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.