We finally got the hotel room, complete with cable television, hot showers, and a free voucher for the buffet lunch, which included veal, bow-tie pasta with a creamy sauce, salad bar, and a fruit platter, amongst other things. We took a nap, and then went down to check out and catch the shuttle back to the airport. Some Nigerian travelers who were in a similar situation as us were already on the bus. One of them was in the front-most seat, where on the ride to the hotel the baggage had sat. The driver, an Egyptian named Mohamed that Larissa and I had determined was "a nice guy," asked the Nigerian to please move to the back so that he could load the luggage up front. The Nigerian didn't like this, and with a sharp look to his two sycophants, they began to ridicule Mohamed. He, Mohamed, shook his head and Larissa and I threw him our spiritual support. We were not fans of the Nigerians.
When we got to the airport, the Nigerians beat us to the EgyptAir counter, where a representative was holding all our passports. The Egyptian, a large-nosed younger man with close cropped hair, was sitting in front of a computer. We assumed he was taking care of something for the Nigerians, so we didn't say anything. After a moment, the man looked up, saw us, and asked us where our transfer was. "Casablanca," we said. He picked up our passports, walked out of the office, and said, "Follow me." As we turned to be led past security and into the proper terminal, the Nigerians' eyes followed us in disbelief. Their jaws dropped. They had been totally ignored.
The flight to Casablanca was nice and uneventful. We landed at 11:40, twenty minutes before the last train to Tangier, where we needed to go to take the ferry into Tarifa, Spain. We got my bag from the claim, went through customs, and headed to the train platform at the base of the elevators. The conductor was walking towards us from the platform. "Come on, come on," he said, "we go now. You pay on the train."
"We don't have any cash," we said.
"Oh. Sorry. Tomorrow morning, then."
The next train, then, was at 7 am. It was midnight. We decided to sleep in the airport. The unheated airport. For the next seven hours. We piled on our clothes, huddled together on a leather bench in the check-in area, and shivered in our sleep.
The next morning, still cold, we got our tickets and boarded the train. Since the three-car train that leaves the airport only ever goes as far as the main Casablanca terminal, we had two hours to kill in the central part of town before our six-hour train ride to Tangier. It was a cold day, but the sun was bright, and silhouetted the clock tower of the station before us. We headed to a small cafe along the main road, and Larissa got a grilled cheese and egg sandwich, and I got a yogurt. We ordered orange juice, and the man squeezed it in front of us. When we finished eating, they brought us some complimentary tea, which Larissa used to warm up her nose. Then we walked down the street to a small park with tended lawns, clean benches, small trash cans, and palm trees. We like Morocco, we decided.
We spent the last thirty minutes waiting for our train to arrive at the station sitting between two women. The woman on our right just stared at us and the woman on the left covered her face with a shawl and stared at us. Although slightly warmed by the sun, Larissa was still shivering. The woman on the left offered her one of her gloves for two minutes, which Larissa accepted. Finally our train arrived and as we got ready to board, the glove-lender raised her hand as if expecting some change for her two-minute one-glove lending service. We both feigned ignorance, threw her some of our best innocent grins, and boarded the train.
A brief note on Moroccan winter dress/fashion: these people know how to battle the cold. The women wear brightly colored shawls, while the men wear hooded robes that look like Franciscan monks had their winter coats designed by Klansmen. They are dark or light brown, go all the way to the floor, and have hoods which remain remarkably pointy, even in the wind.
The train ride was nice. We slept for most of it. Morocco is in the middle of their rainy season, however, and through the windows of the train we could see the whole countryside, covered with a green velvet sheen. Herders with their meager flocks sat amongst their grazing sheep, cows wandered over the countryside, donkeys loaded with vegetables made their way to market.
We finally made it to the Tangier station about three in the afternoon. We took a taxi from the station to the port and bought tickets for the ferry which would take us to Tarifa. At the customs desk to get on the ferry, a man had hijacked all the disembarkation forms. To fill one out, you had to give your passport to one of his flunkies, who would then fill it out for you. At first we thought they were officials who did this for a living, but their jump suits said "Sanitation," not "Immigration." They were janitors, and when they were done, they held out their hands for a tip.
The thing is, though, that we'd spent all our Moroccan dirhams on the train, the taxi, and the ferry tickets. All we had left were one dirham coins, about 12 and-a-half cents. We held them out to the janitors, and in their Arabic accents they said, "One dirham? You give me one dirham?" They shook their heads in disgust and let us past.
And then we were on the ferry. A thirty-minute ride across the Strait of Gibraltar was all that was left of the journey to Spain. My parents, who had flown into Madrid on Saturday and rented a car, were waiting for us in Tarifa. Since we had no way of contacting them, and since they had been expecting us since the morning in case we'd gotten that midnight train, I was nervous as the sun set over the waters, the blue of day turning into the purple of twilight and finally into the inky black of night on the sea. But when we got off the boat, they were there. So excited to see us, they waved with all their hands.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Cold and The Spanish Sun, pt. 1
After some trouble with a money-changer at the Togo/Ghana border, Larissa, a husband and wife combo from PC/Niger, and I rented a private car from Aflao to Accra, a three hour drive. The beginning of the road was similar to Togo. Potholes and dirt, the flora along the edge of the asphalt painted burnt ochre by dust. But as the road became smoother, the painted lines whiter and crisper, the mud huts and the tin roofs gave way to massive fenced-in factories, signs for local farms, and finally subdivisions and duplexes. I felt like I was in a suburb of Ft. Lauderdale.
In Accra itself there were overpasses, exit ramps, readable signs, working traffic lights. Larissa and I got out along the highway, and crossed the road to the mall, to spare the driver a time-consuming turn through the highway's cloverleaf. In the mall we ate fast food, played Wii in a bookstore, checked out the movies playing in the theater, and shopped in a real grocery store. When we were done, we took a taxi to Champs, a sports bar, and feasted on Nachos con carne, washed down by draft beers and a whiskey on the rocks. Except for the occasional piles of trash, and the ever-present little black market sacks, it was hard to believe we were in Africa.
The airport seemed slick and shiny, with clean plastic check-in counters. The attendants were polite and helpful, and we got our tickets and checked our bags with no trouble. The only "African" experience I had during those hours in Ghana was at passport control, when the attendant asked me to give him one of the books I was reading. I told him no, so he gave me his phone number and told me to call him when I got back, so that we could be friends.
At 11:15 pm, our flight to Cairo was announced. We all walked outside into the little bus that carried us across the tarmac to where the plane was waiting. We boarded, met a Yale business student who knows a former volunteer we know, and then fell asleep in the cold recycled air of the plane, the lights flickering into dimness, the hum of the engines steady and true.
We landed in Cairo at 7 am, with thirteen hours to kill before our flight that evening to Casablanca. The Egyptian sun rose later than in West Africa, and the air was so cold our breath escaped in clouds. When we finally made it to the transfer passengers waiting area, we were told our complimentary hotel room would be ready within an hour, and if we could just sit inside the waiting area to the left, they'd call us when it was ready.
While I was in the bathroom, trying to jump out the door over the mop of the tip-hungry bathroom attendant, Larissa was approached by a representative from EgyptAir in charge of QuickTours, who offered her a pamphlet with possible tour options during our layover. When I got back, Larissa brought me up to date as the man came over.
"Hello, Hi, my name is Ahmad." He told us the options we had in lieu of a hotel room. For only $70 each, for example, we could visit the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. If we threw in an extra $30 each, he'd throw in a tour to the Egyptian Museum as well.
"Hmm..." we said. "We'll have to think about it."
"Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do." Ahmad sat down and straightened his tie. "I'll go talk to my people and see if, since you are Americans, I can bring ze price of ze pyramid trip down to just $55 each. " People think it's just the French who say 'the' with a z, but apparently it's the Egyptians, too.
And then he rushed off. He came back fifteen minutes later with our other options:
"Okay, so, you can take ze hotel room and just rest. Or you can take ze tour, for only 55 US Dollars each, for both ze pyramids and ze Sphinx."
"Well..."
"Or, you can forgo ze hotel room for free visas, so zat you can walk around ze city yourselves."
This option made me a little curious.
"So, I have a question. If we just take the hotel, does that mean we have to stay inside the hotel, since we won't have these visas? Or are we allowed to leave and walk around?"
"Oh, yes, you can walk around, zat is no problem."
"Then why would we give that up for the free visas?"
"Tell you what," he said, "I have another choice. If you want to leave right now, you can skip ze hotel room, we go to ze pyramids and ze Sphinx for 55 dollars each, and I will cook you breakfast here."
"What? At the airport?"
"Yes, yes."
"Tell you what," we said. "We'll do the pyramids and the Sphinx for 55. We'll just need to exchange a little money first."
"Okay, zat is no problem, I will make ze arrangements."
What we didn't know, though, was that none of the exchange banks in the airport, and really, throughout most of Africa, accept traveler's cheques these days. And they also wouldn't exchange Ghanaian Cedis, or West African Francs. Between us, we only had about 40 USD. So when Ahmad came back, with a sign-up list (or maybe his breakfast menu?), we had to tell him that, really sorry, we just wouldn't be able to do the trip, so could we just get that hotel room please?
Ahmad disguised his disappointment well, and said that, yes, no problem, he would take care of zat right away for us.
Thirty minutes later, however, Ahmad came back to sit down in front of us. "Okay," he said, "I have one final option. You see zese people over zere?" He nodded behind him. Yes, we saw them. "They have signed up for ze tour, but zey are only three, and the tour needs at least five. If you would like to go with zem, immediately, you pay only 25 American dollars each, and you leave right now."
"Sorry, Ahmad," we said, "But it's the same problem as before, we just don't have the money." He nodded and said okay. As he was getting up to leave, we asked again about that hotel room. "Oh yes," he said, "I will take care of zat right away."
Two hours later, we are sitting in the same seats in the waiting area. Other EgyptAir employees have been calling people by their destinations, taking them to their complimentary hotel rooms. We have heard nothing about us, about anyone going to Casablanca. We have not seen Ahmad since his last promise to us two hours ago.
Around 12:15 Ahmad walks into the waiting area. He's not wearing his suit jacket, however, and he doesn't make eye contact with anybody in the room. He's carrying a sandwich. He proceeds to eat it. He finishes at 12:45. He gets up and leaves.
A few minutes after he leaves, I find Ahmad and ask him about that hotel room he said he was going to work out for us.
"Oh yes," he says, his shoulders slack in their disinterest. "Well, you see, zat is not my department. You must go over to zat desk right zere."
In Accra itself there were overpasses, exit ramps, readable signs, working traffic lights. Larissa and I got out along the highway, and crossed the road to the mall, to spare the driver a time-consuming turn through the highway's cloverleaf. In the mall we ate fast food, played Wii in a bookstore, checked out the movies playing in the theater, and shopped in a real grocery store. When we were done, we took a taxi to Champs, a sports bar, and feasted on Nachos con carne, washed down by draft beers and a whiskey on the rocks. Except for the occasional piles of trash, and the ever-present little black market sacks, it was hard to believe we were in Africa.
The airport seemed slick and shiny, with clean plastic check-in counters. The attendants were polite and helpful, and we got our tickets and checked our bags with no trouble. The only "African" experience I had during those hours in Ghana was at passport control, when the attendant asked me to give him one of the books I was reading. I told him no, so he gave me his phone number and told me to call him when I got back, so that we could be friends.
At 11:15 pm, our flight to Cairo was announced. We all walked outside into the little bus that carried us across the tarmac to where the plane was waiting. We boarded, met a Yale business student who knows a former volunteer we know, and then fell asleep in the cold recycled air of the plane, the lights flickering into dimness, the hum of the engines steady and true.
We landed in Cairo at 7 am, with thirteen hours to kill before our flight that evening to Casablanca. The Egyptian sun rose later than in West Africa, and the air was so cold our breath escaped in clouds. When we finally made it to the transfer passengers waiting area, we were told our complimentary hotel room would be ready within an hour, and if we could just sit inside the waiting area to the left, they'd call us when it was ready.
While I was in the bathroom, trying to jump out the door over the mop of the tip-hungry bathroom attendant, Larissa was approached by a representative from EgyptAir in charge of QuickTours, who offered her a pamphlet with possible tour options during our layover. When I got back, Larissa brought me up to date as the man came over.
"Hello, Hi, my name is Ahmad." He told us the options we had in lieu of a hotel room. For only $70 each, for example, we could visit the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. If we threw in an extra $30 each, he'd throw in a tour to the Egyptian Museum as well.
"Hmm..." we said. "We'll have to think about it."
"Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do." Ahmad sat down and straightened his tie. "I'll go talk to my people and see if, since you are Americans, I can bring ze price of ze pyramid trip down to just $55 each. " People think it's just the French who say 'the' with a z, but apparently it's the Egyptians, too.
And then he rushed off. He came back fifteen minutes later with our other options:
"Okay, so, you can take ze hotel room and just rest. Or you can take ze tour, for only 55 US Dollars each, for both ze pyramids and ze Sphinx."
"Well..."
"Or, you can forgo ze hotel room for free visas, so zat you can walk around ze city yourselves."
This option made me a little curious.
"So, I have a question. If we just take the hotel, does that mean we have to stay inside the hotel, since we won't have these visas? Or are we allowed to leave and walk around?"
"Oh, yes, you can walk around, zat is no problem."
"Then why would we give that up for the free visas?"
"Tell you what," he said, "I have another choice. If you want to leave right now, you can skip ze hotel room, we go to ze pyramids and ze Sphinx for 55 dollars each, and I will cook you breakfast here."
"What? At the airport?"
"Yes, yes."
"Tell you what," we said. "We'll do the pyramids and the Sphinx for 55. We'll just need to exchange a little money first."
"Okay, zat is no problem, I will make ze arrangements."
What we didn't know, though, was that none of the exchange banks in the airport, and really, throughout most of Africa, accept traveler's cheques these days. And they also wouldn't exchange Ghanaian Cedis, or West African Francs. Between us, we only had about 40 USD. So when Ahmad came back, with a sign-up list (or maybe his breakfast menu?), we had to tell him that, really sorry, we just wouldn't be able to do the trip, so could we just get that hotel room please?
Ahmad disguised his disappointment well, and said that, yes, no problem, he would take care of zat right away for us.
Thirty minutes later, however, Ahmad came back to sit down in front of us. "Okay," he said, "I have one final option. You see zese people over zere?" He nodded behind him. Yes, we saw them. "They have signed up for ze tour, but zey are only three, and the tour needs at least five. If you would like to go with zem, immediately, you pay only 25 American dollars each, and you leave right now."
"Sorry, Ahmad," we said, "But it's the same problem as before, we just don't have the money." He nodded and said okay. As he was getting up to leave, we asked again about that hotel room. "Oh yes," he said, "I will take care of zat right away."
Two hours later, we are sitting in the same seats in the waiting area. Other EgyptAir employees have been calling people by their destinations, taking them to their complimentary hotel rooms. We have heard nothing about us, about anyone going to Casablanca. We have not seen Ahmad since his last promise to us two hours ago.
Around 12:15 Ahmad walks into the waiting area. He's not wearing his suit jacket, however, and he doesn't make eye contact with anybody in the room. He's carrying a sandwich. He proceeds to eat it. He finishes at 12:45. He gets up and leaves.
A few minutes after he leaves, I find Ahmad and ask him about that hotel room he said he was going to work out for us.
"Oh yes," he says, his shoulders slack in their disinterest. "Well, you see, zat is not my department. You must go over to zat desk right zere."
Friday, January 9, 2009
Tony Peeks Under His Own Hood
Sometimes I wish I'd studied something in college a little more practical than English. Like physics, or some short-bus version of engineering, or biology. Although, I doubt I could biologize, or physicize or even engineer as easily and readily as I can write. Maybe it's not such a big deal that I don't write as much as I think I should. What do physics majors do with their free time? I'd probably juggle a lot, to admire gravity. Or shoot a hose at a high arc, google-eyed and slouch-jawed about the molecular structure of water, which really is probably the most pleasurable thing I can think to watch.
Or maybe another language, studied in detail, till the point of fluency. I speak French pretty well, and I have enough interest in it that I know I'll speak it pretty well for a long time after I'm done using it in Africa. Honestly, I'll probably speak better French when I leave here. I try to read novels in French sometimes, and I get them, I understand them for the most part, but I never get that suck-in-your-breath feeling like when I read DFW or Jonathon Safran Foer or Saul Bellow. But I'd like to, you see.
And then there's all the kinds of handy skills I wish I knew. Horse-shoeing, metal-working, complex carpentry, even plumbing or being an electrician. And what about brick masonry?
I feel like if I were younger, still influenced by the Romantics, still taking myself way too seriously (it's actually pretty embarassing how seriously I took myself from, like, 10-16; it got better after that, but I'm still a bit of a self-important weirdo), I'd consider all these desires as an indication of the question, "Who am I?" But, you know, I feel pretty comfortable with who I am. I've got a good grasp on that, like an old woman gripping her morning mug. I just want to make the me that's here and now a better person for whatever might come up in the future.
Also, I'd like to be the kind of guy who can reference a funny anecdote whenever the occasion calls. Like when people interviewed Kurt Vonnegut, and instead of responding directly to their questions he'd say, "Well, you've heard about the man who fell off a cliff, right...?" Or something like that.
You want to know how to tell if a friend of yours is a genuine person? Feed them a Sloppy Joe. The cleaner their hands at the end of the meal, the less you can trust them. That's a fact. Like, right now, I'm eating a sandwich while typing this, and let me tell you, it's hard to see my shirt through the breadcrumbs. I'm a man who keeps his word.
Speaking of Kurt Vonnegut interviews, I just read an old one I found on McSweeney's, and the interviewer mentioned a movie in which the afterlife was individualized, with every person reliving one memory, just one, for the rest of eternity. Vonnegut said his would be this:
"I think it would be the moment where I was doing everything right, where I was beyond criticism. It was back in World War II. It was snowing, but everything was black. The trucks were rolling in. I was surrounded by my buddies. And my rifle was between my knees, my helmet on my head. I was ready for anything. And I was right where I belonged. That would be the moment. It would have to be the moment."
What would my moment be, if I had to choose right now? I can't think of a specific year, but it would have to be one of the many Fourth of July corn roasts at the Lake. What would yours be?
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Passing Thoughts
On Saturday I go to Spain with the gf. To meet the parents. I'm in Lome now, getting my Ghana visa. We're flying out of Ghana. Into Cairo. Layover. Into Casablanca. From there, if all works out, the midnight train to Tangiers, and then the seven-thirty ferry to Tarifa. Where the parents will be waiting with a rented car, not likely red of color, eating tapas in the shadow of a church next door to the restaurant.
Tim and I have been emailing dreams. How we'll make money once I get back home so that we can go to Japan. The book he wants to write, how he wants me to be a part of it. It's a travel book. I told him I'm in. I haven't told him that travelling abroad secretly scares me. Visas and passports and WHO cards with all the proper vaccinations. The conversion of money, the unknown market prices. Some people tell me that travelling in West Africa is harder than in other places. I wish I could be comfortable knowing there are things I don't want to do. But I just feel a kind of personal weakness.
Have you heard? I am having a wedding. With the gf. The dowry is: two bottles of sodabe, four bottles of whiskey, a case of beer. My host mother wanted to get it town to just two bottles of whiskey. The gf thinks she's worth all four. Maybe five.
At the Ghanaian Embassy, two middle-aged Canadian missionaries were filling out visa applications. I said, "Hello, fellow North Americans." The man, looking out of place in Africa in a baby-duck yellow polo, said, "We're from Canada actually, but close enough." I think he misheard me. The wife was nicer.
I walked from the Embassy back to the Bureau. That's a taxi ride of about 800 F CFA. That's pretty far, for a white kid. Or so they tell me.
The thing I most want to do in Spain is to go bowling.
Monday night, before leaving village, Lidao and Adele came to hang out with me before I left. I had to grade papers, so I set up my little laptop and put on Kung Fu Panda. Theo came in shortly after. I couldn't concentrate on grading. I kept looking at the backs of those little black heads as they shook with laughter. They were beautiful.
Tim and I have been emailing dreams. How we'll make money once I get back home so that we can go to Japan. The book he wants to write, how he wants me to be a part of it. It's a travel book. I told him I'm in. I haven't told him that travelling abroad secretly scares me. Visas and passports and WHO cards with all the proper vaccinations. The conversion of money, the unknown market prices. Some people tell me that travelling in West Africa is harder than in other places. I wish I could be comfortable knowing there are things I don't want to do. But I just feel a kind of personal weakness.
Have you heard? I am having a wedding. With the gf. The dowry is: two bottles of sodabe, four bottles of whiskey, a case of beer. My host mother wanted to get it town to just two bottles of whiskey. The gf thinks she's worth all four. Maybe five.
At the Ghanaian Embassy, two middle-aged Canadian missionaries were filling out visa applications. I said, "Hello, fellow North Americans." The man, looking out of place in Africa in a baby-duck yellow polo, said, "We're from Canada actually, but close enough." I think he misheard me. The wife was nicer.
I walked from the Embassy back to the Bureau. That's a taxi ride of about 800 F CFA. That's pretty far, for a white kid. Or so they tell me.
The thing I most want to do in Spain is to go bowling.
Monday night, before leaving village, Lidao and Adele came to hang out with me before I left. I had to grade papers, so I set up my little laptop and put on Kung Fu Panda. Theo came in shortly after. I couldn't concentrate on grading. I kept looking at the backs of those little black heads as they shook with laughter. They were beautiful.
Friday, December 26, 2008
Maman and Daniel
When I was helping with the training group in Agou at the end of November, I didn't go eat as often with Maman and Daniel as I had when I was there in October. I'd gotten a little sick last time, and by the end of the week wasn't eating any of the food that Maman was preparing, so this time I didn't want her to waste anything on me. Nonetheless, I would go over there when I could. Daniel was out and about most of the time, or wandering around the courtyard searching for something he wasn't sure he'd lost. I helped Maman make the couscous she served me one Tuesday, and when I couldn't find an egg sandwich on the side of the road, she insisted one night that I buy the necessary ingredients so she could make it for me at the house. She really is a great mother.
I've recently come to enjoy fufu, the pounded yam dish that is a staple of the Togolese diet. A few days before we were to leave Nyogbo for the swear-in in Lome, I asked Maman to prepare it for me. She says she'd eat fufu every meal of every day if she could, so I wanted her to eat with me, instead of just serving me my couscous or salad at the table and then retreating to the kitchen to make her own lunch. Okay, she said, and we agreed on the next day.
She let me pound the yams along with Daniel and the little girl she took in shortly after Gerson died. When it was done and the sauce was hot, she scooped blobs of the white pasty yams into aluminum bowls and poured the sauce all over it.
We sat in the mini courtyard in front of the kitchen, in the shade of the overhanging tin roof. Daniel was off playing in the abandoned church next door, the little girl was washing some clothes in the yard, and the trainee was studying in his room. We ate in silence at first, my fingers burning against the sauce, my tongue scalded by the chicken. It was delicious.
It's not a Togolese habit to talk and eat at the same time, but Maman knows me well enough to humor me with conversation. She's a lively discussionist, her face a panoply of expressions. We were probably talking about the training, the upcoming departure, my work in village. Whereas before it was I who would steer the conversation towards Gerson's death, this time Maman picked up the thread.
"I still don't know why he died," she said. Her confusion is both physical and existential. The doctors have been unable to tell her what killed Gerson; she cannot understand why God would take such a good man so soon.
"They say," I said, "that only the good die young." It was weak, but I had nothing else. "Maybe God takes the best of us early because he needs them with him."
She didn't like the explanation any more than I did. "He had so much left to do here," she said. Then, in a voice a little more broken: "Why would he leave me?" I didn't look up to see if there were tears in her eyes, but I heard the sniffles.
"I don't know, Maman. But he was a good man. We were the ones lucky enough to be here with him. We have to remember that." My eyes were moist now, too. Maman wiped her nose silently on her apron.
"I worry about Daniel," she said. "He doesn't want to study. He doesn't want to go to school. I tell him to go to his uncle's house during the breaks, but he refuses."
"He's afraid to leave you. He's afraid he might lose you too."
"He used to be first or second in his class. Every year. But now he doesn't care. I said, 'Daniel, why have your grades fallen?' He says because now that Papa has died, no one will buy him a bike if he gets first, so he doesn't try. He's looking for his father, and he knows that he won't find him."
"Maman," I said, and I looked up at her. "You don't need to worry about Daniel. He's a good kid. A great kid. And I know this for two reasons: he had a great father; and he still has a great mother."
She was no longer sniffling. Her face was constricted, as though she were slightly in pain. She was looking away from me, into the fronds of a palm tree behind us. Her voice was shaky now.
"Lately I've been waking up at night from my dreams. In each one I'm some place I don't recognize. I'm surrounded by people I don't know. I get scared, and in the dreams I start to cry. I go into a corner to try to hide, and I hide my head in my hands, wanting to escape. And then I hear a voice calling 'Maman, Maman!' I see Daniel. He's waving at me, running toward me. And I know that he's coming to protect me."
We finished our meal in silence, and I helped Maman with the dishes. "Do you want me to get you some plantains for when you leave again?" she asked.
"No, Maman. Then I won't have an excuse to come back here and eat with you."
"You need an excuse to come back here?" She looked at me with her not-really-insulted smile.
"Never, Maman," I smiled, "Never."
I've recently come to enjoy fufu, the pounded yam dish that is a staple of the Togolese diet. A few days before we were to leave Nyogbo for the swear-in in Lome, I asked Maman to prepare it for me. She says she'd eat fufu every meal of every day if she could, so I wanted her to eat with me, instead of just serving me my couscous or salad at the table and then retreating to the kitchen to make her own lunch. Okay, she said, and we agreed on the next day.
She let me pound the yams along with Daniel and the little girl she took in shortly after Gerson died. When it was done and the sauce was hot, she scooped blobs of the white pasty yams into aluminum bowls and poured the sauce all over it.
We sat in the mini courtyard in front of the kitchen, in the shade of the overhanging tin roof. Daniel was off playing in the abandoned church next door, the little girl was washing some clothes in the yard, and the trainee was studying in his room. We ate in silence at first, my fingers burning against the sauce, my tongue scalded by the chicken. It was delicious.
It's not a Togolese habit to talk and eat at the same time, but Maman knows me well enough to humor me with conversation. She's a lively discussionist, her face a panoply of expressions. We were probably talking about the training, the upcoming departure, my work in village. Whereas before it was I who would steer the conversation towards Gerson's death, this time Maman picked up the thread.
"I still don't know why he died," she said. Her confusion is both physical and existential. The doctors have been unable to tell her what killed Gerson; she cannot understand why God would take such a good man so soon.
"They say," I said, "that only the good die young." It was weak, but I had nothing else. "Maybe God takes the best of us early because he needs them with him."
She didn't like the explanation any more than I did. "He had so much left to do here," she said. Then, in a voice a little more broken: "Why would he leave me?" I didn't look up to see if there were tears in her eyes, but I heard the sniffles.
"I don't know, Maman. But he was a good man. We were the ones lucky enough to be here with him. We have to remember that." My eyes were moist now, too. Maman wiped her nose silently on her apron.
"I worry about Daniel," she said. "He doesn't want to study. He doesn't want to go to school. I tell him to go to his uncle's house during the breaks, but he refuses."
"He's afraid to leave you. He's afraid he might lose you too."
"He used to be first or second in his class. Every year. But now he doesn't care. I said, 'Daniel, why have your grades fallen?' He says because now that Papa has died, no one will buy him a bike if he gets first, so he doesn't try. He's looking for his father, and he knows that he won't find him."
"Maman," I said, and I looked up at her. "You don't need to worry about Daniel. He's a good kid. A great kid. And I know this for two reasons: he had a great father; and he still has a great mother."
She was no longer sniffling. Her face was constricted, as though she were slightly in pain. She was looking away from me, into the fronds of a palm tree behind us. Her voice was shaky now.
"Lately I've been waking up at night from my dreams. In each one I'm some place I don't recognize. I'm surrounded by people I don't know. I get scared, and in the dreams I start to cry. I go into a corner to try to hide, and I hide my head in my hands, wanting to escape. And then I hear a voice calling 'Maman, Maman!' I see Daniel. He's waving at me, running toward me. And I know that he's coming to protect me."
We finished our meal in silence, and I helped Maman with the dishes. "Do you want me to get you some plantains for when you leave again?" she asked.
"No, Maman. Then I won't have an excuse to come back here and eat with you."
"You need an excuse to come back here?" She looked at me with her not-really-insulted smile.
"Never, Maman," I smiled, "Never."
Saturday, October 25, 2008
AIDS Ride
On the last day of biking for AIDS Ride Centrale, both teams headed from Wassarabo to Agoulu, stopping in one village each along the way for a morning sensibilisation. The road was hilly and rocky and beautiful, and some of the bikers had to walk up the hills. Those that pedaled up stopped at the top for breath. Going down the hills was absolute, wonderful terror.
AIDS Ride consists of groups of volunteers and Togolese counterparts riding to hard-to-find villages and giving sensibilisations about AIDS prevention. Each region coordinates their own routes, and how they'll perform every sensibilisation, but we all do it the same week. Funded by two organizations here in Togo, we were 'required' to sensibilise at least two hundred people at every village, the majority of them from the target demographic, which group is obvious when I tell you that we handed out lots and lots and fucking lots of condoms. It was tons of fun.
The two Centrale teams ate together almost every meal every day, but we rode to different villages to maximize the number of sensibilisations per day. Each group did one in the morning, one in the afternoon, with the time between spent biking or eating.
On Wednesday, orange team did a morning sensibilisation in a Muslim village (no alcohol), and then headed two kilometers down the road to our village for the afternoon, where there was, while not a bar, a small boutique with Flag beer and a fridge. We ordered some beers, and sat under the big ugly tree in the center of village, where in two hours we would do our afternoon performance.
Depending on the day, I either hate kids in this country or love them. As I rolled up under the tree on my bike, a group of about twenty kids had gathered round the rest of the volunteers already seated on straw mats on the ground. One of the easiest ways to amuse ourselves in this country is by chasing little kids, so I rode straight into the group, dispersing them, and then hunted one down to give him a pat on the head. The fear in his eyes was entirely real, and the laughter of the men and women sitting on the fringes of the public square echoed between the mud walls of houses.
One rule of thumb when dealing with kids is to never pay attention to them if you want them to go away. Thanks to my little pursuit on the bike, the group had swelled to at least fifty kids. I opened my beer, and saw several little ones smiling and pointing at me, so I casually got up and then chased them on foot, capturing one, who was crying when I reached him. This, naturally, made even more kids want to come around. By the time I reached my mat and took another sip, there were well over a hundred children encircling us.
It's a feeling I always hate, even if I provoke it: being trapped by children, stared at like a zoo animal. They smile and laugh and call us Whitey, they point and imitate and ask each other questions, but the moment you approach them, no matter how calm your walk or benign your intentions, they scatter in utter fear. I've seen kids too scared to even run properly, and in the melee they stumble, nearly trampled by their peers, while the very white man he or she was running from comes over to pick him up and dust him off.
I decided I would no longer chase the children, so as they crept closer and closer to us, I tried calling them over. Only one was brave enough to come, and when I shook his hand the rest of the kids giggled. I get a real kick out of speaking to them in English, so I started telling the kid a knock knock joke. He started repeating me, and did pretty well with it, especially the word "banana." I noticed other kids in the crowd mouthing along, wanting to get special attention as well. I started the joke again, indicating to all the kids to repeat, which they did. Call it a simple pleasure, but that was one of the funniest things I'd heard in a while, and I was so giddy when they finished that I just had to chase them again.
Since white people can hold a kid's interest for hours, we decided to change the strategy from trying to run them off to trying to wear them out enough to go home. Another volunteer taught them freeze tag; I taught them the hand jive; we played a rousing round of the Hokey-Pokey; the freeze tag guy, Marcus, taught them Red Light Green Light, which they didn't understand at all; at the end, just as the hour of our sensibilisation approached, Marcus just started clapping his hands, trying to work them into different rhythms. When syncopation failed, he went with the classic Queen stomp-stomp-clap. By the end he had all the kids singing "We will rock you."
Things have been going well for me here, and AIDS Ride was amazing in all its aspects, and that afternoon with the kids gave me enough happy memories to last for a little while now. School has started again, and I'm much better prepared for it this year. I'm teaching the kids how to write expository and persuasive essays, so that they can articulately express the concepts they learn in class. Tomorrow I head off to Agou, to spend a week with the trainees. I saw the gf for her birthday, and we 'celebrated' our one-year-together mark on the twentieth, while she was sleeping in a dispensary in some small village and I was sinking into the cushions of a couch at the volunteer's house in Tchamba. There exist every day small and large frustrations, and the desire to get this second year over and done with is big. But I understand things better now, I'm more patient, less influenced by smooth talkers, and I've begun cutting my own hair. Things have, if not gone on the upswing, at least levelled off. I'm hoping to keep this up for awhile.
p.s.
I haven't written any letters at all in a long long while, so to those who think I've forgotten about them I say "Nay." You are just as loved and missed as before.
AIDS Ride consists of groups of volunteers and Togolese counterparts riding to hard-to-find villages and giving sensibilisations about AIDS prevention. Each region coordinates their own routes, and how they'll perform every sensibilisation, but we all do it the same week. Funded by two organizations here in Togo, we were 'required' to sensibilise at least two hundred people at every village, the majority of them from the target demographic, which group is obvious when I tell you that we handed out lots and lots and fucking lots of condoms. It was tons of fun.
The two Centrale teams ate together almost every meal every day, but we rode to different villages to maximize the number of sensibilisations per day. Each group did one in the morning, one in the afternoon, with the time between spent biking or eating.
On Wednesday, orange team did a morning sensibilisation in a Muslim village (no alcohol), and then headed two kilometers down the road to our village for the afternoon, where there was, while not a bar, a small boutique with Flag beer and a fridge. We ordered some beers, and sat under the big ugly tree in the center of village, where in two hours we would do our afternoon performance.
Depending on the day, I either hate kids in this country or love them. As I rolled up under the tree on my bike, a group of about twenty kids had gathered round the rest of the volunteers already seated on straw mats on the ground. One of the easiest ways to amuse ourselves in this country is by chasing little kids, so I rode straight into the group, dispersing them, and then hunted one down to give him a pat on the head. The fear in his eyes was entirely real, and the laughter of the men and women sitting on the fringes of the public square echoed between the mud walls of houses.
One rule of thumb when dealing with kids is to never pay attention to them if you want them to go away. Thanks to my little pursuit on the bike, the group had swelled to at least fifty kids. I opened my beer, and saw several little ones smiling and pointing at me, so I casually got up and then chased them on foot, capturing one, who was crying when I reached him. This, naturally, made even more kids want to come around. By the time I reached my mat and took another sip, there were well over a hundred children encircling us.
It's a feeling I always hate, even if I provoke it: being trapped by children, stared at like a zoo animal. They smile and laugh and call us Whitey, they point and imitate and ask each other questions, but the moment you approach them, no matter how calm your walk or benign your intentions, they scatter in utter fear. I've seen kids too scared to even run properly, and in the melee they stumble, nearly trampled by their peers, while the very white man he or she was running from comes over to pick him up and dust him off.
I decided I would no longer chase the children, so as they crept closer and closer to us, I tried calling them over. Only one was brave enough to come, and when I shook his hand the rest of the kids giggled. I get a real kick out of speaking to them in English, so I started telling the kid a knock knock joke. He started repeating me, and did pretty well with it, especially the word "banana." I noticed other kids in the crowd mouthing along, wanting to get special attention as well. I started the joke again, indicating to all the kids to repeat, which they did. Call it a simple pleasure, but that was one of the funniest things I'd heard in a while, and I was so giddy when they finished that I just had to chase them again.
Since white people can hold a kid's interest for hours, we decided to change the strategy from trying to run them off to trying to wear them out enough to go home. Another volunteer taught them freeze tag; I taught them the hand jive; we played a rousing round of the Hokey-Pokey; the freeze tag guy, Marcus, taught them Red Light Green Light, which they didn't understand at all; at the end, just as the hour of our sensibilisation approached, Marcus just started clapping his hands, trying to work them into different rhythms. When syncopation failed, he went with the classic Queen stomp-stomp-clap. By the end he had all the kids singing "We will rock you."
Things have been going well for me here, and AIDS Ride was amazing in all its aspects, and that afternoon with the kids gave me enough happy memories to last for a little while now. School has started again, and I'm much better prepared for it this year. I'm teaching the kids how to write expository and persuasive essays, so that they can articulately express the concepts they learn in class. Tomorrow I head off to Agou, to spend a week with the trainees. I saw the gf for her birthday, and we 'celebrated' our one-year-together mark on the twentieth, while she was sleeping in a dispensary in some small village and I was sinking into the cushions of a couch at the volunteer's house in Tchamba. There exist every day small and large frustrations, and the desire to get this second year over and done with is big. But I understand things better now, I'm more patient, less influenced by smooth talkers, and I've begun cutting my own hair. Things have, if not gone on the upswing, at least levelled off. I'm hoping to keep this up for awhile.
p.s.
I haven't written any letters at all in a long long while, so to those who think I've forgotten about them I say "Nay." You are just as loved and missed as before.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
A Brief Entry on Health, With No Theme
Yesterday, instead of going to the Embassy to meet with the relevant secretary, I spent pretty much all day sleeping on the couch in the volunteer lounge, or shitting out my guts in the volunteer lounge bathroom. Whereas in the States, bodily waste is either number 1 or number 2, here in PC/Togo we have 1,2,3, and 4. The first two are the same; 3 is when you don't so much shit as you piss out your ass; 4, which is more common than I care to reflect upon, is when you both shit (either type-2 or type-3) and puke at the same time. Yesterday I held steady at number 3. This was accompanied by extreme abdominal pain, extreme headache, extreme nausea, and general weakness that left me either unable to get up or on the brink of fainting every time I did.
Today, however, I am fine.
In terms of health, I'm probably one of the most resilient volunteers here in Togo. There are other volunteers who rarely get ill, and when they do their illnesses last only for the short term, and require little medication but lots of rest. There are also those who have had no health problems but who then become gravely, frighteningly ill.
I can't really accurately say what the average health/sickness cycle is for most volunteers, because many of the illnesses (amoebas, giardia, other shit living intestinally) last for a long time (often due to lack of treatment due to unwillingness on volunteers' part to go to the med unit) and become part of the daily ignorable routine. I do know, however, that my girlfriend gets 'sick enough' about once every month or so. Not so sick that she has to be rushed down to Lome, but sick enough that she's in pain/on the toilet for more than one day in a row. Not to reveal anything too personal, but she was the first person to define number 4 for us, from experience.
So I consider myself lucky, when it comes to health. The sickest I've ever been was the night of a cluster-mate's going away party. The four of us in the cluster got matching bubus, with are like mumus, and then had ourselves a beer and tchouk crawl. I personally drank 3 liters, 30 centileters of beer, and three calabashes of tchouk (chugged; we were racing against some Togolese dudes at the tchouk stand). Needless to say, the rest of the night was immemorable.
My relatively good health here in Togo, in conjuction with my capable language abilities, often leaves me (usually while sitting at a bar) thinking to myself that, yes, I can handle being overseas. I can survive living in Togo, or another part of Africa, or even a place a little more 'accepting' of my skin color. But right after I have this thought, I realize that I don't want to survive in these countries, I want to go home. This always leaves me feeling slightly guilty.
Guilty because it brings up the questions that I sort of addressed in the last post, about privilege and luxury and all the aspects of zero-sum theory, which, at its most basic, says that one cannot have without depriving another. My good life in the States must is directly correlated to the poor life of someone somewhere else. If I'm totally wrong on my interpretation of zero-sum, I apologize, and would look forward to explanations helping me understand it further.
I try not to let the guilt overtake me. Dave Eggers wrote, in, I believe, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, though it might have been AHWOSG, that being born into privilege (in my case, white middle class in the United States) is so far beyond the choice or guidance of the individual that to feel guilty is useless. What are you going to do, give away everything you have, become poor and suffering on the side of the street? Sure, you could, but being a semi-utilitarian, I think you should never throw away the opportunities you already have. After all, my privilege has brought me to Africa, in an attempt to help an apathetic populace (my remarks are very editorial), which most people would say is a good thing, which deep down I still believe has merit and value, despite the reality that I've seen here face to face.
The other thing that eases my guilt is the simple and plain fact that I love the United States. Geographicall, socially, politically (despite some really frustrating shit), and emotionally. I am not a European, or an Asian, or an African, I am an American. It's weird how I'm just now beginning to get comfortable with that. When I was young (like, 22 and below) I thought so highly of people who spent long stretches of time living overseas. I thought that any capable, intelligent person would not only be able to live in a foreign country, but would choose to do so, and that those who could not, or would not were missing some key element in their lives. I no longer hold the expats in such high regard (though neither do I fault them; to each his own). It's both humbling and comforting to realize how important my life in the States is to me, and that I don't ever want to let it go again.
Today, however, I am fine.
In terms of health, I'm probably one of the most resilient volunteers here in Togo. There are other volunteers who rarely get ill, and when they do their illnesses last only for the short term, and require little medication but lots of rest. There are also those who have had no health problems but who then become gravely, frighteningly ill.
I can't really accurately say what the average health/sickness cycle is for most volunteers, because many of the illnesses (amoebas, giardia, other shit living intestinally) last for a long time (often due to lack of treatment due to unwillingness on volunteers' part to go to the med unit) and become part of the daily ignorable routine. I do know, however, that my girlfriend gets 'sick enough' about once every month or so. Not so sick that she has to be rushed down to Lome, but sick enough that she's in pain/on the toilet for more than one day in a row. Not to reveal anything too personal, but she was the first person to define number 4 for us, from experience.
So I consider myself lucky, when it comes to health. The sickest I've ever been was the night of a cluster-mate's going away party. The four of us in the cluster got matching bubus, with are like mumus, and then had ourselves a beer and tchouk crawl. I personally drank 3 liters, 30 centileters of beer, and three calabashes of tchouk (chugged; we were racing against some Togolese dudes at the tchouk stand). Needless to say, the rest of the night was immemorable.
My relatively good health here in Togo, in conjuction with my capable language abilities, often leaves me (usually while sitting at a bar) thinking to myself that, yes, I can handle being overseas. I can survive living in Togo, or another part of Africa, or even a place a little more 'accepting' of my skin color. But right after I have this thought, I realize that I don't want to survive in these countries, I want to go home. This always leaves me feeling slightly guilty.
Guilty because it brings up the questions that I sort of addressed in the last post, about privilege and luxury and all the aspects of zero-sum theory, which, at its most basic, says that one cannot have without depriving another. My good life in the States must is directly correlated to the poor life of someone somewhere else. If I'm totally wrong on my interpretation of zero-sum, I apologize, and would look forward to explanations helping me understand it further.
I try not to let the guilt overtake me. Dave Eggers wrote, in, I believe, You Shall Know Our Velocity!, though it might have been AHWOSG, that being born into privilege (in my case, white middle class in the United States) is so far beyond the choice or guidance of the individual that to feel guilty is useless. What are you going to do, give away everything you have, become poor and suffering on the side of the street? Sure, you could, but being a semi-utilitarian, I think you should never throw away the opportunities you already have. After all, my privilege has brought me to Africa, in an attempt to help an apathetic populace (my remarks are very editorial), which most people would say is a good thing, which deep down I still believe has merit and value, despite the reality that I've seen here face to face.
The other thing that eases my guilt is the simple and plain fact that I love the United States. Geographicall, socially, politically (despite some really frustrating shit), and emotionally. I am not a European, or an Asian, or an African, I am an American. It's weird how I'm just now beginning to get comfortable with that. When I was young (like, 22 and below) I thought so highly of people who spent long stretches of time living overseas. I thought that any capable, intelligent person would not only be able to live in a foreign country, but would choose to do so, and that those who could not, or would not were missing some key element in their lives. I no longer hold the expats in such high regard (though neither do I fault them; to each his own). It's both humbling and comforting to realize how important my life in the States is to me, and that I don't ever want to let it go again.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)