She Don't Use Jelly

Before I left for Madagascar, I spoke to one of my friends who had served in The Gambia. The Gambia is that awkward strip of land carved right through the middle of Senegal that always reminds me that national boundaries aren't decided by forces as natural as bubbles aggregating to reduce surface energy, or as strategic as board positions in a game of go. No, The Gambia was delineated by shot-put. A gunship, sailing inland from the Atlantic, fired cannons towards either wall of the gorge, and the range of the shot fixed the borders.

In any case, my friend told me how she and her fellow The Gambian volunteers would find sublime satisfaction in a mayonnaise sandwich. In my mind, mayonnaise was quite the team player, bringing synergy and cohesion to many a salad or sandwich. But it was never, under any circumstance, a soloist to be spooned from jar to mouth or suctioned directly from single-serving condiment packets. And only once had I auditioned it for a duet. This was a catastrophic event known as "smoker's cough" where a dollop is floated over an ounce and a half of Jaegermeister and passed over the back of the tongue as quickly as gravity and peristalsis will permit. So it was with some skepticism last week that I regarded the two-piece hybrid I'd created after succumbing to the fact that I was too hungry and lazy to hunt down and boil a couple eggs to balance the composition. But I ate it. And I liked it. And then I downed another.

And so it has been that I've grown strangely nostalgic about certain americana that I used to find somewhat distasteful. Cars rusting in parking lots with the AC on and the windows down. Beer drinking, pizza eating, lazy boying football saturdays. Even high fructose corn syrup, lighter fluid and special sauce seem almost quaint. As goes the mayonnaise sandwich, so goes the nation.

This isn't homesickness, culture shock, greener grasses, or any other term that describes an unhappy transplant. Indeed, I'm having a brilliant time. My commune seems to be quite mahay, and my partner NGO is already doing great things with them, letting me tag along as I like. I can't wait to get back and begin planning projects of my own. But if we insist upon using the grass and fence platitude, then let us say the fence is a short one. Then I can comfortably note the good humus under a foot planted on each side.

It is in this spirit which I raise a glass of warm THB, offer you a spot on the fence, and wish everyone a happy Independence Day - be it the fourth or the vignt-six.