Goodbye to All That
to Dakar, to dust, to Wolof, to rice and fish, to sheep living (and dying) on my roof, to marriage proposals, to malaria medicine, to car rapides, to bargaining for cab rides, to my race affording me celebrity status, to fabrics covered in dollar signs or Obama faces or portraits of the baby jesus, to five times daily calls to prayer, to mountains of trash, to the Atlantic crashing up against the sides of the city, to babies named Mohammed, to perpetual summer, to fish dumplings, to men in T-shirts bearing english slogans they couldn’t read (“Michigan State University presents…The Vagina Monologues”), to speaking French every day, to pretending to understand French every day, to Allison and Shannon and Bobby, to Africa time, to holidays that depend on the moon, to all of that and to a thousand others rattling through my head just beyond reach. Goodbye.
