Simon's Nairobi Diary - Archive 42

11 December 2007 7:15pm

Yes Mr. Police Borderguard? Why are you asking me to get out of the car? I will climb over the back seat and come because you saw the blue and white eagle passport when I held it up to the window. Sure, I will follow you into your rusted building. Where shall I put my bag? On this plastic table covered in wax droppings, ok. Yes, I am traveling to Dakar. I arrived in the Gambia on the 4th. I was only here for a short time, yes, I know. Where am I going in Dakar? I know you have no idea about this -- so I am making up a hotel name, because I actually don't know the location myself. I understand, you are checking people for drugs and weapons. Yes, I understand this is why you brought me from the back seat. I am so nervous, but I will try to smile and keep you light hearted that this doesn't sour, but inside I am screaming. Sure, no problem, you can search my bag. Pockets too, well fine I know you're just doing your job. After all, most toubabs are the drug smugglers. Please let me help you unwrap my books, my tshirts, my underwear, my shorts and pants. Please, let me explain my prescriptions: malarone, ciprofloxacin, and zantac. Oh, thats just a pink bismuth tablet, its not drugs. Yes, that is a Gambian newspaper, I am bringing it to Senegal for a souvenir of this wonderful majestic country. Why do you say I am transporting secrets? I was not aware the newspaper held the nations secrets, that I am delivering your facts to your enemy, that I am a spy or a mercenary because I carry this newspaper. Yes, you may keep it. Thank you, thank you sir for informing me that this newspaper would have arrested me at the border for being a spy. I am sweating my head is pounding, but I will keep on smiling and being lightheartedlooking but then you coyly move my CD to your pocket. Oh, I understand, you are a Youssou N'Dour fan too. How wonderful. I am so angry at you, I want to reprimand you in front of our mothers. That? That is my wallet, and I am begging you with all the mustered will I must swallow to not steal it. This little room and you and me and nobody else is getting small and my brain is frantic, overloaded, and I am trying to keep you happy. Anything you ask will of course be given, because I value only my health and perhaps that passport you have tucked in your armpit. That 50 dalasi purple note you have found loose, snatched, let that be a gift to you for helping me out, helping me to know the danger of carrying that newspaper. Do you see how I am framing your stealing to make it comfortable for you? Your comfort is my safety, truly. And can I place all of these things back into my bag now? Thank you, thank you for helping me out. I feel stripped and mocked, but thank you and see me smile? This must be what humiliation feels like. I am placing things and tucking them quickly to leave quickly. Please God let nothing else important be left behind by my razzled unmeticulous state. Ok: passport and wallet and health are here, so I am breathing easier as I shoulder my pack back to the car. Ok, I am getting back in the waiting car now. Good by sir and thanks again about the newspaper, I am waving to you and angry and shaking and you wave back and smile back and I hope your society loses its poverty and you are paid enough to avoid shaking down people like me. Until then, I hope you see someday the evil of corruption, are told even once that the policeman should model purity.

9 December 2007 8:30pm

Today we left early and languished the day, sabbathing and sunbathing, on the Gambia River. The boat was handmade from long edged boards each tightly nailed and all brightly painted in the Gambian flag colors of blue, red, and green. We brought french rolls, oh so plentiful in these parts, and caught yellow finned dolphinfish to grill on the charcoal stove we had brought. The framing of this bliss were the mangroves. All was a surrounding of such a dense spidery wooden web of roots and branches, the grey mud flats they forwarded, and the continuous number of slim necked birds: herons, plover and egret and ibis looking over and over. The water would at times burble and bust with a loud flurried movement of the schooled fish underneath. And the hot sun cut across the water and made the colors of the boat so vivid, the water pure jade, the mangrove pure green and brown. My mother called and said hello, my aunt and her conversing in Dutch. We sat and talked and I read more of Gods Bits of Wood and drank wonjo and and and and....

6 December 2007 6:58pm

"Later on this week we will bring you to man who can teach you the rhythm of the mbalax." my uncle says. "But first you have to see my baobab and tamarind seedlings. Oh! Also try this root drink. Taste this fruit also, its very rare to find in the wild anymore."

Later we traveled to their eco-preserve outside Kololi. We walked through dense brush as my aunt checked the status of the forest, always on the lookout for somebody who has chopped a tree or dug a hole. "Simon," she says. I look up and she is bending down to remove a tick from my leg. I check elsewhere but come up clean. Good thing. We keep walking and I asked what is 'over there'. She says that we don't walk over there because its for the baboons and colubus monkeys.

Inside the preserve is a family my aunt cares for, and the mother has given birth two days ago. She is nursing the child so delicately, but her eyes are tired. Their simple house, ground mats, a fire tended in a metal firepot, its all not where you think a woman would care for a newborn. But this is her life and her place and her family. They are sitting around each other with her, talking to my aunt who has come by. I look at it and am so overwhelmed with awe for the strength of this woman. Two days after birth tending the food and feeding an infant while the men and boys are sitting. And its without blinking, because this is the reality of her and the silent mothers of this land, the way its always been. She is, as far as I see it, living to the fullest capacity possible for a human being. I am left looking at my arms while looking for ticks, and perceive each to barely contain a mote of such reserve.

5 December 2007 1:22pm

A seven hour sept-place station wagon taxi, seven people in flowing boubous, this tired taxing drive to the border of the Gambia. ¨What do you have in your bag,¨ the border guard asked, hoping my bag is filled with Sony and gold, anything of worth to pay customs to himself. As I am unzipping it a man from the U.K. thanks him for something and gives him money through a handshake. I unzip the main pocket of my backpack and show him. ¨It´s clothes,¨ I show him. I have not unzipped the slim back zipped laptop pocket, and he pressed me no further for which I was thankful.

The ferry took us across the water to Banjul, its capital, and people found me with a piece of paper in their winshield that said ´Simon´ and had a winking smily face. I know this is from Claudette.

My wonderful Aunt I´ve only seen every three to five years is speaking Wolof that evening, a common one in Senegal and the Gambia, to her employee who is mixing flowers in water to make wonjo, a delicious syrupy beverage of heavy purple. The girl answers back some sort of affirmation and continues her steady deliberate stir of the shallow wide bowl within the kitchen, potted with living ornaments like everywhere else.

My aunt Claudette and uncle David´s house hooks and dips into brightly colored side rooms and wide sitting areas. Each doorframe is another color, each metal window security grill is painted in a sunset or in a gradient from light brilliant color to dark brilliant color. The place is covered in a blanket of bamboo leaves sprinkled with small pots of seedlings or cactus. Wind, when a strong gust comes, brings such a whisking of branches that it nearly interrupts speech. Ants are walking up the thicklime painted door frame. Two papaya trees are hanging green fruits for later. I sat talking with her and David late into the night, it wound down and I barely noticed because she shares such a commonality. Though I see her but twice a decade, we pick up quick, and talk and talk and all of a sudden I am all but asleep and the night is in full swing. The power has been out and the worker said he can´t get the generator to work, so David goes and starts it for him and we light candles and talk yet later. Oh the blessing of family and commonality, of relationship and family. I feel so sustained through this meeting, it gives me structure, foundation, reassurance of my person through contact of my history. And its all done so wonderfully with a tender Gambian uncle and a lively Dutch aunt serving purple flowered juice and talking over the light hum of a petrol generator.

4 December 2007 12:01am

Updated Gambian phone number until Dec11: 011 (220) 741 6133

3 December 2007 11:49am

I was just trying to say the word -- two. Just two. I thought I knew at least two in French, but I stood in front of the icecream girl and stupped and stuttered and finally gave up. I pointed with both hands. Oh heavenly universal finger, oh earthwide iconic motion of demand. I didn't know what she said, so just handed the biggest banknote I had and she gave me some back. I counted the change to find how much I had paid - 1300 CFA, and turned to the girl who drove to ask how much that was. She said it was two dollars. OK, I thought, searching for control.

Everywhere is ocean smell, heavy like Mombasa. The simple license plates are vivid blue and white lettered, start with DK. The roads were at times covered in sand, so much sand everywhere. The soccer field is sand. I watched a group of boys tussle furiously for the ball, sprouting arches of pale lifted sand with each motion of leg. Half of the roads we took last night were 'diversion'ed or road blocked for work, so it took awhile to go someplace near. The taxis and 'transport commun' buses we followed were painted with so much yellow and blue, stars and diamonds, faces, painted with letters, luggage racks on the roof, and so so old looking. 'Alhamdulilah', they say. I know that ones Arabic, but nothing else. We drove past the all concrete buildings, zig zagged concrete windows, so much construction. They were hanging clothes on the roof!

"The street kids are from the villages, their parents send them here to learn the Qur'an," the girl said. "What is the hardest part of living here," I asked. She said it was the oppression. "From living in a walled churchy community," I asked? "No," she said, "The spiritual oppression. This is Satan's country." I tried to think which one is Gods.

I am sitting in a room, tiny tiled, that has screened windows. The mosquitos come through anyways. I keep the glass slats open because the air feels so different from Nairobi, heavy like I've exercised, lulling the effort of movement and thought. Why am I sleeping so well I wonder? Last night the call to prayer droned on, though more intense than I had heard anywhere. Distant, but really wild. I went to bed at 11, and it was still warbling and pitching through the room, mixing the heavy air. I dropped to bed and tried and counted: un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq....