Chapters 6-10

CHAPTER 6

Death was just a normal part of animal life on our farm.  Some died from the cold temperatures, like the baby rabbits that Josh and I were waiting to welcome into the world.  They started out so tiny when they finally were born, and didn’t look much like rabbits at all – but then they started to grow and they were the cutest things we’d ever seen.  One night they must have been left without the warmth of their mother, and all seven of them died during the cold night. 

Other animals died because we ate them for our family’s food – something my dad called “The Circle of Life,” a phrase that I didn’t really get, but figured it meant that it should be ok to eat our farm animals.  And then the animals sometimes killed each other, too.  Coyotes or foxes would sometimes kill cats or small dogs, and definitely chickens.  Of course cats would kill mice and other rodents.  Sheep were always leery of predators, too.  One time our two dogs got into the chicken coop and killed a couple of hens.  Sam was a Labrador, and Bernie was a wiener dog – small, but ferocious.  My dad taught them a lesson by tying those dead chickens around the dogs’ necks – he called it a “chicken necklace” – I learned very quickly that even dogs have shame.  They hid under the porch all day and wouldn’t come out again until my dad cut the twine that set them free from their dead weight.  Those dogs never went after the chickens again.

One of my dad’s favorite stories that he told us from when he was a boy was about his own pet chicken.  He had a hen that he took care of, and she hatched several broods of little chicks.  One time there was only one lone chick that lived from one of the broods.  His hen would go around guarding that lone survivor under her wing, keeping it safe and warm, hovering over it and chasing it all around the hen house.

 Pretty soon, she had another brood, and those little chicks were just miniature puffs of yellow downy fuzz compared to the fledgling that was already maturing into an adolescent.  Just a stiff wind would be all it took to blow those fuzz balls around the coop.  The older chick could hardly fit under its mother’s wing anymore because it had grown up so much.  But my dad said his hen was such a good mother that she didn’t care how big her baby had become – she still put him under one of her wings, warm and snug and safe as any child should be.  He took up all the room under that wing, so the mother hen gathered her newest brood of chicks and fit each and every one of them under her other wing.  She had all her chicks safely gathered in, and my dad said she was the best mother hen he’d ever seen.  He said that’s how a mother loves her children – and how our mom loved Josh and me.

“But Daddy, what about Jude?  He doesn’t have a mother, so who is going to love him?”  I asked sincerely.  “Who’s going to put a wing around Jude?”

He looked at me, eyes softening and replied, “I guess we’ll all need to put our wing around Jude, then, won’t we?”  Josh and I felt satisfied with that answer, and our hearts were full again with hope of a fair and just existence.

Dad acquired two pigs from Mr. Cox, and pretty soon we were up to our ears in piglets.  Little piglets are also really cute – it’s not until they grow bigger that they turn into a huge hog that terrifies you with visions of being eaten alive after falling into their pig pen.  Josh and I understood well that we would be eating the pigs at some point – and we were fine with that.  We enjoyed bacon and ham, and we’d rather eat the pig than have him eat us!

Our parents would sing to us a lot – songs that I still sing today to any willing ear.  My dad didn’t really have much of an aptitude for music, but he loved to sing nonetheless.  It seemed like he and mom knew the words to every song there ever was – I was so impressed with their repertoire, from nursery rhymes to folk songs, to their ability to recite long literary verses given by various historical figures, like the Ride of Paul Revere, or the Gettysburg Address.  Every Sunday, Dad’s discordant singing could be heard above the swells of the congregation, and I’d peer over from sitting next to him to see his beaming face and radiant smile.  I was so happy he was my Dad.

 There was one that he would sing to us about two friends named Jack and Joe that sailed off to find their fortune.  Joe loved a girl named Nellie, but Jack ended up coming home first and marrying her right out from under Joe.  We loved joining in with Dad and Mom on the chorus:

Give my love to Nellie, Jack.  Kiss her once for me. 

The sweetest girl in all the world, I’m sure you’ll find is she.   Treat her kindly, Jack, oh pal.  Tell her I am well. 

His parting words were, “Don’t forget to give my love to Nell.”   

Poor Joe.  He lost his true love to his friend, Jack.  So in honor of this favorite song, we named our pigs “Jack” and “Nellie-Jack”; we didn’t realize it was Give my love to Nellie, comma, Jack.  We thought it was a hyphen. 

The day came when Jack and Nellie-Jack were to be butchered.  My mom was really nervous about how we would take the news of their impending doom, and she cautioned my dad that maybe we should stay inside while he did the dirty deed.  “They need to learn about the Circle of Life one of these days.” Dad said.  “It may as well be today.  I’m sure they’ll be fine.”  So off we went, following my dad down to the pigpen with his rifle in hand.  When we got back to the house, Mom asked Dad how it went, and how Josh and I handled it.  He reported back to her that we did just fine.  In fact, when he shot Jack, we were perched up on the top rail of the pigpen fence. When he turned to us in order to measure our reaction, we said to him, “Shoot him again, Daddy!  Shoot him again!”

Lucky was our beloved milk cow, and one of our chores was to milk her. On our walk home from the barn, I was always in awe when Josh could spin the bucket super-fast, half full of precious milk, around and around in a circle way above his head and down past his feet.  His shoulder was the hub of a wheel, and his arm the turning spoke.  He didn’t spill a drop of that milk, because the centrifugal force kept it all inside the spinning bucket. 

When we got it home, my mom would put the milk into big gallon jars to chill in the fridge, and after a while the cream would rise to the top where she could skim it off to use for other things.  One time Lucky stepped in a bucket of milk.  Josh was exasperated.

“I can’t believe after all that time we spent, she had to step in the bucket!”  He complained.

“Well, she just barely stepped in it,” I said.  “Do you think anyone will notice?”

“Maybe not.” Josh mulled the idea over in his mind, gauging the acumen of our mother, and wondering if just this once she wouldn’t notice.  “It’ll probably be fine, anyway.  It’s not like she soaked her hooves in it.”

We were loath to waste all of that milking time, so we brought the bucket home, hoping Mom wouldn’t notice.  We poured the milk into the gallon jars, straining all of the liquid through some cheesecloth first, just to be sure Lucky hadn’t left some straw in the bucket from her hoof.  We carefully set the jars to cool in the fridge, and promptly forgot about them. 

The next day our mom summoned us to the kitchen, where she had the gallon jars sitting out on the counter. The milk was a shade of green, and the cream on top was greener still.  Her look was one of, “Really?  You thought I wouldn’t notice?”    

Mom knew how to make butter from the cream, and lots of other dairy products, too.  She made “Lucky butter,” “Lucky ice cream,” “Lucky buttermilk.”  Eventually we ate “Lucky burgers” and we were truly thankful for that peaceful bovine friend that we once knew. 

There were other animals that weren’t so nice to us – as if they sensed we might want to put them on our dinner table one day, or something.  We would try to avoid the geese at all costs.  We were almost more scared of the geese than we were of the big bull all alone in his vast pasture.  The geese would deliberately chase us through the fields, honking and hissing, nipping at our barefoot heels so that we danced on our tiptoes, trying desperately to avoid the sticker plants.  We’d rather get stickers in our feet, though, than be bitten by the angry geese, so we’d run as fast as we could until we could scurry carefully under the bottom wire of the electric fence, safe from our predators. 

We had never named the geese.  I thought this was sad, because even angry geese deserve a name.  I decided we would call the meanest one Lucifer, and the other one would be called Aunt Rhody – probably just from wishful thinking that it would hasten the “Old Grey Goose’s” death.

When our little bunny rabbits died, Josh and I decided we would bury them in a Mason quart jar.  Jude was over at our house that day playing with us, so the three of us gathered the dead bunny rabbits up in our little hands, their soft bodies limp and lifeless, and laid all seven of them gently to rest inside the jar, all snuggled up together to keep them warm in their glass sepulcher.  Maybe if they had been all snuggled up like this during the cold night, they wouldn’t have died.  

“Let’s say a prayer for them,” Josh said.  Jude looked a little uncomfortable, not used to religion at all, other than when he was around us.  I bowed my head obediently, though, and Jude quickly followed.  Josh prayed for the souls of the little bunnies, asking God to keep them safe.  I dug a shallow hole, and we buried the quart jar.

It wasn’t until a week or ten days later that we remembered our little buried treasure, and we ran out back by the rabbit hutch to dig up the time capsule tomb.  We just wanted to check on them, and make sure they were still ok.  We took them from the quart jar to examine them, touching and handling each one before returning them to their final resting place.  My mom wasn’t too pleased with the dead rabbit smell on our hands, and no amount of scrubbing would get rid of it; only time would eventually wear it from our skin.

CHAPTER 7

                  “Mom, do you think it would be ok for me to marry Jude?” I asked, nonchalantly.    In my eyes, Jude was the next-best boy in the world after my brother, and I wanted to marry him.  He didn’t have any idea I felt this way about him, but his deep brown eyes and dark locks caught my attention every time I saw him.  He was funny, and he was always kind toward me.  His smile was bright against his olive skin; I had a crush on this Second Musketeer. 

“You might want to wait until you get older before you make up your mind,” she said wisely.  I think she was a little hesitant about this idea.  She loved Jude, and tried her best to provide a good example to him, but there had been more than one occasion when my parents had needed to sit Jude down for a discussion.  He had stolen $20 from my mom’s purse once, and he had lied to them several times.  But they understood his home life, and lack of decent adult supervision and role models.  So they did their best to reproach him with gentle kindness, at the same time attempting to teach him honesty, hard work, good character, and love.   My eight-year-old mind was pretty sure Jude and I would be getting married.

                  Jude didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and that’s maybe part of the reason why he loved spending time with us.  His parents were divorced, which wasn’t very common for the time, and it made him a little different than everyone else at school.  He lived with his dad, who drank way too much.  He wasn’t sure where his mom was, and so he clung to our mother as his own, loving any attention he got from either of our parents.

The three of us sat up in Joshua’s tree that summer, and I watched as Josh and Jude took turns cutting the palms of their own hands with Josh’s pocket knife that he got for his birthday and always kept in his pocket.  Dark blood oozed slowly from their wounds as they clasped their hands and mixed their blood as an oath of brotherhood.  I think they saw some Indians doing it on The Lone Ranger, and they wanted to make the same promise to each other.  They were “blood brothers” after that, and it was amazing to witness the alliance and bond that they formed from that time forward.  I stood as a witness that day to two young boys pledging their loyalty to one other – an outward display of solidarity that continued into manhood, and was just as real as a bond of true blood.

                  Josh and I were no strangers to corporal punishment; a spanking now and then would set us straight, and keep us honest.  But Jude’s dad would go a little too far sometimes, and we’d see bruises now and then on Jude’s arms and neck.  The older he got, the more time he’d spend at our place, and his dad was too drunk to really care.

∞ ∞ ∞

                  The first dead guy we ever saw was when I was in the third grade.  Mrs. Aspromonte was trying to drill the multiplication tables into our brains, our minds so easily distracted by daydreams of summer adventure.  I would stare out the window and imagine my bare feet dangling into the cool water of the irrigation ditch.  But when I heard her promise an ice cream sundae at the drug store for the first three students to memorize their times tables, I snapped back to reality, suddenly engaged with a challenge.  Of course I was one of the three to enjoy that ice cream sundae a couple of weeks later.  My competitive spirit wouldn’t have it any other way.

                  The bell rang and I ran to meet my brother and Jude.  We were headed to the store to buy some intensely grape-flavored Bubble Yum.  We’d stuff our mouths with several pieces at a time, gluttonous gourmands with no concept of savoring the occasional indulgence.  With these visions of sweet pleasures dancing around in our heads, we ran out of the grade school and on to the sidewalk along Grand Avenue.  We came to a sudden halt in front of a man who was blocking our path with his sprawling body.  His head was in a pool of blood that stained the sidewalk for months after that, and his eyes weren’t quite closed.  Kids kept coming up beside us, and soon we were all around the man, standing still as statues, and just as quiet, too.  The man wasn’t very big, but his dark brown skin was leathery with deep wrinkles, and Josh knelt down to close his eyelids.  His hands were motionless, but well-worn and calloused by years of toil.

                  The principal was there now, and he sent us all on our way, saying he would take care of things, and this wasn’t something we needed to see.  We still went to the store and bought our gum, but we weren’t running with excitement anymore.  We walked quietly, not sure how to process what we had just seen.  We stopped at the playground on our way home, and pushed each other on the swings.  The seats were made from a piece of wood, flat and strong, perfect for pushing each other higher and higher until we launched ourselves from the seat and into the sandy pit.  I could propel myself the farthest, and neither one of those boys could beat my mark. 

                  As Josh gained altitude on the swing, I would hitch a ride on the wooden seat by grabbing onto it, and letting it lift me with his backward momentum.  My fingers caught the back edge of the seat and it lifted me briskly off the ground, my weight suspended for a moment at the apex of the backward motion.  As we came back down to earth, I would push with all my might in tandem with the downward force of my body, and the swing would go even higher.  Josh let go, and landed a foot short of my mark.  Being small had its advantages. 

CHAPTER 8

                  Our world was disrupted when my parents told us we would be moving out of the country.  My dad had gotten a job in Africa, and we would be moving there for at least a couple of years.  When our parents sat us down to break the news to us, Josh looked a little forlorn, and went out to be alone in his tree.  He wasn’t really sure how to wrap his mind around leaving his best friend.  He felt responsible for Jude, and was worried who would watch out for him if we weren’t there.

I was excited for a new adventure, and I found out we would have to learn French.  We were moving to a country called Mali in West Africa, and the idea sounded so exotic to me.  Before its independence, Mali was a colony of France, and French was still the national language of the country, although many native dialects were spoken throughout the region.  Our parents arranged for French lessons right away, hoping to give us a jump-start before the big move to its capital city of Bamako.

I didn’t really know exactly what my dad did for his job.  I knew he was a “plant guy” because that’s what my mom called him.  He knew the names for every plant we ever saw.  Not the normal name, like “sage brush” – he would call it by its scientific name, Artemesia tridentata.  We thought it was impressive, and teased him endlessly about his big brain. 

His job in Africa would be working as a contractor for a Range Management project, conducting plant classifications and mapping them for the Ministry of Agriculture, through a USAID contract.  I had no idea what that really meant, other than he would be working as a “plant guy,” and that Josh and I would get to move over the endless expanses of ocean and start a new adventure. 

A few weeks later, Jude and Josh sat up on the platform in the Joshua tree, dangling their feet over the edge, swinging them back and forth as they took turns trying to spit the farthest.  Pretty soon their mouths ran dry, though, and the contest lost its thrill. 

“So, are you going to write me letters while I’m gone?” Josh asked, not really knowing how to broach the conversation about his sudden exodus from Jude’s life. 

“I doubt it,” Jude snapped, with an edge of bitterness in his tone.  “I don’t even know if letters can make it that far, Josh, so don’t count on it.”  Josh looked at Jude out of the corner of his eyes, trying to gauge what had gotten into him.

“OK…well, just so you know, I’ll still try to write letters to you sometimes.” Josh was trying to make peace, sensing an uninvited vibe of tension starting to rise between them.

“Don’t bother, Josh – seriously.  I don’t even care.”  Jude stood up and reached for the rope swing, eager to get out of the tree and out of this conversation.  His heart felt weird like it was being squashed, and he didn’t like the feeling.  His vision was already starting to get a little blurry from the tears that were threatening to develop, and the last thing he wanted to do was cry in front of Josh.

Josh watched him getting ready to swing down to the ground, and he pled with him, “Don’t leave, Jude.  I’m sorry…don’t be mad.” 

“I’m not the one leaving, Josh.”  Jude’s feet were already on firm ground, and he dropped the rope, walking away as it swung lazily back and forth losing its momentum against the friction of the air and against gravity itself, coming to rest again in its usual spot.  Josh watched the rope until it was still. He peered down through his eyelashes at his hands, a bit forlorn and not sure what he could do for his friend. 

                  I was on my way out to the tree to get Josh for dinner when I ran right into Jude, who seemed like he was in a hurry.  “Hey, Jude!”  He looked up to meet my gaze, and I could see the look of hurt on his face, and the tears welling up in his eyes.  “What’s wrong?” I implored.

                  I think I caught him right at the moment where he simply couldn’t keep up the tough guy routine for one more second, and he surrendered his broken heart to the first person he saw, my skinny little eight-year-old self.  He practically ran into my arms, hugging me, crying out loud in thick and throaty sobs as if this was the only time in his almost ten years of life that he’d ever let his feelings emerge from inside himself.  I just hugged him, and told him it was going to be ok, even though I didn’t know what “it” was.

                  Once he calmed down a bit and pulled away from my embrace, we sat on the ground where Josh joined us, having followed Jude toward the house.  He let his heart spill over, having reached its capacity for feeling, and he told us the thoughts of his heart.

                  “I just don’t know why I have to be left behind.” He started.  “You guys are leaving me, and I don’t know how I’m going to do my life without you.  You’re my best friend, Josh, and I don’t know why you have to leave.”  Tears streamed down his face, leaving pale tracks through the dust on his cheeks.  My own eyes welled with tears just from empathy for his, and I reached over to hold his hand – he didn’t pull his away. 

                  Josh tried to reassure him, “Jude, we don’t want to leave you, either.  I’m sure it will go by super-fast, and we’ll be back before you know it.”  He didn’t know what else to say, and this seemed like a lame conciliation once he said it out loud. 

                  “It might go by fast for you, but you don’t know what it’s like living with my dad.  I just…will miss you guys – and I’ll miss your mom and dad, too.”  With that admission, he pulled his hand from mine, and buried his face into both his hands, quiet sobs escaping his throat, his shoulders shrugging with each sound.

                  A thought came to my mind, and I thought I had just come up with the most brilliant idea ever known to mankind.  “Jude, maybe our parents will take you with us!”  I exclaimed.  “Really.  You stay with us all the time anyway – and your dad won’t care, right?  Let’s go ask mom and dad, Josh!”

                  All three of us felt a nagging aura of skepticism looming around us, but for lack of a better idea, we got up, and headed to the house to pitch our proposal to my parents.  If wishing could really make things come true, we had it in the bag.  But of course, reason and the rule of law trumped any wishing, and in the end Jude had to stay home while we moved to our new home across the briny deep. 

Initially when we approached our parents with the idea, they saw the desperation on our faces, and the swollen eyes from Jude’s lamentation – so they promised to talk to Jude’s dad about the possibility.  Of course he reacted defensively, accusing my parents of wanting to take his son away from him.  “He’s got a dad!” he yelled at my father, his breath reeking of alcohol and his eyes riddled with broken capillaries. 

I think my parents knew all along that it wouldn’t be possible, but they wanted Jude to know that someone cared enough about him to at least try.  To at least want him to come along.  I think the effort made a difference to Jude, although later in life he looked back on this time as a diversion of possible paths – one that would have opened his world to adventure, a true sense of family – even privilege, and the other an avenue leading directly to his scornful reality.  He seemed guarded from then on, never wanting to expose himself to disappointment again, and never allowing his heart the chance for vulnerability, and therefore genuine love.

CHAPTER 9

Kéta was crouching down on the backs of his heels – a stance that seemed to be a special talent that only Africans possessed.  I certainly didn’t have the balance or the flexibility in the tendons of my knees to sit for hours, flat-footed with butt resting on heels.  I didn’t have much meat on my bones, and yet I couldn’t crouch like that without balancing my weight on the balls of my feet, heels in the air.  As soon as I put my heels down, I fell over backward. 

Kéta was our gardien, the person who sat at the end of our alley at night to guard our house.  All of the ex-patriots in Bamako hired a gardien – it was almost a system of forced employment, meaning if you didn’t employ someone to guard your house, word would get around and the locals would reciprocate by breaking into your home. 

Even when you did have a gardien, people still broke into your house.  At least if your gardien was Kéta, who tended to sleep by his fire at night at the end of our alley instead of staying awake and vigilant.  One night my dad heard an intruder, and chased him out of our house – Kéta woke up and ran after him, chasing him with his shoe in hand.

The insult of the shoe is fairly well-known in Muslim culture.  Shoes are considered filthy, lower than dirty feet, and hitting someone with a shoe is a way of showing great offense and disdain to the recipient of the blow.  So when Sungalou, our nineteen-year-old houseboy, took off his sandal and chased us around our dining room table with it held high in his hand, we knew our teasing had gone too far. 

“I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!” Josh yelled, keeping just far enough ahead of Sungalou to keep out of his grasp.  I just shrieked and screamed as I ran around the table, full of both fear and fun all at the same time.  My screeches were interposed by surges of laughter; my vacillation between the two made Sungalou even more irritated.

He was mad at us for laughing at how he said some English words.  His thick African accent, laboring to pronounce our bizarre and awkward lexes, was new and almost whimsical to us; it just tickled our funny bones.  But our amusement had gone too far – instead of it being fun, his pride was starting to get hurt, and off came his shoe in disdainful reproach. 

When our giggles gathered steam and finally combusted into bursts of laughter, we ran for our lives out the front door and into the yard, Sungalou eventually giving up the chase.

Yes, I learned quickly that gardien didn’t always mean to actually guard something.  Whenever we drove to the open marketplace downtown Bamako, we would be surrounded by twenty or thirty kids, hardly letting us get out of the parked car because the throng was pressed up against our doors and windows.  Each one of them was yelling, “Gardien! Gardien!” hoping they would be the kid we would hire to stand guard by our car for the hour that we would be gone doing our shopping. 

These kids were my age – maybe ten years old.  There’s no way they could keep someone from stealing our car, or anything inside it.  This was just another form of employment, just like Kéta’s job was at our house.  We would pick out one of the boys from the mob to stand by our car, and my mom would pay him some centimes when we got back from our errands.  It was something my mother was always happy to do – the kids were clearly quite poor, some with their bellies distended from malnourishment, and others with shirts that they’d borne on their backs years beyond their proper fit.  It was obviously all they had, and a few coins for their labor was the least Mom could do – although she wished she could do more.

I watched Kéta crouching close to the ground with his hamstrings smashed down against his calves, as comfortable as could be.  He was tending to his fire, and I could smell burning flesh in the air.  He must be cooking his dinner, I thought, as Josh and I wandered out of the gate – a grey metal portal through the thick concrete wall that surrounded our house and yard that squeaked on its hinges each time it was pushed open. 

The wall was topped with thousands of pieces of broken glass that had been set into the wet concrete when the wall was first built.  These were meant to act as deterrents to a potential voleur who had unscrupulous intentions of sneaking into our yard and stealing something.  The sharp points of broken bottles would slash someone’s fingers and hands if they tried to grab onto it to pull themselves up, aiming to scale the wall. 

Josh and I would still crawl over the top of the wall as a shortcut to school, gingerly avoiding the sharp edges and corners of the multi-colored glass fragments.  We had our reasons for wanting to take this path despite the glass on the wall; we were too fearful of what awaited us at the end of the alley, and we avoided that route if at all possible.

We sauntered up to Kéta, curious about his dinner.  He was nursing the fire with little pieces of wood, feeding it with one hand, and poking at it with the other.  He was chewing on a stick the size of a cigar, a short twig completely frayed at one end, knobbed with slivers of woody white fibers.  I had asked him before why he chewed on a stick all the time, and he explained that it was his miswak tooth brush. 

Apparently, this method of brushing your teeth from a twig of a Salvadora persica tree had more benefits than just clean teeth – Kéta said it kept him from getting malaria, and kept his tooth enamel strong.  The bark contains an antibiotic that suppresses bacteria growth, and contains natural nutrients like Fluorine and Vitamin C.  It made me wonder why we didn’t use these twigs, but instead brushed our teeth with plastic bristles.  Just one of the many things it seemed we Toubabs did the hard way. 

Toubab was what all the African kids called me and Josh – it means “whites” – they would actually chant it to us in a little sing-songy way, following us home from school.  “Tou-ba-bu! Tou-ba-bu! Tou! Tou! Toubabu!” 

I asked Sungalou one day how to say “blacks” in Bambara, their native language.  But when I started chanting that word back to the kids the next day as we walked home from school, they got all offended and started throwing rocks at us.  I had even tried to sing it to them the same way they did to us, mimicking their song as best I could, but using the new word Sungalou taught me.  It really didn’t go over well.

We ran home as fast as we could – I guess it wasn’t offensive to call us whites, but it was really distasteful to call them blacks.  I didn’t understand it, but I refrained from countering chants after that.

                  When we got close to Kéta’s fire, we realized he had some sort of small animal on a spit, turning it slowly from time to time in order to roast it on all sides.  He had skinned it, and its flesh was shiny from basting in its own fat, however little it possessed. 

                  “C’est quoi ça?” I asked Kéta what it was, since Josh and I were scratching our heads at what this varmint could be.  It looked nothing like a chicken – we’d seen plenty of those on our farm.  This creature had four small legs and a long tail – more like a small cat. 

                  “C’est un rat,” he answered.  “Je l’ai attrapé chez les voisins.”

                  I looked at Josh.  Did I hear that right?  He caught a rat at the neighbor’s house?  If that was a rat, it must be an enormous mutated variety, because it looked more like the size of a jackrabbit! 

“Mom!  Dad!” we called as we ran back into the house.  “You’ve got to come see this!”

“What is it?” Mom answered.

“Kéta is cooking a rat over his fire.  He caught it, and now he’s eating it for his dinner!” Josh explained.

Our parents happily followed us back to the alleyway, camera in hand.  There are some things that must be documented on 35mm; things that are otherwise too fanciful to be believed.

                  Kéta was quite a character.  He did more sleeping by the fire at night than guarding the house.  But he provided a lot of entertainment, as well.

“Sir, I want to show you this pistol,” he said to Dad.

“That looks like an old muzzle-loader.  Black powder.” My dad was admiring the gun.

“My Uncle gave it to me,” Kéta was talking to Dad as he loaded the weapon, pulled back the hammer, and held his arm straight out in front of him, aiming it toward the mouth of the alleyway. 

Then, he rotated his head so that his face was looking in the complete opposite direction of his aim. 

“Qu’est-ce que tu fais?” Dad stopped him, and asked him what he was doing,

                  “Ah,” Kéta continued in French, “well, you see, I learned my lesson the first time I shot this pistol; the kick was much more powerful than I had anticipated.”   Dad was listening to his story, unable to imagine a scenario where you wouldn’t look in the same direction as your aim.

Kéta went on, “I wasn’t holding my grip tightly enough, and the gun kicked back with such force, the hammer buried itself into my forehead, just between my eyes.” He brought the gun back toward his face slowly, touching the hammer to his forehead to demonstrate. 

“See?” He showed us the scar as proof.  “Now, I know better; now I look the other way!”

CHAPTER 10

                  When our airplane first landed in Bamako a year before, the door was opened to allow all of the passengers onto the portable stairway that had been pushed up against the plane.  Hot, humid sub-Saharan atmosphere gushed into the fuselage, flowing with it a smell that is uniquely Africa.  To this day, that smell conjures so many memories for me, bringing them to my mind’s eye more intensely than photographs ever could.  If you’re ever present when a traveler returns from Africa, and they open their suitcase for the first time since returning home, you’ll relate.  The scent is emitted from each piece of clothing, filling your olfactory senses with vivid memories of past travels.

                  The airplane ride itself was an adventure.  I’d been on airplanes before, but never one where farm animals traveled with the passengers.  There was an African woman dressed in the most colorful and exotic fabrics.  Each vibrant cloth was printed with striking yellow patterns on a brilliant blue background, draped around her torso and wrapped around her head, enticing my wondrous gaze.  She was sitting two rows back from us, and in her lap was a wire cage that held a live chicken, softly clucking its nervous objection to the journey.

                  “Dad, look!” I tugged on his sleeve and pointed at the chicken. 

                  Dad smiled at me, and said, “Yep, that’s sure different, isn’t it?”

                  “Maybe we should have brought our chickens with us,” I suggested.

                  “I don’t think that chicken likes flying very well.” Dad said.  “I think our chickens are a lot happier at Jude’s house.  Besides, now he and his dad can have fresh eggs every day.  Right?”

                  “Yeah,” I replied. “I hope he knows what he’s doing with my chickens.  They’d better still be alive when we get home.”

                  I took another look at the hen in the woman’s lap, and I suddenly wondered if my hen would be hatching a new brood sometime soon.  Jude was going to have his hands full. 

                    As I emerged from the plane and out into the sun, the humidity hit me, and I was instantly drenched in sweat.  That was our introduction to the weather in Mali – immediate misery and discomfort, sweating profusely, and hot as the underworld. 

We spent the first couple of weeks at the Hotel L’Amitié, and Josh and I spent almost every moment in the swimming pool – the only place we could keep cool.  Our skin was swiftly burned; our initiation to the harsh sun and tropical heat had commenced. 

Staying at the hotel was a benevolent and gentle entrance into the Third World for us; it could have been baptism by fire with instant integration into the African way of life.  Since my dad wasn’t a “Direct Hire” by the US Government, we didn’t get the comforts of home from the Embassy Commissary.  We hardly got medical care from the Embassy doctor, unless it was a dire emergency.  Our home – when we found one – would be among the locals.  A small modest house made of cinder blocks and a polished concrete floor.  So the hotel was a little softer landing for us, coming from the comforts of the States – a place where we could eat ice cream and spaghetti before being tossed to the wolves in the Grand Marché of Bamako for our daily shopping.

                  Josh and I swam across the pool at the hotel, and popped our heads out of the water at its edge, resting our arms on the warm concrete as we gazed across the grounds.  There was a white man with a thick brown beard sitting under a big tree, and a monkey was lingering at his feet, waiting for him to throw it some scraps of food.

                  “Look, Josh, there’s a monkey!” I pointed so he could see.

                  “Oh, wow!” He was just as impressed as I was.  “Come on, let’s go see if we can pet it.”  He lifted himself out of the pool, and I followed, the water dripping from our suits, the sun working quickly to evaporate the droplets from our skin.  We walked slowly toward the man, and sat quietly at a safe distance; we didn’t want to scare the primate away.

                  “Have you ever seen a monkey?” the man asked us.  We shook our heads, and he said, “Watch this.”  He put some crumbs of bread next to his shoe, and the monkey came closer, took the bread and ate it. 

The monkey’s face and hands were black, but its fur was light with tinges of brown; its hands were tiny, black, and creased.  They looked like they might be the size of a doll’s hands.  My mom had brought my old Mrs. Beasley doll with us, even though I protested loudly that I was too old for that kind of thing.  The monkey’s hands were about the same size of Mrs. Beasley’s, though.  I imagined the two of them shaking hands with each other, introducing themselves as new acquaintances, and Mrs. Beasley complaining to the monkey that it was far too hot here in Mali for her long dress and frilly cap.    

The monkey held the bread in both hands, and gnawed on it with quick tiny bites, its eyes looking all around, filled with paranoia and suspicion. 

                  “Cool!” we cooed.  The man put a crumb of bread in his shirt pocket, and the monkey climbed right up on his belly, and fished the bread out of his pocket with one hand.

“I want a monkey!” Josh said. 

“Me, too!” I echoed.  We were completely amazed.

The monkey sat there eating the scrap of bread, and when it was finished, it touched the man’s beard, starting to scratch at it.  Soon, it was working with both hands, picking little morsels of goodness from the man’s beard, and putting them straight into its mouth.  We laughed and giggled with delight. 

The monkey groomed the man for five minutes, or so, and he smiled as the monkey combed through his hair and beard.  We just sat there in awe.

Josh and I ran back to the hotel and begged our mom for a monkey.