The Princes

Tonight is the great Baye-Fall night. They have commandeered the mosques and are chanting, chanting until the early morning. Scooting through the market on my bike today running little errands, buying garlic to plant, onion seeds, I saw two gods. They were Baye Fall talibé, young men, dressed in the finest and noblest costumes I have seen to date. They each had shoulder length, perfectly hanging dreadlocks, nothing silly or shoddy about them, and they both seemed to be 7 feet tall. Whether by nature or by their poise, they were taller than everyone around them, and walked shoulder to shoulder in perfect step, looking like nothing so much as two princes, brothers, their bond and nobility deeper than any imagining. They were unbelievably, stunningly beautiful, the only people in many years to make my mouth actually fall open with admiration. I, riding my bike, came up on an intersection rather quickly and had to stop short to avoid hitting them. One of the princes turned his head ever so slightly to ward me off, not once actually noticing me, and I felt as an ant must when it strikes our shoe and we push it away, causing it to change its course.

It was such a gorgeous contrast. The market, the ridiculous Senegal market with its strolling women, thieves, lazy teenages, wobbly bicycles, clopping horses, filthy workers, shop owners screaming out Toubab! Chinois! Nar! HEY! pieces of fabric, rotton vegetables, manure, bargaining, total stinky, absurd, monstorous chaos...and these glorious princes strolling through never once breaking stride, while everyone else bumps and shoves and claws and whines, these two, taller than everyone, float past with the most beautiful dignity...

I actually circled back to try and see them again, but, as unlikely as it seems, they had melted into that insane syrup of color and incense and I couldn't find them again.

The princes. Human beings. Man as he is meant to be, the Man that was created in the image of God. Noble. Decent. Untouchable by the everyday and the common, not by force, but because their essence is guarded deep within their bodies, guarded scrupulously, cared for and loved.

Though I was the ant to their deity, I didn't feel small and mean. I felt only an intense admiration and I desire that, someday, I might be so beautiful.