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!