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.