It was okay with Sam that I stay over at his place, but when we got back to the compound I decided to make the trek. Only four kilometers back to my village, a heavy moon, nothing to worry about. When I got back to the compound it was near ten o'clock. The other families have stayed up later before, but this was a school night, and the door was locked. Blame it on whoever you choose, but I was never given a key to the front door. Rather than wake my compound-mates, I decide to vault the wall. Not wanting to leave my bike in plain sight by the door, I wheeled it with me to the corner, where it would be hidden. A gap in the roofline provided the perfect place for scaling the wall. I locked the bike, intending to retrieve it in the morning, and placed my hands on the concrete, ready to hoist myself up.
I'm flat on my ass, my back against a tree stump. Despite the dark and the shock I can clearly see half of the concrete wall, about three feet by four feet, lying on top of what used to be the front wheel of my Peace Corps issued bike. I telephone Lao. There is irony.
The next morning M. Bamazi asked me, essentially, "What the fuck were you thinking?" Kpekpou said the same thing, sort of, with, "You should have knocked on my window." Despite their assurances that the only important thing is that I wasn't hurt, the general feeling was that I was a dumbass.
This all came at a bad time. Following two great weeks in village, with attentive classes and significant farm work, things began to decline. A visit from a stranger searching for plastic bags (for a tree nursery), that just had to be bought from my boss. A short and crowded weekend with the girlfriend, held in the regional capital instead of her village, as originally planned. Her mild illness, and thusly affected mood. A second visit from the stranger, who spent 600 CFA in travel to ask me a question in person; the answer: "No." And then a flat tire, which, due to a faulty hand pump, took me a total of three hours to patch and pump on Tuesday morning. Yet, by Tuesday night things were better. Tchouk with Sam's friends, dinner and beers at a local hotel (which is too expensive for local people to ever use. One room, with AC: 9,000 CFA a night. The average salary of a waiter, which is a damn good job in that village: 12,000 CFA a month). And now this.
I could blame the sudden destruction of the wall on sorcery, if I wanted. Two weeks ago was the first time I'd heard anything about my village's history with with the dark arts, but since then, I've heard nothing else. Even the CEG science teacher, who declared that he doesn't believe in God because of the Truth of Mathematics, stated (not ten seconds later) that sorcery was the only unknown to be feared in this world (where was God, he asked, when the sorcerer made that boy's penis disappear? [do you want to know the details? No.]) But in the end, when I tell the story to other volunteers, the consensus of the cause seems simply to be Togo.
Once again, I'll declare that what I'm writing comes after a period of intense dislike of, well, everything. This is, I've heard, simply how life is going to be for the next two years. It never really levels out, or gets any easier to deal with the frustration. The thing to do is remember there's always a bright side. I've got tree nurseries and sensibilisations planned in two other villages. As soon as the rain hits for real, my six village volunteers are going to start our agroforestry experiment. And despite my stupidity with regards to the destroyed wall, and thusly affected bike, there is still something to smile about: somewhere in village there's a mason wondering just how the hell a white man ever got the best of his handiwork. Right now, I'll take whatever satisfaction I can get.
