Twenty-Four Hours of Taxi

Hour 0: Waiting at dusk outside the Customs Office in Koundara. Taxis returning to Guinea from the Senegalese markets must stop here to get a stamp. Cellou has agreed to run and ask the drivers of incoming cars if they have a seat, or half a seat, or anything, available onwards to Labe. Kilometers remaining until Labe: 255.

Hour 1: At dusk, as the rain started, Cellou found a taxi. “Only the trunk is available. Is that OK?” I need to get to Labe, then Conakry, as fast as possible. We meet the taxi in town where they stopped to let everyone get dinner. Most had been in the car since midday and were hungry. The rain becomes serious. The driver didn’t want to go out and move bags out of the trunk up onto the roof rack in the rain. Kilometers remaining: 255.

Hour 2: We moved. Everyone in, and most of the stuff except the toolbox and the driver’s clothes in a plastic bag and a 5-liter jug for water cleared out of the trunk. Inflated my thermarest and arranged it in the back. So clever! Stopped at the edge of town to have a tire repaired. The road ahead is unforgiving and long, spare highly advised. The Senegalese-built highway leading south into the interior is smooth and wide and amazing, but the tarmac won’t last. The car’s suspension is worn, and so at 90 km/h the rear springs create an impressive harmonic. My semi-reclined position aft of the rear axle forces me to be rocked to sleep. Kilometers remaining: 247.

Hour 3: We come to a stop, and I wake up. It’s 22h30. We have a flat. Good thing we got that spare fixed! Bad thing we got a flat already, and now have no more spare, and we haven’t even left the pavement. The driver doesn’t shut off the engine. It is loud, but better than pushing the car to start it. I pee off the embankment of the highway and we are off again. Kilometers remaining: 193.

Hour 4: We leave the pavement with a bump. It is pouring rain. In the trunk the blackness of the night is compounded by the heavy tint on the rear window, I can see almost nothing. I peel back a small portion of the film and make a hole for one eye through which I can see the rain drops reflecting the white light of the broken taillamps. The trunk seems mostly watertight, and any dampness is blocked by the thermarest. My memory reminds me that the worst bits of the road will be coming soon, just after the pavement ends. I wish I could see the road ahead, it seems to be adequately illuminated by the headlights. Judging from the angle of the car (severe), the sound of the exhaust (burbling), and the level of ambient light (drops to almost nothing), some of the puddles are deeper than the headlights of the car. I remember seeing that one of the rear tires was a studded mud+snow model. It seems to be helping us along. Occasionally I get a glimpse of the road ahead, when the passengers in the three rows of seats in front of me all duck at the same time. It looks like a lake, or a beach at high tide. The frogs are deafening. Kilometers remaining: 176.

Hour 5: We reach Kounsitel, the intersection where the road splits to go either to Labe or to Conakry via Gaoual. A truck stop of sorts. At the police checkpoint right before the driver stops and opens the trunk. “Give the money,” he tells me. “All of it?” “Yeah.”  So I gave him a hundred thousand Guinean francs, more than usual cost of a ticket, and certainly more than usual for the undesirable trunk spot. He used some of it to pay the cops. At Kounsitel he shuts off the car by letting it die in gear. It is raining hard, it is twenty two minutes past midnight. The twenty five kilometers of unpaved road we have traversed in the past hour have caused the roof rack to loosen from its rain gutter mountings and slide forward. A few more bumps and the rack, along with some three hundred kilograms of baggage, would have come through the windshield. The driver and the mechanic-boys at the truck stop break two ropes trying to pull the rack and baggage back into place, tying it to a tree and driving away. Finally someone brings out a metal cable and, after breaking off one crossbar of the rack, they manage to yank it back into place. Unfortunately no one has a wrench that fits the mounting bolts, so we can’t tighten it. Kilometers remaining: 160.

Hour 6: I am sleeping. I think we are making progress. Kilometers remaining: approx. 145.

Hour 7: When I wake up the taxi is stopped and shut off.  We must be at the ferry, perhaps waiting until dawn for the ferrymen to ferry us across the surely-swollen river. The women in the seat in front of me are sleeping. I reinflate the thermarest and go back to sleep. Kilometers remaining: 130.

Hour 8: It is 4h15. I get out of the trunk and see many other taxis parked around us. But we are on the side of a mountain, not at the bottom of a valley. So the ferry isn’t here. We are stopped for some other reason. The rain has also stopped. Kilometers remaining: 130.

Hour 9: At 6h15 I wake up again. I walk to the front of the line of the cars and there is a landslide blocking the road. Big rocks, and plenty of dirt. I can see where a few rocks have been pushed away to allow motorcycles to squeeze by. The sky lightens. The jungle below is misty, and there is an orange spillage on the horizon. In my mind I had mistaken dawn for a fire. The light is continuing to increase and people are waking up and starting to mill about and find water with which to do their ablutions. I see one older gentleman who has placed his prayer mat at a bend in the road beyond where the taxis and a truck are parked, perfectly aligned with the fiery sunrise. Kilometers remaining: 130.

Hour 10: Once everyone has prayed, and complained about not having any breakfast, we congregate around the rubble blocking the road. A man in military costume has the loudest ideas, and slowly the other men follow his lead and move the largest rocks they can off to the side, below the edge of the road where it has been blocked. A fallen tree acts as a backstop of sorts, and the pile of rocks clinging to the slope slowly grows.  Kilometers remaining: 130.

Hour 11: Soon all the rocks larger than a fist have been scavenged from the surrounding area, and our new pile is beginning to approximate a road. Someone procures a large hammer, and breaks down the edge of the largest rock that juts into the new right-of-way. Will the new route be wide enough for cars to pass? Will the rocky roadbed stay stuck to the hillside, or will it tumble down as soon as the weight of a loaded taxi passes over it? One man is taking some pictures of the slide and the work in progress. He is reprimanded by the military man. He says he is a foreigner, and needs to have a picture to document for his work why he is so delayed. Later I speak with him, he was born in Sierra Leone but now resides in Belgium with wife and kids, who are in the car waiting for the new road. He congratulates me on my Pulaar and asks if I am a Muslim because of the name I give him, and the Arabic that peppers even my French. The road is made. Maybe it’s wide enough! There is a very heated discussion about the order in which the cars should pass. Respect the order or arrival! But there isn’t enough space! My car is smaller! Drivers run to their cars. One car goes, goes, spins in the mud, spins in the mud, and passes! We all cheer and clap. Kilometers remaining: 130.

Hour 12: All of the cars pass, even the LandCruiser that is 6 inches wider than the taxis and gets stuck halfway through the detour, each rev of the engine and spin of the wheels bringing the car closer to sliding sideways down the slope. Except ours. We parked facing uphill, but of course the car needs to be push-started. So we push-three-point-turn (more like seven points actually) and then push down the mountain a bit to get some speed and finally the engine coughs and then roars. Our taxi scrambles and slides by, and we are back on the road. I give some cookies to everyone. Kilometers remaining: 127.

Hour 13: We rumble along. I can see now, it is daylight, and not raining. The road is bad and bumpy and I fear for the tires. It’s not worth worrying about the suspension, it is already toasted. We stop once to try and tighten the baggage rack at a local mechanic’s stop, and we wash our muddy shoes in the stream. Kilometers remaining: 105.

Hour 14: After a knobby descent we arrive at the ferry. But the brakes are broken. So we wait for while another mechanic unsuccessfully fixes the master cylinder using the film from and old cassette. After, a friendly tree helps put the baggage rack back into place. The river is high, and swift, but there is still a substantial slope down the bank and then up the loading ramp of the tiny ferry. Our intrepid driver, brakeless and starterless, makes a dumb decision and purposefully kills the engine during the descent, expecting that he will have enough momentum to make it up the ramp but not so much as to coast off the other end of the ferry into the river. Of course the taxi is going too slowly and doesn’t make it up the ramp, and is now stuck in the low point between the bank and the loading ramp, engine off, brakeless, in several inches of water. Someone makes a comment about a boxcar being a more suitable mode of transportation, given that our car has no starter and no brakes and apparently no driver. Together, the passengers and ferrymen, with the help of a length of chain, pushed and pulled the loaded taxi onto the ferry. Then we pushed it backwards as far as safely possible so that there would be enough space (maybe 30 feet?) to push start the car off the ferry. The crossing takes ten minutes with two men cranking the cogwheel that pulls the ferry along the chain. The driver pays the two-dollar fee plus, after some haggling, a bit extra for the ferrymen who helped push and pull the car into place. Kilometers remaining: 97.

Hour 15: We push the car off the ferry just as the engine roars and sprays thick black smoke all over us. Then, on the other side, a second mechanic re-rebuilds the master cylinder, and a third uses a sledgehammer and a crescent wrench to tighten the baggage rack. I dry my shoes and socks and insoles and feet in the sun.  Kilometers remaining: 97.

Hour 16: We give one youth a lift to his village a few kilometers down the road (he just stands on the bumper and grasps the baggage rack). He gives the driver a smoked fish in return, which the driver places next to me in the trunk on top of the toolbox. It is very warm, and smells a little bit like bacon, because I’m hungry. There are many cows on the road. We drive around them through mud puddles. Kilometers remaining: 89.

Hour 17: We pass two trucks on the side of the road. One is upright. The other is not. It appears that it rolled over trying to avoid a mudhole. The people standing around say no one was hurt, and the presence of the second truck (into which the goods from the first, sideways one will be loaded) is proof that things will be okay. The truckers ask us to return the bowl and platter their lunch of rice and sauce was served on to the village a few kilometers down the road. They have probably waiting there for two days. Soon after we all get out of the car to lighten it as the driver navigates a particularly treacherous looking section of mudholes. He balances the tires on the high ridges between the ruts, only sliding into the deep mud once. Just beyond, the LandCruiser that scraped past the landslide ahead of us has broken down; their radiator burst just after the muddy section. They are coming from the Gambia, on their way to Labe. It will likely take them three days to make their voyage. We get out a few more times for muddy spots, and I reinflate my leaky thermarest. Kilometers remaining: 80.

Hour 18: Our driver stops to disconnect the radiator fan, which is wired directly to the battery. Now that we are moving a bit faster he doesn’t think it’s necessary. For reasons unknown, he shuts off the engine to perform this task. Remember, we have no starter. And he has stopped at a low spot in the road, forcing us to push the car up a slight grade to try and get it started.  We try five times, pushing the car through a multi-point turn after each failure. Finally, with the help of two men on a passing motorcycle, the car gains enough momentum to force the engine over and it roars to life. Everyone back in! I am soaked in sweat, and the trunk feels perhaps hotter than being outside. We stop in the village to return the platter and buy ten liters of diesel, and the driver has the good sense to leave the engine running the whole time. I like that the rear window is tinted, I can watch all the people but they can’t see me. A boy stands behind the car watching the hot air from the exhaust buffet his pants, clearly amused. His face saddens as we drive off. Kilometers remaining: 72.

Hour 19: We pass villages where the corn is tall and ripe.  Then the road climbs and twists up and up through the mountains, affording me, in the trunk, excellent views of the valley we came from. Three months ago, when I last took this trip, there were women and girls selling buckets of mangos for eighty cents at every wide spot in the road. Now there are no roadside vendors, only cows. Two motorcycles pass us, each carrying two people well wrapped up in raingear and winter coats. One of the four people is even wearing a helmet. Perhaps they too are also coming from Koundara. We bump down the other side of the crest, and without any fanfare suddenly the right-of-way becomes wider, the trees having been cut down for ten meters on either side. We have reached the section of road under construction! In a year or two there will be beautiful two-lane asphalt from here all the way to Labe. Right now they are cutting and filling and grading and placing enormous culverts to prevent the road from being washed away during the rainy season. We are moving faster, and the people facing forward can see the town of Thiangol Bori (Pulaar for Rushing Stream), six kilometers ahead. Kilometers remaining: 54.

Hour 20: There is a clunking sound, a new and ominous one, every time we hit a bump. Everyone in the car notices it, but the driver pretends not to hear. Finally a woman in the middle row speaks up. “Hey listen to that, what’s that sound?” The driver continues on without acknowledgment, bumping over the road that has been well beaten by the trucks and heavy equipment of the Chinese contractors. We pass a steamroller and a dumptruck making a nice flat road; of course we are ten meters to the side on a bumpy detour. Finally another person expresses their concern over the ominous noise and the driver stops the car in the middle of the road. He gets out of the car and looks at the right rear wheel, where the sound seemed to be coming from, and makes a silly, guilty face that only I can see (everyone else is forward of the rear wheel). “What is it?” The driver doesn’t respond, and keeps making that face. Clearly it is not his nature to get mad or frustrated. We all get out of the car. A quick inspection of the rear wheel shows that the two (of four) remaining wheel studs have both been pulled loose from the hub, and the wheel, barely attached, has been moving about freely, ovaling the bolt holes and destroying the hub. A small bottle jack and other miscellaneous tools are produced from the trunk, and the driver attempts to remove the wheel. Unfortunately, the now-detached wheel studs just spin, instead of allowing the lugnuts to be loosened. Kilometers remaining: 50.

Hour 21: The women in the car have spread out scarves or blankets on the side of the road, and are resting, enjoying the space. No one seems angry or scared. We can see Thiangol Bori, and the large camp built to house all the Chinese trucks, in the valley below. There are impressive clouds, but no rain. A taxi overtakes us and our driver waves it down. They too are coming from Koundara, although they left this morning. When the car stops, three people get down from the roof rack, and two emerge from the trunk. The driver of this taxi undoes his spare tire and gives it to our driver (remember that our spare was put on the car last night, outside of Koundara). Then they are off. Even if we wanted to catch a ride with them there is no space in the car. Our driver reaches behind the broken wheel and detaches the axle and hub, with wheel and tire still attached. These Peugot 505s have a solid rear axle, ideal for ease of repair and durability. Our driver, like most, travels with a spare axle-hub assembly, more or less complete and in working order. There are only three wheel studs, but that’s still better than two broken ones. Then the newly procured spare goes on, and the repair is complete. Or almost complete; because the wheel could not be removed from the original assembly, our new setup does not have a brake drum or shoes, meaning no brakes. But that’s okay, we’ve been in this situation before. The broken axle-hub-wheel-tire assembly goes in the trunk. I sit up front, with the driver and two other passengers. We head onwards to Thaingol Bori. Kilometers remaining: 49.

Hour 22: We stop to eat rice and sauce in Thiangol Bori, the first real food we’ve had since leaving Koundara. I buy a warm Coke and some bananas. The car goes to the mechanic, who extracts the old rear wheel and rebuilds the hub. He also patches the radiator so we shouldn’t have to keep refilling it. Then we are again on our way. Kilometers remaining: 45.

Hour 23: The road from Thiangol Bori on is good; wide and well graded. We make good time, but at dusk we are still a ways from Labe. Our driver turns on the headlights to pierce the encroaching darkness, and that unique smell of burning plastic wire insulation trickles into the car. The headlights go dim. He stops and checks under the hood—indeed a short has taken out our high and low beams, and right at dusk. We continue onward, albeit a bit more cautiously. Oncoming cars and motorcycles blind us, slowing us to a crawl. Kilometers remaining: 8.

Hour 24: A soft rain starts, further darkening the situation. At least the windshield wipers work. We stop at a gas station a few kilometers outside town to drop of one passenger. Her bags are at the bottom of the pile on top of the roof. Fifteen minutes later we are on the road again, and the solar-powered streetlamps of Labe make the driving much easier. We reach the main traffic circle at the entrance to town, and I get out. I get out! It is nighttime, exactly one day ago I was getting into a taxi to come to Labe. Now, I must walk the two kilometers to the main taxi station (the Koundara taxi goes to the Koundara station, on the other side of town), and try to find an overnight car to Conakry, four hundred kilometers away. Kilometers remaining: 0.

Independence Day Menu

Grilled Corn

Potato Salad

Tenderloin and Pineapple Kebabs

Mango Pico-de-Gallo

Yoghurt Flatbread

Mango Cobbler

Mint Iced Tea, Coca-Cola

Dionfo 11:47 AM

The grief came like rain. Predictably, intensely, then slowly fading out, only to surge back again. One woman said a prayer. Another, the mother [perhaps], repeated “oh my baby”. No crying. The men made sad faces, and spoke less. Two or three started talking about how to maintain one’s health, the symptoms of malaria, and the lack of medical support that is available out in the village. Better to raise a child in the city.

We passed through the checkpoint without bribing the gendarme because the driver put on the hazard lights and told him there was a body, the body of a child, in the car.

Your name was likely Ibrahima. Born perhaps 20 or 30 months ago, to Aissatou and Thierno Boubacar. When you died no one was expecting it. They knew you were sick, probably with malaria. I didn't know you were sick; I didn't even register your unique presence in the car. You were another child sitting on another woman's lap, one of five or six. You weren't the one that cried and screamed until we started moving, nor the one that spit up on his jacketfront because of motion sickness. But halfway to Labe the woman holding you said something and the driver stopped abruptly and we all got out and laid you on the ground and you were dead. 

Late June, 2013

The fog rolls in through my window. I want to go outside and be in it but the front door is padlocked and the keys are in another room where someone is still sleeping. 

I packed my bag mostly and put on the jacket I had made that really I can only even wear in this city because everywhere else in the country is too hot and got out money for breakfast but I’ll have to wait. 

So instead of reflecting on the sky and the mud I will imagine what is good for breakfast (warm bread and nescafe) and write about the baby that died and listen to the motorcycles and people and chickens waking up around me. And the fog drifts in through my window.

Today I

Today I ate some mangoes. Today I watched the red sun rise. Today I made peanut butter stew. Today I got stung by a (tiny) scorpion. Today I finished a book; The Thing Around Your Neck, and it made me nostalgic for many things, not all of them good or happy. Today I thanked fourth graders for carrying rocks. Today I bought meat and fresh bread and okra and bananas that tasted a bit like cloves. Today I borrowed a wheelbarrow. Today I smashed many rocks with a sledgehammer. I got so sweaty my pants were wet. Today I took antibiotics and a malaria prophylaxis. Today I explained the difference between calculating mechanical power and electrical power. Today I yelled at a girl for headbutting a boy with her headscarf. Today I picked eggplant in our garden. Today I ate some of some more mangoes and some goats ate the rest. Today I tried to guess which vegetable was which while I ate my dinner in the dark outside. Today I saw the new moon.

Like I knew that I would

I’m feeling good. Of course there are many ways to feel good, even limiting oneself to the literal somatic feelings that the body experiences, which is what I have in mind. Running nine miles feels good, going back to sleep feels good, breaking the surface tension of water feels good.

I can’t identify why I’m feeling good.

I know that the chair I’m sitting in usually isn’t this comfortable, but today its contours and misaligned slats are welcoming me like any fauteuil would after four drinks.

The wind is light, mostly, and not all that cool. It seems to change directions now and then. Sometimes the sky flashes red in the east, and fewertimes booms as well. It was raining earlier; not even a real storm with a dry-spell-shattering deluge, but real enough to remind us here that the rainy season will come again. The sky was half yellow and half blue while the stormcloud was lit from above during the sunset.

I know that the antibiotics and malaria prophylaxis in my bloodstream shouldn’t have much effect on how my body feels while I’m awake. Also, peanut butter and molasses and bananas shouldn’t make me feel this way either.

Maybe it’s sitting here on the terrace and feeling my subconscious shift from “every day is dusty and forty degrees” to “every day is green and your flipflops will flip mud onto the back of your pants”.

Maybe it’s reading Playboy for the articles of course and being saddened by the large variation in the quality of editing. Aren’t they supposed to be at least a little bit proud of their prose?

Maybe it’s watching day become evening becoming night, in thirty-five minutes.

Maybe it’s done with school in three weeks done with Peace Corps in three months done with Africa in October.

Maybe it’s purposefully not watering our garden for the first time.

Maybe I don’t need an explanation. 

Eating Beans

I am sitting on a bench outside the chicken shack. I am eating beans. I am watching motorcycles flutter past. I am being rained on. I am crossing my ankles. 

Guingan Style

Speaking to likely inevitably Mr. Diallo found out he was Mr. Bah. He was a bit drunk and me not really but our conversation was in four languages. He was selling prepacked semi-local snake oils and powders. Wearing sunglasses too. I saw him later drinking his earnings, and selling still.

And we were sitting on a log that termites had finished with, balancing. Palm wine is 2000 francs guinéens per skin, about a litre. Easy to drink, even when it’s hot. And it’s always hot. Or warm. There is no good equilibrium between sweetness cloying sweetness and vinegar pee fart juice. But some things don’t matter when you’re drinking.

There was a young girl wearing yellow, including a bucket on her head that was yellow. An older girl went by with what are those pancakes in a bit of brown paper. Presented them to some seated men. Commissioned undoubtedly, she didn’t eat any of any of them.

I was holding a chicken with my feet. A cock at that, seven dollars at that. But its legs were tied together with a band of blue so it wouldn’t have gotten away quick even if it had been inspired to go and if I hadn’t been gently retaining it. But I got up to pee on the other side of the dry streambed so I confided the chicken to auntie sitting just in front of me selling tappets, and she confided it to her sister next to her. I came back from the openair bathroom finding the pancake lady. One thousand each to break the bank so emptied my pockets acquiring them, brought them back to share. Oily and leavened a bit and with rice flour and tepid and a bit hard so we devoured them.

Time to go cause the wine and the wine are gone. Back to bikes. Back to the market. Bought more wine, the red kind in the bottles that are repurposed to hold gasoline later. So it can get hot against my sweaty back on the way home. Or we could send it with mom. Ended up choosing the later. Better for transport, worse for potential hydration on the ride home. Two almost crashes and one real one, involving a domesticated animal.

The road is flat and rocky, barren, exposed, gravelly, flesh wasting away to expose the hard white bone beneath. I traded bikes and rode the “Eastman” blue one with the upside down bars and bent cranks. It had a slow leak that got faster. Later we found out that there were two trous. The chain was skipping and descending frequently too so frequently that I finally gave up flustered and traded back. The air boiled away, leaving only dust and light behind, each competing for my antagonism but instead they got beat by yeast+sugar. 

Palm Wine

We went to visit Thiako’s uncle in Tcherôt, an old village at the end of a long winding track into the bush to the south and east of where we were staying. Before, many families lived in Tcherôt, but they had all moved away to the city and to Senegal; only his uncle and his small family remained as permanent residents. Despite the paucity of inhabitants, the village is well known as a place of palm wine collection, and any decently learned child from the sub-prefecture could point out the appropriate turnoff from the main road.

We were guided to the place where his uncle was working by his young son Talan, a small boy with eyes and head equally round. We found his uncle and others at their camp, a low place, where a stream would flow during the rainy season. They were collecting palm wine.

Palm wine, as collected by the Coñagui people of northern Guinea, refers to a family of drinks made from the sap of a variety of palm tree. Thiako’s uncle explained the process to me while his nephew August kept working, and Thiako translated and elaborated as necessary.

“Palm wine is collected during the dry season, while the palm trees are flowering and fruiting. During the dry season, honey wine replaces palm wine as the tipple of choice, as the honey harvest is performed at during the last month of the dry season. Female palms (or the female parts, recognizable via their more prominent fruiting bodies) are sought as they produce more sap than the males. These fruiting bodies are located at the crown of the tree, requiring an often significant ascent for all but the youngest of palms.

For this purpose, a sort of harness/sling is fashioned from a few long pieces of palm frond. Two rigid bands are formed (presumably with hot water) into U-shaped sections. The long flexible tips of the two fronds are braided together into a thick rope, and then joined with the other ends in a sort of square knot, easy to tie and easy to untie. The result is an oval-shaped  hoop, fitting the diameter of the trunk of the palm and the back of the climber. Additional flaxen rope is wrapped around one side of the oval for abrasion resistance where the contraption slides along the tree.

After ascending, the trunk, barefoot for increased traction, all of his kit swinging from its strings, the climber removes one of two sharp bamboo-handled chisel from their bamboo sheaths (the two chisels are identical, maybe the extra is a backup?) and cuts a small hole at the base of the fruiting body. A small piece of young frond is wound into a cone and pressed into the hole to serve as a funnel. The climber then takes an empty plastic bottle (repurposed soda or water) and suspends it beneath the funnel, attaching it with string to the fronds above. The sap starts to ooze within minutes.

The process (cut spout capture)  is repeated four or five more times around the crown of the tree, one bottle per fruiting body. Then the climbing process is reversed, and the climber seeks out a new tree.

An average palm will fill an average water bottle in about 12 hours. So, twice a day (in the morning and in the evening), the bottles must be emptied. The hole can also be plugged with a wadded up frond, so as not to waste nor attract more insects and sugar-loving animals. On the ground, the contents of each bottle are filtered (a plastic bottle cut in half with a bit of fabric inside) into large bidons (20-liter vegetable oil containers). As the bidon becomes full, a thin white foam—the head, really—puffs out. This indicates the freshness of the wine. Checking the filter afterwards shows bits of palm, windblown detritus, and some insects that died happy.

The sap is not naturally alcoholic. Freshly tapped, it is very sweet, and only a little bit tangy. However, yeasts naturally present (in the air, in the containers, everywhere) metabolize the sugar and , within a few hours of being tapped, create a wine that is distinctly acrid, slightly sweet, and perhaps three to seven percent alcohol by volume. The more it sits, the stronger it gets, until all the sugar is metabolized, and then it turns vinegary. It is drunk at all of these stages.

Traditionally palm wine is offered to strangers on arrival. The vessel, whether a plastic goblet or a traditional clay jar, must always be filled to the brim. Palm wine is also to be shared at partings. All ages and sexes drink palm wine, and all times of day are acceptable. 

La Première Mangue

Entry: March 2. Time: approx. 15h45. I am sitting on the crest of the road traversing the bowal between K____ and D_____. Light to moderate easterly gusting. Sun diffused but not completely blocked by clouds. Ambient noise: birdsong, rustling fire-dried leaves. Temp.: perhaps 28°C. Of the eight mangos in my pack, chose the one appearing least likely to survive the especially bumpy remainder of the ride home. This mango is green, with yellow, ochre, orange, and red, especially towards where the stem connected, where the most sunlight fell each day, until today. It is not small, though certainly not a large mango. Perhaps 10 cm in its largest dimension. It is dense, but not consistently solid. The skin is thick and leathery, but pliable; as if the fruit had, for some reason, desiccated slightly on the tree.

Rinsed it briefly with water. Fairly certain my hands are dirtier that it is, washing thus futile. Using the blade of my pocket knife, made an angular cut, a chord, through the bottom tip of the fruit (while holding it upside down). No juice or sap drips out, or even wells up. The skin does not yield easily to the blade, dull as it is. Fibrous flesh beneath lacks enough structure for the knife to make a clean cut, but it is readily pulled apart by hand. The majority of the pulpy, stringy, and cheddar-cheese orange flesh remains attached to the central seed, a large oblong pit. Ate the morsel so removed.

O delightful flavor! Perfumed, complex, like a papaya, but with none of the wateriness that characterizes the latter. Something of carrot, citrus, and flowers, but smoother, a gestalt, creation of that master crasftsman, le mangier. The taste needs no guile, demands nor even suggests alteration or augmentation (again papaya comes to mind, viz. lime). The flesh clings to the fibers that extend from the pit in all directions. They are hard to cut and harder to remove from between one’s teeth. Find that it’s best to approach the seed as one might an artichoke leaf, scraping with the incisors to remove the maximum of flesh. Cut the rest of the skin away and chewed it like a cheese rind. Chewed it until it was gone. The pit, now scraped clean via the aforementioned technique, suggests some sort of melonheaded barbiedoll in the midst of a makeover. Pale yellow and white, flat and hairy.

Tossed the pit to the ground, licked my knife clean. Smelled the breeze, took in the hills.

More to come. 

Mefliam

School wasn’t cancelled but no one seemed to be in the classrooms. On the walls, in the outdoor corridors, white, angular letters spelled out messages. It didn’t seem to be hate speech, or threats, or political; no one was enraged, nor bemused. The language looked maybe like Finnish, lots of i’s and f’s and doubled letters. They were already starting to sandblast or rub it off. Why only the fresh white graffiti? The old greasy slogans and profanity plus the oil of a thousand hands running every day along its now smooth surface gave the wall a venerable patina. Where the fresh white words had been removed, something else had gone too; now there existed transparent blotches, revealing the crumbled brick backfill of the wall as though preserved in resin, or like a clever display in the mining and geology section of a children’s museum.

Students had gathered on the sort of second-story courtyard, and they were talking, yelling, excited by the distraction. Their black polyester robes flowed about, and their contrasting faces looked grimacey and masklike in the light of the cloudy sky.

But then we were at the party. Rachel or Jessica or Meghan was having a birthday party. An old roommate? We were sitting in some sort of bizarre anteroom, the party could be heard, bounces of colored light too, via the hallway at the left. Again the walls were dirty, greasy, well used. Some of graffiti fluoresced. The light was putrid and turbid, suggesting metal staircases and loading docks and broken fire-extinguisher boxes, and boxes of ammunition towards the corner like in a N64 shooter. People passed by, ones and twos, cups in hand, hand in hand, cups in mouth, mouth in mouth. My companion greeted them when it seemed to suit his fancy, or the haze of his stupor temporarily diminished. He too was slumped in a second dark green (or was it grey) vinyl-covered fauteuil pushed up against the wall. The birthday girl stumbled past, disappearing past a corner, and then was back. The shuttle will be here soooon, she reassured the room, partly for the benefit of the two of us in it. She called out a friend’s name, waved a hand/sloshed a solo cup, and was again gone. Another girl sauntered in and noticed us, maybe.  Her dress was one of those colors which probably looked better on her computer screen than it did now, vraiment. She seemed to recognize my neighbor but then fixed on me. Did she speak? Did it matter? Was my neighbor telling me of her tendency, warning me with a lifted eyebrow and an “if you like…” shrug, or was that just my own souvenir? She approached me, straddled my jutting knees. Her solo cup was partners with a cigarette, each listing dangerously. The hem of her garment, her shoulders, my knees, the edge of the fauteuil were all in the same plane. Her eyes gleamed dangerously and then fogged, the sequins scintillated. “Shuttle’s here!” someone whooped.

We got out of the shuttle onto what looked like a vertical hillside. Tufts of grass green and yellow and drying dirt under our feet evoked an old outfield. I've been here before. In my mind flashed a ski-area-style map; liftlines here, blues and greens, cartoon trees and peaks and permanently closed areas and access roads. You are here. 

The activity was straightforward: you just slide down the hill. Can’t be sure if you need some sort rice-sack-cum-toboggan, or if just spreading your feet apart and balancing is sufficient. Look, down there is the end of the slope, it seems to flatten out. Are those people picnicking? Slide don’t fall. The lift can take you back to the top for a repetition, like at those tubing places. The attendant was checking passes or something, as people came to the entrance before sliding down. How many runs did the birthday party get? I’d already done several, I think. He looked at my pass. A problem: an ID number appeared to be missing. No worry, he can look it up in a ledger, or call someone, and get me my proper number. He is looking for his cell phone. I am getting embarrassed; won’t the people behind me be getting perturbed at the delay? Isn't there a better way to do this? There must be a better way to do this. I’m holding up the whole line. The attendant cares none; he continues searching with a bureaucrat’s disposition. I wait.

American

-So you’re American?

-Yeah.

-From which part? Latin America or Central America?

No title

A different big truck came today and dumped no didn’t dump the young men shoveled all the sand out of it. Its cab was painted the same color as the body and sand leaked through the seams. So I went to Konah to drop of those letters for the AIDS workshop but I forgot the banana bread so I came back and went back again. Took a different route home cause it wasn’t too hot and watched the vultures and little birds and a hawk circling over the freshburned fields where no mouse can hide. I thought I heard a snake but it was a man sitting at the base of the tree wondering why I hadn’t noticed him earlier; but my attention was focused on the creek crossing only dabbed one foot the other totally dry just like the next creek crossing. Bump to the top of the hill where three old oranges where consumed, mostly by me but also by a medium sized grub. Flicked him/her out! Suddenly cellphone credit but too early to call you so back down the hill to the empty center no one at market day because today is marriage day. So out for a walk to clandestinely cut banana leaves with my keys the only tool I had. Sort of wrapped rice and banans with the wide fragile leaves but couldn’t tie with string (see above; re: market day) so just folded and stuffed into the recipient. Started the stove with cancer and cardboard then piled the charcoal on high then the pot on top then half-filled with water then the loose rice packages then the lid then fingers crossed. Left for two hours to allow children to play soccer. I gave them the ball. Marriage sound check DJ check screech check perfume check sneakers check thieboudienne check. Back at home no major catastrophe just a slight tilt to the pot so righted it and cut up the unlucky onions that won’t grow big like their neighbors. Add bacon bits and bacon bits and garlic and fry. Tastes like chinese bao with the pork and sugar and also a tepid crunchy potato salad sesame oil no mayo. Quick colorful clouds make digestion easy. Now light is tiny and the breeze is cooooler. After dark I’ll call.  

Dian

Mamadou Dian Diallo is from Diamiou, a village about ten kilometers from where I live. His father was a businessman (probably a merchant) who did a lot of work in Guinea and in Freetown, Sierra Leone. When he was ten years old, his father moved him to Freetown, where he enrolled in private school and started learning English. While in high school, almost ten years later, he began spending time around the welding school, watching the masters and picking up the basic notions. When the rebels came in 1997, the year before he would have finished high school, he picked up and went back to Guinea. He joined a group of Senegalese welders, and worked as an apprentice for four years. They didn’t pay him, but after four years his master told him there was nothing more for him to learn, and provided him with an attestation of his learning and ability as a welder. They also fed him very well.

His first job after leaving the Senegalese was working on the US embassy in Conakry. He spent almost four years working at the site, moving from operating a jackhammer to welding all of the interior plumbing (a US embassy has quite a bit of complicated plumbing). While working on the building, which is, to date, the most expensive structure that has been built in the country, he was not paid well. At the end of the contract, he and several other Guinean laborers waited patiently, peacefully, and unobstructively outside the gates of the embassy for four days in protest of their non-payment. They were finally told to go home and wait there; payments needed to be authorized by Washington and then converted to local currency, and were in the works, they would be informed via the radio when they would be able to pick up their final wages. He is still waiting for such an announcement.

Since working on the embassy, he has mostly worked out of Conakry, but jobs send him around the country. He has been working in our village for over five months now, first on the home of a wealthy businessman reinforcing the window bars and then making windows and doors for the new school. He says he is doing his best work here; the work is from the heart and not for the money. His young wife is from the village, and he has reminded me twice now that his (future) children will likely go to school in this new school building. He wants his son to inspire awe and reverence when he explains to his classmates that his father made the windows, not laughter or derision because of the shoddy workmanship.

He smiles a lot, smokes some, and always seems to be having an okay day. Two weeks ago he moved back to Conakry.