The Man with Two Homes

Hello and Welcome to Sitting in Silence, the newsletter about craft, writing, worry, and joy.

I write today again from the Black Rock Senegal residency in beautiful Dakar. This is my third dispatch from West Africa, a time and place I know I’ll never forget.  My adventures here have included side trips to Goree Island, Saint-Louis, and Maka-Diama. At every turn, I’m seeing things I never imagined, meeting people I dreamed of, and generally having the experience of a lifetime.  

But I also write from Louisiana because I’m back in the States. I suppose that sense of being in two places is what I’ll talk about today.

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Today, let’s talk about The Man with Two Homes: Senegal

I remember being a small child playing in the yard at home in the early 80s. Our house was part of a new development called Kingswood. (Flash forward about a decade. A classmate said incredulously, “there’s no way you live there!” It was a nice, quiet neighborhood but not that fancy.) So new that our backyard was a sandlot. I don’t think Dad liked the idea of me playing in construction fill. Or maybe Ma wanted some greenery for aesthetic reasons, wanted her new yard to match the yard she’d grown up with.

Either way, Dad didn’t play around. Before long he was depositing large squares of grass all over the yard. Before long, that grass integrated with the soil below and just like that we had a beautiful verdant expanse behind the house that Dad would spend countless broiling Saturdays mowing. That is until I grew tall enough to push the lawnmower and the job descended to me. But before that transition, my friends would come over and play. Once one of us found a tiny plant with four leaves. Someone said it was a four-leaf clover. It yielded good luck to the wielder. I must have stared at those leaves for the rest of the day. Memorized every line. The mild variations of color. Eventually, if memory serves, Dad asked what I was looking at. I explained. He took it and placed it in the Bible where the clover resided for a generation until the floodwaters of Katrina came.

Contrary to popular belief, the world is full of such clovers if you know where to look.

A year ago, I didn’t plan on even applying for Black Rock. It was the brilliant and kind writer Deesha Philyaw who told me to apply. Maybe I didn’t think I was worthy. Perhaps I wouldn’t be able to set aside time and resources to go. Maybe I was worried about going to an unfamiliar place. Who am I kidding? It was all those things and more.

There’s a short list of places I’ve wanted to go since I was a teenager: Tokyo, Australia, and the African continent. And I’ve traveled my fair share over the years. But…my adventurous spirit is tempered by pragmatism. Even with the money of my old corporate law jobs, I rarely got to take time off for a vacation. A trip to any of those far-flung locations would have required a week or more stay. Why waste time going to the other side of the world for a weekend?

Still, as long-time readers know, I pray. I pray for the health and safety of my loved ones. I pray for my portion of wisdom. And sometimes I prayed for a luxurious trip to Africa.

You see, I went to a radical high school that emphasized the importance of African Americans to the United States, but our teachers also told us about the continent. We learned about Mansa Musa, the richest man in history. We learned about the natural resources and culture of countless tribes. We even learned phrases in Swahili, Wolof, and other languages. But like all Americans, I had to contend with anti-African propaganda. My grandfather’s beloved Three Stooges and Warner Brothers cartoons denigrated almost everyone with dark skin, American or African. Most images of the continent during my youth were about unrest and starvation. Don’t get me started on Tarzan.

I suppose that’s why the trip was so important to me. My experiences there proved most of what the media showed me was false. Just like some people overseas sometimes think all Americans are supersized, fanny pack wearing cretins, direct experience changes perspectives (usually).

The truth of today’s post is that I’m not sure where to start in talking about my time in Senegal. I had a life-changing experience every couple of days. My assumptions were challenged at every turn. And then my new understandings were challenged again. I was delighted every night with the people I met and the things I saw. As a writer, I’m certain that I have enough material to write about for the rest of my life.

But here and now, I’ll say this. We all have a home. And we all have a history. Up until now, I was forced to observe so much of my family’s history from a distance as though through display glass in a museum. As someone in my forties, I sometimes feel like I’m just learning who I am and what the places I call home mean. Yet, spending time in Senegal, eating chebu jën, drinking bissap, speaking Wolof (apparently, I was good at it) and watching teenagers drop to their knees in prayer on the streets of downtown, showed me that this part of me is something I’ve always understood. My direct relationship with Africa is just beginning, but it will continue. That’s how I became a man with two homes.