Retention

At Sunday noon, Phillipe freshly nursed and committed to Yves' happy hands, Lucy and I are going out into the neighborhood for an hour. We'll go to the pharmacy, buy some native bananas and mandarins at her favorite fruit-vendor's stall, and buy some wax cloth for me. The little fabric store may or may not be open, this being Sunday. While this isn't a Christian country and Friday is the holy day for Muslims, Sunday seems to have become the universal day to close the shop and take a break, if you can afford to do so.

We're making this excursion today because I've had to admit that I'm going stir-crazy. While I love my place in this family and know what a privilege it is to be here, the woman who waited half her life to escape just such a life will not be beaten back from my consciousness. From time to time she grows positively menacing."I have to get out of the house," I've snarled at Lucy, "if things are going to continue to work. I have no friends here; I'm homesick for my coffee shop and my brother's band and all my routines. I want to complete the work I've started at my own desk. I want to go outside when I please!" There: A simmering tantrum that had to boil over sooner or later.

When I stop to think about it, it is remarkable that Lucy is here and leading a contented life after having come in 2009. She teaches at an English-intensive private International Bacalaureat school, the only one of its kind in West Africa. She applied and got the job over the internet just as she graduated from college. The students plunge into English courses cold from French when they are in about 9th grade and they emerge with their diplomas speaking and writing better than most American collegians: Their fluency is well beyond most natives.'

The school has three young American women on the staff at all times, two to teach English and one to teach science in English. They come with two-year contracts. Lucy and one other are the only ones who completed their contracts since she arrived; she is anomalous for staying on beyond that to make the beginnings of a real career here. She loves the school and she loves her students, firecrackers all of them.

Americans teach the first year of English, then sophomore year is taught by someone Senegalese. This is because the school needs to have someone who knows the country's rules for end-of-the year testing and how one moves up through the national system. Last year, the sophomore teacher had to leave in the middle of the year, for family reasons, so the administration hastened to find a replacement, which they did. That woman quickly fell by the wayside for her own reasons: The students, who had Lucy as freshmen, spoke English so much better than she did that she couldn't keep up. Lucy was called in.

Lucy goes back to teaching after a trimester's maternal leave and she may have to cover for another loss of personnel when she does. One of the new Americans went to Belgium for her winter break, but recently communicated that a medical emergency with her failing grandpa in the States was calling her home: She might not show up on time. On a hunch, Mme Sanka, the school administrator, checked the school apartment rented to the teacher and found it vacated of every personal item, down to the boxes of Q-tips and granola bars.

I get it, however cowardly and juvenile I think the teacher's behavior. After just a couple of weeks, in the heart of loving family, enjoying one of life's great events, the tastes of loss and loneliness creep in even for me. Homesickness is real. Looking out the grated window at the sunshine, seeing the lively scene go by—what's at my fingertips seems miles away. It's almost like buying postcards and saying you were there.

For a young, white American girl with generous intentions and and a taste for adventure, the impasses to happiness here are formidable. Senegalese women simply don't make friends. The culture can be impenetrable when it comes to knowing how people live their lives. You take who you get in the school community and, as Lucy's seen, that doesn't mean that any American you encounter promises to be someone you'd like just because they happen to be here. She met plenty of Americans who have challenged her manners and temper.

Senegalse teaching colleagues are paid less than Americans are; you will never be friends with them in the way American colleagues become. And out in the community, your opportunities for being cheated, overcharged, and exploited in every way are endless. To defend yourself, your biggest tool is to speak Wolof and take a fearless stand. These are two things that young women  usually don't do when they come because they are out to save the world or to have fun in Dakar and teach on the side.

Sometimes I wish I'd been able to have big adventures at Lucy's age. What a laugh! I can't imagine that I could have begun to make so many adjustments or to have the selflessness not to throw a tantrum and go home. I long to go outside! I want to take a walk! Well, that's natural enough, and we'll do it. In the meantime, I can smell the simmering pork that Yves will cook with white beans for dinner. I hear the muezzin, the whistles of vendors, the cries of babies all around the courtyard block—Phillipe's brothers and sisters getting their lungs ready to create their generation's beat. 

Lucy and I will go out. It will give me a needed hour to get annoyed with a sandal full of sand and grit; to find the fabric shop closed so I can make the trip another day; to ask Lucy to name all the strange vegetables at the stall. We'll return relaxed and happy. Phillipe will be awake and hungry. I will be so happy to stay, to spread out even more on my blogging bed.