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.