I haven't come up with a unified complete blog post for a while so here are a series of scattered thoughts.
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Hot season in the Fuuta is upon us, which means scorching sun with an even hotter wind. Its like when you're baking a cake and you open the oven door to pull it out and get that rush of 350° air. Except imagine you also get a face full of blinding sun. And the other air around you is 115-120°. And you can't shut the oven.
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I've become proud of my sense of smell here. Its a big part of my life, really. You're sitting in your compound, on a horse cart (a charette or saret), or walking to the market. There isn't always all that much to see here in the desert but there is always some smell to identify. I can tell at quite a distance the difference between human poop and animal poop, which is very different from your diarrhea, which is again distinct from a baby's diarrhea. Then there is the more watery smell of sewage, when you're in a place that actually has a sewage system (of sorts). The age of it matters too, as manure is completely different from any of the above smells and so too is the fresh smell of a horse pooping in front of you while it is pulling your charette. But it's not all about poop, not always. There are smells of a freshly powdered baby, mud oven bread baking in the early morning, the lilac-y scent of the bushes surrounding my village when they bloom in February and March. The house-based smells of laundry drying in the sun or simmering beans in my favorite tomato sauce. I can identify the type of wood we are using to cook or the amount of dung tossed into the fire by the smell. An over-perfumed man, often wearing a distinctly feminine scent, can actually be nice to walk by. Anyone who lives here knows the humid, dusty and slightly sweaty scent of an alhum (small bus) full of people. Some smells I can't describe, you'll have to find a better writer. I know the smell of meat in a market or the smell of fish and then dried fish as you turn the corner. A scent that is fairly distinct to the Fuuta is the smell of a dead animal, the strong, acrid, vomit-y smell of its carcass baking in the sun. Garbage fires, with its sickening burnt plastic overtone mixed with a heavier rancid aroma is a standby here. Garbage in Senegal lacks the sickening rotting sweetness of American garbage, probably due to the lack of milk and fruit. There are seasonal smells like ripening mangos or flowering neem. There are weirder smells that you only get to know after a while, like the oddly sweet smell of a person's sweat when they have had a lot of kosam (soured milk drink) recently. The smell of old well water when you've left it in your bucket too long- musty and plastic-y. The dusty smell of my mattress after a windy night outside.
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You know you're part of the family when your little sister picks your nose for you.
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I love breakfast stands here. It's like heading to an airport in the states. A heady sense of excitement concealing your underlying tiredness from an early rise; you're going somewhere. Whether it's a 15 hour sept place ride to Kedougou or a plane to California, you are on a trip, and treating yourself to expertly mixed café e meew or Starbucks and a muffin is the beautiful beginning to your journey. You banter with the breakfast lady and the other customers, you people-watch everyone on the automated sidewalk. Now, if you get breakfast from a stand every day or you are at the airport all the time it loses its magic. It stops being the horizon to a new adventure, loses its place as the daybreak oasis between leaving and arriving. If you're lucky though, you realize it for what it is. Breathe, sip, savor, smile.
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After being in Senegal for over a year, I am dirty. So dirty. Somehow, there is a film of dirt on me that just doesn't come off anymore. I'm being completely serious, honestly not exaggerating and romanticizing the dirty Peace Corps volunteer thing at all here. There is a distinct difference between the new volunteers and old ones. A year of transportation- alhum rides, bush taxis, charettes, walking- plus the constant sweating and a season of dust storms must have something to do with it. From between my toes to the crevices of my ears, I am dirty. And thats just the outside of me. On the inside it's just as bad. I eat almost exclusively refined white sugar, white flour bread, rice and copious amounts of oil. A little fish, some vegetables. Mostly carbs, sugar and oil though. It has got to be rotting me from the inside out, I'm sure. The only thing that has a chance of getting cleaner while I'm a Peace Corps volunteer is my soul I guess.
