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.