Please Don’t Let It Be Clothes
I was 20 years old when I realized what it meant to be happy, to be thankful, to be a servant, to be alive. I lived two whole decades thinking that I understood these things and thinking that they were a part of my life. That entire time, however, I was mistaken.
My story begins in the heat of summer, but ends at home in the midst of winter. It ends on Christmas Day. Gingerbread cookies that were the perfect shade of maple were on the dining room table. Pot roast with all my favorite vegetables was in the oven and the smell permeated the house. It was the kind of aroma that you could smell as soon as you pulled into the driveway and with one whiff the floodgates in your mouth instantly opened. Even though it was midday, the lights on the Christmas tree glittered and the presents hadn’t been opened yet. My ten year old cousin, Jackson, sat anxiously at the table holding his still wrapped presents.
“What is it? Please don’t let it be clothes. I hate clothes. What is it? Can I open it now? Why do I have to wait on Courtnie?” I swear he didn’t stop to breathe at all during this rant.
My younger sister, Courtnie, had decided to spend Christmas morning at her dad’s house with her step-siblings. Grandma promised her that we wouldn’t eat or start opening presents until she returned. Courtnie walked into the house, carrying an armful of gifts and Jackson immediately tore into his presents.
A few hours later, the whole family sat around the living room. A sea of multicolored wrapping paper covered every inch of floor space—waves of greens, blues, silvers, and reds. Jackson sat on the floor ogling at his new shotgun, complete with bright orange clay pigeons for target practice. One hand was on his new life-sized cardboard cutout of his favorite athlete, another hand on his new toy night-vision goggles—the ‘it’ toy of the year that my uncle had to search every store in Atlanta for. Courtnie, reclined on the couch, was taking silly pictures of herself with her new camera. Her legs rested on her new pink basketball. Both of them ignored the piles of new clothes they had received. I laid down in the torrent of waves that still flowed throughout the room. I let the shiny red and white, candy cane striped paper prop my head. I held up the purple pearls that my grandmother had given me—the one gift I had asked for. They were a beautiful shade of Columbia College purple, a perfect match for my graduation cap and gown. I looked down to my feet at the piles of clothes my cousin and sister had forgotten about. They were all clothes that I picked out weeks before, clothes that I searched forever for the right sizes, clothes that they needed.
As I began to lift my eyes from the depressing pile of clothes back to my sparkling pearls, my eyes stopped at my feet. They still hadn’t recovered from my summer’s adventures. They were dry and cracking. This seemed to have become a permanent state. Gallons of lotion and multiple pedicures still hadn’t fixed them. They still had my awkward flip-flop tan line crisscrossing across them. Despite being covered in shoes for months, the tan line refused to go away. I was ok with that. It reminded me of where I had been. It reminded me of where I had celebrated Christmas earlier that same year.
Just mere months before, I had lived in a place the farthest from ‘church-on-every-corner, freedom-filled, suburbia’ South Carolina. I was in ‘mosque-at-the-end-of-each-dirt-alley, poverty-filled, African village’ Senegal. Some friends and I volunteered to spend two months in an African village doing medical work and teaching English. I was placed in a house, if you can even call it that, with a girl from Texas I had never met, Bekah. We lived with the Sylla family—a husband, his two wives, and their six children. They were a Muslim family that spoke no English. They were the exact opposite of me in every aspect.
What I thought would be a great adventure turned out to be much more meaningful. Bekah and I ran a medical clinic out of our bedroom. Every hour a new kid would show up with cuts and scrapes and beg for a ko, bandaid. We treated lice, pink eye, skin infections, burns, cuts, and allergic reactions. The real health clinic took too much time and money, so people began to come to us instead. We would also teach an English class twice a week on the roof of our home. I must admit, we learned much more Wolof than they ever learned English. Yoff, our village, became home. Everyone knew our names; we were Ami Sylla and Awa Laye, no longer tubobs be, the white people. We ate, slept, cooked, cleaned, talked, and lived for two months with the Syllas. We were attached. We were bonded. We were family.
I will never forget the night before our plane left to return to that dreaded country, America. All my belongings were stuffed into a book bag and a camping pack. Earlier that night, we ate dinner on the floor of N’Daye’s room with the family as usual. The men sat on tiny wooden stools, seemingly symbolically, above the women, eating with their spoons. We sat with the women and children kneeling on the floor, using our God-given utensils—our hands. The heat of the day had subsided, and a cool breeze came in through the windows, rustling our ankle length skirts. The power had gone out once again so we used our headlamps and candles to see the one large, communal, metal bowl of cebujen—fish, rice, and vegetables—the tantalizing smell that I still miss to this day.
After dinner we ran to our room to prepare the surprises we had for our family. Though they had no understanding of Christmas and we didn’t speak enough Wolof to translate that concept, we wanted them to experience its joy. For weeks we had collected plastic bags from stores anytime we went to buy a soda or toilet paper. We had one bag for each family member. We put toys we had brought from America in each child’s bag: coloring books, crayons, yoyos, and bubbles. We put our used, dirty skirts and dresses, along with our leftover lotion and soap, in bags for the women and girls. We put our headlamps and leftover medical supplies in a bag for our husband, Mustafa. Finally, we put one outfit each in the boy’s bags, knowing that they would be more excited about their bubbles. Our family, unsuspecting, was preparing for the next day’s work, because even though we were leaving, their lives, full of hard work, would continue. We called them back into N’Daye’s room and passed out our presents for them. One at a time they opened their gifts.
I never knew true joy, happiness, or thankfulness until this moment. The adults and older children were so happy. N’Daye Fatu, our oldest daughter, immediately changed into her ‘new’ skirt. Ami, our youngest daughter, hugged us with more gratitude than I’ve ever experienced. The wives looked at us with tears in their eyes, thankful for the fifty-cent skirts we had bought at Goodwill and ruined throughout the summer. Omar, Alingae, Isaaxa, and Mohammad—our little boys, our brothers, our sons—broke my heart in the best possible way, however. They had never been given a gift. They didn’t want to tear up their bags the way that little kids back home ripped open presents. They set their crayons aside and picked up their outfit. Their eyes widened with both joy and tears and they smiled the biggest, warmest smiles I had ever and will ever see in my life. Mohammad ran to Bekah and Isaaxa to me, wrapped their arms around us and said Jerri Jiff ingir sama roba. Bugganala, “Thank you for my clothes. I love you.”
The next day we loaded our bags into our supervisor’s truck to leave. The entire family lined up to tell us goodbye. Each of them still wore their new clothes.
I was 20 years old when I realized what it meant to be happy, to be thankful, to be a servant, to be alive. I lived two whole decades thinking that I understood these things and thinking that they were a part of my life. That entire time, however, I was mistaken.
I didn’t know the look of true happiness until that last night in Senegal. I didn’t know the look of true thankfulness until Isaaxa wrapped his arms around me. I didn’t know what it meant to be a servant until I gave away all my belongings. I was alive for 20 years, but did not live until I put other’s needs before my own wants.
My head rested on the sea of candy cane-striped wrapping paper and I looked at the clothes that my sister and cousin had disregarded. I glanced at Jackson, his beautiful blue eyes still focused on his shiny new toys that I knew he would forget about the next day. Courtnie’s long, chocolate hair flowed over the side of the couch, while she now took pictures of her other presents. They felt temporary happiness. They expressed no thanks. They were living, but not yet alive.
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