Domestic matters

Life in this household is very casual and easy these days. Teaching is over for Lucy and she's officially on leave for the next term. Yves, whose work requires travel all over West Africa and as far as all his native Congo Kinshasa, requested that he stay put for December, so he's home all day too.

The interior is high, shiny, and cool.

The apartment is a wonderful space. Like every interior I've visited in Dakar, it has ceilings of around 18 feet. The plastered walls are painted with glossy paint in creamy white. The floors here are ceramic tile; some places have marble tile. Everything shines and retains the coolness. The electric lights are few—one small fluorescent overhead per room—and are used only when it's really dark outside…and when the electricity is not cut, which it is, unpredictably. A couple of days ago we experienced four or five cuts over the period of a few hours. Then we hastened to unplug the computers and refrigerator. Actually, that's about it: There are no washers, driers, dishwashers, or other major appliances to worry about.

Today the water is cut, but it didn't prevent my taking a shower and washing my hair this morning. Since there's no water heater in either of the bathrooms, the water is heated very hot in a big pot on the gas stove and carried to the bathroom, where it's poured into a big plastic tub, which it fills to abut 1/3 capacity. For ease of access the tub is place on another, inverted, tub, to raise it. Then, you can dilute it with as much cold water as required to bring it to a comfortable temperature.

Bathroom ready for my shower; blue tub of recently 
boiled water, 10 liter bottle of cold.

Stored water under the sink.

You have a little plastic tub with which to dump the water over you as you stand in the sunken, yard-square shower area with drain in the bathroom floor. When there's water, you can use the shower head for the cold water. When, as today, there is none, you carry a 10-liter bottle of saved-up tap water from the kitchen to mix with the hot. Because water outages are common, most families keep the bottles emptied of purchased, filtered drinking water and fill them from the tap for just such purposes—showers, dishes, and the laundry.

There's nothing exceptional about having no kitchen storage; Lucy has a nice kitchen by any standards I've experienced. The small gas range is powered by bottled gas, which one turns on and off as needed to start or stop the flame that is lit by a match.

The kitchen. Gas tank to right of the stove.

They have a modern refrigerator/freezer. The freezer is where they keep bags with any trash (shrimp shells, melon rinds, garlic peels) that might attract the indomitable, almost microscopic ants that are a fact of life everywhere. Trash collection is not as routine or simple as it is back home (you wait for the truck and run out with the trash; there's no dumpster at your building), so Yves discovered this method for keeping stink and ants at bay until the truck shows up.

I don't remember myself when I'm home, how different domestic routines are here, and how much less convenient. True, Lucy has a housemaid who comes weekly to clean the apartment and to wash all the clothes (except the underwear, which we're expected to do for ourselves). But even then, the maid will do the laundry on a scrub board in a tub and hang it on a line in the courtyard to dry.

I do not, however, find myself feeling sorry for anyone, or wishing for Lucy and Yves to come back to save themselves from an inadequate lifestyle. This life is so relaxed and, above all, quiet for the lack of "conveniences." At least for me, it's very calming even to have no washing machine. It's lack simplifies the idea of what I will wear, how much I need, how long I'll wear it, what "dirty" and "clean" mean…A lot of assumptions that waste time and effort go out the window lacking the machinery of convenience—or, at least, we have to remember that convenience always has a context.

Walking; Watching; Waiting

Lucy was required to have a fetal heartbeat test today. The results would determine whether she would go straight to the hospital for induced labor, or wait for Nature to take her course. The test required no appointment, so she, Yves and I set out by cab to the Clinique de la Madeleine, downtown, where she will also give birth.

Downtown is a long way from Oacam, both in the time it takes to get there and as the crow flies too. There are many sights to be seen along the way: The rolling, silver waves of the North Atlantic, and the grandest mosques of the city with their imposing square towers—a style unique to Senegal. Entrepreneurial sorts assail the cab at every stop, touting fruit, peanuts, Chanel No. 5, cards for cell phone minutes, stocking caps, and New Year's firecrackers.

On the Corniche—the modern road that rings the Cap Vert peninsula, which
Dakar occupies—approaching one of the great mosques.

The clinic (a clinic is a private hospital) is in the same quarter of the city as the federal government, the embassies, and—by far the most imposing—several UN agency headquarters.These streets are graced by ancient deciduous trees. It's delicious to walk beneath them since most neighborhoods have no shade at all. Baobabs as big as buildings are intermixed with dainty mimosas and with others I don't know at all—relatives of magnolias and sycamores I'd guess. Even with the broken-up sidewalks, crumbling walls and pavement, it's not a stretch to imagine the Parisian-style ideals the French once imposed on the governmental heart of the city.

When we reached the clinic at 2:00, we were sent away at once and told to come back in a couple of hours. "The machinery was busy. The walk would do Lucy good. Around 4 or 5:00 would be much better." What could we say? Off we went. Our walk was almost entirely in the streets because the sidewalks are essentially parking space for officials of the government and UN: There are no garages. It was astounding to see the quantity of impeccably clean Citroens, Smart cars, and mini-Coopers; of behemoth Ford dual-cab pickup trucks, Range Rovers, Mercedes and Honda SUVs. To encounter these under power on the narrow street when you're on foot is terrifying. The horse cart drivers seem to take them in stride, though, as they do everything else. For the horses themselves? It would seem that life is one long death march anyway, from the looks of their skinny frames and hanging heads. Their tails don't seem to auger the luck that cabbies assume.

We finally alighted at the grounds of the French cultural center, where they have a beautiful arboretum amidst which is a cafe festively set underneath a large tent. The breeze wafts through while you have your drink of coffee, beer, wine, or, in our case juice. We holiday-makers sit at pretty little tables, upon slender wrought iron chairs. This feels continental and relaxed, especially as a retreat from the hubbub of the streets.

One of the species of wonderful deciduous trees
typical downtown, which I also saw on the road
north to St. Louis on my last visit. The trunks have
spectacular dignity and gravitas.

Drinking juice wasn't merely a politeness to accommodate the pregnant Lucy, but for me a great treat. It's customary here, and there is a delicious variety on the menu; juices appear before anything else, the seasonal offerings being listed first.

I chose ditax because I've had it before and it is in season. I've not seen the fruit, but the juice is rather oddly green, as if you had kiwi green ramped up in an unpleasant way. It so dry that it is apparently impossible to drink without the sugar that makes it, in fact, quite palatable. It feels not only dry in flavor, but dry to the palate. Apparently the fruit itself is powdery. It is unusual, unlike anything you will ever have in the States. Despite its surprising dryness and bitter undertones, it's pretty mild.

Not so Yves' and Lucy's choices of ginger and tamarind juices. Oh my! Intense is a pale word to describe these powerful glasses of drink. I'd never have believed that a mouthful of anything could have packed as much flavor and pleasure as those did. Both were sweetened, but neither was diluted in flavor with much extra water: Without sugar, they would have been of almost medicinal strength. One drank them as one would a liqueur or single malt whisky, even though they were served in tall glasses. It probably wasn't the wisest thing for me to indulge in a glass of ginger juice after my ditax, just out of greed for the flavor. I could not finish it. My mouth was utterly spent after half a glass and the orgy of taste.

Back at the clinic, after a long wait in a pleasant sun room, Lucy and Olivier went in for the half-hour sonogram of the baby's heart. They received the sonogram printout and finally, at around 6:15, as the sun was setting, we piled into another taxi and headed uptown to the OB/GYN's office near the University of Dakar, where he's a professor in the Medical School. Fortunately, he hadn't left, so he examined the sonogram. The word? The baby's heart is fine: No need to hasten to labor. He made another appointment to check Lucy on January 9, close to the official due date of the 13th.

We were all a little let down. All right, already! Be born, Phillipe!

A cheerful incident in the traffic on the way home, though. Stuck in our cab in a pile-up at an intersection of several cramped downtown streets, we were followed by a small cloud of the usual street entrepreneurs. Yves was in the front seat with his window down while Lucy and I tut-tutted in the rear, conscientiously clutching our purses.

When we were stopped, we saw Yves suddenly put his arm out the window and gesture to one of the men who was toting a big load of merchandise—boxed sets of glasses as it turned out. It's been a bit of a nuisance over the past few days that Lucy and Yves own only 3 glasses.

Vendors in a traffic jam on a 4-lane national highway.

So Yves initiated a parlay, bargaining quickly back and forth with the guy until they settled on a price for a boxed set of 4 glasses. The man handed them through the window just as the car started moving, grabbing the way-too-large bank note that Yves proffered in obvious expectation of change. But Yves kept his arm out the window of the moving car. I watched over my shoulder in alarm and saw the salesman drop his burden, hastily search his pocket as the cab jostled us to the intersection, where he had to wait his turn to enter. With change in hand, the merchant dashed up the street and dropped it into Yves' extended hand—and both men acted as if the transaction had never been in doubt. Our hesitation in the traffic seems to have been part of the calculation on both sides. Now that is "stop and shop." It makes internet shopping and overnight delivery seem like the Wells Fargo wagon.

Tomorrow we'll watch the DVD of Downton Abbey, season one, that I brought to pass the time. There's nowhere to go and nothing special to do. I've got season two for after that.

A trip to the Casino

This afternoon Lucy and I set out for Casino. There are lots of casinos around here near the fancy hotels of the Almadies neighborhood about a mile and a half away. But our Casino is the upscale French grocery store where one purchases Western supplies of dependable quality—familiar French brands and occasionally American ones. The many fruits and vegetables are imported, chilled, and crisp. Succulent meats and myriad French cheeses are artistically displayed, as are the beers, wines, and many champagnes that you won't find anywhere else. In a Sufi Muslim country, you don't run out to the liquor store.

The small shopping mall in Almadies, full of Western stores,
where Casino is situated.

Going to Casino means taking a taxi. Once outside the apartment building, it's easy to get a cab, even on the sandy street. Taxis seem to be much more abundant than passengers. Two Western women are bound to draw the attention of drivers who will toot their horns and follow as you walk along, even when you don't need them.

Lucy stuck her head in the open window to negotiate with the driver when he stopped. There is no metering of taxis; the market is wide open here. Drivers usually address Whites in French, though Lucy hastened to initiate the bargaining for a fare in fluent Wolof, the native tongue that is the first language on the street. As soon as drivers hear it coming from a White woman's lips, they know that she's not a tourist, and not about to fall for an inflated, Whites-only price. Lucy drives a hard, native's bargain and knows what a fair price for a ride to Casino should be. She refused the taxi driver's offer and we stepped away. He hastily made a counter offer and we were off for the kind of ragged ride possible only in a Dakar taxi, a vehicle with no springs, no suspension, a cracked windshield, dangling a horse's tail on the ground from the trunk—the last for good luck.

If it's culture shock to get out of South African Airways' Business Class to arrive at the basics-only Aeroport Leopold Sedar Senghor, it's very much the same to wrestle one's way out of the taxi and step into the frosty air-conditioning of the Dakar City mall where Casino sits opposite the Guess Store and Sports City. Everything gleams and invites the shopper with its array of fashionable and desirable goods for the fashionable, desirable-looking shoppers both Black and White. It's comforting, though, to be in Casino. It's just like home—the few times I feel extravagant and splurge on a trip to a gourmet market, one that isn't even part of a chain.

Lucy bought things she can't get (or can't get of sufficient quality) at the corner store--the boutique. We shopped for pasta, semolina for making foufou (a Congolese staple), toilet paper, toothpaste (Colgate), oatmeal, bottled pasta sauce, canned peas, fresh shrimp (in Dakar on the ocean, shrimp is very fresh!), fresh spinach, local melons, two stalks of celery (imported—a head is very expensive), and a few other things.

I bought us a bottle of champagne and a stuffed lamb loin for an extravagant New Year's Eve. It made me feel wonderfully, magnanimously like the elder generation to do it. Now I wonder if we will all be together at the table in their apartment on New Year's Eve, or whether Lucy and Yves will be celebrating at the hospital with their newborn.

We left Casino with six bags of groceries, carefully packed into the shopping cart by the bagging boy, who followed us to the parking lot. He even followed us through it to the curb of the busy street. He didn't have to help us hail a cab, though. As I said before, cabs materialized as soon as we hit the sidewalk. The first two were dismissed: One driver wouldn't negotiate his high price. The second couldn't make change for the bills Lucy and I had between us. The third worked out and the grocery store helper loaded our bags into the front seat while Lucy followed me into the squashy, sticky back seat. She called Yves, who met us at the door to ferry the bags into the apartment.

Yves is infinitely solicitous of Lucy. His courtesy, kindness, and concern for her well-being are heart-warming to see. The sentiment of uxoriousness is lovely; but to see love acted out in practice, in details of every day is beautiful in the present and bodes well for the future that's so close, and for the one that's years away.

The Evil Eye

Lucy and I took a twenty-minute walk around her neighborhood. "Get more exercise," her doctor has told her.

To get more sleep is not something she needs to be told, now 40 weeks into her pregnancy. Our stroll came between our long, perfectly synchronized naps; my energies came and left in tides of jet lag. The air is perfect for this refreshing activity. A breeze ruffles the curtain that maintains my privacy from the children, beggars, and cows that would otherwise peer in the window of my room. It's easy to fall asleep because it's quiet here with few cars and none of the other engine-driven racket of prosperity.

Residential street of Oakam, neighborhood where Lucy and Yves live. Photo
from two years ago. Mixture of finished and unfinished structures is common,

On our walk, I found that I have finally, on my third trip, gotten the hang of being here. I've overcome my deeply ingrained visual impulses—my need to look around, to step off our course to look up or out, or to put myself in a position where I might exchange glances with anyone. We stick out like sore thumbs and now I appreciate the danger that our appearance bring. I know now that we set our pace and don't diverge from it. We keep a predictable, straight course, keep our eyes down, and stop for nothing. Manifesting my curiosity could bring on the evil eye.

Lucy points out how unemployed men hang around, watching. They know everything about the neighborhood—who lives where, when they come and go. She's affirmed my concern that my new presence increases the possibility of robbery at their home.

When we left the apartment, we locked the door to each room after stowing valuables in inconspicuous places. We locked the apartment and building doors, of course.

It's likely that there will be few new photos in this blog; I'll stick to ones I've taken in the past, from the windows of taxis. To take my camera with me on a walk would be the greatest folly. Even without creating my own, mechanical one, it's plain to see that the evil eye is real, and embodied.

The best way to go

It's surely too easy for me, cynic that I am, to discount the freedoms I enjoy as an American. But there's nothing like embarking on an international trip to remind me how fortunate I am to see the world unimpeded by a regime. No matter how often the flight is cancelled, delayed, or overbooked, as long as I manage my impatience, I know I'll eventually arrive—perhaps "bloodied but unbowed"—in London, Munich, or Dakar. Then my dyspepsia vaporizes with the contrail, gone, gone, gone.

I won't pretend, however, that the journey by air is a treat: It's the Destination, Baby. Today, for instance, Tom and I awoke to the alarm at 3:30 a.m., hastily dressed, and he had me at Port Columbus by 4:00 for my 5:50 departure to the airport big enough to host a flight to Africa. Since international flights nearly always leave in late afternoon or in the evening; and since during the holidays I'm lucky to get any flights at all, here I am at 7 a.m. until South African Airlines feigns boarding my 5:40 departure around 4:30. My experience suggests that we'll be lucky to fly by 8:30. But who knows? This could be the day.

It is a very particular Hell to wander bedraggled for a day in a huge airport (Dull-Us indeed!), hoisting the so-called "hand luggage" (the size, weight, and unruliness of a small sow) dragging a winter coat and scarf on your sweating arm, and like the Drooping Dutchman, doomed never to linger in any port. The butt-breaking seats at departure gates fill and clear in waves; you can't rest there. The crowded eateries cost a fortune; after an hour in a restroom stall, people start to grumble against you.

This morning, though, I'm writing from the comfort of an easy chair in the hushed, carpeted United Club, a cup of coffee at my hand, my computer plugged into one of myriad outlets. I bask in the rays of free Wi-Fi. Food is piled up for the taking; a bartender is ready to mix me a martini at 8:30 in the morning. And I walked right in because the concierge scanned my United ticket from Columbus: "First Class." I'll fly South African's Business Class to Dakar.

Holy cow! This is a fabulous gift from my wonderful sister, whose consulting business with a national clientele allows her to accumulate vast numbers of airline miles. She is speeding me to Dakar in the class she flies as a matter of psychic and physical self-preservation. 

I am not used to being served, but I can tell you already that I don't mind it. To be relieved of the discomfort to my arthritic hips and the effort of dragging myself through a day of displacements is already heavenly relief. It's nice to know that I can fall asleep in this lounge without having my slumbers filled with murmurings about the rape of my "personal belongings."

But I'm not a traveler in the sense my sister is. She makes her living by travel; I'm off to explore. Happy as I am to enjoy the perks conferred upon me by my tickets, I find that I nevertheless feel a little awkward. It's not a question of desserts, though, or a sense that I'm on the wrong side of the American division of wealth: I feel quite untroubled by these issues. It's the destination.

I know where I'm going and what it's like there. I'll debark at a Third World airport; I'll walk down steps from the airplane and cross the tarmac on foot. The airport is unairconditioned. The country is poor. Simply by virtue of going there, I am rich and privileged. Forget "first class." I am first class because I exist and got from America to Senegal. How comfortable can you get? How comfortable do I need to be? To be in Senegal is to be uncomfortable. For me, at least. I'm going for my daughter and her family; but I go knowing that I'll spend a month being discomfited.

I'm on my way!

Packing

Visa for entry; Malarone for malaria; peppermint for Christmas; TV shows 
for waiting.

I've been to Dakar twice, once to visit Lucy on her first Christmas in 2009, after she'd been there for six months. The second time was when she married Yves in December, 2011. My first trip lasted ten days, my second for only a week. Now, to watch over my daughter at the birth of my grandson, I'll be there from 28 December until 30 January, time enough for the world to remake itself; time enough for Lucy, Yves, baby Phillipe, and all of us related to them to come out shaking and testing our own new legs. I will be like a calf or a colt, I'm sure, wondering what hit that I find myself on this new planet. We will all be newborns.

My packing is still in process. I'm filling two suitcases with baby clothes, maternal supplies, luxuries for  the mother and father, my camera, and enough writing supplies to keep me happy for a long month. I plan to buy even more wax cloth because I'm so greedy for eye-popping clothes. I hope to see some art: Lucy tells me that there's an artist with an open studio living just down the street. But mostly I want to help the young family in some ways that makes sense. It remains to be seen what Lucy and Yves will ask me for and what I, pompously advancing to give, find accepted and what I discover them telegraphing secret glances and rolling their eyes over.