Under the Trarzan Sun
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There is a nice scene in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun where Diane
Lane, having just purchased a run down villa, describes all the
nightmares of fixing it up. It begins with, "I have bought a house in
a foreign country..."
I too, have bought, or rather, rented, a house in a foreign country.
And I too am dealing with all the joys inherent in cleaning and fixing
and generally making it fit for human occupation.
Not that that should really be important since at the moment there is
a menagerie of cats, bats, frogs and monkeys camped out in and around
the place, so the human is pretty much hopelessly outnumbered.
But before I described my Trarzan villa, I should probably tell you
how I got there.
If you can remember that far back, you might recall that I described
the joys of the bush taxi in my last letter.
Oh how little I knew then.
I think I have also previosly mentioned that in the rainy season there
is no road to Jidrel Mohgheun.
Well, a week and a half ago, when it started to rain 30 minutes
outside of Rosso, I found out why that is.
We left at quarter to four, me, a five year old girl named Fatou,
Fatou's dad, a guy riding on the roof, the driver, and Baboucrene, a
teacher at the college, or middle school.
They started to push the car at around five, after 40 minutes of
helping other cars get out of the same bog.
They then continuously pushed the van until dark, took a rest, and
pushed again. Meanwhile; Fatou and I fell asleep.
At 10:30 I was shaken awake by Fatou's dad, telling me to get up and
get out of the van, we were leaving. I had thought we were sleeping
there, and had really not had a problem with that idea.
So I left my bag, took my shoes in my hand, and hopped out the door to
sink seven inches into the mud. Oh yeah, the van was going nowhere.
None of the other people in the van had a flashlight, so my headlamp
became a valuable commodity, and it was as I was helping them untie
the goat from the roof that I saw another headlamp bobbing down the
road towards me.
It was Nicole and Zack, my fellow volunteers, apparantly their car to
Tekane, 25 km past my village, was stuck just behind ours. We were
all in it together. So we set out, into the pitch black night, on a
random road in West Africa, my shoes in one hand, and the sticky palm
of a digestively challenged severely malnourished Senegalese five year
old in the other. You could barely walk on these roads, let alone
drive on them. so we slipped and slid and waded in water up to my
knees and Fatou's waist towards some destination that the Mauritanians
seemed to know, but we didn't. I couldn't see where my fellow white
people were, and occasionally Zack would shout back to make sure me
and poopy butt were doing ok. I sang Yellow Submarine. Eventually we
veered off the road and out of the darkness a few buildings appear.
Later I would learn that this place was called Bayon. Nicole, Zack
and I were pointed into one of the two cement houses in town. By
house I mean 4 walls and a roof. We rinsed our muddy feet as best we
could, crawled into a mosquito net with 4 other strangers, all men I
add, and tried to fall asleep on the cement floor using our bags as
pillows.
Needless to say, none of us were keen on waiting around the next
morning for the roads to get better. We grabbed our stuff and started
walking. One man told us Jiddi was 10 km away, another said it was 4,
and guy in my village said it was 7km. We walked for about two and a
half hours, and were then picked up by a couple of Chinese guys in a
truck. They took off at ridiculous speed, swerving and throwing up
fountians of mud, and generally enjoying themselves until the truck
became stuck. We were in sight of the village fields, so we hopped
off and decided to cut across. I forgot about the canal that is in
those fields. After stepping in thorns that remain in my foot to this
day we were picked up by a tractor that took us the rest of the way to
my place.
The journey wasn't over for the Tekane kiddies, they still had to get
back to their village. We got to my town at 10:30, they reached home
about 8 that night.
This whole splendid journey was just the beginning of my day. Still
covered in mud, since there wasn't any water at my room where I was
staying at the time, I got to go negotiate the surrender of my house
with Sidi Moktar, the evil landlord.
The house is nice and in a compound with a well. However, at the end
of this compound, in what was an abandoned boutique last time I was
there, is now the home of who else but Sidi Moktar and several men of
unknown relation and horrible hygeine who work at the boutique.
They are my closest neighbors.
But that is a story for another day.
There is a nice scene in the movie Under the Tuscan Sun where Diane
Lane, having just purchased a run down villa, describes all the
nightmares of fixing it up. It begins with, "I have bought a house in
a foreign country..."
I too, have bought, or rather, rented, a house in a foreign country.
And I too am dealing with all the joys inherent in cleaning and fixing
and generally making it fit for human occupation.
Not that that should really be important since at the moment there is
a menagerie of cats, bats, frogs and monkeys camped out in and around
the place, so the human is pretty much hopelessly outnumbered.
But before I described my Trarzan villa, I should probably tell you
how I got there.
If you can remember that far back, you might recall that I described
the joys of the bush taxi in my last letter.
Oh how little I knew then.
I think I have also previosly mentioned that in the rainy season there
is no road to Jidrel Mohgheun.
Well, a week and a half ago, when it started to rain 30 minutes
outside of Rosso, I found out why that is.
We left at quarter to four, me, a five year old girl named Fatou,
Fatou's dad, a guy riding on the roof, the driver, and Baboucrene, a
teacher at the college, or middle school.
They started to push the car at around five, after 40 minutes of
helping other cars get out of the same bog.
They then continuously pushed the van until dark, took a rest, and
pushed again. Meanwhile; Fatou and I fell asleep.
At 10:30 I was shaken awake by Fatou's dad, telling me to get up and
get out of the van, we were leaving. I had thought we were sleeping
there, and had really not had a problem with that idea.
So I left my bag, took my shoes in my hand, and hopped out the door to
sink seven inches into the mud. Oh yeah, the van was going nowhere.
None of the other people in the van had a flashlight, so my headlamp
became a valuable commodity, and it was as I was helping them untie
the goat from the roof that I saw another headlamp bobbing down the
road towards me.
It was Nicole and Zack, my fellow volunteers, apparantly their car to
Tekane, 25 km past my village, was stuck just behind ours. We were
all in it together. So we set out, into the pitch black night, on a
random road in West Africa, my shoes in one hand, and the sticky palm
of a digestively challenged severely malnourished Senegalese five year
old in the other. You could barely walk on these roads, let alone
drive on them. so we slipped and slid and waded in water up to my
knees and Fatou's waist towards some destination that the Mauritanians
seemed to know, but we didn't. I couldn't see where my fellow white
people were, and occasionally Zack would shout back to make sure me
and poopy butt were doing ok. I sang Yellow Submarine. Eventually we
veered off the road and out of the darkness a few buildings appear.
Later I would learn that this place was called Bayon. Nicole, Zack
and I were pointed into one of the two cement houses in town. By
house I mean 4 walls and a roof. We rinsed our muddy feet as best we
could, crawled into a mosquito net with 4 other strangers, all men I
add, and tried to fall asleep on the cement floor using our bags as
pillows.
Needless to say, none of us were keen on waiting around the next
morning for the roads to get better. We grabbed our stuff and started
walking. One man told us Jiddi was 10 km away, another said it was 4,
and guy in my village said it was 7km. We walked for about two and a
half hours, and were then picked up by a couple of Chinese guys in a
truck. They took off at ridiculous speed, swerving and throwing up
fountians of mud, and generally enjoying themselves until the truck
became stuck. We were in sight of the village fields, so we hopped
off and decided to cut across. I forgot about the canal that is in
those fields. After stepping in thorns that remain in my foot to this
day we were picked up by a tractor that took us the rest of the way to
my place.
The journey wasn't over for the Tekane kiddies, they still had to get
back to their village. We got to my town at 10:30, they reached home
about 8 that night.
This whole splendid journey was just the beginning of my day. Still
covered in mud, since there wasn't any water at my room where I was
staying at the time, I got to go negotiate the surrender of my house
with Sidi Moktar, the evil landlord.
The house is nice and in a compound with a well. However, at the end
of this compound, in what was an abandoned boutique last time I was
there, is now the home of who else but Sidi Moktar and several men of
unknown relation and horrible hygeine who work at the boutique.
They are my closest neighbors.
But that is a story for another day.
posted by amy at 12:53 AM
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