Daydream in the Rain

It’s overcast and has been raining off and on all day. The paved road running through the village is wet and deep black and steams when the sun comes out. Along the road the air has the stink of worm/amphibial carnage. I remember walking from my house to the bus stop when I was a kid, a quarter-mile hike up and down a long hill, seeing the flattened bodies of nightcrawlers and toads. One toad I found had his guts spilling out of his mouth, the back half of his body completely flattened, painted cartoon-like with the imprint of a tire tread.

Here, though, in the sandy, tropical soils, worms are rare, and rarely as fat or long as the nightcrawlers of my youth. And while toads and bullfrogs can be heard chorusing in the night, their corpses are never found on the road post-rain mornings. Here it’s the crushed, snot-like bodies of snails splayed out along the rumble strips and the crumbling asphalt edges. Nights during the rainy season are murder for squeamish folks making frequent latrine sorties. Try going out without a flashlight or other illumination and the crickets’ rhythm will be interrupted on nearly every footfall as the full-bladdered person steps on innumerable escargots. They pop like lightbulbs. I shined my torch before me once during one of these excursions and found an uncomfortable amount of snails carpeting my little bit of grassless yard. Two or three at a time were gorging on my mucuna bean plants, leaving trails of worm-like shit and slime to dry over the leaves. My neighbors’ kids come into the yard often to collect the snails, and when they’ve got a decent amount stored under an inverted basin in their yard, they shuck them from their shells, skewer them and grill them. I’ve declined every invitation extended me to these feasts.

But so okay I’m on the road to go to the boutique to buy cookies, because there’s nothing better to do in the rain than to sit huddled under my paillote hidden from the kids to munch on biscuits, little drips of rain falling from the brim of my hat, my hand curled over the cracker, the crumbs tumbling and whirling through the air. I’m in a zip-up hoodie sweatshirt I bought in Spain in January, and I’m wearing it not so much because I’d be cold if I didn’t, but because during a rain wearing it doesn’t make me too warm. The temperature doesn’t ever really fall below 65 ° F, so I take whatever chances I get to bundle up.

My two years are officially over 6 December, but I’ll be able to leave no-questions-asked thirty-one days before that, so really I’m out of here like mid-November. Which means four months left in Africa. Twenty-two months spent here. I have dreams about icicles hanging from the eaves over the pick-up/drop-off areas of the Indianapolis airport, the defogger on my parent’s car wheezing with exertion, my teeth deliciously chattering despite every layer of elemental protection I brought with me, which, in the face of a Midwest winter, is nil.

The dream continues with arrival at the house, the yard lost beneath snow, perhaps a distress snorkel sticking up through the white, the only indication of a misplaced pet. A trip to the Marsh to pick up two cases of Budweiser, which we’ll bury in the backyard’s white mounds, while inside the house delicious-tasting things go through various stages of preparation and mastication. When everybody’s gorged and satisfied, me and the family go outside and hunt for twelve-ounce cans like Easter eggs, cracking them open and enjoying what’s inside. That’s my daydream. Cold weather and snow, good food utilizing more than two ingredients, and delicious beer served in reasonably sized containers. That’s what I miss, material-wise.

And but so like let’s snapshot me here, though, crossing the route to the boutique, watching a couple of kids in oversized windbreakers kicking empty tomato cans around beneath a palm-frond awning. I’m not unhappy. I’m wearing tan pants with brown piping down the legs and the imprint of a rooster perched between the words ‘Le’ and ‘Coq’ on the front in the left thigh area. I’ve got my grey hoodie, and a blue Texas Rangers hat given me by a recently departed volunteer. I’ve got a believe-it-or-not beard, which my family laughed at me over the phone when I said I’d managed to facially grow something resistant to a cat’s tongue. I’m twenty-fucking-four. Gasping for breath. When I left home I was un-tan, totally smooth visage-wise, and a sprightly twenty-two. Way ignorant in terms of third-world realities. I had a pretty quality digestive system. Etc.

Larissa and I had been with the new group of trainees on Wednesday, to talk to them about Volunteer mental health, how to avoid becoming an alcoholic, how to be a good listener. At the end of our presentation, there was time for interfacing, and a new-but-older trainee and I were talking about how the big advantage of Peace Corps service is internal, i.e., it changes you, and if you’re lucky you can step outside of yourself every now and then to observe these changes. The crux of the discussion was that it’s naïve to think that these changes or personal revelations are always pleasant, or conform to the propaganda Peace Corps uses to recruit people. The advantage of your service might be to reveal to you that you have no interest in doing stuff like this. Or that you’re way more cynical/conservative/racist than you thought. Ahem. Just speaking generally here.

So like then let’s return here to me snapshot crossing the road, at what is approximately revelation-time in terms of service, for me. I’m not unhappy. I’m disappointed in the way the ‘development’ work went (or didn’t). I hate the inability to blend in, the conspicuousness of my skin. When I say hate, I mean like loathe with my very core. I nearly had a nervous breakdown while biking from Sokodé to my village, shouting “I’ll fucking kill you!” at everybody that called me 'Anasara.' Women and children, too. I’m embarrassed, but I have to admit it. I probably would have really snapped if my village had been any farther away, because just when I felt I couldn’t take it anymore, on the edge of the teak trees that divide Babadé from Nima, somebody I didn’t recognize looked at me and shouted, instead of the ‘Anasara’ I was expecting, he shouted he said, “Mazabalo, bonne arrivée!” Mazabalo is my village name. And so then but like every single person I passed from him to my door waved to me and said “Bienvenue, Tony!” or “Bonjour, Mazabalo!” I felt like I’d let go of a breath I’d been holding in too long. I was back in village. I was home.

Not that I’m not impatient to get out of here. Every morning I draw a little symbolic X through the day before, arriving ever closer at the symbolically circled mid-November day of departure. It’s more like I’ve finally relaxed and realized that nobody is mad at me because there are things I didn’t do. They are happy with me because of the things I did. I know who they are, what their lives are like. They know the same about me. This makes being here a lot more pleasant and relaxing, realizing this does.

And but so like now I’m in the boutique. I’m unfrozen from the middle of the road. The kids kicking the can are pulling their jackets up to their ears while they say hello. The little one holds up her arms and says in her squeaky voice, “Tony!” I hold up my arms and say “Elli!” and bend down to give her a hug. Their mother is behind the counter, listening to some guy on his third or fourth shot of sodabe talking about himself. She sees me and straightens up and asks me if I’m cold, is maybe why I’m wearing all these limb-covering garments. I say I’m just pleased to be here. She smiles and asks me what I’d like. I hold out my money and simply say, “You know me.”