One Mouse Down...

So this evening before dinner I was out playing cards with Drissa and I started to hear a mouse inside and I was like, “there! You hear it! I’m not lying! There are mice!” And he heard it and we continued to play. Then we heard a splash and some more splashing. And I was like HOLY SHIT, the mouse fell into the water bucket. So I took the lantern inside and sure enough, there was a little mouse swimming around in the water bucket. I brought the bucket outside and I said, “Oh no! What do I do now?!” Because mice are cute. Obnoxious. But cute. And I could never kill one with my own hands. Though I’d have no problem sic-ing a cat on them. So there were some kids. And they gathered around the bucket and one of them dipped his hand in to fish out the mouse. As I was about say, “what will we do with him now?”, the kid took one step back, raised his hand over his head and slammed the mouse onto the ground as hard as he could. Liquid of some kind ricocheted into my face. I was stunned for a second. Then I ventured to look at the mouse, who had flown to my feet. I couldn’t have taken it if the mouse had still been alive – fatally injured, but alive. Thank God he wasn’t. He was as still as Melvin was after I found him drowned in a bucket in Guinea. A kid picked him up and did God-knows-what with him (I think threw him into the field). I said, “I prefer it when a cat kills the mice.” And wiped the drops from my face. Some kid said he’d go find me a cat. I think maybe they didn’t believe me about the mice before, but now they do. So now they are actually going to find me a cat.

Anyway. Today I also tried to explain to Drissa about “me time”. They have NO concept of “me time” in Africa. I mean, why WOULDN’T you spend every waking moment constantly surrounded by people? That’s normal! I had to explain because a. he thinks whenever I am alone in my house, I am sleeping (which is almost never the case) and b. he asked if I spend my nights out chatting with the family, which I don’t, ‘cause that is me time. Plus I go to sleep really early (like 8pm…hey man if I have to get up at 6 I gotta get my beauty sleep). So I had to explain to him that I am an American, and as an American, I need time by myself. I read, I write, I think, I just be alone, and that is something I need EVERY DAY. At first he was like WTF. But I just said, you’ve seen all the books in my house and all the paper, when I am alone in my house, I am reading those books and writing on that paper (really I am writing on this AlphaSmart but I am SO not about to try to explain this thing). I think in the end he understood. Probably not WHY I need it, but what I am doing during it, and that it’s one of those weird things white people do.

He brought me a bag full of beef today. I was like, “oh”. That shouldn’t be surprising at all but right when I saw it in my head I went, “gross” and ALMOST said, “eeww” out loud but then checked myself. As a bag of raw, bloody (and I mean bloody…it dripped on my floor) meat is quite a gift in Africa. I gave it to Setu, who was on cooking duty today. She and the momuso (grandma) who were there seemed really happy about it. It showed up in that evening’s peanut sauce (three cheers for peanut sauce!!). Also Yousufu sent over a big bowl of the grits-like thing and peanut sauce (I prefer my family’s peanut sauce though). And Drissa was like, “you have to eat it.” And this is after we are already full of my family’s dinner. And I’m like, “dude, this is how big my stomach is” and make a circle with my hands. “How am I gonna fit that into it, too?” He said if you don’t eat some of what people send to you, they will think you don’t like them. Even if you get six bowls of food, you have to eat some of each or you will offend people. I was like, “I sure as shit am never going to go hungry here.” I have to give all my potatoes to my family tomorrow, before they go bad. I don’t anticipate making French fries anytime soon.

Also,today I introduced cards into my relationship with Drissa. First I asked him if he played cards and he said yes but then his eyes got big when he saw the deck and he was like, “that’s a lot of cards!!” So clearly he had never played with a regular deck of cards before. I taught him to play “Go Fish”. To make it educational for me, we did it in Bambara. Dude, you can learn your numbers QUICK playing Go Fish in another language. “Segin b’I kun wa?” – Do you have an eight? You can also learn how to say, “do you have…?” which will be helpful especially when trying to buy things. We named the king “ce” (CHE) which means man or husband and the queen “muso” which means woman or wife and the jack “den” which means kid. I contemplated naming the ace “Allah” but stopped short at that. We played like 30 rounds before dinner got to us.

He also told me that it is weird that I eat alone and not in the same bowl with the family. I told him they bring me my own bowl 3x a day and do not invite me to eat with them, so that’s how we do it. He is probably going to tell them to start inviting me to eat with them and then I will lose even MORE “me time”.

I think I had a spoiling surplus of “me time” in Guinea (like, 90% of my day) and here switching it 180 so I only have 10% “me time” is almost more shocking than it would have been coming from the States.

At any rate. Maybe they won’t think I am just sleeping all afternoon.