THE ELEPHANT AND THE SONGBIRD (AN ORIGINAL AFRICAN FABLE)

Tags

Africa, Animals, Fable, Humor, Modern Folktale

This fable was inspired by my puzzling out a few Congolese fables published in 1966 in Lingala, I think as a grammar school primer, by Pere Paul Lepoutre. The originals were rather cryptic authentic oral tradition folktales and bear almost no resemblance to my stories. My stories were written for an American audience, and the writing is entirely mine. However I did fall in love with the delightful anthropomorphic animal characters in those tales. The good father deserves a mention, as do the anonymous Congolese story tellers who kept their folktales and culture alive. Special thanks to Susannah Glover Black for her illustration.

Before the Sahara Desert was fully formed, when there were still vast grasslands and even a few rivers and lakes in what is now almost all desert, along the borderland between the jungle in the center of Africa and those grassy plains, lived two unusual friends, an elephant and a songbird. They were unusual friends because most animals, including people who are just another kind of animal, prefer the company of those who look and act like they do. That way they don’t have to learn new ways of thinking and behaving. Learning how to get along with and appreciate others who are different takes some effort, but it is always worth it.

Big and strong with a voice of thunder or a thousand trumpets all sounding at once, the elephant was a dull gray color, except when he covered himself with brown mud or red dust, which he liked to do when the sun was hot or now and again just for the fun of it. The songbird was mostly green up top, and mostly yellow on the bottom, and really quite pretty. So tiny compared to his friend, the songbird could crawl into the elephant’s trunk and tickle it with his feathers, which caused the elephant to sneeze him up high in the air. The songbird thought that was great fun, and the fall back down didn’t hurt at all, because of course the he could fly. The elephant loved listening to his friend sing. It put him in such a good mood that he didn’t mind the sneezing, at least until his trunk became red and sore, which happened sometimes if they played the game too long. This elephant had four wives, because that is the way of elephants, while the songbird had just one wife. The elephant’s wives got along well. He was careful to treat them all the same. Making a lady elephant angry can be downright dangerous, even for another elephant.

Everyday the two friends searched for food together. Although he was too small to fly high or far, the little bird could fly to the tops of trees and spot ripe berries and other fruit. Then the elephant would butt the trees to shake down fruit or rake berries with his long trunk. Above all the elephant loved the cinnamon flavored bark of certain thorn trees, a species of acacia tree. Whenever they found the right kind of acacias that were just the right size, the elephant would slice the bark with his tusks and peel it off with his trunk. Usually butting trees and raking vines didn’t hurt them, but peeling the bark killed the acacias. The bark from the older larger trees didn’t taste nearly as good to the elephant, so he left them alone. Therefore there were always seeds falling and new trees sprouting, but it took at least ten years for the trees to reach the size the elephant liked best. He ate them much faster than they grew. Soon acacias of the right size were very hard to find. The elephant could have saved some of them to eat later. That is called conservation. Elephants don’t know how to do that. Neither do some people.

They ate other things too. Their wives made foofoo for them everyday. Foofoo has many names and is made from different grains or roots in different places. It usually looks like a mound of soft jiggly bread. You eat it by tearing off a small piece with your fingers (after washing your hands) and dipping it into the stew. Our two friends didn’t have hands, but a handy trunk and tiny beak worked just fine. Regardless of what it is made from, it takes time and hard work to make foofoo. African wives clean roots and grain thoroughly. Some root pieces have to be soaked several times to remove harmful toxins (things that would make you sick). Then they spread them out to dry, watching to make sure no animals steal them. Then the wives use big sticks (pestles) and large wooden bowls (mortars) to pound the grain or roots into a fine flour. The wives often work together, pounding the sticks in turn, clapping their hands to keep time like a jump rope chant. When the flour is ready they slowly add water until they get the consistency they want. Then they cook it slowly in pots. The foofoo was always delicious, as well as the sauces and stews the wives made.

However, since they had it everyday, the two friends didn’t really appreciate it. One starry evening they ate their supper under a knobby old tree. As usual the foofoo and sauce were perfect, but there was no cinnamon flavored bark for the elephant’s dessert. The elephant turned to his little friend: “Tomorrow we’ll go to a far place on the edge of the grassy plain. Not many big trees grow there. It’s a perfect place to find acacias. “Fine,” replied the songbird, “but let’s take our wives so that they can make foofoo.” “No,” trumpeted the elephant, as he stomped around causing leaves and small branches to shake down from the tree. “I’m tired of bothering with wives! I need a vacation! We’ll have bark and berries and fruit. We can do without foofoo for a few days.” When the two friends had an argument, which wasn’t very often, the elephant usually got his way because he could shout so loud and stomp the ground so hard.

So the next morning they started off and walked all day until they reached a lovely spot with plenty of fruit and acacia trees of just the right size. Soon they gathered all they could eat. The fruit and acacia bark was tasty, but it would have tasted even better if they had had some foofoo too and maybe a nice sauce. The next day the fruit and bark didn’t taste quite as good. It was exactly the same as the day before. Their wives made many different sauces and stews. Also they missed their foofoo. They’d eaten foofoo all their lives, at every meal, and supper didn’t seem right without it. For us it would be like eating a sandwich without bread. Yuk! By the third day they were so tired of food without foofoo, they hardly ate anything. That night they dreamed about platters of foofoo.

In the morning the elephant decided to call their wives. He stomped around and bellowed as loud as he could, “Wives, oh wives!!! Come to us and bring some foofoo!” They waited all day, but the wives never came.  The village was too far away even for the elephant’s great voice to reach. That night they nibbled on some fruit, but they went to bed hungry for foofoo.

The next morning the songbird announced, “Today I’ll call our wives.” The elephant laughed, “If our wives can’t hear me, how can they possibly hear you?” “Nevertheless,” replied the little bird in his gentle way, “I have a right to try too.” “Oh go ahead,” said the elephant. “But don’t blame me if we go hungry again tonight.” They went a bit deeper into the forest until they found a very tall tree. The songbird flew to the first branch, then the next and the next, until he couldn’t see his friend or even the ground. When he finally reached the very top, he perched on a branch and sang his sweetest song.

Two African fish eagles, which closely resemble bald eagles, were flying by. With their keen hearing and even keener eyes, they heard and saw the little bird. This pair had mated recently and were carrying twigs to build a nest. The female eagle dropped down to the tree, and the male eagle followed her. The male thought that they should be on about their business, but they were newlyweds, and if his mate wanted to listen to a songbird, well he would go along, at least for a little while. Because the eagles were carrying twigs for a nest, the songbird sang about how much he missed his wife and their comfortable nest, which he hoped would soon be full of tiny blue eggs. When he finished, the female eagle had tears in her eyes. Then the songbird asked her to use her powerful wings to fly to their little village and ask their wives to come at once, bringing everything they needed to make foofoo. Of course the lady eagle agreed to help. We can only guess what the male eagle thought, but seeing the mist in his mate’s eyes, he wisely decided to keep his mouth shut. It was full of twigs anyway.

The songbird fluttered down and rejoined his friend. They waited all day. The elephant was certain that their wives couldn’t have heard his tiny friend. The elephant had barely heard something, not even enough to make out the words, and he’d been standing right at the bottom of the big tree. Just at sunset the wives arrived. The elephant’s jaw dropped open in amazement. They had even brought some foofoo wrapped in big banana leaves. It wasn’t as fresh as usual, but it still tasted great to the songbird and the elephant. They praised their wives and told them how much they missed them.

Later they sat out under the stars rubbing their full bellies from time to time. Finally the elephant said, “I still don’t understand how our wives heard you and not me.” The little bird laughed, “My friend you have legs like tree trunks and a voice of thunder, but I can sing, and I . . . I have wings!”

ACCIDENT PRONE (GREAT CHARACTERS I HAVE KNOWN — DAGUE’S STORY)

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Africa, Beer, Chad, Humor, Nonfiction, Peace Corps

 

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Le gout de bonheur

 

“Dague, it rhymes with vague,” was how he introduced himself. He came from Minnesota and looked it, broad-shouldered, square-jawed, tall. After a few beers he might tell the story about the time he fell off a tractor facedown in a field. The metal spikes of the trailing equipment had planted him two inches deep, breaking a bunch of bones in the process and leaving him with a back that looked topographical. Then there was the metal plate in his head, the scar on his abdomen, and the faded burns on his forearms, each with its own story.

He served four years in Chad as a Peace Corps Volunteer, working in N’Djamena’s parks and gardens, such as they were. A normal tour of duty was two years. Extensions for one year were fairly common, but serving four years was unusual. He was in charge of a small crew of Chadians who worked daily to ward off the encroaching desert and create little, usually temporary, pockets of beauty. He fit the city’s Beau Geste ambiance. He would have looked good in a kepi. Buildings were made of either earthen or concrete blocks with a plaster finish, often painted in dull pastels like smoky blue or leaden yellow that tended to fade gracefully. Since independence all of Chad’s infrastructure had deteriorated, but N’Djamena’s architecture had worn rather well. Visitors often mistook Dague for some unfortunate foreigner condemned to swing a pick on a work gang, but the people of N’Djamena found his indefatigable work ethic uplifting. Towards the end of his service the Chadian Government held a special ceremony to award him a medal, the only PCV ever to be so honored. A week later he received a bill for the medal.nexplicably, N’Djamena produced one of the world’s great beers, Gala. It was as if the universe decreed that if we had to endure the horrible dust storms in winter and unbearable heat in the hot season, we would be given some boon to balance things out. Gala was ambrosia. Blond men with Teutonic accents brewed Gala, importing everything save the water, and that came from a deep well, a well that tapped the ancient water trapped beneath Chad, water from pristine rain that fell long before the industrial revolution. Gala came in serious twenty-two ounce bottles which sold for about thirty cents, a price even volunteers could afford, at least for a good part of the month. Toward the end of the month many a vol was limited to eating Peace Corps sandwiches (bread and mustard), but still washed down with Gala if they could afford it. I once heard a rookie volunteer ask an older vol, “How about we split a beer?” To which the older vol replied, “Let’s split two.” It changed some with the seasons, but the Chadian Government favored a split work day for employees involved in manual labor to avoid the worst of the heat. It became a ritual for wells vols and Dague and a few others to break at midday, meet at Moustapha’s store for a beer, then go home for lunch and a siesta. After several hours of lying on your back in the dirt, trying to coax rusted bolts loose from an old land rover transmission, a cold Gala tasted mighty good.

 

Mr. Natural At Door, Dague On Right

 

Moustapha made an interesting character study. Casablanca-like, he was a dark-haired, olive-skinned, slightly built, obsequious, shrewd fellow of indeterminate age and origin. Arabic seemed his native language, though he spoke several others nearly as well. He had his hand in pots on both sides of the law, while giving the impression that he would never dream of cheating his customers, unless the amount involved was substantial, and even then he would have the good grace to feel badly about it. He did what he had to do to prosper in a hard land, and he kept his beer cold. His store sat right in the middle of town on the main street. It was rather small and cluttered, however a high ceiling and two open arched entrances gave the illusion of space. Vols would sit on coke crates and observe the passing scene.

Me on left at Moustapha’s with my late buddy Roger Jones

N’Djamena’s indigent knew where they were at noon, and though vols had but little, that little was a lot in Chad. So every weekday at noon a procession of the blind, the crippled, and those touched by the gods passed by Moustapha’s to garner a few coins. Dague’s favorite was an old man that he had nicknamed Mr. Natural. Mr. Natural wore “a twisty piece o’ rag” that just might have been a uniform once and ancient combat boots, invariably balancing a nearly empty burlap sack on his head. Rumor had it that the sack contained memorabilia from wartime service with DeGaulle’s Brassaville garrison of Free French, where Rick and his friend went at the end of Casablanca, but no one would compromise the old man’s dignity by looking. Mr. Natural had strong rough hands, a grizzled beard, and eyes that looked into places others couldn’t see, vast empty places. He always smiled and shook every available hand while mumbling strings of greetings and thank yous in Chadian Arabic. He demonstrated the same effusive gratitude for gifts worth pennies as for larger amounts. It was all the same to Mr. Natural.

One hot day the usual crowd gathered, plus Richard, a teacher vol down due to rebel activity from his remote post in a desert oasis, when Phil, the Assistant Peace Corps Director in Chad, and a middle-aged American walked into Moustapha’s. The stranger was a former Congressman who, having lost his last election, had received a Presidential appointment to some new position that had something or other to do with overseeing The Peace Corps. When he extended his hand toward a vol, Mr. Natural took it instead, and since the Congressman didn’t shake Mr. Natural’s hand, Mr. Natural didn’t let go. The Congressman tried walking to the other end of the store, but Mr. Natural just followed in tow, Harpo-like. Finally the Congressman yanked his hand away. Mr. Natural just smiled and wandered around looking for the next hand.

After introductions the Congressman started criticizing the wells vols for using “advanced” technologies. It should be noted that auguring wells is as low tech as it gets in the machine-driven well drilling business. It works on the Archimedes Screw Principle, which has been around, well, since Archimedes. Anyway It was an old tired song. Peace Corps loved the one man and a shovel concept. It was very Peace Corpsish. Dague represented the ideal volunteer, but volunteers driving Mercedes trucks with mounted drilling rigs made them very nervous. Never mind that for years, dating back to the mid-sixties, even though in those days it was done at an even lower tech level, the wells project had provided many thousands of villagers with potable water. It wasn’t quantifiable, but many children were alive that would have died from dysentery, and many women had avoided years of back-breaking labor because drilling closed tube wells allowed them to be located up on the dunes in the middle of the villages, not down in the ouadis where open wells had to be dug. Fortunately, the U.S. Embassy, the Chadian Government, and USAID (the funding agency) all loved the project. So there was little Peace Corps could do except lecture us from time to time on the evil of our ways. Not getting a reaction bothered the Congressman, so he escalated: “How can Peace Corps Volunteers afford to swizzle beer like this?” Now that hit a nerve. Dague finished his beer and approached the Congressman. For a second I thought Dague was going to grab his collar, but he just stared, then turned and walked out. The rest of us followed.

Dague and Richard hopped on mobylettes (French mopeds) and headed down to the Peace Corps office to check their mail. Dague exited the office grumbling to find Richard standing by his mobylette reading a letter. “What’s the problem Dague?” Richard asked. “First that Congressman jerk and now no mail.” “Well why don’t you punch your mobylette? That always makes me feel better.” And Dague did. Of course he only hit the cushioned seat and not all that hard, but there was a metal plate that ran underneath the center of the seat, and Dague hurt his wrist. They decided since they were at the office anyway, he’d better go on in and let Sue, the nurse, take a look at it.

Sue was a plump red-headed Boston-Irish force of nature, reeking of rubbing alcohol and cinnamon. She and her diplomat African-American husband had seven adopted children, a catholic jumble of genders, nationalities, and races. She tended her flock of PCVs with a sense of inexorable purpose, as relentless as a firetruck. The condom barrel by her door exemplified her style, seeming to shout, “Partake! That which I contain is crucial to your health, and I have them in abundance.” A few minutes after Dague had entered her domain, Sue’s piercing voice transcended brick and plaster, dominating the city’s competing sounds, like the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. “You did what???” “I punched my mobylette,” was Dague’s matter-of-fact reply. Dague was long on honesty, perhaps, in this case, to a fault. “You moron! You idiot! You broke your damn wrist!” As her vocabulary grew more colorful, Richard slipped away, lest her attention turn to him.

There was a volleyball game at the Ambassador’s Residence after work that day. It was played on the driveway inside the security gates. It was informal, coed, and fun – a social event. Things were well underway when Dague peddled in on a bicycle. His wrist cast covered most of his hand, making it impossible for him to twist the handlebar accelerator on a mobylette. Of course he couldn’t play, but he cheered everybody on and responded good-naturedly to jibes about his broken wrist. When it became too dark to see the ball, the game ended and most people headed to a nearby bar. Dague peddled off. At some point Richard pulled up beside him. “Want to race?” he asked Dague. “Sure” Dague replied. They were both just kidding around, but Dague raised himself up on the pedals in pretense. That’s when the chain broke and Dague fell off the bike, tumbling down into a three-foot deep caniveau (concrete drainage channel) and breaking his other arm. They say Sue waxed poetic that night.

The following Saturday the wells vols used a land rover to transport Dague as they went bar hopping. He now sported a full sling type cast as well as his wrist cast. They wound up in a Chadian bar that they rarely frequented. The owner was delighted to have them. Crowds packed the isles just to watch Dague drink. He couldn’t handle a glass, but placing the bottle on the very edge of the table he’d squeeze the neck between his casts and slide down slowly in his chair, tilting the bottle ever downward until gravity transferred the beer to the general vicinity of his mouth. The excited crowd drew the attention of a passing beggar. Seeing some white faces, he decided to try his luck. He marched in waving a hand missing two fingers. “Life is hard!” he shouted in Chadian Arabic. “Allah has been generous to you white people, therefore you should be generous to me.” Dague took this as a personal challenge. He held up his sling, “See that”. Then he thrust his wrist cast under the beggar’s nose, “And that.” Dague jumped up, “Somebody help me get this shirt off.” Dague proudly presented a back with the texture of playdough that some child had left out in the rain. He pivoted, displaying the impressive purple saber-shaped scar on his abdomen Then brushing his hair back to reveal a ruddy scar, “In there is a metal plate as thick as a land rover fender.” The bar paused in absolute silence. Dague winked and began to fumble with his belt buckle. “Allah be merciful!” the beggar cried, breaking for the entrance and fleeing the bar.

OLD FRIENDS, OLD STORIES, AND A FEW BELLY LAUGHS

Tags

Charleston, Football, Humor, Key West, Nonfiction, South Carolina, Sullivan's Island

A collection of amusing and interesting stories. Enjoy!

I played football in high school. It was a very small school, maybe forty in my graduating class, so they needed every able body who managed to will themselves through brutal two-a-days in August in South Carolina. I was a lousy player, but Coach Biggerstaff liked to give seniors a chance to earn their letter. So he placed me at middle guard on defense, right between the two best players on our team, both linebackers on defense. Donald was the Charleston County Back of The Year and Alton was the Charleston County Lineman of The Year. Both went on to play college ball, Donald started at South Carolina, quite an accomplishment for such a small school. As a result the St. Johns Islanders were a very good team. We were undefeated at the time of our homecoming game against Moultrie, a much larger school. We were favored nonetheless.

It was third and long for Moultrie. Their QB dropped back to pass. For some reason nobody blocked me. I wandered into the Moultrie backfield and flushed the QB. He headed around left end, saw Donald waiting and reversed field. I lunged and missed the tackle as he headed around right end. Alton waited there, so he reversed field again and ran right into my arms for a fifteen yard loss. With fourth down I trotted off the field to the bench. The sizable crowd gave me a standing ovation. The cheerleaders twirled and chanted, “George, George, he’s our man!” The guys on the bench jumped up cheering. That was uncharted territory for me. Coach Bigerstaff looked at the crowd, then the cheerleaders, then my shouting teammates, then out at me trotting in. Then he looked back at the team, and in a slow southern drawl said, “Well boys, it’s like I always said. You give a monkey a typewriter, and sooner or later he’s gonna spell a word.”

For three years during the summer while I was in college I worked for The Post Office. It was one of the few summer jobs in the Charleston area that paid anything. My first year I had to compete with thousands to get the job, after that it was automatic. I would replace regulars while they were on vacation. Usually I would spend a couple days riding with the regular guy, then take over the following week. Sometimes if somebody was sick, I’d do the route cold. Those were long days. The more familiar the route, the faster you could do it. Raised on Johns Island, I only knew the main streets in North Charleston. So when I took over a drop box route in a residential area up there, I just memorized the maze like route. Drop boxes are those big stand alone boxes that you find on corners and in front of malls and such. There was one box that usually had a lot of mail in it, and I would bend down and stick my head in the box to make sure no mail was stuck in the chute. A terrier would sneak up behind me and yap loudly just at the right moment, causing me to jump and bump my head. I swear that dog laughed at me. He got me three times over two weeks.

One day they assigned me cold to a residential route in the St. Andrews area. I came to a house with a mailbox on the porch, 112 something or other. I had mail for 112½ also. There was a trailer in the back, so I headed back there. I heard one “wolf” and saw a bloodhound heading straight for me. That dog meant business, no foreplay. At five feet he leapt for my throat. I dodged to the side and he hit my shoulder knocking us both to the ground. Bloodhounds are big dogs. He rolled a couple times, then headed out in the backyard, made a U-turn, and came back full speed before I could get up. Just then the owner came out and called him off. That was terrifying. Badly shaken I continued the route. Not long after I came upon another house with the mailbox on the porch. This one was fenced in and had a Beware of Dog sign on the gate. I would have skipped it, except I had a certified package that needed a signature. I looked around the vehicle and found a billy club and some pepper spray. So I went to the front door well armed with the package tucked under my arm, one hand holding the club and the other the spray. When I rang the bell, a little white-haired old lady opened the door and her chihuahua came running out. The old woman took one look at me and started shouting, “Don’t hurt Mitsy! Don’t hurt Mitsy!”

I became friends with Dennis near the end of my college years. This is a story he told. He graduated from high school in Charleston in 1965 give or take. He and some classmates rented a house on Sullivan’s Island for an after graduation party. As customary in the low country in those days, they had several bowls of PJ (Purple Jesus), a punch made chiefly with grape juice and grain alcohol, but sometimes with rum, vodka, and fruit slices thrown in. In addition they had one bowl that was laced with LSD. It was still very early days for drugs in the deep south, and Dennis didn’t even know exactly what LSD was, nevertheless he knew he was drinking from the special bowl.

At some point he wandered down to the beach. It was a calm night and the mosquitoes were out in force. To get away from them, he decided to take off his clothes and get into the water. It was pleasant out there. As everybody who has been there knows, if you don’t fight it the current will take you down the beach. When he exited the ocean, his clothes were nowhere in sight. He started walking down the beach. In his fuddled mind about the only thing he was certain of was that he was very hungry. He had an epiphany. Houses have food in them. So he climbed the steps of the nearest beach house, jiggled the handle to the screen door, and walked right in. When he opened the frig, he found treasure — a platter of fried chicken. Now Dennis is about six three. The dentist and his wife who lived there heard noise and found Dennis in all his glory illuminated by the frig light. They yelled something. Dennis took the drumstick out of his mouth and said, “Sometimes life is like that.” Soon he realized he wasn’t welcome and left.

There followed several hours of phone calls to the police reporting “a naked stranger” wandering the streets of Sullivan’s Island. They finally cornered him, handcuffed him behind his back, and put him in the back seat of a patrol car. Dennis is double-jointed or whatever they call it and has really long arms. He had a trick he could do. When a cop looked back, Dennis had his hands in front of him and a smile on his face. They stopped and repeated the procedure, this time telling Dennis not to do that again. They threw him in the drunk tank. Dennis said that when he awoke the next morning still naked, the other guys in the communal cell had been betting on his story, most favoring the unexpected return of a boyfriend or husband. The police out there were used to drunk students, but they didn’t know much about drugs yet. Also things were looser in those days. So when the dentist didn’t press charges, they let him go. It didn’t hurt that his father was well respected.

Another friend of mine, Stanley, ran a delivery service for a while. A bunch of us used to meet at Kitty’s Fine Foods for breakfast. The best breakfast in Charleston. Miss Kitty was a plump matronly woman. Her menus had cat pictures and cats wandered around the tables from time to time. The front of Kitty’s was all plate glass. Apparently Stanley had had a rough previous night. He missed the brake on his van and it made contact with Kitty’s window, not hard contact, but enough. The window shattered spraying half her place with glass. Fortunately no one was hurt. Stanly calmly walked in, looked around, sat at a table, raked the glass off with his elbow, and said, “Could I have a cup of coffee please?”

After college for a time I shared a house with Dennis and some other Charleston buddies. It was just across the street from Johnson-Hagood Stadium, the Citadel stadium, a nice old house that had seen better days. As one would expect in a bachelor house, our furniture was improvised. Dennis had “found” some old railroad ties and fashioned a long rough coffee table, kind of neat really if you didn’t mind a whiff of creosote. Dennis had a German shepard named Bigfoot, a very smart dog. When Bigfoot did something wrong like winkle the butter wrapper out of the garbage, I would scold him and tell him to go stand in the corner and put his nose on the floor. He would do it, and then look up from time to time with remorseful eyes to see when his punishment was up. For a time we were acquainted with a Russian defector named Oleg or Oleck (I think), a sailor who had jumped overboard in Charleston harbor. At least that’s what he claimed. We never really trusted the guy. Bigfoot hated him, some deep-seated racial animosity at play no doubt. Bigfoot would spend hours slowly working his way closer and closer to Oleg, a stretch here a roll over there. Finally when he was within range Bigfoot would leap at him. It was amusing to watch, maybe not for Oleg.

In those days our favorite bar was The Three Nags, close to and later claimed by the College of Charleston. It was one of the great college bars of bygone days, ranking with The Opus at the University of SC and Chukkers in Tuscaloosa. Now we liked to throw the occasional party. We knew a guy who spent his spare time in the summer seining for little creek shrimp. They were delicious but there wasn’t much of a market for them. If you were into pre-shelling and deveining, they were a lot of work. We didn’t bother with those niceties. So we made an arrangement for him to catch and freeze shrimp all summer long. Then we’d buy the lot and throw a party. I don’t remember the exact price, but it was well under a dollar a pound for two to three hundred pounds of shrimp. We would invite friends, and also drop by The Three Nags and tell everybody to come by. The party amounted to boiled shrimp and beer and dancing to Martha And The Vandellas. By the end of the night there would be shrimp shells piled everywhere.

At one point when I was Heat Waved out, I was chatting with Nancy Barnwell, with whom I had been dancing, kudos to her bravery. She related the following story. Recently she had been jogging down Folly Beach where she and her husband had a house. She wasn’t really thinking, just sort of registering things as she passed — crab, dog, waves, gulls, peanut butter foam. Suddenly for the first time in her life, she realized that the light brown foam on the beach couldn’t possibly be peanut butter foam. Turns out as a little girl she had asked her grandmother about it. No doubt with a smile, her grandmother had explained that it came from ships at sea washing out their peanut butter jars. She had never questioned it.

Ben and I became friends at the tail end of college and beyond, since we were both from Charleston. One day he asked me if I would hitchhike with him up to Lake George, New York for the Fourth. He said we could stay with his friends there and in New York City, so off we went. The trip was pretty much a bust. His friends were not all that delighted to put us up, especially the new boyfriend of Ben’s former girlfriend. Also I think we were coming to the end of the yeah sure crash on the floor era, perhaps more so in high traffic places like NYC. One modest highlight of the trip was being picked up by two mafia guys in a Lincoln Continental. They were going to Saratoga for the races and spoke pretty freely around us, nothing incriminating of course, but a lot of “family” politics. The most interesting event happened on the way back to Charleston. We were dumped in Columbia at the USC campus just a little before midnight. That being our old stomping grounds, we both had nearby places we could crash, and we split up.

Extremely tired, I walked down Green St. past fraternity row to John Arthur’s house, another Charleston friend. It was exam time for summer classes, and he was conked out in a chair. Cat Stevens’ Tea For The Tillerman album was playing over and over with the arm up. The main door was open, but the screen door was latched. I pounded on the door and yelled, but he was out for the count. I decided to walk back through campus to the Opus Bar, my favorite watering hole. So at two in the morning, now exhausted and drunk, I decided to give it another try. At one point I passed a lone coed going the other way, then two males a hair young for college students going the same direction. I took note of the situation. Almost home I heard the faint patter of running feet and a muffled yelp. Damn. I wasn’t up for this. I turned and ran back. I got there as they were dragging her into the bushes about thirty yards from the road where I stood. She appeared to be limp, probably unconscious. I started yelling for help. They turned to face me. One guy actually smiled and pulled a knife. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to end well. Finally lights started coming on and people exited the houses. The two assailants disappeared down the hill. I went to the coed. She was semi-conscious, incoherent, her glasses broken, and her face bloody, but she still had clothes on. When the first fraternity looking guy reached me, I passed her off and got out of there. I admit one part of me was a little angry that she put herself and me at risk like that. Another part of me said maybe she had a good reason. I never found out. The second time I managed to get John Arthur’s attention.

A year or two later, Ben was working in Key West as an educational counselor on a military base. A nice gig. His father had connections. Dennis and I and my brother Charlie decided to drive down to visit him. During the last leg we picked up an attractive young lady hitchhiking to Key West. We were average decent looking guys, and we behaved like perfect gentlemen. In fact Dennis was tall, dark, reasonably handsome, and a bit of a chick magnet. So you would think she would be at least distantly pleasant. She spent the whole two hours subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, insulting us in one form or another. She wasn’t a native Conch, having lived there a couple of years, but you would have thought she went back three generations. With all the zeal of the newly converted, she made it plain that tourists like us were the lowest form of creation. I think she was terrified that we might run into her and presume friendship. It got so bad that Dennis and I were making eye contact and chuckling. When we dropped her off, I told Dennis that if we ran into her hopefully with her friends, we had to run up and give her big hugs. Unfortunately the opportunity never presented itself.

We couldn’t have picked a worse week weather-wise. A stalled tropical depression took up residence. It would wobble away and then wobble back. The locals began to call it a neutercaine. In addition to near constant rain, the storm spun out mini-tornadoes from time to time. No snorkeling, sailing or fishing for us. Mostly we hung out in bars and ate good seafood. We spent many hours listening to the not yet famous Jimmy Buffet, an acquaintance of Ben’s. He seemed like a nice guy. Ben had rented an old weathered house with plenty of character. I loved the huge arched double doors that separated the upstairs master bedroom from the living room. Space wasn’t a problem, but lack of furniture was, namely guest beds. Ben had his bedroom, and we made do with the couch, chairs and the rug in the living room.

I’ve never been fond of airport bars, but that is where we would close out every night. Ben was hitting on the lady bartender. Now to be fair this wasn’t a modern sterile chrome and glass airport bar, and security guys didn’t have to examine our tonsils before we were allowed in. In fact I don’t remember any security at all. It looked like it was in an old wooden hangar or maybe a warehouse. It had a high ceiling with fans, wooden tables and a neat long curved bar. That said, transients spoiled the ambiance. Airport bars are airport bars. Ben was a likable fellow, decent looking, good sense of humor, nice job, nice house, a pretty little sports car (unfortunately one of those British ones that were always breaking down), and most importantly for the women of Key West he lived there. The lady in question seemed friendly enough, but then lady bartenders are paid to be friendly. I had to admire Ben’s persistence. Night after night he would dance his little dance and go home with just us guys.

Then on our last night in Key West, the lady relented. Good for Ben. While the two of them disappeared into Ben’s bedroom, the rest of us tried to get some sleep there in the adjacent living room. It wasn’t easy. They were pretty noisy. I was just about to sleep when she yelled, “Careful Ben you’ll break your neck!” At that I gave up the ghost and turned on the TV. The late night movie was that Errol Flynn movie, The Charge of The Light Brigade. It was reaching its climax, with the star rising in his stirrups to shout “Charge!”, when a mini-tornado hit the house next to us, Ben’s side of the house, and completely took it off of its foundation. Transformers exploded with sparks like Roman candles as the electricity went off in a flash. The tornado shattered Ben’s window and sent his bed crashing through the double doors into the living room, with Ben and his lady sitting up naked as if they were riding a magic carpet. Quite a show.

THE THIN PARTITIONS OF SANITY

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Africa, Chad, Humor, Nonfiction, Peace Corps, The Thin Partitions of Sanity

These stories recount my experiences in a fascinating time and place, as well as describing the wonderful characters I met along the way.

It’s dangerous to blur your borders. The things that confine us, also shape us. The British functionary’s traditional insistence on stiff clean-shaven ritual even in the remotest of places was part of his battle against spiritual devolution. Conrad would have understood Allen (not the real name). The villagers of Doum Doum told his story in hushed voices. “Yes, a Peace Corps Volunteer lived here years ago, up there, on top of the dune. Of course the dune was smaller then, before the sand ate the administrative office. Two Americans lived here at first, but one got sick and left. A volunteer named Allen stayed. He learned to speak Kanembou, and dressed and ate like us. He was often sick and lost weight. That’s when the dreams started. Allen said monsters stalked him at night, rattling the latch to his hut. And perhaps they did, although no one else saw them, but they came from his dreams, not ours. One day the Americans came in big white cars. He fought them. They tied him up like a goat and took him away.”

I heard the rest of the story from a former volunteer visiting Chad. He just rode into N’Djamena on a motorcycle one day. Always fun to meet one of the old vols from the days of legend, back when Peace Corps did fun things like teach new Chad vols the wrong language somewhere in the Caribbean, and then dump them without structured jobs or any material support into isolated villages. In those early days, by dint of great will and charisma, Peace Corps Volunteers were expected to create wonders out of nothing. They were Americans after all. Teaching someone the wrong dialect, well that was just another little obstacle to be overcome. He’d been posted in an even smaller village in that same area and knew Allen. I took the former vol with us on a wells maintenance trip. Traveling up there by yourself and without official sanction invited trouble. We couldn’t even find the site of his old village. The sands had taken it. He told me the trip had been good for him nonetheless, because it had reminded him of all the reasons why he’d left. To finish the story, Allen arrived in the US in a straight jacket and could or would speak only Kanembou to his parents. His mother had to be sedated right in the airport. Eventually Allen recovered and would go on to become a recognized linguist, specializing in Kanembou and related languages.

Early in my tour I was stationed in southern Chad, in the city of Sarh. The wells project down there didn’t enjoy the benefits and material abundance of the main project up north, but managed to bleed off enough resources to keep going. Chadians have a proverb: “Thanks to the chicken, the lizard drinks water.” It is hot and dry in Chad, and people put out saucers of water for their chickens. The ubiquitous lizards of Chad benefit from this also. Every now and then we’d get a hand-me-down vehicle or some equipment from the big project, and the US Ambassador had a thirty thousand dollar annual fund that he could dispense to worthy projects as he wished. We received a piece of that. My co-volunteer Scotty had taken our one old land rover to N’Djamena to plead for a few more dollars, and as customary he took with him all the outgoing volunteer mail from the surrounding area. Randy (forgot his real name) was an English teacher stationed by himself in a town not too far away. He had shown some minor signs of instability, but since he didn’t seem suicidal or anything like that, the decision had been made to let him finish the school year, only a couple months away, before sending him home. He’d sent a letter with Scotty to his stateside girlfriend Jeanne, arranging to meet her in Paris on his way home. Now it so happened that the Peace Corps Director in Chad was also named Jeanne. Jeanne was a decent looking woman, but the male vols were much younger, and in the words of Gilbert and Sullivan: “She could pass for forty-two, in the dusk, with the light behind her.”

The trip from Sarh to N’Djamena took ten to twelve long dusty hours on a good day. So Scotty pulled in at night after the Peace Corps Office was closed, and headed straight downtown for a beer, leaving the bag of mail in the land rover. When he came back, it was gone. Fortunately the thieves in Chad, probably street kids, weren’t mean-spirited, and after tearing through everything looking for money, they dumped most of the mail back at the Peace Corps Office. Not all the envelopes nor all the letters were there, but they managed to put most of them back together.  Apparently Randy’s envelope didn’t make it. Jeanne naturally assumed the romantic letter was meant for her, and that Randy was worse off than first thought. Jeanne isn’t that common a name. Since I was the only volunteer in that area with access to a vehicle other than mobylettes (French mopeds), if you call an old beat up Saviem truck a vehicle, I received an urgent communique via the local hotel instructing me to get Randy and bring him up to N’Djamena immediately. It cryptically added that I could tell him that once he arrived, Jeanne would be happy to discuss Paris. I had no idea what that was all about.

With serious misgivings, I did everything I could to get the old truck ready for the trip. Then late in the afternoon I drove to Randy’s town. He was bewildered. I helped him pack up. We started out well before dawn the next morning. The first leg of the trip was on a decent laterite road which bisected a game park. In Sarh’s modest rainy season (no worse than a summer in Florida) the softened laterite provided a smooth ride. Most of the year it formed a hard ridged surface, but was still far better than most of the dirt road between Sarh and N’Djamena. If you kept your speed up you could skip along the ridges of the washboard laterite for a smoother ride, although it was a bit like driving on ice. Occasionally we would catch sight of animals in the park crossing the road, especially at night like this, but that time of year the high elephant grass precluded seeing much else. I felt the call of nature, stopped and walked across the road flashlight in hand. There were some nasty snakes in Chad, cobras among them. When I started back to the truck I heard a sound like water under pressure exploding from a hose. It begins already, I thought, as I crawled under the truck. Suddenly Randy said: “George, shine your flashlight on the passenger side.” There was a giant elephant foot, and a stream of liquid pouring down. I must have inspired him. Anyway I stayed under the truck until the elephant moved on.

There followed breakdown after breakdown in the sweltering heat, and Randy seemed to deteriorate a little with everyone of them. I had to keep one eye on him while I worked on the vehicle, fearing he might just wander off somewhere. I didn’t look forward to spending the night broken down on the road with Randy. I’ve never considered myself a mechanic, but when you have to, you can do a host of things that you thought were beyond your abilities. I believe Twain said: “Knowing you are to be hanged in the morning focuses the mind wonderfully.” At one point the carburetor blew its gasket. I puzzled over that some, then I cut the tongue out of one of my shoes and fashioned a makeshift gasket. To my utter amazement, it held.

The engine was overheating yet again when I pulled into a roadside village and parked under a shade tree. Suddenly a group of fifteen to twenty nubile girls, bodies painted red with henna, beads covering their faces, bare to the waist, started running toward us. I rolled up the windows. The girls were in some sort of sexual frenzy, ululating as they ran. They climbed the truck and started rubbing their bodies against the windshield, trying to get at us. I had all I could do to keep Randy from opening his door. Finally four or five older women appeared and beat the girls off the truck with big sticks and herded them away. I guessed it was part of some coming of age ritual, perhaps involving female circumcision, and the girls were probably drugged or drunk. It was definitely weird. It put Randy over the edge. He began to spout non-sequiturs from time to time. Although he never became violent, he gave me the creeps.

Our final memorable stop came at a little lantern lit country store in the crossroads town of Guelengdeng, where the road that followed Chad’s western border defining Logone River split off from the Sarh road which roughly followed the Chari River in a more centrally southern direction. It was also for us where the hundred and fifty kilometers of paved road started that led on into N’Djamena. The store was owned by an Igbo named Nathan. The Igbo were the losers in the bloody Nigerian Civil War (remember Biafra) where upwards of a million people died, mostly by starvation and mostly Igbo. They are known as the Jews of West Africa because of their talent for commerce and tendency to wander far afield, which was greatly enhanced by the diaspora during and after the war. Nathan didn’t carry beer, but he kept his soft drinks reasonably cool in fast evaporating water. He had a framed cartoon on his wall which showed a fat wealthy man and read, “I sold for cash.” and a skinny poor man and read, “I sold on credit.” Nathan like most Igbo in Chad delighted in having someone to speak English with. As I perused his shelves, I spied a small purple dust covered sack way in the back. I couldn’t believe it, it was a bottle of Crown Royal. I bought it. If a man ever needed a drink. I used most of it to sedate Randy. Finally we arrived in N’Djamena in the early hours of the morning after twenty grueling hours on the road. Randy was shipped out soon thereafter. Everybody had a chuckle over the letter snafu. Maybe not Randy.