to her that I thought might be of interest. It has given me something
of a change of perspective. I learned a few weeks ago that an old
friend of mine, his third child had a rare brain disease and died at
10 months of age. This was a few weeks before Dembele and Cita's son
was born. I was very sad for Bill but Loren didn't think much of it
because so many children die here. It's no longer as bad as 1 in 7
live to see age 5 but it's still pretty high rates. I didn't know that
Cita lost a baby between Djamal and Rachid, a little girl, which is
why there are 4 years between them. They don't even name children for
a time because they may not live, sometimes for as long as several
months (to name them).
I also learned that in the 18 months I've been away from here, 2 of my
friends have died - one from AIDS, another in a car crash, both in
their early 30s with young families. Dembele nearly died last year of
a mix of malaria and some kind of stomach parasite.
Here I've met a fair number of people who are in their 50s and 60s but
average life expectancy is still 40. You don't meet a lot of people in
their 70s. (Old women are usually killed as witches – mostly because
they are seen has no longer having value to a family so they get rid
of them). Dembele is 39. Makes life seem very precious and every
encounter with a person very important.
October 31 – More stressful things: we got a new guard of course. Eli
is all of about 19 years old and is of course learning the ropes as
guard. I don't like leaving the house without someone watching it at
all, but he still needs to learn that he has to tell people where he
is going and he can't wander off for hours at a time. So this morning
I came out of the house around 8 and didn't seem him, I went outside
the court because sometimes he is sitting with others across the
street which is fine during the day. No Eli. I had to go do some
errands so I left anyway. I locked up the house and Ben went to his
friends' house to play. When I came back I saw Eli who told me that
last night he fell asleep in the car with the windows rolled down (no
he's not supposed to be sleeping but after this I don't think he'll
sleep ever again). At about 2AM someone came over the wall and grabbed
him by the throat, flashed a knife in his face and said if he ever saw
Eli here again, he'd kill him. Then he jumped back over the wall. Eli
waited 10 minutes before moving then moved to sit in the chair next to
my bedroom window (well away from the courtyard walls). When I asked
if he saw the person's face he said, rightfully that, no, that it was
better to look away because if they know that you've seen them they
will do something to you.
I called Loren to let him know, he was shocked! He said, I'll call you
back. 10 min later he sent me a message saying a friend of ours
(former military) was going to set up a sting and take care of it for
us. I'm looking forward to seeing what that is. Strangely, I'm not
scared, I'm stressed (and like I said to Felicia maybe that's stupid
and I should be scared). Perhaps it's that I don't want Eli to get
hurt and I'm not so worried for myself (the house is locked in the
middle of the night). Perhaps it's that my first worry is that if I'm
awake, I'm fairly confident that I can protect myself and my child
(don't mess with a mother!) but if I'm asleep I worry that I can't
protect Ben from harm or from being frightened by someone trying to
enter the house. I think that also opens my thinking to Ben getting
hurt by someone during the day. That isn't so much a concern since
EVERYONE knows him, and he's always with his friends. I don't want to
speak bad things into existence but I guess I'm trying to figure out
what I'm worried about specifically. Perhaps it's all those things.
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