Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 1 (3)

The next day, Musa took him to the Government Rest House on the way to the market. The place was severely run down. No one was around when they went in. Twenty years ago maybe, the British had Rest Houses running. Now, he took one look at the washroom and the flies on the eggs and said, "We'd better get going to the market."

Once there, he bought tinned mackerel and a small loaf of bread and watered it down with semi-cold Coke. It was then he learned Musa had charged him twenty Kobo more for the coke he sent him for in Gashua on the trip down. He also realized they'd been doing business, buying and selling and taking passengers in the Government vehicle all the way to the school. Where was the respect? Going to pick up the new Canadian teacher had been lucrative.

School was supposed to be open already. He hadn't realized they were running on African time, which meant a week or two late. He thought his loneliness would subside when the other teachers and students came and he was busy. Now he had nothing to do but kill time, so he'd case the town, buy a few things and see what happened. Usually he wasn't lonely when he went into the market. He was a big hit. The children would follow him around and everyone would yell things. He smiled a lot because he never knew what they were saying.

Alex slowly got the drift there was a lot of anti-imperialism on the rise and the colonialists before him hadn't exactly paved the way for whites in Africa. He was in the most unstable continent in the world and the fight for equality in South Africa was still being waged. Anti-apartheid feelings ran pretty high in this neighbourhood.

These thoughts were running through Alex's head as he got closer to the market. It wasn't his fault he was white, but that's what the people saw when they looked at him. "Sannu Bature!" they'd yell, and he'd clutch his amulet nervously.

There were people here who hated him because he was a Bature. This was a new experience for him, to be judged by his colour. He was an individual. He had nothing against anybody and he wasn't prejudiced, so why would someone hate him? He felt like wearing a sign around his neck saying "I'm not one of them, I'm cool." He tried to always smile, look friendly.

Alex had one thought to console himself. Most of the people were illiterate. They hadn't even read the history books about the slave trade in West Africa. They probably didn't even know where Canada was. But then again, maybe the chiefs had passed the stories down verbally as folklore?

He was quite helpless, really at the mercy of these people. He needed them, for his survival. There wasn't even a telephone in the whole of Borno State. What if he got sick? He wondered if they'd just let him lie there like they did their own people. He hadn't ever seen a place where health conditions were so bad. There was such a struggle for existence in this over-populated place that human life didn't hold a whole lot of value.

He'd heard horror stories of bodies lying on the road for hours after being struck by a car, before anyone removed them. They were used to cripples, leprosy, starvation and death, conditioned not to be nauseated by suffering. Why should they care if another body lay in the dirt begging for help, especially a Bature? The whites hadn't done a whole lot for them. But Musa had spoken English and shown him around that first day and he bartered some as best he could using his fingers to do things. Over the past week, going in every day, he'd found many basic things he needed.

Alex walked in the back way to the market, up a road with garbage strewn on both sides. Somebody should tell them that plastic and tin don't decompose, he thought. They'd always thrown refuse into the streets. The goats could feed on it. He hated the smell. Sewage ditches drained from the compounds into the street and there were open sewers everywhere. It was one big toilet.

He entered the market where wrapper-clad, brightly-covered African women chattered, their calabashes of grain and beans in front of them. He could tell the different tribes now by their hairstyles and ornaments and even the way they decorated the calabashes they carried on their heads.

Further into the market he went, past the stalls of blankets and cloth, smiling and waving to those who greeted him. Occasionally someone would say, "Bature! Welcome." It would make him feel good, but he always felt like an intruder in the market.  

He walked on up and watched them drying the fish on straw mats and curling the big catfish, fastening the tails to the gills and dumping them into bowls of sizzling groundnut oil. Sometimes he became so interested in what was going on that he forgot his self-consciousness.

He walked past the fishermen's section to where the animal carcasses of fly-covered bloody meat were spread on the tables. They always tried to get him to buy. "Bature, bring shillings," they'd say, knowing he had money to part with. All white men had money in Africa. You couldn't survive without it. He'd always shake his head at the meat sellers. He didn't eat meat. The meat vendors were the most aggressive in the market. He bought some oranges, which weren't orange, more like yellow-green. He shoved some plantain and bananas into his knapsack and looked for other supplies. At the hotel he'd purchased A Cookery Book for the Tropics. It had ingredients like a Nescafé tin of yam flour, a Star beer bottle of red palm oil, six cigarette tins (Players #3) of coconut milk. He got what he mostly recognized, leaves they called alahayo, a kind of spinach and a tasteless gourd, a cross between pumpkin and squash. Rice and yams and tomatoes were plentiful. He'd have to cook something for every meal to survive. He couldn't live on tinned mackerel and bread.

He moved among the stalls where the leather workers hardly looked up from their tailoring of camel trappings. They had a system like a factory. Each did piece-work and he could even pick out the apprentices. It was comparable to the guilds and crafts unions. Every type of trade had an area in the market, pre-capitalist modes of production.

Alex was beginning to feel relaxed in the market. Sometimes someone would greet him and they'd always shake hands warmly. He liked it but he was always afraid of diseases and couldn't see the logic behind the custom of hand-shaking in a culture that was so unsanitary, but he always smiled and shook hands also. After, when he got back to his home he'd wash his hands with hydrogen peroxide. They seemed to sense his fear and discomfort and were friendly, trying to make him feel at home.

He knew they'd charge him three times the price for his vegetables. Most times he'd barter and play the market game and still knew he was paying too much. He didn't really know the amounts to pay yet and would just hold out his hand and let them take some coins helplessly. If he didn't make an attempt to barter he'd insult them and once he learned the prices he'd know the scheme. He'd go back to the ones who'd been honest.

The market was like that -- for awhile he'd feel good, then something would upset him. Someone might yell, "Bature!" in a harassing way. He could feel the dirt in his hair and clothes, the sun beating down, the crowds and tiredness and he started to make his way out of the market. He got annoyed with the beggars and deformities and the primitiveness of it all. He felt like he wanted to get out of there, like the travelogue was over but he had to stay for the second feature. There was no way out. He couldn't leave.

At the edge of the market he stopped in a quiet spot and lit a cigarette, watching the Muslims doing their afternoon prayers across the street. The alienation got to him, the feeling of loneliness and despair had come over him again, like people in a large city who are cold and tired at night and have no place to go.

Alex looked over into the bloodshot eyes of a leathery, weathered face. The elderly villager smiled with yellowed teeth, a wise smile, understanding. Instinctively he drew his camera out and raised it to his eye, focused on the lines of the aged face and pressed the shutter. It took forever for the shutter to release with a loud click. The old man slowly turned away and walked on down the street with his goats following. Then he turned, "Sannu, Bature," he waved.