Desks

They unloaded the truck in the morning, stacking pieces next to the pavilion in the center of the village where meetings are sometimes held. When I passed by on my way to school at a quarter to eight they had almost finished, and the piles of sides and tops and backs and bracing were approaching head height. I arrived at school and remarked to the principal what I had seen. He jumped up to go remind the carpenters that they were allowed to store the completed desks in the pavilion but not to actually work in its shelter. Repairing damage to the tile floor from a stray hammer blow or errant varnish drip could be costly.

After school I stopped again to watch. The truck was gone. It had deposited a load of sand outside the window of the 10^th grade classroom where I was teaching, distracting everyone. Now a large portion of the village center on the north side of the road was filled with freshly glued and nailed desks, perhaps sixty-five or seventy of them. The four carpenters had found an efficient way to share the two hammers, two buckets of glue, and two saws they had brought, and a newly-assembled desk was placed among the others about every two or three minutes. The first carpenter took two opposite endpieces, each with a skid at floor level, a box to support the seat, a beam to support the desk surface, and a riser with a notch cut out at the top to hold the backrest. He then glued the backrest and the seat in place, and added a handful of nails. The next carpenter verified that everything was square and nothing damaged, and fitted the notebook tray at knee level. The third added the desktop, with glue and nails, positioning the groove for pens and pencils at the front of the desk (I only saw two that were backwards). The final carpenter added a brace at foot level, and moved it to the ‘finished’ area.

The fresh desks arranged in rows in the middle of the village attracted passersby other than myself. Many old men stopped to comment on the rapidity of the work, the fact that the wood had so obviously been cut with an electric saw in the city and not by hand, the uniformity of the desks, or just the impressive sight of so many new pieces of scholastic furniture. Children played in the rows, or sat and watched. Small sheep enjoyed the new shade.

I came and stopped again about an hour later, and watched the last desk get nailed together. Eighty new “table-bancs” as they are called in French were more or less arranged in the middle of the village. I think the carpenters where told to work there because it was next to the place where they would be stored, not so that they would attract the attention of everyone who passed by that day. But the effect was important, and valuable. Several people told me directly that it was so inspiring to see all the new desks, ready and waiting for students to fill them. I overheard more than one conversation in which someone lamented no longer being in school (too old, dropped out, etc.) and now wanted to go back, if they could only sit in one of those new desks.

The desks that are currently in use at the school are uneven. Their surfaces are scarred by careless chainsawing at the beginning of their lives and many years (over forty for some of them) of bored students scratching their nicknames and lovers’ names into them with their pens or worse. Most have one or two or three nails that stand proud from the surface, either at the desktop or the bench. Some are wide, some are narrow, some are high, some are short. They have no backrests. Unfortunately, the approximately 300 students currently enrolled this year will need almost half as many desks to be comfortably seated, so many of the current, ugly desks will have to be used alongside the new ones in the new classrooms. I imagine fights between students who come early and get seats at the new desks, and those who come late and won’t accept sitting at an old desk.

Before I went home they had started varnishing. First four gallons of Guinean-made varnish were mixed with half as much lamp oil. I guess lamp oil is cheaper than varnish. When the head carpenter was satisfied with the color and consistency of the mix, brushes were distributed and rinsed in lamp oil, and the varnishing commenced. Gradually the students, children, and even old men sitting and looking on where displaced so their seats could be brushed with varnish, bringing out the lovely light red tones in the wood. I’m not sure if they finished before nightfall. 

Light

On the bowal, about 6:20am

Your picture

This morning I took apart an ikon of sorts; I am using the frame for your picture. The frame is a too big, too thin, but the color—dark, brickish—plays well with the colors in the photo. It’s the one that I really like, that your friend took of you looking out at the busy Cambodian street, with the people and tuktuks and mopeds passing below blurring together in the shallow depth of field. Your hair is still facing the road, but your eyes look right at the camera; she must have taken it in that splitsecond between when she called your name and you saw the camera and realized what was happening.

I got the idea last night. I had been meaning to get a frame for a while, putting on the last three shopping lists I made, but I don’t really know where to look for frames, nor do I have much extra money, nor am I frequently in the city where one might acquire such an item [excuses]. As I was lying facedown on the floor resting after too few pushups I noticed/remembered that the stack of old things the previous tenant left in the house contained some framed images. Cleaning last year I had carefully pyramided them and put them under the bed, where they have been gathering dust and moisture since.

The frame used to have a homemade collage: images of Christ, a picture of a cross, an illustration of the virgin, a short poem - Confía en El. A piece of yellow notepaper served as matting, and an inspirational note “Díos Te Bendigo” written in a loopy hand filled the space. Time and moisture caused some of the collage pieces to tear and stick a bit; I’ll have to scrape off the fragment of fringe of radiant light still clinging to the pane. There is also considerable cobwebbing at the corners. If I can find a piece of black paper I will use it as a mat, but the plain white cardboard backing will probably suffice.

Where should I hang it?

Wet Start

It was dark when I awoke. The crescent moon had set long ago, and the muezzin and his rooster friends had not yet begun to crow. I lay in bed, staring at the mosquito net, imagining a future trip where maybe I didn’t (have to) sleep under a mosquito net, where the day held movement and new adventure, where I might feel like my activities where under my direction, instead of feeling like a passenger on a moving sidewalk, slowly crawling along. But the muezzin interrupted my reverie, and so I fell into his, the entire extended prayer call pouring gently through the bars of my open window. When it was over, I swung myself around and out from under the net, lit a candle, made a cup of tea, and ate a grapefruit. Halfway through, a light rain began playing on the roof, and the overexcited birds gave way to small, calm drips and drops.

Raincoat on, I darted out into the new wet day. My morning run this week takes me exactly one mile towards the next village, up the grade southeast of town, past some huts and houses, over a bridge or two, and past a slippery soccer field. There, at the high point, I turned around. The road was wet, and uneven, so I guessed in the lightening day where the rolley rocks are and tried to avoid them. The rain continued, gray pillows overhead taking the place of the pink shreds and orange stippling of clouds I usually observe at dawn on my way back. Some stupid sheep [all sheep are stupid] ran ahead of me for a bit, not realizing that they could cross the road and I would not follow. The smell of warm, wet wool lingered in the air after them; I was reminded of skiing, at lunchtime.

Seventeen minutes later I was back inside, and after twenty-five I was out of the shower and the rain had stopped and I was boiling cornmeal for porridge. The sounds of the latest world news blended nicely with the sound of an egg frying; crackle coup d’etat in Guinea Bissau pop military intervention in Mali sizzle.

I assembled the day’s kit: lesson plans, scraps of paper for warm-up exercises, some balloons, several varied sources of light [candle, flashlight, glow-in-the-dark Frisbee] and a big basin to help demonstrate refraction. With everything except the basin tucked into my bag, I started off towards the school. While I was eating, the dark grey sky had brightened significantly. However, and odd and mildly ominous stormfront had established itself from north to south overhead. The result was a bit confusing: the bright part of the sky was in the west, and the eastern half was dark and foreboding and growing rapidly. I stood in the road and watched for a full minute; the darker grey front moved over and down and then broke over the hill to the east. Low fog spilled over the crest and began to infiltrate the treetops. The day darkened some more.

About halfway to school rain started again. Lightly at first, then more earnestly, moreso at least than an hour ago during the predawn. The few villagers that had risen early in spite of the dark and wet moved back under the eaves. I held the basin over my head.

Outside the schoolyard I passed two women walking into the center of town, plastic bags tied over their scalps to keep their braidwork dry. “I like your umbrella,” one said in clear English. “Thank you,” I replied.

At the school the principal was sitting at his desk, the window and  door closed to keep out wind and rain, listening to the radio in the dark. He had pulled his scarf and flowey long caftan tight around him, effectively cutting his apparent size in two. I sat across from him, both of us in contented silence, listening to the same soundbites I had heard earlier.

Presently two more teachers arrived. We talked about the upcoming Tabaski holiday (the Muslim sheep-sacrifice holiday, in remembrance of Abraham’s piety as he was ready to sacrifice his own son) and how it might impact the school schedule; I explained that in the US we also have a T-holiday that involves the customary consumption of a designated animal; and we talked about temperate climates (the Guineans were all very cold, I was enormously content). About twenty minutes late I shuffled off to class, where three students (out of 67) were waiting. I wrote the warm-up question on the board and distributed half-sheets. Gradually, more damp students arrived, and gradually, the rain increased. Sometimes a bit of wind caused a loose leaf of corrugated roofing to flap noisily overhead, startling the students. Through the doorway I could see a family of sheep, standing in the lee of a tree in the schoolyard, the larger one closest, the smallest ones lined up next to her.

Still students continue to arrive, and still the rain intensifies, and the classroom gets louder. I sat on the windowsill and watched the sky get brighter and brighter. 

Breakfast Time

Orange juice

5 medium oranges

Find a child (preferably in one of the later grades of primary school, and probably a boy) who seems to understand a decent amount of French. Tell him you’d like to get some oranges. If he seems indifferent, offer to pay for them, a bit less than the current market price [datum: preseason oranges are four/1000 GNF, so offer to pay 1000 GNF for six]. Follow the child as he leads you into the heart of the village, into his brother’s/aunt’s/father’s parcel. Ask if there are any oranges that are not “not ripe” (or ripe, if you know the word for that), and point to the tree. Point to a different tree when the child tells you that that one there is a grapefruit tree. Point to a third tree when he tells you that that second one is a lime tree, aren’t those too small for oranges? Watch fearfully and with slight awe as the child hoists himself into the crown of the tree, and then begins a quick but graceful ascent. Take a few steps back and observe the branches of the tree, speckled with yellowing orbs. Ask the child about that one there, that nice orange one. Is that one good? Get that one. No it’s not. It’s not? Nope. Don’t believe him and jump up and pick (with startling ease) another equally-blushing -but-lower-hanging fruit. Touch it barely so as to not crush it as you let it drop to the ground where it splats, transforming a rotting sphere into a rotting circle. Look back skywards and orangewards and make eye contact with the boy. Spread your hands like a baseball glove or one of those women’s hairclips and catch the green thing he drops at you. Examine the fruit, baseball sized, dimpled, and mostly green with the slightest hints of yellow, a John Deere orange. Catch four more similar oranges as they are lobbed down. Miss one, and jump back to protect your exposed toes as its precious insides spurt out through a new seam in the side. Tell the child that’s enough, knowing that he will pick at least one more. Keep watching as he downclimbs, but stay ready to move a little bit as bits of small branches tumble down. Consider also the possibility of breaking his theoretical fall, and how bruised you would get, and how bruised he would get, hitting branches and then you on the way down. Try to act unsurprised and unimpressed as he moves towards the extreme of the lowest branch, which was seven and a half feet above the ground but now with his weight on it is a comfortable five and three-quarters. Give him a moment to go back to the trunk and put his left sandal on his right foot and the right on the left. Pick three large spindly biting ants off the back of his shirt that he missed while doing a general removal seconds earlier. Attempt to carry the oranges (joke that they should be called greens) in your hands, struggle, move to pick them up again after they tumble down, and finally accept the child’s offer to carry them for you. Help him load them into a lumbar pouch he creates by tying the unbuttoned shirttails of his school uniform, and then follow as he leads you on a meandering path back to the village center and your house. Place a basket or plastic bowl on the ground outside and have the child deposit his cargo into it. Go inside and bring back out a cup of water and a dirty banknote, give both to the child. Take the cup back when it’s empty. Bring the oranges inside and cut them in half along their equators. If you possess a juicer, use it to juice the oranges, but scoop the pulp but not the seeds back into the cup. If you don’t have a juicer, squeeze each hemisphere, one hand inside the other, over a large, preferably wide, cup. Use a sharp knife to cut the pulpy fringes off of each piece of fruit before throwing the rind out the window or off the front porch. Remove the seeds with a spoon. Drink and enjoy.

Hotcakes

4 parts flour, sifted

2 parts corn flour (coarser is fine)

1 part powdered milk

¼ part baking powder

¼ part salt

Water

Oil

Mix dry ingredients together, smashing lumps with a fork. Slowly add water while stirring the batter until barely heaping. Pour an aliquot into a hot, well-oiled pan, frying on both sides. Eat savory with cheese and veggies, or sweet with peanut butter and honey.

Sunshine

Everybody’s been wondering where you you’ve been

And now that we know what happened

We’re all wondering where you are

----- 

After 26 hours of travel, I received a surprise upgrade to first class for the final leg of my trip home.

I’ve been away from family, old friends, loved ones in general, for at least 378 days. And now, on this third and last plane trip of this overextended day, I am drinking decent red wine from a glass tumbler.

The Alaska Airlines 737-700 has bigger, more tightly spaced windows than the A330s I rode earlier. So now, in between bites of boeuf bourgignon, I can clearly see the Montana rumplelands below the patchy clouds, waiting calmly, monochrome laundry in need of ironing. The porthole makes as good or better a rowmate than the Ethiopian-cum-Kenyan chemist/investor or the Indian UN water sanitation expert from this morning or last night, respectively.

I’m going home, where everything is how I know, where I don’t feel proud when I’m able to communicate. But red yellow and green of the cherry tomatoes and spinach on my plate remind me of the country I left so recently. I remember explaining once to my tenth grade students the feeling of being in a plane as it takes off. If I had three thousand dollars, I might bring one with me just so that we can share that experience of watching the clouds go by.

It’s Ramadan, but I drank three IPAs and ate a bacon cheeseburger in Minneapolis, total cost equal to one fifth of my monthly salary. Luckily I am still in possession of the local salt, tree pepper (gileh), and snakeskin wallet I brought into the US with me; the customs officer served in PC Thailand in the sixties. And now I’m moving mouthfuls of spinach or potato to my mouth with my forbidden hand (via fork).

This twenty-first of July, snow is hiding on the northern sides of those little wrinkles that are slowly crescendoeing into the Rocky Mountains. Nevertheless, some valleys are parsected into neat fields the colors of apples and pears, more brilliant access roads leading to the tiny gleaming silos at their centers. Seeing the US road network from above, I imagine an immense and ever-multiplying fleet of bulldozers paving machines civil engineers spreading across the landscape like liquid into a watershed after the dam breaks. If one mile of paved high way costs about one million dollars, how many families could be fed for how many months for the cost of building all the spur roads in Minnesota and North Dakota?

And they just brought me cookies. Soft and warm. Sometimes some things just fall into place, into places you didn’t realize were there to fall in to.

Soirée Africaine

I will be back in Seattle for a few weeks this summer to attend some weddings, see friends and family, and keep working under the guise of Peace Corps' third goal: Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. You, dear reader, are thus invited to a "Soirée africaine", a night of food, pictures, stories, and insights that I have taken back to the US with me after a year in Guinea.

Please present yourself at the Bean-Haugerud residence at 5pm on Thursday, August 9th to participate. Bring your questions and an appetite.

Please send an email to thaugerud@gmail.com if you plan on attending so that we can prepare the appropriate quanitity of food.

A bientôt!

Malaise

The 10^th graders all left this morning in a truck, off to the prefectural capital to take the week-long high school entrance exam. The excitement of forty students about to do the most scholastically important task of their lives thus far, in a city (well, town) over this hills and through the woods, was almost palpable. Once the truck was gone, so was everything else, even the tiny children that had gathered, even the dust.

The village tailor, who I finally have started to frequent, seems unwilling (or unable?) to take the time to make seams straight and match patterns on my shirts, or cut the shoulders to the size requested. He is, however, incredibly affable.

Even if the tailoring were superb, the more wearable patterns are all printed on miserable polyester fabric, hot and scratchy and flammable. Perhaps this is part of the reason most people wear occidental hand-me-downs instead of localishly produced garb.

The school year isn’t over, but it has faded away to nothing. The seventh grade math teacher stopped coming after the first week of May: he had finished the curriculum, so…. Grades are supposed to be turned in posthaste, but the principal didn’t give me the paper I need to draw up the reports before he left with the 10^th graders, and I didn’t remind him. The teachers and students seem more concerned with rankings than with the grades that create them.

The abundance of produce that coincides with the start of the rainy season has also faded away, and now only small onions, small chili peppers, and occasional avocados are available. Even mangos, once so numerous they were free, are scarce, and seem less tasty.

The rain that does fall is not the cathartic showers that flew down from low black clouds like bombs; it is softer, longer, colder, and more oppressive.

I am charging my computer more often, watching a movie almost every day.

Reading Orhan Pamuk’s Snow reminds that there are Muslim countries with ice and cheese.

Journal Excerpt

Been eating lots of ginger (cheap) and eggs (expensive). The end of the dry season brings more weather fluctuation in the past week than has blown through in the past three months. Today the haze was so thick that the morning light was even and yellow, and the sun was only strong enough to run the water pump for a few hours; the water tower was empty again by four. In a suitable segue, I’ve finished Robinson Crusoe and have started Heart of Darkness, which I prefer.

A movie and three pictures

or http://youtu.be/R5HizrVh_EY

Ndiyan [rain]

It rained again today. I was sitting on the porch, reading Bill Speidel’s Seattle history. The sun had been coming and going, showing itself occasionally from behind passing clouds, encroaching on my shady position with each reappearance. Then there was thunder.

Children squealed. It was like when a truck drives through town: a couple deep booms as it clobbers the cobbles, children get excited, adults turn their heads but don’t leave their work, and then it’s over and all that’s left is dust and fading rumbles and clangs. Totally normal.

Two vaporous giants had taken over the sky where before patchy clouds had slid about. One, dark and looming overhead, the other, white and towering, almost confectionary, over the hills to the east. Blue sky shone between them. I quickly got out my bike and headed to the house under construction up on the hill; the porch has both a great view of the valley and a roof. As I left my compound, the rain was beginning to taptap tap the metal roofs.

From the vantage of the second-story porch I watched the first dark giant pass, showering the village. Soon it was gone, over the ridge, to make its fleeting trucklike appearance in the next village over. The rain lulled. I watched a baobab seed float slowly to the ground. The rain had dampened its surrounding tangle of tulle-like fibers, transforming it from a will-o-wisp to a badminton birdie. I took leave of the well-diggers working at the site with whom I had shared the shelter of the porch and continued up the hill. The sun was back, on my back, tracing my sharp shadow on the clean ground.

There are three sensations produced when the first rain in a while begins to fall. First is, of course, the smell. The smell is hard to describe but everyone knows it. It’s always the same, always wonderful, slightly dusty and moist at the same time, and incredibly clear. When it hasn’t rained in six months, this smell can linger for days.

The second is the sound, or rather a series of sounds. There is at first the sudden bustle as laundry is hauled in, as goats run bleating for cover, and as children remind their peers that ‘it’s raining!’ Then there is a lull. Not unearthly quiet like during and just after heavy snowfall, but a dampening, if you will, of all activities. People still talk, motorcycles still blast by, and some crickets still make their noises, but all of these things are perceived in the context of the falling water. The whole world is still there, but the rain smoothens and filters the sound, the auditory equivalent of looking through a screen door.

The third is sudden, subtle, incredible change in how the world looks. Daytime rain is not gloomy, grey, or dull. The sky is a bit less brilliant, but the difference is made up on the ground. New rain turns bricks into ORANGE bricks, dead grass into YELLOW dead grass, budding trees into GREEN budding trees, scorched earth into BLACK scorched earth, rocks and gravel into RED rocks and gravel, plastic pipes and tarps into BLUE plastic pipes and tarps. Where there was once a homogenous landscape, unified by dust and haze, there are now individual, important, components.

When I came back home, the next cloud had moved overhead. I stood at the railing of the porch for half an hour, watching the drips and the people.

In the mountains and high plains of Guinea, the rainy season and the dry season each occupy one half of the year. The last real rain fell in early November this season. The two storms we’ve had this week herald the coming change, but the dry season is not yet officially over. One or two or three showers in late March and April are normal, but their timing is critical. They must fall early enough that the plants in the fields will survive (irrigation is scarce here), and late enough that those who make their livelihood via baked-earth bricks don’t lose their whole muddy crop in a sudden downpour, before the final firing. And now, many Guineans will allow themselves to eat mangoes. The first mangoes ripened almost a month ago, but only now are they “properly washed,” and thus able to mature as they should. Many other Guineas don’t worry about whether their mangoes have been wetted or not, and start eating them as soon as they ripen.

The rainy season will truly have arrived in mid or late May. This fortunately coincides with the end of the school year. During heavy rainfall, the noise generated by the drops on the metal roof creates such a racket in the unceilinged classrooms that it’s not worthwhile to teach; no one wants to be yelled at (or yell) for two hours. Of course, the kids won’t go home; they’d get wet on the way there [or at least more wet than they do sitting in the classroom beneath the holey roof], so teacher and students alike will sit and wait. It makes sense to minimize this: final exams are scheduled for early June.

I made spicy salty oily vegetables over rice as the light inside my house went from dim to none. For some reason, the lightning here (rain always comes with lightning) is bluer, redder, purpler than what I’ve experienced elsewhere. The bolts of white that illuminate the dark dark night seem to have red edges or glows, though they only last an instant. Perhaps the clouds are lower in the sky, or there are more particulates in the air, or African Zeus has his bolts forged in crimson.

Voyage

Imagine the progeny of an arranged marriage between a covered wagon and a roller coaster:

Crawling up hills, plunging down the other side with the vehicle in neutral and motor shut off to conserve fuel, whipping through blind chicanes, the mismatched tires cling desperately to the terra infirma beneath. Four guys are on the roof, on top of the baggage, on top of the cargo net, strategically splayed so as to minimize their already vertiginous position. Pre-deadly passing manoeuvers test the limits of luck. The road is alternately Jarlsberg and Texas Chili, turning to Rocky Road during the rainy season. Inside the vehicle, the heater is on full blast to keep the engine a precious few degrees cooler, the stick-shift is actually a stick for shifting, the children are calm but don’t pack well, the bidon-cum-gastank fumes in the trunk, and dust settles in every fold like dry snow.  Miniscule motorcycles without mirrors ignore everything, one passenger in a helmet, the next in headphones, the third in a headwrap.  The baby is bareheaded.

This is overland travel in Guinea.

Plus, fuel is about $5/gal.

Lunch

Mustard greens with eggplant marinara and a fried egg, 

Bread with honey, Guava kool-aid

Tomorrow

Tomorrow he will wake up early; after the muezzin, and before the chickens. As he closes the bedroom window to prevent the heat of the day ahead from entering, the new goat families asleep in the cool gravel around the foundation of the house will wake up, too. He will light a candle and turn on the radio, and listen to how many people were killed in Syria today. After boiling water for tea so bad it gives him stomach pains if he drinks it too rapidly or if he forgets to put honey in it, he will filter out the leaves using the same gently oxidizing strainer he uses to keep those few opportunistic grains from tumbling down the drain while washing rice and, in a pinch, move hot pots. Occasionally, while he is eating or preparing his lesson plans for the day, he will glance out the window and notice how much brighter the sky is. While he is eating, he will hear the schoolbells; first the clong from primary school’s suspended truck wheel, and then the clang from middle school’s suspended truck wheel, the accelerating crescendos of steely peals elicited by the time-varnished cudgel futily beckoning the youth to get up and go to class. He will put on socks, wipe chalk dust from his shoes with a cloth partly dedicated to this purpose, among others, and put a blue pen, a red pen, a pocketknife, and 3000 Guinean francs in his pockets. Before deflecting the door to allow the bolt of the lock to clear the strikeplate, he will check that there are at least enough half-sheets of paper in his notebook to give one to every student in both classes. He will attach the key to his beltloop and coax the little wooden elephant that is suspended next to it into the top of his back pocket.

On the way to school he will greet his neighbor, Sadou, who will be sitting awake on his bed, his window open, amidst the merchandise of his one room lodging/store. He will overtake and greet a troop of young boys advancing in faux-motorised spurts towards the primary school, their bare calves and knees as carelessly dirty as their shorts. They will call out the name he is called, and greet him using the only French phrase they reliably know, good morning. He will walk through the center of town. The woman who sells porridge will be selling porridge, and the young son of the man who runs the store will wave at him patiently. The man who sells the bread the baker bakes will ask him if he has eaten breakfast. Yes, I have eaten breakfast, he will respond. He will greet the woman who sells donuts, or her daughter. A juvenile chicken scratching noisily for anything to eat in the dry leaves on the side of the road will draw his attention, and then it will notice him, and then it will run to shelter on the opposite side of the road. He will walk through the gate of the school, the third of seven teachers to arrive. He will greet those who were first and second, and take the keys to open up the classrooms. Four will be locked, one will not. He will reflect for an instant, choose the appropriate mixture of colored and white chalk, and go to class. When students arrive fifteen minutes later, he will teach them physics, French, critical thinking, and patience. They will become bored, fatigued, and start to talk amongst themselves in their language. The schoolbell will be struck; he will make concluding remarks and release them into the sunlight. All will be loud as they shout to hear themselves over the noise they make. He will walk to the next class, clean the blackboard with a piece of foam, and write the opening problem on the board. As students burble in, he will give them the paper on which to do the assignment, and check that his materials are in order. About one hundred and ten minutes later, he will again release them into the sunshine.

On the walk home he will greet the same people he greeted in the morning on the way to school. He will check to see if the loaves of bread on display are crisp and a bit warm, from that day, or soft and cool, leftover from today. They will be soft and cool and he will not buy any. He will brush his too-long hair out of his eyes, face, glasses. It will go back to where it was, instantly. He will unlock his door with a bang, and enter the relative coolness of his house. His eyes will adjust rapidly to the darkness, so he will not raise the thin curtains shrouding the two windows. After washing the chalk dust from his hands and then mixing a bit of drink mix with tepid water from his filter, he will sit at his desk and look at the dirty dishes on the stove. He will reheat the beans from yesterday and fry an egg. He will eat and read: Harper’s, egg, Cervantes, beans, Darwin, orange, dried nectarines, water. The radio will tell him the tentative number people killed in Syria that day.

After the hottest part of the day has passed, he will emerge from his house. He will have traded his collared shirt for a white tee, and his chalky loafers for flip-flops. He will walk past the boutique, past his students reading excerpts from the Koran written on wooden tablets, past the children pulling each other in a wheelless wagon made from half a plastic 20-liter oil container, and past the tattered soccer goals. He will pass the lady selling peanuts and cigarettes and new onions and the other lady selling peanuts and cigarettes and dried fish. He will follow the road up to beyond where the village stops, and then further, to the rock in the middle of the burnt grass where he sits to make phone calls. There will be no service. He will sit in the sun a few more minutes and then walk back home. He will take the route that bypasses the center of the village and goes by the dispensary and the Franco-Arab school and the well that no one uses anymore. Once at home, with a display of impressive motivation and forethought, he will take out his notebooks for the classes the next day and think about how to teach the proscribed lesson and in what order. He will build and test the demonstration which provides the tenuous but essential link between the gibberish on the blackboard and unflinching and inescapable reality. It will almost work, and thus will be good enough. The wind will play roughly with the outward-opening door as it creaks its metallic complaints. The sound will bother him but he will not get up to close it or prop it permanently open. As the sun lowers in the sky, the radio program he dislikes will start, and he will turn off the device. He will disrobe and take a tepid shower, giving the water ample time to soak his skin and impart a temporary sense of clean and cool. He will wash his hair with soap, and shave. Afterwards, it will be too dark in the house to see well. He will make ‘indian food’. He will start by heating a mixture of cumin, mustard seeds, and dried chilies in oil. He would then add potatoes, onion, and garlic, but he will only have onion and garlic. He will add them in vegetable-like quantities, to compensate for the lack of tubers. Then he will add cabbage and tomato, and more spices, and salt. He will make rice with raisins and cardamom. He will eat, and listen to the radio. As he finishes his second serving, the radio will tell him how many people were killed in Syria that day. He will do dishes.

He will again leave his house, and return to the rock on the hill above the village. He will, successfully, call a friend. They will talk about development work, students, and their next voyage away from their sites, in about two weeks. They say they will talk again soon; if they can reach each other, if God wills it. He will walk back to his house, playing Kid Cudi songs from his phone into the dark. He will unlock the exterior door and remove a small praying mantis with a light brown body and big purple eyes like every alien from the interior screen door. He will go inside, close and bolt the door, and open all of the windows to improve circulation. He will brush his teeth and move his phone, watch, ipod, magazine or book, and flashlight to the bed. He will write four lines in a journal about the day and what he saw in the sky at night, and read for a while. He will turn his flashlight to the picture on the headboard, sigh, and go to bed. 

Goats Update

Life and Death and Goats update:

The day after posting the entry below, I returned to my site. Sleeping in the shade of a stack of bricks in my front yard were a mature female goat and her newborn kid.

Three weeks have now passed since watching the vultures. There are at least three different new goat mothers and their five-plus kids that play and bleat and forage within the concession where I live. One of the new mothers is Flower, the one with lopsided horns. The sound her kid makes when calling for her is exactly the same as a dog’s squeaky toy. Exactly. 

Soccer Tournament A Great Success

TANGALY – Delegates and representatives from all corners of the prefecture, as well as the broader region, were present this Saturday, March 3^rd to welcome and observe the first match of the General Ibrahima Baldé Tournament for National Unity and Reconciliation, between the sub-prefectures of Konah and Tangaly.

The opening ceremony got underway a bit before 1300h in the court of the primary school in the center of Tangaly. Onlookers and invitees alike had begun to assemble almost two hours before, those arriving earlier able to seek out the shadiest places from which to observe. A troop of griots, comprised of a flute player, a lead singer with a funny hat, four drummers, and a man who played a calabash half with many-ringed fingers (also wearing a funny hat) entertained the crowd and collected donations while awaiting the arrival of governor of the region and the general himself (Brigadier General Ibrahima Baldé, commander of the mobile squadron and chief of the military justice). After several additional pickup-truck loads of plastic chairs arrived for the men, and subsequent reorganization the seated/standing interface, a drumming prelude announced the arrival of the guests of honor and the start of the ceremony.

The governor, the general, and their delegation took their reserved seats in the middle of the mass, and the crowd of well-attired women pushed inward to see better in a wave of colorful fabric and breastfeeding babies. The PA system was thankfully placed above and a bit away from the crowd on the terrace of the building above, so it didn’t deafen anyone. The governor, the sub-prefect of Tangaly, the local radio host who acted as emcee, and General Baldé each took the microphone in turn and thanked, by name, each of the important people that were present. After this 30-minute process, the sub-prefect described some of the great work that the sub-prefecture of Tangaly had done, such as bridge- and school-building, and announced that, with the help and in honor of General Baldé, soon Tangaly would be home to a local office of the gendarmerie to help maintain the peace. He then explained that this Tournament was to promote national (and regional) unity, and foster reconciliation amongst all Guineans, following the wish of the president, Professor Alpha Condé. The general, who is from Tangaly and is building an impressive and expansive compound not far from the town center, then addressed the group in their local language, Pular, and offered seemingly endless words of thanks, humor, prophesy, and advice. The opening ceremony finished at about an hour and a half after it had started with a benediction by the imam.

The most important of the attendees were invited to the sub-prefectural compound, where a feast was laid before them. Those who arrived first after climbing the rocky road up to the building were able to get both plates and spoons, and helped themselves to riz gras, yassa [peas and onions in oily sauce] with meat and fries, couscous, polenta, fresh yogurt, and salad. Some were even offered warm canned soda. With round bellies and smiling faces, the invitees trickled back down the hill and onto the road, where they slowly made their way to the soccer field. This reporter encountered a Peace Corps Volunteer bumping down the hill on his bike, who was attending the ceremony almost by accident. “I just came to see the principal of the school and take a look at a house that might lodge a future volunteer, I didn’t know I would be listening to traditional drumming and eating some of the best food I’ve had outside of Conakry,” he said. The volunteer added that the house was marvelous, and any future Tangaly volunteer would be quite content with both their lodging and the warm reception and good cooking of the sub-prefect and his wife.

At the soccer field, people had begun to gather, after seeking out shady places to park their motorcycles. Several Landcruiser-loads of people that were too important to walk or lucky enough to snag a place on top, clinging to the luggage rack, arrived, the cars throwing up big clouds of dust as they drove across the dry field to the bamboo-and-tarpaulin awning that had been built for the noteworthy guests. A few men worked to attach nets to the wooden goalposts, and the speakers were wired and the generators (two; one for the announcer his speakers, the other for the DJ and his speakers) fired up. Reporters from the regional radio, national radio, and even the TV station took their places and switched on their camcorders. Finally, at 1605h, the whistle blew.

Tangaly played more energetically than Konah during the first half, making use of lots of passing and careful footwork. They only threatened the Konah keeper occasionally, but, at the nineteenth minute, their fitness and finesse showed and they led the score, 1-0. The announcer and his Pular translator kept the noise level up and the crowd engaged, even as many spectators continued to arrive throughout the first half. Most notable were the young women that had not been present at the opening ceremony, but were now so decked out in colorful garb, intricate hairdos, and heavy makeup that their earlier absence was easily understood. Not even the difficulty of walking in stilettos through a fallow field (as this is what bordered the soccer field) could keep them from showing up to see their team and be seen by all.

Early on in the second half, the sun had already descended enough into the haze on the horizon that it was no longer brilliant, or even difficult to look at. The dust kicked up by the players seemed to linger longer in the slanting light. The announcer drew the crowd’s attention to the Fatako team, present on the sidelines, who would be playing both Konah and Tangaly in the following week as the tournament continued. Konah kept up the defense, but couldn’t find success in any of their multiple attempts on goal. Tangaly’s keeper won many rounds of cheers and applause from the crowd for his impressive saves. After a strong drive across the field, one of Tangaly’s attackers landed a second goal during the eighty-first minute. Finally, just as no more of the sun’s disc was visible in the sky, the final whistle blew: Tangaly two, Konah zero. All players shook hands, and General Baldé and the sub-prefect praised the teams for their sportsmanship and obvious commitment to unity and reconciliation.

Spectators left as slowly as they had come. Motorcycle headlights made impressive shadow figures as they cut between those on foot and the dust that was inevitably raised with so much movement. General Baldé and his squadron of attendant gendarmes left in their official cars, quickly overtaking the motorcyclists. Young children that hadn’t seemed present during the match suddenly appeared and danced in the dark in front of the speakers. The tarps and goalnets were taken down. The half-life-sized framed picture of the president that had sat at the back of the covered seating area was put back in its battered cardboard box. Everyone went home.

Vive la paix! Vive la réconciliation! Vive la Guinée!

Life and Death and Goats in Africa

I spend at least an hour underneath the melina tree in my front yard every week while doing laundry. When I arrived in September, the leaves of the melina tree were broad and green, providing ample shade for my hammock hung beneath. In October, the melina tree was frequented by many impressively loud and large bees, seeking the small yellow-red flowers that had begun to show at the bases of some of the leaf clusters. In November, the leaves turned yellow and fell dryly, lazily, to the ground below, where they were chomped up by passing goats. The flowers remained. The line of ants that had daily wound its way into the thinning canopy went away. In December, the flowers also followed the leaves earthward, a fall faster but quieter. One goat in particular, with one horn a bit chipped off, realized this new bounty. I call her Flower because she must have eaten at least 60% of all the tender yellow blooms that tumbled down. In January most of the flowers were gone, replaced by almondlike fruits, green and hard. When these too fell, the goats crunched them. It is now February, and a few tiny leaves have appeared on the bare branches, and are growing bigger. The goats frequent less the space under the tree.

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Last Friday, there was a small dead goat lying in the trampled straw beyond my front yard. A young but mature female was standing over the presumably miscarried carcass, bleating quietly. I entered my house and graded papers and made popcorn. About an hour later sounds of scuttling on my roof announced the inevitable. From my porch I observed two vultures standing around the carcass, one ducking in every few moments to retrieve a morsel, the other waiting impatiently beside. The adult goat still stood vigilantly beside the carcass, still bleating quietly. The carcass was pulled towards the dominant vulture each time it tore off a piece, and the goat slowly followed the procession of bird and food as it moved away from my house, inch by inch. The shoulders of the goat and the shoulders of the vultures are the same height. When I went by an hour later, I couldn’t find any trace of vulture, goat, or meal.

Plateau

Often in the late afternoon or, on days when I don’t teach, in the morning just after sunrise, I walk to the plateau east of the village. The road is rocky and dusty for the first 100 meters, and then the path splits from the road and traverses the dried pasture above the last of the houses and walled gardens. Multiple trails lead to the top, each with its own collection of dried straw, rocks, dried manure, burnt grass, and grasshoppers. After gaining the enough elevation that the ground no longer slopes away out of sight above me (which would indicate the top is approaching), I pick a path that winds south out of the bushes. Here the path is rockier, and my shoes press the round stones together, each footstep sounding like a tiny dump truck emptying a tiny load of gravel onto the pavement in the midst of the otherwise tranquil air. It is too hot up here for people and livestock, the road too bumpy for motorcycles, and the time of day wrong for insects. The only other sound is the singular, unexpected, and inevitable whoosh of a pair of ground-birds suddenly taking flight with all their might, after waiting for me to come as close as possible.

The path emerges from the bushes into what was a meadow three months ago. Now, the entire low wide hilltop is martian; brushfires set in November have razed everything except the skeletons of a few small trees. The ground is black and red with ash and loose round rocks.

It seems odd to feel like an explorer. My small backpack contains a pocket knife, nail trimmers, an issue of The New York Review of Books, a copy of Wuthering Heights, a pen, two mandarin oranges, my cellphone [powered on, there is service up here], and 10000 Guinean Francs [one bill, the largest]. With this kit, my sandals, shorts and white tshirt, I could stay out here for hours! At least until I get thirsty. Or it gets dark.

Have the other people that traversed this Marscape earlier today, or last year, or three hundred years ago also wondered how all the small round rocks got to be scattered about on top of a high flat plateau?  Did they stop and sit on this rock, right here, which seems smoother, shinier, more comfortable than its neighbors, and read, write, pray, or ponder? Did they get sunburnt? Or am I the first?

At about 1600 the moon is higher in the sky than the sun. Unlike earlier, the breeze that occasionally blows is slightly cooler than the stationary air it displaces. I sit on a pile of gravel that someone has made, and burrow my heels into the loose side. I read about Heathcliff and Jonathan Raban. I eat a mandarin and spit out the seeds with skill but not relish. Maybe I receive a text message. Earlier this week I was also here, although sitting somewhere else, and reading Plato’s account of the death of Socrates, 2413 years ago. I can’t decide which seemed less real.

In Memory

On the way home from school, stop and ask anyone standing around if bread is being made today. Head home, have a cup of water, change, and go back to the baker’s hut and wait while he takes fresh loaves out of the oven. Buy two, even if he gives you a third for free. Carry them home in the bag that your mosquito net came in. Eat the end of one on the way home because you can. Don’t bring the loaves inside when you get home; instead leave them on a chair on the porch in the sunshine so they stay warm while you make sauce.

Add to a large wooden mortar four to six small dried red chilies, picking out any grubs stems etc., a small handful of those round dried things that look like chilies but might be cherry tomatoes or just some bitter berry, approximately two teaspoons whole coriander, and a teaspoon black cumin seeds. Pound one minute; until dusty. Peel and mince one large-for-Africa onion and two thirds of a head of garlic. Quickly wash and mince the small sweet potato left alone at the bottom of the vegetable bowl. Add the minced ingredients and a resolute pour of olive oil to your only pot. Cook as fast as possible, only burning a little. Add the crumblier spices and the last two bay leaves, and a sprig of thyme. Cook a bit more. Add three handfuls of mostly-ripe cherry tomatoes, and cook until they start to pop. Add one 70g package of tomato paste, and a second if you’ve got it. Stir around, and add a liter of water. Crumble in a bouillon cube and bring to a boil. Add a pinch of black pepper, two dashes of ground cumin, a generous portion of dried oregano, and a tablespoon of honey. Reduce until thick. Crush any cherry tomatoes that have remained intact.

Split a still-hot-from-the-oven-and-the-sun loaf of bread down the middle with your fingers. Spread margarine on one side and pour honey on the other, then press the loaf back together.

Fill a low, wide bowl with the red sauce and sprinkle instant milk powder on top so it looks like parmesan cheese. Dip the hot honey bread in it like an au jus sandwich and enjoy with a large cup of water and a decent book or magazine. Go through two whole baguettes before you realize you are absolutely stuffed.

Dedicated to my grandmother, Helen Haugerud, who loved everything delicious.