Drinking Senegalese Tea with Mint after a Visit to the Slave House of Gorée Island
Rent from DeepDyve- Drinking Senegalese Tea with Mint after a Visit to the Slave House of Gorée Island
(May 24, 2012, Dakar, Senegal, West Africa)
for Idrissa Diakhaté
This is what I said I wouldn't do:
let a West African man court me.Attempt to make him comprehendmy confusion of languages and flavors:
I am not a mulatto.I am the daughter of two Black Americans—who both are the children
of two Black Americansand so on in Biblical manner.(Who am I to disturb the lie?)
Africa is not my motherland—Gorée Island is the reason.I am an unruly Sister who does not curtsy
as traditional Senegalese women do.Or cover my head, not because I don'tknow the customs of the country
but because patois is an acheof history and I want everybodyto hurt like me. [End Page 19]
Home should remain an absence—but days later, when he croons,Nopenala, ma cherie. Namenala, my sweety,
I will answer that I loveand I miss him as well.I give back what was taken,
I suppose.
The night he made thé Sénégalaisfor me on the front porch of my hotel,a man moved his motorcycle
to allow me to see the oceanand I thanked him to be polite,though I don't like to watch accidents.
Three other men cameand sat beside us,playing at cards and chaperones.
My soon-to-be lover's hands moved fast,pouring from one glass to the other.Jaam rek, he said. Jaam rek only—
and he was beautiful,and already, kidnapping what was leftof my ancestral anger,
and I did not say, there's no peaceand never will be.Home was where the basement
of water held my kin.The same ocean gambledwith an ancient set of bones. [End Page 20]
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Red Clay Suite (Southern Illinois UP). She has received an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and MacDowell Colony. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including American Poetry Review, Gettysburg Review, Iowa Review, Ploughshares, and in more than a dozen anthologies. A native southerner, she now lives on the prairie, where she is associate professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.
