Na God de gi yu di pay

“We yu tun bak to yu fambul den, le yu go wit lon lef an welbodi. Fo ol wetin yu bin du naya, noto wi de pay yu – na God de gi yu di pay,” Luckman Gassama the Arabic teacher at my school told me on my second to last day in Sembehun. That sentiment had already been expressed by several people as they bade me farewell: “Na God de gi yu di pay” – It is God who rewards you.

I kept my expression solemn and willed myself not to cry. It was not that I was particularly sentimental about saying goodbye to Luckman, but the thought of leaving in general left me on the verge of tears.  I knew I could not yet cry; that would have to wait until the very end, when the taxi would pull away from the junction in front of my house.

What Luckman and the other well-wishers did not know as they promised that God would pay me for my work, was that I had already received all the payment I wanted. Our definitions of “payment” probably aren’t the same though. For me, payment is calculated in hundreds of different memories.

Even the mundane moments of ordinary life, I remember fondly.

Brightly colored lappas hang to dry in the sun. A matapensil rhythmically pounds cassava leaf, driving the scent of freshly cut grass into the air. Fati Daramy passes balancing a reddish-brown colored plastic bucket on her head.

I remember the last month in Sembehun, keeping fast for Ramadan.

I sit on the cement ledge of my veranda and share a plate of rice with my neighbor Regina. The call to nafla, the evening prayer, rises sad and sweet from the mosque. Women pass wearing beautiful embroidered prayer shawls.

I remember the moments when students so clearly understood what I had been teaching.

“If we know the area of the rectangle is 20 meters, and the width is four meters, we can find the length,” Abdul Rahman explains.

“What is the length then?”

“Five meters.”

“Is that the answer?”

“No, the question says to find the perimeter.”

“How do we find the perimeter?”

“We say two times four is eight and two times five is ten, then we add and get eighteen,” he says without hesitation. I smile, thinking that while I cannot control what happens on public exams, Abdul Rahman deserves to pass math on the BECE.

I remember the moments when students demonstrated confidence.

“Wait,” Betty Swaray says as a teacher prepares to flog her for coming to school without her head covering. “Let me explain why I didn’t come with the veil.”

“Okay, explain.”

“When we go to sit the BECE, we have to go with a different uniform and they need to add blue trim to the veils, so they gave my veil to the tailor for him to sew.”

I was proud not only of the English words flowing smoothly from her lips, but also of the poise with which she spoke. She held her head high and spoke with the certainty that she would not be beaten as long as she had the chance to defend herself.

I remember saying goodbye.

The street is filled with my neighbors and students who came to see me off. I shake their hands one by one, always raising my hand to my heart afterwards in a gesture that has become second nature. Inshallah we will meet again . . .

All of that is payment. The memories of my two years in Sierra Leone are more valuable than words can express. In fact, I am certain that I have been paid beyond anything that I deserved. Just as I consider those memories payment, it is perhaps payment also to know that I will be remembered.

“When I have a daughter,” Zakaria tells me, “I am going to name her Kenley. When people ask how she got that name, I will tell them I once had a teacher called Miss Kenley.”

Cut Slippers

I bent down to take a battery cap – those blue plastic rings that people pull off of Chinese-made double D batteries – from the ground. Those battery caps are easy to find, particularly in the wet season when rain sweeps them across the sandy ground. Children gather them and tie them together on pieces of string to make rattles or jingling bracelets. The battery caps are also useful for mending broken flip-flops, or slippers, as they’re called in Sierra Leone.

My slippers were worn thin, the soles too flat and the strap that fits between your toes threatening to pull loose, or ‘cut’. I fixed the battery cap around the bottom of this strap so that it wouldn’t break away from the sole of the shoe. People may call slippers ‘toilet shoes,’ but they will still go through great lengths to preserve them. Even my slippers that had been mended with battery caps were not to be thrown away.

“Yu no de gimme da wan de?” someone asked if I wouldn’t give him my old slippers, seeing the new ones I had just purchased in the market. I was skeptical, wondering if he really wanted the old mended slippers, but he thanked me happily when I handed them over.

Normally, when slippers cut, you can slip the torn strap back through the worn out sole and continue to “manage” them, as they would say here. However, there are times when the strap severs completely and they cannot be repaired easily. In such instances, the only option is walking home barefoot. Once, as I walked to the Old Town junction to retrieve my cell phone from the charging station, the rubber stopper on the end of my sandal snapped off, thus rendering it damaged beyond the battery-cap-repair method. I was conscious that Sierra Leoneans believe it is shameful to walk barefoot, but I didn’t really care as I continued the last few steps to the junction.

Two of my students, however, happened to have witnessed the breaking of my slipper. Abu Sedik pulled off his own slippers and told me to take them. He said he would go home with the broken ones. “No, no!” I tried to protest, but Abubakar Bockarie gave me a horrified look and informed me the ground was cold from the rain. Clearly walking across cold ground with bare feet is dangerous to your health and highly unadvised. . . What could I have been thinking?

First Rains of May

On an afternoon at the beginning of rainy season, I walked along the road towards Tuba. A few clouds settled over the oppressively hot sun and a faint whisper of a breeze trailed through the grass. I passed the old road and continued until I got to Ansarul Primary School, then I cut across the field to the orange groove. By that time of year, the slender white branches were covered only in green leaves, but no fruits. Along the path, ferns as tall as I am spread their foliage. I smiled slightly. I could forget sometimes that I lived by a jungle.

I entered Tuba by the back way, from the path that leads to Mano. The breeze picked up, and a few drops of rain began to fall. I was not sure if it was going to be a real rain, or if it was just one of those cruel jokes played by a merciless sun. I glanced towards the Bockarie’s house, but I didn’t see anyone I recognized. From the other side of the path, Mohamed Sannoh called a greeting. I turned to smile and reply. I never had the chance to teach Mohamed Sannoh, since he attended the other secondary school in our community, but during our combined school athletic meet he was one of the star runners for our house.

As I continued walking, the rain drops fell with increasing frequency, suggesting it was in fact to be a real rain storm. The old woman I always greet when I pass through Tuba called to me. “Waa lei!” I obeyed and went to her. “Waa bi hei,” she commanded, getting up from the stool she had been sitting on and moving over to the cooking fire. I stepped under the thatch roof of the kitchen and took a seat on the stool. There were three other old women gathered there. They asked me questions in Mende, which I could mostly answer, but as the conversation trailed on, I was lost.

The rain had picked up, and I was content to sit in silence and watch it fall. At first, the sand ate it, and the drops vanished beneath the dust. Eventually though, the rain began to win, beating the sand down hard and smooth as it rushed in rivulets along the carved out grooves of the dirt path. One such stream stretched in front of the kitchen where we sat. The water rose and pushed along twigs and dead grass, which clogged together to form a miniature dam. One of the women used a stick to dislodge a mango pit from the dam and the debris flowed away. A small child darted out in the rain to place a bucket in the flow of runoff water from the zinc roof of the house.

When the rain ceased, I thanked them and took my leave. “Baika, nya lima.”

“Oo, baika hoe,” they replied.

I set out across the damp ground towards New Site. When I passed Alpha Mansaray’s house, his sister asked, “Ba mango mei?” as she extended a mango to me. It was one of the small ones – different from any mango I had eaten before coming to Sierra Leone, and easy to eat clasped in one hand like an ice cream cone. I took the mango, and thus encouraged, another woman offered me two more. I walked away slowly, African pace, eating one mango as I went.