Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.
-Thoreau (and definitely not Megan)
I can scarcely believe it to be true, but it would appear that Days of Our Senegalese Lives is coming to an end.
On my most challenging days while living in Dakar by myself, I looked forward to this particular moment with scads of impatient anticipation.
Don’t get me wrong, I am eternally grateful for the opportunity to come to Senegal and live in and learn about the culture- but that doesn’t mean that this scholarship came without challenges. In fact, the Olmsted Scholarship is all about problem-solving, and if you don’t like playing with a Rubik’s Cube where your sister has peeled off half of the color stickers, then you might not want to put in your application for such an experience. But that’s a topic for another time.
Today we’re here to bookend my living experience that has been the Ivory Tower of Point E. Way back in 2010, my stuff actually got to Dakar before I did- but it still took four months to move into my own place and reclaim possession of my household goods (I’m looking at you, espresso machine). Unpacking all of your own crap by yourself is about as fun as getting stuck in an elevator during a power outage (been there), and when the movers delivered my stuff I enlisted the help of a random U.S. Navy officer who offered to help me unpack while he was in town on business. “Why yes, complete stranger- I’d love have you come over and sift through my personal belongings with me…”
Moving Day started bright and early with the team leader arriving on site an hour early. See this lovely trench? Not only is it the rainy season, but this is what remains of the parking lot in front of my house. What an awesome time for a person to be moving out of her apartment….
It’s always a pleasure to work with the Senegalese- and not just because all of the movers remove their shoes before coming into my house.
The hardest thing about living in Senegal has been the fact that I have done it alone. On the one hand, singledom has provided the ideal opportunity for me to go out and learn about stuff since I had no comfort zone waiting for me in my apartment. On the other hand, there were plenty of moments where I would have killed for some personal reassurance that came in the form of spoiled familiar sensibility. Especially on a day like today.
Luckily for me (or shall we call it divine intervention?) I got a text the night before the move from a U.S. Air Force officer who is in town on temporary duty. She asked if I needed any help with le déménagement. I responded with an emphatic “Yes!” and she showed up at my house bright and early the next day with two cans of Coke in hand. Overseeing the movement of your own stuff isn’t hard per se, but it is a mentally draining task – so I was exceedingly grateful to have someone else hang out with me as movers blew through my house to the soundtrack of screeching tape rolls.
Since my apartment is furnished, we had to make sure that the movers didn’t ship stuff that didn’t belong to me. Like this fancy flat screen television that I almost never used. I kinda wonder if I will ever buy another TV; it would appear that almost everything that I want to watch (with the exception of hockey) can be found on the internet. On verra…
Although I didn’t scrutinize the evolution too closely, they seemed to do a good job with l’emballage. You may recall that I punched out the last blog entry while the movers packed me up- escapism at its finest.
Even though I managed to make my way through the bulk of the CostCo goods that my friend Blair made me purchase almost three years ago, It is clear that I am leaving Senegal with more crap stuff than when I brought out here.
Of course in Senegal they would use an empty rice bag as a vessel for carrying their rolls of tape. Too fitting. It is still makes me wonder why this ceeb-loving population doesn’t eat their own locally-grown rice.
I’m already wondering what is going to show up on the other side of my move in more pieces than when it departed Dakar.
When the boxing up was completed, I asked the team leader if they wanted to pause for lunch. “No” he said, “we always like to finish all of our work before stopping to eat. Besides, it looks like it might rain…”
Moving during the rainy season is a bit of a gamble, but thus far we had been lucky and my moving boxes were being spared by Mother Nature. I kept one eye on the looming clouds as box by box, my apartment became as empty as the day I first walked inside.
Lucky for me, we didn’t get any rain that day. In fact, the only drama that I really experienced was a rather loud and expressive “discussion” between the team leader and one of the building managers. Apparently she had told him that they couldn’t use the elevator to move my stuff the eight floors down to the ground floor. When they continued, she took it upon herself to shut off the power to the elevator and effectively trap one of the workers inside of elevator. Can you say awkward? I did my best to go to each side of this argument and smooth things over, but in the end I understood that I was a minor player in this sideshow. I went back upstairs and returned to my computer.
Once the crate loading evolution was complete, the crew came back upstairs for some food that I had ordered up. Two big bowls of Senegal’s national dish, ceebujeen (fish and rice). “Madame, kai añ” (come eat) they said. I graciously declined since they were the ones doing the heavy lifting. I was also afraid that we’d run out of food- which luckily didn’t happen.
Before I knew it, I was shaking hands with the movers as they got ready to shove off with cartons that had my last name spelled wrong. I told them that they were a really great team- true professionals who are not only expeditious but pack with an eye for common sense (on separate occasions two different movers came up to me and asked where they could find a certain shoe’s mate. I had no idea but told them that inch’allah, both would resurface when I unpacked).
And just as quickly as my stuff was dumped into this blinding white residence, so was it all taken away. Nothing left to do but clean out the ceeb containers and sit around and take this in. This tour really is coming to an end.