Despite being nestled amid lush greenery that slowly inches its way closer…to the house, the walking path, the garbage burn pit…my job is actually encased in cement. Cement walls and floors and an imposing enclosure engulfing it all; a dingy wall – with once-bright pictures depicting safer sex and mosquito nets to prevent malaria. It […]
“Are you afraid to walk?” Her expression betrayed a little amusement. Not quite mocking, it was friendlier than that. “We walked before,” I countered, “but we were told that we shouldn’t.” She spoke quickly to a man sitting on a ledge at the Cape Hotel, where we’d spent the evening eating and using the internet, […]
“… I think that college friends are more like family than friends; They were there when you were becoming yourself. It is like you were in a store, shopping for yourself. And they stood there, helping you try on things that fit, were too tight, too loose; They watched as you found the perfect fit […]
I’ve hit a rough patch. Hell, we’ve hit a rough patch. Well, maybe not Wry-ly who seems beyond it all, but BushDiva and I have resorted to a kind of quiet desperation around food. I’d like to blame Wry-ly’s composure on the reality that she’ll be heading home in about three weeks – but the […]
“My pe kin.” Gutz is always calling into the distance, “My pe kin,” as he fishes in his pocket for money or finishes a meal that requires the plate be taken in. My pe kin (I very well may be spelling that wrong) and the female equivilant, “small girl“, are bestowed “generously” on any child […]
4am greeted me. Guinea fowl and roosters screaming close by. 4am greeted me and wouldn’t let me sleep. Instead I laid in the darkness, picking out familiar sounds, fixating on unfamiliar ones outside my windows. But the darkness and my closed lids were an exercise in futility and by 5 I’d turned on the lights […]
The moon was full and for a time, hung low in the sky against pink wispy clouds, just out of reach of tall tree standing tall and lonely against the shorter green backdrop that surrounded it. But the moon is seldom still, and it rose in minutes, as if racing the darkness. And it hung […]
I woke up tired. It was still gray outside, early morning cloudy, so I rolled over and slept on. But when sleep would bed me no longer I found myself facing a Saturday with nothing inside it. No plans for the day, no excursion with friends. Instead I curled up with a book (actually three), […]
There were four dead. The branches in the middle of the road told us there was an accident ahead. The number of branches and the distance they spanned before we could actually see the accident told us it was bad. As we inched forward, we noticed a wall of cars in the other lane parked […]
the body
The white bag lay flat on the ground. It was noticeable only in its whiteness. The beginning of the dry season and the harmatton (the winds from the northern part of the continent) scatter dust in fine particles into piles, against skin. So the white, absent of the brown tint of everything else, stood out. […]
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