Wednesday, March 28, 2012

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. 

Friday, March 16, 2012

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 3rd 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!