Day five

Today was time travel day.

A couple days ago Mom asked the guy at the hotel desk if he could arrange a taxi to be at our service for a few hours so we could tour around and see some old stomping grounds. He said he just happens to have a friend who could do just that! Imagine the odds.

Mor is the cabbie's name, and he picked us up from the hotel at 10 this morning. His cab is impressive mostly in the sense that the doors don't require any tricks to open (the day we got here my door couldn't be opened from the inside and on a later trip the driver's door couldn't be opened from the outside so I had to open it for him -- I kid you not) and none of his tires were flat (apparently not a requirement).

First stop: our old house. To get there we took a road called the Corniche. It looks like a divided highway but it's really just a big city road, maybe closer to a boulevard. It runs NW-SE along the water on the west side of the city. When we lived here the Corniche would take you to a point where there was not much built up. There was not much built up around our house.

How things change. There is construction everywhere. New buildings everywhere, many more cars than there used to be, more people. Mom was trying to direct Mor to where the house was but got lost in all the new development because she couldn't recognize any of the old hidden among the new, if the old even still existed. Before we knew it we were up by the school.

New first stop: our old school. The International School of Dakar.

As I mentioned yesterday, I don't have all too many memories of Dakar, especially when compared with Abidjan. The school is something I have clear memories of. (We lived in Dakar when I was between ages 3 and 7, which is too young for school through the middle of second grade.) I remember my teachers and some of my friends and what stuff looked like and where stuff was.

The first challenge to my memory was what stuff looks like. The school has beefed up its security in the form of a more substantial gate. There's a whole village of high-rise apartments across the little dirt road from the front gate that wasn't there before. The road we used to take to get to the school was no longer accessible. That was just the exterior changes.

Walking through the gate and clearly seeing the school building and the field is not easy to describe, so bear with me. They didn't tear the place down and rebuild it. They didn't turn the building around or replace the field with an ice skating rink. The building is still where it's supposed to be and so is the field; the skeleton is in place. There was no mistaking where I was.

But my memory was under assault. I was battling three memory reconciliations: the way things naturally change over time; the way your perception of size changes over time as the subject of your memory stayed the same size but you have grown; and my own self-doubt concerning the reliability of the memory of a 7-year old.

Here's what I remember. The building was in an L shape. Fitting into the corner of the L like a dream Tetris piece was the field. (I just realized how vague "field" is. I mean a soccer field. Lengthwise it's a full field and widthwise it's two little fields side by side. Every international school I've been to has one. I've always considered it an international school staple. I would be worried about any school I came across that didn't have one. I don't believe such a thing exists.)

Surrounding the field was a running track. On the near side of the field between the track and the school building was a row of tiny trees. Next to the tiny trees were benches and tables where we ate lunch. The trees were so tiny they couldn't even provide any shade for us when we sat on the benches. They were like potted plants, barely trees at all in fact, when we left nearly 19 years ago.

The first thing we all noticed and exclaimed about when we entered was the row of huge trees between the school building and the track. The benches and tables are in the shade. There is a pebbled walkway between the trees and the tables. It looks great.

(Posting pictures on Flickr has been unreliable. Twitter has been better so I'll put a couple more up there. When Flickr cooperates again I will do a picture-heavy post as sort of a catch-up.)

The tables and benches looked familiar but there's no way to know for sure if they're actually the same tables and benches or if they are impostors. My memory yielded to what I saw, and now in my memory I see the tables and benches that I saw today. There must be a word for that.

We walked into the office and explained who we are and why we were wandering around. (I won't repeat the explanation that everyone we met was excited to hear that we had returned after so long and that they heartily welcomed us back, etc. Just assume everyone I mention did that, because they did.) The high school principal ended up showing us around and explaining some of the things that might have changed (nearly everything). A much larger student body, new classrooms, a new building opening next year that is going to completely change the physical dynamic of the campus, the technology and on and on.

We began talking about people who may still be around from 19 years ago. The list of people was very short, just two. One was a woman whose name Mom sort of recognized but couldn't match with a face, so we didn't see her. The other was my pre-school teacher, Ms. Bockarie. 

The principal walked us over to the pre-school building and went into Ms. Bockarie's room while we stayed outside. She came out and looked at me. I could see a light deep inside her memory flicker just barely. She stared at me and said "Hold on, hold on, it's been a long time..." She looked at Mom and looked back at me and suddenly the flickering light became high beams. "THE ROBINSONS!"

She remembered my name and Mom's name and Jennifer's name. She gave us all hugs and we went inside to catch up on 19 years.

That was neat.

After we left Ms. Bockarie we walked around a bit more, noticing more and more changes and remembering things we thought we had forgotten. The playground is in the same place as it was. One time I busted my lip when I fell off those monkey bars and I cleaned myself up on a water fountain that was right over there. Hey, remember that once or twice we had yearbook photos taken on those metal pipe things? Yeah. Those are probably the same pipes, just with new paint. Remember we used to have assemblies in front of the library? Yeah. Way too many kids for that now.

When he was still showing us around, the principal asked me if I ever thought I would come back. I didn't know how to answer. I told him that when I left I was only seven and I don't think I had an opinion on that question at the time. Surely there are places I have been that I will never return to, some intentionally and some unintentionally. Likewise, there are places I have no specific plans to return to but will find myself in again. I never think when I leave a place that I will never return. My usual response to not being able to do something for whatever reason is "Well, next time." And I mean it at the time I say it. If I had a list of all the places I have verbally committed, just once, to returning to I would have quite a long list. I think I'm setting myself up for failure.

After lunch we drove around some more and saw where the new embassy is being built and the USAID office. We walked down to a couple beaches and took some beach pictures.

One of the first things Jennifer told us about when saw her last week was a statue called the Monument to the African Renaissance. It's insane, she said. It's a broad-chested, muscular African man, holding his baby up towards the sky, his wife gazing up at him, and the baby is pointing into the distance. It's huge. It's bigger than the Statue of Liberty. You can see it from the Corniche from miles away. It's completely ridiculous.

Jennifer must be drinking the tap water, I thought.

Lo and behold, the statue is as exactly as she described (see Twitter for pictures). You really can see it for miles. And it's not like you see a speck and know what it is because you know what it is. You can see the man and the baby and wife from miles away. I think you can see it from the Hubble but I can't prove it at this time. It's a monstrosity. Maybe you're familiar with the Australian aborigine's take on the genesis of humanity and that it involves a time when giants ruled the earth. Or maybe you're familiar with the Colossus of Rhodes. That's the scale we're talking about here.

We immediately agreed that we had to go into the little observation deck in the man's head.

It's 198 steps to just get to the base of the thing (the statue family is standing on a rock formation). Once inside, there are three levels of museum-like rooms, and an elevator to take you to the 15th floor, which is the guy's head. So we went up.

The view is amazing. It really is taller than the Statue of Liberty. While up there a guide explained why this thing exists. The President of Senegal has this vision for Senegal leading an African Renaissance. He told some famous architect about his vision and the architect turned the vision into a plan for a statue. Then, naturally, Senegal commissioned North Korea to build the statue.

What, you weren't expecting that?

North Korea has very few exports but apparently one of them is building Soviet-style monuments for other countries. No, this is not a joke. The guide told us that there are some North Koreans who live below the hill the statue is on. It's in their contract that they will remain until next year, being available to fix any statue problems in the meantime. 

The guide also explained that the baby is pointing northwest because north is above south, relatively, at least on certain maps, so that indicates upward progress, and west is where you find western countries, countries with whom Africa wants to partner to help them spurn this renaissance. Sounded a bit contrived for me and Jennifer but hey, why the heck not.

You really need to see a picture of this thing. pic.twitter.com/8L0JCcJw

The way our route had taken us we were in position to try to find the house again on the way back to the hotel. Mom and Mor figured out where we were going amid all the construction and we found the roundabout with the turnoff to our street. We were on the roundabout, looked down the street to where the house was and...no house. It apparently had been torn down in lieu of new apartment buildings. So that was that. 

We have no real plan for tomorrow. We might go walking around a part of town called Point E. If we do, there may be many good photo opportunities. Hopefully if there are I'll be able to share them. Darn you, third world wi-fi.