~~~

it was early in the morning and i thought i heard a familiar voice outside my door. i was just coming out of a deep sleep and i heard Sakola call for me, he said i had a visitor. i decided to pretend i was still sleeping. It was not yet 7 a.m., it was too early to be bothering me, even if the person was my friend. i tried hard to slip back into a deep slumber but knowing somebody was sitting a foot away from me on the other side of the wall made it a little difficult.

i tore my blankets off, put on something appropriate, and walked outside.

"hello kacie, good morning."

Tanko, my Muslim soccer friend who had since grown a small goatee, peeked his head around. He was sitting next to Collins, who was looking at me, legs sticking out, smiling.

I rubbed my eyes to suggest Tanko's poor timing, but gave him a smile to let him know it was okay, this time.

"i've been waiting here for quite some time." he said.

"oh really?"

"yes"

"i was sleeping."

"oh well that is alright. i just came over to say hello. i wanted to see how you were doing."

"i'm well, thanks."

Sakola walked through the room and gave me an awful stare.

then i asked "and how are you?".

Tanko said he was fine and that he didn't mean to disturb me.

"coming by early in the morning is not my best time, just to let you know." i said.

"oh okay, well what time do you go to work?" he asked.

"in 2 hours." he already knew that. he met me on the road around 8:45 a few times a week and walked me a small part of the way. i wondered why he was pretending like he didn't know.

"well then, i can just wait for you."

the idea sounded dreadful. how was i supposed to entertain him for 2 hours. i wanted to crawl back into bed and read.

"you'll wait?"

"yes, i'll just stay here and when you leave we can walk together."

Sakola walked back across the living room and gave me another dose of his look.

"well howabout i go bathe and we can go to the market. i'll just leave early today."

"okay, alright." he said.

i went back into my room and quickly got ready. when we left the house the clock said 7:20. oh well, i thought. i'd spend some time at the market and take the long way to work, all the greetings would surely take up an extra hour.

any time before 9 a.m. conversation does not flow freely with me. Tanko didn't have much to say, so we walked in silence. it was nice to see the village at an hour i wasn't familiar with. fog rested at the tips of the trees and there were less children bobbing at the sides of the road reaching out their hands. when we got to the market the veggies looked plump and fresh.

"what will you buy today?" tanko asked me.

"um, i'm not sure." i was having just a fine time looking at everything, i wasn't ready to think about buying. back at home, in chico, our local farmers market is so beautiful you have to make rounds just to satisfy the eyes. once i've circled two or three times i can then focus on what i need. i was feeling the same way.

"well what do you need?" he said again.

"i really don't know." i repeated.

i've found that indecisiveness does not translate well. it's much easier to communicate with certainty, with a strong yes or an absolute no. waivering in the middle is where i usually like to be, but trying to relay that is exhausting. this dilemma has caused me to make some strange quick decisions in my time here. but at the market, on this morning, i wanted to just saunter along and decide nothing.

"you don't know if you need anything?" he asked.

"i haven't really thought about it."

"well do you need plantain?" he started to go through the list of everything that was offered.

"i'll just come back later. i can't do this right now."

"okay i'm coming." he said. and he ran off.

i walked down the road, slowly. i greeted a few people and tanko came back with a big bag full of oranges and bananas.

"this is for you" he said. handing them over to me. i took them from him and said thank you. it was a sweet gesture, and i love bananas and oranges. then he grabbed them back and insisted on carrying them.

"but a few of these are for my mother." he said.

"oh please, take all that you need, you bought quite a lot!"

we laughed.

i decided i'd just go to work extra early, maybe a case had come in?

"so have you got very far in the book i lent you?" i asked him.

he had stopped by my house a few weeks earlier to let me know of a soccer match later that day. "is it christians versus muslims?" i had asked. he told me it was not. it was the guys who lived on the left side of the road, versus the guys who lived on the right side of the road. "which side is going to try to cripple me this time?" i said. he told me i should play with the people on the left side, since that was where i lived. then we sat on the stairs of the porch and talked about religion.

Auntie walked by once and scowled... i ignored her.

Tanko said he really didn't understand why people used instruments to worship God. God never asked for guitars and drums to be included in worship. i said i wasn't too sure about that, how could God not love music, especially the stuff i had been hearing! he wanted to know about Jesus, how could a man be both a God and a human. It made no sense. I had just finished reading The Jesus I Never Knew, by Phillip Yancey, a fantastic book. I offered to loan it to him, if he was interested. "Oh please" was the response i got.

"i'm on page 30." he said.

"are you understanding the language?"

"yes, in fact, it seems i am, but i am reading slowly."

"well take your time i don't need it back any time soon."

"okay, alright, i'll do that."

we walked by his mosque. it was all closed up, they had finished with his morning prayer.

"can i look inside?" i asked.

"of course" he snickered.

we walked over. his mosque is a big yellow concrete structure, smack dab in the middle of town. it has turquoise shutters and brightly colored plastic tea pots scattered about outside. people wash their feet with the water in the tea pots before they go inside, the rest of the day they just sit there, decorating the place looking like empty flower pots from far away.

we removed our shoes and toured through the building. old worn mats were crowded together, leaving no space to walk without walking on top.

"this is the mens section" he said, then we walked and ducked under a cloth hanging down as a divider "and this is the womans area." the woman had a much smaller space, maybe a quarter of the size, equivalent to the waiting space in a fast food restaraunt. then he walked a little further back to an open closet and pulled out a wooden box the size of a long desk. "and this is the casket."

that immediately perked my interest.

"the casket?"

"yes, for our dead people. we carry them in this, put them in the ground, and bring it back. but you whites, i think you do it differently do you not?"

i told him i had never been to a funeral i remembered, so i wouldn't know. i felt strange saying that, almost as if i had never lived. funerals in Boamadumase are the weekend entertainment, where family comes and people drink too much and dance, eat even more and talk. the music blasts out of enormous speakers and rattles my brain even a mile away.

i stepped a little closer and peered inside. i wanted to know it's history, who the casket had carried and what they had seen, what they knew. i wished the wood could speak. i checked it for weird stains.

"how old is it?"

"the casket?"

"yes."

he just laughed, and showed me the exit door. "but since you are a woman this would be an entrance for you. this is the area women pray in, will you be coming to pray?"

"ummmmmm..." i tried to imagine myself bent over on one of the mats, my quiet prayers being drowned out by the hum of a deep african recital. i decided it would be a bad idea, i would be a spectacle not a participant. "... no, thanks."

"okay haha, i understand, well here are your fruits i should get going now. i've got to prepare my lesson for my students, school will be starting very soon."

"alright. good bye!" i gave his hand a soft shake and strode away in my direction.