Life's Ups and Downs

Well, as I seem to be saying repeatedly, what a difference 24 hours can make. Yesterday was an emotional roller coaster. Too many people said to me in person or sent me email messages that began with, “As I’m sure you already know...I’m sorry. I wish you the best.” The problem was that I DID NOT KNOW.

My exchange partner could not overcome his challenges in Farmington Hills both in his home and school settings. As a result, the school principal recommended immediate termination of the exchange. That request resulted in the U.S. State Department putting my exchange partner back on a plane to Senegal within 24 hours. He is now back here in Senegal. That left me in an undefined position, suggesting an immediate return for me as well, for exchanges are defined as two-way. If one side doesn’t work, the other is obliged to terminate as well. All day, I waited for a phone call from the States for some clarification on what exactly was happening, had happened, and would happen. I cancelled appointments here that I had in anticipation of more pressing news.

After morning classes, then lunch at an Indian restaurant and a walk around the Colobane Market** with Abdoulaye, we returned home. The irony was that he had an interview with a bank that morning that went very well, and he may be landing a new job which will finally deliver him from the horrible supermarket warehouse. I was sincerely happy, actually overjoyed, for him. But I could not stop my restlessness. We walked across the street to the U.S. baseball field/park and listlessly threw around the frisbee and swung on the swings. The sun was setting, a truly beautiful sight; yet I was not at peace. We went back across the street with Tom, one of the other Fulbright teachers, and grabbed a drink as a potential distraction. It didn’t work. Ahmed, one of my first friends here, stopped by to see me for the first time since my return from vacation. As I explained the situation to him as I understood it at that point, he insisted that I must put all my concerns and worries in God’s hands. Last night around 9 p.m., while he was with me, I received a call from my principal back home who explained what had happened. He then proceeded to offer to do his utmost so that I could delay my return to the states, if that in fact was my wish, which it is. To bring a somewhat comforting ending to a tumultous 36 hours, he said he already had identified long-term substitutes who could fill in through Spring Break; after that was still undetermined, but he would work on it. Sooo, I’m here to stay until mid-April at least, maybe even until the end of the school year in June.
I’m exhausted yet elated. Anxiety transformed into relief. As my friend Ousmane says daily, “God is great.”

**Immense market with used clothes--among the tens of thousands of items, a UofM Hockey Jersey. Vendors young and old, male and female, forlorn and haggard sleeping on top of their piles of clothes. The attention to folding, cleaning the clothes by other merchants. Using a toothbrush to clean soles of shoes. Such dignity and resignation in the same space. The beautiful Indian restaurant, French pastry shop, European villas in Les Almadies, but not forgetting that that was Abdoulaye’s first time there, and 10 year old boys walking barefoot with empty coffee cans begging for spare change. Layers of contrast. Everyday reality. Such reality layered on my layers of contrast from the latest drama. The words are not here to describe the sentiment, because what can capture that which is incomplete, in opposition, and defies logic? Life here sometimes is about just adjusting to the pain.