Vacation?!

Recently the opportunity to return home and visit family and friends after my 15 month absence arose, so I reluctantly agreed. Kidding, returning home was optional and I much enjoyed the change of pace. The change of pace being altering my daily schedule from waking up at sunrise and working all day in the fields and sun to waking up at 3pm because I played computer games all night and slept on Elizan’s couch during the day. My family did get to see me for a short while, but don’t worry family because I’ll be back in 11 months!

Five months prior to returning I was reluctant to make the trip home. At that point I’d been in Senegal for around 10 months and was in a bit of a slump because all of my projects were in their baby stages and I was uncertain and felt unaccomplished. I could only think of myself sitting at the countertop in my grandmother’s house eating a toasted tuna fish and celery sandwich having light conversation with family. Then while sitting there the idea that I needed to return to my hut and continue living the way I had would enter my head make returning a dreadful experience. I wasn’t sure I wanted to return because to go home and dread coming back can all be avoided by simply not going back. That was all vague projections of how I might feel though, and as the time ebbed away I started getting things done and the dread being trapped in comfort and niceties faded.  

On December 15th at 2am I boarded a plane serving sandwiches and breakfast ham(ham… that thing you don’t get to eat in most Islamic countries). Some of the flight and the long trip from my remote village to the airport was used daydreaming about eating corndogs and fast food, bakery goods and sushi. Mentally reviewing what I wanted to do first and that sort of thing. When I did finally touchdown at my final destination my mother and grandmother were waiting all teary eyed. We greeted and exchanged some hugs before heading out to get the car. Not having driven in 15 months I naturally took the keys and proclaimed myself chauffeur. Little know that my first cultural failure awaited me. As we left the parking lot the attendant was owed $4 so I began handing the money out the window, then my Senegal training kicked in and said “CANNOT HAND PEOPLE THINGS WITH LEFT HAND!” so I awkwardly tried to twist around with my right hand, take the money from my left hand and then hand it to the attendant. That was the only noticeable thing I think I did, minus asking people how their families were.

First stop after picking up gram back at the terminal was a grocery store. I’d loved walking around grocery stores before I left for Senegal. I’d walk around and look at all the options and try to think of all the tasty things I could make with so many options, sometimes for 45 min or so while only needing to pick up several things. The pull to return as my first objective was to meander around again looking at the options but having an entirely new level of appreciation. I had fun in the produce section looking at some of the tropical fruits now being privy to how they grow, and naming them in pulaar to my mom. Picked up some eggnog, and a few snacks for the trip home then headed to SUSHI! Met up with some of my Karate instructors at the closest sushi place to my house(150 miles away) and tasted the deliciousness once again over some great conversation. Wrapped up dinner and began the 2.5 hour drive home. Was having a great amount of difficulty staying awake during the last twenty minutes of the trip but still ended up playing games on my computer for 3 hours before going to sleep.

My first week back was a raging storm of meeting all the new babies, catching up with family, and playing games with my friends until 6am. Aliyah, my new niece, is a little bundle of funny stuff, sticking that tongue out and looking like her dad. Michael, my new nephew, is so consistently happy it’s hard to not think he’s the Dalai Lama reincarnate. Ate good food here and there. Oddly I wasn’t very hungry. I would eat a meal and then be content for most of the remainder of the day. Another interesting thing was all the daydreaming I’d done about corn dogs and unhealthy food was completely negated by something new. I would look at something that I wanted mentally and have zero desire to eat it. I attributed this to a familiarity with how foods affect my body. In Senegal if you eat something and it disagrees with you it is much easier to remember what it was. So while home I ended up eating fast food one time and unhealthy stuff like chips and sweets very little. I took a 5 hour road trip to see some friends and my grandmother and every time I stopped for food picked up sandwiches and milks rather than sodas and chips or candy as had been my previous go to on car rides. If anything I’ll be thankful for the alteration in eating habits this voyage has had on me.

I asked my dad if we could go ice fishing at some point during my escapades home. We took a Sunday and drove to camp early in the morning to try and catch a few fish. Arrived and had to plow out the drive, which was a bit iced over and hard to move. Then had trouble with the gas lines because some pieces were forgotten. Ended up running the propane stove and it’s burners to heat the small building on the edge of the lake. Got out the ice auger(drill) and that didn’t want to run. So we were removing the spark plug and putting gas in the cylinder directly, trying to start it, failing, trying again, until the thing actually worked. Went out onto the ice and drilled the ten holes in the ice which was over 1 foot thick. Halfway through drilling the ten holes was when I reflected on how cold it was and that I may have made some bad choices. Double so considering I’ve been living in hot ole Senegal. Next was getting bait though. A 25 min drive north to discover our bait salesman was closed. Return to the nearby down and ask around, the new bait sellers are close to the old one… 25 min back the way we just came. So do that again. Finally return to camp and get our bait all in the water around 11 am. Then a nice reheated beef stew for lunch while watching the windows de-ice so we can see the lake and our traps. Snowing, sometimes heavier sometimes lighter, fading in and out the trees on the opposite side of the lake. Just enough flags on our traps to have a little fun but not become tired from walking in and out to them constantly. The end of the day found us with only a few crap fish and several salmon that were returned because of size limitations. At the end of the day I was very tired from lugging stuff around and trying to put up with the cold(something I hadn’t needed to do for the past 15 months), but otherwise very happy to have spent the day with my dad playing cards and driving around on crazy bait finding adventures.

During my vacation I also felt the desire to show some of the high school kids from my hometown that there were interesting options available with a life sciences oriented education. My original purpose was to talk with the biology and agricultural sciences classes about what I’d been doing to show them some options. I was also asked in to speak to some civics classes since they had recently review the Peace Corps and volunteerism. So I prepared a picture based presentation about what I did, why I chose to do it, and some interesting dynamics about living in another culture. I spoke for 2 days to 13 classes at the high school and was told after that the kids loved it because they were quiet during the presentation, and still talked about it several days after I left. The option was available for me to sleep all day, play computer games, and ignore everyone else, guess I’m a  bad misanthrop.

Before returning I’d heard stories of volunteers having mini panic attacks in malls or becoming overwhelmed by too many stimulus. There was also the slight chance that everything would simply ‘feel weird’ and not like home. I didn’t expect these to be challenges for me because I’ve always lived primarily inside of my head. I think of it like carrying your house around with you at all times. The way I’ve constructed my worldview is the right amount of ‘don’t care’ and ‘whatever’ that, to a great extent, I’m not really bothered by where I am or what’s going on around me. I also like to play games and do things requiring me to process information quickly or keep my eyes on many targets at once so being in crowds, while unfamiliar to the country bumpkin volunteer, isn’t overwhelming because I have continued it in my personal hobbies. I write most of this paragraph to enlighten the question “How does it feel being back?” Honestly I felt as though I’d been gone two weeks. I was able to slide back into what I’d been doing with great ease. I started doing the things which brought me joy 15 months ago and the transition was incredibly smooth for me. I have different experiences and I’m sure that there are differences in who I am and my reactions to things, but I felt the same. Being back didn’t even feel like ‘being back’, it felt like I hadn’t left.

Then of course the time to return to Senegal came around. I did have the desire to return, unfinished projects, good friends and adventures awaiting. The opportunity to continue practicing martial arts and reading all those philosophy books that don’t show up in all the cat videos on youtube where I keep looking for them. Went to Bangor to catch my first flight and had the last meal of Hibachi scallops. Woke up at 4:00 and started packing up the bits and pieces so we could go to the airport. Arrived to find that my first of 4 flights had been cancelled and the next one would put me where I needed to be 45 min after the flight there had left. Stayed calm though and waited in the line and once I got to the desk it turned out there was a flight to my second destination completely bypassing my first destination, also I would arrive there much sooner than intended. Then I had to get a shuttle from Laguardia to Newark and that took two hours. Interestingly if the shuttle had taken two hours on my original schedule I would have spent the remaining 15 minutes in a TSA line and missed that flight. So… good bad things? Anyway I made it to the flight over the Atlantic. Watched a movie and then slept the rest of the way. Arrived in Dakar and tried to get a taxi to the garage. Was having fun trying to speak french to the driver and was able to greet him in his language of Serer. Thought it was nice being back and happy that I’d be out of Dakar soon. Couldn’t quite figure out what it was but there’s something slower and more personal about being here. Then of course things got worse, as they do.

Arrive at the garage, exit car with my first bag and give the driver the 2,000 cfa I thought we agreed upon. He looked disgusted and threw it on the seat like it was going to give him ebola. Apparently ‘dou mil’ had been interpreted by him as ‘dix mil’ and instead of 4 dollars he wanted 20. To put it in perspective the 14km ride to the garage he wanted me to pay the same as the next ride I’d be taking across the entire country of Senegal, about 600km. I told him I wasn’t a tourist and that was ridiculous but to get him to let go of my bag and not be such a huge asshole I did end up throwing down a few more bills up to around 9 dollars. I had thought being back would be all smooth and nice… but nope, can’t get away without a huge dick of a taxi driver in Dakar. At the garage I did fine though. Bought my ticket to Tamba and waited for the car to fill up. Then began the fun 9 hour journey cramped in the back with my legs in a horrible position as the other two guys in the back were bigger than me. Hadn’t gotten a good quality of sleep on the plane and I can’t sleep in cars well either so it was a long trip. Also didn’t get to find food until about 1pm and the last time I’d eaten was 8pm the previous day on the cross Atlantic flight.

Arrived in Tamba at 5:40 pm thinking I’d likely end up sleeping at the Tamba regional house until the next day. I asked around and a car did plan to leave  to kolda though, if it filled up. So I bought my ticket there and wiated. Eventually three guys walked over to me and one of them started talking to me in french. Then the old, “Sorry I don’t know French, talk to me in Pulaar.” So he gave me the verbal itinerary for the two guys he brought with me. I just kept agreeing and saying ok while having no idea why he was talking to me. Then one of them started talking to me in English and they apparently couldn’t understand any of the local languages but had asked for English, so the garage attendant had brought them to me for translation. It was a fun first thing to have to do, playing translator, after having not used Pulaar in three weeks. So we spent a while figuring out what they wanted and what was available. Then they both wanted to shave for some reason. So we found them a barber close by. While they were at the barber a Gendarme (like a military police guy) came up and started talking and yelling with the attendant. After a minute I was like ‘Oh crap, this guy is looking for those other two guys and they just went to get shaved so he wouldn’t recognize them!’ Then a guy comes back completely freshly shaven and is looking at the guard and me a little suspiciously. I started to get a little freaked until the guy I thought he was returns having not shaved at all and he doesn’t seem to care about the guard. Turned out the guard was yelling at the driver and stuff to buy his own ticket… Anyway after some ladies finally agreed on their baggage price we loaded up and were ready to leave. Turns out my two English speaking guys were from Nigeria and they were nice enough to buy me a dinner sandwich because I’d helped them out so much.

We made it pretty far for all the roadblocks we met. Each time the guard in the front would put  on his beret and talk to the guards at the roadblock and we’d get to keep going. Our luck ran out at midnight when the roadblock at my own road town wouldn’t let us through. So I took the key to my neighboring volunteers hut and went and slept there until 5am. Then returned to the blockade to await it’s opening. We started out at 6:30am and I got into Kolda at 8. Two days and an early morning later I was back in familiar territory and happy to be done traveling, saw some friends and felt very comfortable in my surroundings. It’s no fun to not be able to speak to the people around you.  Had a few adventures, a few challenges and all ended up good enough. But that’s why you join Peace Corps or live outside the U.S., for crazy stuff like that which you have figure out how to overcome. Here or there, challenges come up and you take em or you fail and have to try again. C’est la vie. That is life.