Yacinne Diaw

This morning I headed to the Mayor's office to meet with my supervisor and finalize details about our upcoming urban gardening training (...only after going for a run which was totally embarrassing after two weeks of being out of practice). The meeting went well and my supervisor seemed genuinely excited about the 3 day training which will take place during the 3rd week of March. Lucky for me, he knows I am light years away from a green thumb, so he expects two of my fellow volunteers - Emily and Clare - who are actually trained in urban agriculture to do most of the talking. I'm happy to be official photographer and learn a thing or two to boot.

After the meeting, I headed to my former Wolof tutor Yacinne's house, who has successfully taken the top spot on my list of all time favorite Senegalese people. Way back when I first moved into Pout, my counterpart introduced us and even though she has no teaching experience, I solicited her help as a Wolof tutor. I spent the first 5 months of my time in Pout meeting with her two or three times a week for "classes," which over time became more like random girl talk and less about grammar and vocabulary. Somewhere along the line I think I realized that I'll never be the fluent Wolof speaker everyone wants me to be, and I was okay with that. I ended the classes with Yacinne, partially because the Peace Corps stipend for tutors runs out after several months, and partially because I'd reached whatever imaginary level of Wolof I'd set for myself. Lucky for me, Yacinne and I have remained close.

Today I expected to hang around her house for a bit and be on my merry way, but as is usually the case I ended up staying for lunch and most of the afternoon. In most situations like this I spend my time checking my phone and wondering when I can make an excuse to leave (I mean, after all, how many times can you talk about the weather and goats before you want to rip your hair out). With Yacinne however, conversation comes easy, which is - frankly - hard to accomplish with most Senegalese people. Aside from the fact that she has one of the cutest 3 year olds on the face of the planet who enjoys falling asleep in my lap, I generally feel at ease around her and don't worry about looming responsibilities.

Most of our conversations revolve around random cultural questions that I pose to her and her inability to stop laughing at how bad my Wolof is. The thing is though, I can ask her almost anything and know she won't be offended; it's the type of relationship which, almost as a rule, is hard to come by here in Senegal. Today we chatted about sex before marriage, birth control and how society is changing its views of it, circumcision, and the Mississippi river amongst other things. Yacinne is 38 years old, has 3 kids, never finished high school, and still retains the curiosity and thirst for life of a starry eyed child. She often sneaks away from her duties around the house to go to our local library (and ignores library fines with reckless abandon I've noticed). When I gave her a book of French poetry last year as a birthday present she just about had a panic attack and still will let no one else lay a finger on it. I just find it fascinating that the sometimes stifling, rigid ways of Senegalese culture and the place a woman takes within it seem not to bother her. She is still a traditional Senegalese woman and will likely never leave the confines of Pout, but I like to think that we are kindred spirits in our desire to know and understand the world.

Days like today leave me with a dull ache in my heart. It's exciting and terrifying to know that my service in Senegal will come to an end in a mere 5 months, and I'll be leaving people like Yacinne behind. It's painful to know that you truly might never see a dear friend again. I suppose that's all the more reason for me to plan on fitting in a visit back to this crazy place at some point in my adult life. Won't that be a trip.