Not Just Subsisting

My goodness, what a quick two weeks. Really I’ve barely passed the germination of my two years here, but I’m happy to see this many days have passed on the calendar and I’m still kicking- and not just subsisting, but really loving life. I feel bad, but too much has happened since I washed up on the palm-tree plagued banks of Mambolo to give a full account of everything. Here are some highlights:

Probably my favorite part about this eden is the water. The Great Scarcies is the crown that sits on the northern side of Mambolo, clipping the roads short on two warfs. The one that is still in use is the gem on the crown in my opinion- the nighttime there being lit by fat candles and the single generator that does a booming business charging everyone’s phones (and my Kindle… dude, I’ve read like 6 books since I’ve been here). It’s the hangout spot in town, and I’ve already made innumerable trips down to buy Acheke, bread, or play grapf with whoever feels like beating me that afternoon. The coming and going of boats is another facet to the pull of the warf. Plying the rivers from Rokupr all the way to Freetown, the boat captains are all cut of the same humorous, easy-going cloth. Their character, and everyone else’s that’s brave enough to clamber into the leaky hulls, was exemplified nicely on one of the trips I’ve taken to visit Kim and Lauren in Rokupr when our engine died a pathetically short way off the dock—seriously, if I would’ve jumped overboard, the ripples would’ve made the dock fisherman’s bobbers bob. Well here this boat full of 50 people goes drifting listlessly along with the tidal current, and the small boy with the 10 ft. stick at the front of the boat is forced to start doing battle with the random bushes we’re encountering on our leisurely kamikaze float. The people in the boat could be less concerned, even as we enter the outer atmosphere of a planetoid sized bush that happens to be growing in the middle of the Scaries, they’re still locked in mortal argument about the recently elected paramount chief. The captain, meanwhile, seemed entirely unconcerned, noticing but not caring about the boy in the bow getting completely demolished by this prehistoric bush that we’re now passing through the core of. After a quick carburetor surgery, our massive, hulking, miniscule 15 horsepower engine was able to again complain our way down the river. Outside the gravitational pull of bushes, the river has this indescribable beauty that I’m going to try and describe- Ancient Egypt. Barring the raisin sized motors clinging to the back of a few boats, I really can’t see how it would be much different than a snapshot of the Nile a few thousand years ago. The saturated greens of the rice fields pockmarked by mud-speckled farmers flood out from the river’s indefinite banks till they’re told to stop by the legions of palm trees guarding the more solid ground inland. The majority of boats are home to white sails that tug their small load of men and rice sprouts down the river, and the rest are simple dugout canoes that run on the sweat of farmers. The cool breezes really don’t hurt your mood when you’re trying to take it all in either.

I know that was a long one, but there are obviously a few other good things I’ve done or had happen to me while I was here  that don’t have to do with water. Maybe not a good thing but still remarkable, I came back after fetching water this morning and there was a kid in the living room of Mambolo Manor (my house/crib/pad/palace). And by kid I mean small goat. Just chillin. Knut, the puppy he is, was in complete submission-mode, more worried about looking cute like he always is than about the eat-everything-it-can animal that had magiced its way inside our fortress. I said, “Goat! Leave!” It acted like it was dumb and just sniffed some of my shoe tongues I’m sure it planned on eating. It got the point after I told it, in very vocabu-delic words, what kind of entrée I was planning to turn him and his relatives into. Stupid goat. Stay out of my house.

Um, I guess another highlight would have to be when Kim came to visit Mambolo and made the mona lisa of all meals. We made this thing called ‘Pizza.’ Every attempt to recreate it over these next several years will just be that- an attempt.

Alright, I’ve been doing some productive stuff too- with school looming on the near end of the distant spectrum, I decided to commence working my way through the laboratories—cleaning (if I find myself inhaling acid fumes, I quickly search out the nearest base and waft those fumes… so… see how that works?).  Whatever labs that haven’t been used in 15 years look like, that’s what these labs literally resemble. The stereotypical ‘inch of dust’ is of course represented, along with a myriad of other, unforeseeable, mutations. The chemicals have corroded their way into the open, out of bottles and into a speed dating arena where they all love each other, the moths have taken revenge on the poster depicting the best way to dissect an insect, and all hell has broken loose in the skeleton closet- I think the annelids are jealous of the vertebrates, because their perfectly encased specimen blocks have somehow ended up smashed through the jumble that used to represent a school of fiercely-toothed fish.

Look, I’m back in Makeni for the day just visiting and doing bank business- this lady over my shoulder is reminding me that I’ve paid for an hour of internet, and that hour is up. So I need to go. I really hope all y’all stateside are enjoying the fizzling end of the summer and, as you jump back into work, school, or more play, that you do it safely and in good attitudes. If this post was rambling, then I apologize-  blame the mephelquin pill I just ingested.

Take care!