|
|
| The Shade of the Niger Both Sides of the Niger Against Dying On the Hut Walls in Togo by Poet Andrew Kaufman Masked, Costumed Voodoo Dancers in a ceremony to bring luck for the New Year, Republic of Benin. Photograph by Andrew Kaufman | |
| The Shade of the Niger From the air it is the vast body of a snake, its loops motionless, not a breath or twitch in the desert sand. But from a pirogue the river is silt brown, slow-moving through the dry season, but wide enough for fishermen to call it the sea, as in, Do you have the sea in your country? Where it turns it is stagnant and clouded like a half-hearted scam resolving slowly into a puddle. Toward noon it is a heavy brown skirt covering a cluster of women to the waist as they wash themselves and a few pots. My pirogue moves among them searching the mud for a landing. Their nipples are chapped, coarsened, cracked, chewed, and stretched. They snigger and cackle. Their breasts hang like paper bags. They cannot ask for money-- the hidden pockets of the river will hold no banknotes. I stare into the scarified eyes below their eyes, the white outlines shaped like almonds, cut into their cheeks with a razor blade. I try to guess their ages within ten years the way my grandmother taught me go look at the teeth of shelter dogs. The river's shade is deep enough for a person to pee in secret, those beside her noticing nothing but the quick warmth of a little current. Neither shy nor forward-- like the river in the desert they are neither welcoming nor hostile. I squat with them at night in the dirt, their fingers twisting the dorsal fins off a pile of fish still quivering, small enough to be bait. Moon and lantern light catch in the white underbellies and in the outlined second set of eyes. The huts are the light brown of the drying river bed, made from its mud. Night enclosed by windowless adobe is a crawl space between river and river god. Dawn starts as a slit in a thatched roof. And the day, like everyday, is burning. Both Sides of the Niger Trachoma, typhoid, bilharzia, more Latin names--
until age twelve, usually before three,
both sides of the river, they die just the same. The village chief, hunched on his dirt floor, complained--
You give pencils but you give no money.
Schistosomiasis, filariasis-- more Latin names. A boy who giggled at his laughter on my tape
and one who tried to drown a wild donkey--
both sides of the Niger, they died just the same. Near a copse of cypress trees the wind changed
the voices in the leaves to a sea--
leishmaniasis, TB, cholera, still more Latin names... They die in the pirogue, leave too late
to Mopti, the chief said.. No doctor, No money,
Both sides. This river. Sick. Then dead. The same. The bully who smirked, Ka-boom! Bin Laden. Plane!
A scared girl, her "Duck, duck, goosie!" always me.
Dengue fever, river blindness, malaria, non-Latin names--
both sides of the Niger they died just the same. | | Against Dying 1.
Because of the gods and spirits
that surround Kudadze's home...
Because his family was curious,
since I am white, and, by local standards, rich.
Or because Kudadze is kindly and patient,
or since I am a stranger, or because
his family expected money...
Because it was already noon
and I was leaving the next day,
he and two friends led me to his home
through miles of heat and dust.
When I could no longer ride the old bicycle
they walked with me.
When I could no longer walk in the sun
they sat in the shade. Not much more,
they smiled, Not much more.
2.
Because the countryside, flat and treeless,
had been surrounded by warlords,
warring kings, and slave-traders
since before they counted years...
the people still build their homes
as fortresses--dried mud walls
too high to be scaled, too thick
for arrows and muskets.
Since dry mud cannot protect
against what is not visible,
to keep out hostile spirits
they etched tightly bunched lines
across the walls.
Taking a double bond of fate,
they scarify the lines
across their foreheads and cheeks. Because the spirits of sickness
seep like water
between etched lines,
a god is needed,
Kudadze labored to explain
in pidgin French. A priest is needed
to know which god.
An augury is needed
to inform the priest
what food and drink
the god must have.
3.
Beside the doorway a sheaf of grain
assures the plentitude of rain.
Monkey skulls beside the sheaf
watch the home against the thief. Crockery crumbling in the tomb
feeds the dead as in the womb.
4.
At first featureless and limbless,
the large mud god
they had formed rested
before the house. He sees and hears,
Kudadze tells me, eats and breathes
through the hole
that is his navel. The priest said he demanded cowrie shells
so we mixed these into the mud
of his body. He demanded wood
to form his legs--
we brought two trunks. He demanded the white feathers
of a baby bird--
we stuck these
to his head. He demanded water-
we set the kettle
before him. He demanded millet--
we poured the porridge
over him. He demanded goat's blood--
we spilled the blood
upon him. He demanded meat--
the goat's skull
is beside him. He demanded his children--
the small gods
are around him. 5. Beneath my feet
I noticed the shallow breaths
of a week-old puppy,
rust-brown like the dirt and dust,
struggling to stand
and failing. 6. A boar's skull beside the door
assures the hunt as before.
The gazelle's tracks in the shaman's sand
predict the bounty of the land
The shaman reads the face and sum
of what is passing and to come. 7.
Children and an old woman
surrounded me from a distance,
too shy to come closer.
I became aware of a friend or brother
of Kudadze approaching me,
then a soft, frightened chicken
pressed into my arms, and a voice
in a language I did not know,
repeating what could have been, You, please, take, and gift. | |
| House with Deities, Nadoba, Togo, below Photograph by Andrew Kaufman 
On the Hut Walls in Togo A series of animals with their names in English: dog, parrot, goat, cat, camel. * In one, a red-haired toddler in a red baseball cap and matching pants rides a toy red tractor in front of a 1950's American split level and its restful lawn. * Above the caption, Look at the face and hand of this man. It reveals his character, stands a beneficent Osama bin-Laden, with his beard and robes. * Botticelli's Mary gazes from the heaven of a magazine cut-out. * A collage of bodies with gaping wounds, and troops aiming automatic weapons at villagers is captioned, General Taylor's soldiers killing people. * In hut after hut the de facto president-for-life gazes severely out of a campaign poster. * A buxom white girl in a cowboy hat with feathers and a fetching little denim jacket as the sun explodes on her bare midriff.
* The brown face of Jesus, captioned I drank from this cup for your sake gazes from a newspaper cut-out. * A photo of Idi Amin, large red capitals reading, The Butcher of Uganda. * A ravishing, blank-eyed white woman in ripped denim shorts and see-through panties lowers her head between the hips of another woman. * In one hut Blake's Nebuchadnezzar crawls, half changed to a lion, above the caption, Consider this picture and repent, or your punishment shall be like his.
* A portrait of Mbuto, captioned, The most wicked man in Africa. * In one hut the haloed Christ, his body healed, walks away from the burial cave. * A white man buries his face in a white girl's spread butt-- What do they do here? a village girl, carrying her baby, asks her friend, who shrugs as they walk away. * In one there is nothing but a calendar. * In many there is nothing but one or two geckos holding their breath. * In most there are only spiders.
© Andrew Kaufman, On the Hut Walls in Togo, 2010 © Andrew Kaufman, Against Dying, 2010 © Andrew Kaufman, Both Sides of the Niger and The Shade of the Niger, 2010 ©Photographs, Andrew Kaufman | |
|
|