The birds have found the feeders. I sat on the deck yesterday and watched a few come in, grab a sunflower seed and leave provisioned. The chickadees were the first. They always are. Next was a titmouse, and he came back a couple of times. Some sort of sparrow also visited. I noticed one clay pot’s plants didn’t seem to be doing well. When I checked, I noticed the plants had been pulled out of the soil. I know it was a spawn of Satan. This one is tricky, sly.

Today is already beautiful. It is 80°. The sun is glinting through the trees in the backyard. Nothing is moving, not even a single leaf. Tonight will be in the 60’s.

I have often written about my travels, especially in Africa. I have a story for you, a new story. It’s sort of a long story. My friends and I boarded a bus in Ouagadougou, in what was then Upper Volta and is now Burkina Faso. It was a Trans-African bus with the motto we never break down; of course, it broke down. We sat around while the mechanics left to get parts. They hitched. After we were back on the road we had to stop at a closed post office as we had mail to leave. We stayed overnight. It was cold as we were getting nearer to the desert. The driver to whom I spoke Hausa had been delighted I knew his language. He shared hot coffee and bread with me. I shared with my two friends. The next morning we got back on the road.

The bus broke down again. The driver told me, “An gama.” It is finished. My friends and I hitched and got a ride to the border between Burkina Faso and Niger. The border had a barrel on each side of the road with a long piece of wood resting on each barrel. We sat for a while then hitched. My friends got a ride. I got a different ride. I crossed the bridge into Niamey, and the driver dropped me off on a fairly big road. I was alone. I wandered a bit and found a hotel. I should have kept wandering. That night I realized it was a bordello. I could hear men knocking on doors and talking to women then the doors would close. They knocked on my door. I hid out of sight and didn’t answer. That went on all night. I didn’t sleep. I was on alert.

I left that hotel as soon as the sun rose. I got to the main road, and a little boy stopped to talk to me. He asked in French if I was looking for Le Corps de la Paix, Peace Corps in French. I guess he figured a lost, wandering white lady hauling a backpack had to be Peace Corps. He led me to the office, and they directed me to the hostel. My friends were there. They had found it the day before and had slept there. They missed the adventure. They could never tell the story of sleeping, rather not sleeping, in a bordello. That’s my story.

This entry was posted on July 21, 2024 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.