The Great Gbanky Race

“Oh wow, I didn’t know this would be such a big deal.”

The organism that is my village had constricted around the echoing walls of the abandoned rice processing plant that owned a seemingly painted view of the river. Two fo the most humbling trees I’ve ever stood under built a living box on the banks, their roots like straws in the water. The box was stuffed with people.

The stacks of speakers set up inside the abandoned complex slapped my eardrums with the most popular songs saturating Sierra Leone’s pop-charts and lent a festive scent that vendors had caught and swarmed to. Like an avalanche, the citizens had slid to the “Gbanky Race” in such a way that made me think there were more smiles than there were faces in Mambolo that day.

The Gbanky Race is the annual canoe race that invokes the same excited feel as Chinua Achebe’s wrestling competitions. The race is run from the banks near Catonkah to the mid point in the river in direction of Obersay. No more than a half mile roundtrip, the wiley dugout canoes the competitors were captain of hardly cleared the water by inches as they started the race and the tightly packed box of humans cheered.

I would have attended the race regardless, but when Abdraman solicited me for the use of my boat several days earlier, the race gained a great deal more interest. My juvenile, virgin boat to be set not only against the waves, but competitors as well? I agreed of course. If someone was going to take my child into battle and deflower it, I suppose I’d rather that person be made of cast iron like Abdraman than blood and skin and other wimpy stuff.

I can hardly pretend to be proficient yet in Temne, and Krio even gets lost on me occasionally. So, it’s no surprise I was a little confused when Abdraman came the day before the race asking it was alright to talk to some “mammy” about winning the race for him by giving him something that would surely endow him with strength- I resorted to smiling and nodding like an idiot. Why Abdraman would need any more strength was beyond me, and I just wasn’t seeing how the frail old woman I thought he was referencing could import it to him. Answer: Holy Water.

He burst through my door when I opened it for him on race day, “Oh, be brought a little pop bottle full of water. Staying hydrated like a champ.” Then my living room got wet and wild as he flung water at the boat with a semi-maniacal, Grand-Canyon smile on his face. “It will give me strength so I don’t tire in the race!” I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to try a sip.

My dugout canoe has been acting the part of a couch in my house lately, so I as a little nervous some jungle bug had eaten a fatal hole through it. I didn’t want to see a Titanic recreation half way across the river. But what better to protect my boat and its occupant from the water than… with splashes of water.

A moat, portcullis, awful beasts, lasers, and a TV playing a low-quality Richard Simmons VHS couldn’t have deterred the human tsunami that flooded my house later. It was the party to carry the boat down to launch. Abdraman didn’t do anything more than smile as my baby boat was hoisted out my double doors in the front, whoosps, hoops, and hollers were echoing in the house. Alright, this was getting fun.

Okay fast-forward to the start of the race. From my VIP perspective in the judge’s motorboat in the river, I expected an epic. I expected snapped paddles, blood spilling into river water, collisions, capsizing, sweating, cursing. I expected Ben-Hur. Instead I just got a good laugh.

My new boat looked as absurdly white next to the muddy farm boats in the race as I look absurdly white walking down Market Street in Freetown. There was Abdraman, then there was everyone else. I just finished reading A Brief History of Time, but even if I tapped Stephen Hawking’s vocabulary, I just don’t think I could express how absurdly far ahead Abdraman was from the peloton. After rowing through highschool and university for eight years, my definition of a “solid win” is like… a boat length of open water. Abdraman just ripped my dictionary in half.

At the award presentation after, I tripped through the crowd as I heard my name shouted, instructions following that I was to come forward to say something in the mic. Due to the poorly timed fire ant assault on my legs, I only managed to say, “I brought the boat, Abdraman brought the muscle.” Before I limped away to smack the nasty critters off me.

I’m not sure if I’ll take my couch/boat out to race next year, but I guess I did ask a man the other day how much he would charge to carve me some big paddles…

Alright, well as always, the end of my post will deteriorate into disparate fragments of little things I want to mention. Like: All the hair in my armpits fell out the other day. This isn’t said to raise alarm, but just next time you see me and think, “He’s a little different…” It’s probably because my pits are naked. I really feel neutral about the whole thing- I see my armpits about as often as I see my gallbladder- but it’s still remarkable.

Also- I recently felt like James trying to eat my way out of some freak-sized peach. There’s this police roadblock that I pass through every trip to Freetown where people in cars in need of food have developed a symbiotic relationship with fruit vendors in need of hungry people.

“Banana! Banana!” “I don’t want that.”

“Plums! Plums!” “Nope. Not feelin it.”

“Coconut! Coconut!” “No, you guys just aren’t- OH SWEET, WHAT IN THOMAS EDISON’S NAME IS THAT I WANT IT GIVE IT ME.”

I handed some pieces of paper through the car window, and they had a hard time fitting a prehistoric papaya back through to me. Really it’s a crime I didn’t take a core sample or do Carbon-14 dating on it because surely this monster fruit had ruled the planet with whatever ruled before the dinosaurs. Besides being a great conversation piece taking up all my lap the rest of the way to Freetown, It was a feast for every volunteer with a mouth at the hostel (including two volunteers from The Gambia that must’ve followed astrological signs to be present at The Consumption).

Alright, before I start expounding on my other more trivial trivialities- library I’m building, two year old Mabinty I taught to dance like a dinosaur, Zombie-defying medical supplies I discovered in a dark basement, my recent, passionate, fully exclusive relationship I’ve embarked on with spam- let us kindly put this ramble to rest.

PV=nRT

Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is the cutting of or removal of the clitoris.

Complications are generally: Sex for females can become exceedingly painful, nerve ends distorted by the cliterectomy sometimes never heal. Part of a ritual, the knife used to cut the first girl is used for subsequent girls without sterilization. In large groups of girls, this has been said to lead to the introduction of blood-borne diseases, like HIV, during the removal. Psychological significance, no matter the age of the female, can only be imagined.

The coin is flipped now- the perceived advantages of the tradition: During the time of healing after the cliterectomy, priceless instruction is given to the newly circumcised girls. How do you cook? How do you run a household? How do you get, keep, and live happily with a husband? It’s a time when, given the immobilization caused by the removal, the girls are an almost literally captive audience.

A spotlight has illuminated the tradition on the international scene, the WHO, extensions of the UN, and Equality Now championing the awareness campaign fighting to eradicate FGM. Deeply intercalated into West African culture, however, it is proving a hard element for them to distill and eliminate.

For example, like an oil company hearing about the plans for a car that runs on air, the circumcisers that derive their well-being from the tradition have strove to perpetuate it. A child born to an uncircumcised mother aided by a midwife who is also a circumciser will somehow be suffocated. “Babies die at childbirth if the mother is uncircumcised.” An uncircumcised woman is labeled a “borka” and can be unofficially sentenced to the societal fringe. Political doors are closed to her as well as employment opportunities.

Labels and labeling are a strange game. In the debate over abortion in America, one party waves a flag declaring their “Pro-Choice” stance. So what does the opposition party name itself? “Anti-Choice?” Of course not, they are “Pro-Life.” Republicans in the US wouldn’t want to be labeled as “Anti-Democracy” as much as Democrats would fain be called “Anti-Republic.” So would those in favor of maintaining the tradition and preventing the legislative outlawing of FGM consider themselves “Mutalists?” Of course not, they would be “Traditionalists.” And that is what I would like to briefly address. The razing of tradition.

When men spear through buildings, a city, and a nation’s heart with planes, 11 men and women set their countries on fire by self-immolation, and hand grenades are sent into night clubs and bus stops like bowling balls, it is clear that in our globalized theater, men hold the character of their cultures central. Even as removed as I am, the few radio waves that make it through the jungle to my back porch tell the same story of frictions between cultures; white collared cataclysm in the EU, cars and people alike retooled into bombs in the Middle East, and lethal riots in Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Liberia are all shoves against would-be walls forcing a conformity.

Globalization expansion paralleling the speed of technological growth, the dynamics of globalization are sometimes shrouded in as much mystery to governments and their analysts as computers are mystery to survivors of the pre-digital world. Where cultures expand to overlap, painful interactions due to misunderstanding can occur. Where there is misunderstanding, toes will be stepped on.

Sit tight and read this example of cultural ignorance- A student was sitting in a classroom. That would have seemed normal and right except every other student was outside singing the national anthem. Being my responsibility that week to keep students where and when they were supposed to be, I called the boy out of the room with puffed-up authority.

                His limping approach told me without having to ask why he hadn’t joined his peers at assembly, but the question of why there were forty-or-so black circles all over his leg took its place.

“Iron.”

“Iron? You were burned with an iron?”

“Yes.” He looked down and away not showing me his face.

“Who… burnt you with the iron?”

“My mother.”

What kind of depraved punishment was that? What kind of parent does that? Refusing to answer why his mother had burned his lower leg with a cherry-red iron, I wrote his name on my arm and marched to find the closest senior teacher, planning to find out what Sierra Leone’s version of Social Services was.

“It was to heal him.” The senior teacher explained.

“What?”

“They think the heat enters the bone and it heals the child.”

A maniacal mother I’d been cursing in my mind’s eye transfigured to a desperate mother trying whatever she knew to heal her child. You might think I’m pointing out the mother’s medical ignorance here, but I’d like to emphasize my own.

I’m not condoning the use of flesh-burning techniques to heal, and certainly not giving my blessing to the practice of excising a woman’s sex organs, but one thing I wholeheartedly would endorse and encourage is the use of ears and eyes before words and uneducated action. It seems that, given our planet isn’t increasing in volume, as the number of entities in our world increase along with social temperature, the pressure on us will increase as cultures collide with greater frequency. Boiling, freezing- sometimes an explosion- results from these variables going too far askew, and given the narrow range of conditions our species can survive in, let us try something. Being observant.

Observant of the way people differ from you. Observant of disparities. Observant of intentions behind actions. Observant even of the fact that the fervency you supplicate yourself to your religion with can be matched or surpassed by those subscribing to a different set of beliefs. Observant of the toes we don’t even know we might be about to crush.

I’m sure this carries little weight coming from a young mind with no expertise. However, at risk of sounding extremely disrespectful, I’ll say it is much more common for adults to wear glasses to help them see than it is for youth. For example, even the small amount I’ve aged in Mambolo, a Temne dominated region, I’ve lost perspective on the Mende and other tribal regions of Salone that are diverse as river rocks. It’s not because I’m growing senile or ignorant- of course I’ve been learning more and more every day- but when I take time in Freetown to look around at a mish-mash coming together, I see I’ve been becoming narrowed. We’re natives and therefore products of our own culture, and it takes exercise to grow our minds to allow room for different cultures and creeds to crowd in with our own. Observation is that exercise. Observation and the utilization of the awareness that follows.

Let’s look around often. Please.

Giving Thanks

[Being the introduction of the post, this is the part where I hook ya in with a weird little story]

It wasn’t the wrong side of the bed, but I was turned upside down relative to how I remembered falling asleep. Maybe it was something to do with the two fried spamwiches I had pushed down my throat before becoming comatose, but I felt like I’d been stung in the brain by an entire beehive and my body was marshmallow. This is why God invented Folgers, energy drinks, and… screaming children? Seemingly coming from the square of pale sky that said, “Hey!” through my window, the wails of an aggravated child outside made it more unpleasant to remain in bed than it was to pull up the tacks holding my limbs down. I tottered. Around. Just doing whatever people do in the morning. The thought of masticating last night’s leftover rice for breakfast was menacing, so again I tottered. Down the street. Getting crackers from this guy’s shop was common enough, but the next few brain waves I had were new. My back to the rising sun till now, turning to walk back home squared me to a huge, new sky.

                All of Hank Rearden’s furnaces were burning just below the tree line. The clouds streaming up in columns were yet to be back lit and imitated the black clouds that must have billowed from Haphaestus’s own forge. Surely Rome and every other great civilization were burning below the horizon. The vibrations of the new day that found their way through my leaden lids would’ve rung like gold if they could’ve been sounded. I was transformed to a single note in the Gloria. A 5^th, 6^th- and 7^th dimension for good measure- unfolded on me. Whatever kind of polyester that space-time fabric is made of became infinitely deep under my feet as my brain bore down, laden with whatever was overwhelming it. That would really have to be the last time I fry processed meat-by-product and willingly ingest it before sleeping…

[Great! The introduction over, this is where I use a hook to segway from the introduction to the post’s body]

                I think what I was experiencing besides a confounded stomach was thankfulness. For my situation. For the quick silvers of a sunrise and the cherry heat of a rich sunset I knew would come later. For the food in my hands and the baggy shorts on my legs. For the fact that I can walk, swallow, breathe, twist, and talk. I’ve been a little introspective throughout the day, thinking about what other than- upcoming Thanksgiving. Geography aside, I suppose the essence of the holiday can be maintained well enough for me. Barely.

                Given that the only part of ourselves we really leave after we’re ushered through death’s door into the next room is family, and given they’re an ocean and gigantic land mass away- it’ll be a little harder to be with that part of me that’s most worth appreciating.

[Now here’s the part where I talk about my pseudo-family so everything seems alright]

                I recently got a sim card back that allows me to call anyone in Peace Corps Salone free of charge. Awesome. (I forgot my last phone didn’t know how to swim or else I wouldn’t have dropped it in the Great Scarcies River) Anyway, Kim in Rokupr has been giving me the numbers of fellow volunteers so I can replenish my phonebook. It’s really a charming game we’re playing- she gives me just the numbers and somehow fails to tell me who owns them. Ten times out of nine I end up having a great little chat when I call them. It’s a testament to their warmth of character that someone can call them up after a month of off-the-radar oblivion and they’ve maintained such a level of amiability. I’ve never felt “stuck” in Salone, but if I was actually going to be stuck somewhere for a holiday, this is the pseudo-family I would choose to spend it with.

[Now this is the part where I come across as somewhat arrogant, and even extol the advantages of a holiday abroad]

                During my introspection, a little spaceship from my past gracefully crashed into my conscience. The spaceship held a seemingly alien memory of being shudderingly cold, but on the hunt- on the hunt for a great deal. The days of newspapers made obese by their diets of ads and coupons leading up to my Black Friday shopattack were like days of gladiator training before the colesseum. I think it takes longer to flip through the Best Buy ads than it takes my students to study for their term tests.

                I was glad when I realized that whole component will be excised from my holiday season this go around. Sure I’ll struggle to come up with some gift ideas for those within gifting-distance, but they’ll be made at the blacksmith and tailor’s, not purchased from Target and encased in that freakishly strong plastic. It’s not the presence or absence of gifts or even the intentions they’re bought with, but the environment you have to enter to get them back home can be abrasive. I feel lucky.

                Another facet of abroad-for-the-holidays I’m convincing myself is a positive, is the massively different frame these will be set in. Say someone thiefs your shower from your house… then every other amenity you’re used to. You’ll be pretty darn grateful for even a bucket of water and bar of soap. A pot to boil water in. A mattress. A wall with a window in it. Obviously too many things. Like I said before, the penultimate thing I couldn’t be thankful enough for is my family living on a blueberry farm in a valley’s trough, but stripping parades, football games, and commercials out, the lesser things are easy, easy to see.

[Anyway, this is the part I realize I’m writing a little too far towards the fringes of ponder some- therefore boring- and I come up with a humorous or endearing ending to make anything random I’ve just written seem fine]

I guess the thing I’m most thankful for at the moment though is the semi-permeability of my skin. If I was just living in a waterproof bag, I wouldn’t be able to sweat as profusely as I am on my porch right now. Even if it’s spamsweat from last night’s gluttonous chow session, the wind brushing past me makes me feel quite fine. The radiation from that nuclear sunrise this morning has cooled throughout the day and its activities- my school had a devotion ceremony this afternoon wherein it dedicated itself to everyone’s respective version of God, and a handsome Peace Corps volunteer there got to play a few hymns on a sexy, battery-powered LK-30 Casio Keyboard. A letter from the states turned bookmark has turned fan for me, and every flap I like to think flicks me with a little bit of my family of friends that will be celebrating their thanksgivings soon.

                Maybe it comes from being around such happy, friendly people every day here, but I feel charged with enough good will to write to everyone reading this that you should just pretty much have an excellent holiday season and hug your family and stuff.

Going "Home"

                “Tumble Dry Low” was all I could think as I was flipped like a pancake and gently slammed against the smooth, surprisingly abrasive ocean bottom. I’d love to say profound thoughts and unattained dreams glided through my surprised mind in my dying moments, but as the wave tried to churn me to butter, I actually just thought, “Socks have to deal with this business all the time.” A few decades later, the wave that I had been trying to body surf tired of using me as its plaything and continued past to hiss up onto a two-mile long crescent of white sand. Bureh beach looked beautiful as I gagged out a mouthful of salt water, its blue swells, transparent as each wave crested before turning to bubbles, were the temperature of an old bath and could float you for entire days. The furry palm tree-d mountains blasting up from the beach line promised to divulge the entire cast of Lost if you only waited long enough, and the rare cloud hurrying off to its work inland dropped only shadows, not rain. I glanced around for someone to propose marriage to, but, only seeing fellow dudes, I decided to head back to our beach hut and eat some papaya instead. What a waste of a picturesque location.

                After days of working on project proposals and printing out papers to organize my school’s library, for some reason the idea of staying at a tropical beach for a few nights seemed like something I could tolerate. The tragically, miraculously underdeveloped beaches in Sierra Leone harbor small-scale operations boasting huts for sleeping in, hammocs for reading in, and dinners of fresh-caught fish for burying your face in. Violently giggling to myself as  I read through Puck’s stunts and Bottom’s exuberance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream later that evening, I hardly noticed that my hammock was being rocked by the warm breeze coming from the direction of the orange sky that was busy extinguishing itself in the Atlantic.

                Now, it’s a strange feeling and journey to coming back to my village from there, but I’ll at least try to explain the route.

                The first thing to be done is find a shady spot because you might be standing by the side of the orad for a while. A taxi found and a price negotiated, nothing is left to do but try and brush enough sand off your legs to make the close quarters of 8 people ina 5 passenger car seem bearable (Seat belts? Don’t be ridiculous). Now you’re at Waterloo! Not quite a battleground but surely as crowded as Napoleon’s famous fizzle, Waterloo is a place you go to go someplace else. Sitting in a van, taxi, or lorry for an hour waiting for it to fill up can be sweaty, so thank goodness there are one thousandth of a million people shoving water for sale, rice cakes, and “COLD DRINKS COLD DRINKS ONE FOR TWO THOUSAND,” through your windows. Alright, hopefully you’re in the front seat as you drive out of town, you might have some sway over what the (possibly operating) radio blares and be able to hang your head out the window like a dog. Rogbury junction now? Great, usually they sell those skewers of some kind of bush meat and you usually don’t wait long for a taxi to Bomoy-Luma. Landmarks to look for along the way are Port Loko that has a wall around it, and the river with all the naked people washing in it. If you get to Kambia, you’d best get out and go backwards because you’re about to cross into Guinea.

                Bomoy-Luma is an inspiring place. It inspires me to spend boku Leons on stuff. It’s the site of a tireless market that will probably still be maintained by cockroaches after mankind extinguishes itself. I think whatever spirit a bulk-buyer at Costco or Sam’s Club has, lives inside me and has translated itself into Sierra Leone. If you’re anything like me, when you find another lorry, taxi, unicycle, dump truck or winged Pegasus to take you to Rokupr, your bag will be a little heavier with flour and cheese packets and margarine and fruit. I suppose a lunar buggy would even have to stop and change a tire or fix a snapped axle on that next road, so don’t get too anxious if it’s not an expedited trip. My worst (just kidding, BEST) experience there entails escaping from a taxi with the kid that was sitting on my lap as a ditch of water attacked the car and drowned everything from my ankles up to my knees. If this happens, just lift the taxi out, continue on your way, and forget that your butt is soggy. Alright, so you’re in pretty much beauty-central now- Rokupr. The pimply road downhill to the warf gives your eyes an emerald dinner (you’ve been traveling for five hours, so any meal is appreciated) before you’re sinking up past your ears into the busy waterside fiasco. Somehow I’ve always showed up in time to get the last boat out that day, so if you’re going to try the trip bring a boquet of shamrocks for luck. At this point, feeling a pleasant little buzz through the boat from the speck of a motor perched on the back, you can think to yourself, “Home free.” That is if you can hear your thoughts. The density of humanity on those boats is red-line, and I’m working on copying their acoustic properties to amplify my lessons at my students. Alright, after Rocino, Makot, Rowolo, and Carpasseh, you’re bumping into the concrete warf in Mambolo. A short walk fraught with friendly greetings later, you’re unlocking the door to Mambolo Manor, throwing your bag down, and collapsing onto whatever surface will support your tired bones. Congratulations, you just traveled about a hundred miles and it took 7 hours.

                Look, I know this is a stalker’s treasure map if they want to find me, but really- I’d love to have guests. Anyone, on any part of the creep spectrum, is invited.

                Anyway, you might laugh if you watch the day in rewind and realize you had taken a bath in the ocean just that morning. As nice as the whole indulgence of the beach was, I guess I’m realizing how attached I’m getting to my village and community when, instead of thinking, “Good to be back in Mambolo,” I think, “It’s good to be home.”