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.