Amy Diallo Goes to Seminary

When I returned to the States two weeks ago, one of my grandmothers asked if I thought I might keep up with my blog.  At the time, I thought “surely not”—after all, this blog was created to capture my scribblings from Senegal, and now I’m just at seminary.  However, after a week of orientation and a mere one day of class, I’m beginning to think seminary might just be more foreign of an adventure than I’d realized!
In the past week, I’ve had my “calling” questioned (as in, “So, if you don’t want to be a minister, are you sure you ought to be here?” along with other similarly helpful comments); yet I have also met students who seem to understand me and my reasons for being here quite truly, students who can relate to my having made the decision to come more because things just seemed to fit than because of any clear “writing on the wall.”  I’ve explored with my fellow first years the ways that activities such as African dance and molding play-dough can serve as spiritual practices (cool, right?), and I’ve sat through chapel services ranging from swinging and vociferous to the more subdued, yet striking styles of high church.  I’ve broken a vase, smashed a light bulb (both accidentally, I promise), and received several baffling bug bites, but I’ve also explored a lot, discovered the woods and park near my new home, and become familiar with some of the surrounding neighborhoods.  In the fast few days, I have felt extremely uncomfortable, unknown, and out of place at times; yet I have also been the recipient of sincere hospitality, have shared food at a close-knit, laughter-filled potluck home gathering, and have been blessed with the opportunity to reconnect with a best friend from my childhood who now lives just down the street.

In short, I’m exhausted from all the walking, the small-talking, the striving to talk back to the voice inside my head that incessantly asks, “But really, what are you doing here?” In this moment, I’m also a little sad, as my Senegalese family is missing to me in a raw, fresh way, and as the beginning of the school year draws my mind often to the mentors, friends, refugee preschoolers, and church family I hold dear back in Memphis.  But I’m also hopeful, more or less content to be here where I am right now.  I knew this would be hard, and it is.  But I know too that God is faithful, that community can be found wherever one looks for it, that growing always tastes a little bittersweet and that that’s alright. 

Today I had the opportunity to sit in on a class over at the Public School of Health, a class that I very much hope to get to partake in this semester but for which I’m still waiting to get the official go-ahead.  However it turns out, I’m thankful I was there today to have been introduced to the poem “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.  The author asks a series of poignant questions, my favorites of which are as follows:

 

“I want to know if you can sit with pain

         mine or your own

         without moving to hide it

         or fade it or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy

          mine or your own

          if you can dance with wildness

          and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes

          without cautioning us to

          be careful, be realistic

          to remember the limitations of being human.”

Truth be told, I don’t know if I can do those things, Oriah Mountain Dreamer!  In fact, I’m pretty positive I can’t— the whole not fading pain and the unfettered joy bits, well, those are tall orders indeed.  But I do know that these are elements I want to strive for, attitudes I want to seek to embody, and, who knows, perhaps even things I will continue to learn about during my coming days and years at Candler School of Theology.  And hey, in the meantime, I just might keep on scribbling, writing here as a means of reaching for a little clarity in the midst of this chaos and of keeping you family up to date on my most current muddling and musings.

So, until next time (probably!),
Janelle/ Amy Diallo   

Home?

            Leaving home to go home is a funny thing indeed.  Is it good to be back?  Yes, that is I think so.  Give me a few more days to process, and I know I’ll start getting excited about my next, more local adventure, beginning grad school at Emory University.  But was it as gut-wrenching to leave this time as before?  You betcha! 

On the bright side, “Amy Diallo” turned out to be far easier to find than expected.  Where did she turn up, you might ask?  Well, she certainly came around on Korité (the feast marking the end of Ramadan), in time to watch the ritual sleep slaughter, don traditional Senegalese clothing of her own, and pay all the requisite social visits.  But even more so, I rediscovered her in the little things, the sweet moments that marked the rhythm of my days there, which stretched out particularly lazy and long during our final days of Ramadan fasting.  [Confession: I did make a once-a-day exception for mangos—after all, their season is almost up, and I couldn’t let the pile my family had stocked up for me go bad!]  Yes, it was in was in the hours spent just sitting and chatting with Papy Jo, helping with Mama Fat Kane in the kitchen, playing with my little nieces, and going on evening walks with my brother that I found myself slipping back into that part of me that is Amy Diallo .

Without the constant influx of English that came in the form of 55 American peers last time around, I found myself living and dreaming in French more than ever before.  In fact, without the structure and support of the program, I was able to come to the realization that I could truly make a full and contented life for myself there—were I able to find meaningful work, that is!  How exhilarating it was to make new Senegalese friends, learn even more about the culture, and become further embedded in my family’s life!  But the realization was also a bit bittersweet, knowing that, at least for the next three years, a move to Senegal is simply not the path I’ve chosen to take.  As I prepared to leave, Papy Jo and Mama Fat Kane began to regularly ask me, “Who will do this when you’re gone?  And what about that?” referring to the various little tasks I’d claimed as my own, such as bringing Papy Jo his juice or lugging the wash bowl out for Mama Fat Kane after meals.  The last day of my time there, my little 6 year-old niece’s plaintiff cry nonetheless caught me by surprise: “But Amy Diallo, who is ever going to cut the okra when you’re gone??”  Having been dubbed particularly talented at this line of work (for reasons entirely unbeknownst to me) and having since spent many afternoon hours chopping the things to pieces, her question definitely made some sense—it just also is surely not the sort of legacy anyone ever expects to leave behind!

In short (ok, or maybe not so short), my days spent in Senegal this summer number among some of the most special of my life.  The opportunity to go and fully share life with this second, across-the-world family of mine was a tremendous gift.  In some ways too, it served as a timely reminder that I can adapt to even the most disparate of circumstances, changing and opening myself up to others wherever I might be.  As I set off to grad school, I know that I’ll be doing my darnedest to hold on more tightly to the Amy Diallo side of life—that is, challenging myself to keep trying new things and seeking out friendships in circles different from my own.  I know also that I will, or rather must, find a way go back.  After all, who else is going to cut the okra?

Affectionately,
            Amy Diallo

Looking for Amy Diallo

Two years later, and I am finally going back!  Figured I’d revisit this site for old time’s sake (not to mention in the hopes of working through some pre-trip nerves!):

I leave for Dakar tomorrow and will be returning in just under two weeks.  On this side of things, the trip feels both short and long.  On the one hand, after spending a full semester becoming embedded into life there, it seems crazy to be going for just 12 short days.  Yet on the other hand, this time I will be returning practically sans obligations—neither classes to attend, nor papers to write, English lessons to give, nor even American friends there to keep up with.  And this, I think, is what I am simultaneously most nervous and excited about: excited to be able to have so much uninterrupted time with my family, nervous in that it makes me feel more than a little bit vulnerable to be so completely dependent on their willingness to put up with me the whole time!

This past week has been a flurry of activity, as I’ve been flitting around trying to gather up personalized hospitality gifts for all of my Senegalese family members, bake up a storm, and supplement my wardrobe with a few more “Muslim-modest” pieces.  (Most of which is all done now, thanks largely to my American family!)  I had determined too that I would reread my French grammar book, but, after stumbling through about a quarter of it, I decided it would be much less depressing to just read The Hobbit in French instead.  Less depressing, yes; equally helpful, not so much—after all, it seems highly improbable that I’ll need to be able to converse about hobgoblins and orcs in French, but hey, should the topic come up, I’ll certainly be game!

A few weeks ago when I asked Papy Jo if I could bring him anything in particular from the States, he most seriously replied, “Yes, one really, really big thing, please!”  Wondering what on earth he’d possibly want that was that large but nonetheless determined to make it fit in my luggage, his follow-up response caught me by surprise: “It’s Amy Diallo you have to bring with you!  Yes, you must bring me my daughter, Amy Diallo!”  I reassured him with a laugh that I’d certainly have found Amy Diallo (aka, myself) by the time of my departure, but in hindsight I realize that perhaps I spoke too hastily.  After all, Amy Diallo is who I spent an entire semester becoming, and I worry that there are parts of her that I’ve sloppily left behind in the course of the past two years, pieces I’ve let myself forget, skills that have grown rusty for lack of use.  All I can do, I’m afraid, is pray that I’ll find “her” while I’m there, pray that everything that I need will come rushing back; back in the Land of Hospitality, in the delightful chaos that is Dakar and in the folds of my Senegalese family, hopefully that’s where Amy Diallo will turn up!

And so it is with much excitement and nervousness, worry and expectation, I sign off for now—

Yours Truly,

Janelle