Last Wednesday I awoke at 6:30 a.m. to screaming, screeching, wailing, and moaning here in the courtyard. It was loud. I mean really, really loud . . . all coming from a single female voice. From a woman I’d never met who’d evidently been invited into the courtyard the prior night. The wailing was unnerving. From the sound of the screams I thought surely that a snake was in her little room attached to Leon’s home. By the time I decided to peer outside to investigate, Leon and Elizabeth had left for work, and the children were off to school. Remember, everything starts here by 7:00 a.m.
After the wailing came the chanting. Repeating and repeating and repeating some long phrase in some foreign language . . . not Kassim, certainly not French. Neighbors arrived in an attempt to calm this young woman, who could not have been more than 22. Her screams carried down the valley, and very likely all the way to town. Very young children, too young for school, entered the courtyard to see what was happening. Sada ran up the hill from the water pump and took the children away.
Little Victorine, strapped to Sada's back in a pagne, is totally unmoved. OK, at one-year-and-nine-months, Victorine is a rock. I, however, am not. This is seeming a bit threatening. Do I stay in the hut, or do I dare venture out for a peek? A neighbor man arrived and tried to reason with the woman. He was violently beaten by her twig broom. It's difficult to sustain any serious injury from a broom of thin little twigs. Still. Then the woman locked herself in her room and proceeded to scream and bang for an hour to get out . . . while she alone possessed the key. Key word here being possessed.
By 8:30-9:00 a.m., I was ready to kill her. Did I mention that she was really loud? I approached her door, carefully, bearing an apple. This is Pô. No one refuses an apple. But she did. In fact, seeing a nasarra approach, her psychotic episode got even uglier . . . and louder. Seriously, if I'd been wailing like this for over two hours, I'd have collapsed. Lady, get a grip!
Now I’ve failed to mention that this was yet another day in Pô with no electricity and no water. And this woman is potentially dangerous. So I couldn’t putter in the garden, or plug-in my earphones and watch a movie or listen to music. I honestly considered beating her. I keep two large, long sticks (branches, really) in my latrine as exit ramps for the bush rats. Though the rats are large and strong enough to push open the door (and they have done that), one really doesn't want to spend even two seconds in a small, dark, enclosed latrine with a confused bush rat. Thus the exit ramps were put in place for their speedy retreat up and over the walls. Point being, I was strongly inclined to snag one of those branches and beat this woman. No, I am not kidding. She was mad . . . and maddening.
About 11:00 a.m. she ran across the courtyard and pushed into my home, declaring in perfect French that she needed to be behind a screen so that the sorcery wouldn't get to her. Did I mention that she smelled. S-M-E-L-L-E-D! Use your imagination. Geez.
OK, silly American that I am, I didn't realize that sorcerers and genies can't get through a screen door . . . albeit, a screen door with a hole in the screen and a gap around the bottom of the door. Idiot that I am/was (or sucker, or kind-hearted, or merely stunned), I sat beside her, tried to comfort her as she held her French Bible. I actually held the hand of this insane woman and turned to some of my favorite verse:
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.
For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;
and they that wasted us us required of us mirth, saying,
Sing us one of the songs of Zion.
How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Reggae lover that I may be, I'd never have known this entire verse were it not for the Nelson DeMille book. Thank you, you brilliant man. Anyway, knowing it in English made it easy to read in French; and it actually seemed rather appropriate for the occasion. Talk about a strange land!
I've got a little stone box filled with an aroma therapy balm (remember the French Lick box, Sally?). So I rubbed some on her hands, temples, and under her nose. Yes, I actually touched her. Then I did the same for myself. I assure you, at this point, I needed calming therapy more that she . . . and needed a break from the smell.
The beaten neighbor gentleman returned to the courtyard with her two sisters and a packet of tablets. Xanax! WHAT?! You can buy Xanax over-the-counter in this world?! Things are looking up. Way up! The man wasn't allowed in the hut . . . she started chanting again, but he passed-in the tablets. OK, big dilemma. Were they for me or for crazy-gal? Or both? One-point-five milligrams and an hour later, she was a tad calmer. We sat on the floor and I made her a cross from metallic pipe-cleaners, strung on a wide piece of cotton ribbon, on which I wrote "God will protect me" and "I resign myself to the protection of God." Or maybe I wrote "God is a smoker." You never know with my French. Anyway, she clutched the pipe cleaner cross, and became a bit more calm, though no less smelly.
At about 3:00 p.m. Leon arrived to rescue me, having heard of this tale all the way in Manga, about 135 km away. This really is a small world. His first observation was that my hut was going to need a thorough cleaning to eliminate this smell. Really, Leon? He then asks if I'd mind staying here with her until he can bring medical help and remove this woman. What the ?
Let’s wrap-up this story. Leon and crazy-gal's sisters arrived around 16h00 and we all dragged her from the hut . . . literally. Screaming ensured, naturally. Still . . . game over. Sada came to help me wash my mat and floor. I use the last of my L'Occitane perfume, which I'm sure genies hate, and make a run into town for a bottle of rum.
So I got the rum and some juice. Why didn't I stop at the pharmacy for the Alprazolam? One must ask: retuning without Xanax . . . who's the crazy woman?! Where did crazy-gal go? Does my village have padded cells? We can only speculate.
Good morning how are you?
My name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately it’s impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this I would ask you one small favour:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Burkina Faso? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Burkina Faso in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28903 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez