So Shines a Good Deed in a Weary World

Gene Wilder is a genius. On my two most recent trips to the regional transit house, I've watched the old Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I love the song "Pure Imagination." My favorite scene is the one I hated most as a child: on the boat, going through the tunnel, images of insects crawling across people's faces, of a chicken being decapitated; Wonka reciting, at first calmly and lyrically, but then hysterically, madly:

There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing
Is it raining?
Is it snowing?
Is a hurricane a-blowing?
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of hell a-glowing?
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Yes, the danger must be growing
'Cause the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing

Absolute madness. In one of the next scenes everyone (save the chocolate-drinking German boy and his mother) is passing through a room with strips of fruit-patterned lickable wallpaper. Wonka is giddy as a child. "The strawberries taste like strawberries! The snozzberries taste like snozzberries!" Veruca Salt, the little bitch, turns to Wonka and says, "Snozzberries? Who ever heard of a snozzberry?" Wonka grabs her spoiled little face by the cheeks and says "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams."

--

I've taught the children card games. Togolese kids are absolute murder to a deck of cards, but I won't begrudge them a little over-enthusiasm as long as they're having fun. They've learned Egyptian Rat Screwer, and two forms of Speed, and they play them remarkably well. In turn, I've learned the game Huit Americaines, which is a bit confusing at first, but lots of fun. We often all play together under the paillote, sitting at old school desks in various stages of disintegration. The chickens run around the yard, stalking beneath our feet for discarded peanut shells. The women of the compound prepare meals, or serve tchouk, or sit and watch. When somebody new wants to learn, I have the kids teach them. Nowadays both the women in my compound and even a local pastor can sometimes be found sitting on a small stool in a circle of children, slapping doubles, and sweeping up cards.

The first day that the kids learned to play, one of the professors at the primary school came over with some friends to drink. I am not a fan of this man. Two wives, ten children, overweight, and unfunny. The boys were playing as he sat down, callabash in hand. Adele, who had just served him, came back under the paillote to get into the game. "What's she doing?" the fat man said. "She doesn't know how to play." This man often walks into my house without knocking, and his idea of a joke is to tell me he's going to sleep with my girlfriend. "She knows how to play," I said. "C'est toi qui ne sais rien." Adele slapped in, and won the game.

It sounds crazy to make this connection, but I believe that the card games have given Adele more self-confidence. She smiles more often, and won't let the boys cheat her when they play. I haven't even seen her get hit in a long time. She still gets yelled at occasionally, but no more so than the boys. And when the brat cries, he's left to cry.

Even the village seems to be nicer. Recently, a middle-aged man was watching the kids play, and when the game was finished, he took the cards to teach them another game. It was a partners game, and he put two of the boys together, and set Adele at his side. Many of the things I wish to describe seem so lame in words, but imagine if you can, the impact of this move. With the man as her partner, Adele came into a position of power. Not a significant position, and you could argue that it didn't continue following the end of the game. But whereas a week ago somebody was saying she didn't know a thing about cards, now somebody took the time to teach her, and declare her, by making her his partner, his equal. I only wish the first asshole had been there to see it.

--

On occasion I get five or ten francs pieces as change, usually when making a photocopy. They're annoying to have because there's little you can do with them except buy candy. Therefore, I usually save them until a night when I need something from the boutique across the street but am too lazy to go over myself. I'll call a kid over, give him/her the money for the spaghetti or soap or whatever, and then squeeze a ten francs piece into his/her hand. They usually buy the milk candies, little white chewy squares without much flavor, but which are still delicious.

A few weeks ago I'd promised Adele that, since I hadn't brought her anything back from my little trip (I went to Atakpame, or Sokode, or someplace; everybody asks you to bring them something back, it's a cultural thing), I'd get her a sucker from the boutique, which is a whopping twenty-five francs a pop. For some reason I'd never found the time to sneak her the money without the other kids seeing it, or to go myself and get her one. Last Tuesday she was hanging out, doing nothing, and she asked when we could go and get the bonbon (candy). Let's go now, I said.

We looked all over the shelves of the boutique, on the front counter, in the clear buckets, but the suckers were nowhere. "Ils sont finis," the owner said. We had thirty francs on us, so we bought six milk candies instead. "Now," I said to Adele as we walked back home, "I'm going to take one, because I'm hungry. That leaves five. You can share them if you like, or you can have them all to yourself, but if you do that, just make sure you keep them in your pocket so the others don't get jealous." Naturally, I assumed and expected her to keep them for secret treats at night.

We continued in silence, the air sharp and delicious with the scent of the lime trees along the path. After a moment, Adele handed me another candy. "What's this for?" I said. "I want you to have another," she said, "and then I'll give one to Lidao, one to Theo, one to Maman, and keep one for myself." She stored three in her pocket, and took the one she'd reserved for herself, unwrapping it carefully, and bit into it deliberately, neither devouring it, nor savoring it. Her eyes wandered over the corn in the field, the women at the water pump, the fruits hanging from the baobab, and when she looked at me, her mouth broke into her shy smile and she giggled. And let me tell you, I could have stayed right there with her forever.

Il y a la fatigue

How are things, you crazy Americans?
Things here? Okay, I guess.
Don't really feel like talking.
Going to Europe soon, I hope.
Ready to get out of Togo for a bit.
Have stories to tell.
But don't want to write them now.
Au revoir.

Hugs and Kisses

Tomorrow, my little brother and sister will turn seventeen. They have jobs and drivers licenses and interests in the other sex. They will be seniors in high school come August. This all freaks me out just a little.

After giving birth, Mom was laid up in bed, exhausted and whatever else women are after having twins. I was six years old. I'd just finished kindergarten, was going to start first grade in the fall. I don't know what Gaetano was doing with his time. Dad, obviouly, was at work.

Mom and Dad had decided to use reusable cloth diapers from a service in lieu of the disposable ones they'd had for Gaetano and me. I don't know if it was the diaper service or the hospital who'd given it, but as I was wandering one day, alone as far as I can remember, bored because those tiny human apostrophes were sleeping, I found an instructional video. How to strap the baby seat in the car. How to burp, I think. And how to fold the cloth diapers.

I guess this is the long of way of telling you that I was the first one at home to change Nick and Anna's diapers. I remember teaching Mom how to do it. Honestly, for all I know, Mom and Dad had done it before and were humoring me, or maybe I just don't remember this well at all. But anyway.

We pushed them around in a twins stroller, a long basket in which they could both lay down. It was a light sky blue, the color you see behind wispy clouds. There was a mosquito net. I remember a day many years later when we all gathered to look at that stroller, and nobody could comprehend how those two were ever tiny enough to fit inside. I still can't imagine it.

We have pictures of their first birthday, when Nick blietzkrieged his cake and Anna negotiated with hers like a one-year old Neville Chamberlain.

I look at recent photos of them, remembering their dirty and dainty birthday faces, and can't help but wonder what the hell's been going on in the past sixteen years that made them decide to grow up.

Anna is still short. When I was in college, if, when I would call home, Anna answered, conversations were often like this:

Hello?
Hey, kiddo, how's it going?
Good.
Still short?
Yup.
Alright. That's all I needed, talk to you later.

One time she actually said, "Okay," and hung up on me.

Nick is gangly; skinny, but muscling out (at least since the last time I saw him). He and I used to lean on the counter in front of the answering machine, thinking of stupid shit to record. If you called us anytime in the past five or six years, you probably heard some of it.

The point is, seventeen is no longer a little kid, though it's not the adult they think it is. But for some reason, no matter how big they get (save Anna), they are always, in some way or another, the tiny little babies sitting in that stroller, in diapers I likely folded around them.

I love those kids. I once made a list of the people in my life I loved the most. Number one was Grandma. Tied for second were those two.

Happy birthday, kiddos. I miss you like hell, and then some.

In the Ground, On the Mind

Land disputes led me to essentially abandon the field for about two weeks. The president of the community development committee, the group that had given me the land, croaked his way through an angry explanation. I've never really been able to understand him, and it's worse when he's pissed. He said he'd put sticks in the ground at each of the four corners of my field. He said the quantity of land would not be diminished.

Last Monday my homologue took me to the president's farm, since we hadn't been able to catch him at the house. He took us, speaking only in Kabye, to where my land was. There were no sticks. The size had been cut by more than half. He showed us the northeastern corner. "Where are the other limits?" I asked. He waved his hand in a southerly direction and spoke in Kabye. "What'd he say?" I asked my homologue. "Over there, over there."

The next day I went to the director of the CEG to ask him for several students to help me cultivate. What followed was a patronizing conversation about just what the hell did I think I was doing out there? If the village gave me the land, the villagers should help me. If the students are going to be cultivating, the school must receive the harvest. But, wait. I must not have understood, he said.

After twenty-five minutes of calling in other professors--all whom bitch about the director as much as I do--to agree with him, I finally understood that he was asking me just what would happen with the trees I was planting after I leave. You know, a year and a half from now. I don't know, I told him. I guess that's your problem, not mine. He wasn't buying that.

In the end, I got the students. They worked, turning up the earth and sweating and talking about me in Kabye. They worked through the rain. They worked till an hour before dark, and then we left.

I spent all of Thursday and Friday in the field, sowing seed. Rows of trees, rows of corn, a few sunflowers. Tapping small holes in the dirt with a branch I cut from a tree in the field. Throwing in two or three seeds, tapping the dirt back into the hole. Friday night I could barely move my wrist. My skin was more red than brown, hot to the touch. My eyes felt sunburned. Next week I have to finish the second half.

Had this been a few weeks ago, the president and the director would have pissed me off to no end. Maybe it's the new medication, maybe it's realizing that these assholes will always stand in the way of my work, and there's no way around it. Regardless, I didn't give a shit, and it was nice not to.

A Togolese friend and I were washing my clothes one day. I was quiet, fuming, having been kicked off the very land I was cultivating that morning. Land where I'd transplanted trees, raised seedlings, watched pigs and cows trample and eat my garden beds. "Thoughts," he said, "make a man crazy. Leave the thoughts, hold your sanity." Not too long after that, following several straight days of inebriation, the emotional crisis of a friend, and Papa's funeral, brought me to my regional capital. I took my friend aside, and told him what my clothes-washing Togolese buddy had told me. "Sure," said my friend, "but what kind of life is it, when to enjoy it, you must not think about it?"

He's right, maybe. But I'm not going to ponder on that too much. I want these good days to ride along for awhile.

I don't have everyone's email. That's why there's a blog.

Here's a mass email. If you didn't get it, I'm too lazy to look up your address. So here you go.

Dear y'all:

I have not written in a while. And now that I am writing, and am using an American keyboard, I keep typing as though it were a French keyboard. "Some" becomes "so;e" and my name looks like Qnthony. If I wanted to type "wezelo," the Ewe word for welcome, it would be "zewelo." Those French are loony.

That notion is reinforced by the story I found in the "Readings in Intermediate French Prose" book I liberated from the essentially abandoned library in village. It's clearly a donated book, published sometime in the 60s. It was in between a history of the United States (in French), and old homework assignments past volunteers assigned to kids. All was surrounded by rat shit.

I've been reading this book to improve my French, obviously. I learned the word "desespoir," the opposite of "espoir;" the latter also has its synonym "esperance" (they both mean 'hope,' though espoir is masculine and esperance is feminine; please excuse any lack of accents). Within this book I found a story of a Frenchman who decided that too many people died on shipwrecks. After months of research into the nutritional content of seaweed, the amount of ocean water you can drink, etc., the maniac set off in a rubber raft with a bottle of water, some string, a knife, and a hook. He lived.

I decided to read this story to my troisieme class, to give them an example of the importance of being well-acquainted with the environment. I sent three kids home early, and stopped reading to make the kids put their heads down on the desk. I hate teaching.

That's the real reason I haven't been writing. The truth is I've been miserably depressed for about a month now. The only things I have to write about are my frustrations, and I was tired of sending out letters like that; they made me even more depressed.

To cap off this month, I'm going back to Agou-Nyogbo, the village where we trained. That really is a beautiful place, and I did love it there. During our Thanksgiving field trip the girls made a superlatives list, and we all voted. I was elected Most Likely to be Adopted by my Host Family. Daniel was as much my brother as Gaetano or Nick. My host mom used to call me "TH," for Tony Hadzi (their last name).

But when I called Maman last week to tell her I would stop by to see her, neither of us were too excited. "Ca va?" I asked. "Ca ne va pas," she replied. Papa had died.

While my bond with Maman was as strong as my bond with my real mother, Papa and I were not quite as close. Nevertheless, Papa was a good father, and the only Togolese man I've ever seen horse around with his wife. We used to sit and listen to the radio together, watching soccer on Ghanian television. The day I left Nyogbo for good, he called me into the living room. He looked me in the eye, through his crooked glasses with the prescription sticker still on, and he said, "Tony. Stay healthy. Stay happy. The work will follow from there."

I don't ever ask this, but if you could, whether it be by prayer or some hippie method, send good vibes to Chez HADZI this weekend. Maman is a good woman, with good kids, and she loved her husband as he loved her. They have been the best part of Togo for me, and Papa's death is taking its toll on Maman, and I'm sure the kids as well.

Sorry for the downer email. I'm changing malaria meds, so hopefully the hallucinations and depression will stop. Then I'll be able to write positively "instead of bitching to [my] ever so supportive and beauiful and wonderful girlfriend all the time."** Till then, toodles. I hope you're all doing well.

-Tony

**quote forcefully inserted by said girlfriend

Adele, part two

The next day was normal. School was cancelled in continuation of the May Day celebrations. I don't remember anything that I did.

Towards evening, the sky clouded up. It had the texture of hand-whipped cream, and the color of a quiet pebble. Monsieur was standing outside the compound. He'd spent the day playing board games beneath the rafia tree. "Que pensez-vous?" I asked. "La pluie va tomber?" He was positive that it would not. I decided that I would not walk to the field to water the trees.

The night before I'd heard Monsieur chastising the boys. It was in Kabye, so I didn't understand it. There was no punishment doled out as far as I could see. Monsieur is a good man, but a product of his culture. Punishing the boys was not necessary. Warning them not to do it again would suffice.

What kills me about the whole thing is that those boys did something terrible to her. Adele is not a crier. I've never seen anybody weather the injustices doled out to her with such dignity or patience. To find her drenched in tears, shaking with sobs, barely able to breathe because of it, I knew whatever happened had been bad. I told this story to a volunteer friend, and she asked if I'm sure hitting her was as far as the boys had gone. I don't want to entertain the notion. Besides, I think those boys are homosexuals.

Back to Friday, the day after. After quizzing Monsieur on the weather I piddle around for a bit in the house. It's tchouk day chez moi, so several of the old men in the community have stopped by to drink. I tell them I'll join them as soon as I take a shower. As I shiver under the first callabash of cistern water, the rain begins to fall.

While I'm inside changing, the boys and Adele are running around the compound, putting buckets in strategic spots to catch the rain water. I close my windows against the wind and head under the paillote to wait out the downpour with the old men. Everybody is under some sort of roof.

Pretty soon the wife of the history professor is yelling across the compound. "Adele! Adele!" A bucket of insufficient size has been placed under the gutter runoff on the roof near their part of the compound. She wants Adele to empty the bucket into the cistern. Adele does not protest, but sprints across the compound and takes care of the job. When she puts the bucket back under the gutter, the wife tells Adele to wait for it to fill up again. She does not invite her inside.

I'm wearing jeans, a sweatshirt, and my fleece jacket, a clothing combination unheard of in this climate, but I'm freezing. Adele is under the gutter; the wind is blowing the rain straight at her. She is dancing, hopping from foot to foot, her hands clasped together across her body, trying to keep warm. Her skirt and thin blouse are completely soaked.

She empties the bucket into the cistern again, places it under the gutter, and continues to wait. Nobody in the compound is paying attention to her but me. She's absolutely freezing. And I decide I hate this place. I hate that a day after what must have been a heartless beating, if not worse, Adele is called out in the rain, tiny and shivering, to empty water from a bucket she did not place into a cistern she will not use. I hate these people and their customs. I hate the mentality that says cultures aren't wrong, just different. I want to wake up Adele one night when she's fallen asleep on the concrete patio, wrap her in a blanket and take her home. I want to give her sisters, and friends, and coloring books, and a day with no chores. I want to save her, but I have no idea how.

As I'm watching her, as guilty as any of the indifferent men under the paillote, I wonder what she's thinking. What she must wish for in the face of a life like this. Then Adele takes a stutter-step running start, and dives on her belly across the smooth concrete porch. She must have slidden ten feet. I can't help but laugh out loud. She gets up, turns to me, and buries her hands in her face. All I hear is the sound of the rain, and her giggles. She smiles at me, checks the bucket. She dives again.

Adele, part one

She stays with Madame and Monsieur, but she's not part of the family. Eleven years old, the only girl in the compound. She usually walks around in just a skirt, no shirt; she's not developed yet. Her hair, like that of most Togolese children, is close cropped. Her head has a long shape to it in the back, which counterbalances the bulge of her under nourished belly. The scar under her left eye is thick and off-angle, and looks more like an accident than the ritual scars of the others. She is a beautiful girl. Being a guest in the house, she does the majority of cooking, cleaning, and laundry than any of the other kids. She is also the scapegoat when anything goes wrong. Madame frequently smacks her, usually on the back of the head, or on the arms; once across the face that I've seen. The boys pick on her mercilessly. She is forbidden to touch any of their possessions, and they exclude her from most of their activities; or they would, that is, if she wasn't constantly occupied by chores. Sometimes they hit her, too. I had never seen her cry.

The May Day party ended and I went to water the trees. When I came back to the compound, no one was around. The only sound in the air was the static and music blasting from the speakers in the abandoned school building which now houses the mill, and is a favorite site for parties and pick-up soccer. As I came toward the rear of the compound, I heard the rapid hiccough of air that signifies crying. Leaning against the wall near the shower stalls was Adele. Her face and chest were soaked in tears; her body was shaking. I knelt beside her and put a hand on her back. "What happened?" They hit her. "Who?" She wouldn't say. I told her to come sit down with me, have a mango, drink some cold water, calm down. "I can't," she said. "I have to make dinner."