Taxi!

As I sat for the first time in the gouged seat of a bush taxi, hoping that its lack of stuffing was not due to the teeth of some burrowing creature, I decided a green taxi and its weed smoking driver seemed like a better deal. I peered ahead through the smeared arc of the windscreen and winced at the uneven terrain we would soon be traveling, the bare metal spring digging into my bottom suddenly mouthing new threats. That, coupled with the fact that the heat was sitting on top of us like a stubborn toddler, told me this would not be a comfortable ride.

Our guide was still haggling with the driver for a reasonable price, so we had nothing to do apart from chatter in nervous tones and gaze out of the smeared windows. We all watched a car drive passed, rising and falling across the sandy roads like a ship on a rolling tide. We all watched as one of its front wheels fell off and a bystander ran to catch it. We all watched as the driver remained motionless in his seat and the catcher rolled the tire back to the car. We all watched as the catcher removed what can only be described as a large rubber band from his pocket and secured the wheel back in its proper place with a few twists. We all watched as the driver continued on his way without acknowledging his helper.

Finally, when our bush taxi was full of passengers inside, outside and on the roof, we set off. It became very clear that the rules of the road were patchy at best. It seemed that vehicles could swerve and glide across the entire width, taking the easiest route possible over the swallowing dunes. When another vehicle approached, they passed on the right, but that was debatable. I wondered if drivers were required to take tests in The Gambia.

Along the way, we found ourselves passing money forward from locals to the driver’s assistant. Their debts paid, they would exit the vehicle, often when still in motion. When it was our turn to disembark, we did so with sickened stomachs and orange cheeks from the breeze that had stung them with sand from the open windows.  

Later, in the smooth motion of English cars on English tarmac, we looked back on the bush taxis with affection.

Wide Awake

I stayed very still in bed, not daring to move as the room shifted around me. My eyes rattled in my head as though it had suddenly grown too big and the single white sheet that covered me rippled like troubled water. Across the room, my sister slept soundly.

The roar of the earth came from somewhere so deep that I felt suddenly unsure of the ground I had trusted to be solid. I imagined myself on an angry sea, and felt panicked by the potential of the body of rock and lava below. The lamp on my bedside table trembled as the windowed doors shook in their frames. The wardrobe edged towards me with a jagged stagger. The tiled floor shrieked with protest as more furniture scraped across its surface.

I wondered if my parents were awake in the next room. Still my sister slept, and I felt the urge to wake her for fear of being alone, but I was paralyzed, watching the wardrobe stumble ever closer and wondering if it would topple.

The noise continued and I managed to persuade my eyes to close. I imagined a fleet of Lorries rumbling through the centre of the room having been led astray by faulty sat navs. Suddenly I felt the urge to laugh. What a ridiculous situation.

Then I heard the children crying in the apartment next door.

Finally, the noise lessened and my eyes settled back to stillness. The life went out of the furniture and appliances, and they once again sat quietly as they should. With renewed courage, I called out to my sister. She roused slowly and grumbled at me to let her sleep. When I asked if she had heard the earth quake, she told me to stop lying and rolled over to face the wall. I marvelled at her ability to sleep like the dead.

In the morning the locals of Kefelonia told us it had only been a tremor. A slight squirm of the earth, like a baby rolling in its mother’s belly. I shook my head in disbelief and decided not to imagine what a real quake felt like. No doubt that wardrobe would have shimmied with a little more gusto.

A year later, another fleet of misguided Lorries rumbled through my room in England, letting me know that the Earth was awake in every part of the world.    

Illusions of a Poetic Mind

It happens every day

When you have a poet’s mind,

You’ll see a word in everything

No matter what you find.

Patches in a balding lawn

Will form a sign of age,

Of moments wasted, ticking clocks

And a life to leave the stage

A line of four smart gentlemen

In regimental grey,

Once had me staring quite in awe

Till they quacked and flew away.

A field becomes an ocean,

A cup becomes a soul,

A pen becomes a person,

And an ache becomes a hole

My world is now a metaphor,

My mind a simile,

My heart a hidden meaning,

But my poetry is me.

The Monkey Woman

She sat in her wooden booth, the corrugated roof hanging loose at one end, pushed aside by tendrils of the jungle that framed her in green. Her thick black hair sat like a soft halo around her face, a perfect orb. She appraised the world through hooded eyes and dark lashes free of makeup. She took our money and tore our tickets with bored hands that afterwards reached to rub at a fray in her jeans, pulling strands of cotton to twist between her willowy fingers. I wondered how long she had sat there, the monkey woman in her booth, accepting money she could not keep from travellers who gawped and agreed with each other in whispers that she was too beautiful to work in a place like this. ‘She could be an actress, a model, a singer!’ Promises thrown about her head of contracts and glamour if she only lived in the western world. Did she know? Had anyone told her that she was ten times as striking as most beauties seen in magazines, even without the hours of gruelling nips and tucks and air brushing. If others were like me, I doubt they would have even taken a breath to speak before being distracted by the monkeys they had come to see.

At night, Sene Gambia was owned by men and I wondered where the monkey woman went. Did she sleep in her booth, upright against the wooden slats, her halo of hair a pillow against the splinters? Or did she tend to children in a home barely bigger than three booths in a row? Did she have a husband to serve, who she loved and loved her back? Did she have an elderly mother to care for, who relied on her daughter’s routine of returning every evening with a hand of dalasi and the strength to cook and clean? Did she cry at night for a miracle?  

Perhaps she was happy, content with her life. Perhaps an offer of a better world was in her mind not better at all. Perhaps our western way of thinking, of wanting more, of moving forward and craving the spotlight was just not how she thought. Perhaps it seemed fake, too far from the real world she knew and the people she loved. Perhaps she had never even thought about it.

Or perhaps, simply, she just loved monkeys.

The Oddness of Us

He never spoke

unless his finger tapped

on the round of his chin

and so

I ruined him when I asked

who gave his finger permission

to tap?

He speared the peas in twos

never threes

and the green beans and cabbage strips

but the carrots he ate in ones

because obviously

they were orange

She kept a mouse in her bag

and fed it

on sunflower seeds

that she found on the bird table

her father made

She wore holed socks

so her feet could breathe

and the smell could leak

from her foot to the shoe

Then I scrunched my nose

as I do

and they laughed at the oddness of me

The Seasoned Celebrity

A low, thin rail separated her from the hordes of pushing fans, more of an inviting seat than a barrier. They breathed hot air and jabbed with pointed hands as they vied for front row. Then their mouths formed little ‘ohs’ and they gazed adoringly at the face they had only seen on postcards and television. But she was not fazed; she had been doing this for years. She smiled her infamous smile, revealing nothing of herself except the suggestion of a secret.

The sand sponged wall behind her spread open like a blank canvas. People always commented on how small she was in real life; I blamed that wall with all its height and width. She looked vulnerable, pressed with her back against it. The security guards that flanked her left and right leant with wan grins and tried to smother yawns.

Was she behind glass? I couldn’t tell. Her face was so clear, hardly aged at all, and yet with all the flashing and snapping going on around my head I wondered at her preservation.

Her sisters had not received the same treatment. They were left out in the long halls, suffering the touch of oily fingers and close up scrutiny. I’d been shocked. I had expected more respect for them, a greater separation, not an up close and personal encounter. I had held my breath around them, not wanting to release a single harmful molecule onto their already cracking faces.

I reached the barrier as those ahead of me grew bored and moved on. It pressed into the tops of my legs as she drew me closer into her knowing stare. She seemed to look right at me and I felt a connection form between us, stretched over hundreds of years. I wanted to know who she was, how he had come to know her, what she had been thinking as she sat and he painted. I was filled with a sudden sadness; she had moved from the slow intimacy of the artist and his muse to the steals of impatient cameras. I wondered how many of the pressing crowd actually stood in awe of her, and how many were there only to take the bragging iconic shot to show friends and family.

I am ashamed to say, after removing the flash and apologising to Leonardo, that I took my own and walked away.     

Woman in a Wide Brimmed Hat

cut at the waist by waves of green

she looks down at the companion she knows is there

and smiles at his invisible play

Soft curves and rises surround her

speckled yellow and white

there is always more on the horizon

as they roll out of sight

Beneath her feet

banks sliced smooth

splurge a deep red that bleeds into the water

where Medusa weeds splay

caught in a draft of tide

and an artifice of sugar rests on the surface

For You

Sweet words with a price, they said. They suggested a gift, but we were told not to believe it for payment was ultimately expected. Money, clothes, a flight out of Africa. Turn away from ‘for you’ with your hands closed.

The first ‘for you’ came when I was given a plate of Benachin by a trio of chuckling ladies dressed in gold, their hair swept up in swathes of tie-dyed cloth. ‘For you,’ they chimed, and my radar bleeped in warning. But I ate it all, mopped the juice with my fingers and chased the last grain around the plate. Payment came in the form of an empty dish.

The second ‘for you’ came when I bought a doll, her dress mimicking the fine batiks of the women I saw. I paid the vendor and he asked me to wait as he reached up into a ceiling of beads and plucked a necklace. ‘For you,’ he said as he fastened it round my neck. I looked up, expecting to see an empty, impatient hand held out, but instead he smiled and wished me safe travels.

The third ‘for you’ came in a Bakau, a fishing village where men and children pulled nets into bright boats. The smoke-filled huts on the shore boasted fish dried to leather and overlapped like scales of a larger creature. ‘For you,’ a child said as he wiggled one free and swiped the flies from its skin. For the strange white visitors he had only seen in books.  

The fourth ‘for you’ came when I woke early and ventured to the market to buy a gift of clothing for a child. The vendor, a woman with a dozen thick braids, caught my wrist and wrapped it with bracelets. ‘For you,’ she said, her first customer of the day who would bring her luck.

The last ‘for you’ came when my money was spent. He caught my eye and gestured me over to stand amongst his stall of carvings. He asked my name and beamed when I told him. He told me to come back in a minute or two, and when I explained that I had no more Dalasi he waved me off with a dismissive hand, insistent still. When I went back, he was polishing an ebony dolphin with a dirty cloth. ‘For you,’ he said, the girl who shared a similar name.  

Lady of the House

He sucked on seeds

while she made buffalo stew

with a splintered spoon

that rose to scold

unruly children

as they scavenged beneath chairs

She lit lanterns

and hung them in trees

they warmed her face

dabbing away lines

and bathing her in softness

while inside the television glowed

Lips muttered the dreams of sleep

she touched them with a kiss

one by one

then slipped into jeans

and stretched bare toes

on a floor she had neglected to sweep

The Black Parade

It was the saddest day.

On the eve of Good Friday, the long parade of the hooded make their way slowly through the streets of Sorrento like a black mist. At first sight, tourists catch their breath and shake disbelieving heads as an inaccurate association spills to the forefront of their understanding. But this is not a procession of hate.

The incappucciati wear their pointed black hoods with slotted eyes as a mark of tradition, sorrow and shame. Like Adam and Eve, they cover their sin and hide from the Lord. Pale hands clutch torches to light the silent streets and the solemn faces of two thousand spectators. Faint footsteps tap the ground as a prelude to the hymns that follow, the mournful voices that drift after the parade and mark it with pathos. In the distance, a drum beats like a deadening pulse. Yet I smile a little as men with authority and wooden sticks dig and knock the hooded back into line when they happen to drift. This parade is for the Lord; it shall be precise.    

Women cross their chests and bow their heads when their Lady passes. Dressed in black, the Madonna mourns the death of her son and searches for his return. Sceptics fidget in the silence, feeling out of place and yet unable to move away from the transfixing event. Soon they fall still and watch with the saved. In this moment, everyone is a believer.

Symbols of the Saviour’s end sail in the regimented sea of the hooded: the jug in which Pilate washed his hands of all blame, the bag that held the money of the betrayal, the rooster that marked Peter’s triple denial with its crow, the cross that encompasses the faith of Christians in solid wood and weight.

This is a funeral march, but as in all Christian deaths that follow Christ’s, hope overrides in the promise of new life.

You have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. John 16:22.   

          

Six thousand three hundred and fifty six miles away, Filipino men walk in their own parade along the streets of Subic. The symbols they bear are different: deep slashes across bare backs and the holes of crucifixion held in open palms. For them, it seems the death of Jesus was not enough.