9/11/08 I didn't think of digging spines from rubble, smoking skies, and falling towers-- too much. That seems so far away, a scene reproduced on my flip-flop (WTC flipflops are all one can get here besides jellies and when your feet wear into them, the scene rubs off and disturbingly resembles smoking towers). A story of the past.
Here I feel like I can barely remember myself, sobbing for strangers, candlewax dripping down my fingers on the Gunnery quad. Here, death descends regularly, quietly. A village wails, for a night, often.
We're giving out mosquito nets. Sometimes I forget what this actually means. Statistics could change. A week from now, every bed in the arrondissement should be covered. Will the wails lesson?
But today we gave ourselves the day off. We slept in until 8, through rooster and prayer calls, feasted on BREAD AND MAYONAISE (I am insanely and unhealthily enthusiastic about the presence of this combination in my life) and even TIGA DIGA AND JELLY! SO0OO good! Then we biked back to Kafori and seriously bushwacked to les cascades. Pretty tricky to get there but incredibly unbelievably worth it. Walt Disney would have moved in. Angels might as well circle. I don't even know how to attempt to describe its perfection. Pool after pool, fall after fall, a giant angel staircase of cascades. Rocks just tricky enough to climb without being suicidal. Pockets just deep enough and cliffs scarily high enough for Matt to jump while the rest of us screamed. Splish splash siiiiighhhh.
Jumping on each other in the water, singing at the tops of our lungs to compete with the roar of crashing water, floating with views of the falls and blocks of cliffs above, pressing up against rocks' edge to let the water fall in front of temporarily private lairs... Thinking over and over- see? It HAS been worth it. Whatever pain, loneliness, and hunger preceeded this blissful moment-- how could it NOT be worth it? All those taco-eating Americans I've been envying have no bloody clue! They are missing an earthly Utopia AND the invisible badge of mosquito-net bearer. Where else could I possibly be?
We had leftover cheb jen for lunch, in a bowl we'd biked and rondugol-ed over. And cliff bars and package candy, mmmmm. Our guide (random village kid) killed a fish with a single sling-shot.
We returned through man-high grass, river-roads, mud sand rock cliff loose stones cows no hewi! AND through golden-headed fields, green fringed mountain frames, timeless serenghetti trees, singing greetings from underneath head-held buckets...
We returned to the Dimboli disponsaire (where we'd been slumber-partying all week) just as the air turned rosy and people rushed home with bundles of hot bread in their arms to break their fasts. We had more BREAD AND MAYONAISE ( YOU HAVE NO IDEA) and jam and "cheese sticks". We grinned over our day. When the sky pinkened our faces, we ran out to the road to catch the peak point of the setting sun. Appropriately, it seems, the cloud cover disallowed a single spot to take all the glory. Instead each second turned new shades of pink, red, purple, passion. Black ink sihlouetted trees, tiny bats, a suggestion of a blurry moon in the east. Matt said the moment needed a painter, poet, writer to immortalize it. We said nothing could ever do it justice. Nothing could.
Bikers passed us, thrilled to get home and take that first bite. We greeted each other noticeably more enthusiastically than ever. The joy was palpable. The senegalese don't know how beautiful this is, we sighed. Easter egg colors darkened behind the trees, not easter colors at all with those trees in the same picture.. instead of the world that has such a thing as easter egg colors. A world with cartoon bunnies, plastic water parks... falling towers...
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