Quality of Life Issues

Later on this year in the global issues part of my class I will be discussing topics as diverse as the death penalty, abortion, and euthanasia, but that is not what I wanted to touch on here. Rather, I wanted to reflect for a moment on my life as it was before I left Bay Ridge and my life as it has been since my arrival in Dakar.

From the Bay Ridge Avenue stop in Brooklyn, a 10-minute walk from my apartment, I would get on the decrepit and smelly R train, where I would usually stand patiently until my stop at Canal Street in Manhattan, a ride of about 35 minutes. I developed all kinds of strategies for saving time, such as switching from the express to the local, choosing my exits to get me as close as possible to my destination, etc. I would have to fiddle in the depths of my bag for my ID before I would be allowed to make the mad dash to the elevator, and there, unlike here, I would sit at a nicely appointed desk with phone, Filofax and binders and carry out the tasks entrusted to me.

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Halloween, Senegalese Style

Let me begin by saying that it is rather odd to be in a place that is warm on October 31st. I remember hiking in the crisp clean air of Cold Spring back in New York this time of year, admiring the striking reds and yellows of the leaves and the carved pumpkins adorning most porches, then coming back down to the main street to watch the joyous faces of the children participating in the local ragamuffin parade. Here, if I were to carve anything, it would probably be a watermelon.

Here, also, I did what I typically do, from slathering on the sunscreen to going for a quick after-school dip in the ocean to unwind (though the temperature of the water has dropped considerably, another indication of Senegal’s little winter).

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Sunday with the Monks

Bright sunshine illuminated the grounds of Keur Moussa when we rolled in at 8:30 a.m. Not entirely sure when the mass would start, we had left Dakar at 7 a.m. sharp in order to get to this Benedictine monastery (founded about an hour outside of Senegal’s capital back in 1962) on time. On the way, we stopped at a tangana to have a delectable smooshed pea sandwich (see http://www.traveling-stories-magazine.com/fried-egg-sandwich-a-la-senegalaise/#more-385) and some sweet milky coffee.

Mass did not actually begin until 10, but many of the monks were walking about chatting quietly to one another while others were practicing their music. The brothers wore extremely simple tunics made of coarse white cloth tied with slender brown ropes around their waists, and most wore sandals. There were a few older white monks, generally French or Franco-Canadian, but many were young Senegalese who appeared to be no older than their late twenties, leading me to wonder what it was that made them decide to enter monastic life so early on.

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Was that a CAT I Saw?!

“Now I see why this place is undiscovered,” Kerri remarked wryly. We had just spent 2.5 hours sitting in Dakar traffic trying to make our way to a resort area called Toubab Dialaw. Once we got to Rufisque, we had arranged to rendezvous at the big baobab tree so that we could be shown the shortcut to the highway.

“Promise me we’re not really meeting at a TREE,” I said in utter disbelief. “It is a hotel or something called the Great Baobab, right?” Sure enough, it was in fact a tree – on est en Afrique - but as always, things did work out as planned; we got to the highway in record time thanks to our guide and turned off at a village called Yene. From there we spotted various hand-lettered signs for Sobobade, our hotel, and found ourselves bouncing down a pitted dirt road guaranteed to set your granny’s hemorrhoids aflame.

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From Sunny Senegal to Gray Britain

Over the summer, I took a trip to see friends in the UK, and my hostess did me the great honor of wanting to throw me a party in her lovingly planted and very spacious garden.

In typical British style, prep time was spent putting caviar decoratively on blintzes and raspberries on beds of whipped cream whilst looking fearfully out of the window to see if the weather would hold or whether we would have to move all the lawn chairs back into the garage. (Ultimately you will be glad to learn that the weather did hold and that we were able to swill champagne on the lawn just as my hostess had envisioned).

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