Field Trip

“I’ve made a mistake.” I thought with something more than serious chagrin. I was feeling like my friend or I was about to die—it was my dehydrated state versus my height, but given the shiny, well hydrated mud coating my visible (and invisible) skin, I guessed the lightning would choose me as a lightning rod rather than my companion… a full two feet shorter than me.

When Ibrahim and I had started our tour of the farms, everything had been blue skies and butterflies. Knut had come on our walkabout and could only be seen like a gangly white dolphin as he arced in and out of the chlorophyll-green fields. After a fifteen minute gloppy walk away from the road across the beautiful rice though, cannon fire started in the eastern skies and an obscenely phallic cumulonimbus announced its unswervable intention to steamroll us into the thigh-deep mud.

Crossing my eyes- one pointing to the clouds, the other observing where the deep green of his well-fertilized field ended and the yellow tinge of his neighbor’s farm began- I immediately affirmed Ibrahim’s suggestion to return.

A short two minutes later, my tympanic membranes went scrambling for a bomb shelter before they were exploded. The low, dark forerunner of the perversely shaped cloud brightly connected the short distance to the ground every handful of seconds, bragging immediately after with serious boomness. Being the tallest object in a square mile, I spent a few seconds, ostensibly the last of my pre-lightbulb life, wondering if my post-jog dehydration was enough to dissuade a million volts from illuminating me. Then the rain came.

“Double time?” Ibrahim asked without a trace of question in his voice.

The rain falling felt like a marriage of the line-drive that nailed me in coach-pitch and the time I wore shorts and tanktop to paintball in. The mud turned to muck then again to mostly liquid just as Ibrahim and I reached the raised road running through the farms. Ibrahim chuckled because we were the same color, then summed everything up nicely, “This field trip has embarrassed us.”

By the time we made it back to Mambolo proper, the rain had washed most of the embarrassment off us, but somehow had left Knut incredibly filthy to create a swamp in my parlor.

I’ve been having ‘different’ days like that lately. A few afternoons ago I was desperately trying to not make Brontosaurus sounds. I had been carted off to a great location- another swamp- this one so big it disappeared with the horizon. The sun was spraying through a bordering palm forest tattooing golden globs on newly planted rice shoots. The fog heaving out of the ground lent the prehistoric feel that was encouraging my narrowly suppressed Jurassic Park reenactment.

The other humans with me were speaking deep, mumbled Temne I could understand, so I had been keeping up a steady chat with my brains. IT was boring conversation and went something like,

“This is the DEEP BUSH.”

“Yup. If this bush were any deeper it’d be poking up in the Solomon Islands.”

“Yeah. So deep.”

I’d been having such a great day, and at that point didn’t even know some kid was about to run out of the bush, give me a veritable barrel of bananas, then leap back into the bushes. A little banana ninja is what he was.

The reason for that evening’s excursion was to find a weaver in the bush that would make me enough country cloth to cover my body. Someone recently said my body is “becoming to be gigantic,” so a truly skilled artisan was called for. Such a man was only found days later- living several hosues away from me.

Ayway, with the 10-month-till-home point in my service securely passed, I’m trying to have as many ‘different’ afternoons while I’m here to have them.

Call It What You Will

Just a student lying on the staffroom floor twitching. Five teachers sitting at the table trying to look bored. One casually opens a dictionary to look up a tricky English word, a woman in the corner languidly looks on as the girl quivers—now violently, now quietly pulsing.

A man arrives on an Okada, unassuming in his baseball hat and Hawaiian pattern button-up. He takes her socks off and begins to remove her demon by pulling her small toes sideways. A choked ‘no’ escapes her and she gives herself over to the seizing barrel-rolls that have characterized her episode. Now, grabbing her twisted, rigidly adducted arms, he strains against this small girl’s strength to bring them together, breaking her flexed, crucifix form.

Her mother appears in the doorway exhibiting the expected affectations—wailing, bowing beating her chest—pausing for a moment to add a genuine tear as her daughter’s body writhes away from the man now whispering softly in her ear.

Smoking embers are brought to choke her demon. The pall of smoke takes the place of what little conversation was left hanging in the room. A rhythm less dance begins around the girl, teachers placing chair cushions where the girl is expected to convulse to.

“Demons” everyone murmurs as the girl is carried out, her body completely rigid between the hands carrying her at ankles and shoulders. Her eyes remain tightly shut as she’s made to straddle a motorcycle, her face thrown back and arms out to the sun as she’s motored away between driver and father.

“Demons.” Everyone mutters again before returning to the table and their books.

Feeling Sick

Having cholera would feel much better than being told my three year old friend had just died from it. Tolo was brazen. He must have been the most theatrical kid I’ve known, his gravid eyes always reminding me of stage makeup you would see on a Pharaoh. Touting water and often having to aggressively defend myself, too many times this berserker among children would prove my most worthy opponent. Not settling for a ten-foot charge, Tolo always gave himself a ten yard runway, focusing his energy into his foot-long legs instead of shouting like his myriad of other attacking peers.

“Juvenile fools,” I always imagined him thinking, “let me show you how to topple a white man.”

Our encounters always ended the same—me with spilled water all down a leg and him with a size 11 ½ footprint square in his chest. I used to wonder if the little guy needed prescription contacts (how could you run at an outstretched leg for thirty feet and still manage a full-speed collision?), but eventually amended my opinion: black-baby descendant of Braveheart or he loved slapstick comedy as much as I do. But Ya-Ah’mamy stopped me with my bucket of water yesterday to tell me he had died. Her own eyes, expressive as her grandson’s had been, looked like melting glass before she started sobbing.

You were so awesome, little guy. Your family misses you and I sure do too. Heck, given how many times I saw you sharing your rice with Knut, I’ll say he even misses you. There’s such a loud silence on your porch, in our neighborhood, that we have to listen to every day now.

What’s been burning me since your grandmother cried out an explanation of your last few days to me isn’t so much the thought of you hallucinating till the last system in your dehydrated body shut down, but the image of those standing by your bed during your last bit, refusing to take you to a hospital. Devils and an uncontrollable force didn’t take you, Tolo, it was a treatable sickness, superstition, and a bent kind of love.

I’m making that long, hot trip to the Luma market tomorrow for you and your playmates. Hopefully people use the boxes of soap I bring back. Ibrahim even said he’ll help me distribute, so maybe instead of laughing at my mangled Temne our neighborhood will learn a thing or two about hand washing and how to prevent the sickness that killed you. I can’t help but think this should’ve been done sooner.

Future Jared Tomb Raider

America had faded from my peripheries, shrunk in my rearview, and now might have floated off to Australia for all I knew. I was standing on my porch in Mambolo, 8,000 miles away. After my two day home-to-home transit, my keys had sunk to the deepest level of my bag. Their jingling was mean spirited laughter as I completely unpacked outside to find them, water splattering all around more like marbles than drops. The rainy-season was welcoming me home. Flicking aside the key to a truck parked on another continent, I plunged my house key into the lock, twisted, then opened.

It had been so easy in America to laugh of worries about my African house and properties. Let future Jared deal with whatever goes wrong, alright? Well now I was future-Jared, and it was time for me to face the music. Was that really a leak sprung in my roof three weeks ago the night before I left? What happens to a back yard in the jungle left unattended? Had vermin, chickens, and children taken to cohabitating in my house? And where was Knut anyway?

“TombRaiderBAM!” I shouted as I kicked my double doors in. I wanted whatever rat, snake, or goat in the place to know the SWAT team was home and trigger happy. Congratulating myself on a forceful entrance I unsuctioned the usual crowd of porch children that had attempted intercalation into my legs and took a bold step inside. Hollywood has certainly taught us how not to enter an abandoned building filled with cobwebs. Namely alone and in the dark, but I know the other obvious things not to do—like meekly say “hello” as the wind slams the door shut behind me. That behavior summons men with axes.

The first thing I noticed was the green tumor/chandelier that was bulging/hanging from my ceiling. Very vivid green mold. Noted.

My next observation was a few shades stranger and more worrying than even late 1990’s Michael Jackson—dead mice scattered across my floor. Don’t get me wrong, not-living mice warm my heart, but four intact, un-nibbled carcasses gave me pause. The circle of life is vibrant in the deep bush where I live, even the chitinous exoskeletons of the cockroaches I smash in my latrine at night are gone by morning. So why had Mufasa decreed these mouse lumps be allowed to lie in state? Anthrax? My unwashed socks smoldering in the corner? The roided-out bully rat that had been eating my protein powder? I uneasily filed this mystery away.

The rest of my place was alright. The weeds in the back had gone all USSR and were threatening to destroy all life as my corn stalks knew it, but I showed them how it’s done in ‘merica and paid someone else to destroy them. After that the only thing left to do was inhale all the dust from my bed sheets later then violently sneeze it out through my eye sockets that night.

I’m settled in now though. I’ve been napping a bit lately to ease the jetlag. Two or three good naps a day. Accompanying my naps have been the best dreams—vampire killer, superhero, war general. One day, feeling more like a loaf of bread than a human, I had been waking up only long enough to saw off then consume generously sized chunks of pepperoni before re-hibernating. After being elected dream-president of Sierra Leone, I kindly waited till after my inauguration parade to wake up again. Upon waking I had this urge to go out and be amongst the people (inception?).

Anyway, after confining myself to pants for the first time in four hours, it was radical to find the sun still so high. Going to the warf was the activity I had planned, so I followed through and found myself sipping Fanta with the usual crowd that haunts the Warf. Like everyone else down there I either sat quietly or argued.

“Lightning doesn’t strike white men.” I stated.

“What? Yes it does. You’re so tall, Oputo, you’re dead once the storms come. Thunder will Kill you.”

“Lightning. Thunder kills no one ever.”

“Lightning then.”

“Lightning never killed anyone in Mambolo!” (Volume is key to being right.)

“It killed my Grandma.”

“You’re lying.”

“Ask anyone. She was chopping down a tall coconut tree with an iron axe.”

“Oh… well that actually sounds like a lightning strike scenario.”

I chugged my Fanta and retreated back to bed. I can’t believe I have to leave this place in less than a year.

Going Home

My eyes and little pieces of associated brain interpreted it as a mechanical whale lying on an untroubled concrete sea. The closest I’d been to a plane in the last fourteen months was 35,000 feet away (they look so small from that distance), but now up close I could finally believe that this marvel was not only large enough for me to walk inside, but could loft me at least part of the 8,000 miles towards my home in the United States. It seemed like the biggest concentration of organization ever, entropy taking hardly anytime to scratch its head at this flying beast before it moved on to trouble some bush road or more susceptible, rusty lorry. All the apprehension I’d been feeling about going home over the last few days tripled at the sight of this winged leviathan… then disappeared completely when I heard that they served food and gave passengers entire cans of pop- for free.

You see, some time back I received a message from a human I like quite a bit saying he was going to get married to some chick. “Marriage,” I thought to myself, “is a wonderful thing. I must go to this.” So after selling my every vital organ, the airline exchanged digital money for a promise to take me home for a little over two weeks during my school break. Images of Dairy Queen, pizza pies, Cap’n Crunch, and Bacon had been pogo-sticking through my dreams since I received that promise.

When the evening to leave came, I presented myself at the airport and, with hesitant, dirty feet, shuffled across the tarmac and into the belly of the whale. Which was airconditioned. With TV screens. And had funsize blankets and pillows. “Why was I nervous to go back at all?! This is great!” Too busy berating myself, I of course greeted the hygienically exemplary Sterwadess in the most awkward way possible, probably not making sense in any of the three languages I threw at her then apologized in.

The next two days of traveling back were exactly the same as those first five minutes: fun and embarrassing. The airline had promised to get me back, but they did it in their own time. During my 27-hour layover in Brussels, my auspicious parents had reserved a hotel room for me in the center of town. After riding the train twenty minutes past my stop I decided to get serious and ended up finding said hotel in good time. Over the next day it would be my base camp as I sallied out between very long, hot, unnecessary showers to harvest chocolate and drink fermented things. “Sarah” who worked at a waffle stand turned out to be a great tour guide- even if it did get expensive and filling talking to her.  Brussels was gorgeous, mild weathered, and made me feel like a complete villager. At one point, skeptical glances from modern-suited fellow sidewalkers drove me indoors to buy a new shirt and clean flip-flops.

By the time I taxied to my gate at PDX a day later I felt like each of the last thousand miles had hit me in the face with a frozen water balloon. On the other side of the angry men in blue TSA uniforms, though, were my parents I hadn’t seen in a year, and after hugging them began the blur that has been my last two weeks. The wedding itself has its own, clearer set of memories, and I suppose I could account for the other days and nights, but it all seems to have flashed by. Frozen in my mind for a year, America was quick to thaw- identical to when I put it on ice with very few, very positive exceptions.

And now, after bacon, pizza pies, a walk at Alton Baker, good days, family, wedding rings, and drinks with friends, I’m left with a strange feeling of leaving home to go home.  One more quick year in Sierra Leone to get as much done as I can.

Summertime Freefall

“A good toiling is what I need.”

My ancestors' Mennonite blood was simmering, and, like the Mongols of old who felt compelled to plunder and raze from their perch atop swift horses, I too was feeling compelled to descend with all the wrath and fury of a pacifist-farmer on the square of dirt behind my house. My genes were demanding in chorus from their tiny Nuclear Parliaments- Must! Garden!

You see, I was having an extremely “Levin” or “Constantine Dmitrich” moment. After seeing farmers working every day on their plots as I went and came from school, I needed to get a tool in my hands and do something tactile. Far from a matter of survival (no matter what you see in those awful commercials, food is abundant in this country) planting then pulling food from the ground just seemed right.

Any first step for the novice agriculturist? Lacking The Home Depot, let’s go to The Blacksmith.

I didn’t do anything nearly so epic as give my new ho a name, but I tried a few handles till I found a good fit, then sat and watched as Ibrahim smacked, heated, plied, bent, and beat the head nito the handle. I left boasting a smirking swagger and an embarrassingly clean tool.

Fast forward forty-eight hours and one seed buying trip to ROkupr, you’ll find me thoroughly cured of my need to toil. Less concerned with making mounds and straight rows, I’m more concerned about a sore back and wondering what the heck I’m going to do in a few months when fifty stalks offer me one hundred ears of corn. Maybe make an extremely linear corn maze for the neighborhood kids…

Mennonite ancestors-  appeased.

Anyway, besides mucking around and throwing seeds over my shoulder, I’ve been placed in a frightening situation as of late- summer vacation. It’s as if all the rush-hour traffic that made you buy those books on tape has disappeared- completely. All the lines at Sam’s club keeping you from getting home to dinner have evaporated- entirely. All those electric harbingers of busywork and meetings laying siege to your inbox have seemingly deleted themselves from existence. No voicemails to answer, no projects t complete, no deadlines to beat by a day… sudden freefall. Besides the making and subsequent devouring of my lunch’s vivacious cucumber salad, my obligation meter for the day is laying down dead on zero. September 10^th is the next time the seal on my school will be broken, and that leaves me feeling about as important and needed as a river steamboat captain in Indianapolis.

Far from being frustrating, though, after recovering from the initial stomach-lurch of obligation freefall, I’ve charged myself with a new set of chores. Learn another language, read more, learn how to throw a clay pot, write a grant, make home improvements, cook edible things, train for a marathon, help with community projects, and do whatever else- all outside the borders of alarm clocks and pressure.

Sound like a workload you’d be interested in? Well, https://www.peacecorps.gov/apply/now/index.cfm?clearform=1 I'll bet you won't though.

The New Guys

I’ve always had a problem fitting the right words to a given situation. My clunky brain grabs its ladle and dips into whatever pot presents itself first- the result sometimes being a half-cooked stew of mostly sensible, though strangely spiced, words. I like the pace of writing by hand on my back porch. The jungle doesn’t roll its eyes at me when I cross a sentence out, and Knut doesn’t take a bite out of my foot (too often) when my brain slips a gear and my pen stalls over paper.

So you can imagine my apprehension was equal to my alacrity to be among the first volunteers to greet the forty-five incoming PC trainees to Sierra Leone. But remembering my own myriad of questions up on arrival here, I had to wonder if my conversational faculties had atrophied past the point of providing sound answers to simple questions. The worst case scenarios of interactions ran through my mind thus:

“So what’s your favorite thing to do in your village?”

“I like to… weather hot… sit naked on my back veranda at night drinking Kool Aid and the BBC…listening.”

Or:

“What are some of the projects you’ve done in your community?”

“Yes.”

In practice, though, I’d like to think I played my part better than dreaded. Unless I repressed the memories I don’t remember saying anything too many shades off color, and at the end of my several weeks with the ‘new guys’ I feel like I left them more knowledgeable about the country. So there must have been a filter working, right? I imagined I shouldn’t bring up the traditional practice of FGC the first evening at the airport, and maybe kettling or illiterate students weren’t meat for conversation the first week. I avoided trainwrecks by saying, “Your body’s tolerance to alcohol greatly reduces in this climate,” instead of “ONE second I’m cracking open a Carlsburg, the NEXT thing I know my naked butt is running towards starlit waves."*

The result of my filter in action, though, was a kind of constant, internal chuckle as I remembered weird stuff that has happened.

“Do you use candles in your house?”
A simple question. But I’m sure my eyes glazed over as I remembered one night maniacally hacking the lid off a can with a knife I’d made earlier at the blacksmisth’s-exploded tomato paste giving me a seemingly bloody visage- when I leaned too far over the candle in my kitchen and spent the next handful of seconds with my head literally on fire. “Yeah, I use candles. With the state of waste disposal here, I’d hate to be throwing out batteries constantly.”

Smooth.

After my few weeks with them I feel surprised and encouraged anew to be in an organization constitued of such like-minded, different people. Even the steps taken to get on- and especially off- the plane in the good mood they did is a testament to the caliber of these ‘new guy’s’ character. Heck, after a couple of week they even made me feel comfortable like I could talk good.

*Naked body surfing is just an example...and (probably) something that I've never done (twice).

Rainy Season Ramblings

Well there I was, using half my mind to admire Mambolo’s new green coat it bought for the rainy season and the other half to mark student’s papers, when I felt a quickening in my village. The drums aren’t uncommon to hear down at the warf any time of day, but the persistent, brassy Z undertone to the rhythm was something that even stopped the game of “throw-shoe” (really simple rules) the kids were playing in front of my veranda. Images of racing across Fall Creek or Dexter reservoir on an Oregon afternoon were boiling in my mind- had a speedboat really wandered up the Great Scarcies River? I was skeptical- the previous evening I’d heard a roar overhead and had a little start when I saw a metal bird carrying green and red lights across the sky. Had a metal fish come to visit me now, too?

Even though I lied very earnestly to myself and said the only reason I was going was to buy bread, I nevertheless noticed I was oriented with the rest of my village, like iron filings being pulled towards our magnetic visitor in the river.

I could’ve ridden, pants-less, on a dragon while sparks and marshmallows shot out of my ears for all anyone at the warf cared. Feeling stymied and unsure of what had become of the celebrity-status I usually enjoyed, I grumpily approached the river bank where knots of inebriates were assiduously trying to bang their drums louder than the nearest, rival knot.

Well there sure was a metal fish. A brand new Bayliner with the Minister of Works at the helm flanked by several extremely European, gray-haired gentlemen that looked like they could spend long hours discussing the EU financial crisis. They all took turns hoisting (what I can only imagine were cold) Heinikens to their mouths while executing lazy turns in front of the crowd at the speed of fun. To maintain the picturesque theme, they had loaded the bow full of wide-eyed, job-stricken children picked up off the shore.

I bought myself a drink and spent the rest of the afternoon watching people enjoy themselves, deciding it was a relaxing change to just be in the crowd.

I’ve been thinking lately that if Peace Corps were a game of Oregon Trail, I estimate my group would be creeping down the West side of the Rockies. Getting to this point hasn’t been easy- eight passengers in our wagon have fallen off and gone back to Independence, Missouri , meat has always been scarce, and Giardia or snakes are a constant threat on the trail. But two of our party have found love anrd are planning matrimony even before we reach our destination. We’ve had the benefit of following the wagon tracks of the first group (two more months and they’ll be at the end of their trail).

Something quickly approaching on the map is the arrival of the third group of PC volunteers in Sierra Leone. This not only means there will be gads of pudgy American faces to marvel at, but will mean it’s my own one year anniversary of having my feet on the Africa part of the earth.

Radical Rachel, Beautiful Brian, and myself have been asked to greet the new arrivals at the airport in Freetown and escort them to Bo where they’ll have their PST- I giggle in anticipation to see what I must’ve looked like stepping onto the sweltering tarmac a year ago.

Other landmarks on the map this summer will be Ivy and Cody’s wedding. Nine days after that happy event I’ll be boarding a plane to fly to planet America for several weeks. And it’s absolutely impossible to neglect mentioning I’ve already started making plans for my favorite day of the year- the 4h of July. What a calendar of events.

So I saw a working TV the other week. It reminded me of all you guys back home, and I spent some time wishing each and every one of you well.

Springbreak '11

“Kinda pretty…” I thought as the scaled tube slid over my foot. The neon green of its back washed in to a vivid red- like a fire truck that had crashed nose-first into a leprechaun convention. Pico seconds had been stretching into days since I’d first felt the punch on the outside of my sneaker and I was using the distortion of time to generate memorable words I could utter as I gazed up into the middle-distance, sinking to my knees stricken by a deadly snake.

All that bullet-time contemplation was completely useless though- I wasn’t going to die. Somehow I’d forgotten a kindly old medicine ma had taken a razor to my shoulders, and, with some crushed, burnt leaves, made me immune to snakes. Black marks on the shoulders of others I’ve seen protect them from witch guns, sways, and poisoning. But since I carry a lime in my pocket, have money to remove a sway, and already had built an immunity to poison via my university’s cafeteria, I wasn’t concerned about those. A trickle of blood down both arms, three vertical marks, and one dizzy-head later, I was feeling safe as a snail.

And so, it was only after I had formulated my earthly exit words did I realize the 7’ long, pop-can thick snake was only sliding over my paralyzed foot to pay homage. Nevertheless, after that the hills I was hiking in seemed to harbor a few more dangers than I had calculated before.

The sun had laser-rayed its way through clouds earlier that morning to illuminate myself and a jolly band of travelers. We were on phase-1 of our spring break fiesta. Having been chained to an oar through university, doing daily doubles instead of drinking doubles, I decided my two-week break from school this time would be forcibly strangled, assertively wrung, and gently milked of whatever adventure it was pregnant with.

Phase-1 hiking was by far the most potent prescription that adventure could’ve written us. Conscious the ink in all my pens isn’t sufficient to catalogue the events of that trip, I’ll paraphrase. Cows can be terrifying. I won the closest-to-death award three days running. Iodine tastes like Iodine. The view from the top was great- now I know what Mufasa felt on top of Pride Rock. Thanks to Dylan for bringing jerky and Brian for bringing the Crème. I will never voluntarily make that hike again….barring amnesia or offers of large amounts of money.

Anyway, surprised at our still-living, not-dead state and completely wrecked from Phase-1, a faction of our mountain conquering regime fled for the far side of the country to the maternal, comforting arms of the Peace Corps hostel and associated white sand beaches. At this point my break adopted the hue of an American vacation- relaxation being the sole goal we toiled towards. Thanks to our work ethic and our steely resolve, we managed to enjoy ourselves. The denouement of phase-2 was the genesis of the much more productive third phase.

Phase -3 was a lifeskills workshop. It was good and stuff. Then I went back to Mambolo.

Right, so time is being pushed along, experiences are being had, strange foods are still being eaten, rain clouds are forming, and bored bloggers are abusing the passive voice and ignoring parallelism. I sure hope all y’all are taking care of yourselves and summer finds you quickly.

Makeup

“Well… fake it till I make it.” Is something I don’t want to hear my wife grumble on our wedding day.

In other times and settings, it’s really not that ignoble of a notion though. Are you in a new situation with no road map towards proper conduct? Well, do your best and eventually you’ll learn the ropes. Feeling like your mood just got kicked in the back by a kangaroo and then stepped on by a poisonous platypus barb? Well, go to a party and act happy… pretty soon your mood is hitching a ride on the Goodyear blimp to cloud 9.

Some kid from Oregon transplanted to work in a West African country for two years? Well apparently after 9 months (coincidentally the gestation period of a human) of faking it, you’ll start to not be the most socially awkward one in a crowd. Not that I’m graceful in my native culture, but I’ve noticed I haven’t been acting the part of the bullheaded, linear-charging American lately. You want a concrete example of how my conduct has changed? Well, how American of you.

I guess communication has changed most- almost as hard as Temne has been to learn, I’ve learned to speak “Grape Vine.” First off, I’ve give up trying to perform tactical information extractions then escaping in a conversational Blackhawk under the cover of night- there’s a protocol for information gathering here I’ve noticed worked on me. I’m beginning to warm up to it.

To start, my village, consistent with the rest of my country, is big on simply greeting. Of course it’s just polite behavior, but more than that- in communities composed of such tightly braided families, it’s important to have a steady reading of the village blood pressure. If you say, “Hey, how’s it goin?” and don’t get back a standard response, “A tel God tenki,” then you might want to put your nose to the ground and see if something’s up.

I’ll take a moment to give a crash-course in Temne greetings- “Sekke” is always an acceptable launch pad. You can even add a “momo” to your “Sekke” to be very polite. To respond, of course, you have to “iyo” their “momo” and add your own “sekke,” possibly even crowning it with your own “momo.” They might “iyo” your “momo,” but if they “momo” your “momo” and follow it with an “iyo,” be sure not to “iyo” their “iyo.” If at any point you get frightened or lose track, a good “sekke” resets the whole thing and you can begin a conversation.

Now, if I( want to know if someone is going to follow through on a commitment, a year ago I would’ve asked, “So, how’s the work? Any chance “X” will happen on time?” But here I would ask something like, “How’s your farm?” or “Who won the Arsenal-AC Milan game?”

I’ve been surprised quite a few times after having a seemingly innocuous chat about school schedules or Mangoes, by a conversational upper-cut. Suddenly I’m being asked if I can lend my bike out for a week or asked if a phone I confiscated from a student can be returned to their nephew, because, after all, it actually belongs to the Imam’s older brother. What?!

Treading softly seems to get you quite a few more places than a frontal assault would. A direct question could get a, “No he won’t be there.” Whereas beating around the bush in a wide spiral would yield a more satisfying, “Well… no one can tell. This time of year people are pressed to work on their farms.” Run that through the grapevine translator- “No, the dude isn’t showing up till at least the turn of the season. He’s hungry.”

Also, yelling isn’t always a bad thing. If you scream, “HI, HOW ARE YOU” in someone’s face they’ll think you should be institutionalized, but if conversation strays towards the topic of money- please feel free to insert your earplugs now.

“How much for the eggs?”

“Ten thousand.”

“TEN THOUSAND?! THIS IS A CRIMINAL PRICE. I’LL PAY SIX.”

“SIX?! ARE YOU TRYING TO THEIF ME?! PAY NINE!”

“I’LL PAY EIGHT!”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

One instance in particular I was surprised by the tenacity of the ‘bargaining’ between a salty boat captain and passenger wanting to bring along enough jugs of palm oil to fill Zeus’ own goblet. I asked the man sitting next to me if they were about to “dif ko” (straight-up murder each other). My fellow witness smiled and responded that they simply wanted to let each other know they were serious.

So I’d like to think little by little my square cultural edges are beginning to be sanded down. To think that I’ll escape the awful square-peg vs. round-hole analogy and sometime soon find out that I’m not slathering makeup on my life, but it actually does look like it belongs in Sierra Leone… But until then, I’m still going to act super awkward when someone asks me why I have had children while breast milk sprays across my arm and a small child defecating in a pot is gleefully calling my name.

Hey- also- I should mention how thankful I am for a few things-

Not that I won an Oscar or anything, but I’ve got to thank my family. It’s always an electric moment every Sunday afternoon when they call. What voices are going to be on the other end of the phone? What has everyone been doing in that strange place, America? It’s like my weekly fuel-up.

And Neil Armstrong- I understand you, man. As I was peering in quivering disbelief inside my last care package from home, I realized peanut butter and beef-jerky shouldn’t invoke so much emotion.

“Heyyyy, cool moonrocks, Neil!” Cool moonrocks? These gray chunks are a connection to something, an experience and place, he can’t describe to hardly anyone else on literally the whole planet.

So when, through unwarranted generosity, kind souls like Hugh and Barbara send a packet of magazines, Sarah sends me a book to change my life, one of Molly’s letters lights up my day/week/month, Ashton gives me a glimpse of her amazing life, my phone buzzes with a text message from Noah- or any other precious missive gets to me, well… I think people here or in the states can appreciate what the gesture means, but I really don’t think I can explain the entire significance. We say “thanks” back home, “tenki” in Krio, or “momo” in Temne. So maybe if I say “motenks” you’ll get an idea just how much I appreciate grandparents, my great parents, siblings, and friends taking care of me from an ocean away.

Motenks.

Goodnight

Nighttime is different here. The biggest difference is that the darkness is absolute, but the more biggest difference is that I think I actually kind of lose my mind when the sun goes down. The huge horizons make it obvious that the sun is punching out of our hemisphere till dawn, but it’s still startling after it leaves to realize if my candle blinks out, that it’d be the task of a blind man to relight it. Maybe it’s that the ranks of jungle parasites no doubt living in my cortex wait till dark to play, but sometimes I’d swear the evening air is at least 80 proof.

Shadows of normal stature shift and distort to ogre proportions as radio-blaring motorcycles gash through the dusty dark. Oil candles stand orange-sentinel periodically along roads giving their tenders hollow-shadowed eyes as they peddle their wares with monotone repetition. The palm forest that pervades my district exhales at night and sends tendriled jungle up to doorsteps and window panes- a sense of crowding more tactile than visible. In Freetown, the jungle has ceded its square miles to the capital and the line demarcating dusk is melted. The city glow is a shield, fencing itself against the ocean and dimming the primal stars.

Outside a city’s hustle, though, I realized I need to be careful what books I read to my flimsy mind after dark. I was crashing through the pages of World War Z the other night when, of course, every shuffle outside my window turned to a Zombie’s shamble. I’m not ashamed to say my machete may have slept next to my bed that night. I realized not having a local pawn-shop to raid for anti-zombie shotguns is a pressing problem, but given my stranded loacation, it’s best to bury my head in the sand and read about outer space or unicorns or WWII battles… or outer space unicorn battles.

In summary, walking into Michael Crichton’s Sphere is a less wild experience than walking down a sunless street in Mambolo.

Basketballs and Baby Deer

I was sitting here, pen limply in hand, wondering if I was feeling inclined to write today when I looked down at my bloody arm. Oh, I’ll write about that dumb time I played basketball against the Sierra Leone national team.

The Last competitive game of ball I played was Freshman year in highschool. My growth spurt that had sent my point average into the teens during my 8^th grade glory days had exhausted itself, and I’m not too ashamed to say I dribbled through Freshman year on the JVB team and took consolation in my performance on the football field. So given I wasn’t ever great in the first place, I can forgive myself the nervous, dopy grin that plagued my face when I walked out on the court just last weekend. The game was arranged by our very own Liam and was played in the shadow of the national soccer stadium. The nicest court in the country, it still lacked a roof and bleachers- the crowd that grew at a bacterial rate sat on a strip of concrete adjacent the court. What the facility lacked in structure though, the home team made up for with height. And meanness.

Ironically, the “Salone Hoopers” were a multinational bunch, the one that told me to “Watch out before I hurt you, bwoy.” Was from Nigeria. Throw a bunch of seven foot tall ballers on a court together and they’ll look normal relative to each other, even small on TV, but a warning to my fellow 6-footers- it’s like walking with the dinosaurs.

If you had to guess right now, you’d guess myself and fellow mortal volunteers lost the battle on the basketball court that day. You’d be right, but that’s mean of you to think. Very unsupportive.

Six-to-one isn’t an awful start to a game, but by the end of the first quarter when we hadn’t clawed into the double digits yet it was getting awkward.

“Broken arrow, broken arrow,” I thought to myself, “time to take it to another leveeeelllll.” My ‘next level’ was analogous to an idiot attacking an iron brick with the side of their head, then, summoning courage and fire, switching to beat their face against it. The brick just carried on being a brick and I got bruised up.

Well by the end of the game, as in all lopsided games where the winning team doesn’t believe in the nebulous principle of “sportsmanship,” it turned into a game of streetball.

“This is a game of streetball.” One of my teammates grumbled.

“Well…” I said intelligently, looking at our cyclone-fenced enclosure, rowdy with urchins that had turned up to watch the slam-dunk-on-the-Americans competition. Was it ever not?

Only when the lead of the Salone Hoopers had bloated past the 40 point mark did the clock tire of the game. By then plenty of feelings and limbs had been damaged, so it was nice to find out that even all bad things come to an end.

By the time I regale my great-grandchildren with this story, I’m sure it will consist of me leaving footprints on the other team’s faces, but for now I’m happy to brag I survived with a pulse and all my motor skills in working order.

Also- completely unrelated- my towel smells like milk. And this is why:

If you want to make me annoyed with you for the day before I even see you, walk around to the back of my house and treat my name like it’s loaded in a chain of machine-gun  bullets.

“Honestly, I’m annoyed with this dude and I haven’t even seen him,” I thought as I walked out the back door to find some guy was flapping a doll around above his head. He must’ve been getting paid a dollar every time he said “Issa Kabba” because he was happier than a clown on nitrous, and, upon seeing my emergence into the morning sun, literally jumped a few times. After earning another $15, he came around to the front to be given audience while I stumbled around inside looking for some socks to pack in this guy’s mouth.

His rag-doll, on closer inspection, wasn’t what it seemed. Immediately after cracking my door open, I became psychic and knew three things: He was going to try to sell something to me. If I did not buy that something, he would kill and eat it. And lastly, I would, in fact, buy what he was selling.

Bargaining isn’t always fun. Because the lack of pigment in my skin, most people trying to make a deal with me tack on a whiteugy tax. Le300,000?! Honestly, I wouldn’t bail my own grandmother out of federal prison for that (but I’d totally visit all the time and write nice letters). Anyway, one well intoned, hollow laugh at their starting price can usually wither it by 50%. In this case, the price started in the stratosphere at 300,000 and ended with me giving the man 15,000 and a cooking pot I don’t ever use.

I shut the door again and he left me with a gorgeous- even if badly shaken- baby deer. After cutting off the “halter” that had kept one of its legs jutting straight to the side, it stopped its painful salute and took its first few tentative steps.

“Doug.” I commandingly and confidently dubbed it. “Doug the Deer.”

Upon further inspection, the name had to be revised. It wasn’t a good name for a girl. After consulting Kim, I re-titled her Douglas-Hadley. Truly a nice name for a pygmy baby deer.

The days since her inclusion into my family have been made of glowing hours. Unless you’ve had a baby deer bump up and rest against your leg, had one lay down and get sleepy next to you, or had one come and drain a bottle of milk from your hands, I’m not sure if I can explain it fully.

Anyway, my towel smells like milk because while I was laying down reading “Contact,” Douglas-Hadley started trying to pull milk out of my fingertips. I had just MacGyvered a baby bottle out of a hair tie, pop bottle, and finger from a latex glove, and when presented with that she jumped up on my chest and started dribbling everywhere. It was really the only place she was eating well, so I put my towel under her and she got a fat baby-deer belly before falling asleep next to me.

Casting Off

There’s a critical point required for a boat to leave the dock in my village. I used to think it was a number of passengers or cargo required before departure, but just now, as this boat I’m sitting on cast off, I discovered the key, the fuel to the engine is volume.

                You could argue that volume is directly proportional to the amount of individuals onboard, but I would argue back with you and win. Sometimes I’ll be pleasantly engaged in eating fish bones in my house and wonder at the volume of the crowd massed outside by the police station next door- reminiscent of Autzen Stadium on an autumn Saturday- only to discover all the decibels are generated by a pair of disgruntled women. Conversely, I’ve entered the community center expecting it to be deserted, but rather walked into the company of 30 souls feasting while conversing in library mumbles between mouthfuls.

                A fully loaded boat can sit for an hour. No tension on the boat would suggest it’s coiling to spring away from its mooring, in fact last anyone saw the captain he was headed for the palm-wine bar next to the river. But then at a shadowy point, at a moment that lingers like a burst bubble, the snowball of murmurs begins rolling. It’s not a gasoline ignition, but the reluctant burn of a damp log. No more than two passengers with a goat might have joined the after-capacity boat in the last, hot hour, but the listless fame of noise discovers it has friends… and cousins… and acquaintances… and then, as if an arm is told it will be slowly pulled out of its socket, the boat flexes and chests expand with air- with ammunition.

                I’ll take a moment to say how much I adore pirate ships and old-school warships. Build a wooden, floating box, then pack it with black explosives to feed eighty hungry mouths vomiting leaden death? I’d love to sit in the crows nest as an opponent pulls his iron-studded girl next to my own and we disintegrate each other in a Hollywood-sized helping of splinters, black smoke, and glory. I’ve never had an explosion of wood and sparks behind me before, but I imagine instead of ducking like a sissy my eyes would probably turn to steely storm clouds and my head would remain as motionless as the bust of a Roman conqueror.

                Anyway, instead of cannonballs, boats leaving from Mambolo’s warf exchange a fury of sounds with the concrete bank. The pulsing waves are almost visible, frantic as if the clutch of land can only be repelled by the diaphragms of those onboard and shore bound. Today I literally covered the ears of the baby on my lap as it groped for my useless nipple, wishing someone would cover my own. As if they’re stones driving away the last of a flock of birds, it’s not uncommon to see wads of money thrown by those on shore chased by deafening instructions for its use. (Honestly, couldn’t you have done this the last two hours we were sitting here smoldering?)

                A goodbye at this point can’t be delivered anywhere below the level of a preschool field trip in a candy shop, and any explicit missives should be delivered in the same range as a head-on train collision with a circus. But as the gravity of the shore is strained and the last word is flung fiercely out, at an indefinite time with an invisible exit, the sound waves dissipate into the wake of the boat and wind from the open water sets about its task of scraping sweat off of faces.

                Oh- and really unrelated- I’ve got a problem. Usually mice or rats in my house are whatever. the only time they ever bother me is when they forget to invite me to their diskotek parties on top of my ceiling tiles. Every now and then they’ll send a Champion to challenge me for possession of Mambolo Manor, but with Knut and my cutlass, I’ve managed to dispatch them effortlessly- even if with some excitement.

                So you can imagine my ill-ease when I found my coveted mountain-sized bag of protein powder had been nibbled through. The scattered, chocolate flavored powder suggested a nutritional orgy, and I balked as pictures of an angry Schwarzenegger with a rat’s head bowled into my mind. It was like coming home early from an 8-5 to smell cookies that my fully make-up’d housewife had just made for the new, buff pool boy. Uh oh. Might have a problem.

                Every day since then I’ve been listening for heavier than usual scuttles along my ceiling, looking forward to the dark day Knut and I will face a mutant army and I can utter the words, “Knut, you take the one on the left. I’ll take the thirty on the right.”

Banana Islands

Would you believe it, there wasn’t a single banana on all of Banana Islands. A textbook example of a sad misnomer, the whole three-island chain, as far as I could tell, boasted one lame Banana tree that even Charlie Brown would’ve written off. But, did this tragedy ruin my three day visit to the islands? Did the lack of crescent fruit spoil my fun? Did I spend my time listlessly staring up at the island’s Banana-less canopy? No. Because that place is overall fabulous.

                An obvious destination after the In-Service-Training that brought all the Peace Corps Volunteers back together in the southern city of Bo, a few handfuls of us spent our Christmas holiday surrounded by the blue of the Atlantic ocean several miles off Sierra Leone’s mountainous coast. I’ve never really been to an island before, and I was surprised to find myself gingerly walking on the trail from the harbor to Dalton’s Guest House, unsure of the ground. What, did I think the island was a big soggy sponge? Anyway, by the time we gained the guest house where we would spend the next two nights I had stopped walking all weird and the ground had proven itself sufficiently tough. The dinosaur trees on the island could’ve proven this by inspection…but then again, maybe the cacophony of vines weaving the jungle together were holding them up.

                Dalton’s Guest House is one of a few on the island. Getting there was a good bit of fun, Dalton himself picked us up from Kent beach on the mainland in an appealingly orange boat. Of course, like all transportation in Africa, everything managed to barely fit. If there had been ten of us instead of fifteen we would’ve barely fit, and if there had been fifty instead we would’ve barely fit. Magic.

                I see no reason not to shamelessly promote this place- everything was great. The big ‘ol beds very comfortably slept the two people that we assigned to them and in lieu of the soon-to-be-completed showers, the jovial staff supplied us with buckets of hot water to wash with. Our dinners of Texan proportion were served underneath a deck built up through the trees, both levels having a happy view of the small, sheltered beach which in turn had a view of the azul shifting carpet that rolled out till it defined the horizon. It was out of the ocean that ‘Gregory’ pulled the underwater mammoths that constituted our tuck. Simply fish and onions boiled in water from Dalton’s would make crusty Pirate Lords tear up a bit, and the three or four more dishes wee were attacked with brought our taste buds to their little, slippery knees.

                But we didn’t just sit around feasting. Dalton’s also offers several expeditions for various prices- everything from sitting in a boat big-game fishing, to taking a three –day scuba diving course to look at some of the many sunken ships around the island. Our main host during our stay was Gregory. He was from Greece, probably my favorite of his stories was about the backpacking trip he had gone on through the depth of Africa- “I planned to do it in dee one year, but… it took three year.” Anyway, he’s a dive master and, after seeing him walk out of the water in slow motion, spear gun in hand, I begged him to teach me to free dive and become an underwater hunter. He agreed, and I think I’ll be heading back in April during spring break. Fierce.

                So having seen an exotic aquarium’s worth of fish simply snorkeling off the beach, myself and some others set off to explore the length of the islands on foot. We went at our own paces, the walk was reportedly three hours one-way, and I was soon happily humming through the jungle by myself, vines and branches encroaching on my vague trail. I took the monkeys I saw just a ways down the trail as a good omen. I’m sure my resemblance to them is what made them reveal themselves to myself alone amongst the adventurers that day. The islands are narrow, and the trail often has picture-framed views of coves, boulders, and trees forming private beaches for the mermaids that could be seen sunning on the rocks.

                Just after the bridge between the two largest islands, my super powers fully activated. I was still glancing over my shoulder at the narrow rock isthmus that delicately threaded the two islands together when I heard a sinister sound I had suspected would assault my senses- a snake. I turned just in time to see the entire 20 foot length of its body coil before launching through the air at me, its body motionless as my mind all but stopped time. Almost with regret I firmly planted my feet as I backhanded its barrel sized head against a tree. There was a new king on the island today and he loved kicking snake tail. As I finished securing its body around the rock on the peak of the island’s highest mountain, I remember saying something menacing over my shoulder like, “Do that again and I’ll give you another snake hole.” Except I accidentally put the emphasis on “give” so it sounded like I was literally going to dig him another home.

                But seriously people, I saw a black Mamba. It was laying in the trail but slithered off a ways when I chucked a seashell at it. How cool is that?

                After reaching the end of the island, I asked myself, “What would Huckleberry Finn do?” then I stripped down and took a great swim before walking the entirely uneventful way back. News reports from Brazil say they saw a glow on the horizon from my nakedness, but it’s Brazil so they just chuckled and kept salsa dancing while deforesting the Amazon.

                As we puttered our way back to the mainland the next day, the merpeople sang goodbye in chorus on the rocks as schools of fish described shimmering semicircles out of the waves and a rainbow framed the strengthening sun that silhouetted a herd of winged pegasi. It was a good vacation.

Dry Season

                “The moon is glinting gently off my Papaya.” I noticed as I looked at the papaya in my lap- which, indeed, had glints of moon on it.

                The moon was actually glistening over quite a bit- the dust-filmed bucket of water next to me, the spoon in my hand, the car driving by stacked high with speakers and higher still with daredevil passengers, the fur on my dog Knut, and glistening quite a bit off the flowing hair on my own head (this is a guess. I can’t see that part of me).

                I’m sitting on my back porch thinking how it’s the dry season now and the game has changed quite a bit. The underwhelming volume of days since I last tried to tell stories seems attackable and retell able, but for now I think I might just have to generalize about the new season.

                So, “Dry Season.” As in- white fluff clouds only exist in my memory. As in- the winds breezing across the Sahara pick up every derelict particulate and pitches it up to be a thread in the blanket that is a gray screen across the sky. The blue yields its traditional place to the gray closer to the horizons and the colluding dust scarf turns even the afternoon sun into a perfectly red coin, a crown on top of thirsty palm trees.

The river that held no regard for its banks in September now cowers below them, leaving their muddy nakedness cracking as winds and temperature alike come up. The last of the unharvested rice in the fields that used to whisper in the wind now sounds like a waterfall of glass shards when the slightest breeze slides through the dry stalks. Are you getting the picture? If your picture resembles Mars on an especially warm day, you’re picturing right.

                Of course it’s actually not all that bad. The wind that muddles the sky also cools the evenings down to the lower 70’s (I had to actually buy a blanket) even if it does spike into high 90’s during the afternoon. People are generally in better spirits now- the harvesting work mostly done, people’s financial lives are about as vivacious as they get throughout the year. There are jams or outings every other night, and general holiday fatness prevails for the time being.

                I think traditionally students tend to trickle back to school this time of year, extending their holidays like Pinnochio’s nose after filing taxes.

                But not at Scarcies Baptist Secondary School, baby.

                If my school was a rockstar, it would eat Fenders for breakfast and never touch the ground when it walked due to the amount of garments thrown at its vibrantly sexy rockstar self.

The first day back, over 90% of the students were in uniform, taking tests and being smart. The full complement of teachers was present to invigilate tests, and I.S. and myself have even spent some time after-hours lately pretending to be electricians (we’ve got these dusty computers we’re trying to safely hook up to a generator…if we fail though, I’m going to sell them to a museum). Schools in Sierra Leone recognize that a student is most comfortable not fused to a desk, but rather blasting around a football field or diving on a volleyball court- we have a whole week this term devoted to sports wherein the four school houses compete against each other.

                So, that’s the “Dry Season.” Anyway, I hope none of you all have holiday hangovers (they’ll come again in less than a year, I promise) and I’ll bet you’re all furiously attacking all the opportunities this new year has to offer.