He Grabbed at Me on an Empty Beach
Escaping in the burning sand led to an unexpected encounter
The sand scalded the balls of my feet as I sprinted across a stretch of beach under the midday sun. I clutched my sandals in one hand as I ran.
Ahead of me, I saw only the ocean and the dusty concrete walls of a seaside neighborhood in Dakar. The call to prayer had just finished echoing from the nearby mosque, and an eerie stillness hung in the air.
Behind me, he stood there next to the ocean. As if keeping watch over me as I fled.
The walk had been my idea, a naive decision to venture out alone on a Saturday morning. I needed a break from reading alone in my stuffy room or yearning for home in an internet café.
I had moved to Senegal only a month before on a Fulbright grant. I thought I was ready for a post-graduate adventure in a country that had intrigued me for years.
Yet soon after I walked off the plane and smelled the ocean air of Dakar for the first time, I became a homesick shell of my former myself.
I arrived during the hottest season of the year, the air a constant sauna and the mosquitoes vicious. My living quarters were the meager volunteer dorms of a non-profit organization.
