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January, 2001. There I was, in the Leopold Senghor airport, tearful and nervous. I'd just said goodbye to my Peace Corps volunteer sister after an intense three-week visit to the rural Senegal village where she was stationed. I was a New Yorker who had never been out of the country before, I hated to fly, and I hadn't taken a shower in over a week. Tense and confused, I tried to decipher enough French to tell which plane on the tarmac was headed to Kennedy--without my sister's fluent Wolof to help smooth the way, the guards at the gate were blank-faced and intimidating. I wiped my face and went over to the nice-looking backpacker guy sitting nearby. "Um...do you speak English?" I asked. "Sure do," he replied, in a friendly, Midwestern accent. We started talking about Africa (where he'd lived and worked), graduate school (we were both students), and books. On the packed flight, the seat next to him was somehow free. I moved my stuff over, we talked for the entire nine hours, and he let me grip his hand during the bumpy landing. We've been married for five years now, thanks to Air Afrique and the Leopold Senghor airport.
