Love, baskets of love for the baby Yao. Gardens of it. Oceans. In a village swarming with children, each of them vital and mercurial enough to remind your heart it can split wide open, Yao has made an impression on us all. All the volunteers. Each day, men and women, Africans and foreigners alike, set down our shovels or mortars for a moment, wipe the dust and sweat from beneath our eyes, and watch Minessi as she strolls by, tall, dark and regal, with Yao strapped to her back. Yao swivels his little head, working hard to take us all in with his enormous dark eyes. And what eyes! Compassionate enough to forgive a world’s transgressions, alert enough to awaken a planet asleep.
Forgive my gushing. I’m in love.
We are building teachers’ quarters in the village of Afranguah, near the Ghanaian coast. Every afternoon, as soon as we finish work, I tear back to the schoolhouse where we are sleeping, grab a bucket of water and a calabash bowl, and duck behind the woven reed screens that partition the showers. I dump calabashes of water on myself while I soap off the day’s grit, leaving a few inches in the bottom of my bucket for a final whoosh of cool. Then, while the other foreign volunteers hang around the camp trading travel stories, I scoot down to Minessi’s hut to spend some time with Yao before the evening meal. I’m determined to get to know the villagers during my time here. I don’t want to breeze in and out like a tourist, exoticizing them from a distance. Neither do I want to come in like a missionary, imposing my values and ideas. I’m eager to forge real connections, based in mutual respect.
Usually Minessi is washing laundry or preparing fufu in the shared courtyard outside her hut. Fufu is made by placing a portion of boiled cassava or yam in a large bowl made from a scooped-out tree stump, then pounding it until it acquires a smooth, elastic consistency. The women throw their entire bodies into the pounding. Using heavy wooden pestles 4 to 5 feet long, they repeatedly fling their arms high above their heads and bring the pestles down with tremendous force. Each time I watch Minessi do this I am struck by the extraordinary grace and dignity of her movement. While most of the women in the village are short and stocky, Minessi’s figure is tall and tapered, with wide hips and a long, elegant neck. Her arms are lean, sinewy ropes. Her pounding looks like a ritual expulsion, a fierce, elegant dance.
Minessi looks up at me as I approach. She smiles her languid, unhurried smile, and unstraps Yao from her back. Her skin is very black, and her wideset eyes tilt upwards slightly. It’s obvious where Yao got his looks. The schoolteacher Amoah, an effusive, genial man whose hut is next to Minessi’s, greets me with a warm cry of “Sistah Korkor, you are welcome!” (Korkor, which means “second-born” in Ga, is my African name.) Amoah’s three children run up to me, and we trade exuberant greetings in Fanti. Then I sit on the low stool in front of Minessi’s hut, take Yao in my arms and rock him, singing softly in his ear. He explains a few things to me in his own language, a kind of universal babyspeak which resembles neither English nor Fanti so much as the call of a rapturous bird.
Minessi speaks a bit more English than the other women in Afranguah — her vocabulary extends beyond basic greetings. We often have conversations that go something like this:
Minessi: You like Yao!
Me: Yes, I do.
Minessi: You like Yao too much!
Then she begins to laugh, and her laughter is like a thunderstorm, starting as a rumble, low and distant, occasionally building to a full-on roar. Soon I begin to laugh, and Yao, too. The three of us spend many minutes like this, laughing together, for no reason at all.
But today our conversation is different.
“Minessi, listen.” I hold Yao’s mouth close to her ear. His breathing is raspy and labored. She listens for a moment, then looks at me, confused.
I imitate the breathing, exaggerating it for effect. She gives me a long, wary look, then shrugs. I let the subject drop, but not before kissing Yao’s silky forehead and whispering in his ear that he’s trying to scare me, and he should cut it out right away.
Two days later as Minessi takes her daily stroll past the construction site, she stops and gestures to me. I set down the short pile of cement blocks I am precariously balancing on my head and skip over. She looks at me for a moment with an anxious, indecisive expression, then whispers in my ear that she would like some money to buy medicine for Yao. Could I bring some to her house tonight?
Sure, I tell her, how much does she need?
But she doesn’t want to talk about it now, in front of everyone. We can talk about it later. She hurries away before I’ve had a chance to kiss Yao.
When I come to her house that afternoon she is not pounding or washing or sweeping, but sitting with Yao in her lap, waiting for me. Amoah sees me approach and calls out “Sistah Korkor!” as usual. When she hears this, Minessi springs up and drags a stool out of her hut for me to sit on. She then disappears again and returns with a plate of fufu and some pepper sauce. She hands me the plate and gestures that I should eat. Yao reaches out his arms to me and gurgles in his throat like a dove. After I’ve eaten, I heave him into my lap. He looks up with a smile of purest delight, then sticks his fingers in my mouth and coughs. Minessi stands watching, not saying a word.
“Minessi?” I say at last. “You wanted some money for medicine?”
She glances over at Amoah, who is playing with his children and seems not to hear.
“Yes,” she says softly.
“How much do you need?” I ask.
Silence.
“Please tell me, Minessi. I want to help.”
“Please, you give 1,000 cedis,” she blurts, all in a rush.
I look at her for a moment in astonishment.
“That’s fine, Minessi. No problem at all.”
A surprising sting of tears rises in my eyes. Less than $2 stand between my darling and his medicine. I reach beneath the waistband of my cotton skirt for my money belt and pull out a small sweaty wad. Minessi stares as I peel off two 500 cedi notes, then watches my hands as I replace the rest. She drops her eyes.
“Thank you,” she says, not looking up.
We have shoveled and carried and mortared and pressed and nothing is done and already our three-week stint in Afranguah is up. Materials are being left behind to complete the buildings we began. The village minister, a Ghanaian man named Billy Acquah Graham, promises it will be finished in our absence. I go to Minessi’s hut to say goodbye. Yao’s breathing is no better. It scrapes and croaks. I ask Minessi whether she got the medicine, and she nods. I tell Yao to get with the program and shape up. I hug him and Minessi and Amoah and Amoah’s three children. Everyone squirms and laughs uncomfortably in my embrace. I tell them I’ll be back to see them after my next project.
Back to Afranguah after a month’s dusty labor elsewhere, I can’t wait to see Yao. The tro-tro ride from Saltpond Junction is bumpy and crowded, but in Afranguah a cadre of about 25 children greets me with enthusiastic shouts. The children accompany me as I dump my luggage in Billy Acquah Graham’s cinderblock house and run down the hill to Minessi’s mud hut with its corrugated tin roof.
Minessi is in the courtyard, pounding fufu with a long wooden pestle. She laughs when she sees me with my entourage and shouts, “Eh! Sistah Korkor! You are welcome!”
I run up and hug her. Yao is on her back, and I cover his little head with kisses. Minessi leans the long stick against the scooped-out wooden pot and unwinds the cloth that holds Yao to her back. She hands him to me.
I look deep into his soulful eyes and am shocked to find them glassy. Then Yao coughs, a wrenching, guttural cough that sends a shudder through his whole body. I look up at Minessi in alarm. She starts at my expression, takes a step backwards.
“Yao is worse, Minessi, he’s worse.” I hear a shrill of panic in my voice. Minessi is silent. “What happened to the medicine?” I ask.
“It is finished,” she says. “Every day, one spoon.”
She goes into the hut and brings out a bottle, empty and carefully washed. I look at the bottle and see that it is a kind of drug store cough syrup, cherry flavored for children.
“Oh, Minessi, who gave you this?”
“Saltpond Junction. I tell him Yao is sick. He says it is the best. From England.”
In Saltpond Junction, where you catch tro-tros to Saltpond and the surrounding villages, a man runs a stand selling cold “minerals,” the Ghanaian term for soda, and other assorted goods.
“Minessi,” I take her hand. “I want to take Yao to see a doctor. There’s a hospital in Saltpond, right?”
She shrugs and looks at the ground.
“I’ll pay for it, OK? For whatever he needs. But let’s get him there as soon as we can. Can you go today?”
“I must tell my husband.”
I’d forgotten she had a husband. Where was he all day? In the fields, perhaps, or with the group of men that hung around the bar, drinking apetesche. I was struck, not for the first time, by how little I knew about the people I considered friends.
“Tomorrow, then, OK? In the morning?”
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
When I step outside Billy Acquah Graham’s house the next morning, Minessi is waiting for me. She is wrapped from head to toe in beautiful printed cloth, bright orange and stiff, as though just purchased for a festival. Yao is on her back, asleep. I lean close and kiss his soft cheek, listening to the low uneven motor of his breath.
The walk from Afranguah to Saltpond Junction takes about 45 minutes. The heat of the day hasn’t settled in yet, and I enjoy the cool silence as we head down the dirt path through the fields of dry yellow stalks. I ask Minessi where she learned English, but she doesn’t seem to understand the question, answering only “Yes.” I ask her if she wants more children.
“No!” she says firmly. “Finished. Four children. Enough.”
“Four children? I thought you had only Yao!” I realize I’ve never thought about Minessi’s age. Her queenly bearing makes her seem older, but looking at her face now I see that she can’t be past her early twenties.
“Three girls!” she laughs. “They stay with my sister. Cape Coast.”
“Really? What are they doing there?”
“School. Her husband, he is guide. At the monument.”
The “monument” in Cape Coast is an old castle with low dungeons where slaves once lay shackled in darkness, waiting to be shipped overseas. Perhaps the tourist income generated by the castle allows Cape Coast to have better-equipped schools than the ones in Afranguah, which have neither paper nor pencils nor books.
“You must miss your girls a lot,” I say.
“I will go to them. I want to learn.” She touches her hair and makes a gesture, twisting, braiding, arranging, long tapered fingers moving nimbly though the air. “Then I go to live at Cape Coast, too.”
“You want to be a hairdresser!” I am pleased to be taken into her confidence.
“Then I go to live at Cape Coast too.”
At Saltpond Junction we wait for two hours while the tro-tro accumulates passengers. I wander around outside; Minessi prefers to sit in the minivan, holding our places. She leans her head against the closed window, looking out.
None of the windows open, and the ride to Saltpond is bumpy and stifling. It’s past noon by the time we arrive, the whole town wilting under a midday heat stroke. We walk to the hospital, the air dragging at our limbs. Sweat shines on Minessi’s face. Yao is asleep.
The hospital is a clean, modern cement building with bare scrubbed hallways, rooms with beds, a waiting room with a few patients. It’s nothing like the hospital in Accra, the capital, with its outdoor courtyard crowded with patients from morning till night.
A nurse sits at the reception desk. She discusses our situation with Minessi in Fanti for a while, then writes “cough” on the sheet of paper in front of her.
“His breathing, too, listen to it, it’s not just the cough,” I chime in. Minessi glances at me uneasily. The nurse adds a few notes to her paper, then tells me I should come in with Minessi and Yao to explain the situation to the doctor. I add that it was already going on when I left a month ago. The nurse looks at Minessi in surprise.
“Bohsom?” she says sharply, which means month. Minessi nods slightly, looking caught out.
We enter the doctor’s office. I’m amazed by the low fees: only 200 cedis so far, less than 40 cents. The doctor is a young Ghanaian man in a white button-down shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. He wears a silver cross around his neck. Probably a recent university graduate doing his mandatory public service. He sits behind a broad desk, wearing a stethoscope. He speaks curtly to Minessi, and she replies respectfully, her eyes dropped.
“Bohsom eko,” she murmurs softly in Fanti. One month.
The doctor brings his hands down on the desk in an impatient gesture, barking a response. I’m dismayed to see the Minessi cowering now, her elegant posture literally shrinking under this man’s rebuke. She unwraps Yao and sets him, naked, on the desk.
“She feeds the baby mashed kenke. No milk,” the doctor tells me in English. “Do you know what is kenke?”
Kenke, made from fermented corn meal, is one of the region’s staple foods. I nod stiffly. Minessi avoids my eyes.
How can he speak like this in front of her? I think. Does he think she doesn’t understand? If she’s feeding him kenke it must be all she can afford. But isn’t she also breastfeeding? I realize I don’t know, and now I can’t remember if I’ve ever watched her feed him. For a heart-stopping moment, I wonder if she’s guilty of negligence. My mind flits to her other children: Why aren’t they with her? I quickly push away the disloyal thought. She’s wonderful with Yao, so gentle and patient. If she’s stopped breastfeeding there has to be a reason, doesn’t there? And cow’s milk, which can only be found in tins, is certainly out of her range.
The doctor orders Minessi to remove a small pouch that hangs on a frayed red ribbon around Yao’s neck.
“I too have my superstition.” He winks at me. “I won’t touch the baby while this is on.”
Placing the stethoscope against Yao’s tiny chest, the doctor looks up and shakes his head at me again.
“They feed the babies mashed kenke and then wonder why they grow pale and have no energy,” his voice rings with disgust. “I tell them and tell them but they won’t listen.”
I hate him making Minessi a “them.” Even more, I hate being a part of his implicit “us.” He smiles at me ingratiatingly. I keep my expression coolly neutral, refusing to forge an alliance. In my periphery I see Minessi adjusting her orange cloth, looking sideways at the bare walls of the room. When the doctor turns his attention back to Yao, I try to catch her eye.
After the examination, the doctor again speaks sharply to Minessi in Fanti. She nods, expressionless, head down.
He turns to me. “The baby has pneumonia. It is lucky that he is alive. He will have to sleep two to three days here in hospital,” he continues in a comradely tone. “One-hundred cedis a day to stay here. Not so much, eh? But she is afraid to bring him. Instead she will visit the witch doctor. Then she will sit in her house until the baby dies. They can never find money for the hospital, but they will always find money for the funeral.”
Minessi is silent as we walk down the sterile hallway.
“That doctor was a jerk, wasn’t he?” I say finally, but she just stares straight ahead.
In the pediatric section, which seems to consist of a room with eight cots — six empty and two occupied — they give me a prescription to fill. We walk into town to find a pharmacy.
It costs 2,500 cedis for ampicillin; 2,100 for paracetamol. Minessi looks on with a stunned, incredulous expression, shaking her head slightly as I fish out the money for the medications. On the way back to the hospital, she repeatedly removes the medicines from their paper bag and looks at them.
“Are you all right, Minessi?” I ask, but she doesn’t respond.
Back at the hospital, she sits down on a cot with Yao. In a flat voice, she asks me to tell her husband to come tonight with clothes for her and the baby, and some water.
I begin to leave, but she stops me. “Chop money,” she says, her face turned away. She needs money for food. I give her 1,500 cedis, and tell her to send word with her husband if she needs more. She takes the money without comment, and doesn’t look at me as I go to the door.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
Yao is well! He and Minessi stayed in the hospital a week, and now his eyes are clear and bright. His breath flows unimpeded, a strong sweet column of air. He lies on his blanket in front of the hut, flailing his arms.
“I’m so glad he’s better,” I say to Minessi, who is pounding fufu in a corner of the yard. She has been distant towards me since her return from the hospital. My feelings towards her have changed, too, subtly. I have an agenda now: to make sure Yao stays healthy. Where I once thought Minessi an ally, I now fear she may be an obstacle. I keep my tone cheery, attempting to neutralize the tension by ignoring it.
“Isn’t it a relief that Yao is back? Maybe we could go together and buy some milk for him. I could set up some kind of a milk fund.”
She continues to pound silently, the muscles in her back working.
“Sistah Korkor!” calls Amoah from across the yard. “You people know so much! Here we thought, the boy is fine. He smiles, he looks around, this is a healthy boy. And now we find that the boy was so sick. We know nothing!”
I sense, more than see, a bristling from Minessi. The pounding speeds up.
“Oh, no,” I say. “Minessi knows a lot more than I do. She just couldn’t … She didn’t –”
“No!” Amoah laughs. “She is a foolish African woman. Not smart, like you. Is that not true, Minessi?”
Minessi stops pounding, her pestle hanging in mid-air. “Yes,” she says suddenly, loudly. “Before Sistah Korkor and her friend the doctor we know nothing. We do not know Yao is sick, we do not know Yao is well. We know nothing, we can do nothing. We must say thank you to Sistah Korkor.” She turns to me, her jaw taut. The veins stand out in her neck and arms.
“Thank you, Sistah,” she says, her voice low and shaking. “Thank you for the life of Yao.”
She turns her back. The heavy thud of her pestle fills the air like a mournful drum, a rhythmic counterpoint to the other women pounding out their dinners in nearby huts.
Stepping off the plane in Vientiane, Laos, we were greeted by the sort of reception usually reserved for package tourists to Waikiki Beach.
Pre-pubescent girls in native costume rushed up with leis; a troupe of Lao dancers swayed on the tarmac, dancing to musical accompaniment that sounded like a rhapsody composed on a planet inhabited by medieval cats. Press photographers snapped pictures as we accepted free T-shirts, handed out by smiling boys who lined our passage into the arrivals lounge.
“This gives fresh meaning,” I said to my companion, “to the phrase ‘accidental tourist.’”
The date was Jan. 1. My friend Diane and I, along with a load of other unwitting travelers, had arrived from Bangkok on the maiden flight of “Visit Laos Year 1999-2000.”
This “Visit (your country’s name here) Year” business is an honor doled out by ASEAN — the Association of Southeast Asian Nations — to its member nations. Last year was Thailand’s turn; this year, for the first time, Laos (which joined ASEAN in 1997) received the mantel. The hope of this poor and landlocked country, naturally, is to cash in on the millions of dollars in foreign exchange — much of it from tourist revenue — that has flowed for decades into Thailand and, more recently, into Cambodia and Vietnam as well.
Long-restricted Laos dropped many of its travel limits in 1994. It now offers a visa on arrival at the airport. And it has launched “Visit Laos Year 1999-2000″ on the wings of a tender slogan, a phrase officials clearly hoped would root in the hearts and minds of the waddling Westerners whose shirts and blouses had been permanently stained by the potent botanical oils in their pesky leis: “Laos: My New Love.”
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
Vientiane, the capital, is almost cosmopolitan; there’s an English-language newspaper, a district of tailors and countless lanes lined with shops selling metal tins and carved wooden boxes, cheap jewelry, counterfeit antiques and ethnic minority dolls. French colonial dwellings — some of them converted to guest houses — squat in the shadow of gleaming office buildings, and the menus of the French and Italian restaurants around Nam Phu Square list their prices in dollars, not kip.
And there are some glorious wats (Buddhist temples) in the capital. We spent our single sunset in Vientiane at Wat Sisikhet, with its long corridors lined with gesturing Buddhas. Also impressive is Wat Phra Keo, whose signature image — an Emerald Buddha, presented to Lan Xang (“The Land of a Million Elephants,” as Laos was then called) by the king of Ceylon — was looted by the Thais in 1827, just before they razed the place to the ground. (The image is now in Bangkok’s Wat Phra Keo, in the Royal Palace compound.) Still, there are some superb Buddha images at the rebuilt temple: One of them looks a bit like Groucho Marx, another like Mr. Spock, and several reminded me of characters from a Lynda Barry cartoon.
But we did not tarry long in the capital. Our destination was Luang Prabang, a monastic center and former French colonial settlement, situated along the Mekong River.
Diane, a writer and producer who has written for National Geographic and worked on films like “Little Buddha” and “Seven Years in Tibet,” lives in Nepal. Expatriates working in Kathmandu are always looking for places to escape to — places where they can actually breathe. High in the hills, Luang Prabang had recently acquired a reputation as a retreat of choice. From initial reports, we expected something halfway between Shangri-la and classical Indochina: a sylvan enclave where hornbills nest, the mist rises through bamboo groves and the gentle peals of temple bells signal the dawn.
We wound up at the Villa Xiengmouane by accident, after our first choice
of hotels — the well-known Calao Auberge — proved a noisy bust. At the
Xiengmouane (pronounced “sheng’mwan,” but I’ll just call it the “X”) we
took a small suite: a pair of rooms facing on one side a handsome wat
(from which the guest house took its name) and on the other a large,
quiet garden. Laundry hung brightly on the line, and the umbrellas of a
riverside restaurant were visible down a nearby lane. In the distance,
toward the setting sun, motorboats plied the Mekong.
Despite our luck with lodgings, we were a little let down by the town.
It was far from what we’d expected. Wandering the streets, Diane and I
felt a little brokenhearted, poorly served by the paeans of praise that
our friends had heaped upon this rustic peninsula at the confluence of
the Mekong and Khan rivers. For all its anti-hype, Luang Prabhan — “LP”
for short — is already a typical tourist “discovery,” a place that was
undoubtedly far more charming two years, or even six months, ago.
Alternative travel has become a lot like the stock market: By the time
you get wind of something, it’s over.
A day’s stroll was all it took to see where LP is heading. The streets
were abuzz with new Honda motor scooters; a couple of years ago, Luang
Prabang was filled with bicycles. A CNN report on the impeachment trial
issued from a coffeehouse; above the Scandanavian Bakery, an
enterprising Lao had opened a cybercafe.
There was construction everywhere, a steady soundtrack of power tools and
the steady percussion of hammers. Observing the new architecture, we
had to laugh at the irony. After declaring the old part of Luang Prabang
a World Heritage Site, UNESCO insisted that all new structures must be
of traditional design; but “traditional,” in the case of Luang Prabang,
means French Colonial. With its new designation and an evident influx of
capital, LP seems well on the way to becoming another travelers’ mecca:
a watering hole on the ever-expanding Thailand-Cambodia-Vietnam circuit.
But the town was not without its charms. We passed the afternoon at the
LP’s most fascinating temple: Wat Xieng Thong (pronounced “Washington”
by some fellow travelers). Walking into the compound is like stepping
into a fairy tale: There is a sense of magic that, once upon a time,
must have saturated all of Luang Prabang. Built in 1560, the temple
complex is named for its venerable thong, or bodhi, tree. The ficus — like
most of its companions at temples throughout Asia — was probably grown
from a cutting taken off the original bodhi tree in Bodhgaya, India,
beneath which the Buddha gained enlightenment.
Some of the wats at Xieng Thong are inlaid with mosaics made of colored
mirror. The style, showing cartoonish figures on a red background (some
with their heads getting cut off), reminded me of “naive” American art.
Others are decorated with bas-reliefs of carved wood, thickly layered
with gold leaf. (The most beautiful building of all, emblazoned with
golden panels depicting erotic scenes from the Ramayana epic, is
actually a parking garage for the royal funeral chariot.) As the low sun
struck the wats, the air seemed to fill with colored sparks; it was like
sitting in the middle of a giant jewel box. We caught our breath, looking
beyond the temple gates to the shimmering cord of the Mekong River.
Only one element compromised the scene. A teenage monk sat on the steps of
the main temples, smoking a Marlboro Light and tapping his Nikes
restlessly on the steps. Enlightenment, I thought to myself. Just Do It.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-
The full moon rose over Mount Phousi,
casting the wat on its crest into spooky silhouette. Diane and I
wandered the old town, searching for a restaurant that served crepes
and fruit salad. When we finally found one — after a long walk in circles
through the old quarter — I decided to stay local, ordering a traditional
Lao specialty called laap. Made of minced fish ground in a mortar with
spices, garlic and green onion, the brown paste was the nearest thing
I’ve eaten to cat food. (I must add, for fairness’s sake, that on subsequent evenings I tried
chicken laap, at the Phousi Hotel restaurant, and found it delicious.
Lao food can be terrific, but you have to know where to look. Lonely
Planet recommended a “small, funky” place where the locals go. We found
it; it’s now in a cement building, packed with guidebook-toting
Planeteers. The food was great, though. And there’s precious little to
choose from in Luang Prabang.)
It felt good to return to the villa, to put Segovia on our portable CD
player and nest in our little suite of rooms. Outside the window, Wat
Xiengmouane lay in shadow. I could make out the spires of the small
vihara shrines and, to their right, the temple’s ritual drum: a huge
cylinder with two leather heads, suspended from ropes within an elegant
gazebo.
I climbed into bed at 9, three days of international travel finally
catching up with me. Diane was equally spent. She was fighting off a
cold as well as the body-memory of four stressful, all-consuming months
of work in Nepal. Right away, we ran into trouble. The bed squeaked like
a cave full of bats, screaming at every adjustment of an arm or a leg.
Tired as we were, we burst out laughing. Earplugs muted most of these
high-register sounds, and I drifted off to sleep.
I was shaken out of bed — literally — at 4 in the morning. Twenty feet
below, the monastery drum had begun to beat: thunderous thumps that
shook the room by the neck, punctuated by a cacophony of cymbals and
bells. The charming cultural racket continued, unabetted, for 15
minutes. I tried desperately to pretend I was back in my old Santa
Barbara apartment, right next to the railroad tracks. I’d gotten used to
that, hadn’t I? The clamorous thumping of the freight train, rolling
past my window at 4 each morning? Yes, I had; it had taken two years.
In the strange clarity that accompanies premature awakening, I
formulated a cunning plan. Years of travel have taught me the value of
preparation, and I carry a few items that most travelers never think to
pack. My noise-addled brain imagined with satisfaction the bewilderment
and confusion of the monks as they arrived for their next wee-hour puja,
only to find their mammoth drum webbed behind the bright yellow tape I’d
snatched from an Oakland, Calif., patrol car: POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS.
The big problem with being a solo female traveler is that every horny Tom, Dick and Kwesi gloms onto you like a blood-hungry tick and won’t let go. “Vous êtes seule?” they ask — “You’re alone?” — and then, with growing excitement, “Vous êtes Americaine?” There’s an instantly recognizable look to the eyes of men who are about to give you a sleazy come-on — a hooded, dozy look intended to draw you in with the promise of candles, stringed instruments, expanding time, expansive beds.
Far more annoying than the men’s incessant overtures, however, is the inexplicable fact that I feel guilty when I reject them. I remember an incident years ago in Baden-Baden, when an Italian guy I had met at the youth hostel wanted to go hiking with me. I said no, because he was already getting touchy-feely, and I knew I’d be fighting off his advances before we rounded the block. He reproached me with, “You must take risks when you are in a foreign country. Otherwise you miss it all.”
Clearly this feeble attempt at persuasion was a garden-variety example of the depths the male species can sink to in its tireless quest to self-perpetuate. We know this, right? And yet, in spite of this knowledge, in spite of years of feminist education (well, not so many years — I was only 19 at the time), I tormented myself for days, wondering whether I was cheating myself out of too much life.
In another instance, a Swedish man whom I’d rebuffed asked me why I was creating artificial barriers between body and mind. We liked each other, why shouldn’t we make love? And although I knew he was a New Age clone whose recycled arguments went all the way back to John Donne and “The Flea,” I had to endure the nattering of my own mind for days, wondering whether there was something wrong with me, whether I was an ice empress, incapable of passion.
These things, and more, make a shaved head and robes seem like blessed relief.
But anyway. After nearly seven months of solo travel through Europe, Morocco and West Africa, I was convinced that there was no tactic known to the Y-chromosome that could surprise me. Then I met Jimmy Brahima.
“You are very interesting,” he told me after less than five minutes’ acquaintance. “Très, très interessante. Please, can I take you to bed?”
“No!” I shouted, furious and bored and disgusted. “No no no no no!”
We were on a darkened street behind the stadium in Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso. I’d arrived that day from the capital city of Ouagadougou, after a long bumpy ride in a packed minivan. My plan was to stay the night, visit Bobo’s famous mosque, then move on to Mali. Since I was always pushing myself to maximize my cultural experience, I’d gone to the stadium to see a youth choir concert, but there was no concert. Tired, headachy and near the breaking point, I’d been walking around in circles for almost an hour, trying to find the way back to a hotel whose name I’d forgotten. Along the way this irritating companion had attached himself to me, like something unseemly sticking to my shoe.
“Shhhh …” he looked around, embarrassed, but there was no one to hear. He leaned in for a kiss. I sidestepped him so quickly he almost fell.
“Don’t touch me,” I said between gritted teeth. I was about to follow it up with a command to get the hell out of here, when he startled me by suddenly backing up about 10 yards. He did it so quickly, bouncing backwards in tiny steps like Charlie Chaplin, that I giggled with surprise.
From that distance he shouted the following pronouncement: “If a woman tells me not to touch her, I don’t touch her, because I don’t know what she is.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, mildly intrigued.
“She could be a genie.”
“Really?” I took a step toward him. He backed up. “A genie?”
“Oh yes. There are so many genies walking around. They appear to be human, but when they want to, they can grow huge.”
“Are they all women?” I asked.
“No, there are males too, but the males don’t show themselves to men.” He looked at me speculatively, then continued. “If a genie is angry, it goes like this.” He made a powerful sucking sound through his teeth, lips parting slightly to let the air sing through.
I tried to imitate him, but instead sputtered and drooled like a geriatric camel. I struggled to look forbidding, but laughter twitched the corners of my mouth uncontrollably, and soon I was cackling so hard I could barely breathe. After a moment Jimmy joined the escalating gigglefest until we were both bent over and gasping for air. Jimmy moved closer again — I guess he figured I couldn’t possibly be a genie with such a wimpy capacity for hissing. Either that or I was an astounding bluffer. He demonstrated the sound a few more times, and with some practice I got it.
“Please,” he said, “let us go to the bar for some beers. Afterwards I will help you to find your hotel.”
Riding the wave of goodwill, I accepted.
“If you ever need to threaten a man, make that sound and he will run,” Jimmy counseled me as we made our way through the darkened streets.
I promised to keep that in mind.
“I worry for you, une petite fille traveling alone.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. We’d reached the bar, which had an outdoor courtyard with several wooden tables where African men in both Western and traditional clothes sat drinking, laughing and shouting. I slid onto a wooden bench.
“But I do worry. Such a little girl. You need protection.” Jimmy himself was dressed in spanking new blue jeans and a silky black button-down shirt. I half expected to see a gold chain around his neck. His face, seen for the first time in the light, was strikingly handsome in a sleek, chiseled way, with high cheekbones and thick-lashed dark eyes. I already regretted having agreed to a drink.
“Spare me the ‘little girl’ stuff,” I said testily. “Je suis très forte. I’m very strong. Not to worry.”
“I knew it.” Jimmy leaned forward, his eyes wide and eager. “I could see it. Please, will you tell me your secret?”
I laughed. “There is no secret.”
“You should tell your brother. Tell your friend. Teach me.”
“No secret. I’m trained in self-defense,” I said.
“Self-defense?” He lowered his voice to an excited whisper. “You mean you can … disappear?”
“Disappear? No — no … Self-defense — I can defend myself. Use my hands and feet to disable someone, knock him out.”
He looked at me reproachfully. “I wish you’d tell me the secret. Don’t be annoyed. You frighten me. I don’t know what you are.”
I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Please. Let us agree. I will tell you a story of my friend, who met a genie, then you must tell me what you are.”
I nodded and took a long swig of beer. I extended my hand. “Deal.”
Gravely, he shook my hand. He looked at me for a long moment, then began:
“He saw her here, at this bar, sitting alone at a table. She was a beautiful fat African woman. She was dressed in expensive European cloth. He himself is so skinny, with one leg shorter than the other, and not rich. Normally he would never speak to a woman like that, but her eyes stopped on him, and she smiled and nodded her head. He went to her and offered to purchase a drink, but she said no. She asked if she could go home with him instead.
“They walked to his house, but every time he reached for her hand, she said, ‘Laisse moi,’ and pushed his hand away, just the way you pushed me away before. Every several steps she asked him, ‘Where is your house?’ He asked her why she was in such a hurry to be there, but she only said, ‘I need a place.’
“When they finally arrived, she almost ran to the door. Inside, he tried again to pull her next to him, and she went ‘Fffffft!’”
Here Jimmy made the sucking sound, violently, his hands in the air and his eyes wild.
“Then she started undressing,” Jimmy continued. “She took off one skirt, then another and another and another, then shirts, one, two, three, until there was a pile of 100, 200 shirts lying on the floor. The room was filling up and my friend could not breathe. He ran for the door, but the woman begged him not to leave. ‘Stay!’ she cried. ‘Stay with me!’”
“But my friend was too frightened. Even though she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, he opened the door and ran down the street to the house of his cousin. He remained in his cousin’s house for two weeks. Finally he went back to his place. Everything was normal. No clothing on the floor, nothing. But from that moment on he was impotent.
“That is why if a woman says, ‘Don’t touch me,’ I don’t touch her. I don’t know what she is.”
I stared at Jimmy, entranced by his fine cheekbones, expressive eyes and wide, elastic mouth. I gulped at my second beer.
“Now,” he said, “you must tell me what you are.”
“Oh … I don’t know,” I teased. “I don’t know if I can trust you with the information.”
“Ma soeur!” he said eagerly, taking my hand. “Surely you can trust me. Have you ever in your life met a nicer person than me?”
I nodded.
“Where? In America? Ghana?”
“Lots of places.”
“Lots of places? No. There is no nicer person than me. How can you say someone is nicer than me? When you told me not to touch you, didn’t I say ‘yes madame’?”
“Yes, but only because you were afraid of me. A really nice person doesn’t ask a woman to sleep with him when they’ve only known each other for five minutes. Especially not when she’s alone in a dark place.”
“You must talk more quietly; you’re talking very loudly.” He eyed a man at the next table. “I was just making several options available to you. You never know what a person wants to do. I said, do you want to go to the concert tomorrow, to the museum, shall I go with you to the market? You said no. I said you are very interesting, can I take you to bed? You said no to that, too. I said all right. I was only giving you choices.”
My head was spinning from the beer, and I started to laugh. The day’s heat and exhaustion lifted off me, and I felt giddy and weightless. So what if I couldn’t find my hotel that night? I’d surely find it in the morning, when it was light.
Perhaps I am a genie, I thought, filled with hidden powers, and the thought made me feel sexy, reckless. Something moved inside, not unlike the sensation before an impulse purchase, a rash, against-my-better-judgment stirring, a heart-knock of desire. I was lonely, too — why did I always deny myself? Whose outdated ethic was governing me? What exactly was I defending, and why? Here was Jimmy, a physically gorgeous man, and vital, creative, alive. I could almost feel the heat of his hands against my body, the long, smooth journey of my fingers down his back. Oh God, it had been so long …
I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.
“You want to know what I am?” I asked softly. I was about to follow it up with something flirtatiously ironic, when Jimmy quickly scooted back to his bench and stood up.
“Please,” he said, “the bartender, he knows all the hotels. He will help you. Please be kind. Don’t watch me. Don’t follow me. Please.”
And Jimmy was down the street and around the corner before I could tell him that of all my roadside suitors he was the lucky winner — that I was no genie at all, just a tipsy human female ready to step off her pedestal and seek a little comfort far from home.
There is one person on the planet whom I can honestly say I hate. This in spite of two and a half years of lovingkindness meditation. I’m not talking about the profound yet somehow abstract hatred you feel for a brutal dictator in a far-off land, nor the reluctant half-desire, half-loathing of an ex-lover. I’m talking about the peculiarly bitter, tenacious hatred you feel for a person who once caused you an acute and unforgettable humiliation before a tribunal of peers.
Oberlin College in the mid-’80s was fertile ground for humiliation.
“Identity” politics were gathering steam, and everyone was discovering his or
her oppression. In the larger superstructure of both the college and
society, minorities of all categories still struggled for basic parity. Our
student social life, however, had become a sort of inverted universe: The more
oppressed groups you belonged to, the higher your status. And the higher
your status, the more license you had to publicly call people on their unconscious bigotry.
Generally, those of us whose sole claim to oppression was gender had only
white males on whom to take out our anger (and I took mine out in spades). Occasionally, however, someone could gain status through the sheer force of moral indignation and be accepted as an honorary member of a more oppressed
group than her own. These individuals were always the most virulently
righteous when taking other members of their own societal subsection to task for their
sexism, racism, classism or homophobia.
Don’t misunderstand me. I have no desire to belittle anyone’s anger at
injustice by slapping it with the mocking label “politically
correct.” College is a violently politicizing time; the sudden awareness
of your personal story as part of a broader societal mosaic can galvanize
phenomenal growth, courage and action. And if some tender feelings get hurt
along the way, I’m not convinced that’s always a bad thing, especially if
those feelings have survived 18 years without close examination. Given
all of that, why do I still hate her, after all this time?
“Laura” was a latter-day hippie when she arrived at Oberlin from a New
England prep school in 1984. She played Woody Guthrie songs on her guitar,
was openly bisexual and wore her muddy blonde hair hanging straight down her
back. She seemed to frequent every political organization on campus, but was
most visible in the Women’s Center, where she was the primary contact for
Violence Against Women Awareness Week (VAWAW) and its crowning event, the
Take Back the Night March.
That same year, I arrived at Oberlin from Lawrence, Kan., with shaved legs
and lipstick, wearing polka-dot leotard and mini-skirt combos, my wavy brown
hair permed in a fluffy ‘fro. Like Laura, I was eager to get involved in the
abundant political life of the Oberlin campus. Giddy with admiration for the
feisty, articulate student activists, I focused my political energies on
SANE/Freeze and Democratic Socialists of America. For a solid year I
remained blithely oblivious to the Oberlin aesthetic, roundly confused when
the scruffy, defensive young men I worshipped wouldn’t give me the proverbial
time of day.
By our senior year, Laura had become an ultra-hip leather dyke, or its vinyl
equivalent (leather didn’t go over too well in our largely vegetarian
school). Her hair, now platinum, was short and spiky, and her acoustic guitar
had long since gone electric. She was no longer involved with the Women’s
Center, but had become the most prominent white anti-racism activist on
campus. I, meanwhile, had grown out my leg and underarm hair, gained 20
pounds, traded my polka dots for tie-dye, and become an outspoken bisexual.
I was now co-chair of the Women’s Center and a primary organizer of
Violence Against Women Awareness Week and the Take Back the Night march. I
revered Laura, but whenever I tried to connect with her, she looked at me
as though I were an unwelcome pop quiz. Still, I managed to invite her to
appear in our VAWAW panel discussion on “Rape and Racism,” and to my
delight, she accepted.
On the first day of VAWAW, we woke to find an enormous banner hanging on the
Student Union bearing the words “WHITE SUPREMACY RULES.” The campus
community was stunned beyond belief. We wanted, needed, to believe
that it wasn’t perpetrated by students — that it was “outsiders,” most likely
a group of Ohio rednecks angry at the “commie faggot students” running
around town in their ripped-up clothes. Classes were canceled. A teach-in was held in the
cavernous chapel-cum-concert hall where the big-name musicians played. One
after another, members of Oberlin’s small student-of-color population took
the stage and said that, yes, they could believe Oberlin students had done it.
They told stories of the racism they’d encountered at Oberlin, the ways
they’d been marginalized from the day they arrived. Oh yes, they could
believe it.
An angry gloom fell over the 3,000-student campus. Marches and rallies were
held. White students cried; students of color caucused and raged. The
VAWAW planning committee cancelled the first two days’ events, but by the
third day, when the “Rape and Racism” panel was scheduled, we decided to
resume. We decided as well that Take Back the Night march should take
place at the end of the week as planned. As horrific as the banner incident was, there didn’t seem any point in letting our efforts go to waste. That would give the bigots too
much power.
All 200 seats were filled in the classroom where we held the panel, and another 50 or so people crowded the back of the room and spilled out into the hall. The atmosphere was charged, everyone still on fire over the unsolved mystery of the banner. One by one the panelists — three professors and two students — spoke about the racist perceptions around
rape crimes, setting the historical context of black men lynched for looking
at white women and bringing it up to the present, where black men are
routinely hauled in by the police on no greater evidence than the color of
their skin. Each was cheered long and loud by the multiracial crowd, and I
felt a stirring of pride at my role in organizing this important event.
Laura was the last panelist, and the only Caucasian. She strode confidently
to the microphone and waited for silence.
“Take Back the Night,” she said in a coolly mocking tone. “I can’t believe
this racist institution is being perpetuated on this campus for yet another
year. I thought people would’ve gotten a clue and shot the beast by now.”
A strange heat rose in my body. What was she saying?
“White women marching through black neighborhoods,” she continued. “That’s
how this march began. You can change the route of the march, and you can try
to get a few brown faces into the line, but it comes down to the same thing:
privileged white women screaming at poor black men.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. We had dealt with this issue! The committee had
reviewed the march’s history and route exhaustively. Weeks of discussions
with women-of-color groups on campus had gone into creating a march and rally that would feel inclusive and welcoming to all women.
I felt a burning mix of anger, shame and fear. Laura had organized the
march for the past three years! If she had suddenly gained insight into its
inescapably racist nature, why hadn’t she shown up at an early meeting this
year and shared her discovery? Why had she agreed to participate in
something she reviled?
Laura finished her speech to raucous cheering. As one of the professors rose
to invite discussion, an angry buzz filled the room. Other VAWAW organizers
sought my eye, expressions of mute appeal in theirs. Someone had to speak.
Slowly, heart pounding, I raised my hand.
“I understand the complaints against Take Back the Night’s history in
Oberlin,” I began, fighting to keep my voice steady. “But I can’t accept
that a march against violence against women is an inherently racist event.”
As an inexperienced freshling, I explained, I had found the sensation of
marching through darkened streets with hundreds of other women profoundly
empowering, even life-changing. That experience made me an activist! It was
true the march had attracted mostly white women in the past, but every effort
had been made … And I had to maintain that even if only a few women of color
chose to participate, the march was still a valid event. White women were
still women, still victims of violence. Was it better to do something,
however imperfectly, or to do nothing at all?
At this point in my monologue, my voice began to crack, and tears came into
my eyes. I concluded hurriedly and sat down.
Laura returned to the microphone. She paused for a moment, then began, “It’s
always an interesting thing when white women cry in front of women of color.”
I don’t remember the rest of Laura’s response. At that moment, I disappeared
into a kind of fresh red hell, where I could see and hear nothing but the
blood trundling through my head. I was convinced that Laura was the
incarnation of all things evil, dumped onto the earth in human form to quash
any impulse toward constructive action. She had betrayed me, not just as a
woman, but as a fellow activist. She knew my heart, I was sure, knew my
intentions, but had sold me down the river to bolster her own image. Laura’s
fear of the racist label was so intense that she pointed the finger, not just
at me, but at a community and event she had championed passionately for the
previous three years.
When I returned to earth, one of the professors was at the podium. The buzz
had died down, and the discussion had apparently shifted from the Take
Back the Night march to the need for more ethnic studies courses. A gentle
hand was rubbing my back, and I turned to see a gorgeous African-American
woman whom I recognized from my course on “Women in Development.”
“Hey,” she said simply. “Hey.”
It was a moment of grace, a divine reminder of the power of kindness. Her
simple “hey” had the power to crush an army of evil Lauras. I smiled.
Take Back the Night proceeded as planned. The percentage of women of color
at the march was not far off the percentage of people of color at the school,
which was minuscule. In a small way, we considered this a victory.
Looking back, I have to ask myself again the reason for this lingering
bitterness. I have no trouble forgiving the kids who called me a Martian in
the seventh grade because I wore too much green. Was Laura’s behavior
really so different from theirs? A painful desire for acceptance and an
excruciating fear of exclusion drive adolescent cruelty. As we get older,
this same insecurity fortifies itself with an arsenal of political jargon.
Those who mocked their classmates’ hairstyles in junior high can viciously
attack their politics in college. The schoolyard bully turns rallies into
riots. (A friend once suggested to me that the cause of war is hurt
feelings. Absurdly naive as that sounds, I think it harbors a grain of
truth.)
What finally becomes obscured in all of this ego-shuffling is the
issues themselves, as well as the actual lives that give them meaning. When bigotry
becomes an insult to fling at the terminally uncool, we lose the power to
name it when it’s really there. We frighten potential allies into silence,
and hand those who maintain bigotry doesn’t really exist a perfect
target for their ridicule.
Maybe that’s what really burns me about Laura all this time. Or maybe I just wanted her to like me.
Mosquitoes don’t like me. Conversely, I don’t particularly mind
them. The same goes for flies, gnats and other small circling creatures.
This simple fact exasperated my boyfriend Simon.
“Relax into the bugs,” I’d counsel him, as we hiked along in some
damp, tropical place, a cloud of insects swarming around his head like a dark
halo.
“Easy for you to say,” he’d snarl from deep within his swirling aura,
his hands flailing angrily at the air.
When I decided to spend a year in West Africa, Simon stayed behind.
I didn’t promise to come back and he didn’t promise to wait, but I knew he
would. Though I’d loved him wildly for three years, I wasn’t worried about
losing him. In my mind, the equation was simple: Mosquitoes didn’t want me. Men did.
Working as a volunteer for a non-governmental organization in Ghana,
I watched with infinite compassion as one by one my fellow volunteers were
laid low by malaria. Behind my compassion was only the smallest hint of
triumph. To get malaria, you had to be bitten. And my blood was bitter
horseradish to mosquitoes.
At first, I followed the precautions anyway, just to be on the safe
side. I dutifully popped my chloroquine and Paludrine and covered up in the
evenings, wearing long-sleeved T-shirts and lightweight pants, applying
repellent, carefully checking my mosquito net for holes. But as time went by
I became increasingly careless. The repellent was the first thing to go,
mainly because I hated the hot, sticky feeling of it, like an airtight layer
of latex paint on my skin. Not to mention the smell. The long sleeves went
next.
Three weeks into the trip, I would sit on the stone steps of the one-room
schoolhouse that was our living quarters in the village of Afranguah, near
the coast, enjoying the delicious whisper of the night air on my
bare arms, while my European co-workers sweltered in their long sleeves and
jeans, reeking of toxic substances. And still they came down with it,
sweating and shivering on their air mattresses in the stifling cement room
while the rest of our brigade was out digging and carrying bricks for the
health center we were building. I never gloated, at least not on the
surface, but I considered myself supremely blessed.
Eight months later, I had completed my volunteer stint in Ghana,
traveled overland through Burkina Faso and Mali, flown across the continent
to Kenya and bused my way to Tanzania, still malaria-free.
My best friend Debbie flew out from Minneapolis to meet me in
Tanzania for a month. She brought with her a letter from Simon, telling me
that he was seeing someone. He still loved me, he said, but he was sick of
waiting with no promises, and she was gentle and attentive and, well, there.
What was he to me, anyway? he asked — a safety net to come home to when the
travels were done? He was tired of feeling like the laughing boy in the
corner, standing around stupidly while the free-spirited object of his
affections danced her way across the globe.
A jolt went through me as I read his letter, but I squelched it. He
adored me — hadn’t he told me a thousand times that I was the love of his
life? The world’s greatest miracle? Wasn’t he repeating this message even
now, in so many words? Let her comfort him, I told myself. When I get home
in a month or two, I’ll show her the door.
“Enjoy yourself,” I wrote to Simon, “but don’t commit. Your girl
will return anon.”
The following week, waiting in the village of Arusha to arrange a
safari, Debbie came down with malaria. We hung out for a week in that
strange little town filled with desperate safari hawkers, while she went
through the feverish dance I’d come to know so well. By the time she was
safely on the plane, and I had set out alone for parts unknown, I was convinced
that my body was invincible, a fortress of immunity.
A week later I lay on a lumpy mattress in a barren hotel room in the
town of Tanga, Tanzania, lazily watching a fan turn above my head. The air
was stupefyingly hot and still. As I stared at the fan’s hypnotic spiral, an
extraordinary languor seeped into my limbs. My arms and legs felt weighted
down, as though an army of Lilliputians had anchored them to the bed. As my mind began to drift toward sleep, a small, reasonable voice in the back of my head made a delicate suggestion: “Before you conk out, why don’t you put up your mosquito net?”
My eyes scanned the room vaguely.
“Oh, I don’t see any mosquitoes,” I told the voice. “Probably the
fan’s keeping them away. And besides” — at this point my face undoubtedly
wore a faint smirk — “mosquitoes don’t like me.”
Three days later I awoke with a hot ache in my bones and the sensation of a thousand tiny
needles pricking my flesh. I was in the village of Pangani, on the Tanzanian coast. I’d spent the past two nights camping on the roof of the Pangadeco Hotel with Clemens, an East German medical student with bright green eyes and astonishing black lashes whom I’d met in Tanga.
The Pangadeco was a “find” — a completely empty hotel less than 100
yards from the beach — and the previous days had passed in a blissful haze of
sun and sand. At night we’d walked for miles into the lukewarm shallows of
the ocean, moonlight floating lightly on the water like lace on black velvet.
Back on the beach we watched tiny crabs skitter sideways across the sand and
drop into their holes, so light on their ballerina claws they left no tracks.
The only blot on this idyllic time (besides a nagging anxiety about Simon)
was the fact that it was the sacred month of Ramadan, the Muslim holiday in
which no one eats between sunrise and sundown, and there was no food to be
found during the day except coconuts and under-ripe miniature bananas.
But on this third morning, when I sat up, my head seemed to soar
above my body at a great height, as though resting atop an impossibly tall,
spindly neck. I stumbled down the stairs to the toilet, awkwardly balancing
my unwieldy head, and noticed, with the morbid fascination that accompanies
such observations while traveling in “third world” countries, that my shit
had turned a bright, almost neon yellow. The beast had entered me at last.
I carted myself to the local hospital for a malaria test, only to
find that it was now the end of Ramadan, and the hospital was closed for the
festivities. Back at the Pangadeco, the owner telephoned a German doctor who
lived in a nearby village. Over a crackly connection, the doctor said I
should assume it was malaria and begin treating it right away, rather than
waiting to get a test. If it were malaria tropica, the most dangerous
strain, and I didn’t treat it, I could conceivably die from it, she
explained, whereas taking unnecessary medication might screw with my system,
but wouldn’t kill me. Armed with this advice, I broke out my supply of
mefloquine, also known by the brand name Lariam.
Mefloquine was the strongest anti-malarial drug available. Peace
Corps volunteers took it weekly, as a prophylaxis, but the doctor in southern France,
where I had bought my medications, had advised me to bring along only a small amount,
to use as a cure if necessary. Instead, he had given me a combination of more moderate
drugs as my weekly preventative medication.
“This mefloquine is too toxic for your body. You should not take it
weekly if you will be in Africa for more than two months. This is not just
the personal opinion of Dr. Marc Sillard,” he had told me sternly, pointing at
his chest, “but the strong recommendation of the World Medical Association.
I give it to you as a cure only in case of emergency. If you are near a
hospital, and can be tested, they may give you something else.”
Peace Corps volunteers I met in West Africa reported all sorts of
effects from their weekly mefloquine dosage, from depression and mood swings
to startlingly vivid dreams and hallucinations. Their weekly dosage was one
tablet. The curative dose was three tablets in a single day.
By the time I took my mefloquine, the fevers were in full swing. My
body behaved like a furnace gone haywire, my temperature modulating up and up
like the ending of a Barry Manilow song until it broke in a dramatic display
of sweat and shivers, only to begin the process all over again. I kept a
bucket of brown water next to my sleeping bag, wetting a grungy washcloth and
placing it masochistically against the hottest spot I could find — stomach,
underarm, inner thigh — as every hair on my body stood bolt upright on its
follicle in protest. Although I was ravenously hungry, when I finally got
access to food, I was unable to keep it down. Even with something as
innocuous as rice, I would eat one spoonful, and my throat would close on the
second bite. Still my mind remained detached, even slightly intrigued.
“Malaria’s not so bad,” I said to myself.
Little did I know the fun had just begun.
My first mefloquine-altered night was spent in a surreal state,
somewhere between painfully acute wakefulness and grotesquely etched,
brilliantly colored dreams. Everyone I’d met in my life paraded through my
head like a Super 8 movie shot with a hand-held camera. All my loves and
betrayals, from early childhood onward, came forward in random order to take
their shaky bows — my seventh-grade best friend who deserted me when I was
kicked out of the popular group for gaining weight and “dressing like a
Martian”; the mentally disabled boy at my elementary school whom I championed
and then betrayed by throwing a single pea in his direction during a
cafeteria food fight; the man who whispered “dirty Jew” in my ear on a
cross-country bus; the acting teacher whom I worshipped with fervent,
unparalleled lust; my dead grandfather; my adoring father and chronically
nervous mother; Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon, Simon — all of them praising and
accusing me, grabbing hold of my hands and legs and hair, breaking my heart
again as if it were the first time. I shouted their names, sat up again and
again, cried and begged forgiveness.
And then, suddenly, I opened my eyes. I had to write a letter to
Simon. I shot out of my sleeping bag, slipped under my now-superfluous
mosquito net and skidded across the cold cement to my backpack, where I
fumbled madly for my notebook and pen. Suddenly there was no time at all, no
time to form the words, no time to get the stamp, no time for the letter to
cross the ocean and sit in his mailbox. In this moment I understood
everything, and he had to understand right now too. I loved him. I needed
him. I cherished him. He was my life.
By the time morning came I had no patience left for either malaria or
letter-mailing. I had to get back to Tanga, where I could find a reliable
phone. I would call Simon and tell him how I felt. Then I’d go to Dar es
Salaam and put myself on the first plane home. My journey was over, the
endless searching, doubting, questing for self. I knew what mattered. Thank
God I’d figured it out in time.
I started to get up to pack my backpack and was stunned to discover
that I could not stand and cross the paved roof to reach it. I stood up and
sat down again three times in rapid succession, my legs folding beneath me
like a marionette’s. The dizziness in my head was so severe that palm trees,
ocean, clothesline zoomed by me as if on a high-speed carousel.
“What are you doing?” Clemens called out from across the rooftop.
“You’ve been screaming all night long,” he added with visible irritation.
“I’ve got to get to Tanga,” I said.
“Are you crazy? You’ve got malaria. You’re not going anywhere.”
“But I have to,” I told him, my voice rising. “I need a reliable
phone line. I have to call.”
“Call in a few days,” he said. “Look at you. Who do you think you
are? Stay in bed for Christ’s sake.”
“I have to call,” I said. “What’s the big deal? How much work is it
to sit on a bus?”
I started to stand up again, and again I found myself sitting. My
head ached like the worst kind of hangover. The colors of the world were too
bright. Still I kept trying, over and over, with the perseverance of an
athlete training for a race. Never in my life had there been a challenge I’d
set my mind to and been unable to achieve, from winning the County Spelling
Bee to writing and touring a play to traveling alone through Africa. I
wasn’t going to be defeated by six feet of cement rooftop.
But I couldn’t do it. I rose and fell and rose and fell like a crazy
jack-in-the-box before I dived headfirst into the hot morass of my sleeping
bag and began to cry like a child throwing a tantrum; heaving, moaning,
wailing, shaken by violent sobs that gradually gave way to a bottomless
river of fluid grief. I could not stand and walk across the cement. Simon
was gone and would never come back to me. Things were fragile. Things could
be broken. Things could be lost.
I lay on my sleeping bag, looking up at the pale yellow sky, a
27-year-old white girl from the United States of America, privileged and
reckless, sporadically courageous and wildly arrogant, selfish and loving,
thoughtless and tender — sick now, alone now, growing older, growing up.
The events were these:
At the main crossroads, near the village of Gowrie, in the Upper East Region of Ghana, my English friend Katie and I sat on the shaded cement porch of the fisheries building, waiting for a tro-tro to take us to Bolgatanga. We’d been with Aroko’s family for a week. It was Monday, market day, and we were about to head to town to buy tomatoes, rice, palm oil and tinned milk for the compound. The air was still and very hot.
Aroko was leaning against the fence nearby, talking softly with a friend. He pulled up to us on a bicycle. “A small boy fell in the water and we are going to get him out,” he said, and set off.
“Ooh,” we said, and frowned.
“That’s worrying,” said Katie.
Half-standing, we watched the bicycle disappear down a dirt path between the high millet stalks.
“It must be far, if he’s going on bicycle,” Katie said.
“Mmmmm,” I concurred. We sat back down.
Small groups of people began to pass, heading down the same path, some cycling, some running, others walking purposefully. Small children shot by. Now we thought we should go too, but we’d just sent a man to fill our water bottles. So we stayed, discussing CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Neither of us was quite sure how these were done. Katie thought it was one breath to 15 presses, but that didn’t sound right to me.
People continued to pass.
My copy of “Staying Healthy in Asia, Africa and Latin America” explained CPR and mouth-to-mouth, but it was in my bag, at Aroko’s father’s house in Bolga. We thought they were two different things, one to do with heartbeat and the other with breathing.
The man returned with our water.
“Should we go?” I inquired vaguely. The stream of people had all but stopped.
“We don’t know where it is,” said Katie, glancing toward the place where the path disappeared into the dry stalks. I raised my arms to let a hint of breeze cool the sweat.
Aroko and his friend returned.
“Is he OK?” I asked, relieved.
“The boy is dead,” Aroko said.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – -
“You were in an extraordinary situation,” my friend Colin said, eight months later, back home. He sat on the couch in my mother’s Berkeley apartment, tracing with his fingertip the edges of a photo of Aroko’s mother smilingly gutting a fish. “You’re not brought up in a place where things like that happen. Besides, what could you have done?”
This is what plays in my mind:
A 7- or 8-year-old boy (or 6?) walks into a dark cement
irrigation tunnel with water up to his neck, holding a fishing net, slips and
is unable to regain his balance, clutching at the cement walls, slippery with
algae, trying to scream, water filling his lungs as he gasps, his heart
pounding, and his friends sitting on the grass eating groundnuts and swinging
a rope strung with fish and eels, the day’s catch, as 20 minutes go by, 30, an hour, and they start to wonder, “Where
is Azureh? He’s been a long time.” They call “Azureh? Azureh!” They wade
in and try to peer into the tunnel, calling his name into the hollow echoey
place. No response and they’re afraid to
enter — they try throwing in a rope, they talk some more, call his name.
Finally one runs for help.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-
“You’re not used to that kind of heat,” said my mother, closing the
refrigerator door. “And you shouldn’t do CPR if you’re not trained.”
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-
This time I rise and follow Aroko down that path — one foot in
front of the
other, the high dry grass scratching my calves, my legs heavy in the heat,
taking hat and sunglasses off, wiping away sweat, putting them back on. We
follow the voices, come out to the spot where people stand on either side of
the canal peering into the tunnel. Above them on a bridge, where a
wheel, secured by a heavy iron chain, controls the dam, people pound
against the chain with a rock, trying to break it so the wheel can turn to
lift the cement gate; the water from the reservoir rushes through and carries
the body of a 6- or 7-year-old boy out of that dark stone tunnel into air
and light and waiting people of all ages standing on the bank shouting and
gesticulating as if these things could bring him back.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-
“There would’ve been choices at every step,” Colin said. “If you’d
followed,
then you would’ve had to decide whether or not to dive in. Then whether or
not to interfere. To try procedures you’re not sure how to use.”
“If he was in all that time, he would’ve been long dead when you
arrived,”
said my mother.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-
As we see the body emerge, carried on the swell of water, Katie and
I push
our way through the crowd, “Is there a heartbeat?” “Try mouth-to-mouth” — “Oh
God, did you check for vomit?” “Is his chest rising?” If only I had that book!
Fear of raising false expectations, disapproval of touching the
dead, chill
of putting your lips against his cold ones, wondering if there are amoebas in the water and knowing it’s useless, he’s been in so long; what makes you think you can — but you’ve got to try, because what would you be if you didn’t try? Trying
more for you than for him, and if that’s true, who the hell are you to
practice your peculiar cultural rites on the body of this boy?
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - –
-
Here is what happened after Aroko said, “The boy is dead”:
We changed locations. We were sitting beside a chain-link fence,
under a
tree. Two men were talking, a few feet away, sharing an orange. A repeated
phrase of English jumped out of the Frafra conversation: destiny to die in
water, destined to die in water.
Aroko pointed to a boy across the street, his big belly sticking out above brown shorts, skinny legs, to one of the neighborhood boys who smiled shyly and said
softly, “Namba,” as he passed the compound every afternoon, carrying water or a
bunch of groundnuts or a string of fish. Aroko said, “The boy was like this.”
An orange peel hit Aroko’s arm. He looked up.
“Eh!” called the man. “Azureh was tall. He was never like this boy.”
