The deep musky smell of a mosquito coil fills my small yellow room, as the wisps of smoke curl around my fingers. I like the smell, because to me it smells like incense. It is by far better than the nasty smelling bug spray they sell in the shops that line the street. Every time I spray it and I breathe it in, I am sure I am breathing in some noxious fume that slowly kills me. Ok, I know that sounds dramatic, but I seriously think I lose brain cells whenever I get a good sniff of the stuff.
Tonight is my first night with electric light in my room. I have had electricity, but up to this point there has been something wrong with the light socket in my room. The electrician finally came today and fixed it. Being without light has been an interesting experience, almost like camping in a house. I had my headlamp ready with me every night in case I needed to find something; otherwise I was surrounded by complete blackness. The good thing was I went to bed very early, and I would wake up at the very start of the day.
Every morning a rooster wakes me up literally at the break of dawn, and shortly thereafter I can hear the Muezzin from the loudspeaker in the minaret calling the Muslims to their morning prayers. Madame Caro’s house and the school are situated just down the street from a mosque. I doze for a little while, listening to the sounds of the morning. The children waking up for school and moving around, mothers beginning to gather their clothes from the laundry lines next to my window.
The school compound is like nothing I expected. When I hear the word ‘compound’ I think of concrete, barbed wire and a guard shack. We have all three I suppose, but it is not nearly as austere an atmosphere as I imagined. There is a short barbed wire fence that surrounds the whole property, but it is a large plot of land that has a warm, inviting atmosphere. On it there are two schools, a church, some mud houses with straw roofs, some brick houses with tin roofs like the one I am staying in, and a two separate large fields where the children play. There is a guard at the gate of the school, but whenever I see him he is stretched out on his chair in the shade, sometimes even sleeping there to escape the hot African sun.
And the whole place is full of children, especially in the school where I stay because many of them board here. Every morning when I leave for work and in the afternoon when I return they greet me with smiles. I raise my two hands to greet them in the sign for ‘hello’ and the put both thumbs up, which means that I am doing well. And in when I return for the day they always run to help me carry my bag back to Madame Karo’s house, even the ones in wheelchairs vie to take my bag for me. They are very kind, especially the older ones. They almost operate as a family, the older ones caring for the younger ones and all of them caring for the others who have cerebral palsy or another form of physical handicap. Sure they squabble and push one another out of the way, but that is typical sibling rivalry at work.
And they help me with my laundry too. I have never before washed my clothes by hand, and they tried to teach me the technique, but I failed miserably. They gave up on me, laughing, and used sign motions to indicate that I needed to stay out of it and just let them work. So I decided to take pictures of them while they did. Pictures mean a lot to them, which is understandable because they are only able to interact and communicate with the outside world with their eyes. Vision is everything to them, and they notice just about everything. And I love the ability to show them pictures, to type out what it is I am trying to say and have them teach me what to say in sign. I only wish I had more time to devote to it. I wish I had more time in general.
When it comes to time everyone is poor. Some might be wealthier than others, but there is really no way to know. There is only to live. Right now. It is to feel the sun and dust brush across my skin as I walk to the office. To taste the baobab candies with the red dye staining my fingers and mouth, and to say ‘jambo’ to everyone I pass.
I wish I could write Gede, capture the way it feels and the way it looks, but my words are too poor and everything would seem shabby and recede into something it is not.
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