My husband let the other guide talk for most of the trip; it made the hours spent bobbing in the back of the car more bearable. Besides, the man couldn’t have been silenced—he seemed incapable of keeping to himself the wonderful changes these European men had brought to the country. In his estimation, the Europeans’ arrival had carried the brightness of dawn. Despite there being much he didn’t like about his masters—how they spoke to him as if he were a dog, for example—he loved that they were giving him a chance to separate himself from his age-mates. His eyes shone when he talked about strolling around his village wearing clothes his masters had given him, the looks of envy his friends gave him, close as he was to becoming a European man himself. Though he missed his wife’s cooking when he traveled, he enjoyed eating his masters’ leftover food and drinking whatever alcohol they couldn’t finish, even if the drink was nowhere as good as palm wine. He hoped the masters’ mission would be successful. If everything went according to their plans, he said, people in every village in our country would soon be speaking English and wearing fine clothes and reading books and eating sweet things and owning cars, and maybe, he added wistfully, a child of his would one day own a car too, and he would get to sit in the front, no longer in the back.
—
My husband couldn’t recall how many days it took to arrive at the coast; he had stopped counting after Day Two, deciding it best to be mindless of how far he was from the only world he knew. When he finally entered the coastal village of the European men’s departure, everything about it was like his birth village except for one thing: the smell of its air. It was distinct, a scent he couldn’t describe to me because, he said, it wasn’t sweet, not exactly, it wasn’t delicious in the way a pot of stewed chicken smells, but he could taste it and swallow it. It was an entirely new sort of pleasure for his tongue, this air the ocean was directing his way. He’d inhaled it, savored it, eyes closed, over and over.
He ran to the beach as soon as he was done helping the masters get settled in the village head’s hut. The horizon was the first thing he noticed, its curve and expanse. “How can I describe it?” he asked me. “How can I help you conjure such an enormity?” Looking at it, he was suddenly aware that he was a mere speck in life’s infinite wonders. He realized he was everything and nothing. He sat down on the sand, open-mouthed, slack-armed. He remained on that beach for hours, while the village’s children swam in front of him, splashing water against each other. He was still there when fishermen began returning with their catch. Some of the fishermen looked at him on the sand with his mouth agape and laughed—they’d seen the likes of him before, one of those from the hinterland who had never seen blueness without end. That evening, he saw the sun enthroned at the horizon. He watched it bow before the earth. When he touched his cheek, there was water on it; that was the only time he ever cried as a man.
He slept on that beach for two weeks, while the other guide slid into the bed of a husbandless woman with whom he had an arrangement (the masters left on the third day; the boat that took them brought new masters, four Europeans who wanted to stay in the village for a while). Some of the men from the village offered my husband space in their huts, but he thanked them and said no—he’d soon be returning to sleep in huts for the rest of his life, but he would never again sleep on a beach once he left. In the evenings, he took beach strolls and bought dinner from women selling freshly caught grilled fish marinated in salt, pepper, ginger, and garlic; covered with sliced red onions; served with fried ripe plantains and a peppery dipping sauce. After the descent of darkness on full-moon nights, when the villagers came out to the beach to sing and dance, he helped the men beat their drums. For the first time in over twenty years of life, he was happy. But he knew that he couldn’t remain in that village: a man belongs with his people, among those who share his ancestors, not with strangers, no matter how beautiful their land.
I remember still, when I was a little girl, a day when two Europeans and their interpreter came to Kosawa. They came to tell us about their Spirit. They said their Spirit would bring us out of the darkness we didn’t know we were living in. We would see the light.
The men were covered in mosquito bites and sweating, though it was a cool day, no sun in
