The sun slips above the horizon on the dot of six in Madarounfa, a mere thirteen degrees north of the equator, close enough that sunrise and sunset vary almost not at all the year ’round.  The ten primary school teachers who have gathered for this late-December, weekend school-garden-project instruction are up within minutes. Once they have washed and made their separate trips to the bush, they gather for breakfast under the old baobab tree. It’s still cool and they drink hot tea, brewed very strong, with great chunks of sugar chopped out of a cone that comes wrapped in blue paper. Jon, the American who is instructing them, has made oatmeal. It’s nice of him but the teachers find it rather bland. They add sugar and salt and are polite while watching the light begin to sparkle on the lake just below the camp. The water level has fallen since the end of the rainy season, and will fall lower still before it rains again.

The pink and yellow light has dried up the drops of water left on the leafy plants inside the garden enclosure during the night. The windmill stands silently above the demonstration plot and the small-bore well that lies beneath it. There is no wind today. Jon speaks in Haussa and hands out tools. His instruction covers what plants to chose for the gardens in which today’s pupils will in turn teach primary school children the simplest rudiments of farming. In front of them are large, green cabbages with leaves the size of elephants’ ears, and kohlrabi, a vegetable foreign to this land but which grows well, as long as there a little is water now and then. Of course, they also discuss the peppers, hot red and green, the millet and corn plants, and in the corner there are tomatoes. These are delicious and new. They can be used in tuo sauce. Another new food is the lima bean. These two Western tastes bring a surprising sensory experience: they delight the eye as well as the tongue.

The black men toil lustily all morning as the sun warms the garden and at noon they sit for a discussion in the shade of the baobab once more. Everyone savors the millet paste made by Ali’s wife, Halima, smothered in the sauce she has made from Jon’s tomatoes. As they are relaxing under the baobab for the afternoon sieste, farther down near the lake, Halima is pounding millet in a large mortar and pestle and her sister, Zenabou, is sifting the chaff away in the light air. The men doze in the heat of the day before resuming their weeding and harvesting at four o’clock. At the end of the day each makes a packet of sample vegetables to take back with him.

As the night settles, the group shares a meal of six roasted chickens brought from the market in Maradi, a distance of thirty kilometers, just for this purpose. Chickens, or at least this many of them, are not often available in the tiny Madarounfa market. The tomato-hot pepper sauce is very spicy and makes their tongues dance. Later, they roll into their bedrolls for the night, so many black bodies, tucked together to keep warm inside Haussa blankets made of strips of woven cotton stitched together. The nights are cool now in the dry season and they are glad to sleep inside the small, enclosed space Jon has built for this purpose. In warmer weather, which is most of the year, everyone sleeps under the sky, but before morning the temperature will fall to a very low sixteen degrees (centigrade), halving the daytime level. In the morning the school teachers will pile into the land rover with their gardening knowledge and their packets of sample foods, and Ali, Jon’s driver, will take them to the gare routière in Maradi. There they will find bush taxies back to their villages where they will transfer what they have learned into the soil of their own pupils.

Note from the author: From memory, some of the vegetable material may be inaccurate!

•

RAMADAN STARTED THIS WEEK, a holy month of fasting for over a billion Muslims around the world.  Every year there is heated debate among astronomers as to exactly what day Ramadan begins, as it all depends on when the new moon of the ninth lunar month appears.  Eclipses, clouds, and astronomical calculations all play a role.  Religious leaders line up on opposing sides, too, albeit for different reasons.   Some of them say that Muslims throughout the world should conform to an announcement coming from Saudi Arabia; others say that different regions should make their own decisions about when to begin the fast, depending on their view of the moon.

If you are a Muslim living in a remote part of Africa, all this debate doesn’t matter. I know, because last year at this time I was drawing water from a well for my evening bath in Saare Kutayel, a village in Senegal. Sherife, a little boy about 10 years old stood next to me, chatting away about his day and helping me haul up heavy buckets of water. Suddenly he grew quiet, softly touched my arm, and said with wonder, “look.” He pointed up in the western sky, over the heads of a small knot of villagers peering in the same direction.  Between the thin layers of parting clouds was the smallest curve of silvery light cradled in the vast darkness. Ramadan would begin in the morning.

Living in Africa for over a year by that time, I’d already developed a whole new respect for the sun, moon, and cycles of time.  More than once I’d awoken in the middle of the night to what I thought was a flashlight shining in my eyes, only to groggily discover that it was the full moon, having made its trek over the top of the big mango tree, and was now blasting into my mosquito net.  And, I’d long since learned to time my arrivals back to the village before dark on moonless nights.  Soon after I came to Africa, I got a late start from a faraway village.   I rode my bike miles in blackness over a bumpy trail, with pounding heart, reassuring myself that the sinister clumps of trees around me were familiar patterns leading me home.  Just the week or so before that, under a full moon, everything was lit up like a fairy land. I had no idea that a chunk of cold rock over 200,000 miles away could make that much difference.

In the African language that I learned, Pulaar, the word “lewru” means “moon.” I was stunned one day when a native speaker told me that he was going to visit his relative “si lewru mayii”; that is, “when the moon dies.”  I had to give this long thought before I understood that he simply meant “the end of this month.”  The word “lewru” works perfectly for both moon and month, because, naturally enough, the phases of the moon define the month.  When the moon passes through its phases of waxing and waning, the month is over.

My African friends kindly used the term “lewru tubako” for the months in the Julian calendar. ( “Tubako”  means “white person ”.) If I said something was going to be happening “next month”, for example, they would clarify, “lewru tubako?”  which literally means, “the month (or moon) of the white person.’’  I was always a little embarrassed about this as it so clearly revealed the disjuncture between moon and month in my culture.

Solar time brought up similar dilemmas. There were few clocks, where I lived in Africa,  and having a watch was more of a status symbol (especially if it ran) than a useful object. Since the watches were digital, many people who owned them could say the time, such as “10-30″ , but it had little real meaning. For written communication about time, pictures worked the best.  Often, I’d sit with someone who just returned from the clinic with their paper bag of medicine, and make little drawings, indicating when they should take each pill.  For example, if the directions said three times a day, I’d draw a sequential picture of the sun rising, the sun centered high in the sky, and the sun setting.

Verbal communication about times during the day required a different set of vocabulary.  Among the old people especially, all times hinged on the five daily prayer times of subaka (6:30 am), fana (2:15 pm), alansara (5:00 pm), futuro (7:30 pm) and geeye (8:30 pm).  They could tell if it was prayer time by the position of the sun.  Since we were only 14 degrees north of the equator, the position of the sun and the time of day was almost the same day to day.  Even if people in my village didn’t personally practice the Muslim tradition of daily prayer, this rhythm of the day was ingrained.  Once I said to Aawdy, an older man, that I’d be by his hut “bimmbi law” (early morning) the next day to go with him to look at his fields.  This resulted in a rather lengthy discussion, as to whether that meant subaka (6:30 am) exactly, or just sometime before mid-morning.   Arm-waving also worked well, to convey time of day.  My villagers taught me that instead of struggling for the words or concept of a particular time, I could just say “I’ll see you tomorrow when the sun is here” and throw my arm up to point in the sky as to where the sun would be, directly over my head for a noontime meeting, for example.

My neighbor Mariama loved learning anything new, so we often had discussions about time.  During slow afternoons she’d say, “let’s do the calendar” and I’d go to my hut and retrieve the little boldly colored calendar with a Monopoly game theme that another volunteer had given me as a Christmas present.  Mariama would patiently look at each page, clarify the name of the “lewru tabako” and count each date in that month, her finger running over the numbers in each row. She was also fascinated about how Westerner’s tell time, and liked to compare the time on her watch with mine, to see if they were the same.  I knew we had made progress in cultural exchange one day (perhaps not all for the best) when we were discussing plans I had for the next day.  “I’ll be leaving when the sun is about here” I said, pointing over the cornfields and toward the river.  “Oh,” she said, barely glancing at my earnestly positioned arm, “about 10 in the morning? ”

When I left Africa I spent a few weeks in France before returning to the States, a long awaited reveling in luxury to offset my two years of living in a small mud hut.  One day when I was sitting in soft chair a big house on Cezanne Avenue in Aix en Provence, reading a book and drinking tea, a wave of anxiety pulsed through me.  I put my book down and wracked my brain as to what that was about; I had no deadlines, no appointments, nothing forgotten or undone.  And then I realized; I didn’t know where the sun was. Or, what phase of the moon we were in, or which constellations marched across the sky last night.  I got up and looked out the window to get my bearings and accepted that this was the first of many recalibrations my body and spirit would be making as I returned to life in the Western world.

•

DURING THE TWO YEARS THAT I SERVED in Iran as an English teacher in the 1960s, travel was strenuous, most routes, unpaved, and communications, almost impossible. People often showed up — or didn’t, even when they had written ahead to say they were coming. So, in September 1966, when Tom Dawson and David Osterberg failed to arrive in Rasht, Gilan, as planned, I was not particularly concerned. Tom had written that they planned to spend a night in Ardabil, then catch another bus down the scenic Astara road, which drops thousands of feet to the shores of the Caspian Sea and, if all went well, they’d arrive in Rasht by nightfall. The next day, we’d go on to our workshop in Isfahan.

I had traveled that road earlier in the summer and knew firsthand about the barbed-wire fences and sentry towers along the steppes of Russia. However, in the fishing village of Astara, where the two men had to change buses, only the shallow Aral River defines the border between Iran and the USSR.

When David finally reached Isfahan, he was shaken up and under strict orders not to reveal Tom’s whereabouts. As we learned later, Russian soldiers had apprehended his friend outside Astara en route to Rasht. After Tom was arrested, Russian authorities transported him to Baku, (in what was then Russian Azarbaijan) and held him for three weeks. Although the government imposed a news blackout in Iran, this Cold War incident made front-page news in the New York Times.

After three long weeks, the American Ambassador in Moscow successfully negotiated Tom’s release. My friend walked freely across the border, only to learn that the Iranian government had declared him persona non grata.

Needless to say, when I found myself lost in the mountains of Wyoming last summer, I credited my safe return to Peace Corps training where we had been taught to keep cool in unpredictable circumstances.

Three years ago, I journeyed back to Iran with a group of fellow RPCVs. On this trip, we rode in comfortable air-conditioned buses on smooth highways and our tour guide used his cell phone to confirm hotel reservations. But just like the earlier days when I was still fumbling in Farsi, communications sometimes were lacking. One night, for example, a member of our group got locked out of her hotel room (part of a suite.) Although she had a key to the inner door, she couldn’t get past the outer door. She asked me to call down to the front desk for her. I did so in sorely lacking Farsi. The man replied in English: “I will … the bell man and he will … the door for you.” Happily, someone came upstairs a few minutes later to let her into her room.

I had been thinking about Iran when my husband and I started out at the Christina Lake trailhead in the Wind Rivers mountain range of Wyoming last summer. We are experienced hikers and Paul was carrying a topographical map as well as a trail description. As usual, I had my compass. We ate an early lunch at the wilderness boundary where 2 trails lead up the mountain – one to Christina Lake and the other to Silas Lake. So far, so good. I stopped at Upper Silas Lake to rest while he climbed further into the canyon. It was about 1:30 p.m. and he promised to be back by 4 since it was only a few miles more up to the end of the trail.

Sometime after 4 p.m., I decided to start down. I’d already done a couple of puzzles, eaten my apple, and changed to a more comfortable spot in plain sight. I’d also gazed at the blue sky, identified the trees around me, listened to birdcalls, and watched a rushing stream below my outcropping. I finally wrote him a note, which I left in the middle of the trail pinned down by rocks so anyone could find it.

On the way down, I met a backpacker who reported, “Paul says he’ll meet you at the car.” That was reassuring because it meant he was ahead of me. But twice I got off the main trail. I had to cross a roaring stream on some precarious logs. A swift jog back up the steep grade took most of my drinking water. Then I made yet another wrong turn. Now I had only ¼ of a liter left for the long hike out. However, I saw a lake ahead. Was this Christina Lake? If so, I’d get my bearings. In spite of traveling its full length, I found no trail that headed up to the point where we had eaten lunch. Once again, I’d have to retrace my steps back up the mountain. When I finally caught sight of the sign at the wilderness boundary, I wanted to hug it!

Then I saw the double-blazed blue trail and the red cross-country ski symbols we had followed earlier in the day. Once again, as the two trails diverged. I chose the blue trail. That led me to a large marshy meadow. This was not the right route! I finally reached a campground where a young girl sat at a picnic table. “Is there a driver around who can take me back to the trailhead?” I asked her. By now, my husband was waiting for me just as I had once awaited Tom Dawson and David Osterberg in Rasht, Iran.

Two fellow hikers were there as well. One had already searched the campground; the other was ready to hike up to a high point to use his cell phone and call for help if the need arose.Like Peace Corps volunteers, hikers are always ready to help.

Some day I hope to go back to Iran. But this time, my husband will be at my side.

•

In 2004, Jennifer published Journeys: A Novel of Iran.

•

PEACE CORPS WAS two years of my young life, half my life ago. A time of long blonde braids, still-chubby cheeks, a hardy body withstanding weeks of tummy rumbles, pinkened skin before sunscreen became de rigueur. Quick reflexes, and a back hardened to floor sleeping. Easy laughs.

Peace Corps was unexpected, and unplanned for, fun. Many times, it just happened — someone arrives descending feet-first from the louage, at the doorstep, or someone shows up at a beach disco. Instant friends, mix and stir. A prepackaged community, insurance premium against the loneliness of the Sahelian plains.

Peace Corps was earnestness. Adults used the word altruistic. We tried to do good, and reached for change, big change — winds of change, like the sandstorm Khamseen winds. After supper, I concentrated hard on my lesson plans — taking each one seriously, debating its worthiness with roommates, substituting a different reading passage, reciting lines aloud in preparation by candlelight.

Peace Corps was giddy love, or illusions of it (mirages, salt puddles shimmering as goats wander by), usually across cultures. American slept with Italian, American went with Tunisian, French were waiting in the wings, we tried them all. Anyone was possible and people were buff and looking good. I had three foreign boyfriends in two years. Two overlapped; it was heady and flattering and confusing stuff.

Peace Corps was plump olives and squishy dates and juicy tangerines, Mediterranean food of colors and hot stings, pits and juices, warm tomatoes and lemons, big bread you ripped, layers of things, and the convivial brik à l’oeuf. I learned to eat bread, not drink water, when food is too spicy.

Peace Corps was about men. Afterwards, I explained my hypersensitivity away, saying I had been a libber, fresh from a women-only ivy college — headstrong, principled, and consequently, immediately indignant. I stayed mad at Tunsis for both two years. There were always eyes, always leers, always hands, always them. I wonder why I am still single, 30 years on. I still feel eyes.

Peace Corps was simple rooms. Here was the smoothness of the blue/white striped blanket on my double mattress, here was a pillow. No more, no less. There was a small icon sitting on a plank serving as a tabletop. Here were a few of my things puddled on the floor or on boards and bricks against the wall. There was a round low wooden table set between two thin floor mattresses as a living room. Simple was good.

Peace Corps was marriages. Twosomes separated off and got hitched; maybe five or six couples. I was floored; so young? Some of our women stayed there in-country. The nurse married the Arabic teacher. Haffouz married Kairouan. Tunis Bourguiba married Tunis Bourguiba and are still together. They said PC was hard on marriages. Was it really?

Peace Corps was a slower time. Each day was a bookmark, in hammocks, sofas, on floors. There was lots to write in journals and diaries. Lots, and nothing, happened each day.

Peace Corps was Aimée’s roof-top apartment in Sousse — a weekend refuge. The pall of ocean humidity hung like sheets through the white-washed couple of tiny rooms. I fasted up there for three days, but gave up and went downstairs to the beach.

Peace Corps was Arabic, with a vengeance (see Men, above). Heaves and swallows, gutteral gasps an throaty coughs, vowels from bowels, ballistic combinations of consonants, straining lips, mouth, tongue, stomach, throat. “Bara idfin rowhic high,” I hissed on the busses. Kelb came in very handy in the souks. I get calls even now for Iraq, for Oman — “Titkallim il-Arabi?”

Peace Corps was hammems, vaguely fungoid and slick, creepy with old women blobbing on top of each other, slamming hands into backs, scraping camel mitts over each others’ arms and legs, like frogs, squatting in running water, hot drops clinging to blue tiled walls, chipped and broken, steam everywhere. Leering eyes, private parts everywhere. I was bait, marriageable bait, for these crones, and they trolled —

Peace Corps was being looked at. Jane Kuntz said she turned it off, walking as if with clappers and earplugs, oblivious. But my antenna quivered expectantly, dreading it, hating it, ready for it. Always noticed, under scrutiny, appraised like store goods or bartered horses. Comments on the bus, from the café on the corner, from within holes of souk shops, around from the teacher’s room. On display, in the public eye for two whole years. I can’t shake it all these years later.

Peace Corps was the welcome mat over the threshold into a career — a teaching career — and seemed an answer for me. It would do for another decade.

Peace Corps was finding Americana relief together on small R&Rs of chocolate chip cookies and outdated Time magazines and NY Times crossword puzzles, shared — English, our food, our ways, references only we knew, banana bread. We would sit on each other’s mattresses and reveal pasts, brief though they still were.

Peace Corps was a stand-alone time, a dyad of years wrapped up in plastic and stored on the shelf. A 3-day repeat visit in 1981 rendered no further meaning; was too fast and people looked too different. A few letters over the years, a Saturday spent reorganizing slides, faded prints in albums, mainly of goofy 23 year olds in goofy poses. (I am smiling in every one of those pictures, I think.) Recent random emails, now a reunion 26 years on. Are the years atrophied, petrified, or are they resuscitable?

Peace Corps was a gallery of types I can detail even now, down to the freckle, the lip mole, the calf shape, the chuckle, the broodiness, the breastbones, the contact lens, the frowns, the chubby bodies, their clothes, red toenails. I know their names by heart – after all, he was the first Robbie I knew, she was the first Melinda, the other one the first of many Franks I’ve known. First Lily, first Ken, first Edith — and every Edith I’ve met since then has made me think of that Edith. They will remember me as Peggy, I think, even though I matured long into Peg.

Peace Corps was three lofty goals; but the third one is best. Return home and share what you learned. We talk fast and remember, and hope Peace Corps never goes belly-up. We wear the stripes.

And Peace Corps was cliques — we remember them: the pack of future dropouts who hung unhappily together during training, the in-crowd in Sousse, the well-diggers, the nurses, the last-year veterans like the Funks (they knew so much), the Tunis gang, the twos and threes stuck together. There is a black and white photo of all of us that first summer, a family of 50 (missing only Sweater Man), backed up against a crumbly schoolyard wall. I made them my friends, one by one, two by two. A webbed ball of close people I have somehow let bounce away from me. Have they all reunited in pairs at grad school, making dates in their late 40s, eating cous-cous together in Houston or DC? Have they gotten together, hauling out photo albums over beers in apartments? Where have I been?

Peg Clement works now at the State University of New York in Albany, NY on democracy and governance projects in developing countries, but following her Peace Corps tour lived in six African countries for fifteen years. Her creative non-fiction has been published on-line at the expatriate website, Tales from a Small Planet and recently in Worldview Magazine. She wrote “Peace Corps Was” in anticipation of her group’s first reunion last August in Washington DC. There were fifty Trainees in her group and they trained in in northwestern Tunisia, high in the Atlas Mountains in a village called Ain Draham. She read her recollections to the group on the banks of the Potomac.

•

How to Make Recycled Paper
I shredded paper snowflakes into a bucket of water: Guatemalan newspapers, Peace Corps newsletters, embassy safety bulletins and the Catholic magazines that my mother mailed me each month in care packages. Then I stuck a bean grinder into the word-soup, twisting the plastic knob until the bucket filled up with purplish pulp. I was all alone outside a church in Guatemala.

It was May 2001, midway through my first year in Peace Corps. I had walked two hours to get to a wood-shack village called Buena Vista, planning to teach a youth group how to make recycled paper. The project looked so sensible in the “Youth Training Manual” they gave me, just memorize the script in Spanish and follow directions.

I sketched out my future the same way: follow the steps for two years, amaze the villagers and bring my life-affirming experiences back home. Writing this story a couple years later, I still can’t tie up the story in admirable platitudes.

Peace Corps assigned me to a cluster of villages that sprawled between mountains in eastern Guatemala. Buena Vista rested at the very end of my area. Each trip I crisscrossed two valleys and inclines, land so steep that I had to claw my way up. The village sat so far from the world that they didn’t have electricity, so I used a bean grinder instead of a blender to pulp the paper.

I had planned to teach the youth group how to make recycled paper and invite them to a big, inter-village talent show in the summer. But nobody ever came. I watched rainy season storm clouds creep along the sky, casting shadows the size of movie spaceships across the valley. Down there, a patchwork quilt of farm-plots shimmered between Emerald City green and space blue.

After a few hours, I crammed the crayons, markers, plastic sheets, homemade paper press, posters, and scripts back into my backpack. I walked home.

The Rainy Season
That night, the sky rumbled and crackled like tornado season in the Midwest, and the rainy season broke open with a whoosh of high-pressure rain. The thunderclouds and noise dissolved into a foggy gray roar outside. After an hour, the dirt chicken yard outside my room flooded and spilled muddy paste across my concrete floor.

I used my bucket from the recycling project to catch rain leaking through my flimsy roof. The rain pounded my roof all night, and I buried myself underneath four blankets to stay warm inside that blanket cocoon, the rain sounded like an ocean splashing at the bottom of my mountain.

I stared at my bookshelf, listening to rain on top of rain, and I thought of Amy back home. Amy had sandy hair that she dyed blazing red most of the time, she stood tall enough to wrap up my whole skinny body when she hugged me. We met as editors at a college newspaper, both of us carrying around the same robin-egg blue copy of T.S. Elliot poems. We matched each other, both of us disheveled and anxious from being stuck in books for too many years.

I knew her five years, but we spent what amounted to months of time in smoky coffee shops telling stories and trading books. Years before, we had promised each other that we would read James Joyce’s book, Finnegans Wake. That book stood between us, the ultimate literature-major’s dream that we could unravel like compulsive kids.

The last time we spoke on the phone, Amy had been sick for months. Her doctor diagnosed pneumonia, but never noticed the two blood clots stuck in her lungs like sputtering firecrackers. She lay in bed with her mysterious illness while we talked long distance. “Oh, by the way,” she said, “I had some free time, so I read the Wake.”

“You heartless bitch!” I yelled, and she giggled back.

“Read it yourself,” she said.

Tower of Babel
And so I did. The first week of the rainy season, huge chunks of eroded fields washed out and my usual paths slicked with mud. I didn’t see the sun for a week, so I hid out in my bedroom like a monk and read Finnegans Wake in heroic sessions. I went a whole week without speaking English, while reading the craziest book ever written in English.

Midway through that reading marathon, my neighbor Manuel stopped by. The 16-year-old from my youth group was just bored after hours of rain. “Is that the Bible?” he asked me, scrutinizing the 900-pages of English gibberish. I tried to explain, but he wasn’t very interested.

“People used to speak the same language, you know,” Manuel said. “Man decided to build the Tower of Babel, a tower tall enough to go to heaven. Then God smashed the tower and made all men speak different languages. That’s why you speak English and I speak Spanish.”

His impromptu sermon shocked me. Joyce kept talking about that same Bible story in Wake, he wanted to stir all the languages together in a word soup, a dreamy story built from echoes of different tongues. Manuel had stumbled on the secret of the book. “You should read more,” I said, “I think you could be a teacher, maybe.

“Primero Dios,” he said, “I want to be a minister someday.

Primero Dios. That Guatemalan cliche means “God first” or “God willing,” and it stuck in my head after he left. The country’s long civil war and bad leadership had left public education in shambles. Manuel might have been the smartest kid for miles around, but school ended at sixth grade in the village. The richest kids moved to private schools in the city, but most villagers never made it that far. Too often Primero Dios glossed over sad realities that no Peace Corps Volunteers could ever fix

I finished the Wake, and wrote Amy a huge letter about the rain, Manuel, and the book. We both loved writing stories within stories like that. Stories within stories make a magical circuit, an echo chamber with a little life bouncing around inside forever. Somewhere in this story, Amy is still waiting for my letter and I’m still buried under blankets in Miramundo.

My Bicycle Crash

On June 14, 2001, the blood clots burst and Amy died on an operating table. Before anybody could tell me that she was in the hospital, I rode my bicycle down my mountain. I left my emergency beeper at home, thinking I’d ride the bus back up later that afternoon.
Halfway to the city, I ran over a scrawny puppy. He dashed off screaming into the bushes and I wobbled around a steep curve. The dirt road was a minefield of rainy-season potholes. My tire caught a rut, and I flipped over the handlebars and skidded across the gravel. The crash tore a hole ten-stitches wide in my face.

I stumbled into the first house I saw, trailing gobs of blood behind me. An old lady was working in the yard, and she helped me tape a bloody rag on my face. I rode the rest of the way down the mountain in a shaky daze. At the hospital, a doctor sewed up my face. Doped up on painkillers, I drooled all over his rubber gloves. I spent the rest of the weekend in a hotel, swallowing pain pills.

On Monday, I found out that Amy died and that I had missed her funeral. By nighttime, I was drunk and spending a fortune on phone calls home at a tourist cafe. I called Amy’s mother, and rambled into the telephone. “I sent her a letter two weeks ago. Did she read my letter?” I begged her to answer me.

A Picture of Me Dancing
“Ven, ven al gran show de talentos,” I shouted, a full month later, into a rusty P.A. system. There’s something tremendous about hearing your words beamed through a scratchy microphone and booming over a mountain; your voice lingers and feels tangible.

We had built a plywood-plank and cinderblock stage in my neighbor’s lofty garage. We pumped recorded mariachi music through the amplifier to attract more people to the party. The rainy season rain held off for the whole night. Just before I opened the show, a red and white striped chicken bus rumbled outside.

In one of the happiest moments of my life, I watched more than 50 parents, grandparents, kids and a whole mariachi band spill out of the bus like circus clowns — the youth group from Buena Vista had come back. They knocked off the recorded music and pounded out the real thing on their tubby instruments. People danced and sang along, and the crowd swelled to 300 by the time I opened the show.

The youth group did the rest, performing all the skits they had planned. Veronica sang a country duet with her husband, the 17-year-old girl wailed out the love song. By the time I left, she would have her first baby. Marcella dressed up like a ditzy farm-girl, skipping around the stage. She left for high school on a scholarship that Christmas.

Towards the end, the Buena Vista leader stuck a cowboy hat on my head and dragged me onstage. “Dance,” he ordered, “Dance and we’ll dance with you.”

The band struck up that lilting mariachi beat, and I hopped from one foot to the other, following the beats in my invented gringo dance. Each time I landed, the wood planks banged out the beat beneath me; Freddy and his friends laughed and bobbed beside me, our footsteps booming even louder. I laughed and laughed, I was dancing fast enough to fly.

Somebody took a picture of me dancing, and I still keep it on my wall. I see a younger me: I’m high-stepping like a Vegas showgirl in dirty jeans and a cowboy hat; for one pristine moment I’m lost in my crazy march-step, I danced so fast that both my feet hovered in mid-air; for one moment, I left the ground and I floated, close to Amy as I’ll ever be . . .

•

Jason joined Peace Corps after graduating from the University of Michigan with a degree in literature. He recently graduated from the journalism program at New York University, and hopes to return to Central America as a journalist. His work has appeared in The Revealer, Newsday, and Street Level.

•

I SEE IT NOW IN MY MIND’S EYE — from my house in Songhor — wind blown tufts of light green sugar cane surging like a great sea on Kenya’s Kanu Plains to wash gently against the thousand foot heights of the Nandi Escarpment. Some thirty miles distant, Lake Victoria Nyanza glimmered in the late afternoon sun. The image is clear, yet complicated by the rush of other images, faces, smells, sounds - by the sheer exuberance of memories that so indelibly marked this time in my life.

I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Central Nyanza charged with supervising the construction of a rural water system designed to pipe potable water to 1200 farms on three government sponsored Settlement Sugar Schemes. I worked most closely with a group of eight men whom I trained in the skilled work of the project. When resting we kibitzed and talked. They had many questions.

Maurice almost always began. With a twinkle in his eye, he probed for the amazing differences he reckoned inherent between whites and blacks. He questioned me incessantly about why I had come to

Kenya. I’m not sure he ever really understood my response. Maybe, presuming that I myself knew the answer, I couldn’t articulate it well. Altruism was beyond Maurice’s comprehension, but a thirst for adventure seemed to be a satisfactory motive. Another exchange went like this.

“Robert,” Maurice asked, “Is it true that Mzungus (Europeans) eat frogs?”

I pondered. “Yes,” I replied. “Some Mzungus eat frogs, but only the legs. When fried up they taste a bit like chicken.”

Maurice looked skeptical. “Really,” he frowned. “Frogs.” He concluded, “Mzungus are very weird.”

Inspired, I noted, “You know, Europeans think that eating termites is very strange.”

Maurice absorbed this information, then shot back with a surprised query. “Why?” he asked, “termites are good.”

A more telling exchange occurred in July 1969. Americans had just landed on the moon. The guys were very interested in this news - more intently than I would have expected.

“So Robert,” Maurice began, “Is it true that Americans have landed on the moon?”

“Yes,” I responded pointing to the wisp of a moon still visible in the morning sky. “They are up there now.”

This confirmation engendered discussion of rocket ships and airplanes, which demonstrated these poorly schooled rural men’s lack of appreciation for the science and the technological accomplishment of the moon trip. Francis who was more cynical than his colleagues observed, “If Americans can build airplanes then certainly they can build a rocket.” He was puzzled however, by the fact that it had taken so long to get to the moon. “After all,” he noted pointing again to the moon, “You can see it right there!” This again raised the question as to whether the landing had really happened.

Ligolo, older, taller and stronger with his front teeth knocked out in the traditional Luo style, and who rarely participated in these exchanges, cleared his throat. The men craned anxiously in his direction when he asked the crucial question. “So Robert,” he paused, “What color is God?”

I was stunned. I had no context for the question. Yet obviously it lay at the heart of their concern. James, the most worldly of the crew who sported sunglasses and who shed his family name Oyier in favor of Bondi in honor of agent 007, saw my consternation and came to my aid.

“Robert,” he said, “We Luo people believe that God takes several forms and that he lives, at times at least, on the moon. The issue goes to the nature of God. If God is good, he is black like Africans. However, if he is evil, he is red.” James continued, “Ligolo’s question is fair. If Americans have gone to the moon like you say, they must have seen God. So, what color is he?”

I admitted it was a good question, and with further discussion I learned more about Luo beliefs, but I had no answer. However, we agreed to look for the answer. I brought international editions of Time and Newsweek back from Kisumu the next week and we scrutinized the stories and pictures for evidence, but – of course – found none.

I realized afterwards that this was one of those quintessential moments when each of my friends took one more step into the modern world and away from tribal traditions. The trappings of old beliefs diminished against the onslaught of new reality.

Before too long the issue of God on the moon faded away. Soon Luo owned and operated sugar trucks and buses, perhaps subconsciously reflecting this religious heritage, soon started bearing names like “Moon Rocket” or “Apollo 12.”

In the years since, I have subsequently reflected with some sadness how man’s crowning technological achievement of the 20th Century unintentionally undermined beliefs that had sustained Luo people for generations.

•

FOR TWO YEARS I LIVED in a country with no seasons. We measured time by other means than falling leaves or snow, new buds on trees. There was a fresh breeze in the air, the ash of burned sugar cane floating in the window. There were times to go to work, times to stay home, an election, an eclipse; all of these differentiated the rising and setting of the same hot sun, and the appearance of a glowing moon and full set of stars. Rain would break the swelter like the fever of a child dissolves into sweat, and the whole city would breathe differently that day. Then the sun would come again and dry what had fallen, and could not last.

I came to this country with the expectation of seasons, and before I had woken to a blinding sun on Christmas, I imagined my yard littered with leaves, a chill in the air. It was here, in this place of 12-hour days and 12-hour nights, of weather and no seasons that I learned to tell time. Telling time is like telling a story: the truth, the time, depend on the teller and the audience. In Guyana, people will ask you, “Now is what time?” or, “Today is what day?” because they know the constants in life. There will always be “now” and “today,” while the names we give them, 3:15 or August 8th, are only names, and names that change.

My watch broke in my first few months; I had calendars, but the holidays changed with the moon. Without the time tellers I depended on, I realized, for the first time, that I was on my own. My days and schedules shifted under the weight of unplanned, unused time, and I discovered that when time had no name, it became a broad expanse of life. Eventually, I learned to measure differently, to find my own names for seasons, without words or numbers. The poet Ted Hughes has written of this experience:

I think of it
As a kind of time that cannot pass,
That I never used, so still possess.

I did not use this time either, I discovered it, and in so doing, reminded myself of what I had so easily and quickly forgotten in a well-measured life. More importantly, I learned to answer the Guyanese questions that had confused me initially. I could say that now is when is the frogs sing, and now is when the rain falls. Now is the howl of monkeys, the smell of curry stewing, the taste of mango pulled from a tree. And today, today is our understanding of being, our sense of ourselves as alive. It is without season or name, sun or rain, it is how we can live wherever we are and grow and grow and grow.

Katherine Jamieson was an Urban Youth Development Volunteer in the Peace Corps. She taught literacy, health, and life skills classes, and helped to coordinate programs at an all-girls vocational training center.

•

JULY 2005

I left Thailand in 1980 after spending four years as a Peace Corps English teacher in a secondary school and three more working in refugee camps. I really don’t know why it took me so long to finally make that journey back to Thailand. I guess part of it was the fear of facing the changes that I would possibly find hard to accept after all those years. The tsunami finally washed all that away, and I found myself needing to return to be reassured that all was well there.

The changes in Bangkok seemed profound to me at first. It was so strange to see tall buildings, a subway and a monorail! In many ways, I felt like Rip Van Winkle waking up from a long sleep to find a whole new world! I took a long walk the first night along Sukhumvit Road, a road I had traveled many times in the past. I could not gain a reference point until I had walked about 15 blocks and encountered the old railroad tracks.

•

Khao Lak, Pangnga Part One

I am sitting here alone on the veranda of the Khao Lak Bay Front Hotel watching the sun slowly descending into the Andaman Sea. I feel like I am in a Somerset Maugham novel — all teakwood, dusk, overhead fans… . As you look out over the beautiful view, a closer inspection tells you of darker days past. What was once, I’m sure, a beautiful pool area and gardens about half the size of a football field is now totally submerged in mud and water. You can just discern the outline of the pool itself and imagine how it might have looked last December 26th morning before the tsunami obliterated it and about 10,000 lives up and down these beaches.

A “to-khae” (gecko) skitters across the lattice work of the veranda’s roof as sandaled footsteps approach sliding quickly across the smooth red-tiled floors to turn on the lights— just enough for you to see your way. Small bats do their crazy dance in the sky looking for insects for their evening meal. The air is filled with the sweet aroma of countless tropical flowers. Sounds of croaking and chirping “chinchokes,” to-khaes, frogs, and numerous other animal life common to this area, yet unknown to me, remind me that I am indeed a world away from the sights, sounds and smells that make up my world in the States.

The now gentle sounds of the waves are not reassuring. They are beautiful, but not to be trusted. Even sitting here now you are never so comfortable as this serene location demands of you — paradise to hell in a flash.

•

Last night I thought I heard a thump and felt a lurch of our train as it was speeding through the night bound from Bangkok to parts south. The attendant confirmed this morning that the train had indeed hit and killed two water buffaloes (as if there weren’t few enough as it is)! “Sorry for the delay getting to Surathani,” he said with a smile as he touched the brim of his cap. Surathani– a small town that is at the hub of the south — for people going just about anywhere but Surathani.

The train arrives at the station about 7:30 am, and there is an explosion of activity as if the curtain has risen on act one of a play. The taxi drivers and busmen are working the crowds imploring them to take this bus or that taxi– Kho Samui, Phuket, Pangnga to mention just a few of the idyllic destinations. Market people are hawking all kinds of food to the hungry and still-sleepy passengers as they alight the train. In the center of all this cacophony is a pirate of a man barking orders this way and that. He is the ticket seller— your passage to paradise! He tries to convince me to take the local bus to Khao Lak– just as long, but a more direct route. I insist on the more comfortable bus to PangNga.

The bus takes me as far as the three corners at Khokloie, another nowhere hub to anywhere else. The foreign tourists on the bus look at me quizzically as I get off— “Why is this guy getting off at this God-forsaken place?” — I can see some of them wondering. As the bus pulls away, I get similar looks from the Thais at the small restaurant that doubles as the bus stop. Twenty minutes pass before the bus heading for Takuapa picks me up. The “grapao” (ticket collector) is a lively woman of about 35 years of age. She motions me to sit in the back next to a ancient monk on his way to a temple 30 kilometers up the road. When she hears that I am going to Khao Lak, she begins reliving the stories often told of the tsunami. Her eyes widen as she talks in vivid detail about the bodies lying here and there. She is aware, as many Thais are, that there are many unhappy ghosts in Khao Lak. There are occasional grunts from the old monk, but I can’t determine if he is agreeing with or admonishing the woman and her stories. I take a deep swig on my water bottle and wonder why anyone would travel down here any other way. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss a minute of the past 15 hours traveling here from Bangkok.

The town of Khao Lak is about 2 kilometers along the north-south road running along the beach. Everything on the west side (beach side) was completely swept away. This was the area where many of the hotels and shops were located. Everything on the east side of the road was reasonably in one piece, buy it looked as if they needed to do a lot of cleaning and restoring of some of the buildings.

As I walked up the path to the hotel, I was greeted by the receptionist who was equally surprised that I was there. I explained why I had come, and we had a good chat about the hotel and what was or was not available at this time of the year — like lunch and dinner. I checked in and hiked back along the road to a small restaurant jutting out on the cliff overlooking the sea. I talked to the owner as I ate my noodles with chicken. He spoke about that day and how he had taken a group of Italian tourists out on an overnight trip. When he got back he could not recognize the place. All the hotels and resorts along the beach were completely gone! He showed me a map of the area — Khao Lak Orchid Resortel, Green Beach Resort, Happy Bungalows — to name just a few of the many places no longer in existence. From our eagle’s nest he pointed out where various hotels had been, jabbing the air with his finger as if he were painting on a large canvas. His brother, who had been working at the restaurant that morning, saw the tide go out and watched as people walked out to collect shells. He then witnessed the horror of the huge waves approach the beach — catching everything and everyone in its way. The images of that morning are still very vivid in his mind. As tortuous as recounting the events of that morning seemed to him, at the same time the mere telling of the story seemed to ultimately have a therapeutic effect.

I spend the next few hours wandering the town. Everyone has a story, and they are eager to tell it.  The people you meet are so grateful that you have come. Even with their town in ruins, it is a hopeful sign that things will return to some semblance of normalcy. The hotels will rise again. The tourists will come back, the beaches again will be crowded, and everyone will be working again.

After a quick dinner, I walk back to the hotel along the beach. Six months later belts, suitcases, clothing, toothbrushes, and other articles litter the sands still. In my mind each object speaks a horrible tale. Had the owner escaped or was she dragged out to sea never to be seen again? I watch as crabs run down to the water’s edge and know just when to retreat up the beach to escape the waves as they wash up on the shore. The irony of the scene does not escape me.

•

ON DECEMBER 22, 1991, we took a smelly bus from Suwalki to Warsaw. Marzena, another teacher and I chatted and snacked on sandwiches and hot tea as we rode south for seven hours, through the chill and snowy countryside of Northern Poland. We saw farmers guiding their furry plow horses and wagons through the streets, loaded with silver milk jugs, cabbages and crates of chickens. A long-legged stork landed on her nest on the roof of a farmhouse. After a booster shot at the Peace Corps office in Warsaw, I rode a streetcar to the Marriott Hotel in the center of town for coffee (kawa pronounced “kava”). Violins and a grand piano played on a balcony over the lobby that gleamed festively with bird of paradise in blue and gold jardinières, plush oriental rugs and squishy sofas. PC had adopted the hotel; where we gossiped with friends and called home to the States — $5.00 for five minutes. The American-feel of that gorgeous hotel, in a strange land, soothed our homesickness.

“Poland 3,” as we were called, had arrived in June 1991 to teach English. Two groups had preceded us to teach business and the environment. We lived with host families while we attended school for teacher training, Polish language and history. Eva Orlowski, husband Kazik and the children had made me feel at home in Milanowik. The house was a two-story brick in a quiet, wooded area. Kazik had built it soon after the war; a little farm in the backyard. Eva sold produce and Kazik worked in a tractor factory. They didn’t speak English, but we managed to communicate with sign language, stick drawings and my stumbling Polish. Eva and I became great friends and sang songs from old movies on long walks in the woods. She had been a little girl when the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and cried when she spoke of the horror.

About 125 of us graduated at the end of August as Peace Corps Volunteers. We were feted at a wild party and the next day went to schools all over the country to teach.  I was excited to finally be on my way. I was sent to Suwalki in the Lakes District, N.E. corner of Poland. It’s called the Siberia of Poland, because of its proximity to the North Pole. It is 10 degrees below zero in the winter and dark at 3:00 P.M., a shock to me after sunny California.

Evidence of the Soviet 44-year occupation after WWII was everywhere. The air, rivers and water polluted and towns still in need of attention from the devastation of war. There were many empty store shelves because the best food had been shipped to Russia. In 1988 the communists were forced to leave when the brave workers at the Gadnsk shipyards staged uprisings. The economy was terrible and most residents were out of work. Speaking English would help them move from a Third World country into the World Market.

I lived in a one-room cozy apartment inside a music school and taught other subjects besides English, to 48 freshmen in the college next door. They all passed their exams and we had given the Director, Elzbieta, and staff an art show and concert. When Eva invited me for Christmas I was ready for
some R & R.

Monday, the 23rd of December 1991, I boarded the kolega (the local commuter train) in Warsaw to visit them. I stopped at a kiosk and got Eva five flowers wrapped in cellophane, tied with a red ribbon. It’s a tradition in Poland that when you visit you take odd numbers of flowers, never even. I arrived at the Orlowski’s in the afternoon to warm hugs and kisses. I felt so welcome.

The house smelled like cabbage — Eva’s bigos (sauerkraut stew) — and pine needles from the Christmas tree. Eva and I walked to the market for fish and bread. Later we went to visit Kazik’s sister, Juanita, and her family and drank herbata which is strong tea, in small glasses with a spoon resting on the top for sugar. We ate cakes and tarts. You do not refuse food in Poland. I helped Eva’s granddaughter, Justina, ten years old, trim the small tree with many items handed down from her ancestors: silver angels, animals and religious icons (the country is predominantly Catholic). Eva cooked a rich dessert with cream and fruit.

Tuesday, the 24th is Wigilia (Christmas Eve).  The cooking speeded up. Eva cooked a long menu of courses. She had gone into the woods at 5:00 A.M. to pick mushrooms (grzyby pronounced “gre-jibby”).

I called her “Grzyby Eva” which made her laugh. Kazik took me on a tour of the basement storeroom. It smelled musty like a cave and was spooky down there with light bulbs on electric cords swinging from the ceiling. The shelves were loaded with: jars of jam, potatoes, peas, corn and fruit. There were rabbits, fish and chickens in a freezer. Barrels of pickles reminded me of the country stores in Pennsylvania when I was a kid. Kazik laughed at my astounded expression.

PCVs were warned not to eat the fish from the polluted rivers. The Poles ignored the danger. Eva cut up a large carp in sections. She put the raw fish  (ryby) across a platter with the head at the top, carrot and lemon slices in between the sections to look like ribs or bones. She put the tail (ogon) at the end, sprinkled parsley over it, peas around the edges. Then poured hot lemon gelatin all over it.  This went into the fridge to become a mold. The salad (sa-wat-ka) was apples, hard- boiled eggs, peas, carrots, onions, pickles on lettuce with gobs of mayonnaise on top. A second salad was shredded cabbage and spices. Eva would not let me cook, but I helped her get ready. We put up a long table in the living room with an embroidered tablecloth made by Eva’s great grandmother.

The immediate family ate dinner together Christmas Eve: eldest son, Robi, wife Malgosia, their daughter Justina, youngest son Hubik, wife Monica and her father, Tata. Everyone stood up. Representing a Polish blessing we each broke a piece of paper-thin wafer and passed it around. They toasted with vodka (my choice — apple cider) and we exchanged gifts. Eva loved my ceramic-mushroom candleholder. I gave gifts to the rest of the family and received fun presents from them. While the Poles drank vodka and got very loud, we all ate the huge meal and told stories. Two people could speak English. It was a loving evening meal and I enjoyed it so much.

At midnight Eva and I bundled up and walked five blocks to the Catholic Church down the dark country road.  There was no moon or streetlights and it was cold as a bear’s ice-lair. I was glad I had found fur-lined boots in Bialystok. The bright stars in the black sky made me think of the story of the star shining over the manger so long ago. We arrived late and had to stand and I froze. There was no heat in the church and no cheer as the greedy Nazis had stolen all the ancient gold icons and paintings. The German government was slowly returning the ones they could find. We sang the lovely Polish carols. I missed my family and tried not to cry. Eva was always sensitive to my feelings. We walked down the middle of the silent dirt road and I was shivering. Eva took hold of my arm and began to sing “Silent Night” in Polish with her contralto voice; I joined in singing soprano and we sang all the way back. I thought it had been a joyful Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day — 7:00 A.M.— Andrew and Rose picked Eva up and they went to the cemetery where their mama was buried to put flowers on the grave. Eva cooked breakfast for Justina and me; kielbasa, eggs and fruit. About 1:00 P.M., when the rest of the family came, Eva was slaving away in her little kitchen, Justina was playing her xylophone and Kazik and I were enjoying a soccor meet from England on their TV (televisor) and cheered when England scored. Justina let everyone in. It was quite a mob with Eva’s cousins, Kazik’s mama, Hanjia — 80 years old; twenty people in all, carrying gifts and flowers; white lilacs, roses, poinsettias and freesia. We sat down at the table for the feast.  First we ate fried leftover carp and szledz, a raw fish like herring, with onions and lemons and bowls of cream soup (zupa); then the huge, black mushrooms Eva had sautéed in oil. Eva had baked two chickens (kurcheki), a corn and pineapple salad with gobs of mayonnaise, a spicy/salty cabbage dish, tiny dishes of noodles,peas and carrots.  I helped Eva put food on large platters: sliced meats, bread (cleb), a rabbit loaf, ground and baked in a pan like a meatloaf. “It keeps for months,” Eva told me. The Poles drank vodka and brandy and celebrated. Eva’s brother, Woichek, his daughter Kathy and I drank strawberry juice and sang songs. For dessert there were oranges (pomorancze) from Turkey, hazelnuts, and Eva had baked a loaf cake with powdered sugar on top. We drank sweet, black coffee and tea, poppy seed cakes and macaroons. Each course was served with fanfare.  I never ate so much in my life. I poured Eva into bed under her duvet-covered comforter and turned out the tree lights.

December 26th in the morning, after hugs and thanks, with a light snow falling Eva’s son Hubik and Monika drove me to the Warsaw station. I took a five-hour train ride to historic Krakow. The snow was intense and I had a difficult time finding the Old Polonia Hotel in the dark. Finally in my heated room with the silent snow falling outside, I nestled under a warm duvet and fell asleep. The next day, in a blinding blizzard, I took a bus with others to the town of Oswiecim (German word is Auschwitz) and walked five blocks to the former death camp and across the infamous train tracks into the compound. With tears streaming down my face, I toured the Auschwitz Nazi Concentration Camp, now a Museum.

On December 28th, because of the miserable weather, I returned to my apartment in Suwalki to write up my lesson plans for the next semester. The weather had indeed been cold, but my Christmas with Eva had been loving and so warm. I was so thankful I had been to a true Polish Christmas; an experience I knew I would never forget.

•

UNDER MY MOSQUITO NET, I’d barely slept an hour when I stirred awake. I heard soft footsteps and the sound of scraping near the wall. I pulled the mosquito net up and looked around, disoriented. My clock was gone. I took myself indoors where it was too hot to sleep. The next night I moved back outdoors, locking the front door and putting the key under my pillow. Perhaps I should report the incident to the police. I remembered that I had been told something about the Chief of Police living across the street.

When I found the time to go across the street, at the doorway, I clapped to signal my presence. A tall, slim young woman came to the door. She had warm brown eyes and beautiful, straight white teeth that shone in the shaded entrance to her compound. She was dressed in a red Dutch wax pagne wrapped around her as a skirt and a western style, short sleeved, white sweater that revealed slim, muscled arms. She wore leather thong sandals and a length of cloth that matched her skirt wrapped around her head.

I glimpsed a large inner courtyard, with an L-shaped series of rooms beyond, made of traditional mud walls, rather than the industrial cinder block of the more modern construction I inhabited. I tried to speak in my thin command of Hausa, but she told me in French that her name was Aïssa. She spoke Djerma instead of Hausa because she was from the western part of the country. I told her my name and why I was living across the street, but she already knew all about me. She laughed at my errand and I knew reporting the clock stolen a week earlier was futile. She told me that this was the police chief’s mother’s house and that she was the chief’s cousin, taking care of her aunt. The chief, Idrissa by name, lived above the Commissariat, and I could go there, but it was Sunday and there wouldn’t be anyone there.

Later, about four o’clock on an afternoon in the week following when I didn’t teach, I climbed the steps of the Commissariat. The officers looked at me curiously. As an Anasara, a white woman (synonymous with Western), I was treated with a degree of respect that came more from curiosity about Americans than from colonial habit. I was told to wait. Soon, I was invited into the police chief’s office where I met Idrissa Traoré. He was tall and square. I could see the family resemblance to his cousin. They had the same chin line and the eyes were wide and lively, just like Aïssa’s. He knew all about my clock, and he, too, laughed at my naïveté. He told me that if they found the man who took it they would cut off his hand, but he would not be found. I said I understood. What I really wanted by then was to arrange for the removal of a pile of dirt that backed up to my rear wall where there was no adjoining house, an empty lot and an open invitation. He agreed to have this done for his mother’s neighborhood.

One evening some time later, Aïssa and I  leaned into pillows on my porch bed, side by side like sisters, she showed me that if I watched the northern sky I could tell what time it was by the stars as they passed overhead. At eight in the evening the Big and Little Dippers were rising on the left and the North Star was straight up. At mid-night the North Star was already in the small hours of the next day above the desert and the Big Dipper was pouring its contents afterward. We talked about how we imagined our future. Aïssa had a handsome boyfriend. In fact, she had three suitors, but it was the soldier she preferred and, although her family objected, she had decided to marry for love.

In late October, Aïssa mentioned a throbbing in her left temple. In a few days it was worse and soon her vision was blurred in her left eye. American missionaries, who had a church complex near the school where I taught, were affiliated with an eye hospital in Kano, in northern Nigeria. When Idrissa came to see his mother and stopped to talk with us in the evening as we sat on low chairs in front of her house, I told him about Aïssa. It took about six weeks for him to get the money together and Aïssa went to Kano on December 29th. By that time she saw only with her right eye, she was tired, and had a cough.

After a week, during most of which I too had been ill with a deep cough, on a light, fragile Sunday morning, I felt restored by the antibiotics I’d gotten from the French doctor, who was doing his military service in Maradi. I’d also had a complete night’s sleep, so I went to see Aïssa, to learn what had happened with the missionary doctors.

The boy came to the door. He told me in Hausa, which I had begun to understand and speak, that Aïssa was very ill, “Ba ta da lahia,” he said. I asked if I could see her and he led me inside. There were several women in the courtyard, including the ailing aunt.

Aïssa was dressed, sitting up on a narrow bed in a small room, dimly lit from a single small window, high up. She was coughing and gasping for breath. She hadn’t slept since returning from Kano two days earlier. A bowl lay in her lap and she was spitting blood into it. Alarmed, I sent the boy for Idrissa and the French soldier-doctor. I didn’t really know how to find either but I knew that he would know. White people, there not being more than a few hundred of us, were accounted for on some sort of municipal grapevine and the chief of police, unless he was out of town, would be easily located. As it turned out, the doctor was playing tennis at the French Club, a left-over colonial enclave. He had a car and arrived first.

Aïssa told him that she hadn’t slept or eaten in three days, could only cough up blood and barely swallow water. The soldier-doctor sat down and opened his bag, the kind I remembered from what now seemed a distant and vague childhood, when doctor’s made house calls. The Eye Hospital, it turned out, was a specialty clinic doing cataract surgeries and treating trachoma and glaucoma. The doctors had said it wasn’t her vision, but her heart. A valve was permitting blood to flow backwards. They couldn’t treat her.

The French doctor took her blood pressure and the needle spiked, refusing to come down even when he released the valve on the gauge. “Elle a une tension terrible,” he said, and quickly prepared a hypodermic needle. I sat on the bed next to her and held her upright with my body and my right arm, steadying the spitting bowl on my knees with my left hand. The doctor quickly swabbed her upper arm with alcohol and emptied the needle’s contents into the muscle. As he was noting what he’d given her on a pad of paper, she grew quiet, no longer coughing or spitting.

“Is she asleep?” I asked. He looked up at her, slumped in my arms, and moved to check her pulse.

“Elle est morte,” he pronounced. In the space of a heartbeat, literally, she was gone.

We laid her on the bed and I sat beside her on the floor. Holding her still warm hand against my cheek, I inhaled the scent of her skin, dusty, as if her body were already evaporating into the parched air.

“Can’t you do something to restart her heart? I asked in French, making signs of CPR with my hands in case my French wasn’t good enough.”

“Il est trop tard,” he said. Too late.

I’d never seen the end of time before, and it had slipped right into my arms. It widened, lost its borders, and at the same time closed around me in the small room. My ears were ringing. My consciousness soared into a corner of the ceiling above. I glimpsed the doctor closing his bag behind me. He stood up and moved toward the door.

“I think we should wait until Idrissa gets here,” I said. “He won’t be much longer.” I wished Idrissa had arrived first, wished he’d been there to authorize the treatment. “He should be the one to tell the others.” My head was spinning and I knew I could not get up.

Idrissa came into the room and stood at the end of the bed. Aïssa might have been asleep, but he looked from her to me, and the French doctor, and he knew. She’d have suffocated within hours in any case, he said, perhaps a day or two at most. I watched the two men talking. Idrissa didn’t seem surprised, not as shocked as I though he would be. He knew what she had been told in Kano, he said. She didn’t have long. It was fate. In silence he carried the news to the household. Instantly, keening arose in the courtyard. I stood up slowly and followed the French doctor out into the protective numbness of the morning sunlight.

On Tuesday, when I returned from school at noon, perhaps two dozen men dressed in their grand boubous, were listening to the Marabou recite verses from the Koran. There was a pause as I approached.

“Ah Salaam-a-lei-kum,” I greeted them with my hands folded in prayer just under my chin. They responded in one voice, “A-lei-kum Salaam,” with slight smiles, curiosity, perhaps pleasure at the Arabic acknowledgement coming from the foreigner’s mouth.

Inside, the women were seated on the ground in a semi-circle. I repeated the greeting and received the same welcome from them. I recognized Idrissa’s mother and his wife, a Senegalese former schoolteacher, whom I greeted in French. Aïssa’s mother was the only newcomer. She was dressed entirely in blue. I knelt down in front of her. The aunt explained who I was. The women looked at my face, my uncovered head, and my skirt made of local cloth that spread around me on the ground. I took off my sunglasses and squinted in the brightness. She even had blue eyes.

“Fofo,” I said, the only word I knew in Djerma. The women were delighted, and they all replied, “Fofo!” I opened my hands toward the figure in blue. We had only the memory of Aïssa in common, and she took my fingers in her warm palms, softened beyond measure with care. Sheltered in wrinkles and loose with age, her long and thoughtful years filled every open space in the courtyard. She pulled me to her, easing my difficulty in the mid-day sun with the late afternoon shadows of a mother’s embrace. Through her sister, we talked about Aïssa. She told me that her daughter had told her in a letter, which had been read to her, about the Anassara from America who had blue eyes, like her mother. I told her that Aïssa had taught me to tell time by the stars.

After the men across the street had dispersed to their homes, I stretched out on the Hausa bed at the edge of my veranda and watched the stars take up their usual positions above the runfa and the twin citrus trees, in the darkness. It was eight o’clock by my visual calculations. I said a prayer for Aïssa, and for myself before going inside. By the light of my only reading lamp I began to draw, working slowly from a photograph. It was just a number-two-pencil sketch, an instance of grief inscribed on a sheet of lined foolscap. I’d never drawn a portrait before and I haven’t drawn anything since, but it was a good likeness.