Short Showers, Long Nights

By Thomas Gilchrist

Written:September 15, 2008

They told us to bring a year’s supply of condoms. So I brought three. I brought close to the equivelent of one liter of hand sanitizer, a bottle of shaving cream with twenty eight percent more, free, five sticks of deoderant, two tubes of toothpaste, two containers of bandaids, a loofa, a family-sized bottle of shampoo and three bars of irish spring soap. They said that we did NOT want to overpack for our six month trip to Senegal. I figure I brought the bare minimum.

We set the all-time record for most guys going to Senegal in one year from our school: two (although there are four of us in all). I don’t know why only girls seemingly go to Senegal, for Senegal seems like a very hard place for a woman to live. They do all the work, and raise all the children, and they have to share their husbands. I said two guys, and there are two, me and Matt, or Matt and I as my english teachers would tell me, though I never understood why. I like the word me.

Matt and I spent the better part of the night drinking Gazelle beer and smoking Marlboro Lights at a table in a bar nearby called The Palmtree. At least that’s what their match books say is their name, but around here, nobody knows for sure. We sat there and talked about our past relationships with women who were and still are in many ways, very close and dear to us, so much so that you may even say that we love them. But all we could decide is that we love women, and you can’t love them all and still be able to reproduce. Someone will cut your balls off.

All I read about on the news is that wall street is in trouble, whatever that means. I don’t know. I don’t necessarily understand the transactions involved with money that people hope will exist in the future. I’ve always said that if I had any money to invest, I would put it in Apple because they always seem to be doing OK.

As we sat there at our table with our cigarettes and our beers, a Senegalese air-conditioning salesman named Babacar we had met a couple of nights ago and had since lent us his lighter came over to talk English. He asked where our girls were. We said they were waiting. He said in a mix of French and English and Wolof that communication was everything, and in effect, he summed up our entire discussion of relationships, and every discussion of relationships that has ever occurred, is currently occurring, or will occur in the future. We thanked him.

A man just got out of bed, and took a massive leak.

I love senegal. I love the freedom. I love the sand in the streets and the bagged water. I love how my showers are short and my days and nights are long. I love the smell of death and rot and moldy fish and diesel in the morning. I love the look on my teacher’s face as he speaks to us in Wolof. I do not, however, like Nescafe, but maybe it will grow on me.