Thoughts on hyenas, urine, and microphones

There's a new addition in my household. He's six inches tall, brown, and he leaks so much liquid I think sometimes he must be part sponge. He's called Chulo, Spanish for gangster, a name he has so far completely failed to live up to. He cries and whines and bitches more than any creature I've ever met. He's terrified of everything, all the time, and once spent twenty minutes cowering in fear from a dropped saucepan. Sleep has been a little more exciting since I got him, because two a.m. is usually the time he decides it's time to play, and when I don't wake up he tries to chew my face off. On the plus side, his bean-bag-like body handles being thrown at the wall pretty well.



Yet another way Gambians are weird: the women are scared of puppies. When I bring him near them or he moves around their feet they scream and flail like they've sen a rat. They don't have any problem with the grown dogs that roam around the village, mangy curs that I can hear trying to rip each other to pieces at night outside my compound. These poor creatures have been in so many fights and live in such terrible conditions that many of them look like zombie dogs, with gaping wounds on their scarred faces and chunks missing from their bodies. But my little eight-pound puppy is the terrifying one.

I got to be pretty scary myself, last week. I got to be a hyena, an evil hyena. I was defeated by science! (Possibly blinded, too). Maybe I should explain. About a month ago one of the teachers came into my lab, told me they were starting a science club, asked if I wanted to help out. I said, "sure." "Great," he said, "we're announcing the launch at assembly later today. You should stop by." So I said "sure," again. Like a fool.

So I'm standing near the back of the crowd at assembly, watching the teacher give an impassioned speech about the importance of science, and clubs, and the combination of the two. He whipped them up into a frenzy, painting utopian visions of a world governed by reason, truth, and bake sales. And just when they reached a fever pitch, he pointed at me and said, "And let me introduce our founding director!"

I said, "Huh?" And they all applauded.

So apparently I'm the head of a science club now, a job title which seems to mean doing all the bitch work. I've been organizing debates and making ID cards for the officers, inviting guest speakers and whatnot. It's actually been a blast, mostly because the people I'm working with are pretty motivated and things that they say will happen actually happen. Like a debate we had last week over the economics of solar power versus fossil fuels. It was my idea, but when I proposed it I only half-thought it would ever come together. Eight days later we got the whole school, along with the elementary school next door, in a hall that hadn't been used in eight years and was now spotless, with new chairs lined up in perfect rows, with banners proclaiming to glory of our science club festooning the walls. We even got a local DJ to bring his massive speaker system and microphone.

The night before, as I was leaving school, the same teacher came up to me and said that he wanted to do a play. I said, "when?" He said, "tomorrow." I said, "no." He ignored me, explained the teacher coordinators of the club thought it would be great if they all put on a show about the importance of science, and how it can be misused, and it should be funny, but with a serious message, and with lots of action, and it should demonstrate different scientific principles, and it should be simple enough for the younger students to follow but interesting for the older students. He said the only time he could get the teachers all together to rehearse was in half an hour, so could I have it written by then? I said, "I hate you."

So we did Chicken Little. Each of the teachers was a different animal - we had Donkey Bonkey, and Horsey Norsey. I was Hyena Xena (I figured what the hell). I narrated most of it, then I dropped into character when it was time to trick the animals into going into my cave, where I promised they would be safe from the sky falling. I don't want to spoil the story for you, if you haven't read it, but I was actually planning to eat them. But I was defeated by my arch-enemy, Lion Vion the Scientist. He used his scientific knowledge to show that the sky was not falling, and because he studied animals he knew that I was, you know, a hyena, and I was going to eat them. So they chased me behind the speakers.

All in all it was a great success, although I can't take much credit. The microphone died while I was crawling on the floor and being evil, so most of the students had no idea what we were saying. They just liked watching their teachers pretending to be animals. The guy who played the donkey kept shaking his butt at them, and I think that helped. It was possibly the most powerful production of my theatric career.

There was a creepy consequence to all this. The Mandinka words for "dead" and "killed" are the same, and they don't make much distinction between past and future tense. So ever since my stunning Gambian theatrical debut, people from villages all round who either saw the show or heard about it have been coming up to me and saying, "Yahya, you are dead!"

Considering my fragile emotional and mental state, this is a little disorienting.

Microphones in general seem to hate me lately. I went to the Peace Corps Open-Mike Night last night. I wrote a little poem for the occasion. It was about a bug. I was proud of it. But one of the country directors, an American, decided to bring his kid, and while my poem was hardly pornographic, it had a few words that I wouldn't feel comfortable saying in front of the sweet little seven-year-old who parked herself in the front row and gazed up at each performer with worshipful eyes. So I asked the organizer to bump me back until after she left. Then a friend of mine gave a inebriated delivery of the Angry Vagina speech from the Vagina Monologues, complete with gestures and vernacular. His pantomime of the metal duck-beak at the gynecologist was particularly entertaining, and when the father didn't raise an eyebrow I figured I was in the clear.

But, of course, he who hesitates is lost, and the moment before I got on stage the mike died. So I got to bellow my artsy little poem, with all its carefully drawn metaphors, at the top of my lungs to a crowded bar. Most of them didn't hear me, but it's just as well, since the ones who did were a little too drunk to really follow it. Ah, well. I should have gone with my original plan done my impression of Donald Duck doing an impression of Malcom X. That always gets them.

If any of you happens to be curious, here's the poem. For a little clarification, GMT (Gambian Maybe Time) is a phrase we use to refer to the sort of vague time frame in which things in this country tend to happen. Meetings start hours late, appointments are kept the next day or next week. Seconds and minutes have a fluidity that's hard to adjust to.

There’s a bug on my ceiling.
He’s been there for a month-year now,
A chuck of that chewed-up Peace Corps maybe time.
When you skip through seasons and stumble through seconds
When time turns back on itself.

He was in that corner of my room I like
That point where if you twist your eyes and slant your mind
It flips out and whips you out and now it’s the outside corner of a cube
And you’re standing. And spinning in space.
Alone.

And this little bitch bug’s being on my ceiling,
On my spot, pulling me back to the world.
And I say, bug
I say, bug, you fuck off
Bug, you go get your own universe.

But he don’t leave.
He turns in a nice, tight little circle.
Pivots on his back leg.
Again and again.
Turn and turn.
And he stops.
And he starts again, throwing his legs up and eating his trail dust
On his one-bug, all-kicks, born-free little Route 66.

And he was there the next day, the next, each, beat-up blended Gambian maybe day
For three maybe months.
Walking, jiving, slipping and speeding,
In his smooth long circle-waltz
And his stately way of proceeding.

Maybe he thinks he’s progressing.
Developing.
Sustaining.
He’s got his own buggy maybe kinda time
On his high circle march of mercy
His brain is so small and his world is so tall
The two-second revolution
Seems like two years.

He doesn’t know he’s walked this way,
Played this game,
Danced this dance a thousand times.
This ol’ howdy pilgrim’s walking the straight line
Toward some sacred and succulent salvation.

Maybe I’ve got him all wrong.
Maybe he’s coursing the Icaran heights,
Touching the gods, kicking their teeth, bucking their rights,
Secure in his god-damn, god-high sights.
Yeah, and though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I shall fear no evil, for my little bug buddy is watching out for me,
Watch it, watch out,
Lord and shepherd of all he sees.

I wonder if he volunteered.

Maybe he thinks I’m his god.
Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah.
Maybe I’m his fire and bile and riled up god,
Ready to smack him back him back down if
He fucking thinks of
Stepping his little stepper out of step
Or shining his light out of line.

I’d like to be a god. For just a maybe day. To just a maybe bug.

So I checked.
Three months, real, hard, sun-up months later
Me, the fucking empirical-goddamn-imperial-stupid-imbecile,
I wanted to see what was up.

Stuck in a cobweb,
A little buggy carcass hung an inch from my ceiling,
Turning in the air.