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March 2004 Dear Michael, |
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"His" refers to El Hadj Omar Bongo, the President of Gabon since 1967 bleu-vert-jaune = blue, green, yellow |
And I remember the color of the inside of ripe mangos, the pink of His palace on the edge of town, the bleu-vert-jaune of the flag, and the infinite palette of faces in the classroom, against the white and khaki uniforms. I was in a classroom the first time I heard a woman wail. She was walking past the windows carrying the body of a toddler like a tray. I thought about this in 96 when my father died because, a couple hundred people in a church, and they didnt make a sound. He came to Gabon. Meeting Bob Nikola soothed him, gave him hope we werent hard-core, left-wing freaks. The one thing he didnt like was the big market in Libreville because of the smells. I dont really remember smells beyond dried fish and palm wine. And blood. There was a heavy, metal smell to the blood that oozed from bug bites, once scratched. |
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boite = nightclub |
But anyway, Pensack, what Im trying to say is that we failed to plan for being 45, on those nights on my step or at the boite when we tried to talk over the music. Look at us now: post-Regab, peri-menopausal, pre-death. Im not being maudlin, just wanting to know if you know that middle age, technically, has probably come and gone. Actually, given the life expectancy in Gabon, we were middle aged when we were in Tchibanga. So this, then, is my second relative go-round with it. This time, the color is fading away, the world is turning gray. Its the color of the C-Span suits, the color of some of my hair until last week when, for the first time, I did it. I chose a honey-something brown. You know, neutral, but nice enough. |
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Fetes = A gathering of RPCVs begun in 1985 to celebrate Gabon's Independence Day. It is a 34 day event, held in August, and draws RPCVs from around the world, mostly from the Peace Corps years of 1979-1985. This year it is being held in Burlington, VT. Past fetes have been held in North Carolina, Ohio, Massachusetts, West Virginia, and Idaho. | But its not just the color. At the Shop N Save, the mangoes are stone hard. And nothing smells, not even the rug in the living room in spite of one big dog, two cats, and a guinea pig because I buy Febreeze and we dont eat dried fish. Nobody wails, but the buzz-cut kids being schlepped through Wal-Mart do whine, and their mothers shush them. Some of the women whine too. This town is home to the Brunswick Naval Air Station. When their boys (they call them their boys) get deployed, wives whine and write plaintive letters to the editor like, for Gods sake, what? They didnt read the freakin job description when the boys they married enlisted? I still dont suffer fools very well. Maybe its why we understood each other. The biggest fool is this woman who drives a killer SUV with the words, Support Our Troops and Shut Up scrawled across a back window that is bigger than a football field. Anyway, Pensak, what Im writing to tell you is that Africa is pulling me back. My kids want to go, even though I thumb, once again, through Where There Is No Doctor, with the oozing chancres, the herniated everythings, and the no-guess depictions of disease transmission. Still, they say they want to go. So, I ramp it up, and describe how flies cluster in the corners of some peoples eyes and dogs get kicked in ribs you could count from a kilometer away and not many old people have very many teeth, but the women can smoke their cigarettes backwards. I tell them these things, because Im afraid that their only frame-of-reference for thinking that they want to live in Africa is the Fetes, where grown-ups drink beer for breakfast and its not quite clear which kid belongs to what parent and theres just all this time, you know, to sit down and talk to people. |
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But I want to go, too, and its been causing me to think of you. If I go, we wont write to one another. We never have. We havent even talked in five years, maybe six. But I think of you, Michael, and, every time I do, Im glad that I did Tchibanga with you.
Peace, |
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Melinda Porter (Gabon 198283) is a consultant specializing in workforce education and development. She lives in Maine with her two children. Tchibnaga is the name of the Gabonese town in which she lived, as did Michael Pensak, a Fisheries Volunteer. Melinda has lost touch with Michael Pensak and has no idea where he might be in the world. | |||||
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