You didn’t hear from me during the month of December because I was in village for the first part of it, in anticipation of being gone for over a month. Up to that point my longest stint out of village was just over two weeks and while I was looking forward to my trip to America I was sad to say farewell to my host family and my baby Tanko. I spent my last few days in SPB working on murals at my village health hut, which attracted a lot of attention from the local kids!
I considered writing a blog post from home (Oh the miracle of fast, reliable internet access!), but come on. Did I actually think I was going to waste any of those precious three weeks writing blog posts?! Not a chance. I was too busy meeting my new beautiful niece, having a New Years reunion with my Barnard girls, going for walks with the dogs and attempting to gain back some of the weight I’ve lost since March by eating as much delicious American food as I could stuff down my throat (apparently putting on five pounds a week is not as easy as some of my colleagues had led me to believe).
I had been prepared for some severe reverse culture shock and was pleasantly surprised to find that I slipped back into my American routine almost as if I had never left. I remember feeling so out of sorts when I came home from Senegal in 2007, but the effect was much more subtle this time (aside from a minor and very brief panic attack in the Macy’s shoe department the day after Christmas). Mostly I just felt slightly out of sync with all but my closest friends and family, sort of disoriented in the same way as when you are suddenly awoken from a very vivid dream. And the more days I spent away from SPB, the more my life there really did seem like a dream. I was starting to disbelieve that my routine for the last nine months had actually involved waking up in a hut, getting my water from a well, and eating lots and lots of millet. By the end of the three weeks I was just about ready to get back. I at least was missing my host family and my dog, and definitely by the time I was on that plane I was wishing that it could just drop me off in Saré Pathé.
Instead I arrived in Dakar and almost immediately got on a bus to go to Thiès for the All Volunteer Conference, two days of volunteer presentations on projects and best practices. It was fun to see everyone and sort of strange to come back to Senegal in much the same way as I arrived in March – straight to the training center and the bubble of American culture that dwells there. After AllVol most everyone headed to Dakar for the West African Invitational Softball Tournament, more often referred to as WAIST (a handy acronym considering the general state of inebriation preferred by most involved). It’s a chance for volunteers and other Americans living in Senegal and neighboring countries to come together for a weekend’s worth of America’s favorite pastime. And, as some of us discovered, it’s also a chance to incur some fairly serious injuries.
Now, unlike some of my fellow WAIST weekend casualties, I can honestly say that my injury had nothing to do with either softball or being drunk, at least on my part. The cab driver that we hired to take us from the Peace Corps talent show to a nightclub on the other hand… totally wasted. My big mistake was not getting out of the cab before we got into unknown territory and then Dakar’s notoriously mugger friendly expressway. I knew he was drunk. I should have insisted that he let us out right away, but I don’t think any of us realized how much danger we were in and I think we assumed that he would heed our pleas for him to slow down and watch out. Sure enough, by the time we were on the expressway he did seem to listen and slow down. We were almost there, on a straight, well-paved street, divided from the cross traffic and not a pedestrian or small animal in sight (we had had several near misses already) and then suddenly he just lost control. He over-corrected, swerved several times in the most cartoonish way possible and plowed us right into a cement wall. I was sitting in the passenger seat and saw that wall coming towards me and thought that was the end of me. So when the dust settled and I realized that I was alive I threw open the door and practically leapt out of that car. My ankle started swelling right away. After some yelling and phone calls and a near brawl (the cab driver still wanted his money!) we were rescued by a good Samaritan who happened to speak perfect English and very generously offered to drive us to the Peace Corps office, which luckily wasn’t too far away. As I’m writing this, I still can’t believe that all this actually happened to me and that my busted ankle was the only injury. I feel very fortunate.
As it turned out, I sustained two broken bones, one serious enough to warrant surgery. After a week of sitting in the Medical office in Dakar, Peace Corps decided to fly me to DC to have two screws put in. I’ve been here for almost two weeks now, staying in a hotel in Georgetown on Peace Corps’ dime and am finally getting ready to go home to California. The doctor says I’m not to put any weight on my foot for the next 6 weeks, so I’ll be laid up at home for a while and then have a couple weeks of physical therapy before I can go back to Senegal. At first, I had a really hard time with this news since I was already so excited to get back to site. I hate having my service interrupted in this way because I feel like I was just starting to get my hands dirty. Now I just have to sit at home and try not to forget all the Mandinka I know or let that dream of Saré Pathé fade any further. I’m trying to make the best of it though and come up with ways to keep myself busy while I’m home – doing research on medicinal plants in West Africa, writing a grant for my latrine project, maybe making some visits to local classrooms to talk about Senegal or Peace Corps, realizing some of the art projects that have been stuck in my head while I’ve been in Africa and away from the supplies they require. At least I have an interesting story to tell and some bad-ass x-rays to show off. Things could be so much worse.
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