That’s Why the Lady Is a Tramp.

A beach run with my brother during a North Carolina November-a much more palatable time to wear sleeves! And it doesn't hurt that he carries me when I get tired of running...:)

I’m going to need a couple minutes of judgment-free reading from you. Deal? Perfect.

You see, there’s just something about a white girl running alone in Dakar.

I don’t know what it is. It was around week three last year in Senegal when I finally mustered up every ounce of gumption that I had and dug my running shoes out of my electric blue duffel bag. [Because it took so long to find a place to live in Dakar, Christy and I spent our first eight weeks in Senegal living a sort of vagabond existence out of our suitcases.] Ever-mindful of the inescapable fact that I had just moved to a Muslim country, I dutifully channeled my inner Mennonite,  cast a longing glance at the running shorts and tank tops taunting me from the bottom of my bag, and threw on long running pants and a t-shirt.

[I should note that it had been years since I’d run in anything but a tank top and shorts. I one day intend to write an impassioned manifesto detailing how much I loathe, despise and abominate  sleeves, but we’ll save that one for now.]

It was probably 106 degrees outside. Which, I am fairly certain, is hotter than hell.

With a touch of trepidation [I’d never run alone in a Muslim country before] and that tenacious streak that tends to get me into trouble over here, I cranked up Christy’s ipod [tragically, mine had decided to commit hari kari ten hours before I boarded my flight to Dakar], and cut straight to the beach that I still run on every day.  

I’ve talked about how beautiful and relaxing my beach runs are-what they’ve done for my walk with Jesus and my stress level, and how God has used hours spent by the pounding waves to make my heart more like His. And while all of those things are true, today we’re going to talk about the other half of the story.

You see, the thing about Senegal is…I don’t blend in. I can’t.  My white skin acts as a glaring testament to a simple fact that is continually reinforced throughout my days in Dakar: I do not belong here. Unwanted, probing attention is lavished on me from the moment I step out of my front door until I close it behind me at the end of the day.  That attention is compounded many times over when I’m running.

Some find me merely entertaining-after all, there aren’t a lot of women that run in Dakar. I am an enigma-a foreign oddity warranting catcalls and intrigued stares. But I find that I also make a lot of people angry. You have to understand that to many in Senegal, women are viewed at best as being merely decorative. They are something to be owned, much as we would think of a chocolate lab or a Honda Civic back in the US. A traditional Senegalese woman is expected to conduct herself with all of the quiet decorum of a Chia pet.

 …and I’ve never had very much at all in common with Chia pets.

There is something exceedingly offensive to some Senegalese men about the fact that I run. They see my white skin and yellow Nike’s from a mile away and assume that I’m a tramp for sale. [Much to my chagrin, Ben’s instinctual reaction to this is to begin negotiating a price. ;)] This, though, is where things can get ugly. I’ve been spit on, screamed at, grabbed, flashed, and pushed into oncoming traffic. I have the occasional glass bottle thrown at me from car windows, and sporadic inquiries of “how much?” I’ve been followed, dragged, hit on and hit.

I discovered quickly after I started running in Dakar, that it didn’t matter what I wore or how careful I was to maintain an impassive, icy expression and avoid eye contact-things were going to happen. Some runs-most in fact-would be largely uneventful, but some would make me cry. Thus, given the relentless heat and the fact that nothing made a difference anyways, I got tired of my Mennonite pretense after about a month and a half of  terribly sweaty runs-…and folded up the pants and dreaded sleeves in favor of long, men’s basketball shorts and tank tops.

Scandalous, I know. Call it my rumspringa. But if you’re going to be a trampy missionary, you’ve got to go big or go home.

Now, there’s a point to all of this. I need you to understand how it was exactly, that I recently found myself downtown at nine o’clock at night,  in the middle of a Muslim, African country,  in shorts and a tank top. Because that’s exactly where tomorrow’s story begins…

[Note: runs this year have been a bit better, given that I’ve recently discovered early morning runs when fewer people are out, and Ted has designated himself as my personal body guard.]

Door Bells and Sleigh Bells and Schnitzel With Noodles

Le frigo miniscule.

I don’t have a doorbell. I do, however, have a delightfully convenient little button in my kitchen which when pressed, makes a shrill buzzing noise inside the men’s apartment upstairs! Go. Figure. We have no idea who installed it or why, but the ingenious apparatus has been there since Christy and I unpacked our three-duffel-bag-lives last year. I am, however, under strict instructions not to push it unless an anally specific set of criteria is met:

A. There is a lot of blood. The problem with this is that I haven’t the foggiest idea what constitutes as “a lot”. I mean, I’m not looking to be the girl that cried wolf here-my guess is that it’s probably somewhere in between “I nicked my leg shaving” and “I have a pitchfork lodged in my jugular.”

B. Somebody breaks into our apartment. Daddy, just stop reading and don’t think about it. [That goes for other team Dads as well.]

C. There is a “legitimate” emergency.

…and HERE we have our conundrum, ladies and gentlemen. There are endless miles of room for interpretation in that one little, loaded word. Par example, I have chocolate emergencies all the time. Legitimate emergencies in which I MUST have chocolate immediately or there’s an excellent chance I’ll end up on tomorrow’s episode of “America’s Most Wanted”. [In a concerted effort to keep me off national television, Dayton has a stash of Dove chocolate hidden in his room for just such harrowing moments.]

And what about boredom? Now there’s a crisis warranting swift, decisive action. You’d be stunned at just how much Christy doesn’t care to hear my thoughts on Schopenhauer’s influence on Nietzsche-which is precisely the sort of tirade that Ben has agreed to sit placidly through in exchange for my maintaining a facade of being mildly interested in the world of internet poker. […you can see how the boredom becomes a sort of vicious cycle.]

The third world variant of two dozen roses. Be still my beating heart. :)

And what’s a girl to do when she runs out of filtered water? The men have a water filter; we don’t. And the nine steps up to their apartment feel like the first ten minutes of Saving Private Ryan when I’m tired. And yet, the incredulity with which such requests are met would suggest that I’d just drop-kicked a golden retriever puppy or set fire to an orphanage.

Hmph.

Any clarification on what might comprise a “legitimate emergency” would be helpful-I’ve been informed that if I so much as bend that particular rule, they’re going to disconnect the thing. And Lord knows I’d have no idea how to fix it.

 But speaking of my favorite things, …I took my package slip to the post office early Monday morning. :) When I say “early”, I mean I was sitting on the front steps at 7:50 AM with all of the patience of a pig tailed, red flannel night gowned, five year old little girl on Christmas Eve with seven too many reindeer shaped sugar cookies in her, waiting for a rather foreboding looking guard to begrudgingly allow me inside. My post office boys met me at the door with an overly enthusiastic, albeit rather maudlin “Bon retour!” Let me tell you-when I walk into the post office, you’d think that Princess Di had just rolled up in her motorcade. Really, they L-O-V-E me. The sweet custom’s men are wrapped around my baby finger-not only do they not rip open and rifle through my boxes [something the men on my team have to endure], but I’m also charged next to nothing to get my packages out of “the cage” in the back. [Much to his chagrin, Ben has paid up to five or six times what I pay.] I could be hustling bricks of heroin and nobody would ever know. As it is, it’s mostly just brownie mix and coffee.

Our extreme home makeover! ...currently still endeavoring to febreeze the smell out of those cushions.

 …or as the case was on Monday, Halloween in a box! Kellan bought his way into my teammate’s hearts with personalized Halloween bags full of candy and neon plastic vampire teeth, and stole a piece of mine with a bubble wrapped Starbucks frappucino. As he has a tendency of doing, he made my week. :)

The rest of Monday was spent bargaining for an Oompa Loompa sized fridge and a rather underwhelming furniture set, listening to a Senegalese guy with dirty dreadlocks ardently swear on the name of Allah and several local cult leaders that he was charging us a fair price, talking said Senegalese guy down from said price, and then using the last of our Lysol wipes in what was most assuredly a futile attempt to de-germ couches and chairs that had been sitting on the side of the road for goodness only knows how long.

This week is on crazy pills-I think I need to sit down. Thank goodness I now have a couch…

Of Pumpkins, Pineapples, and My Affair With the Fruit Stand Man.

Enter November, stage right.  She’s laced with gilded yellows and burnt oranges-mahogany browns and brilliantly muted reds.  Her crisp air is tinged with snow and apple cider-pumpkins and pine cones-…and in some places, the stale reek of goats and rancid trash. Cue my Slatkin and Co. Autumn Apple room spray! Coupled with my Pumpkin Spice Yankee Candle, I can sit in front of the fan, squeeze my eyes shut and pretend it’s fall.

…Or I would, if the power were on.  But right now, three very sweaty girls are bemoaning life sans a fan in Dakar. Christy, Michelle and I are typing away by flickering candlelight as our neighbor’s thundering generator battles the soothing strains of Matt Wertz coming from Michelle’s general direction.  

Clearly, I’m the girl that stuffed her purse and carry-on chock full of Yankee candles-and didn’t give a second thought to packing something practical like a flashlight. And let me tell you-our power outages smell divine.  My Chilean-miner roomate Michelle and her no-nonsense head-lamp don’t know what they’re missing!

Today, fall smelled like Foster’s Market chicken and biscuits baguette-skits.  Michelle and I recently decided to go to the mattresses with our hot plate.  My culinary creativity took a bit of a beating last year-chewy beef chunks and burned toaster cakes left my chef ego temporarily bruised. BUT.  New year. New vendetta against the hotplate. It bested me once-I’ll be darned if the thing wins again! Thus, Michelle and I have been scouring websites like this one for creative stovetop  hot plate recipes that use ingredients we can hunt down in Dakar. [Not a lengthy list, mind you.] We’re toying with the idea of writing a “thirty minute third-world meals” cookbook-and something about a ghetto-fabulous cookbook tour is insanely appealing to me! Move aside, Rachel Ray. I ride African busses-I can elbow you in the kidney if I need to.

Speaking of food-I have an announcement: the fruit stand man is in love with me.

It’s true. And after the past four days, I think I love him back. I can’t help it! The other weasely fruit guys have been such a let down-I may or may not have agreed to give one of them my firstborn in the midst of a heated debate over the price of bananas the other day. I swear, every time I waste twenty more minutes of my life trying to convince one of them that my white skin does not give them license to quadruple their prices, I leave daydreaming about tazing them and throwing them into the shark tank at sea world.

 I digress.

Back to my love affair with fruit stand man. He camps out on my running route-right before I cross the street to hit the beach-and thus, has been watching me run by for almost a year now. Three days ago on my way home, after I’d picked over the oranges, smelled every single pineapple he had to see which one smelled the pineapple-est [which, for those of you that were unaware, is how you pick a pineapple], and turned my foreign little nose up at a rather motley looking mound of kiwis, fruit stand man whipped out his calculator and gave me my grand total: 3,200 CFA. [Calm down. It’s about six dollars.] It was a rather unfortunate figure, given the simple fact that I only had 3,000 CFA with me. As I began to return  some of the oranges from my bag, he stopped me and with a grin, told me to just give him the 200 “demain”. [Tomorrow.]

I felt for all the world, like Mary Bailey must have felt when George offered to Lasso her the moon.  [And my, It is a Wonderful Life!] I’ve lived in Dakar for quite some time now, and no one has ever trusted me like that before. You can bet your bottom dollar that the next evening I was back at his stand with my sweaty little 200 coin [I was on a run, after all], which he accepted with a California chin nod that suggested that he’d known all along that I was good for it.

The next day I was back buying more pineapples and oranges [an addiction in Senegal], and I overshot by 500 CFA. Would you believe he let me do it again? “Pas de problem, jolie. Demain!” [“No problem, cutie. Tomorrow!”]

Be still my beating heart. Love him.

Ladies and gentlemen: I have a tab with the fruit stand man!

I think in Senegal, that means I’ve arrived. It’s good to be here. :)

Of Hope in the Midst of Misplaced Keys and Minor Chords.

The beach I run on.

This one, I’m not sure how to write. The story doesn’t resolve-she doesn’t resolve. In this grand symphony we call life, she is a haunting minor chord-the slight grating noise of a key misplaced. She is uncomfortable, and hastily forgotten as the music swells.

But I can’t forget Madame Diatta.

I went for my usual run on the beach on Friday. I do it every day-it takes me about ten minutes to get from my apartment door to a stretch of beach that happens to be both the safest and most beautiful place in the city for me to run. Something about the familiar, salty air and the reassuring ebb and flow of the Atlantic is irresistible to me-reminding me of a God who, like the ocean tide, never changes.

I run up and down that stretch of beach every evening, just before the sun slips away. But on Friday, something was different. An older woman wearing black from head to toe was unsteadily standing on the side of the road, hesitantly holding out her wavering hand in an unsuccessful attempt to hitchhike. I watched her fearfully jerk her hand out of the way as dilapidated taxis sputtered towards her-wherever she needed to go, it was painfully clear that she couldn’t pay to get there.

 She walked with a pronounced limp that suggested some sort of birth defect-I watched her lunge wildly from side to side as though her body were entirely out of her control. I ran by her several times over the course of an hour, and watched as the occasional car would stop for a brief moment, and turning a blind eye to the broken woman quietly begging to be allowed inside, would quickly drive away upon the discovery that she had nothing to give in exchange for the ride that she needed.

She tried for an hour. She stood staunchly, resolutely, with a pleading, despairing look on her face, fighting the grim reality that the help she so desperately needed was not coming as car after car passed her by. She looked hopeless- like she was fighting tears.

 Have you ever watched a stranger for an hour? I felt somehow as though I knew her as I watched her finally turn from the road and start to loudly call out the name of Muhammad in a husky voice, extending her hand to those passing by her, pleading for their spare change. She swayed violently down the sidewalk, unable to really move, …but what choice did she have? She jerked crudely towards the people that were going out of their way to avoid the oddity drunkenly weaving up the sidewalk-they stared straight through her. She was the victim of fleeting, curious glances lasting mere seconds before people turned away uncomfortably and kept hurriedly walking.

She was invisible.

She started to limp towards me. I normally only give food to people that ask me for money in Dakar-but she was different. I had the equivalent of about four dollars with me, [nothing to you and I, but it’s  enough to get you anywhere you need to go in the city] and her chocolate eyes widened as she took the crumpled bill in her gnarled hands. Big, crocodile tears began to spill down her cheeks as over and over again, she gratefully repeated “Merci! Merci, merci.”

 Through broken sobs, she asked for my name, and then haltingly stuttered, “Moi, je m’appelle Madame Diatta. Merci merci! Il y a rien pour l’handicapé ici.” [My name is Madame Diatta. Thank you! There is nothing for the handicapped here.]

In all of my time in Dakar, Madame Diatta is the first beggar to ask me for my name and give me hers. I think in the midst of a world that stares straight through her, for even the briefest moment she wanted to be seen. To most of us, she is little more than a depressing, forgettable statistic. But she has a name. Madame Diatta is somebody’s daughter-and at one point, given the fact that she is a “Madame” and not a “Mademoiselle”, she was somebody’s wife. She laughs and cries, daydreams and has a favorite food. She is somebody.

 Madame Diatta must have tearfully thanked me at least two dozen times-all for the equivalent of one of those caramel lattes that I’m always talking about. Sadly, if her exuberant reaction is indicative, that forgettable four dollars was the nicest thing that someone had done for her in quite a while.

In a world that stares straight through her and pretends her away-I so desperately want her to understand that there is Someone who sees her standing the side of the road, and cries with her. She is precious to Someone. She is greatly, dearly loved-desired, and pursued. That there is hope.

 Do I understand why God allowed Madame Diatta to the born with legs that are all but unusable? Why I’ve never missed a meal in my life, but she spends her days fighting persistent, gnawing hunger that never seems to go away? I don’t understand. What I do know is that God didn’t ever intend for her to live that way-and He Himself left the wonder of heaven to enter into her pain with her. With us. To come hang naked and broken on a cross for a hopeless world drowning in suffering of our own making. We were so, irreparably broken that He had to be broken on our behalf to fix us. I follow a God that intimately understands what it is to feel brokenness and agony-in a way that you and I and even Madame Diatta never will. Jesus died for broken people like Madame Diatta and you and I-to give us hope in the midst of intense pain. And hope does not disappoint. Hope is trust and confidence and expectation. Trust that He knows what He’s doing. Confidence that He’s done it before and expectation that He’ll do it again.

I want Madame Diatta to know hope. Without Jesus, there is none.

My Beef With the Baby Downstairs.

My little cousin Julianna and I. I adore this child. This baby, we'll keep. ;)

I’m not that girl.

That girl that sits around planning her wedding and naming her children? That’s not me-it never has been. Those girls have food names like “Candy” or “Muffin”. They wear pearls to pick the newspaper up off their front porch at 6:30 AM and spend their spare time knitting and collecting little faceless Amish dolls. I can’t even sew a button. I have two puppy names picked out, if that counts [Friday and Latte-how cute are those names?]-but it’s going to be a while before I have any desire to create a mini-me.

…especially now.

Apparently, there’s a sort of understood chain of events that occurs once you fall hopelessly in love and decide to link your life to somebody else’s forever amen. A test, so to speak, to determine whether or not you’re ready to slap pastel paint all over the room in your house that formerly functioned as an office, and toss any longing thought of sleep out the window. For the purposes of our discussion today, we’ll call it the “Can you keep a living thing alive?” test.

 The test begins with houseplants. This is tragic news for me, given that I can’t so much as keep a cactus alive. It’s like plants see me coming and simply give up! I get my black thumb from my Mom-whose line of cheerfully colored dirtpots  flowerpots on our windowsill back home has been affectionately nicknamed “death row” by my snarky brothers.

 I digress. The theory is that if you can keep a plant on the greener side, you’re ready to try and keep a fish from turning some sickly variant of that same color. If your fish survives, you graduate to a puppy, and once you’ve kept Rover alive for a significant amount of time, you’re ready for los bebes. Basically, if we do some simple math, thus far in my life I’m at about a 36% success rate. If I were a goldfish, I’d be hoarding food flakes and cowering in my plastic castle while contemplating leaping over the bowl walls and braving the outside world.

 Given the fact that I’m far, far away from needing to pass the “Can you keep a living thing alive?” test, I’m

Other kids in my family I love! So I suppose they're not all bad...

rather indifferent at this point in my life. The past three weeks, however, have caused me to seriously consider purposefully committing fish genocide and FLUNKING said test to ensure that I never have to deal with anything that won’t swim quietly in a tank.

…ladies and gentlemen: I give you my beef with the baby downstairs.

It can’t be more than two years old, and I know I ought to be far more understanding. Let’s keep in mind, though, that I live in the midst of a deafeningly loud city. It’s not as though I’m asking for silence and solitude, here-the call to prayer starts at 5:00 AM, and I sleep straight through it. I sleep through the hustle of traffic, the incessant haggling of vendors on the street outside my bedroom window, and our neighbor’s rap music. [And by the way, Rihanna needs a full psychiatric work-up for “liking the way it hurts”.] The point is, I’ve learned to tune out the dull roar of my noisy city.

 What I can’t tune out is that blasted rugrat downstairs! Like clockwork every bright and early morning, the thing starts wailing like a banshee. Screaming, hollering at the top of it’s little lungs like it’s on fire-and to my great chagrin, it never actually is.

 It’s just sitting there. If you ask me, I think it’s just bored. And what’s more, it’s brilliant, enabling parents love to yell back at it-creating a daily ruckus that will leave you contemplating gnawing off your right arm.

 I think, if it’s all the same to you, in a couple years I’ll just take up collecting those faceless Amish voodoo dolls and call it a day.

[The fish might need some friends.]

 

[Note: Fine, you caught me, I don’t actually hate ALL babies.]