"YOU'RE ABSURD."
Is what I wanted to scream at an appalingly visible flower in the ditch. It looked like the beginning of the universe had been mounted on a green stem then forgotten by the sdie of the Kambia-Conakrey highway. The flower was completely disrespecting its context. You see, I was having a rotten day and it's purple fringed white confusion, a biological representation of the Mandlebrot set, was insisting that life is inherabtly, gorgeously miraculous. I was being subjected to my pet peave of African cahllenges though- transportation issues- and I wasn't about toput up with anything beautiful.
"Thisssss car isn't registered away from me!" Energetically slurred the man that had sprung behind the wheel when the driver stepped away on an important peanut-buying mission. Not caring to witness a property dispute of IMAX 3D proportions, I politely asked the woman sitting on my lap if she would allow me to step out of the car, and, after she put her chickens back in the baset on her lap, she did just that. Fifteen minutes later found me positioned on top of the same seat and under the same woman/bundle of disgruntled fowl. A quarter of an hour had only yielded more frustrations ad the Okada drivers conspiratorily beckoned me to their swift, cheap, and comfortable Honda motorcylces that the Peace Corps decreed we volunteers shall not mount- on pain of being catapulted back to the US of A. The taxis lumbering by were too full or headed the opposite direction from the Kambia bank I was desperately trying to reach before it closed in 25 minutes.
Anyway, the peanuts having been purchased, the man having yielded the driver's seat, and myself having ground half a centimeter of enamel away, the motor started.
My fear of getting to the bank after the doors had closed were not justified. My 2:59 p.m. arrival a minute before closing was greeted by a smiling, AK-47 toting guard and a few heartbeats later I was back on the road looking fora a car. But not before patronizing a cooler-carrying youth with some cold drinks and a roadside butcher selling a few handfuls of sizzling goat. My blood pressure still high, the thoughts going through my head only belonged in an R rated brain.
"Man... you are really enjoying life."
The voice, not my own, came from the dark. My eyes ached, trying to find the quiet source fighting the afternoon sun to look intoa complex of low overhanging tin roofs. Finding a solitary outline, I asked, "Wetin?"
"Your life... is great," the low, raspy voice replied.
Shifting slightly as he pulled a cigarette from his mouth, I noticed he looked like he belonged in the darkets corner of a pirate-bar. The ghost issuing from the glowing tip of the white stick in his mouth wrapped him in a 4th dimensional surrealism. His hat pulled so low revealed little of his face.
I looked at myself through his eyes and noticed how right he was.
"Oh man... I'm such an idiot."
I'm sure he interpreted my stuttered, "Thank you sir, I know" as arrogance, but to me it was the first dominoe in an internal monologue of self-beration. Little frustrations, annoyances, and every occurence making me vex were put back in their proper places as I took stock of my life here.
The oversized hosue I was returning to was a treasure chest of comforts- food stocked on shelves, a thinck mattress in a hand-carved bed, a solar light to keep nighttime outdoors, a battery-powered piano to slide my thoughts across, silverware, plates, filtered water, books, bicycle, aradio, and furniture all surrounded by lockable doors, glass windows, and a roof that didn't leak.
More essential than the tangible, though, I thought about the friends that live near my jewlery box. Thepastor from the local Baptist Church that discusses the latest BBC news report with perceptive additions. The carpenter that lives across the road that regales me with farming stories and magnificent tales of everything we'll be planting behind my house at the onset of the next rainy season. The police employed at the station next door, reslient to whatever problems crashed into them that day- always ready to share a full round of my favorite flavor of humor- sarcasm. The shop owner athe the warf, proud member of the Black Leo family, that turns up in the most unexpected corners of Mambolo and rips a smile out of me. Abdraman,who comes over at 5 in the morning to work out with me, offer to take my clothes home to wash, and connect me with any community member.
All these friendly faces mixed among the radiant, ready smiles of complete strangers living in the foreground of the paradisical Mambolo backdrop was a stiff, needed backhand against the negative adjectives I'd been smearing across my day.
"Man... such an idiot."
I remember getting back to my house, joking that Knut looked like the "purtiest thing ever," his white fur taking on the pink shades of the sky as the sun was ushered below the horizon (I'm sure it was offensive to him, but his english is still weak and he had to swallow the emasculating comment without retort). After a needed night's rest, I woke with a cool breeze sifting across me through the window, and thought, like I have every morning when I've woke lately, "Okay... don't be an idiot today." And then about every amazing thing that entails.
Is what I wanted to scream at an appalingly visible flower in the ditch. It looked like the beginning of the universe had been mounted on a green stem then forgotten by the sdie of the Kambia-Conakrey highway. The flower was completely disrespecting its context. You see, I was having a rotten day and it's purple fringed white confusion, a biological representation of the Mandlebrot set, was insisting that life is inherabtly, gorgeously miraculous. I was being subjected to my pet peave of African cahllenges though- transportation issues- and I wasn't about toput up with anything beautiful.
"Thisssss car isn't registered away from me!" Energetically slurred the man that had sprung behind the wheel when the driver stepped away on an important peanut-buying mission. Not caring to witness a property dispute of IMAX 3D proportions, I politely asked the woman sitting on my lap if she would allow me to step out of the car, and, after she put her chickens back in the baset on her lap, she did just that. Fifteen minutes later found me positioned on top of the same seat and under the same woman/bundle of disgruntled fowl. A quarter of an hour had only yielded more frustrations ad the Okada drivers conspiratorily beckoned me to their swift, cheap, and comfortable Honda motorcylces that the Peace Corps decreed we volunteers shall not mount- on pain of being catapulted back to the US of A. The taxis lumbering by were too full or headed the opposite direction from the Kambia bank I was desperately trying to reach before it closed in 25 minutes.
Anyway, the peanuts having been purchased, the man having yielded the driver's seat, and myself having ground half a centimeter of enamel away, the motor started.
My fear of getting to the bank after the doors had closed were not justified. My 2:59 p.m. arrival a minute before closing was greeted by a smiling, AK-47 toting guard and a few heartbeats later I was back on the road looking fora a car. But not before patronizing a cooler-carrying youth with some cold drinks and a roadside butcher selling a few handfuls of sizzling goat. My blood pressure still high, the thoughts going through my head only belonged in an R rated brain.
"Man... you are really enjoying life."
The voice, not my own, came from the dark. My eyes ached, trying to find the quiet source fighting the afternoon sun to look intoa complex of low overhanging tin roofs. Finding a solitary outline, I asked, "Wetin?"
"Your life... is great," the low, raspy voice replied.
Shifting slightly as he pulled a cigarette from his mouth, I noticed he looked like he belonged in the darkets corner of a pirate-bar. The ghost issuing from the glowing tip of the white stick in his mouth wrapped him in a 4th dimensional surrealism. His hat pulled so low revealed little of his face.
I looked at myself through his eyes and noticed how right he was.
"Oh man... I'm such an idiot."
I'm sure he interpreted my stuttered, "Thank you sir, I know" as arrogance, but to me it was the first dominoe in an internal monologue of self-beration. Little frustrations, annoyances, and every occurence making me vex were put back in their proper places as I took stock of my life here.
The oversized hosue I was returning to was a treasure chest of comforts- food stocked on shelves, a thinck mattress in a hand-carved bed, a solar light to keep nighttime outdoors, a battery-powered piano to slide my thoughts across, silverware, plates, filtered water, books, bicycle, aradio, and furniture all surrounded by lockable doors, glass windows, and a roof that didn't leak.
More essential than the tangible, though, I thought about the friends that live near my jewlery box. Thepastor from the local Baptist Church that discusses the latest BBC news report with perceptive additions. The carpenter that lives across the road that regales me with farming stories and magnificent tales of everything we'll be planting behind my house at the onset of the next rainy season. The police employed at the station next door, reslient to whatever problems crashed into them that day- always ready to share a full round of my favorite flavor of humor- sarcasm. The shop owner athe the warf, proud member of the Black Leo family, that turns up in the most unexpected corners of Mambolo and rips a smile out of me. Abdraman,who comes over at 5 in the morning to work out with me, offer to take my clothes home to wash, and connect me with any community member.
All these friendly faces mixed among the radiant, ready smiles of complete strangers living in the foreground of the paradisical Mambolo backdrop was a stiff, needed backhand against the negative adjectives I'd been smearing across my day.
"Man... such an idiot."
I remember getting back to my house, joking that Knut looked like the "purtiest thing ever," his white fur taking on the pink shades of the sky as the sun was ushered below the horizon (I'm sure it was offensive to him, but his english is still weak and he had to swallow the emasculating comment without retort). After a needed night's rest, I woke with a cool breeze sifting across me through the window, and thought, like I have every morning when I've woke lately, "Okay... don't be an idiot today." And then about every amazing thing that entails.
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