Two Twenty-year-olds: Face to Face and Worlds Apart

There we are; two twenty-year-olds who are worlds apart and face to face, looking into each others’ eyes in the health center’s treatment room. I found him face down on the wet pavement a few hours before, the rain smattering over his dark frame –plastic sandals, khaki shirt, and raggedy black backpack. Is he dead?! His trembling stills my initial alarm and my pink umbrella serves as a beacon to the passing cars that halt and unload, their passengers crowding around. No one knows if he’s epileptic and everyone is using their cell phones to call for help, but the boy starts pushing himself to standing. Stumbling and haltingly, he rises and shuffles along the sidewalk, clutching his stomach as the crowd looks on fretfully and a man in white follows him to offer a supporting arm.

I end up accompanying the boy and this man in white to the nearest health clinic where I can do little more than provide a comforting hand on the shoulder and offer my gym towel as a makeshift hat for heat-retention. By the time he is allowed to see the doctor, he has regained enough energy to be able to explain his situation in a mumble of responses; he is a Guinean and knows no one in Dakar. He has no family and no connections. It becomes apparent that he collapsed out of exhaustion because his situation of unemployment and homelessness had prevented him from eating anything for two days. The nurse enters and is not happy to see him: “I know you,” she spits out in dismay. “You were here five months ago. I know this one, doctor. Last time I paid for his medicine, food, and bus fare back to the Guinean embassy, and here he is again! What are you doing back here? Why aren’t you with your family?!”

Guinea is in a state of utter chaos and political conflict wherein the police are shooting civilians in the street in reaction to some worker strikes a month-or-so back, so it comes as no surprise that a young man, disillusioned by pain and violence, would seek refuge in neighboring Senegal, with its reputation of political stability and its flourishing capital. But what does he find upon his arrival in Dakar?: a welcoming committee of fifty-percent unemployment and utter helplessness due to his lack of familial connections in a society where relatives are everything. Nonetheless, the nurse shouts, “You go back there to your family! This nice man [in white] has paid for your food and medicine, but you can’t stay here! If you come back I’ll have to call the police!”

What’s sad is that there are many more like this young man –many more refugees from political violence and societal disfuntioning. But the nurse is right; Dakar has too many problems of its own to truly aid this multitude of displaced, impoverished people. But what is even sadder is that one of these times, there might be nobody there to find that boy, and he might never get up.

So I stand there looking at this young man, knowing that there is nothing more I can do for him, knowing that the cycle of pain within which he is submerged is one that is not easily broken. I know that, in his eyes, I am an emblem of wealth and an embodiment of his unattainable dreams. All I can do is wish him luck from the bottom of my heart and go back to what I was doing before: walking to the expensive gym and back into my world of privilege and security. I leave the clinic of distress and black skin, finding my way to an arena of a slightly lighter complexion where hip-hop music booms and ipods abound. Looking around me, I feel oddly out of place.

~Oct 23, 2009

Everything! (And Maids)

ONE HECK OF A WEEK: Lets hear about tea, turtles, and parties!

I sit scrubbing two rainbow colored socks between by hands over a bucket of soapy water and think back over the week; it has certainly been eventful...

On Monday I split a cab with Andy and Lauren to go visit an English learning center downtown where we spoke with various classes about anything and everything and helped them with their English.

Tuesday we celebrated Junior’s birthday, even though the little two-year-old was asleep for the last half of his own get-together. This event, I was assured later, was in no way an actual party, seeing as how that would have involved music and dozens of guests, rather than the ten or so friends who spontaneously stopped by.

Wednesday brought mine and Andy’s roadside tea date with local vendor and informal Wolof professor Sadio. It is an art to correctly steep, sugarize, and mix the ataya tea that people love ever-so-much here, but Andy and I are learning. However, next time I’m going to sanitize the cups myself because the residual stomach ache from our last rendezvous is not to be repeated.

Thursday was an epic day because I managed to flood both mine and my cousin Assane’s rooms. Let me just say that if I’d known that I’d be spending two hours sopping up water and wringing it out of a towel into a bucket that night, I wouldn’t have gone to the gym in the morning! Whewee! A full body workout for sure! Note to self: never turn the tap on in the bathroom and then leave to unlock your door with the intention of returning and turning it off when the bucket is full. Bad, bad, bad idea. Once again, maids to the rescue! After nearly two hours of work and seven buckets of water, our maid Mare took pity on me and helped me finish the second room. I swear, she did what had taken me two hours in twenty minutes. This is something to be admired: the work ethic of the gods.

But onwards to Friday –and let us not dwell on the soreness that persisted throughout thanks to the hardcore workout class combined with the even more hardcore towel-wringing from the night before- when we ventured to the fabric market HLM to purchase some gorgeous materials to have a tailor form into outfits for the end of Ramadan festivities coming up this weekend.

Saturday was the day we made our way out into the boondocks to check out the turtle refuge and that night was the Catholic Choir Soiree where only we Americans showed up at the appointed starting hour -9:00pm. Everyone else filtered in over the following two hours and the music didn’t even start until 11pm. Apparently we forwent the whole party because we left at 1am when the music ended and the dancing was only just getting started. My host mom didn’t get home until, get this, 8:30am!!! ---This is not at all unusual. ---I think the next time I plan to go out to a party or dance venue, I’ll have to prepare myself for a few days by sleeping in. Otherwise, I’ll be asleep before anyone even arrives!

You can imagine that, after this zany week packed with adventures, my Sunday would be a day of repose, and you’d be right; I did virtually nothing on Sunday and stayed at home in bliss.

Fun plans for the rest of this week: check out a documentary at the cultural center, have a climbing play date at a park jungle gym with my fellow climber-in-withdrawal Megan, go surfing, and enjoy the end-of-Ramadan festivities. :-) You just can’t complain when life is good!

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GRATITUDE

Sweat intermingles with rain as I make my way back home from the gym, thinking how ironic it is that I just finished taking a shower and am already drenched once more. Entering my home, our maid Mare is in the courtyard putting out buckets to catch the rainwater that pours down from the terrace rainspouts. These hefty washtubs are full within a minute, spattering water across the tan cement and down a drain; we now have all we need for doing laundry over the next few days. Laundry is a full day’s worth of scrubbing and a second day of drying and ironing, which turns into a third day of drying if it rains. Never am I more grateful for our maids than when they return that pristine stack of clothing to my door and I think of how long I toiled just to wash out some measly socks and bras. They are, indeed, amazing.

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Hugs and love to everyone -especially Oma, Mom, and Uncle Mike. Thank you so much for sharing my blog with GG Jerry before he passed away. That means a lot to me.

Love,

Jocelyn