*
From: tallulahlo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 13 November 2002 09:53
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: your letter
Hey Danny
Already eleven weeks since we said goodbye and I spent hours looking out to sea, not wanting to turn around and admit that you'd gone. I collected your letter from the box in town this morning – seeing your handwriting felt like a shock, the paper was so thick and soft between my fingers. I have read it six times from beginning to end. I haven't been able to sleep for thinking of you this week. I know we're not meant to say this out loud, let alone write it down, but all I've ever done is try to be honest.
Even if I could have slowed down time to spend more of it with you, I don't think I would have. I have felt the deepest of sadnesses in our goodbyes, but I just try now to think of all the good times: nights dancing in the Sadhu Lounge, cycling up Leith Hill, breakfast and newspapers at Jonnie's Café.
I remember about a month before I met you feeling like I'd woken up again, as if I'd been asleep for years, sifting and sorting through myself, then every day that I was with you I learnt more, loved more, lived again. It was a magic summer.
I hope you're loving the snow and getting plenty of those board meetings (!) I think you said Stig was flying out to meet you in Whistler next weekend – if he plays 'Devastate,' take to the floor for me will you?
I'll phone you as soon as I can – either next Wednesday or perhaps on the weekend if there's a boat going – the moment I can get to a line. I am not going to stop writing to you Danny, unless of course you want me to. This whole thing is so double edged – I miss you always, but we had our deal didn't we? Let's not lose the plot over this – whatever happens, happens, huh?
All the doors between us - not yet open, not yet closed.
Take care of yourself Danny, be good. With love, Lisa xxx
*
PO Box 65
Yenagoa
Bayelsa State, Nigeria
15th November 2002
Dear Grandpa and Grandma
I was so sorry to hear about your fall, Grandpa. How awful for you – I hope it wasn't painful – by the time you read this I am certain you will be well again and out of hospital.
Sorry not to have written to you sooner, but it's been so busy with settling in and learning the job, but thank you for all of yours. The humidity here is exhausting and some evenings I fall asleep before 9pm. Even then, the dwellings around mine are silent – depending on the tides, my neighbours go night fishing or take to their beds very early and rise before dawn the next day. The evenings are so dark in the rains, with only the glare of the gas flares above the tree tops to light the sky. I have been given a tiny generator but I don't like to use it – mine is the only house with electricity in the village and the gen makes such a racket. Far better and more peaceful are the kerosene lamps and it's by that light that I'm writing this.
There is so much work to be done here, we are never short of things to keep us occupied. On Saturday mornings the local kids come knocking at my door, bringing me bugs and giant millipedes from the bush – we paint red dots on their shells, set them free and wait to see if they'll come back. We have started a log book.
One of the girls who comes to me is older than the others – her name's Amida. She says she's not sure of her age but I'd say she's about fourteen. Her mother is unwell and in poor mental health – they call her Police on account of the noises she makes with her mouth. Amida dropped out of school to work and picks up any little jobs that she can find – petty trading, periwinkle harvesting, bottle collecting at the bar. I fear for her – she's a bright girl, but alone in the world since Police is not fit to take care of her. The last time I saw Police, she was balancing on a mango stump outside their hut and waving at the lightening sky. It was just before dawn and she turned to me and sang, 'my sweet star babies dey go sleep, Auntie, yes-oh.' Her eyes shone and she smiled. Amida says that she'd like to be a nurse, but what chance has she without schooling? Grandma, you have always said that you would like to help an African child, do it direct, know where your money's gone and who it's helped. Perhaps this is the one?
It's hard to imagine that Christmas is already just over a month away. Mum says that they're all coming down to you in Salisbury. I hope to travel over the holidays, perhaps crossing the border to Cameroon and climbing the mountain there.
Keep on writing to me, letters are wonderful things to receive.
With fond love, Lisa x
*
Dear Me Monday 11th November
Some days I think I will go mad from the lack of conversation, my only refuge has become this writing. We are doing a tour of the villages – there are thirteen of them on the island, plus some fishing camps in the remoter areas. Me and my colleague Inatimi are doing an education survey, seeing what services there are here for the children. Inatimi's got a degree in Electronics – said it was all theory.
Akassa is such a beautiful place of thatched huts and cocoa palms, broad tracts of mangrove swamp and dense bush where drill monkeys and forest elephants live. We arrive at the schools to find them empty in the heat of the day, chickens scratching around in the dirt, small children rolling Blue Band margarine tops along the ground with sticks. Lunch is dried fish torn off the bone with our fingers and oranges sliced in half with a penknife and eaten on the beach. This afternoon, we visited a nursery set up by local women. One hundred and eighty children crammed into three tiny classrooms made from corrugated zinc. The pupils clamber over the desks and fall backwards off their tiny chairs, spilling out of the doorways. But they are learning, singing their alphabets and playing with coloured shapes donated by a wealthy indigene named Aduke Alagoa. As Inatimi would say, 'these women, they are trying-oh,' they are working so hard for their children.
Hi Tuesday 12th November
I don't know if I've mentioned before that there are no roads on the island and no cars, so we move 'by leg,' by canoe and fast boat or riding pillion on motorbike taxis. Socrates is our new pirogue driver, replacing the last who was sacked for arriving at work so drunk that he ran the boat over the bank and into the Royal compound, taking the sea turtle hatchery out with the helm. Socrates refuses to smile for fear of not seeming sober, so I have made it a challenge to make him do so.
The river was busy today – vast rafts of timber, a hundred feet wide and twice as long again, floating down the Niger. The men who captain them shelter in raffia tents and steer the vessels away from the banks with long poles. They are making their way up the coast to the ports of Lagos where the rafts will be split and traded and shipped overseas. Later this afternoon, the components of a new oil rig bound for 'Block 217,' five miles out to sea, sailed by. These are colossal steel structures: great masts and joists, drilling pipes and platforms. Children skipped along the waterside and cheered, while their fathers looked on and drank kai kai, emptying their bowels like pigs on the shore.
Orlando lives in the other half of the house I've moved into. He's not from Akassa, but has come from Rivers State to work for the Company making cut lines through the bush. Sometimes there are other workers who stay a night, but mostly it's just him. Every morning Orlando puts on his hard hat and carefully laces his steel toe-capped boots before heading off to the jetty at Bekekiri. He keeps his curtains drawn at all times, but when the door's ajar I see that his rooms are empty save for a foam on the floor and a mosquito net hanging from the ceiling. Each day we are talking more and more. Tonight he pointed to a picture of Celine Dione in a ball gown as he flicked through a magazine – 'you see this woman here,' he asked, 'is she not thought to be a prostitute when she is wearing that dress?' I didn't really know what to say.
Hello Me Wednesday 13th November
Up at 5am this morning to catch the boat to Yenagoa. It rained heavily and we sheltered beneath a tarpaulin. The rain stopped and we lifted our heads like dogs to the wind. On the mainland I got the bus to the supermarket and bought canned vegetables and meat, surfed the internet for news. All the World Service has talked about for weeks is war. There have been riots over Miss World in Kano city to the north. On the way back the bus driver pulled into a queue of vehicles snaking all the way along the surfaced main road. A young boy and a man with only whites for his eyes held out their palms at the window and begged for coins. We sat out a long wait for the fuel tanker which might arrive today, tomorrow, next week. No one knows. A station attendant in a blue boiler suit walked the line of vehicles waving a short plank of wood studded with nails at no one in particular. In the end, I piled out of the bus with the rest of the passengers, knowing that the wait would be too long, and bought roasted plantain wrapped in newspaper from a woman who'd made a fire in an old car wheel casing.
Thursday
Dear Me, fuck me I'm bored ... Rach is coming next weekend, can't wait.
Me, Friday 15th November
The teachers are on strike – no pay for six months, no visits from Inspectors or officials, no books, no materials, no registers. It's as if they don't exist. The Nigeria Development Corporation dispatched a shipment of wooden desks and chairs to the Akassa waterside in an attempt to appease the teachers, but the furniture was dumped carelessly, splintered and cracked and already rotting in the mud of low tide. I paid a few Naira for some small boys to move it to the assembly hall of the nearest school. The roof has fallen in, but it will be drier than the river bed. At school I found a teacher playing cards in the shade. He told me that he'd given up and returned to fishing and trading for a living. Did I want to buy a bag of dried cassava, he asked, swinging a clear plastic bag of white coral-like matter from his hand. Hmm, I felt like saying, I'll put that in a sandwich and have it for lunch. I bought it anyway; gave it to Amida.
At sundown Orlando and I sat out on the porch and drank a cold beer. We popped ground nuts from their skins and raised our voices to hear one another over the frog song from the swamp.
'So how is this world of development today, my sista?'
'Well. It is there.' I am learning this national game of finding words when there is nothing much to say.
'You have worked.'
'Yes, I have worked.'
*
From: tallulahlo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 20 November 2002 11.08
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: you
Danny,
One of the many things I liked about you was that you were such a great musician. I remember you kept your iPod in a cradle on the shelf and on Saturday mornings you'd scroll through it, getting me to pick out tunes and then you'd play them on your guitar. You played so naturally, even though you broke your hand last year. The playing seemed to strengthen you and when you'd finished, you'd rub your thumb pad across the back of your hand, circling away the pain. There was a time when a melody seemed to snag at you and you stopped playing right there and then, putting the guitar down carefully in the corner by the window. You left the room without a word. I never asked you why.
It's raining heavily today and for the first time since I arrived, I am feeling chilled. That coldness is, I guess, at least something that we share even though we're far apart.
Courage - Lx
*
The End of the Earth
Imere Compound
Buoama Village
Ibuwai'gbene
Opu Akassa
Yenagoa, Bayelsa State
Nigeria, Africa, The World, The Universe.
1st December 2002
Dear Shaz
Thank you so very very much for the gorgeous shower gel – I had a wonderful, luxurious bucket with it the very evening I got it and didn't even notice the colour of the water, it smelt so good. The bath bomb's got to wait though, until I get me to a hotel over Christmas. It's been a long time since I've felt truly clean. Last week the water at my house was smelling so brackish that I took myself up to the tank at the side and found a rotting lizard floating in it. You heard it here first - Eau de Reptile: the new new. I am not sure if having the convenience of a tank at the house isn't more trouble than it's worth and I'd rather collect from the bore hole on the edge of the forest behind the house each morning. I'd pay someone to do it but it still doesn't feel right to have people running around for me.
Do you remember when we saw the sewage donkeys by the skyscrapers in Beijing? I'm telling you, this place is like that sometimes. It's about once a week now that I get to go out on the speedboat – two hours to the mainland. I can get email if there is fuel for the generators and toast if the hotel by the jetty is open. Had to attend a god-awful meeting last week on the Shell compound in Port Harcourt - a carbon copy of middle America with its neat bungalows and perfect sprinkler-fed lawns, tennis courts and wives in pearl earrings. I was served a breakfast of Brevilled egg sandwiches in a canteen staffed by waiters in red tartan and I ate alone and in silence. The Birdie Song was playing on the stereo. Afterwards, in the meeting, they talked about participatory development and stakeholder literacy – the Norwegians want to put money into it before they start drilling. The French are keen to broadcast distance learning by radio from their base in Lomé. And then I came home to Buoama to find that the tides have re-salinated the water supply and the Redeemed Church of Zion were staying up all night to have a sung vigil about it. Meanwhile the rest of us were harvesting what rainwater remained in the buckets and jugs and jerry cans that happened to have been left out in the open.
Looking out of my window there are two of the guys from next door sleeping on a mattress put out on a stack of mossy breeze blocks. Stripped to their waists with mouths open to the sky, there's a strong smell of weed in the air. Did I tell you that the local lads claim this as Bob Marley's ancestral home? Every year they have a memorial wake for him. They are very beautiful boys, Shaz, the musculature of their bodies so defined – every line and curve put there by a life lived without machines or cars or any mod cons. There's not another soul to be seen this afternoon. No noise except for the cicadas in the grass. Ambrose came by earlier with fresh palm wine and I had him fill up that Berghaus flask you gave me. I'm saving it for later – though it won't keep beyond a day.
I lie. There is someone else to be seen – in the shade of the wooden bridge that crosses over the creek by the juju flags, Ebi is crouched with his knees held in close to his chest. His head is bandaged. His eyes are fastened almost shut with the black bruises that have bloomed upon his skin. I know this because he has been coming to me each day so that I can dress his wounds. There is trouble here, Shaz, that I don't understand and I find myself right in the middle of it.
Last weekend a friend from Abuja, Rachel, came down to stay. She brought a tube of Pringles and a bottle of vodka and we sat on my porch at dusk to drink. As we chatted about work, a group of young men – about fifteen of them – entered the compound on the pathway leading from Daddy's shack. I recognised a couple of faces from the bar by the waterside at Kongho – they hang out with a youth leader they call Gadaffi. One of them, the tallest one, dressed in denim shorts, beret and a PVC waistcoat, dumped a large holdall on the ground and Itari, Ebi and the boys from next door came out to meet them. We couldn't understand what they said – they spoke in Akaha – but their voices were strong and they held their chins in the air as they spoke; then the tall one bent down and pulled out a glass bottle from the bag and smashed the end of it off, against the tree trunk. I pulled Rachel inside the house and we watched from behind the mosquito screens as the brawl moved off quickly down the path. Afterwards we smoked cigarettes and thought little more of it.
Sunday morning 5am and I was woken by the thud of running feet upon the earth outside the house. I jumped from my bed and pulled back a small corner of the curtain with my fingertips. In the pre-dawn I could see figures entering the compound with rocks and bottles and machetes, then came startled voices and a few shots from a gun. Then came the hack, hack, hacking of machetes cutting into what, I did not know. I ran to lock the doors which I'd left open in my carelessness the night before. Rachel woke up.
'What's happening? What's that noise?'
'I'm just closing the doors, making sure we're OK,' I made an effort to sound calm before returning to the window.
There was scuffling and torch lights frantically flashing in all directions. Someone was hacking the ground with a machete and looking towards the house. Felicia, a neighbour, was backed up to my window and the women's wailing had begun. I heard Itari's voice and so I moved to get his attention, but he couldn't hear me so I drew back the screen and leant out of the window.
'What's happening? Are we safe?'
He looked at me and raised a hand, the whites of his eyes astonishing in the darkness, and then he turned his back and ran away. Mary, the grandmother, appeared from the big zinc shack at the back of the compound – she was leading a line of tiny children, all holding hands. She wished me good morning, expressionless, then disappeared into the rattans and prayer plants at the edge of the bush. My neighbour, Orlando, was nowhere to be seen.
Rachel and I packed small bags with all of our cash and our passports, put on our trainers and waited for a lull in the fighting. Securing the door behind us, we hastened through the village, not stopping to talk to those who stood in doorways with their faces full of sleep. Mrs Duwei tried to stop us, since our leaving would bring shame to a village unable to take care of its guests, but we were frightened and confused. On the track to Kongho, we jumped into the mangroves as a group marched past with sticks, dragging Itari behind them at the wrists. He did not see us. We waited for the remaining followers, who ran with rocks in their hands, to pass before we moved again.
That afternoon Rachel left for Abuja, not waiting to collect her belongings from my house. I went along in the boat for the ride. We still don't know the cause of the conflict so I didn't go home until it seemed safe and I wedged a chair under the door handle.
Ebi came to me in the night, his scalp swollen and hot where it had been sliced with a long blade. Here there are no qualified doctors, no hospitals, not even a health centre. I had been given a large suitcase of medical supplies with bandages and resuscitators, blood stoppers and cold packs, needles and vinyl gloves. I cleaned and dressed Ebi's wound, enclosing it with sutures. What good it will do, we will see – infection has already set in. He has badly dislocated one of his thumbs, but he would not allow me to inspect it. He was entirely wordless and left without shaking my hand.
Well, it's getting late now Shaz so I'm going to sign off – it's a relief to get this off my chest - it's not everyone I can tell. I'll let you know when I find out more. But don't worry about anything – I am safe enough and we are expecting improvements in security - there is talk of buying a satellite phone. The elections are coming in two months and there's certain to be more trouble, but I shouldn't be here for that. I will travel.
I'm still in touch with Danny and we do exchange a few emails now and again. Who knows what's going to happen there – no regrets, though. I'm so glad I'm here. Martin Boyce is also still in touch – he's doing research now in Ghana.
'Go well,' as they say here, and take care of yourself, write soon.
Big love, Lisa xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
*
Dear Me Monday 2nd December
Today is the kind of day you just want to curl up in bed with a good book or, even better, a good man, and dream away the day. As I sit here at my desk there are crooked bolts of lightning streaming into the oil palms and exploding like stars. Overhead, thunder is crashing down with a might only nature could marshal and the rain pours down, down, down. In the next room, Friday is sprawled on a bed, sickly, sweating, struck with malaria that has fastened his mind into half-consciousness. And all around is the dense hush of truancy, interrupted only by the swift crackle of raindrops on concrete.
*
From: tallulalo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 04 December 2002 13:03
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: hey!
Danny – I find, by chance, I'm out on the mainland. Gutted not to have received a reply from you to my last email. I have been waiting so patiently for days and days but it feels like YEARS. I tried calling you, but no answer.
I had the strangest dream last night – you were lying half in the bath looking up and me and there was a dog on the floor. It wasn't mine but I knew I had to find a way to get rid of it. I kept chasing it around but in the end it turned into a talking drum and disappeared and then I could hear you playing it in the bathroom. What do you think it means?
Let me know if you're online – I'll be here for an hour or two. Mail me, Lx
*
From: tallulalo@hotmail.co.uk
Sent: 04 December 2002 14:38
To: ruckus@madasafish.com
Subject: re: hey!
I'm still here Danny – five more minutes and I've got to run for the boat...
*
Buoama, Akassa
9th December 2002
Professor Boyce I presume?
Congratulations on the book – I haven't read it yet, but I got word of a colleague setting out on the market boat who could carry a letter for me and wanted to take the chance to thank you for sending it – kind of you to think of me.
Things unsettled here. The Company is on the river again – they appear like rude Christs hovering in their flat boats on the surface of the estuary, their jackets and hard hats bright against the dull skies of this season. Andy Burgess has put an estimate of N64 – 86 million on the timber loss and is still working on a figure for the fish nests that were dynamited. He's yet to inform the Committee. Brass is still threatening to attack Koluama and the youth are restive. The Company have already upped the stay-at-home payments and the Council of Chiefs are furious. Alagoa says the youth are blind Company thugs. These grievances are turning fathers against sons, polo against polo, while the rest kick back and watch the show. The water's full of soot again and this week alone, three babies died in my village from the 'fever.' Plus ça change, I am sorry to say. Bob Knight says that every project here needs a white face to comfort the donors. The more I see, the more it seems this whole thing isn't about compassion, but vanity and greed - people like us holding up mirrors to see who's fairest.
My colleague has arrived at my door, so must sign off in haste – by the way, did I ever tell you that my boss is called Friday? I thought you might enjoy that.
With all good wishes, Lisa.
*
Dear Me Tuesday 10th December
On my way to work this morning I found Police cowering in the mangrove roots by the secondary school, blinking up at me from amongst the mud-skippers. She had been beaten blue-black and bloody - said it was the Mayor and her clerk. Orlando told me that everyone here thinks Police is possessed, she is 'a demon incarnate, a danger to the children.' So it seems they tried to kill her with a machete handle heel and make out 'she'd done fall and broke her devil head.' Police muttered that the Pastor's wife came by and begged mercy in return for a rack of dried fish and a baptism for the Mayor's next child, and so they let her go.
When I found her, Police's skin was so split about the face and arms that you could see the whites of her bones. Her nose was torn like cloth on a nail and left long threads of blood twisting over the mangroves. I told her to stay there while I went for help but when I got back she had disappeared. Tonight Amida came to me and cried, saying 'never can I find her more again. She done run, run away, Auntie. Very, very far.'
*
+8821646686092
hiya mum – just to say we've got satellite phone - this no. all is well here - sunshine today. speak soon, lx
18.35 131202
