My Ultimate Minimalism

Jess in front of her parents' home in day-after-Christmas snow

‘Is it time to open presents?’ Jess’s nephew Payton asks again – it has been his refrain for tonight.

         ‘Yes. It is time,’ Jess’s sister Lillian says finally.

         We have all finished the fondue that is a Swiss and Ferndriger tradition. Lillian has kept Payton at bay as long as she can. She watches over the new baby, Xavier, while Payton races past towards the tree. Jess sits next to me and talks to her mother. She is very tired but she has this little bit left. I am in a conversation with her father and Lillian’s husband, Matt. Her father is talking about their travels to Spain and Canada when they were younger and Matt is talking about American football and many other things. I am exhausted from the jetlag and from the new kind of eating and now from trying to make a good impression while following the thread of two conversations.

When we arrived everyone was already there. Lillian had given birth only two days before and she and Matt and Payton had come with the new baby nearly straight from the hospital. It is very curious how so much excitement can surround something that is almost always asleep. Xavier slept eyes tight and soundly beside the sofa and Lillian sat close by. Matt greeted us at the door and helped to bring our luggage in. Jess’s mother was preparing the fondue and at the top of the steps her father came to meet me and shake my hand.

‘He caught me in a bad handshake,’ I say when we are in Jess’s room getting sorted before sitting down to dinner.

‘Who did?’ Jess asks. She is changing into her flannel pajama bottoms because she is practically allergic to wearing outside clothes when she is home in the evening.

‘Your dad did,’ I say.

‘What do you mean?’

‘He sort of, you know, gripped the ends of my fingers instead of my palm.’

‘How did that happen?’ she says.

‘He caught me when I wasn’t ready or at a bad angle or something,’ I say.

‘Well which was it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It all happened so fast.’

‘Aww. It’s OK, love,’ she says. ‘I’m sure he didn’t notice.’

‘I’m sure he did notice,’ I say. ‘It’s exactly the kind of thing that a father would notice about the guy who’s dating his daughter.’

 At the dinner table Jess eats and talks to her mother and is mostly quiet. She checks in with me occasionally but she is not following the plan.

‘What about the plan?’ I will ask her later. ‘You were supposed to run interference, remember?’

‘I know, I know. I’m awful!’ she says, ‘but I was so tired and I was overwhelmed too, you know.’

For dinner we each have strips of raw beef and pork and chicken on our plates. We have a small skewer each with a different color at the end of the handle.

‘You remember your color or else you might take someone else’s meat,’ Jess’s father explains.

‘It’s my favorite meal,’ Matt says and I see that he has an entire steak in large slices on his plate.

I skewer a strip of beef and I place it in the pot on a stand in the center of the table. The pot is filled with an oily sauce, which is kept at a boil by the fire from the burner beneath it. We leave the skewered meat in the fire for a few minutes while we take appetizers of olives and bread and cheese and other garnishes. After the meat has boiled in the oil for some minutes we check it and if it is not fully cooked we let it sit longer before we eat it. It is a new kind of eating for me and I like it very much. I eat slowly and so I am the one to scrape the sides of the pot at the very end.

During dinner I take a beer and afterwards Jess’s father offers me a glass of Jack Daniel’s. I am very grateful because it is exactly what I like. It tastes good because I am very tired and because my last bottle has finished two weeks before and I am too long without it. I ask if Jess’s father will take one with me but he says that he chooses not to anymore. We converse at the table for a while longer until I hear Lillian give in to Payton: ‘Yes. It is time.’ Then I feel Jess grab me by the arm and pull me away from my chair and down to the ground where we sit on the rug between the sofa and the Christmas tree. It is a moment before I realize that this is the moment that I have been waiting for more eagerly, I am sure, than Payton has.

We each receive and open gifts in a loosely coordinated merry-go-round fashion. My first is the ‘stocking’ and it is a bag of chocolate truffles, and a Toblerone, and a box of Belgian chocolate seashells. My next is tall and heavy and contains a large bottle of Jack Daniel’s. These are from Jess’s parents and I try through tired eyes to show my surprise and gratitude. Next is the box from Amazon that holds the two books on Adventure Motorcycling and a DVD on Dual Sport Riding Techniques. This one is from Jess and me to ourselves but I am sure I will be the one to enjoy it more. Last is the most important one, though of course it comes in the smallest box.

         Most everything I own fits into two suitcases and three cardboard boxes, which are in storage back home. Everyday clothing is in one suitcase and winter and formal wear is in another. The cardboard boxes contain camping and sporting goods, books and albums, and yearbooks and other mementos. I have always been tidy and somehow existentially concerned by my material footprint. Your things are an extension of you – I surmised at one point in my early twenties – and, if they are many or untidy, then the same will be true for your mind. But, after Hurricane Katrina, when I shared a cruise ship berth and lived out of a rucksack for six months, my penchant for minimalism became a survivalist instinct.

This doctrine was a shrewd philosophy for a time, but slowly I came to suspect that, the fewer the things I had and the more selectively I acquired them, the more those things become a necessity in themselves. This suspicion became enshrined as law when, six weeks before, my beloved iPhone suddenly died.

It happened when I foolishly plugged it directly into an outlet that was supplied by a Chinese generator. It shut off and, when I turned it back on, it was unable to boot up. This was at Lachlan and Nik’s house and the loss of my iPhone made an already difficult day even more so. When we got home and for several days after, I checked all the forums and scoured the online support and I twice called the Apple hotline. After following all the recommended courses, it was determined that my Mistress 3 (two iPods bore the name previously) could not be resuscitated. After lamenting the loss and further lamenting the cost of DHL, I shipped the corpse home for replacement under the one-year warrantee.

The six weeks since then had been as difficult as any before or since. I borrowed an old Sony Ericsson from Jess to make phone calls. In most ways it was OK except that the microphone was very bad. I would place a call and, after receiving an answer, I would be halfway through my first sentence before I would hear, ‘Hello? Hello? Anybody there?’ For music and audiobooks and podcasts, at first I tried to go without. I decided that it might be Zen-like to reduce the noise, except that, without the noise, you remember how boring most things are. So next I borrowed Jess’s old Chinese-made mp3 player.

‘Boy, we have truly fallen,’ I said when I conceded to try it out.

But it had a very finicky connector so that the slightest disturbance during a transfer and you lost everything. Also, it has a terrible interface and it could not remember your position in a track, which made a 10-plus hour audiobook very difficult to get through. Finally, I borrowed Jess’s newer Sony mp3 player and this worked well enough but it just was not the same.

Our memories of Christmas eve in Toronto

Somehow the days and weeks passed and now we are in Toronto visiting Jess’s family. We have just arrived and it is Christmas and my new Mistress is here in a box that Jess’s mother has wrapped in holiday paper. I peel off the paper and tear open the box. Inside is my ultimate minimalism. It is new in its case and it turns right on when I press it. I see the glow from the screen and I take a breath and I am comforted.

Then I put it down. I look around the room. Matt is telling a story and there is Payton with his new video game, and there is a new excitement around the baby who has woken up for the first time this evening. I look back at my iPhone and I realize that I have not any excitement left in me. Maybe tomorrow, I think, but right now I am just paid out. 

So, I sit back next to Jess against the leg of the sofa. She smiles dully at me, which is the best acknowledgement she can muster, and we stay like that until everyone has left or is gone to bed.

This Is What Causes the Knocking and Pinging

Monrovia street market

‘They are the Goba-Chops,’ the specialist says.

         ‘They are the what?’ I ask.

         ‘The Go-ba-Chops,’ he repeats more slowly for me.

         ‘And what is a Goba-Chop?’ I ask.

         ‘They are the ones who sell the produce in the market for the farmers,’ he says.

         We are in a strategy session where all the employees have gathered in the Director’s office to review the organization’s mission and to think about how it might pursue that mission in this country. Space in the Director’s office is very tight but it is a small country program so we are actually not so many. We are talking about agriculture, which is a strategic area for the country but not an area that we currently program in. Our team is mostly national staff and, although they live in the capitol they each have roots in the villages and they know something about the way it is with agriculture there. One is an agriculture specialist and he is the one I am speaking to. Although we do not have any agriculture programs, he is on retainer to help develop our strategy and be technical support for when we do work in that sector.

         ‘So the Goba-Chop buys from the farmer and maintains a stall in the market where he sells to consumers?’ I say, believing I have inferred the situation.

         ‘Yes, he has a stall in the market and he sells to the customers but he does not buy from the farmer,’ the specialist says.

         ‘He sells for the farmers but he does not buy from them?’ I say. ‘So, how does it work then?’

         ‘The farmer gives the harvest to the Goba-Chop and the Goba-Chop sells it in the market. He keeps a percentage of whatever he sells.’

         ‘OK, and what happens to what he doesn’t sell?’ I ask.

         ‘Probably it goes bad,’ the specialist says. ‘It happens a lot that some of the harvest goes bad while it sits in the Goba-Chop’s warehouse while it waits to sell.’

         ‘And whatever the Goba-Chop does not sell and goes bad, the farmer assumes the loss?’

         ‘Yes,’ the specialist says.

There is water and good soil here

         I am the Livelihoods Project Manager in this country program, although this is rather far from my original area of training. Later we will talk about ‘livelihoods’ but now we are discussing agriculture. First, we have discussed the country’s assets, which is mostly areas of good soil and plentiful rains during the wet season. Then, we discussed the challenges, which are mostly every other aspect of agriculture that requires human intervention.

         ‘Low production,’ was the first challenge posited.

         The Director wrote this on the flip chart and then, when the Finance Manager suggested that this was the problem to be addressed, not a challenge, the Director crossed it off.

         ‘Bad roads,’ suggested another and the Director wrote it down.

         ‘Diminished seed varieties,’ said the specialist.

         ‘Technology transfer,’ said another.

         I squirmed at this because it is a catch phrase that was created to encapsulate a complex idea but is now, I think, used without comprehending its meaning. But I managed to keep silent.

         ‘Import of crops from America and Europe,’ says the specialist.

         ‘Training to farmers,’ said the first speaker.

         This is how it went and I was temped to suggest that it would be simpler and more accurate to write ‘Everything’ and move on to discuss potential interventions. But I managed to keep silent.

         ‘Farmers will only produce enough for what they can eat,’ said the second speaker and the Director wrote it down.

Eventually, someone said, ‘Trouble to sell in the market,’ and this peaked my attention.

         ‘What do you mean?’ I said and the explanation that followed brought us to the topic of the Goba-Chops.

I know little about agriculture and I have never been a very successful home gardener, but at the mention of ‘trouble to sell in the market’ I begin to grow interested. When something peaks my interest, my mind speeds up very fast. Thoughts go in several directions at once and, if my informer can keep up, his answers will expel the spent questions before I inject new ones into the chamber. In this case the discussion will go very smoothly. If my informer is of a lower octane, then my new questions will come before he can answer the old ones, and the discussion will be frustrating. In engines this is what causes the knocking and pinging. I like to think the way I like to ride motorcycles. In developing countries you must ride fast and weavingly if you want to survive but you cannot think that way. It can be very difficult for a national staff to keep pace and the interpersonal results will be very bad. So, frustratingly, much of your efforts must go to riding faster and thinking slower.

         ‘So the farmer brings the produce to the market and then he gives it to a Goba-Chop to sell it for him?’ I say.

         ‘Yes,’ says the specialist.

         ‘What if the farmer wants to sell his produce himself?’

         ‘He does not have a stall in the market.’

         ‘What if he pays for one in the market?’ I say.

         ‘It will be expensive but probably they will not let him,’ the specialist says.

         ‘Who will not let him?’

         ‘The Goba-Chops.’

         ‘Of course they will not,’ I say. ‘So this is what I see. The farmer takes the risk to plant the crops and maybe they will yield poorly. Then, whatever he harvests, the farmer takes the risk to transport the crops to the market on bad roads where floods or breakdowns halt traffic for days. So, probably he loses some of his crop during the transport. Then, he arrives at the market and he must pay someone to sell for him. He has no guarantee for how much the Goba-Chop will manage to sell and, whatever is left, he, the farmer, must suffer the loss. And, with subsidized imports for almost any crop that most people can afford to buy, the price he can expect for what is sold in the market is always quite small. Is that about right?’

         ‘Yes,’ says the specialist.

         The room is quiet for a moment while I think about this and, just before the Director is about to press on, I speak again.

         ‘To me, this is most basically a problem of risk,’ I say.

         I wait for someone to catch on to this or to seek clarification through a question, but no one does.

         ‘The farmer is a small business owner,’ I say. ‘When you own a small business, usually you assume all the risks on yourself. The villagers must look at this situation and decide that farming is an incredibly risky business to be in. There are so many ways to lose everything and, if everything goes just right, your pay off is very small. I certainly would not take on these risks.’

         I see heads nod and I think that most of them understands.

         ‘So, I think the best place to start is to look at which of these risks can be spread from the farmer to other parties.’

I look around again and I do not see any heads nodding. I want to wait a moment to see if it comes as a delay but I have learned better. Often, if there is not a sign of comprehension when you first finish, then the thought was probably too complex and it will be dismissed rather than contemplated further.

‘For example,’ I say, trying a more practical way, ‘a transporter could buy the produce from the farmer and sell it to the Goba-Chop. Then, the farmer only risks a bad harvest. The transporter only risks losing the harvest on the road to the market. And the Goba-Chop only risks not being able to sell the harvest to the customers. Each assumes some but not all of the risks and each gets a percentage for doing so.’

I wait a moment and I see a few heads nod.

‘It’s a good idea,’ says the specialist.

I think the idea has traction and probably there are other ways to spread the risks but it needs further discussion with a real technical specialist. I want to take it further but I know that this is a staff meeting to discuss ‘strategy’ and not the place to discuss new ideas.

‘Anyway,’ I say because I know that the Director wants to wrap up, ‘for now it sounds like the Goba-Chop has a pretty comfortable position.’

Before You Were So Very Certain of the World

I am driving on United Nations Dr at the intersection with Center St when the two men on the motorbike overtake me. I can see that the driver wears a t-shirt and shorts and flip-flops that hang off his toes and dangle from the foot pegs. The man who rides pillion wears a green beret and a dark blue police uniform and the motorbike says ‘POLICE’ in stenciled letters across the tank. They pull ahead of me, and the passenger in the police uniform looks back and waves me to the curbside.

It is a Sunday and we are on our way to the Mamba Point Hotel for a visit to their sushi restaurant. Previously, I have been very much against sushi because of its texture and because I had found no compelling reason for me to be for it. But recently I want to make a change so I have decided to be for it. The evening is very dark because the days have grown short in the winter. Also, the street is dark in this stretch because the businesses are closed and the streetlights are spaced far apart. The man in the police uniform motions again very aggressively and the driver mirrors me closely as though to prevent me from maneuvering around.

 ‘Fuckers!’ I grumble.

After clearing the intersection, I pull slowly to the curb because I decide not to be rushed. I try to signal to Jess to continue ahead but it is not necessary. She knows what to do and how to be safe.

As I come to a stop, the policeman has leaped off the motorbike and jumps in front of me. As I jerk to a stop and throw my feet to the ground, he grabs the keys from the ignition.

You have to take my fucking keys? I think. Can we not do this with civility?

His face is very dark in the shadows of what little light there is but when I better glimpse his face I can see that it carries a severe meanness.

‘Where is your license plate?’ he shouts. ‘Do you have registration?’

I am suddenly very angry in that way that you can only be when it was the very furthest thing in the world from your thoughts only a moment ago. Very slowly I remove my crash helmet and cradle it over the rearview mirror. I am looking past him as I do this and, when it is done, I tend to a nonexistent kink in my neck before I slowly turn to acknowledge him.

‘What is your trouble officer?’ I ask as though I have not heard his shouting.

‘Where is your license plate?’ he says.

‘It is being printed at the Ministry of Transportation,’ I say.

‘I want to see your registration.’

He is scowling at me as though pulling me over has put him out.

I am carrying a photocopy of my registration in an envelope in my pocket. Slowly, I withdraw the envelope and I flip through the pages before I offer them. As he reviews the registration documents, I see that he is younger than he appeared at first and this makes me angrier.

Young fucking prick! I think. You think you’re going to put on a uniform and bully me?

‘I want to see your passport,’ the policeman says.

His driver is next to him now and a passerby has approached and stands behind me and to the right. I observe this and then I scan ahead for Jess. She has pulled over up ahead under a streetlight and the road is clear and well lit around her. I see her running lights and I know that her engine idles and she is poised at the controls. Good girl, I think, before my attention returns to the policeman.

‘I do not carry my passport,’ I say, which is not true, ‘but you can see my driver’s license.’

‘I want to see your passport,’ he says.

‘It cannot be because I do not carry it with me,’ I say.

‘Why do you not have a passport?’ he shouts angrily.

‘I have said I do have a passport,’ I say very slowly, ‘but I do not carry it with me.’

‘Show me your license,’ he says.

I glance around again and I take measure. The driver is not threatening and the passerby is interested but he maintains a distance. The policeman is the only aggressor and he carries no weapons. He wears boots and he looks nimble and probably they have taught him something before they gave him this uniform. I could take him if I have to, I decide, but it would not be clean and, anyway, he still has my keys.

I take my driver’s license from my pocket and he snatches it from my hand. He reviews it from both sides twice before he looks back to me.

‘This is not a license for a motorbike,’ he says.

‘It is a license for everything,’ I say.

‘The motorbike license is a D,’ he says.

‘This license is a B,’ I say. ‘B is Chauffeur. It means that I am a driver of all vehicles and of passengers.’

He looks at it again and then he looks back to my registration documents. I see that he has decided not to pursue the topic of the letters on the driver’s license and I snatch it back from his hand as he has snatched it from mine. He scowls at me as I replace the license in my pocket and then he returns his attention to my documents.

‘You have no license plate,’ he says.

‘As you remember I have said it is being printed at the Ministry,’ I say.

‘You must have a license plate,’ he says. ‘The bike may not go without a license plate.’

‘The bike may not go without registration,’ I say, ‘and there you see in your hand that I have registration.’

He thinks for a moment and the scowl on his face is unresolved.

‘You have no insurance for the motorbike,’ he says.

‘I do,’ I say but really I do not.

None of the motorbike drivers carry insurance but I have learned that it is better to say that you have a thing even if not. It is easy to talk in circles or to discover a misunderstanding, but it is when you admit that you do not have something that they have asked for that they will set themselves on ‘fining’ you for it.

‘It is not here,’ he says. ‘I want to see it.’

I reach back into my pocket and I retrieve my SOS International card, which provides an international number to call in case you require medical evacuation.

He reviews the card and I see that he is puzzled by it.

‘This is not an insurance,’ he says.

‘It is an insurance,’ I say.

He reviews it again and then I take it back from him. He still holds the photocopy of my registration documents in his right hand and my keys in his left.

‘There is no insurance in these documents,’ he shouts.

I look at the meanness on his face and in his voice and I almost tremble with anger.

‘I have just shown you my insurance,’ I say, trying as best I can to measure my tone.

‘Your insurance must be here with the registration and it must say the license plate number,’ he says.

‘I have shown you my insurance,’ I say again, ‘and this insurance covers me for everything I drive and wherever I go.’

‘I see no insurance here!’ he shouts. ‘You will pay me ten dollars.’

‘For what will I pay you ten dollars?’ I say before the words choke under the fumes from my gut.

‘You have no insurance here so you will pay me,’ he says.

Now the driver steps closer and tries to reason with him.

‘Maybe he does not know that he must have insurance,’ he says. ‘You can let him go this time.’

I am practically in a rage now and I can feel the blood burn in my cheeks.

‘I will give you nothing tonight,’ I say loudly and slowly so that there is no equivocation.

‘Maybe he does not know that he must have insurance so you can let him go this time,’ the driver says again.

‘He has no insurance so he will pay me ten dollars,’ the policeman says to the driver and then he turns back to me. ‘You will pay me ten dollars because you have no insurance!’

‘But if he does not know then you can let him go,’ the driver says.

I know that the driver is trying to help and that to go along with him will probably be the easiest way, but I am much too angry to want anything to go easy now.

‘Do you hear me that I will give you nothing?’ I say.

Now I am not hiding the anger and the scowl on my face is as severe as the one on his.

‘You will pay me ten dollars because you have no insurance,’ he says but for the first time I see hesitation.

‘I will give you nothing,’ I say. ‘Do you hear that I will give you nothing?’

His hand that holds the photocopies is close to me and I snatch them back.

         ‘This time you can let him go,’ the driver suggests.

‘I will pay you nothing,’ I say.

‘Next time he will have the insurance with the registration documents,’ the driver says.

         ‘Do you hear that I will pay you nothing?’ I say.

‘You will pay,’ he says and then he looks to the driver.

‘I will pay you nothing,’ I say. ‘You will give my keys and I will pay you nothing.’

My voice is stronger than his now and my anger is severer. I see that his right hand that clutches my keys is now closer to me.

‘This time he can go,’ the driver urges. ‘You see next time he will have insurance with his registration.’

He has my keys but now he sees that the driver is giving him the only way out.

‘His insurance must be with the registration,’ he says to the driver.

He brings his hand closer and I retrieve my keys. I want to say one last time that he will get nothing from me but, even through my anger, I can reason that it would be inelegant. And, after all, I think, wasn’t it his approach that was what sparked me in the first place?

He has returned my keys and now he stands awkwardly like he is without a place. How did this all go so wrong? I imagine him thinking, standing there, his scowl gone and him looking bewildered in front of my bike. He continues standing, looking bewildered as only you can look when only moments before you were so very certain of the world. Then, very slowly, he turns and he follows the driver to where they have parked their motorbike. I watch them drive off as I replace my documents and arrange my pockets. I glance back and I see that the passerby has dissolved into the darkness and that I am alone straddling my bike. I take a breath and I try to swallow the taste of venom that is sticky in my mouth. Then, I replace my crash helmet and I catch up to where Jess sits under the streetlight.

‘Is everything OK?’ she says as I pull alongside her.

‘He tried to bully me for ten dollars for having no insurance,’ I say.

‘So you did not pay him,’ she says.

‘No, I did not pay him.’

‘OK. Let’s go for sushi!’ she says.

         She shifts into gear and she pulls out ahead out of the streetlight so that her taillight becomes the only thing that I can see. She rides straight-backed and tall on the small motorbike. She does not slouch and her feet do not hang off the pegs. I will get crab rolls, I decide as I watch her become only a taillight, the little ones with the slices of avocado and the caviar on the outside. What are those called? Dragon something, I think, or maybe it’s Golden something?

The Kind of People We Want to Be

On a Saturday morning we ride our motorbikes to lunch and then to the village where Lachlan and Nik live. They live in a quaint four-bedroom house on the grounds of a Swiss-funded, private school. The house belongs to the school, which is known locally as ‘Ma Ellen’s School’ and Nik is the school’s administrator. Lachlan is her advisor – mostly unsolicited, I imagine – and he also works for a local USAID program and an Australian pharmaceutical company.

The house by the school in the village is about 40 kilometers outside of the capitol along the good highway that goes towards the international airport. From our place in the Sinkor neighborhood near the downtown, you drive through the Congo Town neighborhood until you reach where there is the busy intersection. We are going fast as we approach and then we slow behind the taxis that load and unload passengers. I ride behind Jessica, which has become our norm by mutual preference. She likes it because she gets to set the pace and I like it because I can watch her and watch over her. After the taxis, we wait for the cars in front of us to turn right. Beside us as we idle the ‘pem pem’ boys (motorcycle taxi drivers) watch us. Their bikes are arrayed in a phalanx along the curbside and they sit perched and waiting to take a passenger.

From the corner of my eye I see two of them laughing and then one leaps down from sitting cross-legged upon his motorbike. He approaches Jessica and makes to throw his leg over to ride pillion behind her. I see this and my blood turns hot. I honk and I mutter a few curses into the microphone, which runs from my crash helmet into my iPhone and, through the mobile network, into her iPhone and out her earpiece. She looks behind her and waves the pem pem boy away. I start to pull alongside but now the boy has gone and the car in front of her has made its turn. Jess moves forward and makes her turn and I follow, looking for the pem pem boy as I go.

         ‘I nearly went into a rage,’ I say to Jess through the microphone in my helmet as we accelerate away.

         ‘Yes, I know you did, love,’ she says and she lets me spit a few more curses until the venom is out of my mouth and the riding begins to calm me down.

         After fifteen minutes along a straight highway flanked by clearings in the vegetation where large homes and small businesses are built, we pass Kendeja Resort where there is a pool and a private beach and the food is expensive. We continue past and, after another fifteen minutes, we reach the turnoff for Silver Beach. We take the turnoff and we follow the sandy wash that is a road. I take it in second gear and I feel the light motorbike swish through the sand. Jess follows in a high first and, looking back often, I see that she is nervous but not overmatched.

After crossing two large puddles and more sand traps, the road opens to a large car park beside a house. On the grassy opening there are two plastic tables and some chairs that overlook a gully and then the ocean. It is deserted accept for an older boy who sits on a log. Probably he is the server. We park and we choose the closer of the tables. I unlace my boots and strip my socks. The grass and sand is good beneath my feet. We order a beer and a cola – Jessica refuses to drink when she rides – and we order food for four because Lachlan has told us that the fish is good but will be very long in the preparation.

         We talk and we read and then the older boy who is the server brings the drinks and we drink them while they are cold. Then we read and talk as before. When the four-wheel drive pulls into the car park, I am into my second beer. My shirt is off and Jess’s pant cuffs are rolled as high as they will go. Lachlan wears shorts and a straw hat and Nik is dressed for the sun.

‘As long as I’m with you I’ll never get to wear a nice dress like that!’ Jess says as an accusation.

         ‘Not on riding days,’ I say.

More drinks are ordered and the older boy who is the server goes off. When he comes back, Lachlan and Nik have settled in. They have been in town all day with their mechanic to buy parts for the new Jeep that they have bought. The traffic is very bad on Saturdays and much worse if there is a football match at the national stadium, which is just past the intersection along the airport road. Today the traffic is as bad as on any Saturday and Lachlan and Nik look very tired. The beers help and the quiet and the sunshine, and they are plenty relaxed when the food is finally brought.

         I am an introvert by nature but through travels and several moves during my early twenties I taught myself to be outgoing as a sort of survival technique and then because I learned that it is a professional asset. Now, between having few friends and having overdeveloped this outgoing act, I dominate the conversation. I know that I am doing it and I know that I do not want to be doing it, but it is a hard forged habit that is hard to break.

         After lunch and another cold drink, Jess is signaling to me that it is time to finish the trip to Lachlan and Nik’s house. It is another forty-five minutes until sunset and there are only a few kilometers left to cover but they are all off pavement and the rains from a couple days before have probably made puddles. We leave money with Lachlan and Nik who will settle the bill and we ride off ahead.

         We ride out the way we came in and we turn back onto the highway in the direction of the international airport. A half-kilometer ahead we see the sign for the school and we take the inland turnoff. The road is very wide in the beginning and there are long patches of mud that are hard to avoid. We ride slowly, passing shacks and modest houses. The ‘pem pem’ boys drive very quickly past us. They wear shorts and flip-flops and no crash helmet. I shake my head as they pass because I have taken a hard fall before and, even on dirt, I was glad for the jeans, boots, and crash helmet.

         The road narrows as we move further from the highway and closer to the village. Ahead where the road skirts the village, it becomes very muddy and there are no alternatives but to power through it. I have told Jessica to keep her throttle on as she goes through it so that she will not bog down. My experience with mud comes from South Sudan where the back cotton soil will stick to your treads and your chain and, if you do not accelerate hard, it will be as if strong hands have reached out from the puddle and taken hold of you. Maybe I do not explain myself well or maybe she misunderstands me to say ‘into’ rather than ‘through’ because she accelerates into the puddles and I see an enormous brown wave rise up. Then, through my earpiece, I hear, ‘I’m all dirty!’

‘You went in hard,’ I say. ‘Anyway, the splash was very photogenic.’

‘I’m all dirty!’ she says again, then I hear a breath and she repeats, ‘’I’m all dirty!’

Probably she is a bit startled, I think. Just a few weeks before she had a whole list of things that she would never do on a motorbike. Riding was the first on that list but we had crossed that off. And then it was riding in the rain and in the after work traffic and we crossed both of those off a few weeks later when we went to meet Lachlan and Nik at the Blue House for dinner. Then it was riding off the tarmac and we had done that when she had followed me to work one morning and then, miserably, had to ride herself back out to get home. Next on the list was riding in mud and then through water where she could not see the solid ground beneath her. Now, she had just done both and she had done it stoically and with great dignity. It had been all quiet in the earpiece until I saw the huge splash. Now she was saying ‘I’m all dirty!’ over and over again and I think it is like she is letting out a sigh of relief. Also, I hear the way she emphasizes ‘dirty’ like as if it is as foul a word in its usage as its meaning.

We go through two more large puddles, around a sandy bend, and then skirt another large puddle by following a trail through the bushes. At the gate, the guard is expecting us and he lets us through. He tries to explain where the house is but I am not understanding him, so he throws a leg over the seat and rides pillion. He directs me across a field, around the main school building, and past another until we arrive at a walled enclosure where a mechanic is working on a Jeep. Lachlan and Nik have arrived and Lachlan is speaking with the mechanic who is packing to leave for the day. I park beside the vehicle and when I have taken my helmet off and removed my earphones, Jessica is reviewing her clothes and her motorbike.

‘I’m all dirty!’ she says. She is smiling but she is still unsteady.

In the house we use the restroom and Jess changes into a clean pair of jeans that we have brought in my daypack. We take a tour through the house and the gardens and we see that it is all very nice. Nik introduces us to the puppies that are in a doghouse with their mother and she takes one with a white patch on his head and gives him to Jess.

‘Awww, I want him!’ Jess says.

Then we sit on the porch and take cold drinks. Jess has the puppy on her lap and we listen to music and Lachlan and Nik tell us about life in the village and the administering of the Ma Ellen’s School.

‘He was building cement blocks and he explained his other ideas for his business,’ Lachlan is saying as we open a third beer. ‘I told him to write a simple business plan and if I liked it I would make an investment – a loan really.’

‘Was he able to put a business plan together?’ I ask.

‘Anyway it was something like that if you ignore the spelling and all that,’ Lachlan says. ‘But it was a bit ambitious, so I helped him to narrow it down. I told him, “If you want to follow this, I’ll loan you the money.” It was about a thousand dollars and I think there’s a decent chance I’ll get some or most of it back.’

‘That’s a really nice thing to do,’ Jess says.

‘It’s a great opportunity for him because Lach is giving him plenty of time to pay it back,’ Nik says. ‘You know the banks require collateral and they charge so much interest, and the repayment period usually so short that you’re certain to default.’

‘Pretty soon you’ll be a micro-lending institution,’ I say.

Then Jessica makes a gasp and we look over.

‘He just peed on me!’

We continue like this until it becomes very dark in the garden beyond the light of the porch. Then we finish our drinks and rouse ourselves to make a drive into the village. We take the four-wheel drive and Nik drives because she usually stops drinking before Lachlan does.

The first place is a general store with a few plastic tables on the porch and a sound system playing Liberian and Nigerian hip hop. This is an entertainment center where you can buy bags of rice and cans of corn or sit and drink cold beer that you buy by the bottle. We watch the boys dancing and I try to imitate their movements but I am hopelessly uncoordinated and I have no rhythm. Later, one of the boys is drunk and he makes an advance at Jess. She fends him off effortlessly. She has become very expert at this over the last few years and I know that he need get quite pushy before it becomes necessary for me to intervene.

The drunk boy begins to leave and then stops and, unsteadily, he looks us over again. He sees Nik at the far end of the table and begins to stagger towards her. But Lachlan is seated between them and he stops the boy with a hand raised to his chest. I watch him and the boy is not happy but he is too drunk to be a threat. In another moment he has turned and he is retreating down the porch steps again and then a moment later he has disappeared into the dark night.

After we finish our drinks we pay and we leave. Nik drives us to another place that is the same but nicer. On the way we stop at a deep puddle in the road where a small sedan has foundered. It is an unmarked taxi. Two women stand off to the side while several men try to dig the wheels free. They ask us if we have a cable but we do not. I jump out of the car to review the situation.

‘It perfect!’ I say to Jess. ‘I’ve had a few drinks and there’s a problem to solve. And it’s not my car, so if I can’t solve it…’

I try to help the others push the car but the clutch smokes and the wheels do not turn and it will not budge. We try a few maneuvers but before long another vehicle arrives with a cable. In a moment the sedan is freed and we are all back on our ways. In the vehicle as we drive I am musing about ‘real mud’.

‘This is not real mud!’ I say as though I have taken an insult. ‘This is sandy mud. In South Sudan you get stuck in the mud and you’ll be there all day. It’s black cotton soil, you know.’

Nik follows a narrow road into and out of another puddle.

‘My first month in South Sudan, I got stuck in the mud. The whole right side of the Land Cruiser sank into a bog and the wheels on the left were barely making contact. The whole axle was stuck! I was there all day – from eleven to six. We broke the winch on another Land Cruiser – we were using it wrong but there were no trees around. It wasn’t until we found a tractor that we finally got it free.’

‘Yes, love,’ Jess says in that way she says when I am drinking – or not – and I have gone into a rant.

‘I’m just saying – that was getting stuck!’ I say and then I reach to the front seat and grab Lachlan by the shoulder. ‘That’s black cotton soil, you know.’

At the entertainment center Lachlan and I drink another beer. Lachlan and Nik talk to a young woman whose child attends the Ma Ellen’s School. Jess listens and I listen and I watch the football match that is on the television. I am mellower now and I like this version of myself better. In the corner a man and a woman play a game of backgammon.

In the morning Lachlan and Nik wake early to go to the airport. Lachlan has a morning flight that will take several legs and almost two days to get him to Sidney where he must go for business. Jess and I sleep in and when I wake up my head and my stomach are very bad.

         ‘I told you you would feel bad!’ Jess says in triumph. ‘ You drank too much.’

         ‘I drank fine,’ I say miserably. ‘You don’t let me practice enough.’

When we emerge from the room, Nik is back and has slept again and now she is doing chores. We sit on the porch and I drink a glass of water. Then Nik calls to us that she has prepared breakfast and it is very good and fresh, and she has fried Greek cheese into sticks.

After breakfast we take a walk through the village. While Nik contributes a few purchases to the village market, Jess and I wander about. Most of the huts are mud and some are red brick and stucco. Some have deeply rusted iron sheets and others have long palms for roofs. The nicer ones have both. There are no roads; only footpaths and some are wide enough for a car to pass. There are old cars parked next to a few of the huts and all but one looks permanently grounded. There is a mobile phone charging booth in the area that looks like it might be a plaza. Boys play pickup football here and the small children with their few clothes and snotty noses and distended stomachs come from the houses and gather around us. On one side of this clearing cement blocks are piled high and moss has grown in the shady parts between them. At the other end is a borehole that does not produce because the tap is broken.

‘It’s the same village as you’ll see anywhere,’ I say.

Later, I will feel bad for saying this because it will occur to me that, by belittling their place, I have written off these people. No one deserves that. Then I will wonder how being an aid worker has made me so cynical about some things, but right now my mood is bad because of how my head and my stomach are from last night. My mood is also bad because Jess’s mood is bad. Her mood is bad because she is worried about having to ride out today. Somehow, she feels that managing the muddy, sandy roads yesterday has increased the pressure on her today. She feels unready and in over her head, and she feels pushed into this. She holds this against me but she hasn’t told me that yet.

‘Look at this borehole,’ Jess says. ‘They didn’t build a trench around the tap – maybe so there wouldn’t be stagnant water for mosquitoes to grow in – but instead it empties right into this hut here where this family lives.’

She will say that she is not a ‘technical person’ but she has been around good boreholes and bad ones long enough to know what she’s talking about as well as any other non-engineer.

‘It was probably missionaries who built it,’ she decides. She is hot and tired and, probably, she did not sleep well. Also, she is more stressed now about the ride home that will come after we leave the village. ‘Why don’t they leave it to people who know what they are doing?’

The sun is very high now and it is very humid from the dense vegetation that surrounds the village and grows up from everywhere where the tending has been neglected. Nik has finished her shopping and we decide that we have seen all that there is of the village. On the way back to the Ma Ellen’s School, we meet Lachlan’s block maker. It is Sunday afternoon and hot as life and he and his man are shoveling sand into a wheelbarrow. They smile and wave to us and we wave back. Then they wheel the sand to the back of the house where they will mix the cement into it.

         At the house we have a cold drink and a sit on the sofa to cool down before we ride out. Jess is quiet because she is brooding about the ride and blaming me for pushing her into it when she is not ready. Nik and I talk until it is time to say goodbye. Before we go, we collect our things and I discover that my iPhone has a glitch. Probably it has happen because I plugged it directly into the outlet to charge and the Chinese generator produces an unstable current.

         ‘So we can’t be talking on the ride?’ Jess says.

         I shake my head.

         We have said goodbye and we are outside now. She is very overwhelmed and her mood is foul. This makes my mood worse and I am grumbling miserably to myself as we drive off.

         When we get home the ride has been fine but we are both very foul. When our helmets come off we begin to spit venom and we continue until there is a stalemate and we are quiet for a time. But our angers have not been validated so the venom builds again until we must let it out. We do like this during the evening but when it is bedtime we are exhausted but we are still nowhere. Finally in the night the venom is all used up and now we are good to each other again. We are good again because we listen, and because we talk about themes and behaviors rather than specific words and actions.

We talk about how she can feel overwhelmed by doing something even when she appears to be excelling, and we talk about how I can acknowledge this rather than take her success as reason to push her harder. We talk about our attitudes about this place and about the kind of people we want to be amidst adversity. We acknowledge that this has been the hardest country for us, even if it carries the least hardship, and this lets us drop our pretensions of being seasoned travelers. We talk about our goals and the sacrifices they require, and we agree that they are our decision and that we take responsibility for them. Finally when we turn out the light we feel good and we feel silly for all the not feeling good from before.

          The next day I send Lachlan and Nik an email. I thank them for the fun and for having us. I apologize to Nik that we were a bit out of sorts before we left on Sunday. I smile at the reply because she says that we were fine and it was her who was feeling a bit off that day.

These Are the Stake-Holders

‘You know, in the villages there is a town crier who tells everyone the news. The people go out to fields in the morning and, when they come back to the village, the town crier goes around to tell them the news. Maybe the chief’s daughter has taken ill or a government engineer came to inspect the borehole – things like that. Even maybe you will be in your hut resting and he will speak loudly to the people on the street so that you will also hear the news from inside your home.

‘So you will come to the village during the day to mobilize the community for a meeting or an assessment or something. Most of the people will be out in the fields. So you will tell this town crier that you want the village stakeholders to assemble for a meeting in the church tomorrow. In the evening he will go around to spread the news of the meeting in the church. The next day you will come to the church and you will be surprised to find that there are only old people. You will ask the town crier why he has assembled the old people and he will tell you that these are the stake-holders.’