[Chapter Twenty-One can be found here.]
Making good, finally, to a promise
he had made the first day they had met, Eric introduced Paul to the mask-maker
he had called the best in West Africa, a man named Bakary Kabouré from Ouri,
down in the southwest of the country.
Bakary’s family had been making masks for the Bobo people for
generations, had lived among them, worked with them, but had never become a
part of them, always keeping their own alien identify and connection with
family far away in Mali.
The artist was a slender man, a few
good inches shorter than Paul, with longer hair than most Africans and a love
for wood that kept him talking and stroking his creations as he pulled them out
for Paul and Eric to look at. He
exhibited an intensity, a focus that put Paul off balance a bit, for he seemed
to assume that others could follow his thoughts and assumptions as easily as he
did. For Paul, who was just beginning to
be able to manage a conversation in French, it was difficult to understand this
man who clearly hadn’t the patience for either explanations or
repetitions. He was always looking
ahead, Paul saw, to the place where his thoughts pointed, never pausing for the
immediate word. So, the two of them
talked little, each paying more attention to the art than the people.
Even though Bakary paid him scant
attention, especially once he realized Paul could hardly understand him, Paul found
himself fascinated by the artist the more he looked at his carvings and tried
to follow his conversation. The man’s
assurance, as he showed off his goods and answered Eric’s questions,
demonstrated a comfort and confidence in his work, confidence of a sort Paul
had rarely seen anywhere. Lacking any
similar sort of talent himself, Paul was slightly in awe of it, and in Bakary’s
obliviousness to the extraordinary nature of his work.
Since arriving in Ouaga, Paul had
seen other examples of Bobo masks, but none quite like these. The circles and triangles at the heart of
each mask design were neat and regular, the larger curves and connections
smooth and soothing. There were masks of
three distinct sorts. Most looked old,
the wood sometimes cracked or chipped, the paint almost completely worn
away. These were like the ones Paul had
examined in the market. Some others, new
looking, had been painted, quite clearly, with acrylic whites, blacks and reds. The colors were even a strong, almost sparkling. A few more were obviously recently painted,
but with muted colors and a somewhat matte finish. Paul wondered at the differences, and if the
first group were antiques, not Bakary’s creations at all.
They were sitting on Eric’s
verandah with Bakary, drinking beer, of course, surrounded by more than a dozen
of the masks along with a number of wood and bronze statues and the four empty
large gunny sacks he had brought them in, all four strapped to the back of his
bicycle. Bakary was arguing with Eric
over a point Paul couldn’t understand.
He showed Eric something on the mask he was holding. Nodding, Eric took it, and added it to the
two or three he had already put aside as those he wished to buy. Paul watched, envious. Not only would he have liked the knowledge
both showed of the art, but he didn’t have the money for any such
purchases. He had no place to keep them,
anyway. Even with his lock, his room was
not particularly secure and the cinderblock walls were not conducive to art,
anyhow.
Bakary had picked up another item,
this one a wooden statue of a woman carrying a jar on her head, when a noise
from outside, a motorcycle engine dying followed by a banging at the gate and
then a voice, interrupted them.
“Eric!” It was Brian’s voice.
“Over here. We’re on the porch. Open the gate. It’s not locked.” All three waited, not moving, as Brian banged
the steel compound gate back with his front moto wheel, thrusting it hard
enough so that it banged back against the wall, then wheeling inside and slapping
down the kickstand. He jumped off the
bike and threw his yellow helmet from his head.
“Jerry’s had an accident.”
He didn’t wait for a reaction but,
acting almost as though he was unconscious of what he had said, got back on his
bike and started to put his helmet back on.
He turned back to them, though: “They’re medivacing him this
afternoon.” He was panting, they could
hear, as though he had been running, so stopped to take a breath. “As soon as the plane gets down from
Geneva. If you want to see him, come
now.”
“Bad, then?” Eric had risen as soon as Brian had spoken,
the blood draining from his face as he listened. Brian nodded rather than trying to speak again. Paul got up, too. “Where is he?”
“Embassy medical unit.” He slurred the words, getting them out with
great difficulty as he stood to kick-start the bike.
“Let’s go, then.” Eric lifted the helmet off his own
motorcycle, which was parked by the verandah, and tossed a second one to
Paul. “Bakary…. ” He
looked at the African, the question unsaid.
“Go.” Bakary waved him away, and started packing
masks back in the bags. “We can finish
this another time. I will stop by.”
“Thank you, my friend.” He reached his hand out. Bakary took it.
Paul, who had been strapping the
helmet to his head, hopped on the back of Eric’s little Honda dirt bike as soon
as the engine roared. They followed
closely behind Brian, speeding through the Ouaga streets, dodging pedestrians
and bicycles.
It only took them a couple of
minutes, the way the two were riding, to reach the embassy. As they were chaining their bikes in front of
the medical unit, Brian gave them a brief description of what had happened.
“We were at Don Camillo’s last night,
until pretty late. For some reason we
left separately. I was staying at
Jenny’s, and he at Alexi’s. Maybe that
was why. Anyway, when I went home, he
was still there.
“This morning, I rode out to
Alexi’s, but he wasn’t there. She hadn’t
seen him, but wasn’t too concerned.
There’s a lot of places he could have slept. But we had a couple of things to do, today,
so I was surprised. I rode over to Peace
Corps, but he wasn’t there. But a phone
call came. He was here.”
“Did they say what had happened?”
Brian shook his head. “They don’t know and, apparently, Jerry
doesn’t remember. They found him,
unconscious, bleeding, at the base of the pillar in the middle of that traffic
circle by the RAN hotel.”
“Good thing,” Eric said, “that they
didn’t take him to the Ouaga hospital.”
“Yeah,” Brian opened the door. “He’d be dead by now.” Paul listened quietly. He hardly understood what they were saying.
Jerry, they saw once they had
entered the small medical unit, was tied to a gurney to be moved to the airport
as soon as the medical-emergency jet had landed. He had been cleaned up, and was bandaged, but
he still looked awful. His helmet had
saved his life, but had split, and his face was bruised and cut. The nurse said he probably had a concussion,
but the worst damage was his leg, which might be lost. He was awake, but drugged, and obviously
confused. His beard was matted, parts of
it plastered flat to his face.
“Gimme cigarette.”
“Can’t, Jerry, they won’t let me,
in here.”
“Gimme cigarette.” Eric looked at the nurse, and raised his
eyebrow. The nurse shrugged and turned
to leave the room. “Just open the door,
so the place will air out.”
Brian shook one out of his pack,
lit it, and held it to Jerry’s lips.
“Thanks,” he inhaled. “Thanks.”
He closed his eyes.
They waited with him, no one
speaking much, until the vehicle arrived to take him to the airport, keeping a
cigarette constantly lit for him, though he was rarely awake enough or coherent
enough to ask for a smoke. The three followed
the embassy van to the airport on the two motorcycles.
The plane, a small hospital jet
from a rescue organization out of Switzerland known as SOS, landed quickly on
the empty runway, turned by the abandoned DC-3 at the far end, and pulled as
close to the terminal as it could. Paul,
like the other two, had been refused entry to the VIP waiting area where Jerry
had been wheeled, so was standing with them on the outside observation
deck. There were no flights scheduled
until later that day; the place was empty.
A couple of people appeared below
them, pushing the gurney with Jerry on it, just as the door to the plane opened
and the steps were let down.
“That thing’s even equipped with an
operating room. He should be OK.” Eric lit a cigarette. They watched as the people from the plane
took over and lifted the entire gurney inside.
Two minutes later, the plane had turned once more and, engines roaring,
was heading down the runway, its nose already in the air.
“I’m going to ride to Koupela,”
Brian turned away. “Lori needs to know.”
“I’ll go with you.” Eric turned away first and headed out to
where they had parked their bikes, Brian and Paul following.
Paul knew that it was useless, at
that point, for him to say anything to the others about Jerry. Their decision to go to Koupela, though, was
a good one. He was sure of that. It wasn’t talking that they would need, not
now, not yet. The enforced silence of the
noise on the road and the demands of riding would keep them focused and away
from the possibility and reality of a loss they could do nothing about. He had realized that on the short ride to the
embassy, had seen how important concentration on something as simple as riding
could be. Plus, on the road they could
be together but wouldn’t be forced to face that there was nothing to say,
nothing to do. It was over: they had
lost their friend, probably until they, themselves, returned to the
States. Possibly forever.
And Lori, Paul knew from his own experience,
was the best person any of them could turn to in a crisis.
They walked back to the
motorcycles. Without a word to Paul,
without a look back, Brian and Eric roared off toward the highway heading east
and Paul walked back into town, Eric’s extra helmet dangling from his hand.
Though he understood that he could
not be a part of what Brian and Eric—and Lori—would be going through that
evening, Paul felt more at a loss than he had since deciding to stay in Africa. It was a shock, what had happened to Jerry,
but it was not something that involved Paul a great deal—though much more than
he had been in the tragedy back in Togo.
He had met Jerry that day in Dapaong and had spent some time with him,
but had seen him rarely since, though he knew that Eric, who he now saw
regularly, considered Jerry and Brian his best friends in the country.
Looking at the helmet he was
holding, he decided to do what he had earlier planned for the afternoon, even
though he now felt slightly guilty about it.
Why not? He was now equipped.
After looking around for the last
few days, inspecting used Mobylettes
and other mopeds, Paul had decided that he had enough money to buy a new
Peugeot P-50, the smallest, cheapest model available. He had seen what sort of shape the used
mopeds for sale were in, and thought they would end up costing as much as a new
P-50 anyway. Though he was shaken by
Jerry’s accident, he figured he might as well go ahead and get the moped. Or at least look at it again. It wasn’t as large or as fast as even the
small Yamahas of the PCVs like the one Jerry had been riding when he crashed,
so it couldn’t be nearly so dangerous. Or
so he told himself. He walked into town,
past Don Camillo’s, which he looked at for the first time with a slight bit of
distaste, and made his way to the showroom, which was only a block further on.
Though he had been in Africa only a
couple of months and even though he had been a little lost when Eric and Bakary
had been talking, Paul’s French had improved much more dramatically than he,
himself, recognized. There was nothing
good about it, but he could now communicate adequately for his needs in
Ouagadougou—as long as the conversation was slow and simple. He quickly concluded his discussion with the
sales clerk, laid out his money, and saw a new blue P-50 wheeled out of the
back. As he was leaving, thinking of
Jerry and looking at the helmet in his hand, he decided he should actually buy
one of his own—and a lock and chain. He
selected an electric blue helmet, solid, and full-faced and mask-like, such as
those the PCVs wore. It would be
protection of a sort, he told himself, thinking of Jerry.
The way back to his house took him
across a wide, open space filled mainly with pedestrians and two-wheeled
vehicles. Paul realized, as he
approached it, that he hadn’t bothered to check the gas tank as he left the
dealer. He pulled over to one of the
many small places with a pump out front, one worked by hand through a handle at
the side. After paying for almost a full
tank of the mixture of gas and oil his moped ran on, he pedaled to start the
engine and moved away to rejoin the flow of traffic.
Waiting for a break, hardly moving,
he saw a bicycle heading right for him.
For a second, he thought of speeding up to get out of the way, but the
bicycle started to swerve to pass in front of him. So he stopped and put his feet down, giving
the cyclist a clear path around him on either side the rider might choose. One accident today, he thought, was
enough. The cyclist, though, who seemed to
have decided initially to go one way, suddenly changed his mind and swerved in
the opposite direction. He almost fell
as he turned, but managed to straighten up plow straight into Paul and his
moped, knocking them all to the ground but hurting no one badly.
“Ah, well,” Paul said, as he
recounted the incident an hour later to one of the PCVs he’d found congregated
at the Oubri, talking mainly about Jerry, moving to other things only when
there seemed no more to say. “So now the
little Peugeot has been in its first accident.
I won’t have to worry about that initial blemish any longer.” Paul had received a few scratches on one arm,
and the cyclist was surely bruised, but neither had needed medical
attention. “I just wish Jerry could have
been as lucky.”
“Where do you think they are by
now?” The PCV hadn’t really been
listening. Jerry and Brian had been in
his stage, had been his training
mates. Though he hadn’t seen them often
since their swearing-in, the near-death of one of the group had, of course,
affected him deeply.
“It’s been, what, five hours? Maybe over Italy. I don’t know.”
“I wonder if he will come
back. I hope they let him come back.”
Paul studied him, thinking once
again that the man was hardly even aware of him, or of his new moped and his
small accident. Again, he realized he
was intruding on someone else’s pain, something he seemed to do way too
often. He got up to leave.
“Let me know, if I can do
anything.”
The PCV nodded, but didn’t look up. He shifted over to listen to the
conversations of other PCVs.
Once again aware of how much of an
outsider he really was, both in terms of Peace Corps and of Africa, Paul wanted
to do something that could take him away from that, to see somebody not
associated with Peace Corps and its rather closed community. He had intruded enough. Been rebuffed enough.
He decided, finally, to find the
son of the family Lori lived with, the one who lived and worked in Ouaga. He had long ago promised, after all, to greet
him for Lori and for his family. Now
that he had transportation, he could do that, for it was a long way on foot to
where he had been told Michel worked.
And he did find Michel, finally,
after a number of wrong turns, in a little hole-in-the-wall shop in a mud quartier out beyond the university,
itself beyond the presidential residence and the cluster of embassies to the
east of the city center. Trying to
follow the directions Lori had given him, Paul had wandered around for the
better part of an hour, retracing his path a number of times to a known
landmark and trying again. When he
finally reached the right shop, he found a tall, slender Michel, clearly his
father’s son, an excitable young man who seemed absolutely unable to keep a
smile from his face. A willing man,
looking to be friendly.
Good, Paul thought, he needed
that. Another shy or withdrawn person
would only have depressed him even further.
This fellow seemed to be the right companion, right then, at least.
Paul had liked Jerry and would have
enjoyed having him as a friend, but Jerry had never liked coming in to Ouaga
and Paul had no way of getting about in the countryside except by bush taxi, so
the two had met rarely after that first weekend. Plus, Paul really hadn’t been around very
long. So, even though he had seen Jerry
at the medical center, the accident wasn’t having the impact on him that it had
on Eric and Brian and the other PCVs. He
also suspected, remembering El back in Togo, that all of the PVC’s and Eric
were feeling guilty about what had happened, though it had in no way been their
fault. He couldn’t help them with that,
unfortunately.
It was best to stay away. Let them deal with it their own ways, and on
their own. Jerry would probably recover
fully—something never possible for Joan Rodham.
He might even be able to return. Still,
Paul really couldn’t be with them for very long in a time like this, as he had
already found in Togo, and they probably would resent it if he tried any
further. He needed to respect their loss
and their privacy, though once again it kept him outside.
He took Michel for dinner at a
place near his shop, a compound called “The College Bar,” a dance establishment
across the street from one of the most impressive baobab trees Paul had yet
seen. They ordered rice and brochettes, and Paul decided to risk a
salad. They watched early dancers take
to the floor as they ate and talked and sipped beer.
Michel, it turned out, lived not
far from Paul’s own room. He took a Tata
bus back and forth each morning and evening, and walked—it took him more than
an hour each way, in total—to the little shop where he worked. He told Paul that he wanted to save enough
money so that he could set up his own place, which he would open closer to
home, but it was difficult. The family
always needed money, even though having Peace Corps Volunteers living there
always helped. He also wanted to get
married, so needed to save even more.
He had finished secondary school,
he told Paul, and had wanted to go to the national university for electrical
engineering, but he hadn’t done well enough on the competitive entrance and
scholarship exam. Now, he recognized the
irony that he fixed tape players and the occasional television in a shop not
far from where he had wanted to study—learning by practice the trade he had
wanted to address in school.
“Does that bother you?” Paul was
finding that he could understand Michel’s French much more easily than he would
have thought, certainly more easily than Bakary’s. As a result, he also talked more fluidly,
surprising himself. Only rarely did they
have to struggle over a sentence before they finally agreed that both
understood what one or the other was saying.
“No. I don’t mind.
I rarely see the students.”
After dinner, Paul rode Michel back
home, making him wear Eric’s spare helmet, which he had strapped to the back of
the moped right after he had bought it.
Michel objected at first, but Paul had told him about Jerry’s accidence
and his own slight mis-adventure, so eventually he acquiesced. As he dropped him off, Paul proposed that
they meet again later that evening.
Michel agreed and named a bar nearby.
To some extent, Paul knew, he would
rather have seen the PCVs who might be in town, but, he now was beginning to
suspect that he had been a fool that afternoon, a fool for not understanding
the intrusion he would represent and the triviality of the story of his own
accident. Scared it was becoming a
habit, he didn’t want to barge in any longer on someone else’s troubles. It was too bad, what had happened to Jerry,
but it would have little impact on Paul’s life—and everyone knew that. It would be hypocritical, Paul felt, for him
to join in the commiseration that had, most certainly, already started. Besides, the two friends of Jerry that he
knew best had already left town.
It would be better to spend the
evening with Michel who, though he had also met Jerry, on a visit to Koupela
when Jerry had been staying with Lori, knew him no better than Paul did.
Michel took Paul to a dolo bar about halfway between their
homes. When Paul, after a calabash,
suggested that they go to Don Camillo’s, Michel shook his head no, which relieved
Paul a bit. Michel said he would show
Paul some better bars instead, places where Burkinabe went, where they could be
comfortable. Don Camillo’s, he hinted,
could never be one of those.
“That’s a place for foreigners,” he
told Paul. “I can show you where the
Mossi go, where the real people are.”
Paul shrugged his shoulders, and
followed.
Later, though, after Michel told
him he needed to go home and sleep, Paul did end up back at Don Camillo’s,
drinking So.B.Bra and listening to Mousa’s plaintive guitar. No one else he knew was there, which suited
him just fine.
[
Chapter Twenty-Three can be found here.]