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