Morning Conversation
This morning, I was wandering aimlessly around facebook (I do this for about 10 minutes every morning) and my friend N. sent me a message.
A little background on N. She's a Senegalese Serer; unusually for the Serer, she's also a Muslim. (The indigenous beliefs of the Serer are so close to Catholicism that they became Catholic pretty easily and almost universally.) We met because she was a security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Nouakchott; the security situation was such that Embassy guards were also working at the Peace Corps office. I was about to leave the country, so I had to be at the office quite regularly over a few months (necessitating a 12-hour taxi ride each time, ugh) and we (the boys in my group and I) all thought she was pretty good looking. I invited her to lunch, which turned into her inviting me to lunch, which turned into a very, very pleasant last week in RIM for me. I found out pretty quickly that she was straight and taken (she took me to meet her now-husband's family), but there are worse things than spending a week in the company of a pleasant, intelligent, beautiful woman. She and her boyfriend (who was one of my superiors at Peace Corps!) saw me off at the airport, and she gave me a new dress as a gift. I still have it.
So. This morning, we talked on facebook and she congratulated me on my marriage. She made it clear to me without being too direct (there is something very nice about West African manners) that she knew I'd married a woman. She also said some very nice things about how I've grown beautiful and how papertigers doubtless appreciates the fact that I've gotten fatter. (Ah, how I wish I shared that perspective!)
I was stunned and flattered and stunned and pleased and did I mention stunned? True friends are so very good to have.
A little background on N. She's a Senegalese Serer; unusually for the Serer, she's also a Muslim. (The indigenous beliefs of the Serer are so close to Catholicism that they became Catholic pretty easily and almost universally.) We met because she was a security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Nouakchott; the security situation was such that Embassy guards were also working at the Peace Corps office. I was about to leave the country, so I had to be at the office quite regularly over a few months (necessitating a 12-hour taxi ride each time, ugh) and we (the boys in my group and I) all thought she was pretty good looking. I invited her to lunch, which turned into her inviting me to lunch, which turned into a very, very pleasant last week in RIM for me. I found out pretty quickly that she was straight and taken (she took me to meet her now-husband's family), but there are worse things than spending a week in the company of a pleasant, intelligent, beautiful woman. She and her boyfriend (who was one of my superiors at Peace Corps!) saw me off at the airport, and she gave me a new dress as a gift. I still have it.
So. This morning, we talked on facebook and she congratulated me on my marriage. She made it clear to me without being too direct (there is something very nice about West African manners) that she knew I'd married a woman. She also said some very nice things about how I've grown beautiful and how papertigers doubtless appreciates the fact that I've gotten fatter. (Ah, how I wish I shared that perspective!)
I was stunned and flattered and stunned and pleased and did I mention stunned? True friends are so very good to have.