Dreams

I've dreamed nearly every night since somewhere around halfway through my junior year of high school.  I don't always remember what I dreamed, but I generally do have some sense of what happened during the night.  Lately they've been really interesting, and last night was fabulous, so I thought I'd share.

Last night started out at a party at some mountain cabin hosted by my friend Zack (I heard from him for the first time in a while yesterday, hence his appearance in my subconscious).  It was a very Senegalese bash--great music, lots of dancing, tasty food and beverages.  I don't remember much of this part other than being thrilled to see Zack again and having a great time.

Skip forward a little and I was taking a trek through these mountains, now covered in snow and in northern Michigan, I think.  Somehow I knew that I needed to be careful of moose, because the males could be dangerous if I got too close to their babies.  One of my goals for this trip was to see some moose, so I was thrilled when there was not one, not two, but TEN moose wading in a freezing river right next to me!

Naturally, the cabin where I was suddenly destined was across the river, and of course I had to swim it.  So I gingerly got into the (wonderfully warm) frozen river upstream from the moose family.  I was being careful to keep my distance as I swam along, but then they all started swimming towards me!  Soon, I was being swarmed by baby moose.  I tried to make it clear to their daddies that I was staying in one place and it was them approaching me, not the other way around. They, too, started coming towards me, and I was afraid they would attack me with their huge antlers.

They swam up to me, sniffed me, nuzzled my shoulder, and hung out.  I continued crossing the river and they followed me onto the shore and into the cabin.  I had a little moose party and it was fabulous.

The end.

I hope that was as entertaining for you as it was for me last night.

That sounded a little weirder than I meant it.

I should write about Papa a bit.  He had a stroke about two weeks ago, and he spent about 4 days in the hospital.  He's home now, and starting to regain control over the left side of his body.  He can sort of fling his arm around, and he can move his leg a little.  He can talk, using mostly the right side of his mouth, and his Wolof is fine, but his French is pretty incomprehensible.  He likes to try to talk to me, but he doesn't enunciate at all and I don't speak enough Wolof to understand him.  Someone translates for him when he talks to me.

Papa is in his early sixties, I think, which is past the average life expectancy here (58 for men).  His health has been bad since I've been here, and it's been much worse lately.  I know that he's recovering, but I feel like that doesn't mean much in the long-term.  To make things worse, my family doesn't have a car, so when they have to take Papa back to the hospital tomorrow, they'll have to take a taxi.  Papa can't walk, so a lot of the strain is landing on Youssou.

Youssou and I went out walking last night for the first time in a long while and had a nice talk.  He bought me ice cream and was relieved to feel the sea breeze since it was his first time out of the house all day.

I wish there was more I could do to support my family right now.  I'm spending more time just hanging out and being social with them, but I worry about the strain my presence puts on them.  We'll see.  Hopefully things will get a lot better soon.

Happy first night of Hanukkah!  Hopefully I'll have some good stories to tell about that tomorrow.