Melvin and Bush Notes

There’s a mouse in my house. I know this because I just saw him with my own eyes. As I was brushing my teeth after enjoying a dinner of spaghetti alla olive oil, onion, garlic and tomato, I heard a noise in the living room/kitchen area and went to investigate. At first I didn’t see anything and just as I was about to turn around and go back to my room, I saw him! He came from behind the table that holds my stove and skittered along the wall. He stopped in the beam of my headlamp and for a moment I considered swatting him with the broom, but what was that really going to do? You can’t kill a mouse with a broom. You can’t even kill one of those weird red butt-bugs that are all over my house with a broom. Then he ran off under my big bookshelf-thingy. I have suspected his existence for awhile now, especially when I’m sweeping little pellets of mouse poop out the door every morning, but now I have confirmation. I don’t really know what to do about it. He hasn’t been eating my food. There are no such thing as mouse traps in Guinea. So, I named him Melvin.

In other news, I did not make it to Ian’s site today because my counterpart knocked on my door this morning and told me we were going to the pepiniere. So that’s what I did. And basically sat around watching people work except for the ten minutes where I helped fill a few sachets with dirt for some orange seeds.

Afterwards, I went to the President of the Groupement’s house and he showed me a picture of the last volunteer (second person to show me a picture of her, she was popular) and then we ate rice and sauce. And THEN he took me across the street to his little plantation where he grows all KINDS of stuff: manioc (of course), pineapples, avocadoes, mangoes, LETTUCE, tomatoes, bananas, oranges, other stuff I am now forgetting. I asked if he sold this stuff at market and he laughed and said “No! It’s for my kids!” He has a big family. There was one pineapple that is almost ready to pick and he said, “That pineapple is for you. Come back in maybe 2 months and I will give it to you.” That’s a HUGE thing because pineapples take 18 months to grow. I said thank you. Then we went back over to his compound and he showed me some trees the last volunteer had planted for him (including some Moringa, but apparently she didn’t explain to him what it does because he looked at me quizzically when I said it was really good for eating and for the soil and all kinds of stuff…or maybe my French is that bad? Who knows.). If I understood him correctly, the last volunteer lived in his compound but they didn’t want me to live there because it is too far from town (and it is pretty far, right next to the pepiniere and river).

Also, I got my first bush note today! (a bush note is just, well, a note, that one sends with a bush taxi to the town they intend and hope someone figures out where the person lives and delivers it). Just before I was fixing to leave for the pepiniere a woman I didn’t know with a huge plate of bananas on her head walked into my yard and up to my porch and said some stuff in Pular and handed me a little folded up piece of paper. I looked at it and saw that it was addressed to “Dorian” and so I said, “::name of Ian’s site removed::?!” And she nodded. So I said thank you and she walked away. And then I read the note and it made me laugh out loud and was a nice start to the day.

It said:
“20 Fevrier 2009. Dorian, Where the fuck were you last Saturday? You better come to my marche day this week. So my counterpart still hasn’t shown up in town, and I can’t get a response from anyone over the HF radio. Have you gotten through? If so, tell Sue I want the following: gauze pads (3 packs), Beta-Sept (2 bottles), sunscreen (2 bottles), insect repellent (3 bottles), medical tape, Band-Aids and a fucking partridge in a god-damned pear tree. But I didn’t need to waste that precious space because you ain’t gonna pansy-out on me tomorrow, are you? I can tell you all this and more over the din of my village’s weekly foray into intensive mercantilism. Bon (and I can SOOOO hear him saying “Bon”). I want to make a trip your way in a few days, maybe Thursday I’ll strap my bike to a bush taxi and ride it home at the end of the day. By Jesus, this is an incredible way to communicate with the world. I hope to God I don’t get sick out here. Later, Ian”

So it kinda made me feel bad that I didn’t make it to his site today as I had intended, but hey, the travail called and I had to answer. My plan for tomorrow is to go to the “taxi gare” in the morning and get in the first taxi that has a free seat. This could mean I will go to Ian’s site, to the North, or to John’s site, to the South (market day is tomorrow at John’s site). It all depends on which taxi has a free seat. If I don’t go to Ian’s site tomorrow, I will for sure go next Saturday (inshallah!) and send this bush note to him:

“Ian ::Last Name Here:: -ou bien- Ousmane Bah (Porto) ::name of Ian’s site here:: 2/21/09 Dearest Ian, I am sorry that I did not come to see you today or last Saturday. I’ve had every good intention of coming, though I admit last week it was laziness that precluded me from voyaging to ::Ian’s site::. Today, however, I woke up with the intention of going to the “taxi gare” to wait for a ::Ian’s site::-bound car but before I left my house, my homologue “conk-conked” and told me I had to go to the pepiniere today. Je suis desolee. However, tomorrow (Sunday), I am going to go sit at the “taxi gare” and get in the first taxi that stops with a free seat. Granted, the first taxi with a free seat could be going to ::John’s site:: in which case I will attempt to go your way next Saturday and you will receive this note. But it’s not all bad news, I can relay your list to Sue while I am in reseau. If you do come to visit on Thursday, bring any books you have finished reading, please! I still have not even located my HF radio, let alone attempted to use it so I have no info for you there. I also hope you don’t get sick up there because I did not receive your bush note until this morning, though you sent it yesterday. If you do fall ill, please put yourself on a taxi, not just a note! <3, Dorian P.S. Come quick, I am being attacked by a mob of angry petites!”

Bush notes are fun. Seriously, this is what my life has become. It’s a frigging highlight of the week to get a random note on a bush taxi. I think I might start sending bush notes just for the hell of it. Like maybe I’ll try to send one to Scott, which would have to change taxis at John’s site before getting to his site and would be quite the experiment. In fact I could send one to John and see if it gets there because he lives in a bigger city and not everyone knows him the way they do in small villages like mine and Ian’s. I could even try to send one all the way to Haute! Ok, seriously. This thought pattern is getting pathetic.

One last thing. When I told the President of the Groupement that I had a puppy he immediately asked if I would give it to him when I went back to the States. That way he could tell everyone that it was my dog, kinda like he tells everyone about the trees the last volunteer planted. I said maybe. I said it’s possible I will love him too much and want to take him with me but we’ll see. So I think I will use him as my dog-sitter when Yogi gets bigger (he is too small to defend himself or take care of himself at all, really, so I just take him with me as of now), as a sort of test-run. If I do leave Yogi in Africa, I want him to be somewhere he will be happy.

Well, wish me luck on finding a taxi tomorrow!