tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44741728129591680872024-03-13T17:22:34.869-07:00Lisa St Aubin de Teran Updates on Lisa's new books, Teran Foundation development projects, journalism, travel writing and life in Mozambique.
| New book coming out 2024 | lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-54160368883867672652024-01-12T09:21:00.000-08:002024-01-12T09:21:30.084-08:00Better Broken Than New <p> You can now pre-order my new book: Better Broken Than New click <a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/better-broken-than-new-lisa-st-aubin-de-ter-n/1144211024">here</a> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg07CIrBoTu8PFxZww4Xs5fV2WqJ1UmCfZuJPEZg7PP5QmLSejFm1PF19chk2GfDNCk_bkaBiVjFnAoEtfSqWvdR3lK-kmw_qzEDjEr1meT2LAWEQyuVuyaIKBtUBq4_l8h0BidO4PBz1r3mL4Y3mWJojjad08CSc-L2QiJSv50kHloomVQWntqeuooeEtm/s1500/IMG_4509.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg07CIrBoTu8PFxZww4Xs5fV2WqJ1UmCfZuJPEZg7PP5QmLSejFm1PF19chk2GfDNCk_bkaBiVjFnAoEtfSqWvdR3lK-kmw_qzEDjEr1meT2LAWEQyuVuyaIKBtUBq4_l8h0BidO4PBz1r3mL4Y3mWJojjad08CSc-L2QiJSv50kHloomVQWntqeuooeEtm/s320/IMG_4509.jpeg" width="213" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-37425436874022057872020-07-27T11:40:00.001-07:002020-07-27T11:42:12.932-07:00Trailer The Bay Of Silence <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="text-align: start;">This is the trailer of the film that will be released soon. It is based on my novel The Bay of Silence</span></div>
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<br />lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-76271266676567764362020-05-03T05:58:00.000-07:002020-05-11T12:23:08.028-07:00After 6 years of radio silence, I am backSince I last wrote in this blog, so much has happened that it will take a lot more posts to fill the gap. But like much of the world, I am in a contemplative mood spiked by alarm and worry about Covid-19. Unlike so much of the rest of the world, though, Mozambique has been lucky (so far) with only 79 confirmed cases and, despite having very few tests, no evidence of infection from Coronavirus in its many health posts and hospitals. <br />
<br />
Whether this is because it is so hot here, or because 80% of the population is under 25-years-old, or because we all get more vitamin D from all the sunlight, or because of genetic factors: at this early stage, who can say?<br />
<br />
While brooding over these things and compulsively checking the situation elsewhere thanks to worldometer's Coronavirus live updates on my cell phone, I came up with the following short story: 'Boris Johnson is Sitting Up'<br />
<br />
<b>Boris Johnson is Sitting Up</b><br />
<br />
The thing is, it wasn’t much good before the lockdown because Jim has his ways. Sometimes he likes to re-live the days of his youth when he was the welter-weight champion for South Devon. Then he comes home from the pub having had a few pints too many, and he likes to use me as his punch bag. Next day, though, it’s not like in the movies: there’s no ‘I’m sorry, but I love you’ or ‘Look what you made me do’. He just wolfs down his cornflakes with almond milk (that he makes me buy from Sainsbury’s and which we can never – ever - use, not even to taste. Then he grabs his sports bag and goes out to volunteer for a long-haul delivery. He always tries not to get back before the bruises and swelling have healed. It’s funny when you think about it: for an ex-boxer to be so squeamish about black eyes and split lips. This time, he told me to disguise the bruises and to stop ‘Going around like road kill warmed up.’<br />
<br />
Mostly, though, it isn’t like that. Usually there’s just me and the kids. Harry and Jane Marie go to school, Jim works delivering bathroom appliances for a local firm and I work part time at Poundland. Jane Marie says that since I started the job our home is like those ones you see on the Telly where hoarders have to sleep sitting up in a chair and pick their way through lanes left between their piles of junk. It hasn’t got to be that bad here but I see her point. It’s just that it’s amazing what great stuff you can buy for a pound and what with my staff discount, I find some of the special offers irresistible.<br />
<br />
The Prime Minister is in the ICU with Coronavirus and Mum’s got a friend with a friend who nurses at St. Thomas’ Hospital who says it’s bad. What will happen if Boris Johnson dies? What then? How can we fight Covid-19 without a leader?<br />
<br />
It’s so worrying that I sort out my garden stuff again to calm my nerves. I’ve got a whole area under our bed full of flower pots (10 for £1), gardening tools, seeds, bulbs and compost. It’s what started the kids off, actually, because we don’t have a garden. There’s a tiny bit of balcony left over from Jim’s old exercise bike, weights, and the boxes of engine oil, brake fluid, and anti-freeze he filches from work. It is just enough room to squeeze in one small flower pot and a compact cork hanging basket (2 for only £1) which I stuff with hyacinths and then lobelias and geraniums. Last year I grew those trailing nasturtiums (2 packets for a £1) which looked lovely spread all over Jim’s junk like an orange trellis until he ripped them out and threw them down. A big clump of stalks and leaves fell right onto Mrs. Davies’ head and she was so cross she limped all the way up here with her sciatica to give him a piece of her mind.<br />
<br />
Afterwards, Jim gave me this kink in my nose and the biggest of the stains in the carpet. There was blood everywhere and the kids were so frightened they hid in their room for hours. Later, I told them they had nothing to fear because Jim only has it in for me. He wouldn’t lay a finger on either of them. Jim’s always been good with the kids. He used to take them to the Common to<br />
<br />
the swings and to gather conkers and to sail the little boats they made on the Plague Pond. But they’d never seen so much blood before and it scared them.<br />
<br />
The football hasn’t started yet and Jim shouts out for the hundredth times the breaking news that he’s bored. I take a quick look at worldometers and see that there are already 2,870 new cases in the UK today and its only lunch time. How different this lockdown would be with a garden: the kids could play outside, Jim and I could sunbathe or just doze in deck chairs or do a crossword puzzle. And I’d grow salads and herbs and I’d grow runner beans up the fence like Granddad used to. And I could make pizzas in one of those outdoor ovens. Mozzarella and fresh-picked rocket. Mmm!<br />
<br />
Thank god for day dreams! I don’t know how anyone gets through life without them. While here we are in our 2-bedrooms, living room, kitchenette and bathroom with me cooking up yet another delicious feast of baked beans on toast. While the others eat, I lock myself in the bathroom and have a whispered chat with my Mum. Whenever I can, I steal a few moments to call her and my sister and Carol from work. But Jim doesn’t let me stay in there for long. He’s got a bit of a sixth sense for it and I know if I don’t hang up he’ll break the door down.<br />
<br />
Then I’m back in the living room locked down with Jim and the kids and all the clutter from Poundland. In the olden days, if you got the plague, the neighbours would mark your house with a big red cross and nail the door shut with everyone - the sick and the well – inside it: dooming them all to die. Funny to think that we live less than a mile away from a medieval plague pond while here we are in the grips of a new plague.<br />
<br />
Last week, I made a snakes and ladders and a pretty good ludo board but the kids aren’t into board games anymore. It seems that if it isn’t digital it isn’t interesting, and Jim is too glued to the box to want to throw dice with me.<br />
<br />
The News comes on again and Jim relays it all to me as I wash up as though I was deaf and couldn’t hear it and as though I don’t have woldometer Coronavirus live updates on my mobile phone.<br />
<br />
“The official death toll for yesterday is 980. 980 and what is anyone doing about it? Nine hundred and bloody eighty and all they can do is close the bloody pubs!”<br />
<br />
So as not to enrage him further, I refrain from bringing up the thousands of Frontline healthcare workers not to mention the entire country in lockdown.<br />
<br />
“I ask you! What a bunch of wankers!”<br />
<br />
He finishes off his 3rd beer of the morning and rolls the empty bottle under the sofa. At this rate, his 6-pack lockdown ration won’t last him today so we’ll have to go shopping again. I back into the kitchen to find our list.<br />
<br />
‘’Oh! Oh! Listen to this: Boris Johnson is sitting up.’’<br />
<br />
“Hmm” I sort of hum, knowing that any actual reply will be a snake.<br />
<br />
‘’I said, Boris Johnson is sitting up.” He shouts with menace.<br />
<br />
‘’I heard you, That’s good because he seems to have had quite a close shave.”<br />
<br />
Jim mimics my voice in falsetto:<br />
<br />
“He seems to have had quite a close shave! La di bloody da! What would you know about it, you stupid cow! Why don’t you stop locking yourself in the bog and gossiping with your fat-arsed friends and make us some decent food for a change? How much longer do you think you can get away with your bloody baked beans?’’<br />
<br />
I keep my head bowed and avoid eye contact. Always avoid eye contact. Anything I say will be wrong and anything I say will be a ladder for him to climb up to the next level; an excuse to end his lethargy and fill the room with his flailing fists.<br />
<br />
The newscaster intones,<br />
<br />
“All non-essential shops, bars, restaurants and pubs will remain closed until the end of April. … On a happier note, the Prime Minister, Boris Johnson is …”<br />
<br />
For Jim, the greatest outrage and the worst hardship is the closing of the pubs. He says they can’t do it; that it is illegal and the start of repression and a dictatorship. He says Lloyd George tried to regulate the opening hours back in 1914 under the Defence of the Realm Act. Jim’s mate, Evan, is a teacher and into such stuff, and Jim parrots his conspiracy theories, moaning about his missing pints as though Covid-19 was invented out of spite expressly to annoy him, his mates, and Boris Johnson.<br />
<br />
You think of a lockdown being about your loss of freedom, the sense of constraint; about being forced to give up going out and seeing friends, window-shopping and watching other couples while you dream about really getting out. But you don’t get it until it happens that a lockdown forces you to live in the here and now rather than as an observer taking and posting endless photos and sending enough encrypted sms per day to qualify for your own MI5 desk at Bletchley Park.<br />
<br />
Lockdown means being 24/7 with your partner, kids, parents, or whoever you room with; when before, when you only spent a few hours with them, it was hard enough to get along. And it’s the little things that get to you: those little niggly habits that drive you up the wall: drip-dripping like water on stone – wearing it down in a speeded up way so that a hundred years of drips compresses into a week.<br />
<br />
We are not used to being caged in together and it is grating. I’m okay because I’ve got Dateline and American Justice on my cell phone. I switch on and tune out, getting through the days by watching the endless episodes of rape and murder, abuse and kidnapping; wondering all the while how many more careless housewives can feed their husbands anti-freeze? I bet a lot of people get away with murder in pandemics. The bodies pile up and there is no time or place left for any autopsies: so the bodies get hastily cremated. Every day, every 24 minutes there is another homicide in America. Whipping out my calculator, I see that makes 60 a day and 420 a week. And those are only the ones who slip up. Every time I switch on, I see that Dateline has millions of viewers: don’t any of those murderers watch it, or CSI? It seems inconceivable. Yet what is and what is not conceivable changes from day to day. Just a few weeks ago, the country was shocked because four people died of coronavirus in the UK. And yet, yesterday there were 980 deaths, which we all ticked off our cards as though we were doing the football pools and reading the results:<br />
<br />
‘’New cases: The UK: 4390. Italy 5400. France: 4188, Spain: 5051.<br />
<br />
New deaths: The UK: 980, Spain: 683”<br />
<br />
And so on, fizzling into a belated geography lesson courtesy of worldometers with statistics for places I didn’t even know existed like Azebaijan, Burkina Faso and Krygzstan.<br />
<br />
I can’t put the earphones in my bad ear, but the left one is okay. But I torture myself wondering how I’d survive if Jim boxes my other ear too. What then?<br />
<br />
For now, I’ve got my mobile phone and the kids live glued to their tablets, and Jim sits and watches the Telly reaching for his beers that only make him miss going out even more. It’s hardest on him because he’s not the stay-at-home type. He goes to work five days a week, and he goes to the pub seven days a week, and he’s used to being out with his mates. One way or another, we never see much of him. Mum suspects he’s got a girlfriend out there. If he has, I don’t care. She’s welcome to him and his temper. And now he’s even started to smell.<br />
<br />
The smell in here is almost as hard to bear as having Jim at home all day – almost! We are four frightened bodies cramped into a box. There’s the smell of cooking, and rubbish, stale beer, and the metallic smell of blood from the stains in the carpet that I can’t get out. We O.D.’d on air freshener in our first week and now we can’t buy any more, or disinfectant. We have soap and a bit of washing powder and that’s it. Jane Marie started her periods last week and the whole flat smelled musky. She was mortified. I used up all my perfume but the other lingered and I felt bad for her. And now Jim stinks of old sweat filled with frustration, rage and fear. He always used to shower at 6.15 sharp before he set off for the pub; but now they’re closed, he doesn’t bother.<br />
<br />
I watch another abduction from somewhere in Ohio. The kidnapper has crossed a State Line, so the FBI are called in. I see shots of a small town and a high street with shops and cafes and a Chinese take away. I wish! When it comes to takeaways, though, Jim is a fish and chips sort of<br />
<br />
man with an occasional exotic foray into the realm of curries. He scorns the late night Halal places: doesn’t trust them. But he sometimes graces the local Indian which stays open until 2 a.m. gathering the drunks at closing time and ballasting their beer with vindaloos. What Jim can’t stand, though, is anything Chinese. He has an aversion to the taste of sweet and sour and monosodium glutamate. Before the lockdown, he used to make a lot of snide remarks about the Chinese eating little furry creatures, snakes, new born rats and creepy crawlies. He could be quite witty sometimes. Then came a lot of ‘I told you so’; because somehow, he knows that when he’s away, me and the kids treat ourselves to a Chinese.<br />
<br />
Well, there’s no trace left of his sense of humour now. He’s just bored and angry and he paces our living room like a caged beast. Three steps one way, squeezing between the chairs, and four the other if you step over the magazine basket (3 for £1) and the mini nest of tables with abalone inlay.<br />
<br />
New cases: USA: 26,641, Spain: 3,268, Italy 3,153 and the UK now in 7th place with 4,342. I know that other people have it worse than us, but we are starting to fall apart: unravelling. It is as though there is a giant rat inside us trying to get out.<br />
<br />
Our one diversion is shopping. Masked and gloved and armed with a list, we queue up and wait to tailor our wants to what there is. I look mysterious with my shades and headscarf. Outside the supermarket, I see socially-distanced shoppers staring at me, wondering if I’m someone famous incognito. Am I a TV star? They want to find out who I am until they see my swollen and discolored cheek and then they know who I am – another battered wife. They give me disapproving looks before turning away; glaring to let me know that they think it is in bad taste to indulge in marital strife when the rest of the country, even the rest of the world, is being beaten up by the Coronavirus. They look at me and judge me as selfish; as though I had hoarded food or soap or hidden a ventilator under my bed.<br />
<br />
The shopping is heavy but we are not allowed back to our local supermarket, so we take a bus to Tescos and then another to the Co-op. We have to make three separate trips. There is a corner shop nearer, but it’s too pricey. We used to get a lot of our groceries from Poundland: big packs of bacon, sausages and five tins of beans to a pound. Harry does his best carrying, but he’s only nine, bless him – and what with Jim’s 42 beers and his cartons of almond milk and all the tins, it is really heavy.<br />
<br />
Jim’s latest is refusing to come shopping. It started last week, and yesterday he tried to keep Jane Marie back. He said it was to look after him because he has a cold. But we need her to help carry, so I won that particular duel. When he said it, I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck like I do when he’s going to hit me.<br />
<br />
The neighbours eyeball us suspiciously as we traipse in and out in our masks and gloves. They can’t miss us because Harry’s got a cardboard box on his head with eye cutouts like Ned Kelly. Luckily Mrs. Davies is out for the count with her sciatica or she would denounce us in a heartbeat for breaking the lockdown.<br />
<br />
It’s changing us: this lockdown. On the Telly there’s a lot of talk about how we’ll never be the same afterwards and how it is bringing out the spiritual side of us. But that’s not what I’m seeing. Even Harry, who is a nice boy with a gentle way about him is acting out of character. He sometimes argues with his big sister – mostly over who can get to charge what on the one socket in their bedroom – but he never hits her. And yet, today he punched her in the stomach really hard and she’s crying. And Jim, who never hurts the kids, has knocked Harry to the ground and has his foot raised to kick him, but then thinks better of it and leaves our son bleeding into the carpet.<br />
<br />
I pull him up and take him over to the kitchen sink and clean and suture the cut over his eye the way Granddad taught me with a bit of plaster cut like a butterfly. Then I push Harry into the kids’ room and he curls up on his bunk sobbing silently.<br />
<br />
When I return to comfort Jane Marie, Jim has got there before me and he is holding and comforting our daughter as a father should. But he is also holding and comforting her as a father shouldn’t. Jane Marie has stopped crying and she tries to wriggle off his lap but her Dad is holding her too tightly. He looks over her shoulder and smiles at me triumphantly. He knows I know. He sees I see. I realize that I will pay for this knowledge later, but I am not afraid anymore. He is not the only one who has changed; and the game has begun.<br />
<br />
I slump into the other armchair of our 3-piece suite and switch Dateline on. I slot an earphone into my good ear and half-watch an episode and half-watch my little girl with her father: our little girl with my husband.<br />
<br />
Later, we eat sausages and mash on our laps as we watch Eastenders. That would usually be the highlight of the day but I’m only half-watching it because I see that Jim is watching Jane Marie more than he is the TV. When Eastenders is over, we watch some more Coronavirus updates. Jim’s cold is thickening and he complains that he has a fever.<br />
<br />
“UK: 5,320, USA: 13,900, Spain: 5,560 …’’<br />
<br />
Time has expanded, but eventually it gets late enough for the kids to go to bed. I tuck them in but they won’t settle.<br />
<br />
‘’What if Dad’s got it?’’ Harry asks. ‘’He has a cold and a fever and those are the symptoms. What if he needs a ventilator?’’<br />
<br />
“Shouldn’t we call the doctor or the help line?’’ Jane Marie chips is.<br />
<br />
‘’They are so over-worked right now with the really bad cases, and you know over 90% of people who get it survive. Even Boris Johnson is recovering; so we have to try and deal with it ourselves. I’ll make him a hot toddy and see how it goes. If it’s any worse by tomorrow night then we’ll call it in, okay?<br />
<br />
‘’Thanks, Mum. That’s really nice. I know how hard it must be for you having Dad around all the time and me and Harry off school. It says on the internet that there’s this neuro chemical called Tackykinin which triggers stress and it looks like the virus increases it until it kills you. But there is another thing called oxy-something-or-other that suppresses Tackykinin and it is activated by gratitude and service to others.’’<br />
<br />
‘’Are you saying that helping you all will keep me healthy?’’<br />
<br />
‘’Yeah’’<br />
<br />
‘’Cool” Harry says sleepily and then mumbles, ‘’I’m sorry I punched you, Janey.’’<br />
<br />
‘’That’s okay. Good night.’’<br />
<br />
‘’Good night, and don’t worry,’’ I tell her, ‘’I’ll look after you.’’<br />
<br />
She snuggles under her Barbie duvet and smiles up at me shyly, ‘’Mum …”<br />
<br />
‘’Yes?’’<br />
<br />
‘’Please can I lock our door tonight?’’<br />
<br />
I swallow hard and try not to show any reaction, ‘’Of course you can, now sleep tight, darling.‘’<br />
<br />
Jim was too unwell to really whack me hard that night and I was ready for him; knowing it would come and able to take evasive action. So I have a red cheek but not much of a snake slide. And it wasn’t much of a ladder for Jim either. When he went for a dump, I got a bottle of anti-freeze out of his stash on the balcony.<br />
<br />
Granddad’s recipe for a hot toddy is: lemon juice, honey, and a tot of rum in a glass of hot water. My recipe was: some concentrated lime drink, honey, a tot of rum and a tot of anti-freeze in a glass of hot water.<br />
<br />
Next day, Jim isn’t well at all. I daydream of a cottage with a garden while Jane Marie makes lunch. It is baked beans on toast with little bits of crispy bacon and a tomato salad. Jim is too ill to eat his, so I put it on the bedside table beside a photo of the two of us in happier times. Then I call the help line. I tell the operator that my husband has a cold and he’s bunged up and he isn’t breathing right. The operator asks me if I think he has Coronavirus. I say I don’t know. She tells me that there is only medical help for absolute emergencies so I have to home-treat him and if he can’t breathe I can call again.<br />
<br />
So I give him another toddy – my recipe – and he wheezes himself back to sleep. I had to sort of tip it down his throat and some spilled, so I changed the sheets and washed them and the glass (unlike the Dumbos on Dateline and CSI), Jim gasps awake in the mid-afternoon. He can’t breathe so I call for an ambulance. The operator warns me there is quite a queue.<br />
<br />
The kids are upset so we watch Groundhog Day together, with me popping back and forth to the bedroom to check on the patient.<br />
<br />
By the time the ambulance arrives, Bill Murray has become a virtuoso Jazz pianist, ice sculptor and Renaissance Man, and Jim is unconscious.<br />
<br />
Did Jim have a cold or was it the Coronavirus? And did he die of it? I don’t know. Would he have recovered like most of the infected victims? Or would he be part of the 3.6% who die of it? Or would he have sat up and recovered like Boris Johnson? Well. I don’t know that either, but Granddad used to say that the best way to get through life with your trousers on is by using a belt and braces.<br />
<br />
Mossuril<br />
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12th April 2020lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com5Mossuril, Mozambique-14.8865202 40.5533995-15.867986199999999 39.262505999999995 -13.9050542 41.844293tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-64213169926650826952016-12-20T09:47:00.000-08:002016-12-20T09:47:02.482-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Merry Xmas 2016 to all friends and family from Mozambique xlisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com0Mossuril, Mosambik-14.8865202 40.553399500000069-15.867986199999999 39.262506000000066 -13.9050542 41.844293000000071tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-52743557790569938522012-11-19T20:12:00.003-08:002012-11-19T20:12:36.790-08:00Seeing old friendsIn Venezuela, people used to say that if you got to 50 and you could count your true friends on the fingers of one hand, then you were a lucky person. And so I am, even though the Grim Reaper has claimed so many in the past two years.<br />
<br />
<br />
I have just watched <i>Casa de Areia</i> (<i>The House of Sand</i>, directed by Andrucha Waddington) and now I can't sleep for all the recurring images of longing and dunes.<br />
<br />
So back to the biography of Raymond Carver that I'm reading. And maybe a bit of <i>Breaking Bad</i> and then it will be time for breakfast. In Holland that tends to revolve around coffee and gingerbread and brown bread and butter with chocolate specks.<br />
<br />
A new ambulance for the little village where I live finally arrived on Saturday. I see its photo outside Mossuril Hospital and it feels strange not to be there; and stranger still not to have been there when its Mercedes engine swept uphill to the blue and white building where I have been so many times. The new chariot is a gift from the Meander Medical Centre in Holland and it was really needed. <br />
<br />
My next project will be to restart Teran Foundation's internet cafe (after the computers burned out some months ago on a super-surge of electrical current). And next after that we will be kick-starting a chain of fish farms. It feels bizarre to be sitting high up in a stately old house in northern Europe working out the logistics of just how deep to dig the fish ponds, and just how much powdered lime to scatter in them to keep the leeches away. I am wondering which fingerlings will do best behind the beach so far away in northern Mozambique. And I'm remembering a sort of horror documentary about fish-farming in Tanzania. And I'm glad that the new fish farms will be dug out of the existing shallow lagoons that the local salt-producers use to water their salt pans and they will be like extensions of the sea and not the home of lurking monsters!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-66079066575116040132012-11-17T13:46:00.001-08:002012-11-17T13:46:23.073-08:00It is extremely cold today: so cold I am longing to head back to Africa.<br />
<br />
Here is another gem from my guiding light, F. Kafka,<br />
<br />
"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. that is the point that must be reached."lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-34492340790262987102012-11-12T18:32:00.000-08:002012-11-12T18:32:08.257-08:00Is splitting a humming bird in two, Playing with Fire?<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">I never thought that publishing something of my own on the internet would give me food for thought, but it does and it has. So I have divided this Humming Bird story, splitting it in half at what seems to be a natural break. I notice a lot of readers see this blog, so if anyone has an opinion about this, I'd be interested to know it. The second half is now called 'Playing with Fire'. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">As opposed to playing with fire, here, at least, I have ceased to live on the edge. I walked a bit around Amsterdam today, ignoring the chill wind and heavy sky. I like wandering around the city centre because it is the only city centre in the world that I don't get lost in. I could say that I don't have any sense of direction, but that isn't quite true. I often feel convinced that I know the way to wherever even though I hardly ever do. But then, some years ago, on doctor's orders, I had to take some exercise. That was a very scary thought for someone whose only sport is Shove Ha'penny - which requires nothing more energetic than the measured movement of one finger tip. Urged on by my partner (who believes that running is the cure for practically every disease under the sun) I compromised and took to walking. And I walked up and down beside and around the canals of Amsterdam. Some of these are so long that pedestrians should get prizes for touching either end. And some are so pretty they don't seem real. And some are so littered that I think the moorhens who nest on municipal rafts on them must be genetically modified to feast on pollution.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">Back when I started patrolling this city, I think I walked further than my doctor could have possibly envisaged because I got very very lost. Sometimes, in some parts of Amsterdam, a person can wait for three hours for a taxi to pass by, I know because I am that person. Long ago, in the days before mobile phones were an integral part of mankind, one could get stranded in places. I am very used to being stranded. When I was a little child, my sister Lali and I used to play a game called 'Let's Get Lost'. This consisted of riding our bikes around London until we had absolutely no idea where we were and then having to find our way back home. Maybe, the reason why I quite like being lost is because it reminds me of Lali. Or maybe it feels like doing something naughty as the first step of running away. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">I liked running away too, more as an adult than a child, Well, to return to my subject: Amsterdam became familiar to me in a way no other city has. I recognise more than trees and shrubs here. I recognise buildings, doorways, churches, certain balconies, certain squares, bridges, alleways, shops, fire stations, police stations and much more. it surprises and pleases me that so late in my life I have finally found signposts in an urban setting. Everywhere else, I can only ever find my way around by memorizing plants. In London, paris, New York, madrid and everywhere else, I follow trees and bushes, hedges and flower beds, window boxes and tubs. In Amsterdam, I used to find my way from vine to vine and creeper to creeper, notching up hollyhocks along the way. Now, when I stroll around, I notice the trees that I used to rely on to get around but I don't need them. I know my way now from the Dam to the Leidseplein, and from the Museumplein to the Albertcuyp Market and out to the Central Station and back via any choice of streets. I can find my way home from anywhere on the central grid. I hadn't realised it until this particular visit: but I am no longer the topographically-challenged person I used to be. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">The Dutch Police are pretty mean about giving lifts or even proper directions to stranded tourists. I tried a few police stations during my city learning curve. Once, I practically collapsed over their counter but there was still no way they were going to help. Most of my encounters with the police worldwide have been when officers from this or that Force have kindly escorted me back home or helped me find whatever hotel I'd booked into and then lost. Most policemen, even in rough countries, have been pretty nice about it. If you check into, let us say, Hotel A, leaving your passport at reception and your luggage in your room, it is not easy to then check into Hotel B without said passport or any luggage. Up until now, I think I've made more friends on the street tracking down those elusive hotels when I was lost than I have at parties. So it feels strange now to go shopping and just shop and return; or to go for a short walk and get back within the hour. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">Now I don't know if it is old age or introspection but my <i>not</i> getting lost is as intentional now as getting lost used to be back in the good old days. I am not ready to put this to the test yet in London or anywhere else, but maybe next year I will.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;">Meanwhile, here is the segmented humming bird open for comment. The 2nd title is printed in a bold font so for those who wish to scroll down: you can find the break without needing to re-read the text.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">He
Came to me </span></b><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">L</span></b><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">ike a Humming Bird<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Whenever I escaped from the village, I liked
pretending to be an islander; wandering around raising white dust as I visited
the almost empty markets and the yellow arcade by the Government Residence. I
used to explore the fortress, the ruined palaces where entire colonies of
refugees were living, and the ladies section of the Green Mosque. I
criss-crossed the cluttered, shady alleyways that traversed from shore to
shore, stepping over women and children, cooking pots, bundles of ragged laundry,
and piles of scavenged firewood. When the tide was out, the beaches were
teeming with waders gathering shellfish and crabs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">From the crenulated parapet, I could see the
fringe of mangroves of our village. That ancient platform studded with rusty
canons pointing out to sea was the only deserted part of the Stone City. The
rest was crawling with islanders and refugees alike. Mothers carried babies
strapped to their backs with cotton wraps; but other people also carried what
was left of grown men and women strapped to their backs like giant babies. My
Cousin Sergio said they were the remains of people who had stepped on
landmines, but when I asked him what a landmine was, he shrugged and said,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “We don’t talk about that.’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">There never seemed to be enough reasons for me
to keep sailing to Ilha. Sometimes I’d spoil things at home and then blame it
on the rats just so Ma would have to replace whatever it was, or get it mended,
and she’d ask me if I could <i>bear</i> to
sail over <i>again</i> to buy a new one or
get the old one repaired. That way (and once even burning my hand so I could go
to the hospital) I managed to get away quite a lot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The only problem was that I found Cousin Sergio
annoying on the ferry crossings. He had always teased me a bit as part of the
fun we had together, but after I became a woman, I stopped liking it. I felt
rushes of anger whenever he pinched my arms or ogled my breasts. He kept
inventing opportunities to touch me. He’d hold onto me as I got on and off the
dhow; and he’d brush his hand against my head scarf - accidentally on purpose -
every time he lowered the sail to punt our dhow to the beach. His touch made me
feel queasy and I began to like the idea of marrying him less and less. But I
didn’t actually decide <i>not</i> to until I
met the stranger I was destined to marry: that is, until I met Evan Garcia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The day I met him, I was on Ilha sitting under
a banyan tree by the empty petrol pump by the new bridge to the mainland. It was
where the taxis had arrived and departed before the War. And then it was where
the convoys of trucks arrived from Out There. Because soldiers and bandits
alike robbed and hi-jacked solitary cars and harassed the convoys, sometimes,
no trucks arrived. Then I could only sit and imagine their arrival with nothing
to distract me from my fantasy except for the black and white crows that
scoured the beaches. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">But sometimes a convoy did come in when I was
there and then I liked to sit and watch the flow of passengers with all their
bundles and sacks and animals and suitcases and bags because they seemed to
have such an exciting life compared to mine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">There would be soldiers coming home on leave
and refugees with sunken eyes and spindly legs. I imagined they came from all
the places I had learned about at school: places such as Nampula and Monapo,
Beira and Nacala, Pemba and Quelimane. They were always covered in dust from
head to toe, but to my young eyes that dust was just powdered glamour. Although
they were dark and light-skinned, Indian, Macua, Chinese, and <i>Akunha</i>; the one thing they all had in
common was their relief at having arrived safely. If any of them happened to
greet me, then I felt almost as though I too had travelled from afar, or that I
was on the brink of an adventure. Ma and Father didn’t know that I spent my
time hanging around the old taxi stop. Instinctively, I knew that neither of
them would approve, so I didn’t tell them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Luckily, I was free to wander on my own on my
visits to Ilha. Cousin Sergio, my betrothed, would have certainly accompanied
me if he could have. But, thank God, he had to stay on board to look after the
family ferry. On arrival, after securing the boat and leaving Cousins Sergio
and Talady with a heap of instructions, Father and Uncle Felis always went straight
into the Green Mosque. After that, they always went to the house of their
friend, Senhor<i> </i>Abdul Kassan, to drink
home-made gin, and pick over the latest events and scandals in the Province. Ma
called those meetings ‘Parliamentary Sessions’ because Father and his cronies
acted as though Ilha was still the country’s capital and as though they were
the Government’s Ministers solving all the problems from the trades unions’
disputes to the shortages, Health and Education. One subject they never discussed
was the War. Like mentioning Uncle Felis’ son who ran away, the subject was
taboo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Meanwhile, on arrival, I would hurry away to
meander up and down the island’s three avenues, always gravitating towards the
old taxi stop. So there I was sitting alone in a crowd, feeling bored and
restless on that morning of October 1986, until, at eight forty-five, a new
convoy pulled up in a cloud of dust. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I had heard it coming for the past ten minutes.
Even before the trucks began to rattle single file across the bridge, there
were shouts and hurrahs from the beaches of both Jambezi and Ilha to herald
their arrival. A new convoy meant new supplies of everything from Malawian
sugar to penicillin, cigarettes, bread-flour, petrol, bicycle tyres, potatoes,
nails, candles, fishing line, and even tins of things like sardines and tomato
paste which our Cuban and Russian allies sold on the side. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">There was a light breeze blowing across from
the rocky beach towards the bridge but the sun was already scorching. A young
gull was drifting on a current of air. I stopped to watch it, envying its
ability to glide. The air was fragrant with jasmine from the garden of the
little mosque on the rocks and frangipani from the cemetery behind me. The new
convoy was relatively small. It was headed by a battered military lorry full of
civilians. There were only seven trucks in all, each laden with goods and
topped with dozens of passengers clinging to the tarpaulin ropes as thickly as
flies on a plate of pudding. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">All around me, women and girls converged to
sell cups of water, donuts, coconut buns, bananas, guavas, little grilled fish
on sticks, and quarter-litre gin bottles filled with gritty <i>maheu</i>. From all three roads that sliced
up the island, people were running towards the incoming trucks. There were
parents hoping to see their children, and children hoping to see their parents.
The Indian shopkeepers and their assistants were running as though it was
Sports Day at school to get to the goods that would be for sale before anyone
else. And the black marketers, (who were both Indian and Macua) were running
too; and because they were mostly younger and fitter, they reached the trucks
before the shopkeepers; so there was a lot of pushing and shouting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I was sitting on a big rock set back a little
way from the road. It was opposite where the third truck in the convoy was churning
up an extra cloud of dust. Watching it was better than any newsreel: as though
by magic, the usually quiet island was a dissected termite hill. Passengers
literally spilled off the trucks, jumping on top of each other, falling in a
heap in their haste, and then running in every direction. Somewhere a child was
crying. Car horns were blaring, and drivers and sellers were shouting their
wares. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Sugar! Sugar! Sugar!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Gasoline! Gas-o-leen!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“You want it, we’ve got it!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“First come first serve!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Get your money out: cash only’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">In unison, three boys with unruly hair jumped
off the side of the third truck beside me. They were dressed very smartly and
had high-soled running shoes that they never sell on the central market because
only <i>Akunhas </i>have such shoes. With
amazing efficiency, they gathered together a pile of boxes which they divided
up, loading them so high they could not see where they were walking and despite
that, they trotted off into the crowd managing all the while not to fall over.
Once they were out of sight, I concentrated on a chocolate blancmange mother
and her skinny daughter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The mother got stuck climbing down and yelled, wobbling,
until she was helped off the ropes by a young man who seemed to be the
conductor. She made a great to-do about unloading her two knobbly sacks which
she handled as though they were as fragile as eggshells. Several Indian traders
literally pulled her over to them, knocking her head-wrap askew in their haste.
I wondered what she had brought in those bumpy sacks that could be of so much
interest. Other passengers jumped and climbed down from all sides, blocking my
view while kicking and elbowing each other and apologising all the while to no
one and everyone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">And then, standing alone in the middle of the
lumpy tarpaulin while all around below him a hundred fingers unpicked its ropes
to release its load, I saw him. He had long smooth limbs and a shine on his
skin as fine as the bowls of polished ebony that the itinerant sculptors make. And
he was young, but, I reckoned, already eight or ten years older than me. His
nose had been broken long since and mended crooked; and I wondered what
misfortune had caused it. And he had gazelle-eyes with lashes so long they
seemed hardly able to stay up above them, curling down and then rising again. His
mouth was wide and his lips were full. I watched him gaze across the bound
canvas tarpaulin as though searching for something he’d lost. Just watching
him, every part of my body began to tingle. And just as suddenly, I ceased to
feel restless because I knew that I’d found what I was looking for. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Like a humming bird, he darted downwards into a
dip in the canvas so that he was momentarily gone from my sight. A tight knot
formed in my chest, stealing my breath. I begged the Ancestors to intercede for
me: I must not lose him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">They didn´t let me down: having found what he
had been searching for, he surfaced above the edge of the load again, smiling
happily and holding up the ten metical coin he must have dropped. He had long
sensitive fingers with the flattened ends of a drummer. His face was high above
the level of mine, his eyes shone; there was a small scar on the bridge of his
nose. His teeth were like polished ivory with a gap on the right-hand side and
one slightly crooked tooth beside it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Then he saw me and grinned. I wanted to climb
inside his mouth and be swallowed by him. I smiled back, happy that he had
found his coin, happy to be near him, happy to have found him. He sprang over
the side and bounced off the ropes with the agility of a monkey. Landing at my
feet, he bowed to me and said,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Evan Garcia, born in Monapo, at your service’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I lowered my eyes and bowed my head, and then I
looked up and stared right under his curling lashes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Nina Ussene, born in Cabaceira Grande’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 6.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina Ussene, as you
see, I’m a rich man. I have this ten- <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 6.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">metical coin, won’t you
make a wish and share it with <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 6.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">me?’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">He held out his hand to help me up from the
stone. As I gripped his proffered fingers, I found the answer to the questions
that had been troubling me all year since I came of age. What does it mean to
be in love? What does it feel like? How can I get it? Where can I find it? Love
was the touch of his fingers on my palm. Love was to be near him, to share not
just his proffered coin, but for the two of us to share our lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">[The end</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">and maybe</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">a new start? ]</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Playing with Fire<b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The <i>Golden
Anchor</i> would set sail at 2 p.m., she always did. Father was very strict
about it. During the four hours and thirteen minutes that Evan Garcia and I
shared on island, we managed to fit in an entire courtship. We strolled through
Ilha as though in a trance. I was vaguely aware of people staring at us, but I
didn’t care. I knew that when I got home, news of my walking with a stranger
would have arrived before me on the gossip tom-tom; yet I did nothing to stop
it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Nothing mattered anymore except to stay with Evan
Garcia, born in Monapo. To which end, I released myself from my engagement to my
Cousin Sergio, and distanced myself entirely from my family’s preparations for
our wedding. Furthermore, I rejoiced that in the corner of Ma’s mud hut, beside
my sleeping mat, the tartan suitcase with my trousseau was waiting so
conveniently for me. Whatever new life awaited me would certainly be easier
with my supplies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Thus, while I wandered around Ilha entranced
and in love, I was also plotting exactly how to elope together with my tartan
suitcase. Actually sneaking away from our hut would be the easiest part,
because girls didn’t elope from our village so no one would suspect me. Even if
I dragged my trousseau down to the beach, Ma and my sisters would just be glad
that I was finally taking a proper interest in it. No one would imagine that
I’d be running away. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">W</span><span lang="EN-GB">ith everything a girl could want, why would I want to leave?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And yet s</span><span lang="EN-GB">leeping at home felt like lying
under a heavy stone. Just being there made me feel crushed. I tried to explain
this to Ma once, but she shushed me and made me a herbal tea that knocked me
out completely. There was no room in our village for discontent; and thus, I
felt, no place in it for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The siri siri plant creeps all over the
mangrove’s floor and tiny pink flowers bloom between its fat stems. Every day,
those flowers are drowned by the tide and yet they survive until one of us
walks on them, bruising their pink petals to purple. Evan told me that I was as
pretty as a siri siri flower. Soon after he said it, I thought: ‘my family are
the fisherman’s feet treading on me and bruising my petals’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Looking back, I think maybe I should have felt
some remorse for the hurt and loss of face I was to cause to Sergio, my
childhood sweetheart; and for the insult and loss of face to Uncle Felis and
the rest of our family. But I blush to say that I felt none at all. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">W</span><span lang="EN-GB">hat they would see as my jilting
(and betraying) my cousin, and insulting our village; I saw differently. From
spiralling down into a kind of madness, I had found an escape. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Evan</span><span lang="EN-GB"> was the current of air upon which I
could glide away. I toyed with the idea of declaring my change of heart, but I
had to dismiss it: because my family could forgive many things, but no one in
the village could forgive a suitor the almost unpardonable sin of hailing from
beyond its boundaries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan came from ‘Out There’, from Monapo, which
is over one hundred kilometres away. His family was unknown to our family; his Ancestors
were not buried within walking distance of our sacred baobab tree. So, just like
talking about Uncle Felis’ son who ran away, and talking about the War: for me to
marry Evan Garcia was also taboo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Despite the indecent speed with which I began
to plot my Cousin Sergio’s betrayal, shame was far from my thoughts. I was glad
that the gods had smiled on me and allowed me to find this new man from among
so many others. Meanwhile, the logistics of how to elope nagged and snagged but,
as my Aunt Aziza used to say: the fruit of the baobab often falls far from the
tree. Dozens of different plans sprung to mind but the only viable one seemed
to be to leave my village that same night. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’d ‘borrow’ Father’s canoe and paddle away because
there could never be a wedding in the village for me and Evan Garcia; and within
minutes of his jumping off that truck, I couldn’t contemplate my life without
him. Thinking about my father, I wondered what would upset him most: my leaving,
or my letting him down? My leaving, or my taking his boat?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">On the flat roof of the fortress, on top of the
world, my new love and I wove between the canons on the empty parapet. We gazed
out towards my home beach. He told me about his job at the cotton factory in
Monapo, his drums, and his hut with a tangle of night-scented jasmine that
covered one side of it. He’d wanted us to stick to the town square to protect
my reputation, but I told him not to worry. I told myself that I’d go home and
face the accusations that had surely preceded me; and I’d pretend to be
penitent so that I could smuggle my suitcase out of our hut. And I had to get
the <i>Eide </i>pocket money I’d been saving
up for years and years. Half of it had gone to the Sorceress to help her cast
her spells, but the other half was hidden in a piece of plastic bag under my
mat. I’d get my things and be gone before anyone suspected me of such folly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Evan didn’t want me to do it. (Kiss me, my
love, and then let your lips graze over me). He wanted to come to our village
and ask Father for my hand. Well, I explained to Evan how unwelcome he’d be in
my home because my hand had already been given to the son of my father’s best friend.
Sitting high up the wall of the fortress with the breeze in our faces, despite
my best efforts, Evan tried to persuade me to wait until we could have the
blessing of my parents ‘because’ he said, ‘an unblessed marriage is a great
burden to carry through life’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We stayed at loggerheads over it and then like
two mules refusing to give way, we had our first argument just before we
parted,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina, dear Nina, it is wrong to run
away. You don’t know me. Monapo is another world and I have only a tiny mud hut
far from the town. You might not like it. You don’t know my family yet. You
might not like them. We must wait. It is the only way.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“Evan, I <i>will</i> run away! And I <i>do</i>
know Monapo: I went there long ago when my sister fell over the side of our
boat and broke her arm. We went to Monapo for an X-ray and then we went up the
hill to the town. So I <i>have</i> seen it
and I like it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I <i>want</i> to live in another world. I live in a huge mud hut that I
hate; I will love your tiny hut because it is <i>yours</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’ll make it a fine home for us and
our children. I’ll plant papaya trees and a mango tree and a coconut palm
beside it. And I will bring seeds from home to make a vegetable garden with
good things to eat. I will make your jasmine spread further to wrap us in its
fragrance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">And I will not need to be near to a
town because I will be near to you.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">He shook his head and narrowed his huge, limpid
eyes. He licked the corner of his lips </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(</span><span lang="EN-GB">lick mine). Taking his fingers, I
played with them, running my fingertips along the inside of his wrists as
lightly as spiders. He gulped, swallowing back his words as I dived in again,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“I don’t know your family: but I
will honour and respect them because they are your family. A girl must always
leave home to marry. Of course I’d prefer a blessing; but I know that not
having it is the price I will have to pay for marrying you.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina, it is wrong to run away. You
must stop it. Don’t you see? You are headstrong and wild and we must wait’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“I’ve been waiting for you, Evan
Garcia. I am headstrong and wild: that is who I am; and my heart tells me to do
this. I will come to you at dawn. The roads are not safe, as you know, so I
will borrow Father’s dug-out canoe and paddle across the water to Jambezi.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“No and no! I don’t want you to run
such dangers. Nina, I don’t want it’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">He is stronger than me, but I am the more
stubborn. I repeated over and over again that I would meet him on the beach by
such and such a tree. He closed his eyes and turned away from me, but I went
on, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“We cannot meet on Ilha because I
have too much family here; and the bridge will be closed at night; and I am
underage; and the soldiers will stop us in the morning.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Wonder widened Evan’s eyes while he listened to
me with a mixture of anger, fear, and desire. I had done my utmost to hypnotise
him and caress him into submission, but he snatched his hands from mine and
told me firmly, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina Ussene, such a plan is
madness. How can you paddle so far in the dark? How can you disobey your
parents and incur their wrath and the wrath of your Ancestors? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It is not safe at Jambezi. You are
safe from the War in your village, but there is no such safety in Monapo. We
can only return with a convoy and there will be no convoy for days. That means
we would have to sleep rough in the bush beyond Jambezi. What will we eat? How
will we protect ourselves from the bandits who roam the beach? ’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I tried to jump in again, but he had the
talking stick and he held me back, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina Ussene, stop it! You are a
rich girl now. With me, you will be poor. You don’t know what you are saying!
It must stop and I must prove my worth to your father. So we must wait.’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">From the way he lowered his long lashes and
stared at his feet, I knew that what he was saying was not what he really wanted.
I found the chink between the two stances and rammed in my wedge, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Evan Garcia, my husband-to be, I
could paddle to Lungá if need be to be with you. I must disobey my parents
because they are blind to what is in my heart.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">What did I care a</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">b</span><span lang="EN-GB">out anything else</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">?</span><span lang="EN-GB"> His touch could calm or excite me
at just the right time. I believed that
the Ancestors were guiding me in that joint venture. Although I will leave the
sphere of their graves, their spirits will stay with me wherever I go. I had
heard that indeed it was not safe in Jambezi: so we´d have to be careful. I</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">'</span><span lang="EN-GB">d take some food with me and I
already had a sharp knife in my trousseau with which my new partner would
protect us from bandits. As to whether there would be enough food: we wouldn´t
feel hunger for many days because we would feast on each other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">We didn´t touch then but I drove my future
husband wild with lust. I made him writhe as though in pain. And that was only
fair because the ache inside me was so great that it was all I could do to stop
myself from pulling him to me, inside me; and holding him there forever. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Once I had got him fit to burst, I explained
how the very safety of my village was smothering me. Desire had tamped my voice
to a hoarse whisper so he had to strain to hear me. He leaned forwards and I
inhaled his breath. I wondered how it would feel to lick his eyelids. There
were tiny white threads caught in his lashes, so he looked like a child who’d
been playing under a kapok tree. And if he licked me, I wondered, what would
his spit taste of? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">A vein was throbbing in his temple drumming
from him to me as I told him that although I might seem rich to him, everything
inside me was fighting against what I had: so I was poor. But he kept telling
me how poor he was, as though I was deaf and hadn´t heard him properly the
first time. Then we both skirted around our mutual arousal, each trying to
douse the flames with paltry leaves. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">E</span><span lang="EN-GB">very time we looked back into each other’s
eyes, we fanned a forest fire and flames leapt out and burnt us. I remembered
how once, on purpose, I’d scalded my hand with boiling water so as to wangle
another trip to Ilha. I remembered how much it had hurt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">As we argued, waves of heat rolled over us from
the fires we had kindled and we scalded each other with words that hurt. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(‘’</span><span lang="EN-GB">Maybe you don’t love me’’. ‘’Maybe you
don’t care.’’ ‘’If you are afraid....’’). Torn between desire, love and wanting
to do what was right, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Evan</span><span lang="EN-GB"> didn’t stand a chance. With nothing to lose, I kept scoring points,
rattling off facts and figures to confuse him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Below us and beyond, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">C</span><span lang="EN-GB">ousin </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">S</span><span lang="EN-GB">ergio had raised the <i>Golden Anchor’s</i> mast. As I negotiated a
narrow stairway past the old dungeons, I reminded my new fianc</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">é</span><span lang="EN-GB"> that The Elders always said that
the greatest wealth is our children. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“So, Evan Garcia, give me as many
babies as you can. ’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(D</span><span lang="EN-GB">o it now, my love, and never stop).
At one point, I pushed him against a greenish wall, lost in frenzy. He pulled
me along towards the gate. The more he resisted me, the more I loved him. I
knew that I had to convince him in the few minutes left before our boat set
sail. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">S</span><span lang="EN-GB">o I trotted
beside him, pleading, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Trust me, my darling, as I trust you: I know
what I am saying. With this </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">W</span><span lang="EN-GB">ar, even though no one speaks of it here, it seems that no one knows
what will happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Out There, the fighting never seems
to end and it could come any day to our village. I will run away from my family
but I will not run away from life. Chance only knocks once on our door, Evan
Garcia. It is knocking now on mine.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan was still not convinced when I bid
farewell and left him <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">My grandfather used to say that
sometimes what looks like the wrong thing is the right thing to do if your heart
promises to you that it’s the truth. My heart has promised it as I promise now
to you, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Evan Garcia</span><span lang="EN-GB">. So wait for me at dawn and I will come.’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Without giving him time to reply, I ran to the
beach, vaulted over the low wall and ran through the shallows to the <i>Golden Anchor</i>. As we set sail, Cousin Sergio
was in an intuitive sulk. I chatted with him to camouflage my new love. During
the entire voyage home, I talked to Sergio but my thoughts were all with Evan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan Garcia and I had held hands but we had not
kissed or touched each other in the places where lovers touch. I wished we had;
why hadn’t we? I had known him for four hours and thirteen minutes only; and I
did not know a single member of his family. Four hours: we could have made a
baby in that time: we could have become each other’s blood family. I wished we
had. Why hadn’t we?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">If my family or any of my friends had known
what I intended to do, they would have said that I was mad or possessed by a
demon. They would have tied me to a tree to protect me because nobody in their
right mind disobeyed or disrespected their family. Well, maybe I was mad, and
even if I was possessed by a demon, it was a demon that gave me the gift of
love: and what greater gift is there? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-21024761139908803812012-11-10T03:15:00.003-08:002012-11-10T03:15:45.946-08:00Photo that goes with my short story 'Watching the Rain'<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEy_3yqPQ-4cIeR9l66zqTRYLHl6c99yhffVvHwSu8rv-XeY-MFP2TavG36zn2MEg7tvBSMFkZ-1j-LfHeqlwd1iQyJokh_7mvudlmG4HfuMZlxxKhI9zPQsQdjfmMtgeMIRtIsEJh1XZM/s1600/IMGP3111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEy_3yqPQ-4cIeR9l66zqTRYLHl6c99yhffVvHwSu8rv-XeY-MFP2TavG36zn2MEg7tvBSMFkZ-1j-LfHeqlwd1iQyJokh_7mvudlmG4HfuMZlxxKhI9zPQsQdjfmMtgeMIRtIsEJh1XZM/s320/IMGP3111.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-88464680289043530342012-11-10T02:56:00.001-08:002012-11-10T02:56:27.979-08:00He Came to me Like a Humming Bird, a new short story<br />
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">He
Came to me </span></b><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">L</span></b><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">ike a Humming Bird<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Whenever I escaped from the village, I liked
pretending to be an islander; wandering around raising white dust as I visited
the almost empty markets and the yellow arcade by the Government Residence. I
used to explore the fortress, the ruined palaces where entire colonies of
refugees were living, and the ladies section of the Green Mosque. I
criss-crossed the cluttered, shady alleyways that traversed from shore to
shore, stepping over women and children, cooking pots, bundles of ragged laundry,
and piles of scavenged firewood. When the tide was out, the beaches were
teeming with waders gathering shellfish and crabs. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">From the crenulated parapet, I could see the
fringe of mangroves of our village. That ancient platform studded with rusty
canons pointing out to sea was the only deserted part of the Stone City. The
rest was crawling with islanders and refugees alike. Mothers carried babies
strapped to their backs with cotton wraps; but other people also carried what
was left of grown men and women strapped to their backs like giant babies. My
Cousin Sergio said they were the remains of people who had stepped on
landmines, but when I asked him what a landmine was, he shrugged and said,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “We don’t talk about that.’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">There never seemed to be enough reasons for me
to keep sailing to Ilha. Sometimes I’d spoil things at home and then blame it
on the rats just so Ma would have to replace whatever it was, or get it mended,
and she’d ask me if I could <i>bear</i> to
sail over <i>again</i> to buy a new one or
get the old one repaired. That way (and once even burning my hand so I could go
to the hospital) I managed to get away quite a lot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The only problem was that I found Cousin Sergio
annoying on the ferry crossings. He had always teased me a bit as part of the
fun we had together, but after I became a woman, I stopped liking it. I felt
rushes of anger whenever he pinched my arms or ogled my breasts. He kept
inventing opportunites to touch me. He’d hold onto me as I got on and off the
dhow; and he’d brush his hand against my head scarf - accidentally on purpose -
every time he lowered the sail to punt our dhow to the beach. His touch made me
feel queasy and I began to like the idea of marrying him less and less. But I
didn’t actually decide <i>not</i> to until I
met the stranger I was destined to marry: that is, until I met Evan Garcia.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The day I met him, I was on Ilha sitting under
a banyan tree by the empty petrol pump by the new bridge to the mainland. It
was where the taxis had arrived and departed before the War. And then it was
where the convoys of trucks arrived from Out There. Because soldiers and
bandits alike robbed and hi-jacked solitary cars and harassed the convoys,
sometimes, no trucks arrived. Then I could only sit and imagine their arrival
with nothing to distract me from my fantasy except for the black and white
crows that scoured the beaches. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">But sometimes a convoy did come in when I was
there and then I liked to sit and watch the flow of passengers with all their
bundles and sacks and animals and suitcases and bags because they seemed to
have such an exciting life compared to mine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">There would be soldiers coming home on leave
and refugees with sunken eyes and spindly legs. I imagined they came from all
the places I had learned about at school: places such as Nampula and Monapo,
Beira and Nacala, Pemba and Quelimane. They were always covered in dust from
head to toe, but to my young eyes that dust was just powdered glamour. Although
they were dark-and light-skinned, Indian, Macua, Chinese, and <i>Akunha</i>; the one thing they all had in
common was their relief at having arrived safely. If any of them happened to
greet me, then I felt almost as though I too had travelled from afar, or that I
was on the brink of an adventure. Ma and Father didn’t know that I spent my
time hanging around the old taxi stop. Instinctively, I knew that neither of
them would approve, so I didn’t tell them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Luckily, I was free to wander on my own on my
visits to Ilha. Cousin Sergio, my betrothed, would have certainly accompanied
me if he could have. But, thank God, he had to stay on board to look after the
family ferry. On arrival, after securing the boat and leaving Cousins Sergio
and Talady with a heap of instructions, Father and Uncle Felis always went straight
into the Green Mosque. After that, they always went to the house of their
friend, Senhor<i> </i>Abdul Kassan, to drink
home-made gin, and pick over the latest events and scandals in the Province. Ma
called those meetings ‘Parliamentary Sessions’ because Father and his cronies
acted as though Ilha was still the country’s capital and as though they were
the Government’s Ministers solving all the problems from the trades unions’
disputes to the shortages, Health and Education. One subject they never discussed
was the War. Like mentioning Uncle Felis’ son who ran away, the subject was
taboo. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Meanwhile, on arrival, I would hurry away to
meander up and down the island’s three avenues, always gravitating towards the
old taxi stop. So there I was sitting alone in a crowd, feeling bored and
restless on that morning of October 1986, until, at eight forty-five, a new
convoy pulled up in a cloud of dust. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I had heard it coming for the past ten minutes.
Even before the trucks began to rattle single file across the bridge, there
were shouts and hurrahs from the beaches of both Jambezi and Ilha to herald
their arrival. A new convoy meant new supplies of everything from Malawian
sugar to penicillin, cigarettes, bread-flour, petrol, bicycle tyres, potatoes,
nails, candles, fishing line, and even tins of things like sardines and tomato
paste which our Cuban and Russian allies sold on the side. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">There was a light breeze blowing across from
the rocky beach towards the bridge but the sun was already scorching. A young gull
was drifting on a current of air. I stopped to watch it, envying its ability to
glide. The air was fragrant with jasmine from the garden of the little mosque
on the rocks and frangipani from the cemetery behind me. The new convoy was
relatively small. It was headed by a battered military lorry full of civilians.
There were only seven trucks in all, each laden with goods and topped with
dozens of passengers clinging to the tarpaulin ropes as thickly as flies on a
plate of pudding. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">All around me, women and girls converged to
sell cups of water, donuts, coconut buns, bananas, guavas, little grilled fish
on sticks, and quarter-litre gin bottles filled with gritty <i>maheu</i>. From all three roads that sliced
up the island, people were running towards the incoming trucks. There were
parents hoping to see their children, and children hoping to see their parents.
The Indian shopkeepers and their assistants were running as though it was
Sports Day at school to get to the goods that would be for sale before anyone else.
And the black marketers, (who were both Indian and Macua) were running too; and
because they were mostly younger and fitter, they reached the trucks before the
shopkeepers; so there was a lot of pushing and shouting. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I was sitting on a big rock set back a little
way from the road. It was opposite where the third truck in the convoy was
churning up an extra cloud of dust. Watching it was better than any newsreel:
as though by magic, the usually quiet island was a dissected termite hill.
Passengers literally spilled off the trucks, jumping on top of each other,
falling in a heap in their haste, and then running in every direction.
Somewhere a child was crying. Car horns were blaring, and drivers and sellers
were shouting their wares. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Sugar! Sugar! Sugar!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Gasoline! Gas-o-leen!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“You want it, we’ve got it!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“First come first serve!’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Get your money out: cash only’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">In unison, three boys with unruly hair jumped
off the side of the third truck beside me. They were dressed very smartly and
had high-soled running shoes that they never sell on the central market because
only <i>Akunhas </i>have such shoes. With
amazing efficiency, they gathered together a pile of boxes which they divided
up, loading them so high they could not see where they were walking and despite
that, they trotted off into the crowd managing all the while not to fall over.
Once they were out of sight, I concentrated on a chocolate blancmange mother
and her skinny daughter. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The mother got stuck climbing down and yelled, wobbling,
until she was helped off the ropes by a young man who seemed to be the
conductor. She made a great to-do about unloading her two knobbly sacks which
she handled as though they were as fragile as eggshells. Several Indian traders
literally pulled her over to them, knocking her head-wrap askew in their haste.
I wondered what she had brought in those bumpy sacks that could be of so much interest.
Other passengers jumped and climbed down from all sides, blocking my view while
kicking and elbowing each other and apologising all the while to no one and
everyone. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">And then, standing alone in the middle of the
lumpy tarpaulin while all around below him a hundred fingers unpicked its ropes
to release its load, I saw him. He had long smooth limbs and a shine on his
skin as fine as the bowls of polished ebony that the itinerant sculptors make. And
he was young, but, I reckoned, already eight or ten years older than me. His
nose had been broken long since and mended crooked; and I wondered what
misfortune had caused it. And he had gazelle-eyes with lashes so long they
seemed hardly able to stay up above them, curling down and then rising again.
His mouth was wide and his lips were full. I watched him gaze across the bound
canvas tarpaulin as though searching for something he’d lost. Just watching
him, every part of my body began to tingle. And just as suddenly, I ceased to
feel restless because I knew that I’d found what I was looking for. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Like a humming bird, he darted downwards into a
dip in the canvas so that he was momentarily gone from my sight. A tight knot
formed in my chest, stealing my breath. I begged the Ancestors to intercede for
me: I must not lose him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">They didn´t let me down: having found what he
had been searching for, he surfaced above the edge of the load again, smiling
happily and holding up the ten metical coin he must have dropped. He had long
sensitive fingers with the flattened ends of a drummer. His face was high above
the level of mine, his eyes shone; there was a small scar on the bridge of his
nose. His teeth were like polished ivory with a gap on the right-hand side and
one slightly crooked tooth beside it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Then he saw me and grinned. I wanted to climb
inside his mouth and be swallowed by him. I smiled back, happy that he had
found his coin, happy to be near him, happy to have found him. He sprang over
the side and bounced off the ropes with the agility of a monkey. Landing at my
feet, he bowed to me and said,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Evan Garcia, born in Monapo, at your
service’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I lowered my eyes and bowed my head, and then I
looked up and stared right under his curling lashes,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Nina Ussene, born in Cabaceira Grande’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 6.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina Ussene, as you
see, I’m a rich man. I have this ten- <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 6.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">metical coin, won’t you
make a wish and share it with <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 6.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">me?’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">He held out his hand to help me up from the
stone. As I gripped his proffered fingers, I found the answer to the questions
that had been troubling me all year since I came of age. What does it mean to
be in love? What does it feel like? How can I get it? Where can I find it? Love
was the touch of his fingers on my palm. Love was to be near him, to share not
just his proffered coin, but for the two of us to share our lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The <i>Golden
Anchor</i> would set sail at 2 p.m., she always did. Father was very strict
about it. During the four hours and thirteen minutes that Evan and I shared on
island, we managed to fit in an entire courtship. We strolled through Ilha as
though in a trance. I was vaguely aware of people staring at us, but I didn’t
care. I knew that when I got home, news of my walking with a stranger would
have arrived before me on the gossip tom-tom; yet I did nothing to stop it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Nothing mattered anymore except to stay with
Evan Garcia, born in Monapo. To which end, I released myself from my engagement
to Sergio, and distanced myself entirely from my family’s preparations for our
wedding. Furthermore, I rejoiced that in the corner of Ma’s mud hut, beside my
sleeping mat, the tartan suitcase with my trousseau was waiting so conveniently
for me. Whatever new life awaited me would certainly be easier with my
supplies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Thus, while I wandered around Ilha entranced
and in love, I was also plotting exactly how to elope together with my tartan
suitcase. Actually sneaking away from our hut would be the easiest part,
because girls didn’t elope from our village so no one would suspect me. Even if
I dragged my trousseau down to the beach, Ma and my sisters would just be glad
that I was finally taking a proper interest in it. No one would imagine that
I’d be running away. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">W</span><span lang="EN-GB">ith everything a girl could want, why would I want to leave?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">And yet s</span><span lang="EN-GB">leeping at home felt like lying
under a heavy stone. Just being there made me feel crushed. I tried to explain
this to Ma once, but she shushed me and made me a herbal tea that knocked me
out completely. There was no room in our village for discontent; and thus, I
felt, no place in it for me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">The siri siri plant creeps all over the
mangrove’s floor and tiny pink flowers bloom between its fat stems. Every day,
those flowers are drowned by the tide and yet they survive until one of us
walks on them, bruising their pink petals to purple. Evan told me that I was as
pretty as a siri siri flower. Soon after he said it, I thought: ‘my family are
the fisherman’s feet treading on me and bruising my petals’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Looking back, I think maybe I should have felt
some remorse for the hurt and loss of face I was to cause to Sergio, my
childhood sweetheart; and for the insult and loss of face to Uncle Felis and
the rest of our family. But I blush to say that I felt none at all. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">W</span><span lang="EN-GB">hat they would see as my jilting
(and betraying) my cousin, and insulting our village; I saw differently. From
spiralling down into a kind of madness, I had found an escape. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Evan</span><span lang="EN-GB"> was the current of air upon which I
could glide away. I toyed with the idea of declaring my change of heart, but I
had to dismiss it: because my family could forgive many things, but no one in
the village could forgive a suitor the almost unpardonable sin of hailing from
beyond its boundaries. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan came from ‘Out There’, from Monapo, which
is over one hundred kilometres away. His family was unknown to our family; his
Ancestors were not buried within walking distance of our sacred baobab tree.
So, just like talking about Uncle Felis’ son who ran away, and talking about the
War: for me to marry Evan Garcia was also taboo.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Despite the indecent speed with which I began
to plot my Cousin Sergio’s betrayal, shame was far from my thoughts. I was glad
that the gods had smiled on me and allowed me to find this new man from among
so many others. Meanwhile, the logistics of how to elope nagged and snagged but,
as my Aunt Aziza used to say: the fruit of the baobab often falls far from the
tree. Dozens of different plans sprung to mind but the only viable one seemed
to be to leave my village that same night. I’d ‘borrow’ Father’s canoe and
paddle away because there could never be a wedding in the village for me and
Evan Garcia; and within minutes of his jumping off that truck, I couldn’t
contemplate my life without him. Thinking about my father, I wondered what
would upset him most: my leaving, or my letting him down? My leaving, or my
taking his boat?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">On the flat roof of the fortress, on top of the
world, my new love and I wove between the canons on the empty parapet. We gazed
out towards my home beach. He told me about his job at the cotton factory in
Monapo, his drums, and his hut with a tangle of night-scented jasmine that
covered one side of it. He’d wanted us to stick to the town square to protect
my reputation, but I told him not to worry. I told myself that I’d go home and
face the accusations that had surely preceded me; and I’d pretend to be
penitent so that I could smuggle my suitcase out of our hut. And I had to get
the <i>Eide </i>pocket money I’d been saving
up for years and years. Half of it had gone to the Sorceress to help her cast
her spells, but the other half was hidden in a piece of plastic bag under my
mat. I’d get my things and be gone before anyone suspected me of such folly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan didn’t want me to do it. (Kiss me, my
love, and then let your lips graze over me). He wanted to come to our village
and ask Father for my hand. Well, I explained to Evan how unwelcome he’d be in
my home because my hand had already been given to the son of my father’s best friend.
Sitting high up the wall of the fortress with the breeze in our faces, despite
my best efforts, Evan tried to persuade me to wait until we could have the
blessing of my parents ‘because’ he said, ‘an unblessed marriage is a great
burden to carry through life’. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">We stayed at loggerheads over it and then like
two mules refusing to give way, we had our first argument just before we
parted,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina, dear Nina, it is wrong to run
away. You don’t know me. Monapo is another world and I have only a tiny mud hut
far from the town. You might not like it. You don’t know my family yet. You
might not like them. We must wait. It is the only way.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Evan, I <i>will</i> run away! And I <i>do</i>
know Monapo: I went there long ago when my sister fell over the side of our
boat and broke her arm. We went to Monapo for an X-ray and then we went up the
hill to the town. So I <i>have</i> seen it
and I like it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I <i>want</i> to live in another world. I live in a huge mud hut that I
hate; I will love your tiny hut because it is <i>yours</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I’ll make it a fine home for us and
our children. I’ll plant papaya trees and a mango tree and a coconut palm
beside it. And I will bring seeds from home to make a vegetable garden with
good things to eat. I will make your jasmine spread further to wrap us in its
fragrance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">And I will not need to be near to a
town because I will be near to you.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">He shook his head and narrowed his huge, limpid
eyes. He licked the corner of his lips </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(</span><span lang="EN-GB">lick mine). Taking his fingers, I
played with them, running my fingertips along the inside of his wrists as
lightly as spiders. He gulped, swallowing back his words as I dived in again,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“I don’t know your family: but I
will honour and respect them because they are your family. A girl must always
leave home to marry. Of course I’d prefer a blessing; but I know that not
having it is the price I will have to pay for marrying you.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina, it is wrong to run away. You
must stop it. Don’t you see? You are headstrong and wild and we must wait’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“I’ve been waiting for you, Evan
Garcia. I am headstrong and wild: that is who I am; and my heart tells me to do
this. I will come to you at dawn. The roads are not safe, as you know, so I
will borrow Father’s dug-out canoe and paddle across the water to Jambezi.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“No and no! I don’t want you to run
such dangers. Nina, I don’t want it’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">He is stronger than me, but I am the more
stubborn. I repeated over and over again that I would meet him on the beach by
such and such a tree. He closed his eyes and turned away from me, but I went
on, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“We cannot meet on Ilha because I
have too much family here; and the bridge will be closed at night; and I am
underage; and the soldiers will stop us in the morning.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Wonder widened Evan’s eyes while he listened to
me with a mixture of anger, fear,, and desire. I had done my utmost to
hypnotise him and caress him into submission, but he snatched his hands from
mine and told me firmly, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina Ussene, such a plan is
madness. How can you paddle so far in the dark? How can you disobey your
parents and incur their wrath and the wrath of your Ancestors? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">It is not safe at Jambezi. You are
safe from the War in your village, but there is no such safety in Monapo. We
can only return with a convoy and there will be no convoy for days. That means
we would have to sleep rough in the bush beyond Jambezi. What will we eat? How
will we protect ourselves from the bandits who roam the beach? ’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">I tried to jump in again, but he had the
talking stick and he held me back, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Nina Ussene, stop it! You are a
rich girl now. With me, you will be poor. You don’t know what you are saying!
It must stop and I must prove my worth to your father. So we must wait.’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">From the way he lowered his long lashes and
stared at his feet, I knew that what he was saying was not what he really
wanted. I found the chink between the two stances and rammed in my wedge, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“Evan Garcia, my husband-to be, I
could paddle to Lungá if need be to be with you. I must disobey my parents
because they are blind to what is in my heart.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">What did I care a</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">b</span><span lang="EN-GB">out anything else</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">?</span><span lang="EN-GB"> His touch could calm or excite me
at just the right time. I believed that
the Ancestors were guiding me in that joint venture. Although I will leave the
sphere of their graves, their spirits will stay with me wherever I go. I had
heard that indeed it was not safe in Jambezi: so we´d have to be careful. I</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">'</span><span lang="EN-GB">d take some food with me and I
already had a sharp knife in my trousseau with which my new partner would
protect us from bandits. As to whether there would be enough food: we wouldn´t
feel hunger for many days because we would feast on each other. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">We didn´t touch then but I drove my future
husband wild with lust. I made him writhe as though in pain. And that was only
fair because the ache inside me was so great that it was all I could do to stop
myself from pulling him to me, inside me; and holding him there forever. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Once I had got him fit to burst, I explained
how the very safety of my village was smothering me. Desire had tamped my voice
to a hoarse whisper so he had to strain to hear me. He leaned forwards and I
inhaled his breath. I wondered how it would feel to lick his eyelids. There
were tiny white threads caught in his lashes, so he looked like a child who’d
been playing under a kapok tree. And if he licked me, I wondered, what would
his spit taste of? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">A vein was throbbing in his temple drumming
from him to me as I told him that although I might seem rich to him, everything
inside me was fighting against what I had: so I was poor. But he kept telling
me how poor he was, as though I was deaf and hadn´t heard him properly the
first time. Then we both skirted around our mutual arousal, each trying to
douse the flames with paltry leaves. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">E</span><span lang="EN-GB">very time we looked back into each other’s
eyes, we fanned a forest fire and flames leapt out and burnt us. I remembered
how once, on purpose, I’d scalded my hand with boiling water so as to wangle
another trip to Ilha. I remembered how much it had hurt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">As we argued, waves of heat rolled over us from
the fires we had kindled and we scalded each other with words that hurt. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(‘’</span><span lang="EN-GB">Maybe you don’t love me’’. ‘’Maybe
you don’t care.’’ ‘’If you are afraid....’’). Torn between desire, love and
wanting to do what was right, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Evan</span><span lang="EN-GB"> didn’t stand a chance. With nothing to lose, I kept scoring points,
rattling off facts and figures to confuse him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Below us and beyond, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">C</span><span lang="EN-GB">ousin </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">S</span><span lang="EN-GB">ergio had raised the <i>Golden Anchor’s</i> mast. As I negotiated a
narrow stairway past the old dungeons, I reminded my new fianc</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">é</span><span lang="EN-GB"> that The Elders always said that
the greatest wealth is our children. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 36.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB">“So, Evan Garcia, give me as many
babies as you can. ’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">(D</span><span lang="EN-GB">o it now, my love, and never stop).
At one point, I pushed him against a greenish wall, lost in frenzy. He pulled
me along towards the gate. The more he resisted me, the more I loved him. I
knew that I had to convince him in the few minutes left before our boat set
sail. </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">S</span><span lang="EN-GB">o I trotted
beside him, pleading, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB"> “Trust me, my darling, as I trust you: I know
what I am saying. With this </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">W</span><span lang="EN-GB">ar, even though no one speaks of it here, it seems that no one knows
what will happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Out There, the fighting never seems
to end and it could come any day to our village. I will run away from my family
but I will not run away from life. Chance only knocks once on our door, Evan
Garcia. It is knocking now on mine.’’ <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan was still not convinced when I bid
farewell and left him <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">My grandfather used to say that
sometimes what looks like the wrong thing is the right thing to do if your
heart promises to you that it’s the truth. My heart has promised it as I
promise now to you, </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Evan Garcia</span><span lang="EN-GB">. So wait for me at dawn and I will come.’’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Without giving him time to reply, I ran to the
beach, vaulted over the low wall and ran through the shallows to the <i>Golden Anchor</i>. As we set sail, Cousin Sergio
was in an intuitive sulk. I chatted with him to camouflage my new love. During
the entire voyage home, I talked to Sergio but my thoughts were all with Evan. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">Evan Garcia and I had held hands but we had not
kissed or touched each other in the places where lovers touch. I wished we had;
why hadn’t we? I had known him for four hours and thirteen minutes only; and I
did not know a single member of his family. Four hours: we could have made a
baby in that time: we could have become each other’s blood family. I wished we
had. Why hadn’t we?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-GB">If my family or any of my friends had known
what I intended to do, they would have said that I was mad or possessed by a
demon. They would have tied me to a tree to protect me because nobody in their
right mind disobeyed or disrespected their family. Well, maybe I was mad, and
even if I was possessed by a demon, it was a demon that gave me the gift of
love: and what greater gift is there? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-43791867279296634112012-11-09T10:44:00.002-08:002012-11-09T10:44:49.517-08:00there is a change in the airThe last few days have been hectic but quite exciting. Now, just as I found a moment to update this blog, adding a new short story, I see that I am momentarily separated from the USB that contains the story in question, so that will have to wait. Mees found the perfect photo for my 'Watching the Rain ' story but that will have to wait as well.<br />
<br />
In a few weeks time we'll be back in Mozambique, and then there are all sorts of new things coming up. I can't believe how many visitors we have had while we've been away. Well, they have all been ones we didn't meet, but they made it in absentia. Not many people actually get as far as Mossuril to visit us, but in the past couple of months, this has not been the case. It feels strange to be away while people from all over the world have trekked out to the egde of the Indian Ocean to see what we're doing and say hello. I hope it is an on-going trend and more people will follow when I am actually back.<br />
<br />
Sometimes one becomes aware of impending Change as though it were a tangible object rather than an idea. I have been feeling a big change in the air for weeks now. Something is about to happen, to take off, and change my life: the feeling is definitely a good one. It is always easy, with hindsight, to re-write history and say, 'I knew that was going to happen'; so I'll go on record now, before the event, - whatever that event might be - and say I feel it coming. It is in the air. It makes me smile to myself as I walk around Amsterdam. What, I wonder, can it be?<br />
<br />
My new short story: 'He Came to me like a Humming Bird' will be posted by tomorrowlisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-84505611530971277082012-11-04T12:59:00.003-08:002012-11-04T12:59:55.406-08:00These are family days. Lolly, my youngest daughter arrived today from Italy. And Charline, my stepdaughter who we have been nursing for the past three months after a car crash, walked this weekend without fdrutches for the first time and even danced again.<br />
<br />
between such delights, I am still editing. I am on my third week of editing a short story trilogy: <i>The Golden Anchor, He Came to me Like a Humming Bird, </i>and<i> The Wish. </i>They are love stories set in Mossuril on the edge of the Indian Ocean and the main character is a girl, Nina, who feels unaccountably different and discontented until she falls in love and elopes.<br />
<br />
I get up very early to get back to the task and I stay up late, addicted to honing and paring.<br />
<br />
I see lots of people reading this blog and that makes me feel good.<br />
<br />
More anonlisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-48639090303013605522012-10-31T18:15:00.001-07:002012-10-31T18:15:25.618-07:00'A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light' F.KafkaI am deep in Kafka: reading and re-reading. And I am starting to get homesick for Mossuril.lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-74006477896055225902012-10-26T17:51:00.003-07:002012-10-26T17:51:55.727-07:00Poeta, no cantes de la lluvia: haz lloverI have a new publisher in The Netherlands, Keff & Dessing: they are small but perfectly formed and they are passionate about what they do, which is just what I need.<br />
<br />
One of the drawbacks of living in the bush is having to let some things go. In my case, that was the whole literary scene, contacts with publishers, and keeping my beady eye on things. Having said that, I should add that I have kept on writing (and writing).<br />
<br />
Now I am back to where I started, turning up in Europe with a bundle of books to find homes for. Back in 1979 when I returned to Europe from the Venezuelan Andes, I was reluctant to let go of my mss because writing my early books had sustained me for years as a secret source of pleasure. I wrote in English surrounded by non-English speakers then; so I had no readers apart from my rather partisan mother to whom I would send snippets by post in letters that rarely arrived.<br />
<br />
Email has changed all that, but I still write in English, in a village of mostly Portuguese and Macua speakers, which tends to keep my writing very private. And once again, whether through vanity or dotage, I am reluctant to send my new books out. In an ideal world, publishers will emerge miraculously (like Floortje Dessing did last July) and find me by the beach in Mossuril. And they'll take care of my new books while understanding how fragile and bereaved some writers feel during the transition from manuscript to going into print.<br />
<br />
Once a book is published, I'm tough. I can bear the most heinous and personally mean reviews without flinching. But in that interrim stage, I cannot bear to equate writing with business or indifference.<br />
<br />
Thus, I am delighted with both Keff & Dessing.<br />
<br />
<br />
I am less than delighted with my laptop which has developed a mind of its own and seems to need a check-up with the PC Doctor. However, the idea of being separated from it for 24 hours while I am still editing is too grim. It is the first time that I have an elderly laptop to work with. Most others get lost, stolen, sat on, or otherwise disabled long before this delinquent phase. There is a lot to be said for the portable 1948 Olivetti that kept me company for thirty years, and I wish I still had it.<br />
<br />
Now that I have started writing in this birthday present blog, I have been wondering how best to use it. On the one hand, it seems to invite daily or weekly thoughts and ideas; but it is not a 'Dear Diary' type of vessel. one cannot confide (to the four walls of this world) as to a private diary. Nor can it be a coded notebook like, say, the notebooks that some writers keep. I hardly ever make notes, but I notice things and sometimes jot down cryptic messages to myself.<br />
<br />
That wouldn't work here. Bruce Chatwin had some notebooks, for instance, from a trip to Brazil, with a mass of cyphers which he and only he could understand. Even when he spent hours going over the entries with me: they made no sense except to him, to jog his memory, not mine. I suppose the obvious conclusion must be that a blog is about sharing: it seems to be personal, but it isn't. So when something captures my imagination, inspires, pleases, or tickles me, this is the place to share it.<br />
<br />
If I had a motto, it would be this:<br />
<br />
"Poeta, no cantes de la lluvia: haz llover"<br />
<br />
Which (translated from Aymaran) roughly translates from the Spanish as<br />
<br />
'Poet, don't describe the rain: make it happen!' [make it rain]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-10629323585306979322012-10-24T08:48:00.001-07:002012-10-24T08:48:07.911-07:0025th Oct Info day for Teran Foundation volunteersOn 25th October (tomorrow) at the Cafe de Punt in Amsterdam (Tweede Jacon van Campenstraat 150, 1073 XZ , just behind the Albertcuyp Market), there will be a volunteer information meeting from 4pm to 6pm to tell more about volunteering in Mozambique with Teran Foundation. If anyone is in the area, please come and hear more.lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-27541969663456409692012-10-24T08:42:00.003-07:002012-10-24T08:42:43.943-07:00Watching the Rain a new short storyHere is one of the short stories I have been editing from my new collection, 'The Promised Land, Macua Stories'. They vare all set in Mozambique in and around the area of Mossuril and Mozambique Island (Ilha) where I've been living since 2005.<br />
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<b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Watching the Rain<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">If the
storm had caught us on the beach, Bia and I could’ve danced on the sand.
There’s no fun to it here in the village. The sheet of water coming down is a
grey wrap weighted with stones. It slices in front of us like the zinc plate
the cyclone ripped off our school and sent flying round the village as a giant
razor blade cutting the tops off everyone’s cassava crop and executing
Next-Door-Fatima’s favourite goat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Yesterday
we gave up catching leaks. We don’t have enough pots or pans or Jerry cans.
Then the grass roof collapsed and now almost our whole roof is a leak. Aunt Ana
says when the sun comes out we can dry the grass and use it again. I want to
tell her that everyone knows rotten straw is rubbish, but I don’t dare because,
ever since Mama died, we have to do whatever Aunt Ana says. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This morning,
Paulo asked Dad to help him throw out the wet thatch, but Dad just blinked,
dazed as a bush baby woken in the day, and, as usual, he said nothing. So that
means we’ll have to try and re-use the straw mush while Next-Door-Fatima’s boys
stand by and laugh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">A big cobra
with black and white diamonds on its back slithered out when the thatch fell.
Even though it slid quickly, I could have hit it with a stick; but Paulo said I
had to leave it in peace because that is what the Ancestors would wish. Just
because he’s my big brother, Paulo always wants to decide what I do. And he
always claims he knows what the Ancestors would think about it. Then, of
course, there is nothing I can do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">That snake
was my ally. I wanted to kill it and sneak over to Next-Door-Fatima’s hut and
put it by her cooking pot to scare her because she didn’t pick me or Bia for
the new dance group. And she always finds ways to get me into trouble; and she
says Mama would be ashamed of me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Since I am
not brave enough to pick up a live snake, I had to let it go. That was
yesterday. Today, we are all standing in a line under the eaves of our hut
watching the rain. We are seven kids, plus Dad, Aunt Ana, and Old Abdul, who
lives with us and is someone’s wife’s cousin. Buckets of rainwater pour through
the mango tree making a pond. Beside us, Bia is standing in line with her
family, sheltering under their roof, waiting for the rain to stop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Bia’s
grandmother is covered in mud. She keeps falling down and the others prop her
up again. She looks like a stick insect. On the Ilha side, beyond Dad and poor
Chaly, Next-Door-Fatima and her three boys are pressed flat against the front
wall of their hut. The mud on it is melting. She doesn’t have a husband to
repair it. Aunt Ana says Next-Door-Fatima has never had one and her boys don’t
even have the same father. And she says there were two more babies who died
from malaria: both from other men; and that is why she’s bitter with life and
mean to me. I think there is more to it than that because Paulo is nasty to me
too and so is Professor Dominguez, our school teacher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">All our
clothes are wet and yet Aunt Ana’s wraps aren’t even damp. She has seven
beautiful cotton wraps which she keeps in a sandalwood trunk covered with a
rubber mat and raised off the ground on bamboo stilts. Rats shared two of the
wraps when she was in hospital, but the other five are perfect. One of them is
orange with black circles, and one is green with big yellow flowers painted
along the edge under some funny writing. She even has one from Beira with the
name printed on it in blue letters with birds and butterflies and little brown
stripes. They are always neatly folded but she pretends they aren’t so she can
take them out and flapper them open for everyone to admire their prints and
their spicy perfume while she re-folds them. Sometimes, she takes forever to
fold up the Beira one, doubling it and opening it over and over again as though
the memories it brings back don’t want to be packed away yet and she has to
force them down with the flat of her hand. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB"> When I grow up, I want to have seven wraps.
Next-Door-Fatima only has three, and they are so thin I can see the mangroves
through them when she hangs them out to dry. They also have peepholes where
rats have shared them because she has no wooden trunk. When I grow up I want a
sandalwood box with squiggly iron loops to lock it, and a padlock like Aunt
Ana’s with a key I’ll keep on a gold chain round my neck. But I won’t line my
box with yellowy newspapers from the War: mine will have shiny blue plastic
bags stretched out inside it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And I want
to have gold earrings like Bia’s mum; and a roof with layer upon layer of
really thick grass pressed down on the edges with bamboo sticks. And when it
rains we will sit <i>inside </i>in the dry
like at the shop with the soap and rice. And I want a husband who brings me
these things and who takes pleasure in life and is not grumpy like Paulo or
silent like my Dad. And I want to have babies:
but not so many that I die. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I’ll have
three little girls with golden ear-studs, and one baby boy with fat-rings round
his neck and wrists from all the maize-porridge we’ll feed him. And I’ll play
with them as Mama would have played with us if she hadn’t died giving birth to
Chaly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When it’s
raining and we have nothing else to do, I’ll teach my children what I learned
at school. I’ll bring in the metal charcoal burner (which my nice husband will
buy me) and we’ll stay warm around it. And while we eat donuts, I’ll show them
the letters of the alphabet so that they understand them all, including the
vowels and the difficult bits at the end. Before they go to school, I’ll teach
them to say ‘Good morning, teacher’, and ‘Good afternoon, teacher’ in
Portuguese and to know how to say ‘Sorry’ and to ask to be excused in
Portuguese so they never feel lost and stupid like I do. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When I’ve
had my four babies, I’ll go to the Witchdoctor and pay a lot of money and a
black rooster (which my husband will give me because that is how kind and good
he’ll be) and I’ll ask for a special tea and a secret spell to take home so
that no more babies take root inside me. No one can read the Witchdoctor’s
spells because he writes them in Arabic. I’ve heard Aunt Ana and her friends
talk about it. They say my Mama should’ve got it too. They say she’d be here
now if she’d asked the Witchdoctor for a spell to stop the babies germinating
inside her. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">When I was
little, I was afraid of other people. But Mama used to hold my hand on the way
to the well and every time we passed someone, she would squeeze my fingers. It
was just a tiny squeeze but it worked: I don’t fear people any more, but I miss
my Mama; and I want to find someone who will squeeze my fingers like that: so
gently that it never hurts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">I think it
is going to rain all afternoon. We’ve been standing here watching since the
fishermen came home. Soon the puddles will join up and make a pond. And if it
keeps raining, the pond will go inside and spill around the stilts of the
wooden trunk. Then Aunt Ana will pet it and tell us again about how her
grandfather carried the sandalwood box on his head all the way from Mossuril
when my grandmother came to our village as a bride. And she’ll tell us how she
gave it to Ana when <i>she</i> married, and
how Uncle Adamo died in an attack on the <i>Comboio<a href="file:///G:/Watching%20the%20Rain.docx#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><b><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></b></span><!--[endif]--></span></a></i>
in the War and how she, Ana, came as a widow to live with her sister who is my
Mama. And she’ll tell us again how the fresh smell in our hut comes from her
trunk. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">And then
she will tell us how rapturously Mama could dance, and how well she made donuts
whenever there was a holiday. Then she’ll say how young Mama was when she died
of a haemorrhage on the path, in the dark, on the way to Chocas-Mar because
there was nowhere for her to go and get help with her baby in our village. And
she will tell us again how Dad carried Mama all that way stumbling through the
high grass in the night; and then how he carried her home again arriving
exhausted and soaked in her blood. And she will whisper how hard it was to get
him to wash it away to go to her funeral. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It isn’t
Chaly’s fault; and I see Dad tries not to let it show that he feels it is. But
he does feel it and he can’t bring himself to touch poor Chaly so he feels it
too. I want to squeeze Chaly’s hand more; but even though he’s just a skinny
kid, he is packed full of memories. I think he is a bit like Aunt Ana’s
sandalwood box and her seven wraps: every bit of him is a thread from the past.
Not that he looks anything like our past now. Standing at the end of the row,
he looks more like a drowned mongoose. But he is made up of bits of everyone’s
memories and that is why touching him hurts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">According
to Paulo, the Ancestors say we need the rain. Before it came, the cassava
leaves were wilting and all our chickens fell sideways last month and the
Witchdoctor said they died of thirst. I can’t tell my brother, because he is
older than me, but I don’t think the Ancestors say things like ‘We need the
rain’ when anyone can see that we do after the drought; I think the Ancestors
tell us what we <i>can’t</i> see. The
Witchdoctor says my Mama sits with them and that she looks over us all the
time. I can feel her looking but I can’t feel her hand. As soon as I’m old
enough, I’m going to stop going to school and find someone to gently squeeze
me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Maybe by
then Paulo will be nicer. If he is, he can come and visit and I’ll make him
lemon grass tea. And if it’s quite soon, poor Chaly can come and live with me;
but I think it is already too late for him to grow fat-rings round his neck and
wrists. Bia can come and touch my seven wraps whenever she likes. And my four
sisters can visit me but they can’t open the sandalwood box my husband will
give me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Only
Next-Door-Fatima won’t be welcome. In fact, she will only be allowed to visit
me when there is a dance; so she can see how I move like my mother; and how
Mama must be <st1:personname w:st="on">proud</st1:personname> of me because she
moves through me as lithe as a snake with black and white diamonds on its back.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span lang="EN-GB">October 2012<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Copyright
Lisa St Aubin de Teran<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div>
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<!--[endif]-->
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="file:///G:/Watching%20the%20Rain.docx#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span lang="EN-US"> A Mozambican train</span></div>
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lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-13637838473941605932012-10-14T07:31:00.001-07:002012-10-14T07:31:27.428-07:00Editing in AmsterdamWelcome to my blog.<br />
I hope I am forgiven for practically not communicating for the past 8 years, but, as some of you know, I live in the bush in Mozambique in a small village on the edge of the Indian Ocean where, until recently, we had no internet or post. Now, however, Mossuril has leapt into the 21st century and we have a wireless internet connection: so I'm back.<br />
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My thanks go to Alex Macbeth for dragging me personally up to date by means of this blog which he gave me for my birthday. Now all I have to do is work out how it works and then I shall be flooding it with thoughts and fiction.<br />
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Actually, I'm back in Europe for a few weeks now, editing my new books (note the plural!). I have just spent many months editing 'Kafka Lodge', my new novel, and now I am editing 'The Promised Land' (short stories).<br />
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Last night I had some great news, Otto, my dearest and oldest friend is heading out to Mozambique with a view to our spending our dotage together by the beach. The only thing holding him back is the need for a good medical insurance - so I'm searching one out. If anyone has a suggestion for an affordable insurance for a 78 year old Venezuelan man (with a chequered past) valid in Mozambique, please let me know.lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4474172812959168087.post-24023206455794178732012-09-25T16:25:00.002-07:002012-09-25T16:27:53.197-07:00<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSi5-4UXNTnSpx2R3mHC7UCFQg3Hnw5fh59pmSYOlN9cGP9p78Z2n2W4R487DaAQGc0rpcPHlSTqnl-g21aIHlxCXUn1yBCb0gzBT8dfS-eE4GWh4hg_YrW0aphNch-tYweCL2zLQZeWbl/s1600/Off+the+rails.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSi5-4UXNTnSpx2R3mHC7UCFQg3Hnw5fh59pmSYOlN9cGP9p78Z2n2W4R487DaAQGc0rpcPHlSTqnl-g21aIHlxCXUn1yBCb0gzBT8dfS-eE4GWh4hg_YrW0aphNch-tYweCL2zLQZeWbl/s400/Off+the+rails.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the rails in Mozambique</td></tr>
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<br />lisadeteranblog@gmail.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12409376914139731742noreply@blogger.com0