peregrine by nature

In the Bible Isaac is named as the son Abraham nearly sacrificed on Mt. Moriah and his descendants the Jews inherit Jerusalem. In the Qur’an his half brother Ishmael is the offering and his descendants the Muslims inherit the land.

The war is not over.

This is the matrix. Wake up.

A renegade soldier is loose in Goma and Gaza Strip militants fire more rockets and Russia still refuses to pull back. In Dakar we lose power, blacking out the peninsula from Point E to Almadies, and now is a good time to remember your physics, in this universe true darkness does not (yet) exist, only varying levels of light. In any conflict or cave or refugee camp, even if your eyes can’t make them out, there are particles of luminescence. Hold on to that and have faith.

It’s true that no man is an island. Islands are feminine.

Île de Gorée sits 1 kilometre off the coast of Dakar, 17 minutes by ferry boat.

Attaya, or gunpowder tea is strong, sweet tea served in tiny glassfuls in a 3 round ritual. Water is boiled on a fuurnu with a small packet of tea leaves and a full kas of sugar, each round with added sugar to symbolize the growing sweetness of friendship. Or, alternatively, the first bitter round is for life, the second for friendship and the third is the sweetest, for love. The tea is poured impossibly high from kas to kas, up to a two foot arc without spilling a drop. This creates delicious foam. Return warga to fuurnu and bring back to a boil. Serve scalding hot. Second and third rounds add mint.

When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it. What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then – that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.
–CS Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet

There are 10,000 talibes on the streets of Dakar, taken from their rural villages at a young age by a marabout, a Muslim religious leader with credibility elsewhere but in Senegal is using the ancient practice to exploit.

Talibes go barefoot onto the streets of Dakar to beg for their food and for money. If they do not bring a sufficient sum to the marabout at the end of the day they are beaten. They also are isolated in that they often can only speak their tribal language, of which there are 36 spoken in Senegal alone. Read more about them here.

Lac Rose has a heavy salt content which causes the waters to turn different shades of pink according to the position of the sun. The salt is harvested from the shallow lake bottom, dried and sent to market.

he ran to me and asked for my Kirene bottle, one quarter full. they passed it around in a circle, taking careful mouthfuls until the water is gone and i’m no longer my own. some days you cry so hard your ribs might break.

Beaching a fishing pierog in Saly. Many Africans pay a fee to take a boat like this one to the Canary Islands to seek a better life. The trip can take up to two weeks through treacherous waters and thousands attempting it have died of thirst, exposure and drowning. A radar system has now been set up in the Canaries that detects immigrant vessels before they reach shore.

West Africa has a joie de vivre that trancends circumstance. If only I could learn as much. Senegal, you have a beautiful smile. Alhamdulilaay.

Sometimes we scare ourselves with our promise. The spirit within each of us. Sometimes I have to grip the ground to keep from jumping off.

Threads crisscross the planet binding portico to rooftop, my Dakar stoop to your Chicago flat. This is where underdeveloped meets tech; two women are grinding grain, one is taken, and the other takes a call on her Samsung.

After one month it’s become clear that I’ve been subconsciously hoping that I was, at soul, fluent. That after a few weeks of verbal stumbling along one day I’d open my mouth and all this forgotten language would gush out with perfect accent, perfect pitch and I’d be witty and interesting in Wolof and French. It didn’t happen exactly that way so, onward language lessons ahoy. I am finding them adventurous somewhat and I do enjoy learning but I’m impatient because there is so much to do, and more easily done if I could communicate better, or at all. I long for the future of cyberpunk when I can lie back, plug in and upload a language program directly into my brain, a la the Matrix, or have a memory chip inserted like Hiro Protagonist. But I begrudgingly guess the reward is in the struggle and muddle and study until you finally have that aha moment, that epiphany, the world opening before you in all its pearly glory.

And this is why I came here, to be out of my element. To live in a place where it would take real commitment to be complacent. The frustrations pale next to the payoffs, when things I agonized over in my last life, things I tossed and turned and petitioned, some of those thank God are but shadows of dreams.