Magic of Christmas survives move to Senegal
DAKAR, SENEGAL— A couple days before Christmas, Noah and I went to the post office.
Most weeks, the trip feels like climbing atop a dunk tank.
We navigate our way to the back of the grim mailroom, crack the stiff latch of our mailbox and press our faces against its cold mouth to find . . . nothing. Splash. But this wasn’t most weeks. This was Christmas week.
This trip, we carried promise: two letters to Santa and news that a package was waiting.
Could it be, that after three long months, the box our friend Nancy had lovingly filled last September had actually arrived?
We boarded the Super with extra élan. The Super is one of four types of buses in Dakar. Picture a hollow tin can, dipped in yellow and hand painted with horses and pineapples and tributes to Allah. Holes had been sawed down its sides for windows and benches thrown in, which are never enough, so men always hang off the back doors. Noah, 5, loves banging a coin against its metal walls, which in Super-language means, “Next stop, please.”
The post office is an oasis from the busy, dusty streets: an art deco building set on a patch of lawn with a mango tree.
We climbed the steps, and carefully slipped our letters to Santa through the mail slot. Then, we made our familiar way to the package counter.
For the first time, the young, shy postal worker delivered good news. Yes, we had a package. But, it wasn’t here. It was at another office. Hurry and we’d get there before it closed.
Now, intertwined with this Christ- mas story is another Christmas story, of a sadder ilk. Noah’s 7-yearold sister, Lyla, had started to doubt Santa. Her Senegalese classmates told her he was made-up. This was an unexpected pitfall of moving halfway around the world: my daughter, gaining so many exotic experiences, faced prematurely losing a North American delight of childhood. She was going to lose magic.
I tried to reassure her: Magic, like languages and religions, is different in different countries. Here, people believe in gris-gris — black magic. That we don’t believe in gris-gris doesn’t mean it’s not real. And that they don’t believe in Santa . . .
The jury was still out. Noah’s letter to Santa was a colourful two pages that closed “I love you Santa. I really believe in you.” Lyla’s, by contrast, was a cold government notice: “I would like a horse magazine and horse stuffy. We are in Senegal. Thank you.” The other post office turned out to be a Dickensian customs house. It was massive and stone, with a racetrack’s epic line of empty wickets. We found one sleeping worker on a distant counter and roused her long enough to point us further down. Noah, by now, was wearing his Peruvian mask — a knitted rainbow bag pulled over his head, with holes for eyes and a creepy Guy Fawkes smile. I worried people might think he was a robber. Instead, we were waved through room after room by laughing workers until finally, we reached the storage barn: boxes piled high behind some chicken wire. Already, the process was opaque. It then became ornately murky. Over the next 15 minutes, we met nine people in six different rooms, some dressed in loose dresses and prayer caps, others in military uniforms. I collected three receipts that everyone stamped. I paid two questionable fees at two separate counters. But at the end, the sleeping worker pushed a big box across her counter and said, “Joyeuses fêtes.” Merry Christmas. We’d waited this long, what was a few more days? This box was clearly meant for Christmas. But I couldn’t resist. That night, I peeked inside.
What did I find? Two horse calendars and a horse stuffy.
Magic works in different ways around the world and Lyla still believes in Santa. Catherine Porter is a Star columnist who has gone on leave for a year to live in Dakar, Senegal. She writes about her adventures each week in the Life section. She can be reached at catherine_porter@rogers.com. You can follow her daily snapshots on Twitter @porterthereport.