Tag Archives: senegal

Well this was unexpected

Posted in French, travel by

unexpected.jpg

So apparently my golden ticket is not so golden. This morning I went to the Senegalese consulate to inquire about visas, since they are not required for visits of fewer than 90 days but I may want to stay beyond that.

It was quite a surprise to be told that the visa is the least of my problems. Once in Senegal I can visit the immigration office at any time to apply for a visa… but I will not be allowed in the country – or for that matter, on the plane – if I show up to the airport without a return ticket.

I spent about twenty minutes trying unsuccessfully to ascertain whether “return” meant going back to the country of origin, or onward travel to any destination outside of Senegal. The two people I spoke with consulted about the nuances of this question and I could not follow along in the least (nor could they give me a firm answer in English). At first I thought they must be speaking Wolof, but I kept hearing words that, if pronounced entirely differently, would have sounded like French to me. This led me to wonder, not for the first time, whether Senegal is actually the best place for an American to learn French. But I’ll table that question for now in favor of the bigger issue.

As it turns out, you can’t just buy a one-way ticket somewhere and promise them at passport control that you will definitely leave within the time allotted to you. I feel pretty naive for making this little faux pas, but I’m not entirely sure how best to correct it, since I have no idea when I want to leave Senegal nor where I want to go next. I don’t want to book an arbitrary placeholder return ticket and change the date and/or destination later, because that will cost money that I haven’t budgeted for this particular use. But it looks like that’s exactly what I’m going to have to do.

Looking forward to spending the next eight hundred hours on the phone with United…

[Photo: Eva Holm]

I’ve got a golden ticket, I’ve got a golden ticket!

Posted in French, travel by

DAKAR.jpg

People. I just booked my ticket to Dakar. I wanted to lock it in before the dust settled on my Elsewhere trip and the paralysis and despair of unemployment (which started this evening) wrapped me in its death-grip. I also thought, wouldn’t it be nice to go into the new year with something to definitively, concretely look forward to and plan for? And why wait? The longer I put it off, the more opportunity I had to start squirming.

So I’m flying to Dakar on Valentine’s Day, which seems appropriate given how I’ve loved Senegal from afar since the age of 14. The amazing thing about this trip is that while I panicked two years ago when I purchased a solo ticket to Argentina (13 days long) and became mildly anxious when I booked a 1-person trip to Mexico City and Elsewhere (11 days long), I barely batted an eyelash of anxiety when I confirmed this ticket (one-way, i.e. unlimited-days long). Practice makes perfect, I guess.

Now I am heading downtown to raise a glass and toast not only the new year but also the next adventure, 22 years in the making.

Happy new year! Or, rather, bonne année et bonne santé, from someone who will be speaking nothing but French in a matter of weeks…

Senioritis

Posted in travel by

rope_bridge.jpgI have one week left on my contract, and I’m not looking for a new job. After that I have about a month and a half off before I intend to leave for Senegal, where I will first be doing French immersion and then who knows what (for who knows how long).

This liminal period feels startlingly akin to my last semester of high school after I had been accepted to college and knew that only a few short weeks of classes and two months of summer separated me from a freedom-filled new life in New York City. The things that used to bother me didn’t bother me, and I walked around in a dream, filled with infinite possibility and muted excitement – muted because I knew that if I gave in to it fully the anticipation would kill me.

Now, work is no longer work. New York is no longer New York. Annoying people are no longer annoying. I don’t have senioritis in the traditional sense that I’ve checked out of my responsibilities, but I have it in the sense that I am delighting in the present without being at all concerned by it  –  instead putting all my energy into my next step, which is so close I can taste it.

For the past few years, there has been meaning and purpose and challenge in my life, but not nearly enough. On some mornings it’s been difficult to get out of bed, and I’ve chalked up my exhaustion to not getting enough sleep. But now that I’m popping awake every day I realize I had just been bored into depression.

Same thing with my taciturn stomach. It did a million times better in countries where you’re not even supposed to drink the water, because I was a million times happier there.

I’m pretty sure at this point that I’m going to make it to Senegal, but even if I change my mind and end up staying here for the foreseeable future, I’ll have benefited from experiencing the me that I am when I’m excited about life. If I stick with New York I’m going to have to figure out how to do it more on my terms, so that I can keep this fun-to-be me around.

[Photo: Clark Maxwell]

what luck!

Posted in French, inspiration & encouragement, travel by

yes_please.jpg

In the more than two years that I’ve been going to French conversation Meetups, I have met people from virtually every francophone country – except Senegal, the one in which I’m most interested. Last night, less than one week after setting my tentative departure date for Dakar (February 15) and beginning to make concrete plans, I met two guys from… Dakar. They live in New York at the moment, but one of them, Michel, will be heading back soon. I told him he will be my first friend there, and I hope I’m right, because living in place where you don’t know a soul is pretty challenging.

He also works at a really great Senegalese restaurant in Harlem, so I now have a plan for my first lunch as a lady of leisure in January.

Ask, and – sometimes, when it feels like it – the universe answers.

[Photo: Tomo Tapio K]

I’m just loco like that

Posted in Spanish, travel by

departures board.jpg

The chapter we’re studying in my Spanish textbook is called “Ida y Vuelta,” and it’s travel-themed. Yesterday, we split into two groups for an in-class activity in which each group had to come up with a travel adventure plan to present to the other group. Details were to include where we’d go, what we’d do, how long we’d prepare for the trip, and how we’d finance it.

I sheepishly reported to my group that I have a real-life travel adventure plan I am hoping to put into action soon. When I told them what it was, it sounded so much like fantasy that I started passing it off as such to hide my embarrassment. “Primero, voy a ir al Senegal para practicar mi francés, y luego voy a ir al Argentina para seguir aprendiendo mi español, y voy a ir de un país al otro país por, erm… no sé… viajar alrededor los otros países del mundo, quizas?” Which, if I spoke proper Spanish, would translate to, “First I’m going to go to Senegal to practice my French and then I’m going to go to Argentina to continue learning Spanish, and I’m going to get from one country to the other by traveling around the world, maybe?”

We ended up fusing that plan with everyone else’s much more modest travel fantasies (tomar el sol en Florida, conducir por México, viajar a Praga para ver los museos) and decided we would finance our now wildly-untenable trip by working really hard in a restaurant for two months beforehand and selling our travel photos to National Geographic during our trip – which actually sounds much more plausible than the idea of me circumnavigating Africa in-between language immersion stints.

At one point while trying to explain the plan, my classmate asked the teacher, “Cómo se dice, ‘crazy'”?

I piped right up, “Loco!” Because if you harbor a dream as far-fetched as mine, you’re going to know that word in many languages.

[Photo: Fumigraphik]

the pleasures of uncertainty

Posted in French, travel by

jet trail

My lease is up this Friday, and I’ll be subletting apartments on a (crazy) month to month basis so I don’t have to sign a new lease that would force me to stay in the city beyond the end of my work contract. I’ve committed to leaving for Senegal within a month of the last day of my temporary – also month to month – contract, which could be terminated any time between October 1 and April 19. This means that if I stick to my guns, I will be in Senegal in no more than ten months. (The hope is that by writing this in a public forum, I will stick to my guns out of pride, even if courage fails me.)

Apart from a hefty dose of fear and dread, the thought of traveling on a one-way ticket to West Africa also fills me with a sense of freedom and excitement that I haven’t felt since right after college when I decided to move to Los Angeles on a whim, sight unseen, with one suitcase, without friends, without job prospects, and without knowing how to drive. That heady mix of euphoria and nausea is back, baby!

[Photo: Tarik Browne]

the little Fr-engine that could

Posted in French by

fr-engine says, "parle français à moi, bébé!"

Monday night, back at the French Meetup for the first time in quite awhile, I got into a conversation with a Parisian whose parents are from Côte d’Ivoire. It started with a discussion of the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of my embarrassment ‘vous‘ing strangers who are peers as opposed to elders or respected figures. Which led to a consideration of whether the United States or France has deeper ‘fractures sociales‘ between classes and races. Which led to him telling me the story of why and how his parents left Côte d’Ivoire for France. Which segued into a conversation about the weird rules of French colonialism. Which was followed by a summation (his) of the hundred-year social history running up to the Liberian civil war. Which brought us, in a roundabout way, to my Senegal dreams. And on and on…

When people ask me whether I speak French my answer is always no, because there’s so much French I don’t know, and so much I do know but muck up anyway. On nights like Monday, though, I marvel at all that I can say and understand, and I find myself thinking, “I do speak French.” No disclaimer or modifier necessary.

[Photo: Sputnick; terrible photoshopping: me]

wanderlust wish list

Posted in travel by

Dakar, Senegal

(Dakar photo: André Thiel)

Yesterday was a day of bad news and angst, and I really need something to lift my spirits today. Strange as it may seem to non-A-types, sometimes all it takes is the exercise of making a list to give me a little pick-me-up. Ordering the bullet points of my life and aspirations on one neat, scannable page is deeply satisfying. And when I create a wish list specifically, it lets me visualize everything I aspire to all at once. Which makes me happy.

So, today’s list of choice: the top 10 places I would like to visit.

1. Senegal

Dakar, Senegal

(Photo: Kalyan Neelamraju)

I have wanted to go since I first learned about this country in eighth grade French. Something about the culture and climate of Francophone West Africa calls to me, and the prospect of going to Dakar has been the carrot on a stick to keep me interested in French for more than 20 years now. I haven’t yet made it out there because I only ever had one or two of the requirements for the trip concurrently: enough time off, enough money to spend, the right travel partner, and/or the right frame of mind to visit alone. But mark my words – conditions are ripening and I’m committing to make 2016 my year!

2. Patagonia

Patagonia

(Photo: Chris Ford)

I saw a photo like the one above, and I was sold.

3. Cuba

Havana, Cuba

(Photo: Nathan Laurell)

For many reasons – cultural, architectural, temporal, geographical, linguistic.

4. Ukraine (my mother’s mother’s motherland), along with St. Petersburg and Moscow – once things simmer down…

Ukraine

(Photo: Peter Fenďa)

5. Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan

(Photo: Pierre)

Don’t know why exactly. Maybe something about East meeting West appeals to me. And Azerbaijan is one of the most beautiful names I’ve ever heard. Which is a terrible reason to visit a country, but sometimes a place just gets into your head for all the wrong reasons and then sticks around.

6. Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah and Athens, Georgia

Savannah, Georgia

(Photo: Jen Goellnitz)

I would eventually like to visit all 50 states and Georgia is the only one on the Eastern seaboard I haven’t been to (unless you count the Atlanta airport). Charleston and Savannah are supposed to be charming Southern cities and Athens sounds like a cute college town and I would love to road trip between them all.

7. Australia and New Zealand

near Perth, Australia

(Photo: Kenny Teo)

I can’t get more specific because I want to see all of it, from Sydney to Melbourne to the Outback to the West, to Aukland to Wellington to Christchurch to the mountains in between. Which means I will probably never see any of it. My fatal flaw is I get too ambitious and then end up doing nothing when I realize I can’t do everything.

8. Kenya and Tanzania

Tanzania

(Photo: David Berkowitz)

Again, overambitious. I want to see Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti and Masai Mara park and Lake Victoria and Nairobi and Zanzibar. This is actually a scaled down version of my original plan, which had been to visit Mozambique in the same trip.

9. Norway and Sweden

Lofoten Islands, Norway

(Photo: Henrik Johansson)

For midnight sun and the fjords. I was thisclose to using my miles on a Scandinavia vacation a couple of years ago but thankfully, I looked up the prices for hostels first and was rudely awakened to the fact that Norway has one of the highest costs of living in the world. Hostels were the price of hotels. So this one will probably stay on the wish list awhile.

10. Mexico City

Mexico City

(Photo: Boris G.)

Mexico’s got thousands of years of history and I’ve only ever been to the tourist strip in Tijuana. I need to cleanse my brain’s Mexico palate with something more representative.

Honorable mentions: Mali (not the best time to visit…), South Africa, South Korea, Montana and Wyoming.

Ahhh, that was fun. Which places are on your wish list?