Vernon Mooers writes

THE WHITE MAN'S GRAVEYARD

chapter 2 (2)

At his house, someone was sweeping out the boy's quarters. A worker, Saleh, was to move in there -- Musa had said, though nobody had bothered to even asked Alex whether he wanted someone living there or not. He would need no servants, could wash his clothes by hand and had bought an electric iron in the market, having been told the tsetse flies laid eggs in clothes and could cause sleeping sickness. In Maiduguri, John Handrigan, an American teacher at Ramat Polytechnic, had hired a Chadian refugee who'd come to the hotel bar looking for work, to do his cleaning and washing. The young fellow, who'd said his father had been a diplomat, had been shot right in front of him while getting into their car in the driveway. The boy had spoken good English, besides French, said they'd even been posted to Zaire once. The rest of the family members in his house had fled or been killed too and the boy had made his way to the border. John believed the story to be genuine and had helped him out, taken on as a servant, but Alex suspected maybe John had other motives.

Alex walked up to the porch. He would have to get a cutter and clean the grass around there. He was afraid of snakes. A book he'd bought had illustrations, full -- colour pictures of West African species. Some of them, even the small black snakes, no more than a foot long were deadly. Several of them, the vipers could even spit their venom and blind their prey. He really hated insects and snakes, wondered why he'd even come to the tropics.

Alex unlocked the door and stepped inside the house. These were going to be long days, even longer nights, before school opened, and he had no means to go to the town except by foot across the fields. In the evenings he could walk to the railway to catch a taxi van and it was more than two naira to get one to bring him back out the road to the school. But he'd have to pay it once, to bring a gas cylinder for the stove. Currently, he was using the kerosene cooker he and Musa had bought in the market. He'd got a thermos and kept it filled with boiled water for coffee and sat down at the table and mixed a cup. He had written all his letters yesterday so he just sat there, staring out past the burglar bars through the side window at the palm bush-covered expanse of sand.

For a second, four horses ridden by Fulani tribesmen trotted through his field of vision. On the path beyond the school fence on the trail that led to the town, and were gone. He had stood by the fence once and watched the wives, with similar blue dresses, carry gourds stacked high on their heads, walk in single file out that way toward the desert. Their golden-toned cheeks had been decorated with intricate blue fan-like tattoos. He had watched them, tall and barefooted, beautiful women with bronze-coloured skin, rhythmically glide past. They had even smiled and he'd smiled back but not said anything, not followed them, fearing their husbands with the long swords hanging down from their sides.

The women had moved together like a group of dancers flowing across a stage, like models in a fashion show. They had perfect balance from years of walking with things on their heads. Models had to practise the posture with books. They had moved silently, smoothly drifting across the sand.

Sherri had moved like that, had taken dancing lessons at the YWCA, had a sense of rhythm, which he hadn't. He'd respected her for her appreciation of the finer cultural things. He had not written Sherri a letter. But he had sent a postcard to her parents, just so she'd know where he was, what he was doing. It was a way of getting to her. In a way, he wished it had worked out -- she would have liked it here, had done her Bachelor's in Anthro originally, and could have taught also. He would have had someone to share things with, and she was strong -- nobody bothered her. She always knew how to stand up for herself, and projected it, was headstrong, always knew what to do.