Existing in a Place You Don't Belong

In December of 2006 I went back to Senegal with a good friend and a video camera. I wanted to capture the feeling of my life there. The video, put together by my friend, is set to a song whose writer described it as being about “sometimes existing in a place where you don’t belong”. When I lived in Senegal, I made only ten dollars a day and I was forced to spend countless hours waiting for public transportation often cramped into the backs of old pickup trucks with old women and children staring back out at the red laterite road as dust filled the air behind us clouding the view of dry peanut fields and the occasional mango tree in the background.

We arrived in Dakar late at night and after a struggle with hostile taxi drivers in front of the decaying Leopold Senghor International airport, we dropped our stuff off at the Hotel Al Baraka and then went straight to Just 4 You (recently featured in the New York Times), a music club to listen to Wolof Mbalax music and enjoy our last night in the capitol before heading out to the Gambian border to visit my old village. It was the day before the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, known as Tabaski in Senegal. I had forgotten just how dry Senegal became during the 9 month dry season where Harmattan winds sweep through the country from the Sahara in the east. Instead of a warm tropical setting, it was surprisingly cold, windy, and dusty. As the sun began to warm the day, we marched with the rest of the village out to the shade of an enormous tree and listened as the Imam recounted the story of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son in the name of God.

We walked back to the Imam’s house and watched as young boys gathered around the white ram as they prepared to slaughter it in recognition of God’s decision to save Abraham’s son.

We spent the rest of the trip on the move heading south through the Gambia via Banjul to the Casamance, a worn torn region where freedom fighters have turned to thievery and outside military forces flex their muscles parading in armored vehicles. On the way back we spent hours stuck at the Gambia river waiting for a ferry, then sitting on the side of the road waiting for a new tire to arrive, and through it all staring out the window of a cramped mini-van watching the scenes of Senegal pass us by.