A Dancer's Guide to Africa Read online

  A Dancer’s

  Guide to Africa

  A Novel

  Terez Mertes Rose

  Copyright © 2018 by Terez Mertes Rose

  www.terezrose.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author and publisher, except when permitted by law.

  A Dancer’s Guide to Africa is a work of fiction. Gabon and the cities named are actual places, but names, characters and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States

  Classical Girl Press - www.theclassicalgirl.com

  Cover design by James T. Egan, BookFly Design, LLC

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  ISBN (ebook) 978-0-9860934-4-9

  ISBN (print) 978-0-9860934-5-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018905819

  Also by Terez Mertes Rose

  Off Balance

  Outside the Limelight

  A Dancer’s Guide to Africa is set in Gabon, Central Africa. A map, glossary, pronunciation guide and further information about the country can be found, courtesy of The Classical Girl, via the following link: http://www.theclassicalgirl.com/zee-africa-page/

  For Kader Rassoul and Karen Phillips, in memoriam

  Table of Contents

  Prologue: The Acceptance Letter

  Part One: The Trainee Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Part Two: The First-Year Volunteer Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Three: Second Year Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part Four: New Year Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Acknowledgements

  More Books by Terez Mertes Rose

  About the Author

  And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

  — Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

  Prologue: The Acceptance Letter

  United States Peace Corps

  Corps de la Paix des Etats-Unis D’Amérique

  1990 K Street, N.W.

  Washington, D.C. 20526

  March 17, 1988

  Dear Fiona Garvey,

  Congratulations! You have been selected to join the Peace Corps 1988 Training Group for Gabon. Enclosed are reporting instructions for your Staging and Departure from Washington D.C. to Gabon, Central Africa.

  You have been assigned to the English Teaching program. Upon your arrival in Gabon, you will take part in an intensive eight-week training program, which will include pedagogical training, French language instruction and cross-cultural training.

  Your host country, Gabon, is a sparsely populated, politically stable country of just over one million, independent since 1960. Straddling the equator on the west coast of Africa, it is approximately the size of Colorado, mostly covered by rainforest. Gabon’s climate is warm, humid and overcast in the dry seasons (May – September, December – January) and hot and humid in the rainy seasons the rest of the year. The country receives about 99 inches of rain a year.

  Gabon is a relatively wealthy African country, rich in natural resources, including petroleum, manganese, uranium and wood; however, rural communities benefit little from its wealth. Gabon’s largest city and capital, Libreville, is home to approximately one-third of the total population. More than half of the people live in rural towns and villages and practice subsistence slash-and-burn agriculture.

  Please complete all your forms and read the Peace Corps handbook included. We look forward to meeting with you in person in Washington D.C. in June, prior to your departure for Gabon.

  Sincerely,

  Evie

  Evie Kavanaugh

  Staging Coordinator, Gabon Training Group

  Part One

  The Trainee

  Chapter 1

  The first thing I noticed was the AK-47, cradled in the arms of the Gabonese military checkpoint guard. That, and the fact that the man looked angry. He sprang to attention as our dust-caked van rolled to a stop, clutching his rifle close, arms at rigid angles. A steel bar, supported by two rusting oil drums, stretched across the unpaved road, preventing us from passing without his permission. Since my arrival in Gabon seventy-two hours prior, part of a group of twenty-six trainees, I’d discovered military checkpoints were common in Africa. At the first one, outside the Gabonese capital of Libreville, the guard had waved us through without rising from his seat. At the second, a soldier was sleeping in a chair tipped against a cinder-block building. Only the noise of our honking had awakened him. But this third official took his job seriously.

  Inside the Peace Corps van, I glanced around to see if anyone else noticed the danger we were in. No one was looking. Animated chatter filled the overheated van. “Um, excuse me?” I called out over the din, my voice abnormally high. “Someone with a big gun out there looks very angry.” My seatmate and fellow English-teaching trainee, Carmen, leaned over me to peer out.

  “Whoa,” she murmured, “he kind of does. Cool!”

  Her fascination shouldn’t have surprised me. Carmen seemed to embrace the gritty, the provocative, evidenced by her multiple piercings, dark spikey hair, heavy eyeliner and combat boots. Although we were the same age, twenty-two, I would have given her a wide berth back home. Here, she’d become my closest friend.

  Together we watched the guard draw closer. His eyes glowed with a fanatic’s fervor, as if he were drunk on his own power. Or simply drunk. The authorities here bore little resemblance to the clean-cut police officers back in Omaha who patrolled the suburban neighborhoods, stopping me in my dented Ford Pinto to politely inquire whether I was aware of how fast I’d been driving. That world seemed very far away.

  Our van driver, a short, wiry Gabonese man, stepped out of the vehicle and waved official-looking papers at the guard. By the determined shake of the guard’s head after he’d perused them, it clearly wasn’t enough.

  The two began a heated discussion. When the driver held up a finger and disappeared back into the van, the guard scowled, tightening his grip on his weapon. Restlessly he scanned the van windows and caught my worried gaze. And held it.

  I am going to die. The thought rose in me, pure and clairvoyant.

  I pulled away from the window in terror. “He’s staring at me!”

  “What are you talking about?” Carmen peered closer out the window.

  “No, stop.” I yanked her arm. “I don’t want him to look this way.”

  “Fiona. He wasn’t looking at you. He was looking at the group of us.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” I insisted. “He was looking for someone to single out.”

  Someone to pull from the bus and shoot. The thought, however irrational, made my gut clench in fear.

  Carmen studied me quizzically. “You know, they say taking your weekly dose of Aralen gives you weird-assed
dreams. Even violent dreams. You didn’t just take your Aralen, did you?”

  “No! And are you saying you don’t find this angry military guy with a gun more than a little scary?”

  “I do not. I mean, I would if it were just him and me on an empty road at night. But we’re a van full of Peace Corps volunteers and trainees. How sweetly innocent is that? This is Gabon, not Angola. And besides, do you see anyone else in this van getting anxious?”

  I glanced around to see if anyone else was bothered by the danger. Conversations had continued without pause. Aside from the occasional idle glance out the window, no one was paying the drama any attention.

  “No, I don’t,” I admitted.

  Our van driver returned to the checkpoint guard. He said something that made the guard relax his grip on the rifle. He opened one hand and accepted the two packs of cigarettes our driver offered him. Pocketing them, he gestured to a structure adjacent to his building, and the two of them strolled toward it.

  “You know, I’m not sure who won,” Carmen said.

  I released the breath I’d been holding. “At least he didn’t shoot off his gun.”

  Another uniformed guard crunched over to our van. “Descendez, descendez,” he called out in a bored voice.

  Carmen and I exchanged worried glances. The volunteers in the van rose, grumbling and stretching.

  “What’s going on?” Daniel, another English-teaching trainee, asked, frozen halfway between sitting and standing.

  One of the volunteers shrugged. “Checkpoints….”

  This wasn’t part of the plan and that concerned me. We were supposed to arrive at our training site in Lambaréné by mid-afternoon. We’d already stopped once for a flat tire and another time for a steamy, bug-infested half-hour, the reason never made clear. No one else seemed bothered by all these delays. Or worried. I could only fret to myself as we descended from the Peace Corps van into the staggering humidity, squinting at the overhead sunlight. Away from the city, deep inside the country’s interior, the whine of insects was a noisy symphony of clicks, buzzes and drones. Jungly trees crowded the landscape, broken only by the red-dirt road and clearing. A group of children, wearing an assortment of ragged thrift-store castoffs, shrieked at our sudden appearance and ran from us. The rifle-toting soldier and our driver had disappeared.

  “But what’s the problem?” I quavered, trudging behind the others over to a mud-and-wattle shack set up next to the checkpoint station. “How long will we be here?”

  “Who knows?” a volunteer named Rich replied. “Long enough to have a Regab.” He entered the shack and we followed like ducks. In the dim room, lit by sunlight filtering through cracks, Rich pointed to a table where our driver was sitting, relaxed in conversation with the guard. Both clutched wine-sized green bottles of beer. Regab.

  “There’s malaria, of course,” Rich was telling us after we’d grouped around a back table, armed with our own tepid Regabs. “Then filaria, hepatitis, typhoid….” He ticked off the diseases on his fingers, undistracted by the whispers and giggles of the children who’d returned. Through gaps in the wall, I could see them outside: a half-dozen pairs of eyes watching our every move.

  “Don’t forget giardia,” a woman sitting next to me on the bench sang out. “Purple burps and green farts,” she added for explanation.

  “These are diseases a person might theoretically get here?” I asked.

  “They’re diseases the volunteers have right now,” Rich replied.

  “You’re telling me someone’s walking around with malaria?”

  “That would be me,” he stated with obvious pride.

  I scrutinized him. Tangled blond curls framed his gaunt, stubbled face, but there he sat across from me in a poncho-like shirt with wild swirls of color, swigging his Regab and chuckling as if having malaria were great fun.

  “Aren’t you, like, supposed to be delirious and burning with fever?” Carmen asked.

  He shrugged. “The fever and chills come and go. I feel like shit at the moment, but hey, might as well drink and have a reason to feel that way.”

  I stared at him, uneasy. “I thought taking Aralen kept us from getting malaria.”

  “In principle, yes. But it’s chloroquine-based and the mosquitoes are becoming chloroquine-resistant.” He wagged a finger at all the trainees. “You’re not safe from anything here.” At his pronouncement, the contents of my stomach—an earlier lunch of mystery meat in fiery sauce over rice—leapt around.

  “Oh, don’t go scaring them,” the purple-burps woman told Rich, her pale, sweaty face earnest. “It’s been years since a volunteer in Gabon has died, and it’s usually from car accidents anyway. Aside from intestinal parasites and skin fungi, I’ve never gotten sick. If it weren’t for the stares that make you feel like a circus freak, and problem students in the classroom, life here would be a breeze. Well,” she added after a moment’s reflection, “except for those packages from home that keep getting torn into at the post office and arriving to me empty. Oh, and the loneliness, of course. That’s a killer. But hey, there’s Regab.” She raised her bottle and paused to regard it with something akin to reverence.

  “Have you talked to Christophe about the post office business?” Rich asked her.

  “No. Think I should?”

  “Definitely. He might know someone there.”

  “This guy, Christophe,” Carmen said. “I heard someone else mention his name. Is he Peace Corps staff?”

  “Only as a trainer for you English teachers. But his father’s the Gabonese Minister of Tourism, so he knows a lot of people.”

  Regab seemed exotic, heavier and darker than the Coors Light I drank back home, but very drinkable, in the end. It began to soothe my jangled nerves, numb my overstimulated brain. Sitting in a dark shack in the sultry equatorial African interior almost became the grand adventure it was supposed to be. Pinging foreign music blared from a battery-operated cassette player. Two chickens crooned and wove their way around our ankles, pecking at the dirt floor. Inconceivable to think that only five days prior, I’d been in Washington, D.C. with the other twenty-five Peace Corps Gabon trainees, beginning preparation for our two-year assignment.

  The delay extended into another twenty-four-ounce beer. Apparently our driver didn’t have all the correct papers qualifying him to drive a group of us in the Peace Corps van. Chuck Martin, Peace Corps Gabon’s country director, also en route to the Lambaréné training, could solve the problem with a signature. When he showed up. I drank more Regab and pressed the bottle to my sweaty face. Carmen fanned herself with her Welcome to Gabon! leaflet. “I need to use a bathroom,” I mumbled to her. “Where do you suppose it is?”

  “Got me.” She shrugged and grinned. “I think you need to go ask those friendly guys at the checkpoint next door.”

  Instead I asked the bar owner, in careful textbook French, the next time she brought beers to our table. “Là-bas,” she told me, pursing her lips in the direction of the back door. Over there. “Follow the path,” she added in French.

  “Want company?” Carmen asked.

  “No thanks.” I teetered through the bar and stumbled outside where the brightness momentarily blinded me. The Regab, heat and jet lag had made me queasy and disoriented as well. But I found the path and started down it.

  The forest directly behind the checkpoint station appeared scraggly, commonplace. The thin trees and spindly brush were like something I might have found in rural Nebraska. The number of flies, however, was remarkable, as was their tenacity. Waving them away from my ears, nose and mouth, I wandered down the foot-worn path, in search of the latrine. Past the clearing, weedy scrub rose on either side of the path, up to my waist. I began to wonder if my translation for là-bas as “over there” was way off. Because I’d gone pretty là-bas and I was nowhere. The marching cadence, however, relaxed me. In the past week, through the Peace Corps stateside training and the group’s transatlantic flight to Gabon, I’d rarely been alone. And I craved solitude t
he way I craved dance.

  Dance. My ballet practice.

  The thought made me stumble. To deflect my attention from the sadness that billowed up like a storm cloud, I focused on my sister, Alison. Alison and her boyfriend. The rage kicked in, clearing my head, making me feel strong again.

  Okay, so maybe the Peace Corps business had been a mistake. At least it had offered me an escape. Nine months ago, back in September, Dad had given me an ultimatum. I’d just commenced my fifth year of undergraduate studies—the cost of changing degree programs twice—performing with a local dance company, enjoying life precisely as it was.

  “Time to wrap it up, Fiona,” Dad told me. “Get that psychology degree—”

  “—Sociology degree,” I corrected.

  “Fine. Get your bachelor’s degree and go find work. A real job, not just dancing.”

  Dutifully I dropped by the university placement center the next day, where I scanned the listings of job offers and recruiting interviews tacked up on the bulletin board. My heart sank further with each one I read. Actuary. Oscar Meyer sales rep. Claims adjuster. UPS supervisor. No, no and no. They all seemed to want to crush something unnamed and precious within my soul, that only dance brought me.

  Then I spied a Peace Corps brochure. Teaching English in Africa sounded responsible and yet romantic. To placate Dad and my own anxiety over leaving dance, I started up the application process. The CARE commercials on television, after all, had always touched me, with their drama and beautiful background music. I visualized myself, noble and selfless, helping rid the world of poverty. Africa would be real life, a true adventure, yet something with soul.