Baby Steps

5 Juillet 2006

Last night for the fourth of July fete, we were treated to plates! forks! and American-esque food. Personally, I thought the plates and forks were sufficiently decadent. Nevertheless, the cooks made us corn and creamed-corn, pasta salad, cucumbers and tomatoes, a cole-slaw like thing, and a ball of beef, like a cross between a hamburger and a meat-ball. Some of the dishes were even served with spoons. Everyone was very appreciative, so much so that we freaked out a bit, and had trouble forming lines.

Before that, I had gone out into town for the first time, something I had been consciously and unconsciously avoiding somewhat. Every step of the way, since getting on the plane in New York, has found me out of my comfort, having to force myself to go forward every step of the way. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I've given in to the momentum of my life now, every event leading naturally to another and another.

Regardless, everyday I am at least a little afraid, I take a step, I feel a bit better, and so on and so on. This is the way we form our lives; this is the way we become stronger and truer and finer and more lovely creatures than we ever could have if we had only done the things we knew already. I want to be strong and true, and lovely too, so we went to the market.

The Lycee is, in fact, a compound, and outside of its walls is something not to be feared, yet something so fascinating in its detail as to be overwhelming.

The structure of the city seems without much design. I can't picture it clearly in my head, yet there was a giant hill of sand, worn semi-mineral with fleets of feet, with trash all strewn everywhere. It's everywhere. I'm not sure I even have a handle on how to describe this: the market is incredible, but not in-credible. It's just so alien in its color; it bleeds it. Lots of fabric and rugs and flip flops, and crappy looking vegetables, and meat with flies on it, and awful fish out in the sun, and sunglasses, and cigarettes, junky knick-knacks, little plastic mirrors with Chinese women on the back, little tart cookies in wrappers, cokes, bootlegged Sony boom-boxes, suitcases - who knows? Everything, probably, if you looked long enough. I got my first "toubab" (white-person) though, which was exciting, from four little girls who called Laura "Madame" and waved out their arms to brandish a rainbow of tie-dyed fabrics.

Then Ginger and I set out to buy cigarettes. I was her 'bait', and she, my 'translator'. The cigarettes were supposed to be for me, because women who smoke here are whores, basically. So we strolled around looking for Marlboro lights (only American Legends were in evidence) with me mumbling morosely at the store owner, and she 'translating' in her marginally better French, until we finally found some which I stuck in my pocket for safe keeping. Everyone was so friendly though, smiling a lot, and a few hundred greetings go a long way. All the beautiful little children (hundreds and hundreds) and youths with their huge white smiles and giant teeth, and casual French. I got to use a few of my greetings, in Pulaar and Soninke, at which they laughed and smiled, and said "Hi, how are you? How old are you?" in turn.

It was lovely, lovely. But not sad, because no one seems sad here despite the poverty. And truly, the issues are so much more complex than simple things like poverty. I mean, yesterday on our walk, Ginger and I were talking about how much nicer this place could look if they would just pick up the (fucking) trash, and how it would be (relatively) easy to come up with a system, and an infrastructure. So therefore, the real issue becomes, not that they haven't done it, but why they haven't done it, which is something that I suspect involves a complex interaction between HEAT, poor climate, the legacy of patronage and handouts, bizarre veins of westernization, fatalism, Islam and basic human flaws too numerous to mention. Still, it bears mentioning that I find this place, trash and all, strangely beautiful.