Vive le Dash

I spent a day out in the bush with cow herders.  Me with my cow wacking stick. Bush veternarian  This is my buddy who took me drinking/eating... yogurt type stuff  I preferred the fresh, fresh milk... which might give me TB Here's a cowpen.  Those cows are off to market.  Where they will become dinner.  That was the biggest cow there.  They told me it weighed 500 kilos.  I have no idea what that means. 

Someone died.  I'm told that he was my neighbor and we talked a lot.  His name was Soule, a young guy who worked at a little boutique near my house selling music.  I don't know that name.  And I can't place him or even imagine his face.  I'm not sure who he was. In a small village, people just know things.  They grew up together.  I had to ask directions to go wherever I was supposed to go.  There were a ton of people sitting outside a compound so I went up and greeted people.  I don't know what you say in English when you lose someone and certainly am at a loss in French or Fulfulde.  It was his father's house.  I was told to enter the compound.  Inside there were more people.  A ton of women in one courtyard and older men in a second.  One man I greeted was in tears, but I was being directed too quickly to even think that perhaps that was the grieving father.  Unlike everyone else, I don't generally know the intricacies of family connections, but I th

There I am in the middle of ten or fifteen guys; it started as just a couple, but very quickly grew.  They are all yelling at each other in Fulfulde or various other local languages.  Right now they are just arguing and it isn't unusually physical: just some grabbing of the shoulders and like.  The disconcerting thing is all the pointing and glances my way.  Clearly whatever is going on is about me. Part of being a foreigner in a strange land is knowing when to sneak toward the door.  A couple of months ago I was sitting on the porch of the chief's house talking to him when someone came up, started yelling, threw his shoes at the chief, and started trying to fight the old man.  Quickly a group of people were surrounding the situation and I'm standing in the middle.  My cue to quietly leave.  I didn't know what the fight was about, but being in the middle of it was not going to help me any. Now I found this argument, that was about me, funny.  It started in Fren

His hands were rough.  Calloused and worn with time.  Dry and white, I foolishly believed I should be gentle or risk tearing them apart.  But they have become that way with years of toil.  He carried a hammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other; passing it to free right and shake mine in warm greeting.  My own hands are embarrassingly soft.  A desk jockey's hands, skin untouched by labor.  He's never sat at a desk.  I'm embarrassed in front of this man who earned his keep.  But only for a moment as his warm smile reassures me.  Like we are old friends though we've only ever crossed paths and spoken in the street.  It is people like him that make me want to make Africa a more hospitable place.  Ease his burden. Allow him to rest.  Of course he is old and happy.  Proud of his life.  Or so I imagine.  At least content that this is his lot.  Still, don't we all deserve some rest in this world?  If it is to be in proportion to works done, his is past due. There