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Tuesday, Feb 9, 2010
Two days into our journey, after hours of being bounced around on unpaved roads, we reached Rumsiki, a small village on the border of Nigeria which is famous for its crater-like mountains. The massive, rocky peaks shadowed by the slowly reddening sky confirmed the village's reputation as one of the 10 most beautiful places in the world. The next morning we visited the crab sorcerer, an old man with a yellowing beard who seemed to be in a trance as he moved around his mud hut. We asked him a question and he sat on a rock, meditatively massaging and blessing his special crab. Finally, he let the crab do its "work" in his clay pot, then opened the lid, examined the crab's tracks and laughed loudly.
"You will be together for a long time, until he" -- he pointed to J. -- "is like me!" The old sorcerer lifted his cane.
At the end of the four days, J. and I were closer again. In fact, I felt more in love than I had in a long time. Perhaps it just takes time to get back in sync, I reassured myself. But then, as if to remind us that nothing in Africa can be counted on to go as planned, our flight back to Yaounde was delayed -- for two days. The rescheduled flight remained uncertain and no airline reps were available for confirmation. The airport had no phones, no food. We spent the night on a cold, hard floor. By the time the flight left for Yaounde, I had missed my flight back to the States.
Maybe I'll stay longer, I thought. But as soon as we returned to Yaounde, J. hurried off to work and I was once again confined to the icy isolation of the blue room. I scheduled a flight for the following day and J. drove me to the airport.
"I like it here," J. said as we drove through Yaounde's gritty streets followed by curious stares and harsh glares from poor Africans walking miles to get home. For the first time in our relationship, at least the first that I could remember, J. and I were having completely opposite reactions to an experience. We had traveled all over the world together, albeit only to beautiful places; we had shared everything for three straight years. Why now, why here was it all unraveling?
I reached for another clichi about Africa: Africa was another woman, a mysterious seducer who was exerting a pull over J. that I was incapable of preventing or imitating, making him feel excited, in control, powerful -- all the things he missed in his life in New York, his life with me. Being white, being the boss, he was not judged by the standards he was so used to failing. I thought about how much he hated the crowds, the subway, kissing up to a superior. In Africa he was a king. I looked at his face and briefly pictured him as the old sorcerer, raising his stick, which looked more like a scepter than a cane.
Weeks later, J. e-mailed me to say he loved me and wanted to be with me but wasn't yet ready to leave a place he found so much more enjoyable than home.
"When will you be ready to leave?" I asked.
"A month, two months. I don't know," he said.
That night I had a dream in which I broke up with J. and then ran off, up ladders, down slides, until it dawned on me that I had made a mistake. I tried to return to the place where I thought he was, but found him instead in a store, trying on a snakeskin coat with four African men. He looked happy and at home.
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