Caution: Contents may Deceive
Sibo wobbled towards the tap with a bucket over her head when we got pushed away by a herd of thirsty cows wandering through the village. I panicked at the thought of horns pinning me by my sleeves to the cement wall. Thousands of pounds of bovine rage were coming towards me, albeit slowly. I thought of two days before, when I had cooked up a portion of one of their relations. The cows could no doubt sense this and would spare me no pity. Then Sibo took a rock in her hand and threw it at one and the herd wandered away without so much as a resentful glance. I’m used to having my life saved by six-year-olds, so we started fetching. A woman came and sat on the bottom of her bucket, waiting for ours to fill. She asked me, “Mariama, do toubabs also dream?”
“Yes, I dream every night.”
“Because you are here, that’s why. In America people don’t dream.”
“They do.”
“Because some of them are black.”
Never mind the larium-sponsored insanity that dances through my head every night as I lay under net-obscured stars, that is a gift from West Africa. Toubabs don't dream on their own accord.We passed by the compound where a woman broke her wrist while running away from a fire she said was started by the two iguanas fighting on the roof who somehow caused the lightening bolt to come down and alight her cabinet.
And then we were home, safe from cows, safe from iguanas. The radio came on with another proclamation of the president's miracle cure for the plague of the 21st century, through prayer and bush leaves. We heard this and thought about it, looking up at the sky, my host mother asking me "Is there a moon in America?" as it got dark.The neighbor's boy came by and stood and told a story of a girl who put her baby in a television box on the top of a bus, but took it down when the aparante told her it was making noise. She brought it to the river to let it go. The point of the story had something to do with "who does that sort of thing?" Then the boy said he was growing his hair rasta style so he could go to the beach and a toubab woman would like him and take him away to toubabland and he'd have plenty of money to send back here. "That's my dream, Mariama. A toubab with a lot of money. Even an old one."
And I remembered the son of another neighbor, young, handsome, tall, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and a cocky smile. I was told his wife from Holland had come so I got dressed to go meet her and found there a troll with a voice like Marge Simpson's sister. The troll had been hideously cornrowed, was sitting, being waited on by a mother-in-law a decade her junior, and which one to feel sorry for?
Docile bulls, countries with no moon, world-altering cures kept in empty water bottles, if things worked that way, I thought, I'd let my mind stop drawing the line between dreams and life. And I thought about another thing, how if someone asks you if you're dreaming and you can't answer, that you probably are, in fact, dreaming. With electric iguanas and talking boxes, waking life might as well be dreamtime
“Yes, I dream every night.”
“Because you are here, that’s why. In America people don’t dream.”
“They do.”
“Because some of them are black.”
Never mind the larium-sponsored insanity that dances through my head every night as I lay under net-obscured stars, that is a gift from West Africa. Toubabs don't dream on their own accord.We passed by the compound where a woman broke her wrist while running away from a fire she said was started by the two iguanas fighting on the roof who somehow caused the lightening bolt to come down and alight her cabinet.
And then we were home, safe from cows, safe from iguanas. The radio came on with another proclamation of the president's miracle cure for the plague of the 21st century, through prayer and bush leaves. We heard this and thought about it, looking up at the sky, my host mother asking me "Is there a moon in America?" as it got dark.The neighbor's boy came by and stood and told a story of a girl who put her baby in a television box on the top of a bus, but took it down when the aparante told her it was making noise. She brought it to the river to let it go. The point of the story had something to do with "who does that sort of thing?" Then the boy said he was growing his hair rasta style so he could go to the beach and a toubab woman would like him and take him away to toubabland and he'd have plenty of money to send back here. "That's my dream, Mariama. A toubab with a lot of money. Even an old one."
And I remembered the son of another neighbor, young, handsome, tall, with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and a cocky smile. I was told his wife from Holland had come so I got dressed to go meet her and found there a troll with a voice like Marge Simpson's sister. The troll had been hideously cornrowed, was sitting, being waited on by a mother-in-law a decade her junior, and which one to feel sorry for?
Docile bulls, countries with no moon, world-altering cures kept in empty water bottles, if things worked that way, I thought, I'd let my mind stop drawing the line between dreams and life. And I thought about another thing, how if someone asks you if you're dreaming and you can't answer, that you probably are, in fact, dreaming. With electric iguanas and talking boxes, waking life might as well be dreamtime
posted by mchughtie at 12:28 PM
2 Comments:
Okay, so I think that I should at least get photo credit for the pic... and if I tell you fun things that have happened to me will you make them sound all good and contemplative for me to send home to people?
Sorry, Erin took this picture! But I cropped it. It was an amazing little moment on a bus, with an old woman straight out of a story book, who sat on a plastic container next to my seat and who marvelled and squacked over our issue of people magazine.
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