I remember the evening in brushstrokes, like a Renaissance painting: indulgent wine, stumbling into the next bar, and, of course, the poem (read it here). I was a sophomore in college and had spent spring break on a pilgrimage of sorts in Greece, hence the art historian—plus a professor and a priest, for good measure.

Long after the trip, “Ithaka” remained suspended in the hazy memories of that night in Athens. It became my favorite poem, not that I’m reading many of those (to my discredit). But for all the ancient allure of wild Poseidon and the suave descriptions of mother of pearl and coral, I didn’t notice that I was missing out on a key realization.

I had no idea what Ithaka even was. I never had to read Homer’s Odyssey in school, and I have yet to make the effort on my own. I figured Ithaka was some kind of Valhalla in Greek mythology, and I must have thought I was getting the full picture without the specifics. It was only thanks to Christopher Nolan’s rendition of “The Odyssey” that I figured this out. Beyond the initial embarrassment, it’s kind of funny.

It’s also kind of insightful. While I concede that a general familiarity with a poem’s central reference is, of course, helpful in shaping our understanding of it, it’s worth noting that Cavafy doesn’t offer a definition of Ithaka either; in fact, quite the opposite. Throughout the poem, Ithaka remains distant and amorphous, something that spurs us onward without the contours of promise: no mention of a paradisiacal Eden, no tales of the mythic Odyssean homecoming.

I don’t think the road to Ithaka is any more defined, despite Cavafy’s allusions to fine perfumes and Egyptian libraries. The paths we chart on that age-old quest, the same hero’s journey that led Odysseus through the Mediterranean millennia ago, are just that: ours. However winding, however slow.

We’re compelled to be stirred along the way by a rare excitement, to take our time, to appreciate these marvelous journeys and all they bring us: summer mornings, colorful markets. Some of these jaunts will be as brilliant as the clever slip from Polyphemus’s cave, others as seemingly pointless as those seven marooned years on Calypso’s island. All the while, we remain tethered to our ever-present companion, change.

As we navigate these experiences, Cavafy reminds us that it is alright, even advisable, to Keep Ithaka always on your mind, just like Odysseus. But Cavafy does not assure us that Ithaka will be some paradise. Indeed, he warns that it might quite be the opposite: poor, with nothing left to give us. The prospect of finding the culmination of our life’s quest in such a state is disturbing, if not downright terrifying.

Undeterred, Cavafy assures readers that, “Wise as you will have become, so full of experience / you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”

In Cavafy’s telling, the solace is in the journey—which makes it tempting to conclude with a few theories as to what Ithaka might be. Perhaps it is the wind in our sails: the abstract values, passions, and rare excitements that spur us onward. Perhaps it is the hope that more magical nights (wine-induced or otherwise) and pleasant mornings in new harbors await. Perhaps it is none, or all of these things.

In search of some physical artifact to mark this shift, I spent this morning at Barnes and Noble looking for a new journal while resisting the compulsion to wipe clean my already-sparse Substack (the blank slate impulse runs deep). What’s wrong with starting from scratch? Some of my old journal entries are rambling and borderline incoherent; plus, why shouldn’t I enter the post-grad no one’s reading this Substack landscape afresh? Then I thought, ‘What terrible, strange ideas.’

I still bought the journal, but I kept the old posts up (assuredly for the betterment of humankind). In an effort to stop making value judgments on passing thoughts—Is it better to leave behind these terrible, strange ideas, or probe where they come from in the first place?—I decided to mull over these whims while sprucing up my bookshelves. I think it’s natural to feel disinclined toward embracing change or evolution. If I want my writing to come across as lighter, why would I leave the heavier stuff up for others to come across?

To answer that question, I had to consider another oddity of mine: I almost always start writing things—academic papers, blog posts, emails—with the title. I think it’s fun. Sometimes the title changes fifteen times, sometimes I get it right on the first try. But when I am suddenly a mad scientist, throwing books into piles and shredding old papers as the wind howls and lightning crashes outside, the title is first to go.

One would imagine that if I can’t make it past the title, I am beside myself by the time I reach, say, the third sentence of the fourth paragraph. Not so. Once I get into the real meat on the bones, the heart of the matter, I am relieved; sure, the opinions and writing style have changed (even within a matter of months), but the essence is mine.

It’s almost as though I become so focused on the big picture, the generalities, that I fail to appreciate the intricacies that first compelled me to put one book next to the other, or to let sentences and paragraphs come together in their own way.

I’ve been on an Eagles kick lately, and New Kid in Town is probably my top song this month. Stick with me. I love the extended, techno-y chords at the beginning, the first few verses: There’s talk on the street, it sounds so familiar / Great expectations, everybody’s watching you. Similar duplets pop up throughout the song: great expectations, hopeless romantics, restless hearts—mini-adages that feel so familiar, so timeless. (I mean, there is the Charles Dickens novel; I’m not alone in my affinity).

Had I not veered into this aside, I’d have managed to connect this reflection to something I could appropriately title Great Expectations. I have not, but I will do it anyway. Perhaps if you check back in a few months, this post will show up as Hopeless Romantics or Restless Hearts. But I’d bet the paragraphs themselves, the thoughts and questions I considered, will be the same—even if I might not approach them the exact same way at some theoretical future juncture. No promises on the bookshelves, though. I’ve already got a new organization scheme in mind.

I have yet to visit the bustling markets of Cairo or the cobblestone streets of Moscow, but I arrived in Rio de Janeiro a few weeks ago. It proved not to be the postcard-ready first encounter I might have envisioned. We landed on a cold, rainy day and I found myself sick as a dog. With no appetite, lingering fatigue, and in desperate need of a shower, I tried my best to power through the immediate hours-long orientation that followed our Portuguese language program’s entry into Brazil. The next few days were somewhat of a blur. I went to bed ridiculously early (single digits early), zombie-walked to school in the morning, and could stomach no more than a few saltine crackers over the course of an entire day. Intent on not missing key social integration, and having confirmed that I was not contagious, I found myself struggling to keep awake at group dinners and watching foggy, rainy sunsets with little appreciation.

I spent most of these early days either at home or wishing that I was. Where other classmates would have been confined to a stuffy apartment, however, I lucked out with an open-air, leafy terrace where I can watch the rain fall and listen to the birds chirp in the morning. The terrace quickly became my base camp from which I called my parents often, turned on my favorite playlists, and consumed electrolytes in the form of Gatorade to mimic the comforts of home. Though I did not realize it, I first became acquainted with Rio on those cloudy mornings and during those late afternoon thunderstorms. The sounds of the city—taxi drivers tapping their horns, the whoosh of buses rushing by, dogs barking for no reason in particular—sunk in just as much up on the roof as they did along the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema, often sleepy in this mild Brazilian winter.

With the stakes lowered because a few sick days would not mean washing out half of the trip, I acquainted myself with the neighborhood and its fruit vendors, laundromats, book stores, and coffee shops. There have been tangible benefits of this down time, too: I eat breakfast each morning at a sidewalk bodega that I found while browsing Google Maps in bed sick instead of traipsing around Rio. Though I am glad to feel better (at last), I am grateful to have come to know this corner of the city in a more intimate way than I might have otherwise. At least for a little while, time seemed to slow down as I eased into this experience. It does not often do so.

I know that occasional late-night dreaming will not magically produce an enriched existence. However, in this head-spinning digital age, the tools needed to grow an organically full life are losing their luster. The social network’s addictive nature relies on blurring the line between consumption and creation. Algorithms that seem to pick up on our every interest guide us toward platforms and apps like Goodreads, Letterboxd, and Beli (perhaps Substack, too) that cement the ritual of performance in how we engage with what we read, watch, and even eat. Despite the temptation to believe these virtual canvases will endure, our online selves are fragile, even illusory.

I am a prime offender of the charges I have just laid out. I save social media posts hawking “Essential Southern Gothic Novels” or “The Canon of Great African Films” and feel a rush of dopamine without reading a single page or pressing play on any of those movies. On a recent school trip to Mauritius, I posted photos from a shared album that depict sunsets I never saw and bike rides I didn’t go on. This is the difference between the online universe and real life. While it is unlikely that anyone will question the verity of an Instagram sunset, I cannot take pride in a sprawling personal library if I have never read any of its books.

The coin of the realm, then, must be collected through a more analog way of encountering the world. I have found that the most memorable people, a lot like the most memorable homes, are intensely singular. I might compare a leafy terracotta patio to a friend who refuses to settle for a hastily-written text message in lieu of a handwritten thank you note. Perhaps mahogany shelves teeming with books are like a professor who spends time reading things they don’t care about for the sake of better understanding their particular niche. In other words, singularity manifests itself in those rare instances when authenticity and effort sync, each catalyzing the other.

Fortunately, I believe this involved manner of being (far from effortless) is beneficial. Writing and journaling, meditating and thinking, reading books and poems: all of these things have been empirically proven to enhance happiness and clarity of mind.

The slow, analog process of creating a rich existence—that is, the quest to become more like these singular individuals (and homes)—is a path that I will no doubt deviate from at times for the sake of convenience or conformity. Perhaps on those nights when sleep evades me, I should turn on my bedside lamp and pick up some of that Essential Southern Gothic Reading or put on a Great African Film. One thing at a time.

Old notebooks and computer files from over the years provide a glimpse into what this progression might look like. Encountering things I have written often feels like staring into a kaleidoscope, a blur of past echoes of myself, or listening to a gray-haired poet recount tales of lovers they once knew. Memories, too, help trace the development of how I have written and thought about writing at various points in my life. On a fall afternoon in the second or third grade, classmates and I passed around our Thanksgiving art projects on the bus ride home from school. As a neighbor in the year above me glanced at my finger-painted turkey, he asked if I had ever heard of a comma. Flush with embarrassment in the brisk November air, I looked at the list of gratitudes I had written—my mom and my dad and my brothers and my cousins—and learned, though I doubt for the first time, the magic of this punctuation mark.

Reminiscing on later years, I gaze through some foggy mirror at a headstrong freshman sitting in the back of an Introduction to Biblical Literature class. I can feel the damp October morning and even seem to recall watching the leaves change color. A fifty-minute lecture is not enough time for the leaves on any tree, even the gargantuan White Ash on Copley Lawn, to change color. My writing from that time provides a glimpse into initial brushes with faith and dogma, reflections and contradictions that would come to define these undergraduate years. Though the opinions on religion and near-constant use of the em-dash in these papers are nearly unrecognizable to me now, I do not look back with impatience or resentment at this younger me. In fact, his devotion to these questions is the only reason I have continued to think about them with such rigor and inquiry.

I have even learned to write in a few foreign languages, often conjuring up false cognates out of thin air and using English turns of phrase that do not work in French or Spanish or Portuguese. In language and in life, I have learned that the perspectives and ways of examining the world most familiar to me are not universal frameworks.

At another point in time, there was also the spring-semester junior who, on the rare occasion that he ventured to comparative politics lectures, knew exactly what information he needed to extract in order to regurgitate talking points on essays and exams. He once sat at the kitchen table, opened his computer, and wrote an entire term paper on electoral politics in The Gambia in one sitting. It was not his best work, but its tone that closely mirrored his professor’s and careful citations of assigned texts seemed to do the trick. I hope this resourceful and pragmatic, if listless writing will not creep its way into future endeavors. I hope that I will aspire toward the highest forms of the written word: truth, inquiry, reflection.

That writer does still come out now and then, especially when faced with an impending deadline or an uninteresting prompt. But as I’ve gotten older, the ability to hone in on what really interests me has allowed me to identify the first semblances of a budding writing style. Literary, meditative, journalistic. Even so, I know that some day I will look back at this very entry as antique, even quaint. After all, in the grand scheme of things, there are not too many years between the third grader on the bus and the college senior the morning after graduation. But I hope I will never look back with judgment, only appreciation for the fact that I felt things deeply and decided to write about them at a time when the world felt limitless. Even if that does not turn out to be the case, I quite like the look of rose-colored lenses.

SAKSUN, Faroe Islands — The tide had gone out to sea, leaving the impression that it was not home; in its stead, an empty house: vast deposits of black sand stretching from one side of the deserted fjord to the other. We walked along the makeshift beach toward a clearing of large rocks. The trail continued, but I sprawled out on one of the stones.

“You guys go ahead,” I said. “I’ll be here.”

This group of friends is not known to tolerate a cop-out; in order to skip a night out, some have been asked to provide a doctor’s note. In other circumstances, I would have been dragged off the rock. But like birds before a storm, we could sense something in the air. We needed a little space. No one said anything—a rare moment of quiet—and we parted our separate ways, at least for half an hour or so.

When they returned, the air felt refreshed and relaxed. I could admire the steep cliffs and snow-white birds without the tension that comes with excessive time in shared company.

“Woah,” someone said after a minute. “That was, like, a reset.”

With all the pomp and circumstance that surrounds travel, the act of being on the road often gets less attention. I don’t think that’s a bad thing; in fact, I sometimes get restless when people want to talk about their flight durations or jet lag instead of the trip itself.

There are biological components to the ever-familiar feeling of “I just need a break from this” when traveling (even on the best trips), like low blood sugar or a lack of sleep. Mentally, too, travel is taxing: new languages, customs, food, even road signs.

Being attuned to these changes—noticing the physical sensation of impatience or frustration before it becomes all-encompassing—makes a huge difference in the moment. Take a nap on a rock if you must. It might seem like the flow of something is being interrupted, but trust me: if travel is like a river, it’s much better to toss a log in the stream than to build a metaphorical dam of grievances and annoyances.

If you’re like me, you might pick up on the fact that you somehow only seem to be peeved by the little things after that third cup of coffee or in the hour window before lunch.

🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.

MYKINES, Faroe Islands — It was no later than ten o’clock in the morning. The churn of the sea was still in my stomach and we had just climbed a steep stone staircase from the fjord below. A speedboat had ferried us—rather, it all but flew through the wind over the choppy seas—to Mykines, among the outermost of the islands in the Faroese archipelago.

Groups of other tourists, not quite throngs but not quite a trickle either, stood in the town square and sipped coffee as we waited for the village-sponsored tour to begin.

“We couldn’t even get a beer,” one of my traveling companions mentioned to a local about our age, who ended up being the tour guide.

“Yes,” she replied. “My grandmother owns that restaurant. There are too many alcoholics here, so she doesn’t serve beer until the afternoon.”

I have found Nordic people to tell it like it is. Substance abuse in frigid, remote places like Mykines is, after all, a well-trodden path. With little else to do in the cold darkness of the winter months, people turn to the warmth of drink.

“Even if you aren’t an alcoholic,” I countered. “It is ten in the morning.”

“Buzzkill,” my friend replied.

With the help of Heðin Brú’s classic Faroese novel “The Old Man and His Sons”, I had been trying to recreate the Faroes of yesteryear in my imagination. During the harsh winter, an island like Mykines, for example, would have been cut off from the rest of the archipelago—not to mention the rest of the world—for months on end.

These days, the Faroes are so interconnected, so technologically advanced that it is hard to imagine such a time. A vast network of underwater tunnels connects islands, even those whose population numbers just a couple dozen, to cities (well, towns) like Klaksvik and Torshavn.

From the top of the mountain that lay just beyond Mykines, I looked down at the village and traced its quiet dirt alleys and babbling brooks in my mind. If only I had been born here, I thought, I could sit at a window and read and write and stare at the sea …

Except Brú’s book, a short but arresting account of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century life in the Faroes, does not speak of any such ease. Instead, the seafaring Faroese sailed up massive swells and past piercing rocks in search of shelter and sustenance. Things were intensely seasonal: the rush to stock up in the cool summer months, the desperation of provisions running low as the high winter winds whistled outside.

I shivered as the thought of such a life grounded me once again in reality. In the morning breeze, hundreds of puffins flew high into the air then turned sharply, a rapid descent back to ancestral perches in the swells of grass on the cliff. We, too, descended, though not down a cliff but back to Mykines town, where the restaurant’s beer-trading hours had begun.

🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.

KLAKSVIK, Faroe Islands — In the American imagination, a European breakfast looks something like a dainty espresso cup at a sidewalk cafe with, perhaps, a few bites of a croissant on a similarly dainty plate. For their part, Europeans picture standard morning fare in the United States like a Waffle House home-run breakfast: half a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk, a few pancakes for good measure. There are elements of truth in both cases.

I’ve had my fair share of both sidewalk cortados and classic diner plates. In our effort to traverse the entirety of the Faroese archipelago in a matter of days, however, we resorted to eating breakfast at the gas station. It’s not as bad as it sounds. The Faroese equivalent of a Shell off of I-95 in America, for instance, will be equipped with a high-quality espresso machine that can churn out a cafe-level cappuccino in a minute or less. Snacks like granola and even pastries are also readily available.

After a morning of hiking, however, we decided to use Klaksvik—the second-largest town in the Faroes—as a chance to find something a little heartier. “Let’s try this place,” I suggested, confident in my ability to choose a good spot. I pride myself on finding authentic and affordable restaurants when traveling, though it’s a risky business: one bad pick and your credibility is shot for the rest of the trip, often longer.

The breakfast joint was packed, which is always a good sign. After lingering in the foyer for a few minutes, we snagged a spacious window table and sat down to get to work. When the plates arrived, I knew I could rest on my laurels for the foreseeable future: a classic European array of cheese, nuts, and fruit (plus a croissant for good measure) captured our eyes and hearts, while a selection of eggs, bacon, and bread held down the American end of the bargain. Cultural diplomacy in real time.

I used my success to my advantage, subtly pointing us toward the bars and restaurants I’d marked before the trip as places I wanted to try. Any time I encountered the winds of pushback, I countered, “Remember breakfast?”

🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.

TORSHAVN, Faroe Islands — “Can you shut the hell up,” I whispered. My voice cracked as the laugh I tried to hold in snuck out. “We’re going to get kicked out of here.”

“Come and take it,” my friend responded at a volume that exceeded the strict quiet hours regulations posted around the guesthouse.

“It’s fine,” another friend insisted, gesturing toward our host’s bedroom door. “She’ll wait ’til the morning to get onto us, and we’ll be gone by then.”

It was barely past ten o’clock, but the Faroese beers we’d been drinking since the late afternoon continued to linger in our bloodstreams. A few minutes earlier, our attempt to creep back into the bed and breakfast fell apart as shoes squeaked, heads bumped into low-hanging ceilings, and suppressed giggles turned into sudden bursts of laughter.

Nothing was particularly funny, not least the night on the town we’d had, but then again it was all funny. In the days before, visions of Nordic nightlife—Norwegian rock music, hard liquor, midnight sun raves—danced through our heads as we envisioned what our Saturday in Torshavn might look like.

The first warning signs came when we walked into what we had determined was the affordable option among the top-rated bars and restaurants in town. Beyond the prices, the environment was mellow and quiet despite the endless taps and bars all around the warehouse-style beer hall. Older people chatted in small groups and younger couples sat with their kids and played cards.

For the next half dozen or so hours, we tried bar after bar in search of the Faroese youth who, we imagined, would take us under their wing and show us a good time.

But to check out a bar, you can’t just give it a glance: one drink, minimum, is required to assess the situation. And so we weaved in and out of watering holes of varying quality; some, like a craft beer room, provided an authentic taste of Faroese ale while others, like a dimly-lit dive plastered with stickers from around the world, seemed like they might have potential on another night. We thought we struck gold when we ran into a store owner we’d met a day before—the large group he was with, however, was not a throng of would-be companions but a private dinner for a birthday celebration.

Since the streets of Torshavn are not laid out on a grid, or really any semblance of a geometric pattern, we ended up meandering up winding hills and along the waterfront. We eventually found ourselves at a crossroads where a bus station promised to take us right back to our place for the night. As No. 1 pulled up to the stop, we hopped on and laughed the whole way home.

🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.

LAMBAVEGUR, Faroe Islands — The cabin looked like little more than a storage unit. Its unglamorous facade had the appearance of a nuclear bunker, or perhaps an unfinished frontier home. We parked our car on the gravel path out front and lugged the bags in; the cheapest rental was a hybrid, because we’re in the Nordics.

Surrounded by other cubicle structures on both sides, the monochromatic structure did not betray what lay just behind. Once inside, however, the scent of warm wood walls guided our noses to a dramatic window and the vista of a fjord just outside. We laughed because there is not much else to do when confronted with such beauty.

An hour earlier we sat in a bright yellow building that stood out against the dark green evening and the lush hills of the Faroes. We, too, stood out; a trio of brightly-clad Americans piled together on a narrow bench. We whispered and tried to listen to the cooks at the restaurant.

“It might be Swahili,” my companions said to one another.

“You both speak Swahili,” I hissed back. “How do you not know?”

“Well, is it French?” they asked me quizically in return.

We were further away than I thought and I couldn’t hear. “Fine,” I replied. “I don’t know.”

Then our number was called—though they could have called any number; we were the only people in there—and someone worked up the courage to ask where they were from.

“Nigeria,” one of the cooks said.

Since all three of us had lived in Africa at one point or another, we struck up a conversation that the cooks at least pretended to find interesting. The Faroe Islands and their cold and foreboding landscape are not a top destination for migrants. Still, they liked it. Still, it was a nice life.

“Remember those Nigerian guys?” I asked after we had settled into the cabin and its deep, fur-lined chairs and wool blankets. “That was so random.”

The moon reflected off the sea, which was a narrow inlet by all accounts but felt infinitely wide in the dark of night. Summer in this region of the world means short nights—or, in the case of places further north like Iceland, no night at all—and the sun would be up again in a few short hours.

“I guess we sleep down there?” someone said, gesturing to the closed trapdoor on the ground. I figured it would lead to some unfinished basement with cobwebs and a lock that didn’t quite work, perhaps even an axe murderer lurking in the corner. The Nordic countries, after all, are renowned for their crime novels.

“I’m good up here,” I said. “Unless someone else wants the couch.”

Once we’d descended down, however, I had a change of heart. Instead of the dungeon I expected, the basement was a cozy chamber of bunk beds—in fact, it was almost entirely beds; there was hardly room to stand up, much less walk around. We all piled in for the night and shut the door above us.

“Let’s open that,” I said, not taking any chances on the whole crime thing.

“I wonder where the Nigerian guys live,” someone wondered aloud.

🇫🇴 Read more from the Faroe Islands.

The sun rises early in Sri Lanka, so when we left our hotel for the train station this morning it was already light out. It was a hectic but controlled scene on the platform, where we grabbed a light breakfast before settling into our seats. Our railcar was relatively empty, with a few fellow backpackers and some families joining us on the journey inland.

After passing through suburban Colombo, the landscape quickly changed to lush jungle with beautiful sun-bleached family homes and rice paddies. I stared out the window in awe, without even taking a photo. I had heard of Sri Lanka’s famous train journeys, of course, but I figured the landscape an hour outside its capital city wouldn’t be too dramatically different. After another hour or so on the train, we arrived in Kandy, the country’s second city.

Signs welcomed us to the hill kingdom, a reference to Kandy’s rolling landscape and fabled history as the last kingdom to fall to European colonial rule in the nineteenth century. Museums across Colombo eagerly recount the Kandyans’ skillful defeat of the Portuguese in several battles that proved humbling for Lisbon’s hopes of absorbing all of Sri Lanka into its empire.

Our first site of the day was the Sri Dalada Maligawa, better known as the Temple of the Tooth, home to a renowned Buddhist relic. In hopes of escaping the Sri Lankan heat, I wore a pair of khaki shorts and sneakers — an outfit that had served me well in Colombo. However, as we passed through the temple entrance, a guard stopped me with a wag of his finger.

“No shorties,” he said. “Not allowed.”

To be honest, I believe this was the first time I had ever been dress coded, not counting situations like being turned away from a nice beachside restaurant for wearing a bathing suit. The guard tossed me a tan skirt-like sarong, which I tied around my waist. After arriving at the ticket stand, we debated paying the rather high ticket price or returning later on to beat the tourist crowds. We opted for the latter, and I’ll be more intentional with my clothing choices going forward.

Instead, we walked around the scenic Kandy Lake, passing by Buddhist devotees clad in all white as they headed to the temple. Sievalee’s family is from Kandy, and we talked about the differences between Kandyan culture and that of Sri Lanka’s other regions. Having heard about a traditional dance show held at the Kandyan Cultural Center, we decided to check it out on our way around the lake. As it turned out, both the cultural center and the Red Cross — situated just next door — offered shows at the exact same time. We decided to go to the show at the government-sponsored Kandyan Cultural Center, which turned out to be a solid choice.

With an hour or so before the show started, we completed our loop around the lake and spotted some wildlife, including huge lizards and colorful birds. Outside of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, an aged, charming brick building surrounded by leafy trees, we grabbed a coffee to shake off the mid-afternoon slump.

The dance show, which took place in a large auditorium that was about one-third full, was spectacular — men in bright yellow backflipped across the stage as women in equally colorful dresses danced gracefully. Several performers played traditional instruments, while others twirled and tossed plates. Even though the performance was catered toward tourists, Sievalee reported that the dancing was both impressive and authentic. I found no room to disagree.

After the show, we headed to a rooftop restaurant to watch the sun set and listen to the birds call out to one another. The views of Kandy’s hills were stunning, and the evening mist settled in as the final birdsong faded into the quiet of dusk.

Saturday must be market day in Santa Ana. Our taxi stopped resolutely at a busy intersection with the implication that we should get out, even though our destination was about a quarter mile up the road. Vendor stalls, one on top of the next, stretched down the block as proprietors marketed their produce, coffee, and other essentials.

We followed the stream of market-goers and ended up, somehow, at the bus station. Colorful school buses, most imported from the United States, were emblazoned with their destinations — San Salvador, La Unión, the Guatemalan border — and we took a minute or so to find our number, 210, a blue bus headed toward Ahuachapan.

It was far from full, but we paid our fare of about a dollar apiece and waited. The bus attendant, calling out to passersby, eventually signaled to the driver that we should just go. It appeared no one else, save the three older men asleep in the rows around us, needed to head east that morning.

Our journey was delayed by the impassable market. The bus honked and squeezed through narrow lanes that, on any other day, it would have flown down. Eventually we reached the interstate and the driver kicked it into gear. We carefully attended to our Google Maps to make sure we didn’t miss our first stop along the way, the archaeological ruins of Tazumal. Not technically a stop on the route, we planned to ask the driver to just let us off on the side of the road.

He obliged, but not after lecturing us about the difference between a direct bus, like his, which doesn’t stop at random, versus a commuter bus that picks up passengers along the way. We tipped our hats and hopped off, heading down a suburban road toward the historic site. Along the way, I found a cross-body bag that served me well for the rest of the trip.

Just outside the entrance to Tazumal, we stopped in at a quiet restaurant and ordered fried yuca with chicharron, a Salvadoran delicacy. Entering the site, official guides offer their cultural and historical insights — but we had no time to spare. We jogged up and down the stone steps of the temple and surrounding areas, often starting with an attempt to read the Spanish plaques before switching to the English in the interest of time (and competence).

As we headed back to the highway to flag down a bus headed east again, we might have done well to remember the driver’s lecture from earlier: bus after bus passed us without stopping. Eventually, we lucked out and were on the road again.

KÉDOUGOU, Senegal — After roaring through Niokolo-Koba National Park—an arid expanse of savanna and rust-red dirt—our bus screeched to a halt on a seemingly random street in Kédougou, a dusty outpost town in Senegal’s far east. We hesitantly followed the stream of disembarking passengers through a market, which was placid compared to Dakar, where vendors sold t-shirts and other odds and ends.

I hoped that we’d be able to find Guinean money or even a soccer jersey, given our proximity to the border. More pressing concerns included locating an ATM and accommodation for the next several nights. Following the Google Maps trail to the top-rated hotel in Kédougou, we were met with a parking lot chock-full of off-roading vehicles with Spanish license plates. The entire place was booked out for some sort of ATV gathering, the receptionist explained (despite our desperate begging).

Defeated and increasingly anxious against the already-set sun, we descended a steep hill in total darkness as cicadas and an occasional howl filled the air. We found another lodge, deserted and seemingly abandoned, but we tried the bell at the receptionist stand several times. A minute later, a jovial man in a wrinkled white uniform appeared and, to our great relief, said he had the perfect room for us.

That is how we found ourselves waiting with bated breath outside the Banque Agricole du Sénégal. We cheered at the whir of the ATM as it fluttered crisp notes into the tray and soon had enough cash to pay for two nights’ stay at a hotel we had only seen under the cloak of darkness that blanketed the dimly lit town.

To celebrate our success, we headed down to a broken wooden dock overlooking the calm Gambia River and cracked open three cold Gazelle beers. The bob of a flashlight illuminated the black night and a hotel guard on the night shift—which was surprising, considering we appeared to be the only guests—introduced himself and struck up a conversation.

He told stories of his youth in this pocket of Senegal among the Bassari group, whose language is spoken by less than 15,000 spread across the remote plains of the country’s southeastern foothills. The stars, ever visible against the moonlit sky, shone brightly above, though I was not familiar with any of the constellations. We were introduced to the Bassari words for earth, moon, and river before we shared some English in return. Not bad for a language I had never heard of an hour earlier.

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FARAFENNI, The Gambia — A narrow strip of land set squarely inside of Senegal, The Gambia—continental Africa’s smallest nation—is viewed by some as a listless, haphazard place. In Dakar, a professor once described a standard afternoon in The Gambia: pouring tea back and forth between the cup and the kettle.

Though I spent this afternoon in The Gambia, I failed to observe any tea-pouring. Our trans-Senegal road trip began in earnest this morning around seven o’clock, with a full-day leg from Dakar to Ziguinchor, the capital of Senegal’s southern Casamance region. Some cursory research revealed that the bus trip would involve traversing The Gambia, an adventure that takes all of half an hour.

Based on some comments on a Reddit post, we hoped to get out of the standard visa fee and process by asking for a transit visa. After about six hours of travel, we hopped off the bus at the border as the rest of the passengers stayed on to have a guard glance at their Senegalese ID cards. Ducking into the passport office, we began to greet the customs agents in our regular smattering of French and Wolof.

“English, they reminded us. “Welcome to The Gambia.” We struck up a friendly conversation, riffing on our limited knowledge of Gambian culture and history. Warmly received, we were soon on our way. After an enthralling twenty-minute drive—one bridge, one mid-sized town, a few villages—the Senegalese flag was once again in view.

The first sign of trouble appeared as we stood in line at the border crossing, which apparently doubles as a municipal jail. A police officer shuffled past us with an inmate, handcuffed, we stared uncomfortably at a wall of “Wanted” posters. Our bus driver, who accompanied us in the interest of time, tried to find someone who could quickly stamp us out. Instead, we were ushered into an office in the back of the building.

A huffy border guard sat down at his desk like a Wall Street banker in a movie and began his line of questioning. Why were we in The Gambia? What was the purpose of our visit? How long would we be staying? Despite our insistence on the fact that we were leaving the country, he was unsatisfied and grew impatient with us. All this despite the rather inconspicuous bus parked outside the border post in a one-horse town—the equivalent of a Greyhound at a roadside diner in the United States.

“The fee is 5,000 CFA per person,” he finally revealed.

“That’s bullshit,” one of us muttered.

“Careful,” the guard replied. “We speak English here.”

We looked around at each other, frustrated and lamenting our failed attempts at a friendly détente (“Hey, America was colonized by the British too!”). Sensing our hesitation at coughing up the cash, the border guard kept at it.

“We don’t let fools in The Gambia,” he said, trying to sound menacing.

We folded and laid the cash on the table. “Sir,” someone said. “You already let us in.”

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DAKAR, Senegal — When I arrived at my host family’s house for the first time, it was around one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon. After the standard greetings and a quick tour, I was shown to my room and told lunch would be ready in a few hours. Then everyone disappeared and the house went quiet.

Perhaps an early siesta, I thought. Looking for something to do, I watched an entire Premier League match with an older host brother; the game came and went, still no one to be found—not even the tireless Abdoulaye.

At school the next morning, I explained my situation in great distress. Did my host family hate me? How could they already hate me? The worry faded quickly into confusion as classmate after classmate explained their encounter with a similar phenomenon. Did all our host families hate us?

Fortunately not. To paraphrase the forty-second president of the United States: It’s Sunday, stupid. The French expression for sleeping in, “faire la grasse matinée”, literally translates to “do the fat morning”. At least in Senegal, alarms are not set, blinds are left closed, and wake-up times regularly stretch into the early afternoon. I adapted my weekend accordingly and could soon sleep until two o’clock like a professional.

Needless to say, any ambition to attend Sunday mass quickly fell by the wayside. A few classmates and I went to Dakar’s central parish one time. It was a sweaty, confusing experience compounded by our lack of local knowledge (not bringing a fan) and linguistic struggles. We were not eager to head back and leaned hard into Sunday-ing the Senegalese way, which often included another nap at the beach.

One Saturday a couple weeks ago, however, my host grandmother let me know that I would be headed to the église the next morning. We have talked at length in the past about (1) religion and (2) politics—the opposite of dinner table conversation in the United States—so she knows I grew up going to church.

She had taken the liberty of arranging a family friend to bring me to Saint Pierre des Baobabs, the closest Catholic parish. I texted our study abroad WhatsApp group to find any willing partners, and sure enough a few of my classmates agreed to join. Part of me doubted that the family friend would actually come pick me up for church. Sunday culture, you know. I hadn’t met any early risers.

Sure enough, a knock at the door came around nine o’clock and I was off on a journey through Dakar’s sandy streets to the church. As we walked, I got to know Jan, Abdoulaye’s former nanny whom he absolutely adores. She told me that when he was a baby, he couldn’t go thirty seconds without seeing her before bursting into tears. Years later, the second she walks in the door he is attached to her at the hip.

After jumping on the car rapide, or a neighborhood hopper bus that costs about thirty cents per ticket, we arrived at the church and sat, naturally, in the front row. A light breeze wafted through the open-air parish, and women in brightly colored fabric dresses fanned themselves as kids fidgeted in their seats. Hymns reverberated from the choir and, for the first time, I understood the priest as he read. The service ended after about an hour and a half, and we strolled back to Sacré Cœur to find my entire host family still in bed.

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DAKAR, Senegal — It was an unremarkable late afternoon as I read in my host family’s foyer, alternating between turning the pages of my book and wiping sweat droplets from my forehead. The sun lingered in the air and a soft breeze flowed through the open door into the tiled courtyard. School had just let out and it was oddly, even suspiciously quiet.

I can usually hear my host brother Abdoulaye, five years old, shouting along our dusty street with his friends long before he bursts through the front door. I enjoyed the stillness, but knew it would be short lived. Soon enough, he crept into the room grinning ear to ear.

On weekdays, he normally donned his school uniform, a navy blue collared shirt and cargo shorts. That day, an impeccably white knee length suit and matching pants covered him head to toe. On his head sat delicately a cap with gold trim, typically worn by religious teachers. In Senegal and other predominantly Muslim countries in West Africa, such leaders are called marabouts. They offer spiritual counsel and lead the Islamic groups that make up the fabric of Senegalese civil society. “Un petit marabout,” I said, skeptically, as he slowly made his way toward me. Without a word, he grabbed my book and cell phone, as he often did.

Abdoulaye is rather studious for his age, whether by choice or circumstance. During the summer, his days are spent at the daara, where he studies the Quran in classical Arabic. Before his fifteenth birthday, he will have its contents memorized in their entirety. Once the school year begins, he attends a private kindergarten and takes Quranic lessons in the afternoon. He is fluent in Wolof and French, and can read Arabic. Naturally, he was regularly unimpressed by my language abilities and took pleasure in correcting my grammar mistakes.

That afternoon, he held a tattered workbook up to my face and tossed my items on the table. Still silent, I looked at him hesitantly. He rarely asked for my help with homework, and even then only math. I took the workbook from him and open its faded blue cover. I looked at the first page, then at him, in surprise. It was filled with words and letters entirely in Arabic. “Abdoulaye,” I said to him. “I can’t read Arabic.” His face spelled genuine confusion. “You’re older than me,” he eventually responded, astounded.

I stared back at him. After a moment, he left the room. When he returned, he dragged in the straw mat he used for lessons with his Quranic teacher. “Sit,” he said. We began at the beginning of the book, which provided an introduction of the Arabic alphabet. He pointed at each character, said it aloud, and waited for me to repeat. Eventually, we moved into short words with a couple of syllables. “Ba ta sa,” he said first. “Ba ta sa,” I responded. Pleased, he flipped halfway through the book. Soon, three letters became ten. I stared at him. “Jack,” he said, with an air of impatience. “What are you doing?”

To no avail, I tried to explain that I had no idea what these letters meant or how they sounded. He stared back at me and rubbed his eyes. All of the sudden, I jolted upright as he swatted me across the wrist. “Learn!” he cried. “You have to learn!” And I tried, sincerely. Even if I could identify the first letter of a word, I drew blanks as the sentences became more and more advanced. For each mistake, and each guess, a slap on the wrist. He grew exhausted and put his small head in his hands. “You should know this,” he told me.

After half an hour passed, he turned to the last page of the workbook. He flopped it on the straw mat and got up, staring at me once again in silence. Then, he turned and walked out of the room, his feet covered entirely by his billowing white pants. At dinner that night, he explained that I was a lazy student. My linguistic capabilities, he assessed, were limited.

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