meantime Mary Hoffman writes about how Grace realizes that her family isn't like the one in stories. It isn't a mom and a dad and a sister and a brother and a cat and a dog. Grace learns that her family includes a Nana, and a stepmother who isn't mean, and two younger siblings named Bakary and Jatou who have never even heard of Cinderella.

"Sometimes Ma called from home and her voice made Grace feel homesick. 'I feel like gum, stretched out all thin in a bubble,' she told Nana. 'As if there isn't enough of me to go around. I can't manage two families. What if I burst?' 'Seems to me there IS enough of you, Grace,' said Nana. 'Plenty to go around. And remember, families are what you make them."


I was ready to leave Senegal by the time I left. It was just enough time to be there, and I am glad to be back. I really am. It just doesn't seem like it. But I promise, I'm here. I missed being here and yes this is my home and yes this is my family and I love you all more than anything. If anything, I appreciate what I have here a hundred times more than I ever did. It just doens't seem like it.


I didn't really get culture shock when I got back. I didn't really get culture shock when I left. See, when you hear the term "culture shock" what you expect is just that- a shock. The instant surprise of something being different, more different than you expected. No one says that sometimes it takes longer than that. That it isn't the fact that things are different, or that things are the same, it's the fact that you have two ideas of what "market" means now. It's that when you say "family" you always feel the need to be more specific. That even though you spent four months craving English slang words and someone who would Just Understand What I Effing Mean When I Talk, it's a good thing you got used to it over there 'cause being back is just as frustrating. I forget who I told what about my trip and feel almost guilty talking about it.

See, I'm used to call and response now. "Nangadeff" is always followed by "Maangi fii rekk". You hear "Assalaam Malekum" and you say "Malekum Salaam". I get back and I say "hey how are you?" and they say "good, how've you been?" and I say "good" and it's just fine. But what's the culturally appropriate response, how do I answer according to social normal expectation, to the question, "So, how was Senegal?"

I miss the shooting stars.