I recall as a child my father vehemently opposing us talking
to him from any other room then the one he was in. Oh, how I loathed it. I’d be in the living room, not more than ten
paces (child paces that is) from the kitchen and he would refuse
to listen to anything I said until I got up and walked those ten child paces
into the kitchen. Now, like most things
that were incomprehensible to me as a child, I understand all too well. I’ll be walking to the garden from my house
and I’ll hear a faint noise from an unknown direction. Could be a bird or just the wind, regardless,
that barely audible sound couldn’t be meant for my ears. Then, someone who is closer to me will tell
me to answer to this indistinguishable sound.
If I ever do find the source of this far off utterance, I will have no
idea who it is coming from as they are far out of normal eyesight range. I’m not talking ten or even twenty child
paces away. If we were in my childhood,
they would not only not be in my kitchen; they wouldn’t be in the kitchen next
door either. They’d be in the kitchen
down the block and around the corner.
Now upon first arriving here, I would try to respond to these marathon-distance
shout-outs, but being that I wasn’t born with supersonic hearing (like all
Gambians as far as I can tell), I quickly tired of even trying.
In addition to not being able to hold a normal conversation
a mile away from my fellow conversant, I also never know who is trying to
converse with me. Turns out you can spot
a “toubab” (white person) from a mile away and being that I’m the only toubab
in at least a ten mile radius, it’s a pretty safe bet as to who I am. My job in interpreting which villager is
yelling at me about how hot it is from the next village over is
considerably more difficult. I now have
a new rule that if the person is more than ten adult paces away from me, rooms
or no rooms, they will not receive a response until they walk into my
“kitchen”.
I’m actually constantly amazed at the lengths one will go,
or not go for that matter, to avoid moving here. This is something I can understand given that
even while lying completely naked and motionless on my floor, I’ll be sweating
buckets. But, people here can take it to
the extreme. The aforementioned
long-distance shouting is one example. Another would be how nearly every day
after lunch any of my three moms while sitting literally within easy reaching
distance of the bucket of drinking water will shout for any of her children to
bring her water. Sometimes it will take
a solid ten minutes of shouting at the top of her lungs to even get the
child’s attention. Then another five
minutes for the child to run the half-mile back to the house.
Speaking of child labor… I’m really thinking of adopting it as
a practice when I have children of my own.
I’ll only have to wait for about two years or so until they start
walking and then I’ll have myself some full-time, round-the-clock employees. If I deprive then of all forms of
entertainment, the work will even seem like a fun little game they play with
all the other little slave-laborers.
“How many pieces of wood can you chop with this axe whose blade is
barely connected to the handle, little four-year old Mohammed?” “I don’t know, but I bet I can beat you three
year old Mohammed!” “Ha, ha, ha. YAY!
Let’s do some more work! Where’s
the machete?”
As a thanks for all this fun, free labor my mom will shout
encouraging words like, “If I find you there not working, I’m going to beat
you!” And “Today is the day you die.”
Ah, to be a young African child.
If this experience has taught me nothing else, I now know how bland my
childhood was, what with all the playgrounds and swings, birthday parties and
ice cream cake, cold water!?! Man, oh
man, did I miss out. Luckily, I’ve now
been here long enough that they think of me as one of their children as
well. I might be the weird, fair-skinned
one that likes to stare at pieces of paper with scribbles all over it for hours
on end, but I’m their weird, fair-skinned child. Now, if my moms see me sitting and doing
nothing (always), they shove a bucket full of peanuts to shell in my face. They don’t trust me with anything like
chopping-wood; I’m not nearly as skilled as all the little Mohammeds. Finally, the childhood I never had.
