These reflections came to me on my sickbed. Aches, pains more or less everywhere, a fatigue that made the most ordinary movements difficult. Every evening, I went to bed hoping to recover, the next day, a little of my strength and my routines. But the relief never lasted. As soon as the effect of the medicine wore off, the same sensations returned. This flu was stubborn.

Eventually, I thought of malaria. I have had it several times in my life. The memory of the injections came back, then that of the people who had died of it. I was afraid. Knowing that death is our only certainty does not stop me from fearing it or from feeling sad when I think about it.

One morning, I went to be seen at the Pikine Darou Khoudoss health post, by Mrs Sougou. My sister-in-law had taken a number for me. The irony is that I, a former community health worker who always urges others to get checked, had to be pushed into seeing someone. The malaria test was negative. Alhamdoulilah. I went home with a prescription and that relief.

But during those days at home, my mind did not rest. I slept during the day and searched for sleep at night. I thought about everything and nothing. Certain situations came back to me, some old, some more recent. I saw them differently, now that I was no longer busy living them.

And in the middle of the night, I would sometimes say to myself: “Wey, such naivety, really!” I did not say it in anger. I was simply recognising something about myself.

When I say that I am naive, people sometimes do not believe me. They credit me with an intelligence that, it seems, should spare me certain errors of judgement. As if my ability to think, to analyse a situation or to defend an idea should allow me always to know who I am dealing with.

Yet I am not trying to belittle myself by saying this. I am speaking of a part of myself that I know. I am not naive in every area, nor with everyone. But I sometimes enter a relationship, join a project or commit to people without considering what, later, will seem obvious to me. In the moment, I see nothing. I go by what I feel and what I believe I understand. And often, I reason from a conviction I do not even take the time to put into words: in my place, the other person would do the same.

It is that very assumption that I am questioning today.

I believe, however, that we load the word “naivety” with many things that do not necessarily belong to it. Trusting is not necessarily being naive. Giving one’s time, being generous, choosing solidarity are not either. A betrayed trust does not, on its own, prove that it was absurd to begin with. I would not want to end up calling naivety everything in a relationship that was not preceded by calculation.

In my commitments, what has always mattered to me is a vision, the trust placed in people, in a project or in an idea. I can devote time, energy and resources to it, because I believe in what is being built. Money has never been what made me stay in a relationship, an initiative or a movement, nor what made me leave.

But I sometimes discover that this way of committing myself comes with an assumption: I believe that the other person gives my gestures the meaning I give them. That the solidarity they receive speaks to them as it would speak to me. That we do not need to tell each other everything to know what we owe each other in terms of consideration.

Then certain behaviours come along and crack that conviction. I discover mistrust where I did not think I would have to justify myself. I feel held at a distance from what I helped to grow. Or I notice that, when resources and recognition become available, the people who were there at the beginning can easily be forgotten.

I told myself I expected nothing. Truly nothing. And if an expectation had formed despite me, it had done so without my knowing. Perhaps this disappointment was needed for me to discover it existed.

I had not made my gestures an advance to be repaid. But nor did I think they could become unimportant. Perhaps I had taken it for granted that something of them would remain in the bond: some attention, a conversation, an awareness of a path travelled together. Something I did not think to ask for, so much did it seem part of the relationship itself.

And my intelligence, in all this? It is certainly there when I reflect on what happened. I am able to understand interests, contradictions, power relations. I can even see them quite clearly in situations in which I am not personally involved. But this ability does not always stay with me in the same way when I am committed, attached, convinced.

I can be rational and irrational. I know this without feeling disappointed in myself. And I cannot blame others for always taking me seriously, for assuming that my decisions have already been subjected to rational scrutiny. But I wonder whether this confidence in my judgement sometimes leaves my certainties too undisturbed. Why not question myself, contradict myself, wake myself from my “dogmatic slumbers”, to borrow that expression from philosophy? Being able to think does not mean I have already questioned everything, especially what seems to me self-evident.

I could therefore learn to stop assuming this likeness. Let facts and actions tell me about the other person. Accept not knowing straight away what really brings us together.

But I am not sure that this learning would have no effect on the way I act. For I sometimes give spontaneously precisely because I do not doubt this shared disposition. It is not that I expect my gesture to be returned. It is that I believe I am acting within a relationship where such a gesture would be possible in both directions. If I start questioning where, before, I would leap in, will my gesture still be the same? Will I give as much? Will I dare to begin certain relationships?

I value this possibility of reaching out to someone without making them bear the weight of my previous experiences. I value the hope with which I begin, the sincerity of my commitments. I would like to be able to acknowledge my mistakes without having to regard my whole way of being as a mistake.

It took my body coming to a halt for me to take the time to revisit all this. I do not yet know what I will keep of this naivety, nor what experience will change despite me. I only know that I do not want each of my disappointments to become a reason to close myself off.

The next time I believe in a person or a project, this question may well be present. I do not know what place it will take. I hope it will still leave me room to go ahead.

By Fatou Warkha SAMBE