Entry Number Six

Dear All:

Bintou has been to the hair salon and is now watching her favorite soap opera (French) with friend Tina. So I have been exiled with some relief to the cyber cafe. An earlier email today was erased when I brushed some hair trigger device on the French keyboard. Gone.

Today is the day I think travel weariness has finally hit me. Oh, sleep is fine, no sickness, thank God. No, just that bone tiredness from taxis all over town to track down this or that, finding a part of one thing, and having to go three places to find the one thing to complete it. You veteran travelers I am sure know what I mean.

This week Bintou and I have been in a private bubble and I think that has protected me to some extent from feeling at all out of place. However, a week without one English newspaper, magazine, tv show, movie, video, radio program, does begin to take a weird toll on your psyche. Last night we wound up watching Catherine Deneueve in Indochine, in French with French subtitles. Believe it or not I was halfway engrossed and could hold my own with it. It is a loooong flick. When it was over, Bintou, who like most Africans does not like cursing, said "the fucking picture eeze finally finished."

In a way these emails have been my contact with home and my native tongue. For Bintou to come to the U.S. many serious hurdles must be overcome. They basically ask for our whole histories. Bintou must produce proper death certificates of her late husband, who was shot to death in front of her by rampaging rebels who swept through the city of Freetown, a city founded by repatriated British slaves, like Liberia was by American slaves. Bintou tried to place herself between the rebels and her husband, but one hit her in the forehead with the butt of his rifle, leaving her comatose to wake up in a U.N. protected hospital. The scar is still plainly visible. The mark of unspoken horrors and tragedies.

I do worry, naturally, about Bintou adjusting to America and Memphis. Although Southerners have a reputation for taking things easy and having manners, no doubt she will feel emotionally bruised at times. (Note to readers:  This did not happen once Bintou arrived.  People have been amazingly nice to us as a couple.) She is still smarting from her harsh treatment at the Embassy. The American in me is so plain to me here. Even among other whites I stand out as an American unmistakably. My size, my clothes (a polo shirt with black jeans), and that kind of James Dean slouch we Americans affect without even knowing it, all are dead giveaways. I am impatient, brusque with people by African standards, and have that unmistakable American swagger. I felt greatly complimented today when I was finally ushered into the big, nice family compound of another "father" of the family. He is the man who ran the utilities for all Senegal. He said in French that I seemed very much like an American adventurer/writer who would brave the wilds of Africa for inspiration and his woman. Why don't people at home give me those kinds of booster shots? "Father" gave the important final say-so for us and the family has expressed many times their absolute conviction that I am here ONLY through the will of God. Don't even bother suggesting that this could be happenstance. They would blow raspberries at such a foolish notion. A remaining phone call is to be made to Bintou's mother in Sierra Leone and an offering of respect, something small but meaningful, will be exacted for this relationship.

Tomorrow is the day of a million things happening. Maybe that is best because Bintou has already begun to shed tears over my leave tomorrow night. Twice now out of nowhere she has gotten quiet and when I walked by her she grabbed me and bawled, her whole body heaving with her sobs. And you know me – she cries and I’m a goner. I am so dreading the parting at the airport.

For very little money I had some tailors duplicate my expensive Gitman dress shirts in beautiful pastels. I am also having some nice ties made from some cool African print material.

Ah, the food. The national dish is fried black snapper, with the heads on and eyes in. The heads are a delicacy and my reaction is about the same as theirs would be when I suck on a crawfish head. Sacre bleu!

Last night we had a splendid meal of grilled lamb, butchered off the hook and grilled with marvelous spices as we waited. I pigged out. Earlier in the day I kept hearing a goat bleating inside our guest house/motel. When we were leaving for the day I saw the men hoist the goat around their shoulders to carry inside their courtyard. When I asked why they had a goat indoors Bintou nonchalantly told me "oh, they are going to kill and eat it." To my veggie friends, apparently it is a milk goat because I saw her (?) later very much alive and still bleating. Another thing I now remember about our guest house: When walking downstairs one afternoon I heard loud drumming from one of the rooms. The door was cracked open and inside the room I could clearly see a Senegalese man and woman seriously involved in ritual African dancing to the drums, being played feverishly by a young man. Even in the Senegalese hip-hop videos broadcast on the Trace network, which I now have memorized in my head like those early MTV videos by Adam Ant and Toni Basil, the dancing and booty shaking is unmistakably African. Like that judge said about pornography, I can’t describe it, but I know it when I see it.

Dakar is not a cheap place. The guest house is forty bucks a day which is by far the best deal we came across. Yes, some things are very cheap -- the lamb meal was three bucks. Gold is cheap, as I said. But things like photographs and batteries you will pay full price for.

Well, my time is almost used up, and sleep soon awaits and my last day. See you soon.

Love,

TG