After almost a year on the road, and a short break, this past half year has been all travelling, from Washington State to Chicago, Cincinnati, and Senegal. We’ve been back in the US for a few weeks. Today, we finished emptying our storage unit, a couch, bookshelves, bicycles, floor lamps, a couple of large carpets. Things that went to a friend’s place until we can reclaim them for our new place on Mt. Alabama.
After fewer than four months of residence in Bellingham, this homecoming isn’t too familiar. That said, it’s undeniably western Washington and familiar enough. How did I get here?
To Chicago
December 2024, we packed our home into a storage unit and left Bellingham. One night in Renton, before catching a plane to Chicago. The 2024 African Studies Association’s annual conference would take Sarah’s days, while I worked from the hotel, most days. Evenings we spent with friends and food, such as my first Chicago Style Deep Dish Pizza in Chicago. Naturally, this occurred under a Stations of the Dick Butkus.
The cold weather was stunning, frost and ice covered many surfaces. Locals said it was much colder than usual. Scarf, gloves, and long coats. When the winds picked up, people became noticeably distracted, concentrating on walking around safely. Later in the week, it warmed up and started raining.
The Art Institute of Chicago
I love museums. My grandmother used to pack me across the Bay to the de Young and Legion of Honor and California Academy of Sciences. The Art Institute of Chicago feels very familiar. Partly for the encyclopedic organization like those other museums, but also the pure fame of so many works inside—American Gothic, is like the American Mona Lisa—and so, while I’m not sure if this is my absolute favorite curatorial kind of museum, this is easily, now, one of my favorite museums.
Next, Cincinnati, OH
Without a background or ton of experience to draw on, I like cities in the midwest. They offer feature walkable pedestrian centers, with architecture arranged by historic layers of migration. Cincinnati, in that way, is a real midwest city.
Holiday parties and dinners, baked treats, and luminary celebrations. Lots of holiday theater, including A Christmas Carol at the Playhouse, on Mt. Adams, and a satire of it a few nights later, downtown. Through Christmas and the New Year, we alternated between Cincinnati and Louisville.
Christmas is great and all, but I am now excited to have been to the Cincinnati Zoo, finally.
December? Not the best time of year to visit a zoo in North America, obviously. As you’d expect, it was cold, grey and sprinkling, and many of the animals were hid away. But the Festival of Lights came on with the evening, and—I mention, for completeness, that Ohio offers very large edibles—the effect of a rising glow from lantern animals was while at a zoo was totally enjoyable.
To Senegal
We started 2025 in Dakar. January through February. I’d like to spend a full year there. Sarah thinks I’d change my tune if I’d been through monsoon.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve sorted out a mobile office setup. It fits into two backpacks, two laptops, external drives, wifi, VPN, portable monitor, power extensions, adapters, cables, strips, keyboard, mouse, drawing tablet, iPad, Switch, audio interface, mic, headphones, and gamepad. Everything fits as carry-on for any flight, domestic or international.
We split our stay across two different apartments, an unknown place for January and one we knew from our last trip for February.
The first place turned out to be on the fourth floor of a building directly in the approach to the old airport, which continues to operate for military and private carriers after Blaise Diagne International Airport (DSS) opened. Planes coming in to land would all appear out our entrance hall window (pictured), coming towards us. They would then disappear overhead before reappearing over the other side of the flat, and finally disappearing behind the skyline of buildings.
Once in a while something important must have been afoot, because there would be a string of private jets coming in. And the takeoff
The space was comfortable. The front door opened into a wide hallway, a large rolling bar stowed along one wall. To the left, double doors connected a large living/dining room, with a table, couch, armchairs, and television. To the right, a full kitchen, with a clothes washer and sealing cabinets.
In homes, tile floor and walls are usually easy to clean. Tile floors, and glossy painted walls. Anything that handles frequent washing and stays cool. Dust is a way of life, it can fill the air. This year, the harmattan has been mild. Of the two months we were there, only a handful of days got really hazy.
Not so in 2020, when the wind, carrying dust blown all the way from the Sahara, turned the air a thick, brown, unbreathable fog. Walking outside without a respirator was very uncomfortable (this was before covid taught us the value of keeping N95 masks around).
Building
In Dakar, there is construction going on everywhere, at all scales. Within a two-block radius, three apartment buildings were going up, including one next-door. Larger buildings, like condo towers, are a frame of formed reinforced concrete, walled in with concrete bricks, that have themselves been made on-site.
Material delivery is often a harbinger of upcoming work. A piles of something—sand, rock, dirt—will show up, suddenly, in front of a site, covering half a walkway, or half a street. At larger sites, it’ll get moved inside a fence or maybe roped off. Otherwise, workers will draw material from it, until, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the piles are gone, that phase complete.
Fit and Finish
The results of these construction projects is often beautiful, inside and out. There’s an expectation that low-key fit and finish, or durability issues will crop up. Take, for example, staircases. Uniform step height, within a single flight of stairs, cannot be guaranteed. One learns to step carefully, especially at the top and bottom of a run.
Wood cabinetry and millwork is not the same as in North America, with our easy access to timber. Here, wood is rare, expensive, and is tested by humidity during monsoon. Many doors are bent slightly in their frames; in the first apartment, a kitchen door has twisted in its hinges and now closed into the floor before it could latch.
Power and Internet
That my whole flight carry-on works on every domestic or international carrier, that it is portable does not address the fact that it can all run over 500 watts.
Power cuts are an inconvenience, and happen once or twice a day, usually localized and related to nearby construction. These disruptions usually resolve within an hour or so. Laptops eliminate the need for UPS, so losing power is never catastrophic. Losing the Internet, however, can be very disruptive.
But stability of the grid was not the main issue for me. As mentioned, my machines still could draw a considerable amount of power, and after a few trips, I’ve learned to be cautious around the balance of the Senelec (power company) account. In 2024, I ran our place out of electricity.
Working in Dakar is eye-opening to the amount of power the computer industry consumes. I cannot imagine running my tower workstation there.
This time, the only thing I ran out of was Internet. Three times! But it’s not really my fault; cellular Internet is incompatible with doing any video game development work. So, despite having a complete office with me, I got nothing done until, February.
Dakar kitchens are familiar, stoves use refillable gas tanks that stay nearby.
We cooked for ourselves most nights, and fell into a routine: pasta, curry, stir fry, and fried rice scrambles. Most dishes featured onion, carrot, pepper, zucchini. Unable to locate a supply of tofu for the two months we were in Dakar, we used lentils and red beans and fresh string beans for protein,
For triglyceride reasons, I don’t drink alcohol. But Senegal, a predominantly Muslim country, is not a heavy casual drinking kind of place, anyways. On my first trip here, in 2019, I met Vimto, the soft drink I’ve been missing. Its taste is like Dr. Pepper flavored cough syrup. Mixing it 1:1 with bubbly water makes it feel fancy. It’s not.
We are in Dakar for family, and eating with them is the best. Usually Adji or Ibou cooks. A few times, Yaye. Sarah and I, as guests, take a break from vegetarianism (true more generally while traveling, when we eat as our hosts do). I avoid shellfish in Dakar after having gotten ill from mussels and shrimp on separate occasions.
This trip, Sarah had her birthday at Adji’s. We ate chicken and french fries and chocolate cake for dessert. We drank several local juices, bisap and ginger and bouye, served frozen.
The Apartment Upgrade
During a trip in 2024, we stayed in a great flat and we wanted to return to it this time. But it was marked unavailable in January. We relocated for February.
A five minute walk away from the first apartment, this other place is smaller, cleaner, and cooler. There are two-bedrooms, opening directly into a single space that encloses a kitchen, dining, and living room.
Outside a small covered balcony, just across the narrow pedestrian street, is a pair of community basketball courts.
Singing in basketball courts in Mermoz, Dakar, Senegal, February 2025
The Courts
During weekdays, schools used the courts for PE. Swarms of uniformed kids, usually in gendered groups, running laps or circuits or burpees or tumbling. Then add, after-school and weekend basketball training camps.
But the basketball courts are also a magnet for community activity. Singing is the most usual.
A Stay Too Short
Two months is just enough time to get one’s feet set. Enough time to get ready to live and not nearly enough to settle or really enjoy. Bonn taught me, ten months is just long enough to feel like you’ve lived someplace.
In our short time, we would get vegetables from vendors Sarah has staked out. Her process that takes time; a few days looking around, locating favorite selections, and building relationships with the sellers.
English is not useful there; Portuguese would be more helpful. French works for anything important but Wolof is best, immediately earns you a different welcome. When Sarah gets going with people, they will often turn to me and remark that she is true Senegalese. With my last name, Barry—a common Peul name, all over Senegal, Gambia—and a few words of Wolof, I get a pass. I’m working on my Duolingo French and picking up Wolof on the street, as it were.
In March, a friend premiered her movie at the French Institute. It’s about trash workers and their collective bargaining with the gigantic city dump Mbeubeuss. The event makes Senegal TV news and we made their B-roll.
Two toubabs go to the movies. Film at eleven.
Home
We returned to the US and spent a couple nights in Chicago. On the first leg, DSS to JFK, Sarah’s bag had some kind of aviation oil dumped on it. Staying the extra night in Chicago allowed her to get that taken care of at the airport, but took all of our energy for running around the city. We stayed in the hotel.
Upon returning to Washington, we spent several nights, with friends, in Renton. We checked in on my mom and her dog, Meg, in Enumclaw. They’re doing well. Afterwards, we returned to our temporary rental in Bellingham, and Sarah began her search. Within a week, we found a long-term home in a duplex, on a cul-de-sac, across the freeway . We move in next month.