The White Bogeyman

West Africa on a Bicycle

by Carla King
September, 1993
My brother Jeff and I acclimate to the West African climate on Saly Portudai, a
quiet beach between the Dakar airport at Mbour and the airport, waiting for
Alitalia to deliver our lost bicycles. They wont come for two weeks but we learn to
wait. We stay in a beach huts, concrete with padlocked doors only steps from the
sand in a village that seems neither to be under construction or in demolition. We
learn quickly that middays are for dozing. Mornings and evenings we are out in
the village getting to know people, learning how to speak their African-accented
French. The second day we swim to a rocky outcropping not far offshore, chasing
crabs and poking at tidepools.
The young men of the village have never dared swim that far and suddenly my
22 year old brother, recently graduated from college with a degree in high-tech
business development, is surrounded by equally tall and trim young African men,
giving swimming lessons. He gives excited instructions in pidgin French and all
the young men diligently copy his movements, arm over head, head down and
turning from side to side, breath, turn, reach, breath. So far away from fraternity
parties and water polo championships, he has found friends and a purpose.
Jeff splashes into the diamond sharp sea, arms rising and falling and the men
splash behind him. They start over, and get a littler farther. After a few days he
swims with them, one-by-one, to the island. There are whooping cries and cheers
from the beach.
We set out before the stars fade away. The stars! Diamonds set into a black
velvet hat, scattered in unfamiliar constellations.
The road is paved but just out of Mbour we are the sole foreigners and will be
until we reach The Gambia where well meet the water engineer. The next time
we speak English to someone will be to the Liberian refugee in Guinea-Bissau,
then another week to the Peace Corps gals, then, a month later, the French
couple on the Cote dIvorian coast.
We are just starting out and the road here runs black and smooth through the
scrubby flat savannah and oh, how I love that first hour before the sun empties
itself on us like a bucket of white-hot light; the white sunlight that soaks into the
tarmac, evaporating the moist, dark spots where the animals sleep, and radiates
heat to bake us from the bottom.
We have agreed to be stoic until ten o'clock, and then we will seek shade and
rest.
The savannah once roiled with lions, but no longer does the dry grass rustle with
their languid wanderings. Termite hills, spiky columns of red earth, rise weirdly
from the flat expanse, towering eight feet tall and higher. Baobab trees stand
alone or in forests, simply and quietly claiming their space, their elephant-legged
trunks connecting roundly to the earth as their broccoli-topped branches cluster
closely and compactly together, no sprawl, a rich deep green against the anemic
African sky. We pedal by in silence, wondering about them, worshiping them.
Despite sunscreen and hats our skin turns pink and our hair is already bleached
to platinum.The Africans here in Senegal are tall and elegant aubergine-
shouldered Wolofs with high cheekbones and almond eyes. They are fascinated,
attracted, repelled by our pink-white palette, our scattering of freckles, the
bleached hair on our arms.
Children run forward, attracted by the strange bicycles laden so neatly with
panniers and packs and strangely dressed riders, and then... the first time it
happens, it breaks my heart. Every time, it breaks my heart.
The girl walks toward the main road from a narrow path, a huge earthen jar on
her head. I do not notice her because it is close enough to ten oclock, time for
our break, pedaling eagerly toward the only substantial shade tree weve seen for
miles.
What luck! Its spreading branches are so heavy with leaves that it has created a
rare, impenetrable shade. I intend to dive under it, lie down, drink water, soak my
head in a wet sarong and gaze upward into green shadows.
The girl slows, then freezes, eyes wide and motionless except for her mouth,
which works soundlessly in a painstaking effort to speak. Suddenly, and too late,
I understand that I am the cause of her distress.
I stop, wondering what to do but fascinated by the effort to work her mouth into a
functional shape. After a slow, tight rounding of the lips, a faint guttural scream
emerges, very quietly, from the depths of her soul.
Unwisely, I move closer, hoping to reassure her but the effect is not comforting.
She pirouettes, one hand still on the earthenware jar balanced on her head.
Her lower body moves quickly, hips swaying wildly yet every-so-gracefully
absorbing the impact of her steps even in her desperation. The upper part of her
body seems to be on a different track, gliding impossibly on a skateboard along
the dusty red road.
Jeff cycles up and stops beside me. The girl turns again to find that now not one,
but two white boogeymen are staring after her. The very white boogeymen her
mother had said would come for her if she didnt do her chores.
She bellows and turns again, runs and turns several times more with the
awkward pirouette, one hand glued to the earthenware jar. Her cries come more
quickly now, more loudly. They are cries of agonized terror.
Jeff looks at me, confused. "What did you do?
The girl surely notes that we are not in pursuit, but this does not comfort her. Her
screams become loud sobs.
Taking a short drink from our water bottles, we look longingly at the shade tree,
then toward the girl, who is now almost out of sight, and toward her village, which
must be nearby. Reluctantly, we swing our legs over the bikes to ride on.