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. 

Fall Readling/Listening List

Adiga, Aravind The White Tiger

Chekov, Anton Great Stories

Dewey, John How We Think [in progress]

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor The Brothers Karamazov

Duncan, David James The Brothers K

Hawking, Stephen A Brief History of Time

Henrik, Ibsen Four Great Plays [in progress]

Jacobsen, Howard The Finkler Question

Levy, David Skywatching

Nabokov, Vladimir Ada

Newton, Jack; Teece, Phillip The Guide to Amateur Astronomy

Thoreau, Henry David Walden and other essays [in progress]

Tolstoy, Leo Anna Karenina

33 magazines, including issues of The Atlantic, Harper’s, Muse, The New Yorker, New Scientist, Science News, Technology Review, and Wired

38 Episodes of This American Life

Gombo et Aubergine

Ingredients:

4-6 medium eggplant, firm with no insect holes

10-12 medium okra, the more ridges the better

½ kg ground beef or mutton*

1/3 cup peanut oil

Half a head of garlic

Two thumbs of ginger

10-15 small dried chilies

1 teaspoon anise, or 3 stars of star anise (better)

Two small onions

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon bean paste

1 tablespoon water

Chives

Handful of shelled, roasted peanuts

*only use meat if the animal was slaughtered that day, so the meat is fresh, if you have a meat grinder, because meat isn’t sold ground, and if you’re extraordinarily wealthy, because meat is expensive. If you’re worried about protein, just add more peanuts.

Preparation:

Peel and mince garlic and ginger (a spoon works well for peeling the latter). Peel and slice onion into wide strips. Trim and wash eggplant and okra. Slice eggplant into any shape, keeping the volume under 10 cubic centimeters. Slice okra laterally, at an angle, into sticky flowers.

Add some of the oil and the dried chilies to a large, high-walled, heavy-bottomed pan. Heat until the oil runs like water, and add the garlic, ginger, onion, and anise. If using meat, add it shortly after, and cook until grey. Add the eggplant and okra, and almost all the rest of the oil. Stir-fry over high heat, minding that the bottom doesn’t burn. Mix together the honey, soy sauce, bean paste, water and the rest of the oil in a cup. When the eggplant is getting soft, pour the mixture onto the vegetables and allow to boil for a couple minutes. Remove from heat, and garnish with peanuts and plenty of chopped chives. Serve with plain white rice and Sino-Afro slaw (recipe to follow). You can eat the chilies if you're brave or lazy.

Serves 4, or one hungry Peace Corps Volunteer two and a half times. 

Labé

Labé is the second-largest city in Guinea (60,000+ inhabitants), the capital of the Fouta, a veritable metropolis compared to the villages and towns that dot my map. I always arrive from the east, just before dusk, covered in dust. One of the corporals at the checkpoint knows me, and so never lets me pass without first chatting for a bit. On days he isn’t there, just remember: greet people with guns, the bigger the gun, the bigger the greeting.

Just like any other big city, the roads are worse within the municipality than outside it. Heavy truck and motorcycle traffic chokes the narrow bridges, alleys, and everyone’s lungs. Trucks that aren’t going somewhere with a full load of things and extra people on top are parked along the sides of the road, receiving long-neglected and now critical repairs. Dogs and sheep lay in their shade.

Unlike towns en brousse, buildings in Labé have signs, lightbulbs (not illuminated, of course), and customers. Unlike in the village, bottled water, onions, and diesel are cheaper, and taxi rides and plates of rice and sauce are more expensive. There are more choices, more refrigerators, more foreigners (few compared to none), more schoolchildren, and more metalworkers’ shops. You need to watch where you’re going.

The most striking aspect of Labé is the people. Because the Peuls of the Fouta are part of the much larger Fula group, and because it is a commercial and administrative center, there are more different looking people here than anywhere except Conakry.

Light and dark skin, all sorts of facial features in all combinations, all heights, and every possible definition of clothing are well represented. Students wear uniforms: red, blue or green gingham for primary school, khaki for middle school, and white on top with blue or green bottoms for high school. Hair and shoes: anything goes, and does. Wigs are more common than long colorful extensions woven into the braids, and dreadlocks are discouraged. Workers wear dirty jumpsuits, businessmen wear suit jackets or colorful, krinkly boubous, and young men wear impossibly bright and clean button-downs with a heavy coat of perfume. What women do can be inferred from their attire as well: Market ladies wear a simple complet of colorful fabric (or a an old tshirt supporting a forgotten candidate and a wrap skirt, if they sell fish or peanut butter), alarmingly young mothers wear tight dresses and babies, linked by a tight towel, and wealthy women wear expensive looking cheap jeans and glittery tops, or complicated layers of imported Malian fabric. Children wear what’s left: tattered shorts, sports jerseys, and snowsuits.

The combination of massive market, towering (relatively) but crumbling administrative buildings, and just-installed power poles (the future cabling lying on the ground between in tangles or spools) gives Labé the feeling of a real place to live; where things are often changing, but nothing ever really becomes different. The same potholes are there, along with new ones, the same broken trucks are being hammered upon, along with older ones, the same sandals are being sold by a different vendor, four doors down, and the bread is always just beyond fresh.

I like Labé. 

Choose Your Own Adventure: Weekly Market Madness!

You know the drill: Read the paragraph, then choose one of the options that follow. Try not to read the intervening paragraphs.

Line 1

It’s Thursday, which means the weekly market is happening in the neighboring village. You need supplies, better go!

-If you walk the 5km, go to line 3

-If you ride your bike, go to line 2

-If you’re tired and feeling wealthy, and take the minibus for 3000 GNF, go to line 4