One of the three men has shouldered a hoe, the style carved roughly, the iron slightly wavy. No relic of the Bronze Age, but most important tool in the field. Beside him on the same level, perhaps his brother, the only bulb in the night hard shadows on the work of the sun and tanned face. At the head of the father's or chief of his district to the greeting ritual, to which the small following matches rhythmically.
- Hail. - Yes hail. - How's the family? - Yes, the family's doing well. - The family, their's is good? - Yes, and health, making health? - Well, what do the children? Yes well, the woman's doing well? - What makes the field? - Yes the box, it is .- And the mother? - Yes, brother? - Father? - Grandma? - The niece? - The cous ...? - Hm! Hm! The sentences are shorter, too short sentences, Words follow draw back into the palate and die slowly in quiet nascent buzz on the lips. Minutes pass. I try to focus, to miss the end of history do not tell the Issifou straight on, when he has finished the greeting is.
Behind me is a long day, a long drive through red laterite. Dust stirred up by our car, long and dense as the contrails of the aircraft shall, to the dry river beds, in the columns of the dryness gaping earth, or the children on their way to school. In the village it is good form to bring small gifts. Batteries, cigarettes, pens, radio, photos from the past The laughter of times
forensic Bar, the village founder, exploded in the shade of the baobab tree, our heads touch two times on the opposite side of the forehead, in thanks for the bottle of gin, which is here not only appreciated by the spirits. Guests will enjoy fee could bar forensic two glasses, water glasses, the temperature at 30 degrees gin poured to the brim, we handed the glasses. This does not, we had thought, looked in bars shining face, his glowing with joy at the guests eyes. The gin burned down our throats down at 43 degrees outside temperature, the heat cooled down like a bell loosened protect us, the tongues, ready for a tour through the village, on arrival, to check into our little hut, which had cleared for us.
forensic bar with a purple baseball jacket, a frayed Bermuda shorts and a traditional, up to current conical cap, similar to a stocking cap, but without the tip of purple-colored, too. He followed a few years ago a path that has been beaten for a road into the bush, burned all his way standing trees for a field, plowed with a simple hoe, for the coveted yams to plant, love the heat like a volcano's lava flows . It came Dendi, Fulbe, Hausa, Fongbe as Christians, Muslims or animists, they live in the neighborhoods, peaceful, as farmers, while supplies last. It goes without having to resort to a common language. Only their children, they play with the languages as if they were their empty bicycle coats, they hunt with sticks through the village. It is my friend, the geographer who is interested in these population movements, which I accompanied here.
The Sodabi, a liquor derived from palm trees, sharp as a razor and as clear as the instinct of a hyena in front of his prey, flows into the small glass from the bottle without a label, makes the rounds with the man the Hacke, perhaps his brother, the boss or father to us. The visitors, on the family, on the field, the wealth, the newborn, happiness, fertility, ancestors. And each time, before the Sodabi the way into the shallows of the body will burn freely a few drops poured on the earth, as a tribute to the spirits, the fetishes, the Marabous.
Issifou, in whose house we sit welcomes the one or the other newcomer, had the thread of his story long ago lost what none of us noticed, and tells of a radio broadcast, reported in a Benin professional football player, was the give up his career had, as he noted with pain, he had broken glass in his knee. Jealous relatives from his native village, with the ancestors in the league, had inflicted it. Murmur, compassion, one is never sure what he had done well. Had he not played just bad, we wanted to know. Laughter. Issifou knew that already from us. A game between him, the wizard of the geographer and the saint himself. Incredible that we can think of something. Only whites can be so incredulous. Until late into the night goes on like that, in light of the bare light bulb in the singing of the cicadas, the squeaking of the belt of the corn mill, the cawing of the radios from the Dendi or Haussaviertel through which powder invulnerable or invisible, on Geldverdoppler or charlatans.
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