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Letter 17, October 2, 2002, Dear Mom and Dad, I'm in a kind of reflective, faintly homesick mood, though my thoughts in the last three minutes have been about how one could live here forever, quickly qualified by "but then there would be no chinese food" and "I would never watch movies again." I'm listening to Salif's new cd (thank you thank you thank you) and especially the first track, with Cesaria Evora, evokes at once the burnt hotness of Mali and the green volcanic hills I have heard tell of on Cap Verde and Sao Tome. That, plus our perfectly overcast sky and gushy breeze today, have me in an "Africa is amazing" mood. I also just finished Jane Kramer's New Yorker article on food in remote, exciting, and scary places, and have been thinking, gee, that sounds like a pretty neat life -- writing and cooking are two of those things I sort of wish I could do, but know I'm not really cut out for. Like she says, though, good cooking is easier than good writing, and besides, it's instantly gratifying: you get to eat it, and you get to see your friends enjoying it too. Unless they're African, and they see chili or spag bol as we do palm tree larvae. I keep thinking about the work I want to do here and what it will entail and who can help, and how I have a really short window of opportunity, made shorter by the fact that school will start late. Our proviseur, who was new last year, is being threatened with lynching, for a variety of reasons. The town has met to say he must go; the Deputé is involved, papers are being sent asking the Ministry of Education that he be reposted elsewhere, even the Governor is in on this. I think I wrote about him briefly, before: here's what he's accused of:
The guy is Fang, that's his first problem, and he's in Pounou country. I was talking with my friend Moussa (Malien) about Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone and how ethnic conflicts can spring up overnight. Could it happen here? I asked. Of course! he said. As soon as Bongo goes you'll see, there will be chaos. And the petty rivalries between the Fang and everyone else will explode. And all us foreigners will pack up and leave! He laughted. I forced a grin. The truth is, it wouldn't take much for things to get out of hand here. On Sunday, after my best-laid plans to go to Congo with Kara and two nurses went awry (Kara didn't show; prefet was delayed -- we were to use his car), I went to a town meeting on the fate of the proviseur. It was led by Le Democrate, our opposition party guy, who closes the lycée when things aren't well by announcing this fact through the megaphone on his truck. Even au village, control of the media is essential. Democrate also burned the ballot boxes last Election Day, because Mamboundou, his candidate (the man for whom we pay tolls in NDD) had called for boycotts of the election. I had never really spoken with him -- it was only last Friday that I happened to be in a car with him coming back from Mouila (still no condoms, by the way -- I got the last 2 boxes). He seized the opportunity to get chummy with the Americaine and sat down beside me. I asked a few questions about his car (in the shop), and he began shouting how he knows all the gendarmes and therefore we wouldn't have any problems on this trip. "Leave your ID cards at home!" he roared. Democrate is a tall man, 6 feet 2, in a country full of short people, and while not bulky, exactly, his frame has some heft to it. He must be at least 35 and has big bushy eyebrows. We got a flat and while the boy-chauffeur changed it Dem tried to educate about SIDA. It was your garden-variety Gabo-ed: yelling at people that it's a real disease, and that they should use a condom, and that's it. The rest of the way I told him about other things -- how it works, where we think it comes from, how many in Gabon have it, how we need to educate. He asked if there wasn't a day sey aside just to think about AIDS, and I beamed. "December 1," I said. "What did you have in mind?" So we agreed that we would work together, and I enlisted him to help with the peer education group I'm trying to set up -- mostly I'm excited about having access to the roving megaphone, and am not yet fully clear about what I want to do with it. But everyone will hear it, whatever it is. "There are good times and bad times for broadcasting," he said. "Yeah, like 6 am is a good time," I said, recalling being awoken to Dem's garbled political propaganda and array of sound effects last December. "Yes," he explained, "because everyone's at home and they haven't yet gone en brousse for the day." Oh, I thought, a little chagrined. Guess I should've figured that one out. We got back fine, and he told me to come to the meeting Sunday if Congo didn't work out. It didn't. Eric and I went to the meeting, but I got there earlier and got a seat inside, taking my chair amid mumbling. Later, Democrate would tell me they were saying that this must be a pretty important meeting, if she's here. That was Democrate's motivation, of course -- he looks good when I'm around. It started 2 hours late, comme d'habitude, and badly -- one guy read the minutes from the last meeting, and another announced that they had been sent to the Governor's, who was now considering NDD's request that the proviseur be replaced. "We are waiting to hear from the Gouveneur," he said, and the meeting stalled. Democrate recovered clumsily, after a long diatribe about the various crimes of the proviseur. "Well, we need to decide here, what we came here for, is that, uh, what are we NDD going to do? Will school go on as normal? No! Would anyone like to say anything?" "Shouldn't the proviseur be here, to defend himself?" someone asked. "Yeah, he's in town -- why isn't he here? Is he mocking us?" Democrat said no, since it wasn't the Proviseur's decision to leave, he didn't need t ocome. "And there's more that you don't know," he hinted, but wouldn't say what. Things got a little hectic and we were called to order. An old papa raised his hand. "Every flock needs a shepherd," he said. "A good shepherd. I have 21 kids. They are the future, they are supposed to prepare their successes at school. The old pangolin depends on his children. All of the trash that Gabon rejects ends up in NDD. They've been banished here and they come to screw us over." There was a chorus of approval. A large woman got up and started asking why he wasn't here. During the five minutes she kept repeating the question, the prov's car arrived, and she got distracted. "He's there?" she said. He walked in, looking skinny and smaller -- the room was tense and he had to push through a group of people standing outside the door. You could smell their hate, and his fear; thought he carried himself tall, there was something that had shrunk in him. He was no longer in control. During school meetings, he would glare, or smile cruelly, or look dismissively at you, but now he couldn't make eye contact with anyone, and when he stood to speak, he kept looking down, and spoke quickly and softly. "First, thank you, please excuse my petit retard, I was preparing a report about the start of school for the Inspector, it had to be done today you see because school starts tomorrow, that was the cause of my being a little late, thank you." He looked smaller, in the way that a wet cat looks smaller -- stripped of his respect. A parent immediately stood up and began listing accusations -- there was only one PTA meeting, the dormitory never opened, he replaced a secretary of 10 years with his wife, who can't type, at a salary of 100,000 CFA/month. The Democrate interrupted. "We need to find a solution, not keep blaming him," he said. "Do we pardon him? Or do we make him go by force? Yes, this word -- it's been behind a lot of our discussions, we have to address it--" here the Deputé, silent until now, looked disgusted and flapped a hand at Democrate, who continued, "When my brother, and he hates it when I talk about it, but when he fucked up in Moulingui Binza, we made him leave. People say I'm just an instigator and I say damn right, I'm the biggest instigator of them all. When it came to closing the lycée [during the elections] I closed it, by myself." He was just getting going when the Deputé broke in. "Look, we need to have control of the situation. Even if someone hits you, you stare them down, you turn the other cheek. We can't have the decision 'he must go' -- that's for the administration to decide, through proper channels. We don't govern by rumor, we govern by the truth, this is a democracy, a country with laws. After the last meeting I took the minutes myself to the Ministry of Education. He was at home, but I saw the Director. This is a purely political problem. I am taking care of it, as your Deputy. We are not just twiddling our thumbs. Rushing doesn't help anyone -- rushing will make things worse. Rushing to judgment isn't good. I am on this. Tomorrow I have a meeting with the proviseur, we will go over the 423 excluded kids and see his reasons for excluding them. This is a country with laws. Everything happens within the administration -- we need to know how to respect these laws! Let's avoid violence. We are a lawful country. Let's not use violence." At this point a drunk prof came in, Mbiko, who's sort of a town clown. "Ndende has a terrible image!" he cried. "Everyone comes here to screw around with us." He rambled in the same vein for awhile before Democrate regained the floor and called him a liar (un faux -- wrongheaded person?). That didn't go over well. Dem repeated himself, and added that there was something we didn't know -- the Deputé, who had tried hard to appear logical and fair and nonpartisan -- the Deputé agrees that the Proviseur should go. The Deputé gave an "aw man, that's so not necessary" grimace. "If we are not all in agreement, there will be a big situation because of the Proviseur," said Democrate. "He will work tomorrow, the students will start school tomorrow, as planned, as ordered under Gabonese law. We will continue to observe." Things broke down completely here -- an angry young man swore a lot and stormed in and out of the room; the Deputé tried to end the meeting; Mbiko, still drunk and offended, called Democrate names and defended himself. You're a liar! No, you're a liar! Somehow we got out of there without throwing rocks, though the whole time I had a feeling that if even just one person made a move against the Proviseur, that would be enough to spark a serious assault. I don't feel insecure here, despite what I've written here -- but then, I'm not stripping 423 kids of their educational futures. Nor am I someone to be resented -- my family is not profiting at the expense of my neighbors (Fang/Punu, Punu/Malian). Matt Muspratt, my editor at the Carletonian "back in the day," was just evacuated from northern Cote d'Ivoire, and wrote about hearing machine gun fire as he woke up ten days ago. But on his way south to Abidjan, he wrote, the rebels were kind with them, laughing even -- "it's not you we're mad at." And they would be waved through the checkpoints. *** Another day. Yesterday at the hospital I heard this awful groaning coming from across the road at the police station. Usually when I hear groaning, or wailing, I think it's some poor child, and then it always turns out to be a goat. I went past on my way to the marché, and it was coming from inside the double outhouse next to the police station. "Jeez -- that's gotta be some bad diarrhea," I thought. The groaning had been continuous for about an hour -- low, uhm... uhhhhhhuhn... with bits of Punu thrown in. I asked what the hell was going on, and was told, "some guy crying." Oh, thanks. Is he sick? No, he's in jail. It's a fou, the brother of Sylviane, the wife of Diko. They arrested him. And this whole time I thought our 2-cell jail was an outhouse. Eric appeared, soaking wet, that night, and we cooked lobster. Yes that's right. Lobster. From Mayumba. It had started pouring at 6:00 pm just as I stepped out the door to sell condoms at the marché. We got 52 mm in 3 hours. And in the rain, we (re)boiled lobster, then sautéed it in butter and garlic. One of the four had all this orange fluffy stuff on its tail, and in its body cavity, which we couldn't identify and didn't eat. You may be wondering how one comes by lobster in Ndende, 200 km from the ocean. Well. I have a friend, Abdu, who used to be the cook at our one cafeteria. Now he's been replaced and has moved on to the seafood trade -- Mayumba-Mouila, picking up 8 kilo bar and 5 pound lobsters on the beach and carting them up to places where whitey's and types will pay 10 bucks a kilo for shellfish the Beninois throw away on the dock. (Actually there's no dock. The fabled Port of Mayumba is a pipe dream much like Ndende's telephone. The Beninois roll their boats up on the beach with logs and manpower.) Eric, who's from Boston, said this lobster was different -- lots of hard pointy thorny things that made his hands hurt as he cracked open the shells. Abdu had boiled the lobsters in Mayumba, to be able to freeze them (up to 6 months, he said) so we just reheated them a little to kill diseases. Yum. Today I dug my garden (sweat! pickaxe! blisters! 5 m x 3 m!) and arranged to get sheep poop from Demba. I also finally got the tiles for my shower -- and Mike came back! Hooray! I have a watering can on the way, as well as all the advice I can handle, courtesy of Baladure, the gardener for the BBQ (his garden is huge, and down the hill from me, in my "backyard"). I'm gonna plant tomatoes, peoppes, eggplant, carrots, and lots of herbs. But first I gotta fertilize with the sheep poop and make a covering to protect the seedlings (out of some sticks and the plastic my mattresses came in). Who needs a Rototiller? Or growing lamp? I will be the African Alice Waters, so watch out. Mike got me some sunflower seeds, whose package says they are great for covering up ugly or deteriorating walls. Well, I got plenty of those. Everyone's house has brown mud splatters two feet up, from the rain gushing off the roof. And my house is no exception. I think I'm getting a kitten... Lamine and Issa just had four. I'll keep you posted. That's all the news for now. Love, Hannah |