-I could not stop smiling when I had my first Nice Cream cone. My eyes welled up. I did several happy dances. It was the best ice cream cone of my life, hands down. Before this ecstacy, the server dropped a scoop on the counter and hesitated over it. I surprised her, the surrounding customers, and myself by yelping, "Non! C'est bon!" and gripping the counter in panic. Too late. She'd wiped it off. She could then only stare at me in bewilderment until I dropped back down to my heels.
-Dakar is food heaven.
-How fortunate to be in Dakar for Obama's party nomination acceptance speech! Someone downloaded it at the PC office so we didn't even have to deal with skipping or sweaty kids playing obnoxious video games, Akon, or porn. Just about 10 PCVs sitting on top of each other, hanging on every word from our (INCH ALLAH) next president. It felt so lucky and monumental.
-NGO (people-with-money) meetings to get the ball rolling on slowing Kgou's AIDS rush. It was cool to see our PCV role at its best. We may mostly look like kids but we know our stuff, have access where others don't, and clearly have no ulterior motives. We can swing in non-threateningly, tell these people how to do their jobs, everyone is happy and things get done. We're like volunteer spies who can bridge the gap between people who need help and people who are supposed to be giving it.
It was strange to sit in a comfortable chair in a tall air-conditioned building and look at paintings and framed family portraits like you'd find in American offices. The women wore pristine white western clothes, drank coffee that wasn't nescafé, had American salads for lunch. They said they'd been here for five years, ten years... I felt the familiar bile of resentment well up as I pictured them and their families swimming at Club Atlantique, eating hamburgers with their all-American friends, and still calling it Living in Africa.
Then I pictured Pellel's rolling slopes of green. Carrying my bike over my head to cross rivers, the waving African stick bridge, sunrises to the sounds of pounding, my little brothers giggling in mazes of corn stalks 5 times their size. And the bile evaporated. There are moments when I swear I'd kill for such things, but really, they can keep their air-conditioning, and those other volunteers can have their eggplant. I don't care if our résumés say the same thing. My piece of Africa is worth it, in the end. I pity the people who don't even know what they're missing.
-One last picture: our sept-place ride down to Tamba. Well-fed and slightly hungover bodies of volunteers returning from vacation, sprawled over each other. I-Pod earpiece sharing, many games of humdingers, lip-sync, would-you-rather, never-have-I-ever... and off-and-on dozing for 13ish hours. Quiet moments filled with thoughts like, "How did I ever get used to this?" Remembering the unbelieving hysterical laughter that f*accompanied the first introduction to the awful road. And nopw, nothing; we're accustomed. Peaceful, even, over all the bumps. But Africa has its ways of reminding you you can't ever be fully jaded amidst its ingenious spectors of ridiculousness. This reminder came on this ride in the form of a drop of red flying in the window to land on my neighbor's face. Then another, and another. By the end we were back to stiffling, shaking our heads, as blood dripped from the mystery meat bags tied to the roof, down the closed windows in horror movie rivulets. At the time, I was the only one laughing...
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