Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 13 (2) 

Alex found a half-shady place under a niim tree, parked, and went into the first office. Already three people were waiting to see the Immigration Official. Luckily, one of his ex-students was typing away and looked up and recognized him.

"Oh, hoh. Master. Sannu. You are still here. Ina aiki?"

"Aiki da godiya."

"What brings you here?" She smiled, was glad to see him. He recalled her name now.

"You are working here Aishatu? It's good you have a job." He remembered she'd been in Form Five when he'd first come. She'd been a good student, always did a dance when she'd see him and the other girls had teased her about it. He could have done so but he had been careful never to fraternize with the students.

"You haven't got one Nigerian wife yet, sir?" she laughed. She had liked him. "You have to take me out to dinner."

"I will if I get my papers done."

"Oh, hoh." She opened the door to the office and said something in Hausa and gestured with a sweep of his arm for him to go in.

"Zo, Bature," the immigration official barked. "Sit down."

"Yes, sir. Ina aiki?"

"We speak English here also, Bature. You are a Canadian teacher?"

"Yes."

"What do you want here?" He was exerting his little bit of power, especially over a white man, just to make things difficult.

"Sir, I need a letter for the bank stating I am a teacher here." He did not mention a remittance through the Central Bank. They did not like you sending foreign currency out.

"Kai!" He slammed his fist down. Alex cringed. "They are just making work for us." He was anticipating a refusal. The official was a very large man, his uniform covered in bars of colours.

"Your passport. Bring your passport."

Alex fumbled for the passport pouch stuck in his shirt and produced it. The man looked at it then slapped it on the desk. He made him wait a few seconds, made him stay on edge, sweat.

"Have Aishatu type the letter. Bring it to me for signing. Go out now."

Alex spun on his heels. It was almost over. He told Aishatu what to write and she took it into the office. The official must have gone to prayers, must have been in a good mood. She brought it back, stamped and signed along with his passport.

"Thank you," he said and started to go.

"Oh, hoh, Master. Wait. You'll buy me one dinner at a hotel," she said. "When, sir?" laughingly.

"Next time I see you," he said humorously.

With that she flicked her hips out in a little dance like she used to in the school and said, "Are you sure, sir?" and laughed again.

"For sure," he chuckled. "See you, Aishatu." Alex was still smiling as he went out to the car. He had been lucky she had been there. It could have taken two or three trips to get that paper. He made it back to the bank just before closing and the bank clerk put the letter in with his other remittance items, for processing at the Central Bank. His work was complete now and he left for the Lake Chad Hotel to get a coffee in air-conditioned comfort and collect his thoughts.

In the dining room at the hotel, he slipped Baba, the young boy who waited on tables, 50k, and asked for a club sandwich and a pot of coffee. The boy put a pitcher of ice water on his table. Only ten minutes later Baba brought out the club, boiled eggs and what looked to be meat fried hours earlier, half-dried out now, between two pieces of toasted bread.

"... Na gode, Baba," he said anyway. It was probably vulture road-kill, but he was hungry and doused the sandwich in ketchup.   Alex sat drinking coffee, scanning the latest issue of TIME magazine he'd bought outside the bank.

"Anything new in the world?" A man spoke from the adjacent table.

"They've sent up the space shuttle again," Alex answered. The man looked to be waiting patiently to pay Baba, who'd now disappeared, for the meal he'd just consumed.

"Not very relevant to the problems of Africa." The man who'd spoken was not very black, had more of a bronze-coloured skin, was very tall and dressed in western clothes.

"No, I guess it isn't. Are you Nigerian?"

"Sierra Leone. Mr. Cheney Coker. A professor at the University. A writer in exile from my own country."

"Oh, teaching English I suppose?" Alex knew a few people at the University, but hadn't met this guy.

"Of course, and you my friend?"

"Math, and some English Language of course, at a Secondary School."

"American?"

Alex shook his head.

"Canadian then, am I right?" Alex nodded. "Ah, This Side Jordan. You wouldn't have read any of my work. Poetry -- the conscience of man."

"I don't read that much. No place to buy books."

"The University Book Store. It's pretty good now. We have African writers -- Ben Okri. Wole Soyinka -- The Man Died. You'll get an idea of why I left my own country, why a man savours freedom."

"Yeah. Perhaps I'll check it out."

"You must seek out these things, understand us, understand why we Africans do certain things."

"I haven't figured that out."

"No, nor do we expect you. Others have spent a life-time here doing it."

"I suppose so."

"Right. Take care, my friend. Buy some books. Use the afternoons to read. With a book, you'll always have a friend."

"It's an idea," Alex smiled as the man got up to leave.

"Right. An idea...." The man turned and was gone toward the patio.

Alex sipped his coffee, flipping over the pages of the TIME. There was nothing in it. He thought he really should have brought Aishatu here for dinner. She was not a student any more. Once, in school, he'd stood over her desk he recalled, intentionally looked down the top of her wrapper. He wondered, would she actually maybe sleep with him?

He told himself he had to keep his hormones in check, keep the rule with himself and control his urges. All the Form 4 and 5 girls flirted with the Masters. Sometimes he'd walk down the aisles in the class in the hot season, the students perspiring, wrappers clinging to their thighs, their breasts moist. They'd lift their top out a bit to fan themselves. Sometimes he couldn't help but notice. He'd have to walk around class, his hands in his pockets to cover up. Then they'd come to his desk in the staff room, lean over the table so the wrapper top drooped, their nipples half-exposed, and ask him for help. It would have been so easy to exploit the situation, invite them to sneak to his house for tutoring Saturday afternoons when there was no one around. Of course, they would boot him out of the country if they ever caught him doing that.

But young Aishatu was not a student any more. It was perfectly legal. No one would say anything. But it still didn't seem right. He had to learn to relax, get rid of those morals, the conservatism that still held him down, imprisoned him. He should have brought her out for dinner. Even if it went no further, she would at least have been company. He took his time with the coffee. Really, he had nowhere he had to be.

And what of his wife? Alex still pondered the situation, milled it over. It wouldn't have mattered to the girl Aishatu. The muslims believed in four wives, even more in some tribes in the South. It made sense sometimes. At first, he had thought it wrong. Now he saw the advantages. Elizabeth was far away in England, more than a thousand miles distant. Here, women accepted that males were polygamous creatures. The Koran said you have to provide for them, should love them equally. How could you love completely different people equally?

He had loved, possibly still loved Sherri, even Lynn, his High School girlfriend. But each one was different. It was not the same. It was relative to time, to the situation, so many variables. He loved Elizabeth when he was with her, but wasn't it possible he could love other women when she wasn't around? He wondered why white people complicated their lives with rules, moratoriums on who you could love and when. They regulated it different here. Marriage worked as well, if not better, than it did in North America, in the civilized world. Batures had something to learn from these people.

Maybe it was just a person you needed, Alex thought. Any woman who was near. Maybe it was just a state of mind, just a minute speck of time in the universe to be filled with sensation. Maybe love, like beauty, was in the eye of the beholder, only existing and at any time able to be ignited, only in your mind? Sometimes he wished he could fill that void, insatiable as it was, if only for awhile.

Alex walked to the patio, sat by himself and ordered a Guilder. Strange that no one he knew dropped by the watering-hole. It was dusk now and he decided to go back out, to go somewhere, anywhere. But where could he go? Sylvia was poor company. She would be turning in shortly. She had a different metabolism, went to bed when it was dusk and got up when it became light.

He got in the car drove toward the TC, but stopped first outside Dr. Gonza's when he saw the Peugeot there. The dogs went wild and tore at the fence until the doctor let him in. They played one game of Chess and chatted a bit. The Spanish eye doctor had it made. He'd been given one of the older government houses that had a telephone. He said he called Madrid all the time and in ten years had never received a bill, that they must have forgot it was there. Alex filed that information away in case of emergency.

Dr. Gonza had to work Saturday mornings, so Alex split after only drinking two beer. It was still early when he got back to Sylvia's, but he tried to take a quiet shower so as not to disturb her. He lay under the fan in his room and tried to drift off.

But he could not sleep. He was awake for a long time.