Monthly Archives: January 2011

January 2, 2011 · 10:21 pm

Of Forest Fires, and Chocolate Covered Anti-Depressants.

This has nothing to do with the story-I just miss the mountains today.

As promised: a recap of our New Years celebration in Dakar.

Given that I was still stuck on that blasted couch, the New Year’s Eve dance party that we’d had planned…didn’t really pan out. [Though Michelle and I DID invent some wildly impressive upper-body moves that you’ll probably be seeing on MTV in the near future.] Midnight found my team and I on the rooftop of our apartment building surveying the panoramic of fireworks displays illuminating Dakar’s skyline. I love fireworks [cannot emphasize that one enough]-and it was breathtaking. Breathtaking, that is, until wayward flames from fireworks-gone-wild fell into trees and buildings, and actual fires erupted all over the city. We watched in fascinated horror as a palm tree burned clear to the ground an uncomfortably close distance from my bedroom window. At one point, a rather panicked Michelle suggested that we call “ les pompiers” [firemen]-…and it was at that moment that we came to several rather startling realizations:

  1. We’re not sure if there even ARE pompiers in Dakar.
  2. If said pompiers do in fact exist, we certainly don’t have the foggiest idea how to get a hold of them.
  3. If by some miracle the stars aligned and there were pompiers and we did get a hold of them, …we’re still in Senegal. Senegal, where everything takes approximately 83 times longer than it ought to. Thus, by the time said pompiers arrived, the entire city would be a smoldering ash heap. Truly, only WE can prevent forest fires.

Dakar is not exactly crisis-friendly.

I ventured out into the great wide world again yesterday-for the second time in what feels like a month of Sundays. [Unless we’re counting the excursions made on my “No Doctor Left Behind” tour. And everybody knows that those are no fun.] The warden Christy finally took pity on me and let me out of the house. Granted, it may have had a little something to do with my repeated threats of flying to Sea World for the express purpose of throwing myself into the shark tank if I spent so much as another second in my living room. [In my defense, the walls were closing in, and I’d started having detailed discussions with one of the roaches currently residing in the kitchen regarding the current political upheaval in Korea. That is one opinionated little bug.] Yes, it’s official: all of this bed rest nonsense has robbed me of the few remnants of sanity I had left.

After listening to Christy lecture me extensively on the perils of “over-doing it”, I was free. Free! I ran hobbled away to the beach and sat on the most beautiful cliff in Dakar [my favorite place in Senegal] and watched the waves crash

Craig and I. And the bear. From that same mountain trip. This was right outside the Rocky Mountain chocolate factory, which according to the study that I just referenced, functions as a pharmacy...

on the rocks for about an hour and a half,  at which point my pansy-little-legs gave up on me and sent me straight back to the couch from whence I’d come. [The couch that I am rapidly becoming progressively more concerned is starting to self-graft to my epidermis. Give it a couple more days and I may need to be pried off with a spatula.]

It was glorious. Glorious, that is, until I came home and discovered that Dayton had taken advantage of my absence and had sneakily done away with Charlie Brown Mohammad Jose.

Take-down-Christmas-decorations-day is the most depressing day of the entire year, I think.

If it were up to me, I’d keep the full regalia of Christmas decorations up in all of their glory until…well, at least Valentine’s day, anyways. [I have a serious aversion to all things heart-shaped. Heart-shaped decorations make me want to gouge my eyes out with a hot poker.]

In an effort to cope with my post-Christmas anguish, I turned to chocolate. I recently read the results of a study that stated that for mild to moderate depression, eating .4 oz of dark chocolate every day more successfully regulates serotonin levels than many serotonin-inhibiting medications. I’m not depressed, but I went ahead and inhaled a pound and a half just to be on the safe side.
A girl can never be too careful.

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Filed under Christmas, Holidays other than Christmas, Team

January 1, 2011 · 10:08 pm

The Lost Boys. [They Each Have Names.]

I briefly left my apartment yesterday for the first time in…well, much too long. When I opened the front door of my building, I immediately saw two things.

Her:

And him:

I’m going to call him Pierre. He’s a “talibe boy” which means that a couple of years ago, lured by the false promise that their son would be fed and educated, Pierre’s parents sold him to a local cult leader called a “marabout”. They are almost certainly from poverty-stricken village, and were probably promised that if they sold Pierre, they would be guarenteed a spot in Paradise after they died. [A Muslim's dream.] And so as a two year old toddler, Pierre became one of the thousands of barefoot “Lost Boys” that aimlessly wander the filthy streets of Dakar.  He spends his days pleading for spare change with a rusty, dented tomato paste can-desperately trying to meet his daily quota. If he fails, he’ll be beaten. Pierre will grow up illiterate-unable to so much as color inside the lines, much less write his own name.

And honestly, nobody really cares about his name. The marabout owns him-that is his identity. 

I really want to adopt Pierre. He belongs in a cheerfully colored preschool with a bright blue Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox tucked away safely in his cubby. He ought to come home to someone that would scoop him up in a bear hug and let him eat too many chocolate chip cookies for snack. Someone that would proudly hang every single one of his finger paintings on the fridge, and read him “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day” as many times as he wanted before gently tucking him into bed at night. Someone that could teach him that he is valuable.

That four year old little boy doesn’t belong sitting hopelessly on the side of the road like this. No child does.  But that’s Pierre’s reality. He and some other talibe boys were playing with firecrackers right outside my door yesterday.

They saw my camera, and ran to ask me to take their pictures. I love Pierre’s toothy little grin.

One of them had a scratched up, bleeding face-which is what happens when you let little boys play with firecrackers. I’ll bet each one of them would love a Mom and Dad to tell him “no”.

Pierre was covered in scabies-all the boys were. Beside him is the old tomato paste can he uses to beg. It’s full of sugar cubes because in Senegal, it’s considered good luck to give a talibe sugar. Thus, in addition to being incredibly malnourished, Pierre’s teeth are beginning to rot.

Senegal is a hub for human trafficking-mostly women and children. The women are sold into the sex trade, and…well, you see what happens to the children. Many of them are prostituted as well. Statistically, there is at least a 4/5 chance that Pierre is sexually abused.

At four years old, his greatest concern should be where on earth he left his green crayon-not where on earth he’s going to find his next meal. I don’t have an answer, here. I just know that Pierre is not a nameless, faceless statistic to Jesus. He is of infinite value and worth to God-and thus, should be of infinite value and worth to me. Each of these boys have names and stories-names and stories that God knows as well as yours and mine.

I think somehow, their stories ought to change ours.

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Filed under Islamic theology, Musings, Senegal, The daily grind