A Dancer's Guide to Africa Read online

  The acceptance letter six months later, after a series of interviews, made me want to run the other way. Somehow my grand idea, viewed up close, had lost all its charm. I told my family about the letter, more for show than because I was going to do it. But while Mom and Dad congratulated me, I saw my two siblings exchange glances.

  “You’re still playing with that idea?” Russell, the eldest and the family’s academic super-achiever, asked.

  Alison, the family’s beauty queen—literally: she’d been Miss Nebraska four years earlier, in 1984—didn’t speak at first. Her expression creased in bemusement before she shook her head and began to chuckle. “Oh, Fiona,” was all she said.

  I knew what that shake of my older sister’s head meant. I’d seen it constantly through my bumpy, awkward, adolescent and university years. It was the pained look you gave someone who’d just stepped in dog shit. This, on top of the most recent humiliation and grief she’d caused me. I had to get away from her. The Peace Corps was my ticket out.

  “Yes, I’m still ‘playing’ with that idea.” I glared at them. “In fact, I’ve decided to accept.”

  And so I did it. Except now I was stuck in Africa for two years, thanks to my sister—and, admittedly, my pride. But I was going to stick it out, even if it killed me. Which, evidently, it might.

  It dawned on me that I’d walked for a long time without seeing the latrine. “Screw this,” I muttered. Stepping away from the path, I squatted down to pee. Afterward, smoothing my skirt back into place, I turned around and headed back. But the return began to confuse me, after the path forked. I stopped and looked around. Had that grove of banana trees been there before? After another minute of walking, my heart began to pound against my ribs. I retraced my steps back to the fork and went the other way. It was worse—I recognized nothing. Five minutes later, I turned around again. This time, I could find no fork at all. Dizzy and nauseous, I began to trot, stumbling on a gnarled vine half-buried beneath the path. I followed the path until I came to a new fork. Or had I taken this fork? The overhead equatorial sun offered no directional clues. It sank in that I was hopelessly lost.

  I dropped to my haunches, covering my face with my hands, my breath coming in short, panicked gasps.

  “Eh… Ntang, wa ka ve?”

  I dropped my hands and looked up. Like a mirage, a tiny, dusty African woman had appeared out of nowhere. She stood in front of me in bare feet, bent from the wicker basket load on her back. A twig poked out of her matted hair. She wore a sheet of fabric, the print faded with age, wrapped around her body like a bath towel. As I stood up, her face broke into a wide grin, revealing gaps from missing teeth. Her milky-brown eyes lit up in pleasure as she reached out with both hands to clasp mine in greeting.

  “Ntang, wa ka ve?” she repeated, pumping my hand. She smelled smoky.

  “Uh … bonjour.” I pasted a bright smile on my face.

  “Ah, madame.” She beamed at me. In French, I explained I was lost, and could she help me find the checkpoint station? She bobbed her head and cackled. It dawned on me that she didn’t understand French. I imitated an AK-47 with my arms, putting a fierce look on my face. She nodded and patted me. She began talking, a patter of incomprehensible language in a soothing, hypnotic voice. Her face was serious, eyes riveted to mine as if this would make me understand her language better.

  “I’m sorry,” I interrupted in English, my voice breaking. “I don’t understand a word you’re saying and I’m lost and I’m starting to freak out here. That stupid Regab…”

  At this, her eyes lit up. “Regab, oye!”

  “Regab, yes? Regab—to buy, to drink!” I mimed gulping down a big bottle, tossing my head back and making glugging actions. “Where—” I placed my hand over my eyes and with sweeping theatrical gestures, pretended to scope out the scenery, “—is Regab? With guns?”

  This time she understood my rifle imitation. Taking me by the hand, she led me back the way I’d come. For a few minutes, I heard only the hushed rustle of the grass as we passed. Even the bugs seemed to be holding their breath.

  We arrived at the fork. “Regab,” she said, and pointed to the right.

  I paused. I’d tried this way already. She sensed my hesitation and made a little “eh” noise and nudged me down the trail. After a few steps, I turned around.

  “Please, mama, this isn’t the right…” I started.

  No one was in sight. The woman had disappeared into the grasses as silently as she’d come. A chill crept over me, in spite of the sweat pouring down my back. She’d been there and now she wasn’t. But I had no time to ponder the woman’s disappearance. Pushing down my panic, I hurried past the trees until I heard the sound of voices and laughter. The trail rounded a bend to reveal the clearing, the two buildings, the Peace Corps van, which, in my absence, had become two, with my fellow trainees and volunteers milling around.

  Chuck, the Peace Corps country director, a burly, vibrant man with a buzz-cut, had arrived. “There you are, Fiona,” he said. “We were wondering what happened to you.”

  “I don’t know where that latrine was that they were talking about. I went forever and got lost.”

  He glanced to his right. My gaze followed his down a better traveled path, at the end of which stood a wooden outhouse.

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  As we walked together to where the others were starting to board the vans, I caught sight of the checkpoint guard. “Peace Corpse, oye!” he called out to everyone as they boarded. A broad grin now covered his face. He waved his arms, benevolent as a mother seeing her first-grader off to school, the image marred only by the presence of the rifle in one hand.

  It was all too weird. I slowed down.

  Chuck glanced over at me. “What’s wrong?”

  It took me a moment to decipher my uneasy feeling. First, the rabid guard who was now our buddy. Malaria Rich and his stories. Getting lost. The old woman. My intestines began to grumble, in tandem with my pounding head. I didn’t know what I’d seen out there or how I’d gotten un-lost or what had happened. Gabon was feeling a little like The Twilight Zone.

  “It’s just that…things here don’t make sense.”

  Chuck’s face widened into a smile.

  “Welcome to Africa. You’ll be saying that a lot.”

  Chapter 2

  Twelve Gabonese students regarded me as I approached the front of the classroom. Through the latticed walls that doubled as windows, I could see across the dusty courtyard into another classroom, where a fellow English-teaching trainee was performing the same show. I turned to face my students, adolescents in blue and white uniforms. They sat at their desks, eager and expectant, their hands folded on the wooden desktops. Aside from the shrieks of nearby roosters and the rattle of trucks over potholed roads, silence reigned. The girls’ dark eyes, fixed on me, seemed both innocent and worldly. The boys looked younger, painfully shy. Whenever they stood to speak, their hands swooped down to cup their genitals.

  It was the first day of practice school, after three weeks of preparing with trainers. My voice shook with nervousness. Sweat dampened my cotton blouse. The students, all here voluntarily, repeated the five new English vocabulary words after me. By the end of the hour, they were turning to each other and asking, “What’s this?”

  “It’s a pen.”

  “A pencil?”

  “No, it’s a pen.”

  “Oh. Thank you for the pen!”

  And like that, they were chatting in English, these kids who’d never spoken a word of the language before setting foot in this classroom. They could greet me, confirm whether a pen or pencil was in my hand, thank me and say goodbye. It felt like a small miracle.

  Beaming, I looked to the back of the room to see if Christophe, my trainer, could appreciate how well I’d done. He stood there, arms folded, his expression cool, assessing.

  I’d blown it when I first met him, but in my defense, I’d had other things on my mind. Like survival. Acclimating to
this strange new place I lived. Absorbing impressions that had flashed by too fast since our arrival: the complexity of French; the rickety dorm beds; the communal bathroom with its stand-up toilets and the sour, bitter smell of a zoo on a hot afternoon; the names of my African and American trainers. The morning of our first teacher training session, I’d still felt rattled and disoriented. But I’d tried to be helpful, moving surplus boxes out of our classroom for Meg, the training coordinator and education volunteer leader. Unable to see around an oversized stack, I bumped into someone when I approached the door. The boxes tumbled to the floor as both of us recoiled with murmurs of annoyance. When we straightened, we met at the same height of five-foot-eight. I hadn’t seen this guy before. I would have remembered. The other African trainers were vibrant, well-dressed and confident, but still friendly and accessible. This stranger seemed as polished and unapproachable as a movie star in his starched button-down shirt and tailored trousers. His skin was the color of melted Hershey’s chocolate. Startling green eyes punctuated his regal, fine-boned face.

  “You’re tall.” He spoke the words with disdain, easily pronouncing the “r” that plagued the other African French speakers on the compound.

  I was accustomed to exceptionally attractive people, having shared a home with one for many years. I’d learned not to feed their egos. Furthermore, this guy had knocked down my boxes but frowned at me as though it had been all my fault.

  “No,” I matched his tone, “it’s just that you’re short.”

  Silence followed. Shocked outrage swept over his smooth face, as if I’d pulled up my shirt and flashed my breasts at him. Before either of us could apologize or introduce ourselves, however, Meg breezed in and surveyed the scattered boxes. “Whoops,” she said, “Christophe, how about giving Fiona a hand here?”

  “I’d be happy to help Fiona.” He glanced at me again, his expression now unreadable.

  So this was the Christophe, the government minister’s son. I’d just insulted one of the most important Gabonese in the Peace Corps community. I wanted to cry. Instead, I grabbed half the boxes, deposited them where they belonged, and made a beeline to the courtyard, framed by a cluster of low, whitewashed buildings, where I hovered out of view until our session started.

  But Christophe was all composure and decorum in the classroom thereafter. He was, I had to admit, a highly qualified trainer. He’d taught English in Gabon for four years and spoke perfect, idiomatic English from his years of living in Washington, D.C., where his father had been a high-ranking diplomat. I disliked the style he advocated, though: overly structured and unsmiling. I thought teaching English should be more like a show. I’d spent years performing onstage; I knew you had to smile and act lively in order to engage your audience. His method made no sense. When I complained in a training session, he asked me who the trainer was. I whispered to Carmen that he must have forgotten who the native English speakers were. This elicited a snort of laughter from her, but glares from Christophe and Keisha, another one of the trainers.

  After the first practice class, Christophe met with me to discuss my teaching. He wore cologne, an expensive-smelling citrus blend that made me want to lean in closer to sniff his neck, a prospect so idiotic and alarming, I felt even more uncomfortable around him.

  “You see your ‘entertainment method’ working here,” he said, tapping his pencil on the critique form for emphasis, “but you had twelve students, all of whom wanted to be here. At your post, you will have anywhere between thirty and eighty students in a room the same size. Once the novelty of having a pretty American teacher wears off, they will grow bored, undisciplined.”

  The determined set of his face left no room for further discussion. But that wasn’t going to stop me. I raised my hand timidly.

  He frowned. “There’s no need to raise your hand. What is it?”

  “If they grow bored, aren’t you, as the teacher, responsible for presenting something more interesting?”

  His face remained composed, but he took a long time to breathe in and out before replying. “The teacher’s job is to teach. That is the role for which I am training you. Please endeavor to focus on that.”

  I offered him a bright smile. “Thanks for the feedback! I’ll be sure and keep it in mind.”

  He didn’t smile back. “I hope you do.”

  French class and cultural awareness sessions followed practice school. Afterwards, I escaped to the dorm room Carmen and I shared, a cramped space that held a desk, plastic chairs and two rickety metal-framed cots. I dropped onto my mattress, a pad with the thickness of sandwich bread. Carmen found me there ten minutes later, reading.

  “You spend too much time in here,” she said. “Robert and I are going into town for a beer. You should join us.” She and Robert, another English-teaching trainee, had become close friends, hitting it off when he admired her combat boots. Carmen ran her hand through her hair to freshen her spikes before nudging my cot. “C’mon, I won’t take no for an answer.”

  Lambaréné was one of Gabon’s main cities, a large inland island that bisected the Ogooué River. The smell of waterlogged foliage battled with the diesel fumes of rumbling trucks and overripe odors from the market, a noisy place choked with people, dust, chickens and produce. Robert led us through the crowds to his favorite bar, the backyard of a bright blue house on the periphery of the action. We found seats under the protection of a giant coconut palm, at a picnic table. Inside the house, pots clanged in dinner preparation. Outside, hens clucked, children giggled and shouted. A goat snuffled through nearby weeds. This was my favorite time of the day in Gabon. As the afternoon light grew soft, the golden rays mingled with wood smoke that curled up from neighborhood cooking fires. The air smelled sweet and comforting.

  “Perfect,” Robert announced. He struck me as a person who knew these kinds of things. During our training in Washington, D.C, he’d smoked Gitanes and drunk Pernod, items as exotic to me as caviar and hashish. He was a native New Yorker and always wore black tee shirts, particularly ones advertising obscure rock bands. Today it was Cantankerous Wallababies. Yesterday, it had been The Zodiac Debriefers. The only rule was it had to be black. “It’s a New York thing,” he told me, pushing his floppy brown hair from his face.

  A woman sailed past, basket on her head, baby on her back and toddler clutching her hand. She turned without losing balance of her load and shooed away a group of loitering kids. They scattered, only to regroup around the bar, staring at us. One boy, older than the rest, took a few steps closer. He wore torn gym shorts and a grayish tee shirt displaying a fading, improbable Los Angeles Yankees logo. “Bonsoir,” he said.

  “Bonsoir,” the three of us replied.

  The boy stayed. “If you please,” he began in halting English. “The hair on madame. Is this the true hair?” He pointed to my hair, which I’d freed from its ponytail. Robert and Carmen swiveled around to scrutinize it too.

  I hated my hair. There was too much, it was unruly, and the color defied categorizing. Strangers would approach me back in Nebraska and demand, “Just what color is your hair?” The answer was usually expressed in the negative: not brown, not blond, not auburn, but an odd combination of everything. “Like sunlight filtering through autumn leaves,” Mom would tell me.

  “Like dirty pennies,” Alison would scoff. Another thing it wasn’t: a duplicate of her honey-blond tresses, groomed religiously to create a sleek curtain against her face. My sister got the enviable color, I got the scraps. Like our eyes. Hers were the intense blue of a cloudless winter sky, while mine were the palest blue possible, as if Alison had used up the pigment when she was born, eleven months before me.

  “Yes,” I told the boy, “this is my true hair.”

  He took a step closer, followed by the other children, who reached out to touch it. African hair, a stateside trainer had informed me, didn’t grow much at all. My long hair would draw attention. The kids oohed and aahed before skittering away. The boy with the Los Angeles Yankees shirt f
lashed us a thumbs-up before joining the others.

  “I’m already hungry,” Carmen announced. “I hate those fish head and rice lunches.”

  “Better to have the fish heads served at lunch than dinner,” Robert said. “That means they’ll have something better tonight.”

  Fish heads still freaked me out. The first time I’d seen a serving pan of them, three dozen heads all staring with glassy eyes, I’d thought it was a practical joke, and that the real main course would be out once everyone had had a good laugh at Fiona’s reaction. But the Gabonese server had only regarded me expectantly, repeating his question of whether I wanted one head or two.

  “The thing that annoys me,” Carmen said, “is how you have to pick and dig at that spot between their eyes—do fish have foreheads?—to get any decent meat.”

  “Yes, but they say the eyeballs are a delicacy,” Robert said. “I tried one today.”

  I stared at him. “What was it like?”

  “Crunchy. Piquant.” He seemed pleased by my reaction.

  “I remember the time my parents tried to force caviar on me,” Carmen said. “It seemed very important to them that a child of theirs enjoy it. What snobs. I told them not a chance, I’d rather starve. It became a battle of wills. My father said no other food until I tried at least a bite of it. I said fine. And so I went thirty-six hours without food.”

  “Who won?”

  “I did.” Carmen grinned. “My mom couldn’t handle the stress of it.”

  “You were a devil child,” Robert said, chuckling.

  “I was. My dad liked to tell me that their original plan had been to have multiple kids, but after I came along, they didn’t think they could manage more.”

  “I would’ve loved to have been an only child,” I said wistfully.

  “Don’t be so sure. It can get lonely.”

  “Better to be lonely than to always be arguing with them.”