Fall

October is just over a week old, and the leaves are beginning to turn. I first saw significant amounts of warm colors on the trees along 116^th, and have begun now to notice the change everywhere. This is my first fall in three years, the last of the seasons I was able to experience after more than two years in the monotonous climate of Western Africa, where, always, it is hot; sometimes it rains.

There were many things I missed when I was abroad, comprising all categories of cravings, from the material (albums, books) to the gustatory (artichokes! Subway!) to the spiritual (less gris-gris) to the climatic (snow, different colored leaves). Each yearning had its own level of virtue.

I left Africa in December, dreaming with almost masochistic anticipation of the cold of a Midwest winter, the pure white glint of new snow. I longed to see a landscape muted by white, mounded and rolling, instead of the scarred look of burnt-out cornfields, or the stubble of felled plantations. Even the grease-spotted asphalt of the airport parking garage, the loops and lanes of the highways, were to me like the brush strokes of a master painter.

Winter came and went, the first Christmas back. The New Year in Chicago; a homemade birthday cake in February. Then spring, and the return of the twins from university, the purchase of a quality badminton set. Horseshoes and bocce and all the wonderful lawn games warm weather permits. The mowing of a real lawn with a real lawn mower. Then summer, with its endless sunshine, evening bonfires, tennis matches, and dips in the pool. Fishing in retention ponds and drinking too much beer.

Now, finally, it's fall. The best smelling season. I was worried when September came and the leaves stayed green. After missing the season for three years, I'd forgotten entirely when and what was supposed to happen. But now they're changing, and the stores are selling pumpkins by the ton, and I've been eating caramel apples by the dozens. High schools and universities are holding their homecomings, shy teenagers asking shy teenagers to dinners and dances, twentysomethings sneaking drinks before games. There is reverence and revelry in the air. A calm grasp for the joy of harvest and bounty, before the sobering chill of All Saints Day, the cold of November leading us into winter. I am waiting, patiently, watching the leaves as they fall.

Georgie Was a Friend of Mine

The drives to the Unisys building from our home in Elgin took approximately twenty-five minutes. It was an agonizing half-hour, but it beat waiting at home for Dad to come back, because then the fun would be delayed twice as long. I remember very little from the drives except the giggly anticipation, the way the evening twilight blended with the streetlights to make everything look exotic, like we'd done nothing before as interesting as this in Carol Stream, Illinois. And I don't remember anything about the Unisys building, really, except the valet-like driveway before the front doors, and the lobby, which I remember being enormous, though I know now that at eight years old I thought so many things were. Gaetano and I spent those tense moments in the lobby pulling on Dad's wrists, begging to know how much longer we'd have to wait, while Dad watched people come out of doors and elevators. And eventually one or the other would open and a tall man with large glasses and a moustache like a dust broom would step out, and my brother and I would terrorize him for hugs while Dad told him how glad he was to see him; George was in town.

Dad and George met in college in New York in the seventies, and had remained great friends ever since, even after my father left New York to settle down in suburban Illinois. George was a groomsman at my parents' wedding. He worked for a company called Unisys, and I never figured out whatever it was he did, but occasionally the company would send him to their offices in Carol Stream, not far at all from our house, where George would stay, under my parents', and eventually their children's, insistence. I don't remember the first time I met George, or getting to know him or anything like that. His visits, as eventful and thrilling as they were, seemed like natural and essential pieces of a childhood.

Gaetano and I adored George for many reasons: with every visit, our toy collection, specifically in the Lego sub-category, would increase dramatically; he would spend a large portion of his time in Illinois on the floor of the living room--a room vast and cavernous, a room suited to space-necessary tasks--helping us put together the new Lego sets he had brought us (indeed, our devotion to George was evidenced by the meticulous care with which we preserved the state of the pirate ships he helped us snap together on one visit, so that we could show him on his next just how much we loved them and that those sets were probably the best presents we'd ever received); and he would speak to us, while studying the how-to-build-'em guides, or while telling us of all the things he'd seen at FAO Schwarz when he'd been shopping for our presents, as though we were no less than two of his best friends in the world, albeit probably the youngest. I never realized until today, reminiscing about his visits, how much influence his manner has had on the way I interact with children now that I, too, am an adult.

I was thinking about his visits because, while our family has aged and we no longer collect Legos, or live in Illinois, and no talk about seeing George again had come up for probably many years, we were informed yesterday that all the times with him have been had; George was dead.

He died of a heart attack. He was sixty. Dad had talked to him only three weeks ago. George's ex-girlfriend Alice called us yesterday to give us the news. Even she had heard about it too late. His funeral had already been held; he is buried now somewhere in a cemetery in Brooklyn. My brother just called and I told him what had happened. We shared a silence over the phone that was unique between us. Our younger siblings never really knew George; we had moved to Indianapolis by the time they were old enough to buy Legos for, and George's company had no offices near us to visit. I guess that makes me and Gaetano pretty lucky. George was the kind of friend every child should have. And for that alone, if nothing else, he was a great man.

The Water Under the Bridge

Freshman year of college, at nights during the warm months when I couldn't sleep, I'd change into shorts and a long-sleeve t-shirt and go running. I'd run straight out the dorm and down Neeley toward the White River, and then I'd run along the path that led past the river, along the railroad tracks, to the south side of town. I'd race the trains as they came along, or jump in fright at the first bark of a dog. Some nights--at midnight, three a.m., whenever--I'd run as far as the graffiti murals the city had sponsored on the concrete walls abutting the path, on the stretch of the track just past the bridge, where once during the spring the area was so flooded Travis and I had to turn back; the water was up to our hips. I stopped running so late, eventually, after several people were murdered that year.

Quoi?

Parfois je ne sais meme pas quoi dire. Vous qui savez le francais, je vous demande pardon pour la manque d'accents. Les claviers anglais, ni l'internet, ne me permettent pas m'exprimer en cette langue avec tout soin. Ce soir j'ecris en francais afin de me permettre vous communiquer sans me repeter. J'ai l'habitude d'etre pedant dans mes articles, de donner mon avis comme ce l'est le loi. Je meme comprends pourquoi mes amis me regarde comme con arrogant. Alors, je vois qu'on n'avance pas. Cette explication est inutile. Comme toutes les miennes.

Je viens de regarder "Le Dernier Metro," un film de Francois Truffaut, qui l'a mis en scene. Et pour terminer la nuit, pour me guider au sommeil tranquille, je vais regarder les particularites bonus, les commentaires, les documentaires, etc. Parce que chaque nuit je dors avec difficulte. La plupart je m'occupe des pensees de la mort, la fin de la vie, le but de l'existence. C'est stupide, a mon age, d'etre paralyse par ces choses abstraites, mais je ne peux pas les nier. Elles sont insistente. Je suis embarasse. Voila pourquoi j'en ecris en francais; mais je ne sais pas pourquoi je m'inquiete. Il est sur que presque personne ne lit ce blog. C'est encore une demonstration de mon arrogance a penser que mes occupations de la tete peuvent vous interesser. Je parle en desordre.

Je m'inquiete toujours de quelque chose: ma sante, ma forme, mon intelligence, ma personalite. Qui suis-je? Que fais-je afin d'ameliorer le monde? D'aider quelqu'un? J'avais essayer plusieurs fois a repondre a ces questions, mais je n'ai aucune reponse. Alors, je termine. Excusez-moi cette parole. Je le sais bien que c'est pretentieuse. Mais, quoi faire?

Kill the Humorless!

There was a while there where I was known for being a real asshole. Oh, not everybody thought that. But a good enough number of folks did that it worried me. And they would tell me this to my face. "Am I really an asshole, like all these jackasses have been saying?" I'd ask. My comrades would tilt their heads slightly and extend, palm up, a hand, to indicate to me just how fucking obvious it was. "That is shocking," I'd say, "just shocking."

I don't mind being considered an asshole, but I do mind being considered an asshole when I have no conception that I am behaving as one. I've always felt like I've had a pretty good prismatic view of the colors of my personality; if there's one thing I dislike about myself, it's that I feel painfully self-aware, second-guessing nearly every thought or emotion. Generally, I feel like I know when I'm being an asshole. So, having a reputation for being one was something I couldn't fathom.

The result of this revelation, coupled with self-doubt following breakup desiderata, was that I felt much like Hal Incandenza toward the end of Infinite Jest, when he loses total control of his facial expressions and, eventually, his abilities to communicate in any form. People look at Hal, who is seriously troubled by a friend's forehead predicament, and ask him what he thinks is so goddamn funny. Today at work, actually, I was unusually pissed off, yet several people, when passing by, asked why I was so goddamn giggly this morning. This only increased my frustration; I wanted to break a mop handle over the backs of the humorless.

Back when this started, though, the direct result of the asshole+desiderata emotional state was that many times when speaking seriously with someone (admittedly, due to drunkenness, those times were rare) I would spend twice as much time assuring them that what I was saying was sincere than I spent saying the sincere things. And the Chinese Handcuffs feeling of it all was that the more I assured them I was totally and completely unironic at the moment, the less assured I was that they believed me. It always reminded me of the time I told a fantastically true story to my aunt, prefacing it with the comment, "This story is absolutely fucking true," which prompted her to scoff and say, "Well, now I don't believe you." And she didn't.

Why The World Needs Superman

It's been snowing all day, and nobody in the family is working. We've rearranged the living room furniture and, most importantly, taken out the old bulky speaker system and replaced it with a compact Bose version. New settings means we must sit in them; new speakers means we must listen to them. And so we shall. All we need is the right film.

Nick and I turn the volume as high as it goes during the scene in Superman Returns when Clark Kent, who has just returned to the Daily Planet offices, rushes to the street ripping off his shirt to go save the damaged airplane/space shuttle combo--which said airplane/shuttle contains, conveniently enough, Lois Lane.

The score is marvellous. I've never been a big Superman fan, but John Williams' Superman theme is astounding, especially when coupled with the sight of the Man of Steel gently placing a de-winged, flaming wreck of a plane on the pitcher's mound at Metropolis stadium. Nick had goosebumps; I had tears in my eyes. Welcome back, Kal-el.

Of course, now that we've watched Superman Returns, we're obliged to continue the streak. Next will be Spiderman 2, because it's the best of the three. Then probably X-Men 2. I would be up for some Batman, obviously, though I'm not sure which one to pick; they're all just so good. Through every one of these films I'll be cheering and shouting and cringing, because I love them.

During a job interview last week I was asked why I joined the Peace Corps. Because of Batman, I said. Because, as naive and idealistic and just plain silly it sounds, the Peace Corps was my way of being a superhero. I'm already embarrassed that I wrote that, but I'll man up and let you ridicule me. It's what Samurai Jack would do.

And maybe my military friend(s) will scoff, but I bet you that, at least subconsciously, Superman was part of the reason they decided to serve the country in that particular idiom.

Sure, on both sides of the spectrum, there are distinguished histories and inspirational stories--true ones--that more directly influence a person's choice on how they serve their country. That's why the Peace Corps has such cool looking propaganda posters; that's why we have the Military Channel. But reality can only take us so far.

Modern Americans don't have anything they would consider mythology (outside of their religion). The story of the fishes and loaves is as real to certain people as the story of Prometheus was to the Greeks. And I like both stories, I really do, but that doesn't necessitate I be a Christian any more than I be a pagan in the Ancient Greek tradition.

I am no longer a Catholic (I'm not even a Christian anymore) but I really appreciate being brought up as one. I like the values of the system, the morals, the call for sacrifice as a means of both personal and public redemption. The problem with religion, though, is morons. So I've distanced myself.

However, I wonder now, as I think into the future, a future I hope to be replete with a large and boisterous brood of offspring, how will I raise my kids with those kinds of values but still keep them out of the clutches of people who think Leviticus 18:22 is the most important rule in the Old Testament? The answer, as I see it, is comic books.

Comic books are modern America's mythology. And it's a beautifully serpentine system of mythology, because everyone living at the time of this mythology knows it to be false; but that doesn't stop people from believing in it.

That last sentence is not a paradox. I don't really feel eloquent enough to explain it, so I'm going to rely on reader identification. I mean, I know Batman isn't real, Superman isn't real, Spiderman isn't real, but because they stand for everything worth standing for in this real life, they are just as important to me as policemen, firemen, Marines, and development workers.

This is especially apropos for little kids. A child might not grasp the gravity of the situation in Sudan, or of people blowing up planes, or of Robert Mugabe being a fucking maniac. They know that evil exists in the world, but that evil is not palpable until it is distilled into the Green Goblin or Lex Luthor. And all the people who sweat and struggle and die to combat the evil in the world are in no way slighted by being represented to a child in distilled form as a comic book superhero.

I am not a comics scholar, but I know that one of Superman's biggest roles in his early years was as a seeker-outer and ultimate-punisher of Nazis. Same with Captain America (why do you think he was even created?). Same with any number of superheroes who have been remembered or forgotten. Thanks to them (and to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and any cartoon character in a propaganda film) war bonds were bought, national rations were strictly followed--and people signed up to fight. As wars ended and comics evolved, evil villains went from Nazis to moronic hoodlums to the Joker. The superhero genre became more symbolic. More mythic. More capable of tackling the big theme of good v. evil. In this way, more lasting. Nazis die. The Joker can live forever.

One of the things that pained me while I was in Togo was the lack of a disseminated mythology. Being in Kabye country, I was interested in their creation myths, in whatever stories they might have that would help explain who and why they are. Whenever I asked after these stories, though, all I got were Bible chapters.

These stories do exist, but none of the youth know them, and few of the old. This frustrated me so much because cultural identity (usually linked to cultural pride) is essential for a people's development. Many folks I spoke with, young and old, held such a sense of shame of being Togolese that they gave up believing they were capable of being any different. Imagine the cultural divide. I come from the land of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, Daredevil, and the Batman. Thanks to them, I believe I can do anything.

The fact is, we need mythology. We need it to tell us, unequivocally, what we are capable of. Real life has so many shades of grey that it is absolutely necessary to distinguish between good and evil, right and wrong, in strictly monochromatic terms. Religion can't satisfy those needs; if Muslims are going to hell according to Christians, and Christians are going to hell according to Muslims, we have a very confusing situation. But the Joker will always be evil. Lex Luthor will always have an ulterior motive. And Superman and Batman will always do what they've done best--stand for truth, justice, and liberty, and inspire people to do the same.

On How I Don't Write Letters, Before Devolving into an Assortment of Subjects, None of Which Offer a Unifying Theme or Satisfying Conclusion

Oh, I'm terrible at keeping in touch. I remember before I left thinking that I was going to write to friends and family all the time, multiple letters a week, a day even. I remember making that promise, too, to several people. I didn't keep the promise. My parents didn't care, though. The Dudes didn't care. I don't think Laura cared too much either, though she did always say it was nice to see those envelopes, rare as they were, fingerprinted with dirt. Vina and I don't ever really need to talk; we always seem to understand each other.

Andy and I talk about girls still, though at our age I suppose we should start to say 'women.' Same subject with Tim and Justin and Mike and my brother. Sometimes it makes me feel immature. I'm not sure how to get over that, though, so I just keep plugging along.

The first night back I couldn't sleep. I was up all night, wandering around the house, wanting desperately to go into the spare bedroom and sift through all the drawers, find out what I'd left behind that I'd forgotten. I finally fell asleep the next morning around nine, on the couch, a dog nearby. I woke up an hour later, with no idea who or where I was. Dad said I called for him, though; I think it was just instinct. I poured myself a glass of juice, my hand shaking the entire time.

I've been going to bed late lately. Tonight I haven't gone to bed at all. Tim lent me a Batman comic, The Dark Knight Returns, one of those Frank Miller's from the mid-80s. For some reason it made me think of death. I tried to turn out the light and sleep but the sky was the brown of a decaying orange and my cat was staring at me instead of sleeping, the little light of the night catching and turning green in her eyes. I was terrified by it. I could feel a panic attack coming. I've been able to control them for a long time now, haven't had one as potent as I used to when I was a kid. As soon as I feel one coming I block all opportunities for it to take hold. Sometimes this means listening to music, which I can do in the dark, with my eyes closed, until I fall asleep. Sometimes this means staying up all night to find other distractions. Maybe when I'm done here I'll make some pancakes.

I saw Chris the other day, which was nice. I'd forgotten how much fun it is to hang out with people who love literature. I mean, really love the stuff. Not just people who read and enjoy and recommend, but people for whom writing has serious weight, who sigh at the good lines, who laugh in admiration at the better ones. We talked about flash fiction, publishing. We drank beer, ate lunch. We watched Muppet videos.

Two days after my return Andy and Justin and I drove ten hours to Philadelphia to visit Vina. We were there too long, and Vina was busy with classes, but we had a great time. The first night, at a hookah bar, I met a Moroccan waitress, and we talked to each other in French, over the heads of my friends. While Vina was in class, the three of us went to Independence Hall, where the Founding Fathers came up with and signed the Constitution of the United States. The tour guide spoke of how Lincoln had stopped in Philadelphia in 1861, on his way to assume the presidency. He quoted Lincoln from memory, something about the importance of the Union, the solemnity of the signing of two of the world's most influential documents, and I began to cry. After the guide liberated us, we went into another building where we saw one of the original printed copies of the Declaration of Independence, and another of the Constitution. I squeezed in front of the woman taking no-flash photos, and in the low light of the display, found my favorite lines:

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.... [W]e mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Again, I cried. And then I had one of those moments, one of those beautiful moments when you step outside of yourself and realize how wonderful everything is, when I felt so damn welcomed, so perfectly right to be back in my country. It was a good way to come home, I felt.

A Sun Came

Before leaving Togo, I sat down with the medical officer to go over some final paperwork, discuss the voucher system for getting my teeth cleaned, etc. I still had a few questions that went unanswered during my final medical exam a few months before. That exam was done by a Nicaraguan woman the Peace Corps kind of just hired as a temp while the PCMO was on vacation. She could do the technical stuff, but when it came time to talk about the depression and the insomnia, I got the feeling she wanted nothing less than to talk about something as scary as emotions.

So I asked the PCMO about the depression and the insomnia, even though then, two days before my departure, they were no longer problems. She said those are pretty standard pre-au revoir symptoms. Though, she said, if they recurred when I returned to the States, looking up members of a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer network could help, to have somebody to talk to, or at least to get contacts of other people who are good to talk to when you get back home and feel like a stranger in your own country.

No thanks, I told her. I didn’t exactly have the greatest time for the past two years. I think the last thing I’d want to do is talk to somebody who probably thinks Peace Corps service was the pinnacle of their young adulthood, if not their entire life up to date. I don’t regret doing the Peace Corps, but I sure as hell don’t want it to define me. It is something I did because of who I am. It is not who I am. That may seem like a thin line, but it’s a significant distinction.

I was speaking with a volunteer once who asked me if I could ever imagine marrying someone who had never been in the Peace Corps. The guy’s a great volunteer, and fairly intelligent, but that’s one of the dumbest questions I’ve ever heard. Just because someone didn’t serve in Togo or some other shitty place doesn’t mean they’re not interesting.

I told all this to the PCMO, about how I kind of worried about this indifference I have to the past two years of my life (when I say indifference, I mean to say that I’m glad I did it, even though I didn’t exactly enjoy it, but I’ll never do it again; and I don’t mean to imply that being in Africa had anything to do with it, so those of you inclined to racist inferences can just shut the fuck up; you know who you are) and the PCMO said that, well, maybe re-integration won’t be as much a problem for me as it is for others. The ones that have the hardest time, she said, are the ones that just can’t get over the fact that they were volunteers. Those poor bastards, I said. Yeah, she said, tell me about it.

- -

Halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, four hours into an eight hour flight, the captain puts the fasten seat belt sign back on and the flight attendant gets on the intercom to say, in three languages, that we’ll be hitting some bitchin’ turbulence, and that we are strongly advised to fasten our seatbelts and not walk around the goddamn cabin, s’il vous plaît. The woman in the seat next to me, a Moroccan who has been living in Boston for the past fifteen or twenty years, is terrified. She’s been nervous the entire flight, but now she’s just kind of silently flipping out beside me, and I do my best to calm her down. It’s all that strong ocean air, I tell her. We’re at the crossroads of the west-bound currents and the east-bound currents, it’s always really bumpy this far away from land. I don't know if this is true, but she stops shaking, at least, so I put my headphones back on and try to close my eyes, because now, thanks to her, I’m freaking out. Two years, I think, of riding in overloaded, poorly maintained bush taxis on shitty roads—including that time the brakes went out coming down the mountain from Kara—and this is what finally gets me. No, I tell myself. I deserve, if nothing else, to see my brother and sister. Whatever is in charge of the universe won’t cheat me of that.

Now, I have a firm belief that God, in whatever form he may take, does not listen to human prayers. I don’t believe in predestination, in fate or kismet, and I don’t believe that he will save anybody from death, no matter how good that person is. We are, as individuals, far too insignificant to have any pull with the big guy. But since I am a hypocrite, when faced with the fear that my life is in danger I raise my spiritual voice. Like that time I biked eighteen kilometers in the rain, with lightning striking along the roadside. Like right now on this airplane, with a Moroccan woman convulsing beside me.

We make it, though, alive, to JFK. I wait for about four hours at two different bars, drinking inordinately expensive beers. Finally it’s time for the plane home, and I get on, and now I’m the one shaking, but with excitement. Because after two years and three months; after bush taxis and failed projects and a feeling of complete social impotence; after bribes and poverty and that one time I got stopped by the police with JT; after a project I paid for and never saw; after all those sorcery deaths; after two terrifying flights to get off that continent; I will be home. We take off and level off and I spread out on the seat next to me and sleep away the last three hours of this long exile.

- -

The airport was clean and comfortably empty and just the right kind of cold. The terminal was a long tall-ceilinged hallway with large glass walls looking out on the empty boarding alleys folded up like accordions. The Indianapolis airport had been remodeled since I'd left. I didn't recognize anything unique, anything outside of the generic airportness of the place, to tell me that I was Home. A security guard was seated at a podium-type desk at the point of no return for arrivals, a tall black man with a clean navy blue sweater, and I had the desire to walk up to him like a little nine-year old and tell him, just to keep him up to date, that I'd been gone for two years and now was home. In the week that I've been home, I've been getting this urge a lot.

I was trying to take everything in, doing my best to not miss a single detail, which meant I missed it all, because suddenly, as the hallway I was in zeroed down to an arched opening leading to some kind of massive lounge, the woman standing next to the potted tree shouted, "Oh my God, it's him, I hardly noticed him!" Hello, Momma. Nick ran at me like a Welshman. Dad had his camera out and snapped photos. Something hugged me around the middle, and I looked down to find Anna, my adorably short sister. Waiting behind them in a polite line, with the kinds of smiles people wear when they don't want to appear too happy, but, of course, actually are, were four of my best friends, Justin, Mike, Andy, and Tim. I was ecstatic. But, strangely, I was remarkably calm. In every daydream about my homecoming, I imagined myself blinded with tears (of joy). I don't know if it was the fatigue of travel, or simply the great sigh of relief of being home, but instead of tears I just felt exhausted, immeasurably content, and, actually, a little hungry. So when Dad put down the camera and pulled a sack full of Arby's roast beef sandwiches out of his coat, everything was fine.

The Land Where They Let the Children Cry

*I like the title game; you guys did a good job last time; Newg was remarkably swift with his response. So I ask again, where does this week’s title come from? Hint: it’s not a film. Also, quick note: I was writing this on the stoop when the last paragraph actually happened. It is not a device; those were my thoughts when I heard the notes rise to my ears.

It makes me laugh, sometimes, hearing the children cry. Especially the young ones, the under-fives, the ones who speak in squeaky voices, with no conception of grammar. It’s even better when there’s more than one and their voices chorus and Doppler, wobbling in and around each other, like the sound of a tuned guitar string ringing over that of an un-tuned one. I like this sound, this shrieking choir; I smile whenever I hear it.

Because the kids are young, malleable, prone to eating dirt and running into walls, and usually (at least the ones I’m around) well cared for by their families, I know when they cry that nothing, really, is all that wrong. A scraped knee, perhaps, or porridge for dinner instead of rice. At the worst, the kid’s bit his own tongue, or peed his pants, or was pushed by another crier (who, though in tears him/herself, is automatically disqualified for cuteness due this habit of pushing other children to the point of tears).

I like the way these kids cry because, really, it’s just so honest. I know that whatever they’re crying about isn’t a big deal; I also know, and this is what makes it so damn poignant for me, that these kids, these little children—who will remember probably nothing before their fourth birthday, who have absolutely no frame of reference, who are absolutely and excusably naïve—they believe that whatever hazard has shown itself (including, but not limited to, any of the scenarios listed above) to be the most devastating tragedy they can imagine. There is sincerity to their tears, an emotional honesty that cannot but be beloved and admired.

I admire this so much because it is corrupted so quickly. Though character varies from child to child and cannot really be categorized by age, I lump the six-to-ten year olds in the group Children Whose Tears Annoy and Anger Me. Children in this group cry even when they know they have not been wronged, or that worse things have happened or will happen. These children are attention seekers, standing in the street like Pharisees, there for all to see. For them, crying is not a form of self-expression, as it is with the adorable ones; rather, it is a way of manipulating their (weak-willed, likely morally corrupt themselves) parents. These budding con artists are easy to spot. Their eyes remain calm in their distress, and all cherubic features are hideously distorted (needless to say, cute cries look even cuter when they cry, like my little buddy Pilakyem, whose face squishes together so that his nose looks like a chocolate raspberry ready to pluck); they also exhibit tantrum symptoms, like The Throwing of Rocks at Others’ Shins, The Slamming of Doors, the tell-tale Unnecessarily High-Pitched Screaming, and the give-away No Visible Nose Running.

In my compound Theo and Bien-Être are the con artists. They cry when it is convenient, when it is too quiet, when, simply, they have not heard a plaintive wail for what seems to them too long. They can turn it on and off at will. They hit their mothers and defy their fathers. They are not welcome on my stoop; I will not stand such behavior.

Thankfully, though, the little dickheads are balanced by Pilakyem and Martine. Not once have the tears of either of these kids upset me, except to direct my wrath toward the other two who, inevitably, either pushed them down or stole something from their tiny, beautiful hands. You really should see them cry, Pilakyem and Martine. It’s almost too cute for words. Pilakyem, with his skinny legs and his big brown eyes; Martine, who I suspect is retarded, with her chipmunk cheeks and her skin like creamed coffee shining in the sun.

Whenever I hear them begin to sob I want to run to them, sweep them into my arms, cover them with kisses. Which, come to think of it, is all I ever really want to do to them; but when they cry, the instinct is irresistible.

Ah, there goes Pilakyem right now, crying from the other side of my fence. I will go to him. I will lift him to the sky, his scrunched, distraught face shining down on me. I will pull him close, and hug him, and tell him everything will be fine. Oh, I will hold him, notched above my hip. I will hold him, wrapped around my belly, while he snots in my shirt. Yes, I will lift and comfort this beautiful, beautiful child—unless, of course, he’s peed himself again. In that case, well, I’ll let his mother handle it.

This Town Needs an Enema*

*You tell me what movie this quote is from, I'll get you a present from Africa, like amoebas, or guinea worm; also, this post contains foul language, and really bizarre subject matter, and may not be appropriate for infants.

When my next door neighbor died and we found out it was the devil himself that took him, we were all a little upset. Knowing what scheisters those devils are, the family called upon all of us present to pray for the giant's survivors, that the devil might not take it in mind to attack them, too, and collect his due. Within a week, it was confirmed that we hadn't prayed hard enough; the giant's twin daughters, adorable, feisty ten year olds, were apparently just ridden with the sonsabitches. And to prove it they summoned a black poisonous snake onto my compound-mate's terrace, just to give him the willies.

Snakes aside, they were fairly benign devils. The girls were still allowed to come over and watch TV, provided they sit outside, and I would take turns singing and dancing with them evenings when I was bored. They got a little pushy in their demands for candy, though, and I didn't hang out with the twins for some time.

The twins' grandmother, now, there's a real sweetheart. Slightly crippled, French-deficient, she is nonetheless one of those people I really enjoyed saying hi to in the mornings. Back when I went to Spain, she asked me what I would bring her as a gift; I told her a handsome young man. When my cousin came in May, I introduced him as 'that gift I promised.' The old black cheeks actually blushed.

But here's the trouble: for the past two months she's been bed-ridden. I haven't seen her, but my neighbor's tell me she's in a bad state. The girls stay home from school a lot so they can help take care of her. I can't say I'm surprised. Even back when the giant died, I figured she wasn't going to be too far behind. She's been hanging in there, though. She's a tough old broad. I mean, she is African.

But now so here's where things start to get interesting. Because she'd been sick for so long, her family was starting to wonder just what was up. The traditional medicines weren't working, and neither were the modern medicines. They decided to call in a charlatan to see if there were any bad spirits about that might be to blame. I bet you can guess what the verdict was.

Devils. A fucking lot of them.

So, here's the geography of the situation, to help clarify things. If you stand at the baobab tree near the old kitchen foundation and look to the west, directly in front of you would be the old lady's house, where she lives with the twin imps, plus Felli, and Felli's mother. Felli, for those that don't know, is the adorable little girl who enjoyed the Gettysburg Address in the video I posted on Facebook. Okay, and then next door on the right is my compound, where I live with the Laos and the Bamazis and various combinations of the Kpekpeous. Looking next door to the left (of the old lady's house) is the house of the old woman we call La Maisoniere. This is the lady to whom I pay my rent, because her youngest sister, rich and fat and living in Kara, owns all three of these compounds.

So this lady, La Maisoniere, she's kin to the ailing, devil-riddled old lady. She decides to call the village chief, an old, dignified man, to intervene on behalf of my old neighbor. Cast the fuckers out, as it were. The chief, well, he used to romp with these chicks, so he accepts the invitation. But little did he know...

... that fucking Mani was back in town! Actually, he did; I exaggerate a little. A lot of people knew Mani was back, because Mani had dropped out of school and disappeared about a year ago. Everybody assumed he was trafficked to Nigeria (which he was) and had been killed by the Ibo (which he wasn't). He came back with a radio and some funny hats, and started working in the flour mill just down the path from my house, the one housed in the abandoned former school building. So Mani, right, he's around twenty years old, he lives with the sick old crippled woman, and he's been helping out around the house a little, cooking some of the food, pumping some of the water, beating the possessed children. Etc.

So why is Mani's presence bad news for the chief? Somebody just go ahead and throw out a guess here. Go ahead, say it out loud. Did you say devils? Congratulations, my friend, because you are spot-fucking-on. Mani, unbeknownst to the rest of us, contracted a powerful strain of foreign devils when he went to be a slave in Nigeria. So, when the chief comes to scope out the situation with the old lady, Mani attacks the old man. Stories branch off at this point. Some say he simply cast devils at him, others say Mani physically attacked the chief; I don't know the details. Nonetheless, the chief grew gravely ill, and the whispers in village were that Mani and the devils were trying to decide who to kill first, the chief or the old lady. While all this was going on, by the way, my compound-mates were freaking out. It's all they talk to me about, still, and they end pretty much every sentence with, "Well, faith in God will protect us." I don't have to worry, because supposedly this kind of sorcery can only be used against people within the same ethnicity. Devils just don't attack white people. Or, as Bamazi put it to me, when white people have devils, they do good stuff, like build skyscrapers.

Sunday morning: I wake up around five or so and lay in bed till six. I do my push-ups and sit-ups, sweep my yard, brush my teeth. Last night was the attack on the chief, so there's a buzz in the air. I've got nothing going on, so around eight o'clock I decide to head to the boutique and have a few shots of sodabe. When I leave my compound, I walk by my crippled/ill/bedeviled neighbor's house, and there is a huge crowd seated on benches filling the entire compound. It looks exactly like it did when the giant died, and so my first thought is that the old woman has passed. Kicking and screaming, no doubt. I am in no mood to hang around, given the nature of all this new shit that's come to light regarding my neighbors and the status of their souls. So I skip on down to the boutique. The lady pours me a shot of sodabe. I ask her about the weather, the crops, the army of demons running rampant. DG shows up. DG's real name is Kossi, but he's always on top of things, so we all call him Directeur General. If anybody knows what's going on with the collection of people occupying my neighbor's yard, it's DG.

DG says that since Mani infected the chief with his devils, the village charlatans were performing a ceremony to exorcise the chief. Only the chief. Charlatans charge a lot of money for the ceremonies they perform, and the chief was the only one with enough francs to qualify for treatment. But they have to perform the ceremony at Mani's house (the old lady's house, the house between mine and the Maisoniere) because that's where everything happened. They're in the middle of the ceremony, actually, DG says, and he has to go back. I tell him I'll wait around the boutique, he needs to swing by when all is over and give me a full report. He slams back his sodabe, and says he'll see me in an hour or two.

This conversation with DG, actually, is where a lot of the details I've just given came to my attention. I knew there was sorcery trouble, but DG provides me with all the hard data. I'm a little bowled over by it all, so I decide to have another shot of sodabe to pass the time until DG's return. When he finally does come back, this is what he says:

The ceremony went off well, freeing the chief of his demons. The charlatan had to do inventory, though, and shake out any demons that hadn't yet been identified. Like a thirsty cowboy with a dowsing rod, the charlatan pointed to the old lady's bedroom. There are devils in her, he says. Then he turns to Mani. There are devils in you, too, boy. What have they made you do? At this point, Mani declares that he's been busy with a lot more than infecting the chief. Mani has an invisible Lhoso airplane--I've heard about these planes in the past--and during the night he gets in his plane and proceeds to fly over the village, stealing people's souls while they sleep. He then transports the souls to an all night voodoo spirit market in Niamtougou, about 150 kilometers to the north. At the market, sorcerers buy parts of these peoples' souls, and then, before dawn, Mani returns in the plane and redeposits whatever souls/parts of souls he wasn't able to sell. Well, I'll be damned, boy, the charlatan says. Where, by chance, did you get the plane? And I'm sure Mani must have said, in whatever mangled, demon-ridden Kabiye he was speaking, that the charlatan only had to point that dowsing rod a little further amongst this crowd to find his benefactor. The charlatan did as he said, revealing none other than--

--At this point I am just fucking blown away. I can't even believe DG is telling me all this with a straight face. He's sober as a pigeon. I'm on my thirt shot of sodabe, because frankly, I need it. The boutiquiere is clucking along to the story. The cluck is the sound we make when something is just unbelievably sad and true, and somebody should have known better, and one demon is understandable, but this many demons just borders on carelessness, and--

--La Maisoniere. What? La Maisoniere, DG repeats. Wait, I say, you mean the short old lady who collects my rent every three months? Yup. La Maisoniere had had devils for some time, the charlatan discovered. She and Mani were working together to steal souls at night and take them to the market. She was the one who bought him the plane! I interrupt DG again and ask him, did Mani say where he kept the plane during the day? You betcha. It's parked in an acajou tree just behind your house, Tony. I've eaten fruit off that tree, I think.

Then, I asked the inevitable question, What Happens Now? Well, DG said... the chief's fine... wouldn't accept anything you haven't prepared yourself from your neighbors... don't let the kids in your house... you know, the usual.

I'll admit, as much as I pitied the family and all its troubles, the only thing going through my mind at that point was that in a month I have to get a legally valid signature from La Maisoniere acknowledging that I don't owe her any more rent, and, boy, won't that be a joy to recover?

DG had to leave then, so I went home and huddled beneath my mosquito net, coup-coup under my pillow.

The next day I was with Nabede, my best friend. We were going to reclaim some wood a carpenter had stolen from me (long story) and on our way to his house we decided to have a few calabashes. I asked him if he'd heard all the news about my neighbors. He had. I asked him if he believed it. He did. Then I asked him about the plane. If Mani only takes peoples' spirits, and not their bodies, and if the plane is invisible, how can there be any proof that this story is in any way true? Well, he said, a few years back there was a similar situation in Adjengre. Young feller, invisible plane, soul theft. The charlatans and the villagers discovered what the boy was up to, and when he confessed to the plane, one of the elders asked him to prove his story. Show us the plane, he said. Well, I can't do that, said the boy, the plane's invisible. In fact, it's here right now, you just can't see it. Well then, said the elder, get in and fly it. Nabede said the boy stepped up into the air and was held aloft. And he kickstarted it, or turned the key, or spun the rotor, or whatever the hell he had to do to get his invisible spirit plane going, and suddenly there was a blast of heat, a roaring sound in the air, and everybody present was knocked backwards off their seats from the force of the lifting craft. They never saw the boy again.

That night, I went back to the boutique. DG was there, the nurse from the dispensary, and... the chief. The chief doesn't speak French, and I don't know what kind of questions are taboo following an exorcism, so I didn't try to ask him anything about the day before. DG was talking to him, though. The chief scowled as he sipped his sodabe, and DG asked him something in Kabiye. I heard Mani's name, but he spoke too quickly and I couldn't catch the question. The chief finished his drink, licked his lips, and said, in a voice that negated any need for translation: "Fuck that kid."

A Disordered Post

The writing of a new post is taking a long time. I want to describe the emotions of being at the end of my service, the strange twist of desires to both stay and go, and I just can't get around to making it sound right. I need more time. But since I'm in Lome, I wanted to get something posted.

My time in village now is spent pretty much just relaxing and hanging out with kids. I've planted just over a hundred moringa trees at the dispensary, but that's about it. Whenever I'm in village, alone, I'm fine with this, but when I'm around other volunteers, and they talk about their garden projects, or the fifty thousand trees they planted, or the special week-long day camps they put on, I get depressed, and feelings of failure and worthlessness come creeping back in. The plain and simple fact is that I was not the volunteer I wanted to be. Some of this is my fault, much of it is the village's. I don't really want to go into it, so if it's all right with you I'll just skip it.

My summer has been spent, like I said, mostly at home, but for two weeks, including this past week, I've been at our training site in Pagala, working with Camp UNITE. Camp UNITE takes four groups of kids--Boys Apprentices, Girls Apprentices, Boys Students, and Girls Students--and trains them for a week in "Les Pratiques d'Une Vie Saine," or, the practices of a healthy life. Themes include self-confidence, communication skills, family and future planning, HIV/AIDS prevention, and sexual harassment and rape. Depending on the group, the angle of approach for each session is different. I did camp for Boys Apprentices and Girls Students, and the session with the biggest difference was Sexual Harassment. With the boys we had to emphasize that a lot of what they do is wrong, and they need to stop it. With the girls we had to emphasize that they don't have to take it, that the law is on their side, and we tried to encourage them to just keep saying no, to be firm, to never give in. Other sessions are different, too, but you get the idea.

I had only signed up to do Girls Students, but last-minute circumstances left the coordinators in need of another volunteer for the Boys Apprentices, so they called me and I went. Young Togolese men are not a very appealing demographic, so I wasn't expecting to enjoy myself. Never before in my life have I so poorly misjudged something as that week of camp. I had more fun than I've had in a long time, and I came to respect the boys, and believe in them, and see the changes in them as they were happening. I could talk forever, but since I don't want to I'll just say that I was really proud of those guys.

So then this past week I did Girls Students, which means that I've fallen in love with fifty underage Togolese girls. I can't even begin to describe how fantastic these kids were. The energy level was amazing, especially after Wednesday night, when we did presentation of traditional dances. The participants and even the formateurs are divided up several ways. Every person has a cabin, an animal, and a color. Sessions get juggled between animals and colors (all the lions over here for AIDS, all the greens over there for Rape, etc.) but challenges are always colors, and then small discussions are always the same animal of the same color. Traditional dances, though, are by building.

I was with a group of girls in the Davie building, and we renamed ourselves the Belles-Fortes (which means The Beautiful and the Strong; there's a beer here called 'Beaufort,' or, Handsome/Strong, so we played off of that). The idea behind the dances is that the girls learn songs from outside their ethnicities. For the Belles-Fortes, we danced Akposso, Moba, Kabye, Ewe, and Lhosso. I danced with the girls, and they wrapped me up in pagne just like they were. It's an incredible thing to watch, because after the dances, the solidarity amongst the girls just goes through the roof.

Thursday and Friday, then, you could see a big change in how the girls behaved. Even though they were happy and participated well, they were still a little timid. But at breakfast on Thursday, girls came to the mess hall singing songs from the night before, songs from camp, standing up and dancing around the tables. At lunchtime you couldn't talk over the roar of voices chanting "Camp UNITE ne perira pas," or "Tire bananes, tire tire bananes!" At dinnertime, every time you sat down to get ready to eat, somebody else jumped up with another song, and the dancing started again. This energy showed itself during the sessions, too. Girls who hadn't answered a question all week were raising their hands; small group discussions went from counsellors talking to participants talking; nobody wanted to go to bed.

My favorite girl from the week, a bottle rocket named Delali, would run up to me after sessions to teach me songs she knew in English. My favorite moment with her was when we were playing ping-pong on Friday night, after the girls' big presentation of dances and skits; she asked me to teach her a song. We traded verses on "Stand by Me."

Same thing as before: so much to write about, I need to get it all clear in my head. So I'll just say one last thing, and we'll end it there, disordered and long and not very specific. When we were leaving Saturday morning, the girls grouped around the taxis going to the five points of Togo. The energy from breakfast was subdued, and their faces took on grave expressions. Eventually, one of them broke down and started crying, silently, but with full tears. This started off the others. When we were all in the cars and leaving the center, the weeping turned into full-blown sobbing. After a week of fun, a week in which they were respected and loved, not harassed and ordered around, they were going back to their homes, back to boys who don't leave them alone, back to sweeping and cooking and laundry and babies on their backs, back to fathers who don't listen, mothers who guard traditions. I turned my head to the window and pulled my cap low over my eyes, so they wouldn't see me crying too.

Jean in Sokode

We had heard that the president was on a tour of the country, a short, three-day trip that would take him from Lomé, the capital in the south, to Dapaong, the capital of the northernmost Savanes region, though not the northernmost city. My village was on the roadside, and we could have seen him easily from the small boutique where I drank at night with the old farmers, tobacco-stained men in sandals made from old truck tires, carrying around their radios in the dark. We decided, though, to go up to Sokodé, the capital of our Centrale region, thirty-six kilometers to the north. There was a nice bar there along the road, and if we staked out the day there we could eat and drink and most definitely see him.

We left my village early, while the sounds of small brooms sweeping the dirt were still loud in the air. As the driver pulled into Sokodé we could see groups of red-bereted soldiers on the side streets, not directing traffic, but diverting it by their presence. The driver let us off near the market, and we walked up the road to the bar.

The sun was higher now, and the heat of the day established. All my days in Africa have been hot, the state of the heat monotonous, its intricacies describable with only a handful of adjectives. Muggy, dry, or blazing, it is always hot. Only during and for a few hours after heavy rains will it cool down enough to put on a sweater, or zip up a jacket.

The bar ladies were still sweeping out the porch when we got there, but the door was open and the tables set up. Two grills, each made from a half of a fifty-five gallon drum, stood at opposite ends of the bar’s porch. Both grills made the same things, roasted chickens and beef kebabs, but I preferred the meat from the grill on the southern end. The cooks arrived. The older one, who wore lopsided glasses and a dirty wool snow cap of indeterminate original color, established himself in the small enclave between the bar and a phone cabine, to start killing and gutting chickens. The other, a slim, smooth-headed younger man, lit the coals and began slicing the beef into ribbons and skewering it.

We sat down at my normal table in the lower corner near the meat men, and arranged the chairs so we were both sitting against the wall of the bar, watching the road. Across the street the breakfast ladies were scraping the bottoms of their large marmites for the last of the rice and beans they dished out in the mornings. One of the waitresses, a tall, flat-faced woman with her baby wrapped to her back, was finishing off a hunk of fish under the breakfast ladies’ small lean-to. The other waitress, her hair in a kinky ponytail, brought us two beers without being asked, and we began our stay.

We were hardly halfway through our bottles when a man I know, a French expatriate living in the city, rode up on a moto taxi. Jean is a tall and skinny man from the Basque region, with thick, curved glasses, and a lanky shock of greasy, sun-filtered hair. He raised his hand to greet us, and then shouted one of only two English phrases he claims to know, “Oh my God!” He pulled up another plastic chair and sat down with us.

Jean has been living in Togo for twenty years. I go to his house sometimes, in the Lohso neighborhood, and we sit on his porch drinking whiskey while his Togolese wife brings me pictures of them taken in the bar they used to own in Lomé. He was handsome when he was younger, but now, at the age of thirty-six, the African sun has dried and darkened his skin so that he looks eternally as though he’s just gotten out from under a car and has not yet taken a shower.

The waitress brought him a beer, and he plied fifty francs in her hand and sent her to a small stand down the street to buy him cigarettes. It was around nine-thirty now, and the walking vendors were out, trying to sell us watches or screwdrivers or DVDs. It is always a pleasure to watch Jean with the vendors. He has both the arrogant knowledge of an expat that this is not his only home, as well as the experience of someone who has spent twenty years not living in a walled compound with servants and chauffeurs. He terrorizes the vendors with his knowledge of the proper prices, and will barter with a boy until the kid thanks him profusely for his business, apologizing about the initially high price. Jean knows everyone in the city, it seems, and makes fast friends with those he doesn’t.

“So,” he said to us in his rapid French, “what brings you two into the city?” We told him about the president’s journey, and how we wanted simply to get out of my village, and see the convoy.
“Ah,” he said, “he won’t come until late this afternoon, most likely, so you might as well stay the night. Come to my house later, and I’ll cook for you, real French cuisine.”

Jean makes his money by traveling back to France every summer and cooking in a restaurant owned by one of his friends. Each trip he takes ready made pagne outfits and sells them to European tourists as traditional African wear. Despite the fact that most of the cloth in Togo is printed in Denmark and China, it really is the kind of stuff that the Togolese wear on a daily basis. Most non-Africans I know in Togo, no matter how dedicated to their Western couture, have at least one pagne outfit.

We told him we’d love to stay for dinner, and he finished his beer and said he had to go home and tell his wife so she could get to the market before it closed. In honor of the president’s arrival, the market would be shutting down at two-thirty this afternoon. He stood up and made to pay for his beer, but we shouted him down. “Merci,” he said. He held out his hand, and we both shook, and as he was leaving we heard him shout the second of his English phrases, “I go swimming naked on Tuesdays with my cigarette!” before he disappeared up the road.

We stayed at the bar all day, getting up only to go into the back and piss in a hole in the floor. We ordered platefuls of kebab meat, which the meat men mixed with grilled onions and tomatoes, and small mountains of ground red pepper. Vendors came and we politely refused them. Children walked up to beg for change, and we sent them to buy us cookies to earn their money. Around two-thirty, Jean came back, and said that everything was ready for dinner tonight. Along with the food, he’d bought two bottles of whiskey, so that when the sun set and we were full and comfortable, we wouldn’t have to leave his house for anything. The three of us then ordered new beers, and settled in to wait for the president.

By three-thirty, the clusters of red-berets we’d seen earlier were spread out along the road, directing cars and moto taxis into side streets to either find their way home on rock-ridden dirt roads, or to wait until the president’s motorcade had passed. Looking out from the bar, the soldiers formed a line up and down both sides of the street as far as we could see. Most boutiques and bars turned off their music, and people walking around looked continually up the street, hoping to be the first to spot a car.

Finally, around four-fifteen, the first car came. It was an olive green military jeep with a mounted machine gun, packed with soldiers. Two more of these followed, and then the cumbersome motorcycles of the gendarmes led into view a black river of SUVs, windows up and tinted. The president’s limousine sat in the middle. Spectators strained from behind the linked arms of the red-berets, trying to see in through the windows for a glimpse of the president. The three of us, the only white people I could see in that part of the city, sat unconcerned at our table, able to see over the heads of the people from the elevated porch. After the last SUV, there were more gendarmes on motorcycles, and then again three jeeps with mounted machine guns. Ten minutes passed, and the first taxi came down the road. The red-berets found benches in the shade and waited for a transport truck to pick them up. The Togolese shook their heads and continued on.

“Well,” Jean said, “what did they expect?” He lit a cigarette and leaned back against the concrete wall of the bar.
“I heard he threw money from the sunroof in Kamina.”
“Can you imagine your president driving around, throwing five dollar bills into the crowd?” Jean asked.
“No,” I said.
“Exactly,” Jean said. “That is no way to save a country.” He nodded to himself. We finished our beers and got up to leave. The waitress came back with our change. Jean handed her a tip of one hundred francs. “Merci,” she said. He winked at her.
“Oh my God!” he shouted, and we walked up the road.

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.”

The Lightning

Many months before, the uncle of one of my good friends had died. He was old, but not old enough that his death was considered a joy, as are the deaths of the crippled women I often buy drinks for when they hobble in to the boutique, supporting their weight on a large teak branch. My friend’s uncle was an important man, a teacher and a middle school director, well known in the community, and equally liked. According to tradition, following the internment of the body, there was no funeral. Now, in March, the tail end of the season for such effusions of grief, it was time.

I had been in the capital for many weeks before the funeral. In truth, I hadn’t known about it until my return to the village. I was weary from the journey, and my pockets were considerably lighter. The local cuisine has a bland, usually fishy taste I cannot get around to enjoying, and even when meat takes the place of fish, the fat and the cartilage attached to the normal edible bits turns me off as well. Nonetheless, unwilling to cook, and having nothing really with which a proper meal could be made, I decided not only to go to the funeral to pay my respects, but to capitalize on the food.

My friend, whom I call by his family name, Nabede, welcomed me and bade me sit inside his house, where there was a television. I would have been content to sit in the circle of small stools, most of which were occupied by the village’s older men, doing much the same as I and scraping back all the food their hosts were willing to offer them. Perhaps it was my fatigue, or my desire not to make any kind of scene, but I did not protest to remain with the men, and allowed him to seat me on an uncomfortable high-backed chair in his parlor. The walls of the house were of mud brick, and the roof was the standard tin sheets nailed to a central support beam. In the afternoon sun, the room was stifling. There was no fan, and the breeze through the small barred window flickered feebly in through the lace curtain. He turned on the television to a sports channel and left me.

His wife, a couturier in another village, came in to bring me a calabash, a dried, hollowed out bowl-like gourd, of tchouk, the local beer brewed from millet. She left and returned almost immediately with a large plate of rice mixed with overcooked spaghetti. The sauce was thick and red, and a fall of palm oil dribbled down from the sauce into the rice. There was a dark brown hunk of indeterminable meat.

I ate and watched a recap of the previous year’s European Cup. By the time I had finished, I could hear thunder in the distance, and the sunlight was fading into the alkaline clarity of a semi-obscured twilight. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and stood up to leave. I shook the hands of all the men on their stools, and thanked my hosts. I walked home alone, watching small rolls of lightning in the clouds against the horizon.

I awoke the next morning to a muted world. It had rained in the night and no one was out. The houses were calm, the green of the verdure so fierce it seemed the world was plugged in. I felt comforted by the scent of wet soil, the air on which you could actually taste the filtering effect of various trees.

I put on some shorts and went outside. Lidao, the ten-year old son of one of my neighbors in the compound, was sweeping my portion of the yard, pushing the papaya and palm leaves that had fallen in the night into a compost hole I’d dug. “Bonjour,” he said, and then he asked, “Did you hear about what happened last night?” “You mean the rain?” I asked. “No,” he said, “the deaths.”

Over the next few days, everyone I asked gave different versions of the story. Some say the people had been outside, dancing in the rain; others said they were huddled under the small eaves of the roof; yet others averred that they had all been sleeping inside the house. Whatever the details, though, the story remains essentially the same. After I had gone home, the rain arrived. The rain here seems to be one of Nature’s angrier forces, for it rarely falls with the monotony and disinterest that is common in temperate zones. Nearly always the rain is accompanied by fierce blowing winds which, despite my efforts, blow water in through the wooden slats of my windows and under the space beneath my door. Then there is the celestial lightning, and thunder that shakes the water in its cisterns.

That night, aside from the driving rain, the lightning was low and rolling in the clouds. I remember watching it before going to bed; it seemed as tumultuous as a sea storm, and washed down from the north with frightening speed. All recounts of the story agree that, despite the rain and the lightning, the sound system and the large speakers were not only not disconnected from the main power line, they were not turned off at all. As the rain fell and the lightning broiled, the funeral attendees continued to dance.

Around midnight, according to Nabede, the only people left dancing were a group of about fifteen adolescents. As I said, what exactly they were doing at the time the lightning struck is disputable. Even the exact site of the lightning strike is unknown. Nevertheless, what happened is irrevocable and only too painfully known. All the houses branched on to the power line in that area had their light bulbs burst or burn out; meters were fried and the numbers frozen; those with televisions still plugged in had their sets destroyed. But the brunt of the electrical force was directed at the children. Whether dancing in the rain, huddled beneath the eaves, or sleeping under the tin roof, the lightning struck them. Two, a twenty-two year old lycée student, and a fourteen year old elementary schoolgirl, were killed. Four were seriously burned, to the point of disfigurement. The rest were burned on their hands, chests, and heads, painfully but superficially.

When Lidao finished his version of the story I went to speak to Lao, another compound-mate and good friend. He told me his version, and we sat on the steps of his terrace in near silence, speaking intermittently about what happened. “They say it is because God is angry,” he told me. “We have defiled the funeral ceremonies for too long, and now God has punished us.” Kpekpou, another neighbor, said that it was not God, but the fetish priests who were to blame. Somebody, he said, associated with the grieving family, must have angered the priests, and to punish them the priests had called down the lightning. It could simply be bad luck, I said, but they clucked in disapproval of my theory.

I made my way to Nabede’s house. His wife welcomed me in, but she was withdrawn, and immediately went to lie down again. Nabede was sitting in a chair, hunched over, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. His eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep. He vaguely indicated the burn marks on the walls of his home, where the surge had scorched the mud behind the power lines. His light bulb was intact but burnt out, a dark black smudge coating the interior. He had been this morning to help dig the graves. Now he was trying to rest, but he could not sleep. I told him about what my neighbors had said, that it was either God’s punishment or the work of fetish priests. He shook his head. “It’s just Nature,” he said. An explanation all the more incomprehensible for its simplicity.
“What happens now?” I asked. He looked up at me as though he did not understand the question, or the impertinence to ask it. “Nothing,” he said. “La vie continue.”

The next day, Monday, I was teaching troisième, the oldest class at the middle school. The director came in and made his way over to a student who, I had not noticed before, was burned on his forehead and his left hand. “Don’t you know better,” the director said, “than to play near electronics in the rain?” It’s the question I’d wanted to ask, though he posed it with considerably less tact.

Class ended at noon, and the students got up to file home for the long break until afternoon classes. I called the burned student over to look at his wounds. His skin was split open along the knuckles of his hand, the flesh pink and beginning to dry out. There was a small split in his forehead. The surrounding skin was a dark purple color, and the outer edges of the burn were the green of an old penny. He said he felt fine. The only people left at the dispensary were the four who were severely burned.

I didn’t hear any more of the incident for the rest of the day. It had been a bad month, with several deaths, and despite the grotesque nature of Saturday night, the sadness was subdued and it seemed as though the incident would go the way of the storm, leaving nothing for memory but a slowly eroding imprint on the ground.

The next day I had no classes, and woke up late to the sounds of people conversing in the compound. Every day, several women in the village make tchouk, and people go from house to house to drink. The woman in my compound, Lidao’s mother, whom I also call Maman, makes what I consider to be the best tchouk in the village, and the benches she arranged around the fence securing my part of the yard were filled with men, farmers either on their way to their fields or coming back from them. A few were discussing the lightning from Saturday night. Most, though, were lamenting the state of their fields. It was not yet the rainy season, yet they were already decrying the lack of a strong downpour. That seems to be the way with the farmers. Either there is too little rain or too much. Rarely does Nature get it just right.

I spent the morning drinking with the men, and by noon I was lightheaded and exhausted. Though it might not be the best way to become known, I’d built up something of a reputation for being able to drink like the villagers. When I first arrived, I would slowly sip one calabash while they would chug back two or three. I’d finally gotten used to the taste, and could drink just as fast and just as much as the men. My record for a day is nine calabashes, a feat which most people only attribute to the village drunks. I may have had four or five that morning, so I made myself some lunch, and went to sleep.

I woke around four o’clock, which is essentially the end of the day. By this time, afternoon classes are over, the men are done in their fields, and even some of the women are beginning to make dinner. I got dressed and decided to head to the boutique to see if any of my friends were out, starting on their nightly round of sodabe, a moonshine brewed from the sap of palm trees. On my way out of the compound, Madame Lao was sitting in her kitchen, a small room separated from the rest of the house so that the smoke from the fires does not become a nuisance. “Good afternoon,” she said, “are you heading up the road?”
“What’s up the road?” I asked.
“The judgment,” she said, “for the sorcerers who killed the children.”

The sky was already turning to twilight, an orange-purple glow infused into the atmosphere. The green of the mango leaves faded into the darkening sky, blurring the line where the trees ended and the night began. At the boutique, I asked the owner’s wife about the judgment. “C’est finis,” she said. Up the road, lines of men were heading in our direction, among them my drinking friends. Magi, a thin old man with a tobacco-stained beard, led the column, and was the first to turn into the boutique’s yard. “I just heard,” I said. “What happened?”

That afternoon, the chief was approached by two people, an old, stooping woman of nearly eighty years, and her son, a disfigured man I’d noticed in the village before. They’d presented themselves to the chief as the sorcerers who had called down the lightning during the funeral. “They said that they hated those kids,” Magi said, “and had been performing a ceremony for many months to have them killed.”
“Why would they confess to something like that?” I asked.
“They wouldn’t have,” he said, “but ever since that night they haven’t been able to sleep. In their dreams the children come to them to ask, ‘Why have you done this?’ They confessed so that their spirits would leave them alone.”

The chief then called the sub-chiefs and the village elders, and they held a judgment. The woman and her son were questioned and beaten, questioned and beaten, until the entire truth had come out.

“The old woman started the ceremony,” Magi told me, “and her son finished it for her.” There was no real motive given for the killing. Perhaps it came out during the judgment and was lost in the retelling, but I doubt it. People here are not concerned with motive, simply with deeds and their consequences, with crime and punishment.
“This is bizarre,” I said.
“But it all makes sense,” Magi said. The son, a man of about fifty, is noticeable in the village because of his deformity. It’s as though his face had been smashed and then smudged to the side like wet clay. He has no nose to speak of, just a lumpy scar over two nostrils under the inside corner of his right eye. His mouth, more a gaping hole with teeth than a usable appendage, starts in the middle of his face and slides into where his right cheek should have been. Magi said, “His face is like that because of his sorcery. He eats the bodies of his victims.” This was such a crime against Nature, he explained, that the man’s features contorted to reveal the depravity of his soul.
“What happens now?” I asked.
“Tomorrow they will be beaten again, and then they will be banished. They’ll never be allowed to return to Babadé.” I stopped my next question before I could ask it. What about the gendarmes, or the police? What about justice? But they could do nothing. This is a case of sorcery, something the government formally denies no matter that every person I’ve ever spoken to, peasants and functionaries alike, believes in it. The best justice we can hope for is that these two will never hurt our village again. For the people of Babadé, that is enough. Grief resides in the unknown, not in the inexplicable. Sorcery is derided by the West, and missionaries have done there best to replace voodoo with Christianity, but in the end, what’s the difference? Voodoo is a religion as any other, with tenets and beliefs and practitioners; it is a gathered set of mythology and ritual used by people to give meaning to the unknown.

The next day in the village people were discussing again the lightning strike, the dead and burned children, the man who ate his victims, the mother who began the spells. Their tone seemed as grotesque as the crime itself, for there was an air of relief palpable in all the conversations. What happened was terrible, the explanation bizarre, and, in my opinion, all the more frightening, but hey, thank God we know what happened, right? I had never believed in the talk of sorcery in my village, and though when my neighbor died I had to accept the verdict that the devil had claimed his soul, I never really took it as validation for all the other stories I’d heard. This, though, was something else. There was an accident, wholly explicable by nature and electricity and human negligence; there was no inquisition, and no wish to begin an inquisition; yet there it was, the confession. We did it, we killed them. We cast a spell and called down the lightning, we killed those we wanted to kill, on the night we wanted to do it. How can I deny this? If I subscribe to the insanity of the sorcerers, I must subscribe then to the insanity of the entire village, and that is not possible. I have to do as my villagers have done, and be comforted by the fact that it was not God or Nature or the ignorance of the children and soundmen. It was sorcery, which can be controlled, either by an expulsion of the source, or, more common in less serious cases, by more sorcery. I won’t try to seek any logic behind it. Crime and punishment; that will have to suffice for me now.