Mangi fii (rekk) - I am here (only)

Forewarning: This post is really long, sorry! There's pictures at the end though!

In the past week, I have said “mangi fii rekk” several hundred times as part of the common greeting. The entire greeting translates to be: Peace to you. - And to you, peace. - How are you doing? - I am here only. - How is the family? - They are there. -Praise be to God. - Praise be to God.

I am here only, it's a powerful phrase. Everytime I say it, I do so in only partial truth. I have adjusted to Senegalese life in many ways these past two week, but I am still rather connected to life back in the US. That's not a bad thing (I think), it is just a challenge to the notion of “being here only.”

I am here.

I am here only.

There is such power and beauty in those statements, which I think comes from the emphasis on being present.

I began to realize the importance of being fully present (physically, mentally, emotionally) this past semester. I was trying to juggle an unhealthy amount of commitments and my to-do list rarely seemed manageable. As much as I tried to ward off pre-occupations when I was with friends or needed to focus on completing a single task, rarely was I entirely present or living in the moment.

This semester, so far, has been the complete opposite. A new school and a new community has meant fewer commitments and more free time (almost too much). That will change in the next few weeks as our semester long classes begin and I will hopefully be able to start volunteering or interning at a local organization.

It is still a choice to be present and live in the moment. Everyday, I choose when I leave my house to walk to school and how much free time I allow for conversations I might have along the way. I largely choose how much time I spend at the Boabab Center with other English speakers, how much time I spend on the internet connecting with people back home, how much time I spend with my host family. There are a numerous quotes and pieces of advice about spending your time wisely, and the hodge podge of them all seems to be that where you invest your time, you invest your life. I think Mumford & Sons touches on the heart of the matter in their song “Awake my soul”

“In these bodies we will live,
in these bodies we will die
Where you invest your love,
you invest your life
...awake my soul...”

It's still a choice to explore and embrace aspects of a different culture, especially in moments when I yearn for comfort. It's in those moments that lyrics from Say (All I need) by One Republic become convicting. Since being here, it seems like every single lyric in that song has described my thoughts and emotions perfectly at one point or another. For the sake of the length of this post, I'll only include a few. A video of the entire song with lyrics is at the end of this post.

Do you know where your heart is?

Do you think you can find it?

Do you know where your love is?

...Well all I need

is the air I breathe

and a place to rest my head

I am miles away from the comforts of my life in the US but I am here in Dakar, a place filled with treasures I'm only beginning to discover. In the past two weeks, I've tried to find the appropriate balance of spending my time and mental energy between life in Senegal and life back in the US. Yet again, I've found that balance is overrated and is not what I should be striving for. Striving for balance gets in the way of following you passions and your heart.

"You are never static, and there is no such thing as balance. You are going up, or going down. What we perceive as balance is the ability to recognize these states and maximize the quality of our reaction to them" – Unknown (at least to me)

And the key to “maximizing the quality of our reaction to them [these states],” I think, is being present. I will strive to be present with my host family and the people I encounter here in Senegal as well as in my interactions with you all back in the states. When I greet everyone, I hope to be able to rise to the challenge of saying “I am here” or “I am here only” in as much truth as possible.

This last quote, I think, ties in a lot of the lessons I've learned since arriving here.

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.
Lewis Mumford

On a lighter note, here's a tiny glimpse of how being in Senegal has changed my daily life:

- my host family's goats baa every morning at 6am, and throughout the day

- I wake up an hour before I need to have breakfast to take my anti-malarial pill

- breakfast is bread (baguette), butter, and tea. Yes, I now drink tea, and I already know that cereal will be one of the first “home” foods I crave.

- Everyone speaks Wolof, and most also speak French. Even though this last week of school consisted almost exclusively of Wolof classes, most of the conversations I hear around my house and on the street are completely foreign to me. Learning a language takes a lot of energy!

- Lunch is the main meal of the day and we have at least a two hour break from school to go home and eat with our families. My host brothers come home from school and eat with my host dad and I and any other distant family who happen to be here. We all eat from one main dish, filled with rice, some meat (usually fish), a few vegetables, and a delicious sauce.

- The television is usually on. I watch soccer with my host dad, MTV with my host brothers, and my favorite- Fresh Prince of Bel-Air dubbed in French with my host sister.

- Dinner is relatively late, between 8:30 and 9:30pm. What we eat varies. The first night, we basically had spaghetti and bread (baguette) which threw me for a loop.

- Nobody EVER thinks I've eaten enough, ever.

- I hear the call to prayer several times a day

- And when I go to bed, I feel like a princess as I fall asleep under my mosquito net.

And, as promised, pictures!

Okay, I wanted this to be at the end of the pics, but this is my room. Note the mosquito net!

 Fish! I've eaten fish pretty much every day, and often I have the joy of seeing its eyes, mouth, and even teeth while I eat. This was one of the few meals we've eaten from individual plates (because it was one of the first days here and it was before we moved into our host families).

This is the apartment building where we stayed the first night. It was much nicer than it looks.

 This picture was taken from the roof of the Baobab Center and overlooks the nearby neighborhood which is not far from where I live.

This is one of the two Baobab Center buildings, where most of our classes will take place.

This is my host family's house/my house. (In Wolof, suma ker.)

And this is the backyard. Note the sheep pen and the prayer mats on the clothesline.