Cape Verdean Immigrants Set to Compete in US Open Soccer Cup

When the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup kicks off next week, familiar names from the lower levels of American professional soccer, like the Richmond Kickers and Portland Timbers, will begin play. This year, alongside those perennial participants, the aptly named Emigrantes das Ilhas have improbably secured their own place in the first round of what is recognized as the national championship tournament for American clubs.

The team is based in Massachusetts, and as their name indicates in Portuguese, is comprised mainly of immigrants from the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of West Africa. The Emigrantes das Ilhas represent the United States Amateur Soccer Association, a confederation of amateur teams which hosts regional playoffs to send a handful of teams to the US Open Cup. There, teams are matched in the first round with professional squads from the lower divisions of the American soccer pyramid.

The Emigrantes das Ilhas won the spot from the northeast region for this year’s single elimination tournament. The club was originally founded years ago, to provide a place for Cape Verdeans in the community to practice their favorite sport, explains team president Carlos Amado, who is also a defender for the squad.

///AMADO ACT///

“Back in ’87 the club was founded, mostly by Cape Verdean immigrants. At that time players were arriving here from the islands, who were obviously playing back in the islands, and needed a team here to play. And it was actually the first Cape Verdean team around at that time. Now we have eighteen teams, we have actually got a league - a whole league of Cape Verdean teams here in the States in the Brockton area.”

///END ACT///

Amado says the club is strictly amateur, and no one is paid to play. He says the team depends on businesses in the local Cape Verdean community in Massachusetts to sponsor its activities. About five hundred thousand people of Cape Verdean descent are estimated to live in the United States, most of them in the greater Boston area.

The Emigrantes das Ilhas are mainly first generation immigrants from Cape Verde, with a handful of American-born players of Cape Verdean descent, Amado says. Eddie Lopes is a squad member who arrived almost four years ago from the Cape Verdean island of Sao Vicente.

///LOPES ACT IN PORTUGUESE FADED UNDER///

Lopes says he played soccer professionally in Cape Verde for Batuque FC before coming to the United States. He says he arrived alone, but soon found companions on the soccer field, and joined up with the Emigrantes das Ilhas after playing against them in a tournament of Cape Verdean teams.

Now Lopes, like his teammates, dreams of a good result in the US Open Cup, and the publicity and rewards that would come with it. The last amateur team remaining in the tournament receives a cash prize of ten thousand dollars from the United States Soccer Federation.

Amado says the team could use that money since, unable to afford a bus, they currently take a fleet of cars to matches. He says the team scrapes by on contributions from the Cape Verdean community and income from the broad assortment of jobs the team members hold down.

///AMADO ACT #2///

“We all have jobs. We have social workers, we have bankers, we have players who work in factories, there is a range, delivering furniture. Obviously we all have full time jobs. We only train twice a week. It is going to be difficult playing the professional teams. These are guys that get paid to play. But we are confident that we can beat them.”

///END ACT///

Amado says an even greater prize would be a potential match with the New England Revolution of Major League Soccer, the United States’ top league. If they can manage to win in the first two rounds against lower level professional teams, the Emigrantes das Ihlas would line up against the Revolution at Boston’s Gillette Stadium, a field with the capacity for over 68,000 spectators.

///AMADO ACT #3///

“Even now, back and forth to games we are taking four or five, six, cars, as opposed to – we can not afford the bus, or anything like that. To have that opportunity, to even think about the possibility of playing the Revolution at Gillette Stadium, it would be a dream for most of our players. So that is our goal. Our goal is to get that far. If we could get that far, we will be happy.”

///END ACT///

The Emigrantes das Ilhas begin tournament play on June 9th against the Western Mass Pioneers of USL-2, the United States third division of professional soccer. The game will take place at Lusitano Stadium in Ludlow, Massachusetts.

The Lamar Hunt US Open Cup is an annual tournament sponsored by the United States Soccer Federation to crown a national champion. The tournament, which was contested for the first time in 1914, has been dominated by Major League Soccer teams since the league’s founding in 1996.

Cape Verde's Largest Island Struggles to Balance Tourism, Development

By Brent Latham

Dakar

04 June 2009

tamarind, Cape Verde

Tamarind, Cape Verde

With a growing tourist industry sweeping the islands of Cape Verde, the nation faces a quandary over how to preserve its tradition and culture while maximizing the potential windfall from the spectacular natural beauty of the remote African archipelago.

Guide Joao Monteiro steps lightly amidst the ruins of a 16th century fort, on a hill overlooking the town of Cidade Velha on the southern coast of the Cape Verdean island of Santiago. The impressive stone walls of the structure, he explains, have recently been rebuilt with financial support from the Spanish government, with the hopes of bringing more tourists to the town.

Cidade Velha, founded by the Portuguese in 1462, is the oldest European settlement in the tropics. But on this day at the fort, painstakingly reconstructed stone by stone by Spanish archaeologists with the help of the local population, few visitors are to be found. Monteiro says tourism on Santiago is not growing at the rate of other Cape Verdean islands.

tamarind, Cape Verde

tamarind, Cape Verde

Monteiro says Cape Verde's northern islands of Sal and Boavista have more spectacular beaches, which attract foreign tourists. The Cape Verdean government has taken steps in recent years to promote foreign investment in tourism infrastructure, resulting in large scale development on a few of the 10 principal islands.

But Santiago, the largest of the nation's islands, and home to the capital, Praia, still mostly lacks the new, large hotels that have attracted European vacationers in growing numbers to Sal and Boavista. Cidade Velha resident Abel Sanchez, who owns a small bed and breakfast, one of the few options for lodging in the historic town, says a renewed focus on development of tourism would be good for the local economy.

Sanchez says many things could be done to promote tourism on Santiago. He says the island, with so much history and natural scenery, would benefit from its own large hotels like those being constructed elsewhere in Cape Verde.

But that model of touristic development has failed to convince some. Sibylle Schellman, a native of Germany, runs a small restaurant overlooking the ocean in the coastal town of Calheta on Santiago's northeast coast.

"The government right now and the ministers of tourism, they only have in mind these big hotels. And they think, cause there was a study once, which said that all included tourism is the best thing for a third world country, and so they said, well, that is what they want, and they want to have a water source, and they want to have golf, and a marina," she said.

Schellman says she came to Cape Verde for the first time years ago, after hearing a performance by Cape Verdean folk singer Cesaria Evora. She and her husband decided, after a number of return visits, to make the island their permanent home, opening their restaurant, as well as a tour agency aimed at bringing visitors from Europe to experience local Cape Verdean culture.

Cape Verde offers much more than just beautiful scenery and nice beaches, Schellman says, adding that she feels the experience of tourists can be enriched far past that offered by the all-inclusive beach resorts, where foreign tourists are sequestered from the local population. Schellman says, besides missing out on much of the beauty of Cape Verdean culture, all-inclusive resorts do not benefit the Cape Verdean population.

"On Sal and Boavista Islands is that the big tour operators are coming, and they are building these all-included hotels. So for the locals it is very hard to start a business there. Even if they make a little restaurant or little tour agency, nobody comes because it is all-included, people already paid everything so it is no use for them to go outside for a dinner or lunch or whatever," she said.

Despite its poverty relative to the European Union, Cape Verde has developed significantly in recent decades. The island population is estimated by the UN at over half a million, with an equal number of Cape Verdeans living abroad. Foreign remittances from the diaspora now account for almost 20 percent of GDP by some estimates, and new cars frequent the streets of the capital.

Cape Verde graduated from the United Nations' list of least developed countries in 2007, and joined the World Trade Organization last year. Along with growth in GDP, foreign tourism has increased substantially this decade, including a 6.5 percent increase in visitors last year, according to the government. The government also noted a 5.5 percent increase in the supply of hotel rooms last year, largely the result of continued development of beachfront resorts on the northern islands.

11. Green Mangos

If life in the countryside generally required a certain level of tolerance for imprecision, there were some undertakings in particular could be completely ruled out without an even larger dose of the requisite patience. Travel, for example, called for a highly developed ability to suppress frustration, to a much greater degree than had ever been demanded of me in the time-oriented culture back home. When I did venture forth from San Juan, something I was doing gradually less of as the months passed, it was with good reason, meaning that I would necessarily set out with certain goals and specific objectives, the achievement of which normally required that I actually reach my intended destination. But I had at least learned to limit my immediate agenda to merely arriving, a simplification that reduced by many degrees the complication of the long trip from San Juan to anywhere.

I had little choice but to adapt to such a reality if I wanted to leave the village, given the irregular state of the bus service. So many factors - the state of the road, the condition of the bus itself, the not always cooperative weather - all conspired to make transportation to and from San Juan, at times, close to impossible. Over time, as I was compelled to cut back drastically on the frequency of trips, it became obvious why so many of the region’s inhabitants had never left that valley. On many levels, it was not worth the effort.

A journey to almost anywhere on public transport meant awaking at sunrise to catch the bus to La Esperanza, for a ride through the hills that consumed at least three hours over the rough road, sweeping along high above deep ravines at the bottom of sharp cliffs which hug far too closely to the roadside, at speeds that did little to preclude a tragic end. If headed on to the capital, I would arrive in La Esperanza mid morning, covered in the dust of a sweltering summer morning in the hot season.

That was if the bus even made it out of the valley. Once the rainy season set in, it was quite common to never even make it as far as La Esperanza, waylaid by the downpours that washed away sections of the road, leaving thick, slippery patches of mud all along the route, and rendering it impassible for San Juan’s primary mode of public transport, one of the ubiquitous yellow school busses imported used, in less than ideal condition, from the United States.

Each day, regardless of conditions, Ronni, the local bus driver, would optimistically set out along the route, as long as the bus was in working order. More than once that swashbuckling confidence was soon extinguished, his bus stuck tire deep in mud somewhere along the way, leaving his passengers to wait for alternate transport, most likely back to San Juan, their travel plans aborted. The very first time I attempted the journey in Ronni’s bus, just a few weeks after arriving in San Juan, on a what I had envisioned as a day trip to La Esperanza to purchase a few things not available locally, we had made it only a few kilometers out of town before reaching a muddy incline, past which Ronni, despite repeated efforts, could not manage to maneuver the bus. Foiled, I headed rather indifferently back to San Juan on that day.

Perhaps experiencing first hand those serious impediments to departure helped me to assimilate the long term nature of my future in San Juan. Gradually, what had at first been a strong if uninformed desire to find an alternative and more accessible work site had faded, and I accepted the reality that my time in San Juan looked like it would continue for the time being. The isolation of the villages was not fully disadvantageous. For on thing, no one seemed to be supervising my work out here, and I used that freedom to venture back to the capital for long breaks in a number of occasions as the months passed, as frequently as my patience and energy for travel allowed. But I wouldn’t linger there, and the periods I spent uninterrupted in San Juan began to grow ever longer. At first I had rarely stayed in San Juan more than a few weeks straight before looking for one excuse or another to travel, but now a month or even two might pass before the urge for a change of scenery would set in.

Even as the town grew on me, though, I came to recognize one important detail that made my semi-permanence in San Juan bearable: that very freedom, to come and go as I pleased, limited only by my own lack of motivation to overcome the irksome but usually not prohibitive obstacles the journey presented. When I so desired, I could leave. It was a luxury shared by very few in town, and perhaps it made the gradually longer spells I spent there more tolerable.

I had lived for more than half a year in San Juan, and I had not been away from the village for more almost two months, when I again decided to exercise that freedom, and go looking for Miguel, in the town where he worked. It had been quite a while since I had seen him, having not coincided on our last trips to the capital. What I knew of him was through news that Jorge had passed on to me when I last visited the house in Kennedy, months before.

The trip to Miguel’s town required me first to travel to La Esperanza, followed by a detour off the main road leading east from there, down a dusty route into the blazing hot valley to the south. The morning I set out in that direction from San Juan was cloudy and cool. A heavy rain had fallen the night before, and remnants of small, gray clouds, free of their cache of liquid, now floated aimlessly through the valley, like caged animals looking for an escape, trapped by the concavity of the hillsides now exploding with green vegetation.

I rode in the back of the packed bus, as Ronni guided it intrepidly down the hill out of town. Not far outside of San Juan, the work on the new road had recently resumed, and was progressing at a snail’s pace, as workers attempted to fix the extensive damage caused by the elements during their long absence. At that point, a detour had been set up around an embankment, which was apparently to be flattened to make way for a pass. As the bus began to scale the muddy makeshift road that had been cleared there, up a slight incline, the wheels lost traction, and Ronni’s machine gradually slid backwards down the hill. Unfazed, Ronni tried again to get that old school bus over the hill, but once more, it came sliding back down. With the passengers cheering him on as if it were a game, Ronni refused to give in easily, but after the fourth or fifth such attempt, with the bus once more at rest, having slid into position at the bottom of the slope, the driver disembarked to assess the situation. One by one, the full complement of men on board got followed him off the bus.

Having seen this drill before, I quickly descended as well. I remembered well that very first failed trip in Ronni’s bus to La Esperanza, when the bus had become lodged in the mud, and all the men on board had immediately gotten off. Not realizing what was going on at that time, I had stayed on board. The rest of the men had proceeded to work to free the bus, as I looked out the window and observed their failed but persistent attempts to extract the vehicle, mortified to realize that, along with the women and children still on board, I was part of the weight that my fellow villagers were pushing.

Since then I have always been among the most eager to disembark stalled transportation. I know as soon as a breakdown occurs, as an able-bodied man, I am expected to make my way deliberately to the front of the bus, down the stairs, and around to the suspected source of the problem, where, at a safe distance from the engine, which often would be steaming, revving, or in the close-to-worst case scenario on fire, a group of men like me, with little or no mechanical experience, will gather and observe the work in progress, like a hand full of supervisors, overseeing the bus driver and his assistants. I have even learned to make appropriate comments to my fellow passengers, adjusted for the level of consternation observable on the faces of the bus workers. “This will be fixed quickly, it’s a simple problem,” or “we’d best prepare for a long wait, there’s no way to fix that,” I will say, my interjection measured to match the egregiousness of the profanity employed by those at work on the engine or tire in question.

The other passengers, impressed, will then nod back in agreement, and add their own observations. “Certainly the gringo is familiar with the workings of this machine, which comes from his land,” was a variation of what one of them would often say. I could now understand their logic. After all, the yellow bus in front of us would have foreign words, for instance “Southern County School District,” stamped in neat letters across the side, revealing the intimate connection between its pale frame and my own.

So when Ronni’s bus once again faltered, at that detour around the hill just outside San Juan, I knew exactly what to do. Despite my eagerness, I was among the last to disembark, having been seated towards the back of the bus, and when I stepped out onto the muddy ground, I found that Ronni had already crafted a plan, and was positioning different men all around the bus. Having given general instructions to push at the appropriate moment, Ronni then climbed back on board, as I took my place behind the bus among a handful of my neighbors.

Ronni gunned the engine, and the bus zoomed off up the hill, leaving the group of would-be pushers behind, thoroughly bathed in a stream of flying mud. Those around me began to run behind the bus as it accelerated up the hill, its rear tires slinging mud all about as it fishtailed from side to side violently. Despite what should have been obvious danger, the group continued its pursuit of the bus, and as its forward progress began to falter, caught up to it, the men, me among them, slamming in near unison into the back bumper with just the force needed to edge the large vehicle forward towards the summit of the small hill. With a puff of deep black diesel exhaust and a triumphant sounding of the loud horn, Ronni and his machine crested the hill and continued onward, coming gently to a halt at the bottom of the incline on the other side.

We men ran along exultantly down the muddy slope, towards the resting bus, shouting jubilantly as, covered in mud, we climbed back on board one by one to resume the journey, with the passion of having just won an important soccer match. On this day, at least, we had conquered the elements.

Having overcome the hill’s challenge, I didn’t run into any more serious setbacks that day, as I found my way down the valley to Santiago Puringla, which despite its name, is a town, not a person. The Otoro valley gradually narrows as the road runs south alongside a wide, shallow river, towards the town.

The details of Miguel’s work as a water systems engineer there seemed to have been more deeply considered than my own job description. His work entailed finding ways to provide water to the towns around the area, and that is exactly what he spent his days doing, jaunting about on the hillsides, mapping the course of small streams and watersheds, and planning his water systems. As such he spent a good deal of his time on the picturesque slopes that hemmed the town in at the narrow end of the long gulch, in this relatively isolated corner of the country, separated from the main road by an unbroken chain of large hills. Despite its site in the center of this hidden valley, I immediately noticed as I reached the town that it was far larger and more developed than San Juan, in proportion, as things these things tended to be, to its proximity to the capital.

Given the size of the town, I had some difficulty locating Miguel’s home. The townspeople, who I imagined would have by now developed encyclopedic knowledge of Miguel’s comings and goings, much as had happened to me in San Juan, instead looked slightly puzzled to have before them an unusually light-skinned individual asking about town for the local Peace Corps volunteer.

“I had a bit of trouble finding your house,” I told Miguel, when I finally arrived at his small apartment to find him just returning from one of his mapping expeditions on the hillsides. “No one seemed to know where the Peace Corps volunteer lived, but when I asked for Jose Miguel, they directed me with no problems.”

“I don’t really tell people that I work for Peace Corps,” Miguel explained, pleased to see me after overcoming the initial surprise of my unexpected visit. “It doesn’t help with my work. There have been some pretty useless volunteers stationed here in the past, and people tend to think of Peace Corps as a bunch of white people bumbling about the countryside. I’m not white or bumbling, so I just explain that I’m an engineer working on water projects.”

I understood what he meant. When away from San Juan, I had further developed the habit of disguising my own identity to prevent being stereotyped. In the village, I described myself as an employee of the cooperative, and never tried to explain the complex arrangement with Peace Corps.

Furthermore, I was far from anxious for the company of other foreigners in what I now considered my village, a preference I knew Miguel shared. Born in Puerto Rico, Miguel had explained that he often felt he had much more in common with the people he found here than he shared with his fellow volunteers. I had also come to understand the irreconcilable differences between me and my fellow volunteers, and through that lens, my similarities to those around me had come into focus. Many of the workers who had begun service with Miguel and me had already gone home, unable or unwilling to adapt to this country and culture. Those who remained spent much of their time cloistered together in small cliques, many of them in a house they had rented together in La Esperanza, where they congregated to escape the monotony of their villages. Ever since I had turned down the invitation to participate in that commune, and in so doing to pay a share of the exorbitant monthly fees, much of which went to buying alcohol for weekend parties, and amenities to make life seem more like home, my rupture with the rest of the volunteer community had been consummated. I now preferred to avoid La Esperanza all together, lest I run into one of my fellow workers, including my pairing at the cooperative, Sally, who was the most troublesome among them, having developed a disconcerting penchant in her centralized role as zone supervisor of critiquing the work and undertakings of her fellow volunteers, particularly in my case.

Understanding all that, I had come, at times, to crave the isolation of my village for a slightly different reason. I had began to realize that only in the context of a closed village, free from outside influences, was I free to develop outside the bounds created for me by the society from which I had come. The presence of another foreigner for a protracted time could lead to comparisons and judgments that could greatly disturb that delicate balance.

“Besides,” Miguel continued, as he pulled a pair of plastic chairs onto the small, shaded patio in front of his house, and offered me a seat. “It’s not many people would be able to make it out here to visit, even if I wanted them to.”

Miguel had at once allayed my fears of having intruded unwanted in his territory, and also pointed out the serendipity of embracing isolation while living in a remote village. Amidst such observations, we broke out the bottle of rum that I had brought from La Esperanza. As we drank, we spoke of the usual range of topics, from development, to the local people, and just living in the countryside.

“Have another cup,” Miguel said as the bottle neared completion. “We can buy another bottle around the corner when this one is through.”

“Really?” I asked. “That’s an unusual luxury for me. In San Juan, there is no alcohol for sale. It’s a dry town.”

“Here it’s no problem,” Miguel said. “Me and my friends drink together all the time.”

“Normally, in the village, I cut off the drinking after a few cups,” I said, nevertheless allowing him to fill my cup once more. “Drunkenness in the village leads to nothing good. In San Juan people are always getting drunk and then shooting at each other. Maybe that’s why they outlawed alcohol.” I stopped there, only half the story told. In San Juan, according to the town statute, to possess or consume alcohol was not illegal. Only the actual sale, and the state of drunkenness itself, had been outlawed. Since those who sold alcohol had staunch connections in town, the jail, such as it was, was used mainly as a holding tank for drunken residents of the surrounding aldeas, to make sure they couldn’t harm anyone but themselves or their fellow drunks while inebriated. And with good reason, as drunks seemed to be able to find little else to do other than fight, often with guns.

“Santiago Puringla is not exactly like San Juan, I think,” Miguel said as he sipped slowly on his rum.

“I think you’re right. For one thing, I would never sit out on my front porch and drink like this. For another, this town is a lot bigger, and a lot closer to the capital.”

“Right, which means people are different. A lot of people have lived or studied in the city, and everyone else has been there many times. Later on we’ll invite some friends over and you can see what I mean. There are a couple nice girls that live down the street.”

“Girls?” I asked in mild disbelief. San Juan at times would have seemed a Puritan village, given the rigid separation between the sexes.

“You can’t tell me you don’t have a few girlfriends in your village?”

“None at all, my friend,” I told him quite honestly. The closest thing I had to a female companion in San Juan was a local school teacher who I occasionally flirted with, if mildly, at the market. But she wasn’t even from San Juan. Then, I thought to myself, there was Indira, a friend of Doña Aida’s daughter Nancy, who frequented the kitchen at the Perdido house, and who I had occasionally caught staring at me from afar. Though certainly beautiful, in her own wholesome way, she couldn’t have been older than eighteen, and we had seldom actually spoken. Yet that was what passed for romance in San Juan.

Miguel, on the other hand, did have in his village a handful of friends our age, some of them girls, a couple of whom stopped by later that evening as the sun set over the valley. Whereas in San Juan any activity taking place after nightfall, particularly one involving members of the opposite sex, was looked upon with the utmost suspicion, evening gatherings here seemed to be considered an acceptable part of normal life. Perhaps that change was largely due to another difference that had suddenly become apparent as night fell. Unlike San Juan, this town had electricity. Whatever spirits had once roamed in the darkness of the night here, frightening the people into the safety of their houses, had long since been driven into the dark hills in the distance.

“There’s no electricity in the town where you live?” one of Miguel’s friends asked in disbelief, when the subject came up.

“No,” I explained, quite calmly, ironically defending my village to a resident of the very country in which a town the size of San Juan could still be without electrical power.

The group stared at me in continued bewilderment. “How do you live there?” her friend asked.

“There should be electricity, sometime soon,” I answered, repeating the hopeful story I had been told so many times in San Juan, even though I didn’t quite believe it myself. “The power lines in town have been up now for quite some time. We’re just waiting for the lines to be run from the nearest town. It should be anytime now.” It was the same story I had been fed by Peace Corps when I moved out there, and that was almost a year ago now.

In such discussions, we passed an agreeable evening with those girls, who were university students home from the capital on break. They proved quite informed, so when trivial issues did enter into the conversation, it was purely by choice. My country routine already shattered, I woke up much later the next day than I ever would have in San Juan. With little to do but lie around and wait for the midday heat to subside, Miguel and I discussed the possibility of another weekend in the capital. I had already travelled most of the way to the capital from San Juan, and was determined to go on, and to convince Miguel to come along as well. From here, it was a decidedly easy trip. We could hop on any of the passing busses that frequented the nearby road, and we would be in the capital in an hour or so.

But Miguel, who took pleasure in debating the benefits, mostly economic, of staying in his village, refused to give in easily. So we passed a lazy afternoon under the mango tree in the courtyard, sucking on salted slices of green mango, which the old lady next door made a business of selling. The mangos, distilled in vinegar to make them palatable, normally sold for three pesos a bag, but Miguel was able to acquire his for free, since the old woman secured her supply of raw materials from the mango tree in front of his house. I had learned with practice to eat the sour green flesh of the unripe mango, which was sold everywhere, but it was difficult for me to enjoy the taste, especially since I was of the opinion that, with a bit of patience, a ripened mango would have made a much tastier treat, and more prized commodity.

“Why do we eat green mangoes?” I wondered aloud, as I gnawed at a slice. “The people in this country seem to love them. You see them everywhere. But, I mean, ripe mangos are much better.”

“Many here would disagree with you,” Miguel said, assuming the contrary, as he frequently would when he sensed that a local custom was under assault.

“Many here would disagree that one and one make two,” I said with a laugh, before elaborating. “This whole green mango issue - it seems like a lack of patience. Just economically speaking, wait a month or two and the tree will be full of ripe mangos. Even if people don’t eat them, certainly they could sell the ripe mangos for more than they get for these green mango slices, and that’s after all the work of cutting them up and putting them in these little bags.”

Miguel sat quietly, contemplating the barren tree above us as he formulated his rebuttal with the serenity of a father asked by his child why the sky is blue. An engineer by training, Miguel was a sociologist at heart, who always had at the ready a logical defense for the peculiarities of behavior that could be observed all around. Those days, I found myself agreeing with many of his theories, as experience slowly taught me that life here was often about day to day survival rather than the maximization of long term well-being. While I waited for Miguel to emerge from his deep concentration, I considered my stance on the green mango question, and thought it strange indeed, given the amount of patience displayed in other aspects of life, like getting from one place to another, that people here would so uniformly harvest mangos before their peak.

“Wait a month for the mangos to ripen on the tree?” Miguel now interrupted my own deliberations with his question. “Do you remember the guava tree at Jorge’s house?” I did remember that guava tree, one of the many fruit trees in the courtyard in front of his house.

“The last time we were there, it was full of guavas, slowly ripening,” Miguel reminded me. “I can still smell them,” he added, seemingly for emphasis.

“Yes,” I laughed. I recalled perfectly well the rest of the story. “We had big plans for those guavas.”

“But they didn’t work out, did they?” Miguel asked. There was no need for an answer. We were going to use that fruit to make fresh guava juice, and then mix it with aguardiente. We planned a whole party at Jorge’s house around the ripening of those guavas, and invited our friends, and some of the prettier girls in the neighborhood, over, the weekend we anticipated harvesting the fruit.

But we had planned prematurely. Birds ate many of the guavas as they ripened. But mostly, they just disappeared. Finally, when just enough fruit remained to make the undertaking still worth our trouble, we resolved to pick the remaining guavas. But that very day, we looked out front and saw a pair of the neighborhood kids in the courtyard, up the tree. They had jumped the fence and climbed up there, and they were plucking the rest from the tree. Jorge shouted through the open door at them, and then, amusingly, ran out front, waving a broom menacingly, as the boys fled, spilling most of the pilfered harvest on the driveway, and trampling it in their hurry to escape. Not one guava remained in tact on the tree.

“Wait a month, and there will be nothing left,” Miguel concluded. “Green mangos may be only a fraction as good as ripe ones, but they are an infinitely superior option to nothing at all.”

Jose Miguel’s abstract mathematical calculations may have seemed out of place there, in the countryside, but it seemed to me that they were indeed the true calculus of this upside down land.

“What you say is true,” I admitted, in defeat. “Everyone is always after the mangos, whether they’re ripe or not. I guess the chances they will ripen are pretty low,” I finished, as I spat out the indigestible hulk of fiber left over from a mouthful of hard, green mango.

“So the choice isn’t between green mangos and ripe ones,” Miguel continued, clearly pleased with this new theory. “It is between green mangos and nothing. This country is like mangos in so many ways. There is so much potential, and yet there are so many reasons why that potential can never be realized.”

That issue resolved to our satisfaction, we sat in silence, and looked up at the bright afternoon sun, shining between the thick leaves of the mango tree.

“Let’s go to the capital,” Miguel said eventually, admitting defeat himself, in his own way.

We caught a late afternoon bus. Compared to the journey from San Juan, it was a quick and entertaining trip. Miguel slept as I, already energized by the thought of the capital’s streets, observed the people who live in the small villages flanking the road leading into the city, anxiously awaiting arrival. Alongside the road I saw frequent stands, where motorists occasionally would stop to purchase whatever goods were on offer there, ranging from clay pots to firewood, honey, and, of course, green mangos.

“It’s interesting about these people, selling on the side of the road,” I said, nudging Miguel to life as we passed a small cluster of homes, each with its own stand out front, all of which, in this case, displayed a number of small bottles of honey impossible to differentiate from one another. “All the people in a given area sell exactly the same thing.”

When we passed the occasional car, stopped by the side of the road to purchase, I saw how dozens of anxious honey sellers had rushed over, instantaneously annulling any pricing power that an individual seller might have had. A few miles down the road we passed a similar set up, only the stands this time displayed clay pots and ornaments. There was not a drop of honey to be seen.

“Sometimes, like in the case of these clay decorations,” Miguel, now aroused from his nap, said as he pointed out the window, “some aid organization has come and trained the people, all in the same thing. There’s a program like that near my village.” He shrugged as the latest set of stands disappeared behind us.

“I’m looking forward to getting to Kennedy and eating some of those baleadas, they sell around the corner,” I said, changing the subject as I looked forward to the variety of the city. “I’m sure Jorge will be glad to see us. It’s been a couple months since I’ve been to the capital.”

“We might not find him at home,” Miguel answered. “You haven’t been around. Jorge’s got a new love interest.”

“Oh really?” I said, anxious to hear the usually amusing story of one of Jorge’s misguided forays into romance, uniformly with foreign girls of Caucasian origin.

“He’s dating some German girl that works for a development organization. He actually spends most of his time at her house now. She has a huge apartment overlooking the city. The neighborhood is on a hill above downtown, it’s called La Leona.”

Having been away from the capital for so long, this was the first I had heard of any of this. “Do you think we’ll see him at all?” I asked. “I mean, if he stays all the way downtown?”

“Oh, we’ll see him,” Miguel said confidently. “I stayed at his girlfriend’s apartment with him last time I was in town. It’s really big, and quite luxurious compared to the house in Kennedy.”

“I don’t know,” I said, somewhat disappointed in this news. “I like the house in Kennedy. It’s authentic.”

“I know. But don’t get too used to it,” Miguel said. “One of the reasons Jorge doesn’t stay there much anymore is because he says his older sister, the dentist, is coming back from the United States any time now, and according to him, she’s not much fun to be around. Besides, his girlfriend is gone a lot of the time. They fly her all around to meetings in different countries, to talk with other development workers about poverty, and how to help poor people.”

“Sounds nice,” I said, considering the old school bus we were riding in. “Maybe one day we can have jobs like that, and travel in planes instead of old school busses.”

“I don’t know,” Miguel replied. “Sure it pays well, and you live in a nice apartment, and fly all around to different countries, where you stay in nice hotels, and eat well. But I spoke to her about it last time I was there. She says all they really do is talk, and spend a lot of money for conferences and such. I’m not sure I could live with myself, having tons of money spent on me, just to talk about poverty, when there is so much work to be done.”

“I guess you’re right. It’s better to work directly with the people, as we do, even if the scale is smaller.”

“It’s not so much about scale,” Miguel said. “It’s about really getting to know the people, in order to work with them and realize their needs. You can’t do that from a nice hotel or an expensive apartment. You just can’t get the feel for it that way. You end up promoting projects that teach an entire village how to make bird cages, when only so many bird cages can be sold in the countryside,” he concluded, looking out the window as the bus passed yet another town with stand after stand by the roadside, these laden with bird cages of every size imaginable, but with no potential buyers anywhere to be seen.

As I stared down at those unoccupied vendors, I remembered something our Peace Corps business training instructor Oscar, a lifetime employee of non-profit organizations, and as such generally considered an expert in the field of development, had said during our training.

“The people in the countryside,” he had told us, “are uneducated. You will find that they have no reason or logic for most of the things they do. You must teach them everything, even to count.” Those words had stayed with me for many reasons, and I remembered them still. I had been quite sure all along that they were inaccurate, but it had taken time to begin to understand exactly what didn’t sit right about them. I wondered now if I hadn’t been working under the same premise anyway, much like the organization that Miguel suspected was at fault for the unsold bird cages lining the roadside here. Perhaps, as I tried to teach new things, I was ignoring the big picture, one which the community, having been in that situation forever, had indeed assessed with their own precise calculations in a math that they understood perfectly, but which I was just learning. I thought of the green mangos. There was much more I would need to learn from the people here, I thought, before I could teach them anything.

Pleased with my newly developing understanding, which yielded explanations for the unusual things I saw around me that didn’t involve assuming the subjects of my observation were unintelligent or irrational, I passed the rest of the journey looking silently out the window, as the bus rumbled on. It seemed, I thought, that I had been led down the wrong path, perhaps unintentionally, by people like Oscar, who were convinced that they had the solution to all of the problems of life in the countryside. That manner of thinking, I now understood, worked fine for people like him, who lived in large houses and had their land rovers to drive around the capital. But Miguel and I lived lives far different from that, and to do so in harmony, if we ever hoped to be effective in our work, we would have to be able to explain things in a different way.

Night was fast approaching as the bus sped down the long, steep road into that final valley, the bright city awaiting below. Our deliberations on development had ended for now. We wouldn’t solve all the riddles facing us, and the country, at least on that day, as the sun was quickly sinking over the hills in a spectacular blaze of orange that only the contamination of thoroughly polluted air can produce. It would soon be night in the city, time to turn my thoughts to easier pursuits, at least for the moment.

FIND THE RIGHT SITUATION

Brent Latham - Tuesday, May 12, 2009

It should come as little surprise to anyone that Landon Donovan has been the lone spark plug for the LA Galaxy thus far in their MLS campaign. Until about ten days ago, Donovan had scored or assisted every goal the Galacticos had put up all year.

As he practically sleep walks through another season in MLS, America's all-time leading marksman still seems to be begging for a bigger stage. He may soon, once again, get his wish.

This summer will be replete with chances for Donovan. A good performance against some of the world's best at the Confederations Cup in South Africa is likely to have suitors banging on the door again, and this may be his last chance to get this transfer deal right.

His MLS performances this year will have done little to placate a growing pool of doubters, so shortly after Donovan failed to stick in Germany for a third time. It seems like he has permanently lost credibility with many American fans, who always seem to have held him to a higher standard. More importantly, Donovan's stock has sunk with much of the European soccer establishment.

That's a shame, because it's somewhat unfair. But perhaps no more unfair than Donovan continues to be to himself, by getting into situations in Europe which give him a very low chance of success.

When suitors come calling this summer, Donovan would be best advised to learn a lesson from occasional teammate David Beckham. Donovan will forever be connected to the English midfielder on and off the field, and with good reason. The American says he has learned a lot from the current AC Milan star on the field, and now he needs to pay attention to the Englishman's moves off of it.

While Donovan was struggling in the cold of Munich, his English dandy companion was off to Milan, playing a handful of mediocre matches in which he was handed the starting job from the get-go, after which ensued what appeared to be an international bidding war for his services.

As Milan and MLS scrapped back and forth, the wily Beckham looked on and tried to make nice with everyone, while seemingly bidding his own price up behind the scenes. Beckham - or his advisers- had ingenuously created a win-win from the beginning, from the loan at Milan back to the MLS opt-out clause he negotiated years ago.

Donovan, on the other hand, tends to put himself in a lose-lose scenarios. He had to fight for a few minutes at Bayern, where he found himself once again in an untenable position abroad, allowing his success to be defined in terms of a permanent transfer.

While the American seems to have further improved his game in Germany, the public understanding of his time there, both in the media and in international soccer circles, was of yet another failure, because of the perception that a good performance would lead to that permanent move.

It had long since been clear that such an event was never going to happen.

Even had Donovan lit up the Bundesliga, MLS is unlikely to have accepted what would have almost certainly been a low-ball offer for the transfer of one of their top performers. If MLS consistently turns down millions for Kenny Cooper and Taylor Twellman, no way would they have accepted a few more for Donovan.

Few at Bayern really wanted him anyway. Coach Jurgen Klinsmann seems to have been the only who really cared if he played at Bayern or not, and the coach himself is now gone, following a slide early in the second half of the season.

The difference in quality between Donovan and Beckham at this point can be considered minimal at best. Donovan certainly has more upside, is younger, and is more flexible on the field. If I had to pick one player or the other to start a side right now, from a soccer standpoint, I would take Donovan.

But the difference in their off-field acumen is light years.

Because of all those on-field bonuses, the American who the Mexicans most fear will get another chance to make an impact on the European stage, but this go round he needs to take his chances as clinically as he normally does on the field. A situation with less pressure and immediacy would do him good.

Donovan needs a mid to upper table team, not one of the huge European clubs, in a league like Spain or Holland, where his game will be appreciated and a spot will be regularly his. He is no longer a young pup in soccer years, and the correct fit will be a team that is looking for a player to insert directly into the lineup to give their attack some bite. And he needs to go over the summer, to give himself a proper preseason window to fit in and earn the confidence of his teammates and coach.

One coach that already believes in the American all-time leading goal scorer is Klinsmann. Wherever the German lands, possibly in England, would be the ideal situation for Donovan, with a coach who believes in him, and a full season's chance to show his wares. The two, as they commiserate about the failings of Bayern's board, can inspire mutual confidence in one another.

Klinsmann is likely to provide Donovan's best shot at playing for a team willing to pony up what MLS will be asking for their top American star. If the right chance doesn't come up this summer, Donovan may be better off to wait until the summer of 2010.

Having already struck out on the European stage, the next approach will be a mulligan, with already lower expectations. Donovan seems to turn his failures into ambition, and if he hasn't moved yet, he will be motivated to take on the world in South Africa in 2010.

After that, hopefully, he will choose a situation that is right for him.

No matter his future, Donovan is by any measure a great American soccer player, arguably the best of all time. His career doesn't need a successful European adventure for validation, but some European goals would erase any asterisk that his doubters will otherwise forever put next to his name.

10. Of Rascals and Saints

On a warm day just before lunchtime, I sat with Juan in his office. My purpose at the cooperative had always been somewhat loosely defined, and over the first few months in San Juan, I had gradually fallen into a general consulting role which included frequent if incongruous chats about the range of issues Juan faced as manager of the branch. Despite having little idea what to do with a consultant, Juan was as determined to try to accommodate my efforts as I was to make them. He had gone so far as to successfully petition the main office for a computer, and a generator to power it, which he would often crank up on the mornings I spent at the office, at expense in fuel and noise hardly compensated for by my production, perhaps hoping that through my mastery of this newfangled machine I would somehow generate the solutions to his managerial quandaries.

By far the biggest of Juan’s work-related problems was that of the cooperative’s large portfolio of delinquent loans. With outstanding loans on many projects that, if they ever had been, were now far from profitable, given the falling price of coffee, the driving force of the zone’s economy, many clients now preferred to abandon their land rather than work to pay off a debt far greater than the value of the property guaranteeing the loan the cooperative had made to them.

On this particular day, Juan and I had just begun a new chapter in our on-going discussion of potential solutions to help mitigate the crisis of bad debt affecting over half of the branch’s loans. As Juan stared out the window, powerless to do much more than contemplate potential action, a look of surprise swept suddenly over his face.

I followed his intent gaze out to the street. Walking by outside was a portly old man sporting a weathered straw hat, which he held tipped across his face in what was clearly a haphazard attempt to conceal his identity, specifically from anyone who might be observing from our vantage point. He was obviously in a hurry, and not anxious to be spotted, but the scheme had succeeded only in drawing attention to his unusual behavior, as it had in the case of Juan, who, after the observing the man briefly, bolted for the front door.

“Don Santos!” he cried, letting the door slam behind him. Through the office window, I saw the man look back furtively, before doubling his pace towards the bustle of the market down the street.

I walked to the door, where Roque stood with a thinly veiled smirk across his face. “That Don Santos, what a character,” he said.

“The Don Santos?” I asked him.

“One and the same,” he said, returning his attention to the pursuit taking place just down the street, as Juan disappeared into the market, hot on the trail of the old man.

On a similar morning, Juan had told me in great detail the story of Don Santos and his coffee cooperative in a neighboring village. Of all the bad loans the cooperative had made, his was the largest, oldest, and generally most egregious case. A number of years ago, when Juan was still an accountant at the branch in La Esperanza, Don Santos had convinced his neighbors in the far flung aldea of Cangual, on the other side of Cerro Grande, to form their own coffee growing cooperative. Not coincidentally, it would turn out, Santos had also recently been named to the board of directors of our savings and loan cooperative. Using his authority as director of both cooperatives, Don Santos had proceeded to obtain, with negligible delay or bother, an extraordinarily large loan for activities at the coffee cooperative.

It was less than a year before Don Santos was unceremoniously removed from the board of the savings and loan cooperative, when his loosely organized group of farmers in Cangual failed to make even the first payment on the loan. The coffee cooperative had been delinquent on its loan payments ever since, and now owed the savings and loan cooperative upwards of ten thousand dollars, an astronomical sum in these parts, accounting for almost half of the branch’s bad loans.

It was now apparent how Don Santos, the sole mastermind behind the scheme, and unquestioned leader of his neighbors in Cangual, had deceptively arranged from the beginning for the loan to be given not directly to him, but to the coffee cooperative as a legal entity, backed by property which he appraised himself to be worth many times its actual value. Furthermore, the property pledged as collateral was split up piecemeal throughout the zone around the village, and belonged in title not to Don Santos or the coffee cooperative, but to several different farmers. These irregularities had been overlooked given Don Santos’ status at the time as a board member. Also ignored was a further, major breech of protocol, in distributing the loan disbursement directly to Santos, rather than to the whole of the coffee cooperative’s board. Given those mitigating circumstances, which Santos now used in his own defense, he refused to be held at all responsible for the debt. Since collecting the cash, it seemed Don Santos had lost his passion for coffee farming, and he hadn’t been seen much around San Juan, having moved to La Esperanza, where he bought a large house that he furnished with all the latest amenities.

With one or another of those details on his mind, Juan soon emerged from the market, with a broad smile across his face. At his side, also smiling, somewhat less confidently, was the recluse Don Santos. Juan marched back towards the office, discretely but firmly pulling the old man along by the arm, like a father herding a disobedient child. The pair crossed the street, and Roque opened the door dutifully with his usual salute. After thrusting Santos through the doorway ahead of him, Juan went inside. With a resolute expression I had seldom seen on his good natured face, Juan waved me into his office as he advanced, all the way pushing the indisposed Santos along in front of him.

When all three of us were in the office, Juan shut the door firmly. “Have a seat,” he said to our new guest. It sounded like more of an order than an invitation.

“Kawil, I’d like to present to you Don Santos Mercedes Vasquez de la Cruz,” Juan said with exaggerated grandiloquence, as he regained his formal attitude.

“It’s a pleasure Don Santos.” I said, sitting down next to him, with a feigned cordiality to imitate Juan’s. At the same time, I inched my chair around the corner of Juan’s desk, to face this man about whom I had heard little good.

“Don Santos has come to speak with us,” Juan said, rather inventively I thought, considering half the town had just witnessed his capture in the market. But Juan had been scripting this moment in his mind for quite some time. Now Santos had finally appeared, and he recognized the need to act quickly, if he was to take advantage of this fortuitous turn of fate.

The pair chatted informally for several minutes, as if they were old friends, as I looked on. Juan asked about Don Santos’ family and his health, while I remained quiet, as I studied the old man. I couldn’t help but feel empathy for him, even though he was somewhat heavy, as the few who eat well in these parts invariably are. In the context of village life, I had somewhat unavoidably developed a lack of tolerance for overweight individuals, reasoning that fatter people were unjustly consuming more than their share of the scarce resources. But this man’s eyes now spoke of remorse, like that of a child who had been caught in lie.

“Don Santos is the head of the coffee cooperative in Cangual,” Juan said to me, when he had finished with pleasantries. Juan was fully aware that I knew the entire story, having told it to me himself, but he seemed to want to reprise some of the facts before getting down to business.

“Kawil has come to work with us here, as an advisor,” Juan continued. “I have told him much of our difficulties. Perhaps Kawil can help us with this problem as well, Don Santos. I have explained the situation to him. He is an expert in finance from the United States.”

“Thank you,” Don Santos said, when Juan paused, indicating that it was time for him to say something for himself. “Of course, I cannot be involved the situation, since I long ago sold my interest in the cooperative in Cangual. I live in La Esperanza now, you know.”

With those initial words, my original sense of empathy immediately turned to annoyance. I let out a grumble of disapproval.

“Certainly, Don Santos,” nodded Juan, much calmer and calculating than I. Perhaps he had expected this turn of events. “At any rate we simply must find a way to help your cooperative. The last thing we want to do is resort to the contract.” By that, he meant take the farmers’ land. That was a losing proposition for everyone involved, as the cooperative was not interested in owning land. In any event, the real losers from such an action would be the poor landowners of Cangual, to whom Don Santos had apparently sold his worthless share of the mortgaged land.

“I would suggest the following, then,” continued Santos with a sly smile, smug behind the barrier of his manipulations. “I really have nothing to do with the matter, as you will see if you go to examine the deeds in Cangual. You should take your little gringo, and go talk with the people there. Organize them to produce, and open the road, which has been closed off by a landslide. I would do it myself, but I don’t want to take advantage of my neighbors. There is much potential for gain, and I would prefer that they are the ones to benefit.”

If it hadn’t been already, it was now clear to me how this episode would play out. The trusted community leader had devised a scheme to defraud everyone around, in this case selling his property twice, once to each cooperative. With no more gain to be had, he now wanted nothing but to distance himself from the situation, a result for which his scheming had set him up perfectly. The savings and loan cooperative had no legal claim against him, since the loan had been given in the name of the coffee cooperative in Cangual, not his. So many things in this country ended in such a way. Still, Juan was determined to press on with the interview.

In the meantime, I stared out the window, contemplating what could be done about my irritation with this man. Perhaps a few months before, when I had recently arrived, my outrage would have been less fleeting, and I would have made my opinions known by arguing with Don Santos, perhaps screaming at him for a time, and certainly calling him a liar and a scoundrel. And all that would have gained me very little, apart from a reputation as a hot head with none of the patience required to deal with the situations life here presents. But I was beginning to understand that firm reactions were usually not the best option for resolving matters in these parts. The best thing to do seemed instead to be what Juan was doing now. Go along with things calmly, and search patiently for an out. But I wasn’t ready to play exactly that game. Maybe I was half way there, if not prepared to smile at hypocrites, or to nod at ridiculous explanations, at least composed enough in the face of this nonsense to validate the trust Juan had placed in me by inviting me to be present. My best choice, I concluded, was to tune out the rest of the exchange.

So I looked out the window, and watched the townspeople passing by on the street. Mid-morning is one of the busiest times of day around the market. Less so in the summer heat, but still, that block of the main street was the busiest in town, and provided ample entertainment to distract me. I saw Patricia on her way to the market, little Aidita in hand, taking two steps for each of her mother’s, perhaps headed to pay a visit, or to purchase the ingredients for lunch, which I was now looking forward to.

Across the way, a grand municipal auditorium was under construction next to the town offices. An ambitious project that would be the tallest building in San Juan if successfully completed, it had been conceived by Don Santiago immediately after he took office nearly a decade ago, and progressed through various states of construction since then. The structure seemed to be coming along well now, nearing the final phases of building after constant delays in funding, material deliveries, and a host of other generally expected if not individually foreseeable problems.

Of late, I understood, a large part of the construction delays were attributable to the mayor’s decision to contract his brother-in-law once removed to finish the roof. A confident veteran of the construction trade, Anhiel worked deliberately when he was in San Juan, where few substitutes for his labor were available. Of late, he had spent much of his time away from the town, in the native village of his wife, on the other side of the capital. Though Anhiel had long ago come to see San Juan as his home, his wife, who he had met on a sojourn to the capital, preferred to raise their numerous offspring in her own town, given its proximity to the city, and the resulting access to everything San Juan was without. But Anhiel still frequented San Juan, where his connections made it easier to get work, including his present job, on the roof of the municipal auditorium, where I now observed him from my vantage point at the window.

I stood up slowly from my seat by Juan’s desk, excused myself from the discussion in which I, at any rate, had played little part, and pushed my way through the door. From the front step of the office, I gazed up at my friend on the roof of the now nearly completed auditorium building.

“Hey, idiot, wake up,” I yelled skyward. “The mayor isn’t paying you to sleep.” Roque, getting more than his usual share of daily entertainment from his post next to the office door, laughed in amusement.

A number of the pedestrians scattered about the street, curious to see what I was shouting about, paused, their attention drawn to the roof of the auditorium. There, Anhiel had been at work installing long panels of roofing material over the wide expanse of the building’s frame.

Though he was famous in town for sleeping on the job, Anhiel, in fact, had not been asleep this time, as my shouting had somewhat deceptively indicated. My intention had been simply to have some fun, and distract myself from the irritating conversation taking place inside the building I now stood in front of. But my good-natured chiding set off of an avalanche among those on the street below.

“Anhiel, you lazy bum, come down from there if you’re not going to work! The mayor is not paying you good money to sleep,” a passerby jested loudly.

A number of councilmen emerged from the municipal building to see what all the fuss was about, and a small crowd now gathered below the auditorium, laughing and shouting obscenities up at Anhiel, who stared down in confusion from his perch. Women covered their children’s ears and scurried into the nearest open doorway. It seemed I now wasn’t the only one intent on having a moment of amusement in my day, at the unfortunate expense of Anhiel.

“We’ll send the gringo up to replace you, he knows how to work,” called one of the councilmen, eliciting an explosion of laughter from the street around me.

Anhiel, finally getting a sense of what was going on beneath him, tossed a piece of scrap metal down in protest, in the direction of the group below.

“Shut up you bastards,” he cried from the roof, in feigned anger. “Get up here, then, you silly gringo. Stop your talk and criticizing, and demonstrate how it’s done.”

“Go on,” came a chorus of voices from the crowd, urging me on. “Climb up there and show him how it’s done.”

I looked around at the expectant crowd. Many people in town had come to believe, in those short months, that I was capable of most anything. I had played soccer with most of them, rode with the mayor around the country in his car, and addressed the town as one of their leaders on Independence Day. Certainly it would be a small matter, they must have thought, for me to now show this lollygagger how to install a few roof panels. Of course, I had no idea how to perform such a task, but I had gotten myself, and Anhiel as well - somewhat unfairly at that - into this mess, and now I would have to follow through.

I crossed the street self-assuredly and walked past the gate of the auditorium, to the base of the building. A rickety ladder leaned precariously against the side of the structure, leading up to the roof nearly forty feet above. Despite a mild fear of heights, I would have to climb, if only to demonstrate that I did belong here, in this town, where it seemed clear that any male my age should, among other things, feel confident in scaling a ladder and putting on a roof.

I began up the ladder. Before I knew it, I was on the roof, scurrying along the newly installed fiberglass panels to the summit to meet Anhiel. The crowd below was satisfied, and the men shouted their approval as they began to disperse. “That will show that lazy Anhiel,” several of them agreed, as they meandered away. It seemed I had proven my worth yet again.

I made my way carefully over towards Anhiel, treading as lightly as possible on the panels, which looked quite fragile, while trying to maintain my balance on the slick rooftop. Despite my care, I soon heard a loud crack under my foot.

“Not there!” shouted Anhiel with concern. “Damn. This gringo. You’re too heavy. Don’t step on the panels. Step on the beams.” I backed off the broken segment and crawled over to the plank of wood Anhiel had installed as a walkway for just this purpose. As I reached it, there was yet another crunch.

“Crap.” Anhiel said, frowning, as I walked slowly along the beam to where he was standing.

Anhiel sat down on another board, and scratched his beard. “That’s going to take a while to fix,” he said, after a minute’s contemplation, “since we’ll have to undo this morning’s work first.”

He certainly had the right to be angry. Perhaps I shouldn’t have had so much fun with him, I thought. I had started an avalanche of unwarranted criticism, then I had come up onto the roof and ruined a whole day’s work. Despite all that, Anhiel remained calm, smiling at me as he shook his head, in between glances at the broken roof panels.

“Idiot gringo,” he said with a broad grin, when he had finished his preliminary assessment of the damage, laughing even as he tried to remain stern in his rebuke. “Talks big and then comes up here to ruin my work. If I had in fact been asleep, as you claimed, I would have accomplished more in my slumber than you have here.”

Perhaps a lifetime permeated by far worse injustice had left him more willing to accept this additional one. Whatever the reason, I appreciated his leniency. I wondered how I would have reacted in his place.

“I’ll come back this afternoon and we’ll redo the work,” I said. It was the least I could offer.

Anhiel cleaned his hands with a rag, then wiped his forehead. The chalk from the fiberglass panels left a white smear across his face, accenting his ever jovial countenance, as he stared past me into the hills around town, still smiling. With few other options, I laughed as well at my own shortcomings, as I followed his gaze into the distance, and noticed for the first time the sweeping view of the valley from that roof, the highest point in town. There was certainly something calming to that vista of green hills on the horizon, rising softly into the clear, pale blue sky, punctuated by full white clouds sauntering aimlessly above the land. I could see why Anhiel was in a good mood.

“Not to worry, gringo pendejo,” he said. “We’ll fix it, maybe tomorrow. This afternoon, it may rain. Better to rest. Let’s go home, it’s time for lunch.” Without further discussion, Anhiel sprung to his feet and glided quickly past me, down the plank towards the ladder. I followed him slowly, as he turned and started down the ladder.

“Be careful this time!” he yelled to me, as I made my way back across the roof. “If you finish breaking those panels, you’ll fall through to the floor!” Forewarned, I managed to get across safely, and climb shakily down the ladder to the ground, as Anhiel led the way, hopping downward with the agility of a squirrel. Even with his pot belly and work-ravaged old frame, in this task he was as nimble as someone half his age.

Safe back on the ground, we crossed the street and found Juan at the door of the cooperative, in the process of locking up for the midday siesta. Having recovered my sense of tranquility on the roof of the auditorium, I had quickly forgotten about our unexpected visitor.

“What happened with Don Santos?” I now asked Juan.

“Long gone, Kawil. He escaped as fast as he could, with his tail between his legs,” Juan said ruefully.

Anhiel laughed. Just as most everyone in San Juan knew of Anhiel’s reputation for laziness, they knew as well the story of Don Santos. For that matter, everyone in San Juan knew the story of almost everyone else. As for Don Santos, it seemed I was the only one around, except perhaps Juan, obligated by his job as manager of the cooperative, who felt any need to judge what he had done. The rest of the community, even the cooperative’s members, who would, in the end, pay the actual costs of his crooked scheming, seemed content to leave the matter be.

As the three of us turned the corner and headed to lunch, Anhiel described to Juan with great amusement the events that had just taken place at the auditorium. “How they screamed at me from below,” he recounted, before laughing once again about the smashed the roof panels. “All because of this Kawil, the gringo Indian. They wanted to send him up, to show me how to install the roof. But, rather than help, well...”

“I told you, Anhiel,” I interrupted, feeling ashamed once again at my lack of agility, “I’ll help you fix it. We’ll go this afternoon.”

“Don’t worry,” Anhiel said, “we will fix it, all in good time.”

“No, Anhiel,” I insisted. “Right after lunch, I’ll help you to fix the damage I caused.” This time he didn’t respond immediately. Not until I continued to press him to set a time to go back to work that afternoon, did he offer more information.

“Ah, you crazy Indian, don’t you see,” he said, in a more serious tone than before. “There are no more roof panels. They have been brought all the way from the capital, counted and measured for this job. We’ll have to wait for more to be ordered now.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. But before I could speak, Juan did.

“We have several extra roof panels behind the cooperative,” he said to Anhiel. “You can come get them after lunch.”

“After lunch I sleep,” Anhiel said with a wink. We had arrived at the Perdido house. “Isn’t that right Mr. Construction Foreman?” he asked me ironically, once again in a joking mood, as he thrust the screen door open, and stood aside while Juan, and then I, passed through.

That was the last I heard for some time about the roof panels. At some point, Juan sent the panels over, and Anhiel fixed the roof. Several times over the following weeks, as Anhiel worked, I climbed up that rickety ladder to the roof of the unfinished auditorium, for the view, but more to spend some time with a good friend, even if we both realized it was best for me to leave the work to him. When the job was finished, Anhiel steadfastly credited me with helping complete the labor. The broken roof panels remained between him and me, and Juan.

Not until some time later, when the cooperative’s auditor inquired as to the disposition of the missing panels, did I find out how expensive they were. Juan simply explained that, as in so many other cases, no one knew exactly what had happened.

West African Chambers of Commerce Discuss Export Promotion

By Brent Latham

Dakar

09 May 2009

Representatives of chambers of commerce from across West Africa have come to Senegal to discuss the prospects for increasing exports from the region.

With the guidance of the Geneva-based International Trade Center , business leaders from a number of West African countries are planning future steps to further improve the panorama for businesses wishing to export goods from and among African countries.

Participants in a week-long conference represent the business sectors of over ten African countries, organizers say. The chambers of commerce are in the process of evaluating their cooperation with the International Trade Center , or ITC, to determine which programs have worked, and which direction to take forward, says Blaise Borel Dourou, a technical consultant at the Chamber of Commerce in Point Noire, Congo .

The ITC, a joint program of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, has played a role in helping West African countries develop their export sectors during the recent period of rapid expansion over the last three years, according to Edward Collins Boateng, Executive Secretary of the Ghana Export Promotion Council. "We have had quite a close level of collaboration with ITC in developing and establishing management information systems to serve the exporter community. It was a three year program which is ending, and there is the need to evaluate and see where we are, what new things we can lend, and evaluate the program. So that is what brought me here," he said.

ITC representatives say training is a key tool for small business owners in the region wishing to export internationally. They say, that since small businesses that could potentially benefit from international trade are spread out across the continent, working through the region's chambers of commerce is an effective way to make sure African businesses are getting the information they need to become effective exporters.

Boateng said the chambers of commerce participating in the conference are eager to continue to encourage the recent growth in the export sector of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS. "I think the regional trade is growing, especially within the ECOWAS sub-region. The European Union has been our main market over a couple of years. Over the last two or three years the West Africa sub region is growing very strongly, and I believe that has something to do with proximity to markets, and we intend to leverage our competence and continue growing those markets," he said.

Africa has traditionally been an exporter primarily of natural resources and raw materials. Experts say African economies would benefit from new approaches to adding value in other sectors, if they are to provide more jobs and opportunities for the people of the continent.

Boateng said he is working with the ITC in Ghana to develop a more effective service sector, which he says has traditionally been informal, both there and across the region. "We are looking basically at the services sector. We thought that we had people trading in the services for a couple of years that had not been formalized, and again with the support of the ITC we tried to formalize it. We have done a strategy with the Commonwealth Secretariat consciously to go out there, create awareness, put advocacy measures to remove obstacles towards trade in services, and effectively take these companies into things like matchmaking issues, development, and international services contracts, et cetera," he said.

The African Development bank says West African economies grew by 5.4 percent on average in 2008, though that growth was expected to slow to 4.2 percent in 2009. Ghana's national statistics service reports that the economy there grew by 7.3 percent in 2008, buoyed by the agriculture and services sectors.

9. Independence Day

After seven days in the capital, I decided it was time to return to San Juan. My original idea had been to stay longer, but a week proved sufficient to change my perspective, and leave me anxious to get back to the fresh country air. The thick, polluted city air had permeated my lungs, provoking an incessant and annoying cough, and the disingenuous scheming of those around me had exacted a similar toll on my spirit, and generated a strong desire to return to the transparent simplicity of the countryside.

I left the capital early one weekday morning, with little energy remaining from the week of life in the fast-paced city. What force I had in reserve I would need for the trip back to San Juan, which I knew would be many degrees more complicated on public transport than in the private cars in which I had always had the fortune to travel.

Despite my concern, I was yet to fully grasp a simple reality of bus travel which my fellow passengers seemed to understand perfectly. Public transportation is rife with inherent setbacks and serious delays. When the bus broke down, or a tire went flat, as happened more than once along the way that morning, there would be little reaction from anyone to match the frustration I felt inside. I was on a schedule, and these unexpected obstacles jeopardized my carefully laid plans. If this bus failed to complete the trip to La Esperanza in the five and a half hours I had carefully budgeted, allowing for what I thought a reasonable amount of delay, then I would miss the departure of the only bus of the day leaving La Esperanza for San Juan.

With that scenario in the back of mind, I watched the countryside slowly roll by through the window as the morning too quickly gave way to afternoon. Even when the bus was in motion, which it seemed, for one reason or another, not to be the majority of the time, progress was painfully slow. Climbing those steep roads into the mountains had taken little effort in the new cars in which I had previously travelled, but the ascent proved a trying labor for the converted school bus in which I now rode, which slowed to a maddening crawl on the incline of each hill, as the window for me to make it to La Esperanza slowly closed. By the time the bus driver stopped for a leisurely lunch break, near the place where I had eaten with the mayor on the way to the capital, I had already become very concerned about the late hour.

“What time does this bus arrive in La Esperanza,” I asked an attendant, who stooped casually by the roadside, watching the passing cars on the main highway.

“We will leave before long,” he replied.

Not satisfied with that answer, I tried my luck with another passenger. But this gentleman, who was dressed well enough to look as if he might have also had some appointment to keep, proved no more able to dispel my growing fears of missing the bus to San Juan.

“It arrives when it gets there,” the man said, with a deeply ingrained fatalism that I assumed would be shared by the other passengers, dissuading me from further inquiry. The other passengers seemed to have wisely put aside thoughts of virtually all future activities, pending the unpredictable culmination of the bus trip.

As the bus sputtered onward, and the afternoon shadows grew longer, I was forced to come to terms with reality. There was no way I would reach La Esperanza in time. I resigned myself to the situation, and gazed out upon the bright green countryside as the bus meandered west, up and down the mountain passes.

It was past two in the afternoon when I finally descended into the large lot that passes for a bus station in La Esperanza. The bus to San Juan was long gone.

I carried my small bag to the edge of the lot, where I tossed it down in exasperation. I had assumed that a full day would be more than sufficient to reach San Juan, and I had not planned for the possibility of being stuck here. After a long, expensive week in the city, I had only twenty five pesos left in my pocket. My painstaking calculations had extended to my finances, leaving me just enough money for the ride back to San Juan, but certainly not to spend the night here in town.

I considered my options. I didn’t want to go to the cooperative office, concerned that I might find Sally there. I had no valid excuse for having been in the capital for a week, away from work. It was easy enough in the expanse of the city to avoid contact with Peace Corps, but if I encountered Sally here, I would have to explain what I was doing away from San Juan.

As I sat, deep in thought that was quickly turning to despair, it began to rain lightly.

“Are you waiting for a bus?” A voice came from a wooden stall next to me, behind which a woman, who I hadn’t noticed before, was observing me closely. “Because you know, there are no more buses from here today.”

“I’m trying to figure out how to get to San Juan,” I replied, somewhat annoyed by the interruption to my thought process.

“There are no more busses to San Juan today,” the woman repeated, as she swept the dust from the table where she normally displayed the merchandise for sale.

“But you could always try the crossroads. Sometimes trucks are headed in that direction.”

“The crossroads,” I repeated, in an exclamation of revelation that the woman mistook as a question.

“Walk up this road to the edge of town,” she said, indicating the road passing in front of the stand. “You should see others waiting there.”

I stood up quickly, pausing only to thank this woman, whose intervention had originally annoyed me thoroughly before ultimately proving so valuable, before I hurried off up the road.

The light rain had quickly tapered off, but the storm clouds were regrouping as I arrived at the crossroads. There I found an assortment of would-be travelers huddled under the overhangs of the homes on either side of the road out of town. Each of them hoped that the next passing vehicle would be headed in the direction they wished to go.

I stood by the roadside for a time as a handful of pickup trucks passed. Some sped by without stopping, others were headed to destinations much closer by. As the minutes turned to hours, most of the waiting crowd found their ride. The rain again started to fall, and most of those who remained at the crossroads gave up their wait, to seek shelter elsewhere. Cold and tired, I would have given up too, had I another option. Forced to remain, I was left alone on the roadside in the late afternoon. The rain fell with more resolve now, in increasingly heavy, cold drops that splattered mud from the road onto the sidewalk, where I tried in futility to distance myself from the torrent from above and the splashing from below. I remembered with commiseration those villagers we had passed in the mayor’s car, on the way to La Esperanza, who we had inadvertently bathed in dust as they waited for transport themselves.

“It’s late, perhaps no car will come now,” said an old man, who I hadn’t noticed before, standing quietly under the leaky overhang by the roadside, unfazed by the weather. His face was harshly weathered by years of facing predicaments like this one.

As I stood on that crossroads, my warm, cozy mud house in San Juan had never seemed so inviting. Nor had I eaten all day, and the rumblings of hunger in my stomach were reaching a point at which I could no longer ignore them. If I could just reach San Juan, I would find Doña Aida there, waiting to prepare a hot meal. That I had no money made little difference there, I thought. I wouldn’t have to pay until I could. I hadn’t even yet paid for the first few weeks of meals I had eaten. I had tried to hand over some money on the first day, but Patricia just laughed at my effort. “Payment comes at the end of the month,” she had patiently explained. “First you eat, and then you pay.”

It grew colder along the roadside, as I remembered the intense heat earlier in the day, when the bus had made that extended stop while the driver slowly ate his lunch, the passengers patiently waiting for him. If that driver had moved more expediently, I might have made the bus to San Juan, I thought. I cursed him as the cold rain water began to soak through my clothes.

“Even if a truck were to come, it is raining even more in the pass,” I heard the old man say softly, perhaps to himself, as he stared towards the clouded peaks in the distance west of town. “Perhaps it is for the best that no car comes today.”

I looked off into that dark sky, and noted with chagrin that the old man was right. The casual assuredness of his observations made it clear that he didn’t share my concern at being left behind, out in the cold. Nevertheless I could hardly have considered him pessimistic in his assessment, since his words were simply an impartial appraisal of the probabilities which we faced.

“No, old man,” I mumbled, as I looked into that darkening range of hills. “I must travel today.”

But the old man must not have heard me over the falling rain, punctuated by the noise of a truck rumbling up the road from town. With it came once more the faint hope of salvation. I held my breath.

The large, brightly covered truck pulled over to the side of the road. It was the type used to haul merchandise and coffee, comprised of a flat bed flanked by wooden rails, and a large cab in which four men could travel side by side. The driver’s window lowered slightly against the pounding rain, revealing a pair of men inside whom I didn’t recognize, as I might have if they had been headed for San Juan. But all hope was not lost. Some cars left for Gracias from here, passing San Juan, though it would be very late in the day to attempt that route.

“San Juan?” I asked hopefully, not just for me, but for my new travelling companion standing behind me.

The driver nodded.

“Hop in,” he said, motioning with a quick movement of his head towards the back of the truck. When I turned around to wave the old man forward, he was nowhere to be found. I located him again, already on board, positioning himself in the back, when I circled around the truck. I threw my bag upward into the cargo area, and climbed up into the bed of the truck, as, with a start, it began up the bumpy road towards San Juan. As we left the town behind, a loud clap of thunder boomed down from the mountains ahead, as if nature had sounded a warning to those who, having realized the danger, still dared to take on the trip. Headed into those dark mountains at this late hour, the sound triggered in me a sense of profound fear, borne of a suspicion of the risk I now faced at the hands of a force much stronger than I was prepared for. Observing a strong storm, which I had always enjoyed, was quite different from behind the glass of a weather-proof western fortress, I thought, then out here. My perception of any ability to resist the power of nature was quickly undone, as I shivered with cold under the dark sky of the rain-soaked afternoon, my vulnerability clear. Perhaps, I thought, the old man had been right his assertion that it was best that no car come.

That crossing to the next valley might have taken an hour, or slightly more, as the truck slowly rumbled up the mountainside, but it felt like a frozen eternity. The storm clouds had quickly turned the afternoon to evening, as the daylight dimmed at an accelerated pace with the climb higher into the mountains, where the sun sinks behind the tall, distant peaks in mid-afternoon. The now icy rain pouring down on the slick hillside made the already brisk temperature unbearable, as I huddled in a corner on the floor of the truck’s bed, protected from the worst of the driving rain by only the limited shelter afforded by the cab.

The truck gradually crested the mountain, and passed the small village of El Membrillo, from where, on the way to the capital, the mayor had pointed out San Juan in the valley below. It seemed like an eternity had passed since I rode along in the mayor’s new car on that bright, sunny morning.

“Here it freezes at night,” I remembered the mayor’s cousin say. That observation was more than a curiosity now. It was in fact advice I should have taken, I thought as I shivered uncontrollably. As for the view of San Juan, it would have to wait for a later day. A thick, gray cloud rose off the mountain, immediately to that side of the road, obscuring the countryside beyond.

Several kilometers beyond that village, high among those mountains, just when the cold and rain seemed at their apex, the old man let out a shrill whistle, which those who dwell in these mountains use as a signal to be heard at a great distance. As it rounded a bend there, the truck gradually slowed.

“Good luck,” the old man said faintly. “The worst is past. You’re nearly there.” With that, he leapt down from the still-moving bed of the truck, and landed with a splash on the wet ground. I thought it strange as I watched him, from the moving truck, for such a frail old body to not have waited for the truck to stop completely. As he edged off the road and disappeared into the undergrowth, where he disappeared, I felt the cold begin to diminish slightly, and I realized, for the first time, that I would soon be home.

Many times since I have travelled that route in the plain of day, and thought to look for that bend in the road, where the old man faded away down a narrow, little used path, off through the trees and into the hills. But that turn in the road has always proved elusive, too difficult to distinguish from all the other bends, and I have never again been able to find it. I know only that the man must have dwelled in one of the isolated homes that sit in the hills well off the road, perhaps with his family, alone and isolated in the dark, cold night. I wondered where he might turn, out there, when something went drastically wrong. Then I asked the same question of myself.

Soon after, the descent into the valley began. The way down the mountain, carried by momentum, was an easier proposition for the truck, and its passenger. The rain let up a bit, and the temperature began to warm noticeably with each passing kilometer. I was invigorated by the knowledge that progress was coming faster now. I stood up and held on to the rail of the top of the cab. As the truck plowed forward down into the valley, I felt the mild air of the approaching basin sweeping up the mountainside, and knew the most difficult part of the journey was behind me. Soon I would be in San Juan. Soon, I thought, I would be home.

Reaching the valley floor, the truck sped down a section of new road, under construction just outside of town. There, the state had incongruously begun a project to pave the road through the valley between San Juan and the neighboring town of San Miguelito, despite the fact that sections on either end of that span remained unpaved, and in much more desperate need of attention. The workers, contracted in fits and starts that depended on the vagaries of the government budget, had been on an extended break since well before I arrived in San Juan, and had long since returned to their respective cities of origin, far away. Most of the work that had been accomplished was now being quickly undone by the rainy season, but the flat, unfinished roadbed still provided a rapid conduit towards my final destination.

The damp countryside was barren as the last light of the fading day made a gallant but unsuccessful attempt to break through the clouds and shine across the valley, when the truck crossed the bridge over the San Juan River, and stopped at the crossroads outside of town, from where it would head south. I descended, and began the short walk up the road into town, reenergized by the completion of the long trip. Exhilarated, I was in the mood to greet someone, but there was no one to be seen anywhere in the fading light. I encountered only silent streets as I walked up the road to the Perdido house, where I let myself in through the open screen door, and proceeded into the kitchen. Finding it empty, I sat down by the stove’s warm fire, and contentedly took in my surroundings.

The wood in the stove crackled slowly as I continue to warm there. I saw the makings of corn tortillas on the table, and a host of covered pots, pushed to one side of the stovetop. Before I could gather the energy to serve myself, Patricia came in. She jumped with surprise to see me seated there.

“The devil has come disguised as a gringo,” she said, when she had gotten her bearings.

“I’m not the devil,” I said, “but this fire is nice after the cold trip from La Esperanza.”

“How would I know if you are the devil or not?” she asked. “Only the devil would travel on a day like today. No reasonable person would attempt a trip in this rain, at this hour. Spirits are everywhere.”

“Well, I haven’t seen any,” I said. “I came alone in a truck, with just an old man for company.” Patricia smiled deliberately.

“This old man,” she asked, as she handed me a cup of hot tea, “was someone from San Juan?”

“No,” I said. “But he was nice enough. He got off at some bend and hopped off into the woods.”

“Ah ha!” she declared, as Aida appeared and, without a word, begin to prepare a hot plate for my dinner. “That’s what the spirits do. They travel with you, disguised as old men or women. Sometimes, when they have served their purpose, they disappear in the middle of the forest. Sometimes, if they are evil, they take those aboard with them.”

“It wasn’t a spirit,” I said, laughing as Aida set the plate down in front of me, on the table next to stove. “He spoke to me several times.”

“Ah,” Aida, who had remained in front of me after serving the meal, sighed knowingly. “But did he speak to anyone else?”

After dinner, on my way down the wet, dark street leading home, I thought about Aida’s question. As I approached my home in that dark corner of town, under the cloudy night sky, I tried to remember if I had seen the old man speak with anyone else. I wasn’t sure I had. He had hopped into the truck ahead of me, and gotten off, alone there in the mountains, without even waiting for the truck to stop, or negotiating the usual fare with the driver. In fact, I didn’t remember him appearing until we were alone at the crossroads.

Too tired to contemplate the episode further, I went in, undressed, and fell into my warm bed.

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I awoke late the next morning and stepped out onto the back patio to a bright sun, shining warmly on the damp ground of the embankment behind the house. The rain had coaxed the dust from the air, and refreshed the earth. I was rejuvenated as well, from the peaceful night’s sleep that favors those tranquil in the knowledge that the next day brings no obligations or worries. I dressed leisurely, and made my way to breakfast, then on to the cooperative to look for Juan, who I hadn’t seen since my return.

As I approached the corner by the central plaza, I spotted the mayor on the front patio of the municipal building.

“Don Kawil,” he called to me with a smile. “So you are back!” I walked over to greet him.

“How are the girls in the capital?” the mayor asked, a little too loudly for my comfort. He turned to one the councilmen standing behind him. “This Kawil is quite a terror with the ladies,” the mayor said. The official nodded approvingly at the observation, in the same way he would have if the mayor had been speaking of budgeting or infrastructure. “Kawil,” Chago said, turning back to me, “I have something to discuss with you. Come into my office if you would.”

I followed the mayor inside, where the typical gathering of townspeople awaited him. He offered me a chair to the side, rather than in front of, his desk, before greeting a few of his other visitors. When the mayor returned, he sat down next to me, crossed one leg over the other, took off his hat and placed it on the desk, and looked at me with a serious countenance.

“Kawil, as you know, Friday is the anniversary of the independence of our great nation,” he began, as if he had rehearsed this speech many times. “Francisco Morazán, who you see there,” he said as he pointed to one of the pictures on the wall above his desk, a cardboard cut-out, more apt for a classroom than the mayor’s office, of the revolutionary hero, “liberated our land from the oppression of its colonizers almost two centuries ago on this date.”

I tried to agree, particularly with the part about the dastardly nature of the country’s colonizers. I had made a habit of taking every opportunity possible to express my distaste for the Spanish, a practice which seemed to take the spotlight off my own exotic origins. But the mayor proved to not be finished, so I remained quiet.

“This Friday, as we do each year, we will celebrate here in San Juan with a grand parade, for which I have already signed and stamped the proclamation,” he continued, glancing towards the official stamp which sat on his desktop at the ready. It seemed the mayor wanted everyone present to understand that a signed and stamped proclamation, in this context, was the greatest assurance available that the event being spoken of would in fact take place.

“I will lead the parade,” Chago continued, “which features the government officials, and other leading community members. It would be my pleasure, Don Kawil, for you to march alongside me.”

The mayor now seemed to have finished, but I waited a moment to make sure that I was not interrupting him. My delay had the added advantage of making it seem like I was taking the adequate time to consider this important request, which to me seemed simple enough. When I was sure the mayor’s monologue had indeed ended, I answered.

“Sure, Don Chago,” I said. “I would be honored.”

“All right, then,” the mayor said, brandishing his perpetual smile. “That is good. I will send the official invitation to the cooperative office later today.”

When that was agreed, the mayor stood up and extended his hand to me, then turned away, to speak with a group of farmers who were waiting for him. I took my leave of the municipal building, and continued my original errand to the cooperative across the street.

There I found Roque, the office guard, waiting as always in his position in front of the building. A former military officer of some insignificant rank, Roque had parlayed his experience into the job as guard, and was now prepared to use all his guile and militaristic wherewithal to defend the cooperative in case of an assault, which was thought likely to occur eventually, if not imminently. He opened the door for me with his usual military salute, acknowledging his understanding of my role as one of the cooperative’s ranking officers, as he pushed aside the shotgun with which he was armed for the part of his job description that did not include opening the door repeatedly. Inside, I found Juan seated behind the desk in his office.

“Good morning, Kawil. Aida said that you had returned!” Juan said as he greeted me with a firm handshake. “I didn’t hear you at the house last night.”

“I got in late from La Esperanza,” I told him. “It was a rough trip. It’s very cold up in the mountains with the rain.”

Juan had returned to his place behind his spartan desk, and motioned for me to be seated across from him. Intimately familiar with the difficulties of travel between San Juan and La Esperanza, he smiled with understanding as I described the trip. During his three years as manager of the cooperative, he had made that journey on countless occasions, every so often multiple times in a single day. Only recently had the cooperative board approved the purchase of a motorbike for him, not because they were concerned about the extensive burden of travel, but because the members were worried that it had become common knowledge that the manager frequented the route, travelling in the back of randomly selected trucks, with large sums of their deposits.

“I’ve just come from the mayor’s office,” I began, when I had finished describing the previous day’s trip. “He has invited me to march in the parade with him this weekend. It sounds like fun.”

I had been slightly amused by that invitation, which I now shared with Juan. The mayor had been very enthusiastic about inviting me, in my role as the cooperative advisor, and I had assumed Juan would be invited too.

“That is a great honor,” Juan said, attempting by looking out the window to hide the frown that had broken across his face. “Only those with great importance in the community are invited.”

“Certainly you have been invited too?” I asked, immediately realizing my mistake.

“No,” he said. “The mayor hasn’t invited me in past years. I’m not from here, you know. But it is a great honor for the community to host someone from so far away as you.”

“Thank you Juan, but I won’t march if you won’t,” I said, willing to exchange the marginal honor of being in the parade in the name of solidarity with Juan.

“Don’t be rash, Kawil,” he said, “you must participate.”

But we didn’t have the chance to discuss further, since, at that moment, Roque tapped on the door. Juan waved him in, and he entered slowly, with great deference, and laid two envelopes on Juan’s desk.

“These have just arrived,” Roque said. “I hope you don’t mind that I accepted their delivery.”

“Thank you, Roque,” Juan said, as he looked at the envelopes. The first, which he passed across the desk to me, bore an irreconcilably misspelled version of my name. The other Juan opened, extracting a letter, which he began to read aloud with a broad smile.

“This Friday,” he began, “is the anniversary of the independence of our great nation. Francisco Morazán liberated our land from the oppression of its colonizers almost two centuries ago on this date.”

Juan continued to read the letter, which matched verbatim the speech the mayor had just given me, finishing with the final sentence of invitation. In this case, however, Juan pronounced his own name instead of mine.

I looked at my copy of the official letter. It was signed and stamped to prove its authenticity.

“The municipal seal,” Juan said, “makes this document an official command from the mayor. So there is no discussion. We must present ourselves Friday at nine in the morning at the mayor’s office, to fulfill our role in the celebration of Independence Day!”

Juan looked out the window, across the way, at the back of the mayor’s office.

“It’s quarter of twelve,” he said, looking at his watch. “Let’s go catch the mayor before he leaves for lunch.”

I could barely keep up with Juan as he rushed out the door and across the street. Retracing my steps of a few moments before, we found the mayor in front of the municipal building, about to get into his truck.

Chago smiled at us as we approached. “Juan, Kawil, can I offer you a ride somewhere?” he asked.

Juan responded quickly, as if there was a chance I might say something to ruin the whole arrangement. “No, Mister Mayor, we’ve come to thank you for the invitation to participate this Friday. We will be present with you that day, anxious to do our part to help the cause of the celebration. You can be assured of that.”

“That’s good Juan. I’m glad.” The mayor said, smiling as always, as he extended his hand to each of us, in turn. “There is much work to do before then. Perhaps you will join me for the planning committee meeting this afternoon.” He stepped up into his truck, where he sat with the door open, still grinning.

“Yes, Mister Mayor, of course we will be there,” Juan said eagerly. The mayor nodded and closed the door gently.

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I was asleep after lunch when, apparently, the planning committee met. As we walked to the soccer field that afternoon, Juan reported that he had signed us both up for what he described as the Independence Day information committee.

“What does the information committee do?” I asked.

“We are in charge of disseminating information about the festivities – like the parade,” Juan answered, his excitement over being invited to take part still apparent. It was our job, he explained, to make sure that everyone in town knew about the parade.

“Who else is on the committee?” I asked, somewhat skeptically.

“There is also Father Ismael from the church, and Don Alvaro, the principal of the high school,” Juan told me, “and of course, the mayor.”

“Aren’t those the people you said were at the planning committee meeting?” I followed, perhaps a bit cynically.

“Yes, in reality it is the same group of people on all the committees,” Juan said, with a sheepish grin, though he didn’t seem to share my doubt over the need to have several different committees comprised of the same group of people. “Our main job,” he continued, regaining his serious demeanor, “is to make sure everyone in town knows about the details of the activities on Friday.”

“But Juan, isn’t there a parade every year? Don’t people already know there will be a celebration on Independence Day?”

“The people need the details, and they need to be reminded. We have already formulated a plan to remind them,” Juan said, with a chuckle. “It’s already Wednesday, and the mayor has to make a trip to La Esperanza tomorrow to buy materials for decorating the town, so we had to think quickly.”

“So what did you decide?” I asked, anxious to know what I had gotten myself into.

“The best way to communicate information,” Juan explained, “is of course the ‘speaking car,’ which we will ready for Friday.” I had already seen the form of publicity to which Juan was referring employed around San Juan more than once. The scheme was straight forward enough. It involved rigging a car with large loudspeakers connected to a microphone, then circling the town repeatedly, while announcing the desired information, in this case that the parade would start at nine on Friday morning, and that, most likely by municipal decree, everyone was commanded to be present.

“The committee decided furthermore,” Juan continued, “that the best time to undertake the mission will be when everyone is in their home. Upon further consideration, we determined the most convenient time to be the morning before the parade. We are expected to meet the mayor at the municipal building at four o’clock Friday morning.”

With that, we arrived at the soccer field.

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Friday morning came, and I was sound asleep when Juan came knocking on my door at precisely four in the morning. If I had learned one thing in San Juan, it was to expect that nothing would go according to plan, so when Juan appeared, he had to wait for me as I got out of bed and quickly got dressed.

“This plan will work perfectly,” Juan said, as we walked to the central plaza through town, still asleep on a dark, chilly morning. “We will have a captive audience, as everyone is in their house at this hour.”

The mayor must have been less confident, because when we arrived at the municipal building, he was busy loading a pile of bottle rockets and firecrackers, which he had bought in La Esperanza the previous day, into his truck. He eagerly showed off some even more imposing explosive devices, which he simply referred to as ‘bombs.’ The priest soon arrived in his own car, accompanied by the school principal. They had already installed the loud speakers, which belonged to the church, in the back of his truck. Those devices, the priest explained, had been a donation to the church years ago, from well meaning Catholics elsewhere who didn’t realize that San Juan had no electricity. They were convenient to have, he said with a wink, on occasions like this one.

At a few minutes after four o’clock in the morning, we set off from the municipal plaza, with the priest at the wheel of his car, and the principal on the microphone. I followed behind, riding with the mayor in his truck, with Juan in the back manning the fireworks and bombs, about which the mayor was demonstrably animated.

“When we get to strategic points, I’ll give the word, and we will throw these bombs out onto the street,” the mayor said, slapping my shoulder enthusiastically as he elaborated on his plan. “Then, once we have everyone’s attention, we make the announcement of the parade.”

We followed that plan closely, driving one by one down the streets of the village, shooting off fireworks at the intersections, followed by the announcement.

“The parade celebrating Independence Day begins at nine,” the principal declared repeatedly as we drove along. “Begin your preparations now!”

I tried to imagine what those preparations might entail, as we paused on the street outside the Perdido house, while Juan detonated a series of firecrackers with a gleeful shout. That morning escapade went on for almost an hour, as we made three complete circuits around the town. Finally, with the mayor satisfied that the whole village was not just awake but also well informed, the members of the information committee returned to our respective homes and went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, it was nearly nine. I jumped out of bed, already dressed, and raced over to Juan’s door, upon which I knocked loudly.

“Let’s go Juan, it’s time for the parade!” I yelled.

Juan emerged from his room with a start, and we rushed over to the municipal building. In the central plaza, we found the school bands from each of the aldeas around the village gathered. They were preparing for the parade with a distracting cacophony that epitomized the haphazard preparations taking place around them. The mayor stood, harried, in front of the municipal building, surrounded by his councilmen. He was dressed in a bright white button down shirt, with intricately woven cords hanging from each shoulder, which connected to his belt in a colorful array. He wore bright blue trousers and black boots, along with some variety of wide-brimmed hat that must have been used to signal the status of a leader of some forgotten rank, many decades ago. Dressed that way, the mayor resembled quite closely the general that he was fond of pointing out in that picture above his desk.

The mayor was occupied with the arrangements for the parade, and one of the councilmen greeted us. “We are ready to go as soon as the mayor’s assistant comes back,” the man said. “He has gone home to look for the keys to the office. The mayor needs the town staff to lead the parade.”

A large crowd had formed in the plaza, and was beginning to overflow along the street leading down the main road into town. The people waited patiently as the final preparations for the parade were performed. After some delay, the mayor’s assistant was spotted down the street, meandering along in no particular hurry, as the growing crowd, anxious for the parade to start, urged him along in his mission of returning with the keys. A councilman anxiously took the keys and disappeared into the municipal building. When he failed to emerge expediently with the awaited staff, Juan was sent to look for him, and I followed along.

We found the councilman towards the back of the municipal hall in the seldom-used area of the long room, standing in front of a large wooden display case. The floor was covered in a think layer of dust, as were the councilman’s hands, from trying to force open the glass doors of the neglected case, through which I could see a variety of objects presumably useful in the ceremonial rule of the town, though I couldn’t make out the staff in question.

“Can we be of help?” Juan asked delicately, after observing the councilman’s struggles for what seemed like an inordinate amount of time, given our presumed rush, as he continued his attempt to pry open the doors of the case.

“The key to this case is nowhere to be found, and the mayor’s staff is inside,” the councilman said, as he hurriedly sorted once more through the large collection of keys on the ring in front of him. Juan let out a beleaguered hiss to express his shared dismay at the predicament, as a number of the other town leaders now made their way down the hall towards us.

The group discussed the problem at length, but was pressed to come up with a viable substitute for the missing key. Finally, the high school principal appeared with a crowbar, and the door was pried open with a snap. But the staff was nowhere to be found, so the mayor was called for. When the situation was explained to him, he smiled apologetically.

“We were waiting for the staff?” Chago asked guiltily. “You should have told me, I took the staff home yesterday to be cleaned and polished. I forgot all about it in the rush this morning. I will send for it.”

It was closer to midday than the parade’s planned starting time when one of Chago’s sons appeared with the wayward staff, and the parade was finally ready to begin. Don Santiago began the festivities with an impromptu speech. The crowd, which had been growing ever larger with each moment of delay, listened intently as the mayor spoke. Just as suddenly as he had begun his speech, the mayor gave a shout, waved the prized staff, and the bands began to play all at once as he marched off, down the road that leads out of town.

One of the councilmen quickly motioned for Juan and I to fall in next to the mayor, as he led the parade down the main street, waving at the people that lined the road, two or three deep on either side at some points. I felt at first a bit strange to march past the same people we conversed with on a daily basis, who now watched, and waved back at us with enthusiasm to reflect our temporary celebrity status. The spectators shouted and cheered as our small lead group passed, followed by the numerous school bands.

We marched down the long block of the main street, to the edge of town, where the crowd quickly began to diminish. But Chago didn’t stop there. Holding his staff aloft ahead of him, the mayor marched on, down the hill towards crossroads, past the thinning crowd, and out of town.

Confused, I looked over at Juan, who shrugged, and signaled for me to continue to follow the mayor. The mayor must have eventually realized, as we reached the bridge out of town, that this tack was leading the parade into the countryside, because when he slowed down and looked about, a concerned expression came over his face. With one of the bands rapidly bearing down immediately behind the lead group, the mayor, as quickly as he had stopped, made a broad u-turn and began to march, with renewed zeal, back towards the town. The entire parade stretched out behind, and lost its shape momentarily to avoid falling off the bridge, as band after band followed the mayor’s ill-conceived route, first down to the bridge, then around and back up the hill towards the plaza, past the same crowd the parade had passed on the way down. Nevertheless the mayor and his councilmen saluted them once again, and the people cheered with no less passion or any surprise at seeing the mayor’s group of honor this second time.

“Look at all the people,” the mayor shouted towards Juan and me, without taking his eyes off the crowd. “Our early morning planning must have worked!” I was too busy waving at people to appreciate the mayor’s dubious logic. Chago, who seemed to have put less thought into the parade route than other details of the day, spontaneously made a right turn at the plaza, and we marched towards the parallel street and the Perdido home. When we passed the house, Patricia hurried out, carrying Aidita, her young daughter. Juan and I waved proudly at them as they pointed and shouted.

We continued up the street to the soccer field, where the parade, having already been strung out along several blocks as the marchers advanced at varying speeds, ended in complete disarray as the bands streamed one by one into the open space. Much of the crowd had also made its way up the main street to the field, where the end of the parade had apparently been anticipated, and a makeshift stage had been set up.

With the last of the paraders still arriving, the mayor began a long and patriotic speech which lasted into the afternoon. In turn, each of the members of the ‘guard of honor,’ as the mayor called the small group that had marched along with him at the head of the parade, was asked to speak. I was not left out, and the mayor eventually called me forward. I stood up from the chair that had been provided to me, alongside the others behind the pedestal at which the mayor stood, and prepared to address the town.

Tournament Gives Senegalese Women a Turn on the Soccer Field

By Brent Latham

Dakar

05 May 2009

A championship tournament for female soccer players has brought together disparate elements in support of the women's game, and is giving Senegalese girls more than just a chance to play soccer.

A coach yells instructions to one of his players, in the heat of a competitive soccer match taking place in the Pekin neighborhood of greater Dakar. Tournaments like these are common in all parts of this soccer-crazed West African nation.

But this particular tournament, staged in front of a large crowd on a warm weekend afternoon, is extraordinary for Senegal, in that the participants are women.

The tournament, called Ladies' Turn 2009, will crown a champion among teams from two of Senegal's largest cities, says organizer Jennifer Browning. Browning says the tournament, which she helped finance through a grant from the US-based Huntingdon Public Service Fund, offers much more than just a chance to play soccer.

"We are organizing soccer matches for girls, on neighborhood fields, with some music, but it is so much bigger than that. With that we are able to add on things, leadership activities, other sources, and activities, and basically just go from there," she said.

Browning says no local women's soccer tournaments have taken place in recent years, due to lack of interest and financial backing. But she says there are still a good number of club teams in the region, and countless female soccer players, anxious to compete.

Browning hopes Ladies' Turn will encourage increased participation in girl's youth soccer as well. Leading up to the championship match on the day of the tournament, the program offered a soccer camp exclusively for girls. Peace Corps Senegal volunteer Mandy Kimberley helped out at the camp.

"These girls are having so much fun. They are so much more outgoing than normal. They are really comfortable with their team. And the best part of the day is seeing everyone lined up along the fence and in the stands to watch. These girls are automatically role models, and I think that is awesome," she said.

The matches provide the participants an opportunity not just to play soccer, but to play in front of a relatively large crowd, on a recently installed synthetic field at the stadium in Pekin. Youth player Diabou N'diaye says the field and atmosphere is very different from her usual pitch back home, in the neighborhood where she lives in the northern city of San Louis.

N'Diaye says when given the chance through the Ladies' Turn structure, many of her female neighbors and friends were anxious to play. She says many of the group had never been to Dakar, much less played in a stadium as large as this one, with the capacity for 7,000 people.

Though this initiative is a big step forward, Senegal has a long way to go in promoting women's soccer if it is to catch up to regional powers like Nigeria and Ghana, says Bassouare Diaby, coach of the country's women's national team.

Diaby says women's soccer still suffers from a lack of support among the Senegalese population in general, who turn out en masse for men's matches, but generally do not look at girls as potential soccer players.

If Ladies' Turn proves to be a success, perhaps it will help turn out more players like national team captain Sainey Seck, who grew up playing in the streets of a nearby Dakar neighborhood.

Seck says she acquired her passion for the game the same way most boys do, playing wherever and whenever she could around the neighborhood. She says many of the pitches where Senegalese learn to play soccer are in fact streets or empty lots.

Tournament organizer Browning says one of goals of the preliminary competition for Ladies' Turn was to improve the visibility of women's soccer by setting up matches in the heart of city neighborhoods. She contracted DJs to play music, and bring attention in the community to the women playing the sport.

Browning says one of her ultimate goals is to give girls the same chance she had to play youth soccer. She says she grew up playing soccer in Washington, DC, and for her the game has been a tool for learning many things, including leadership, teamwork, and social interaction.

To assure that girls will continue to have the chance to play, local sponsors and organizers are preparing to meet with international organizations to discuss continuing the tournament in the future, Browning says.

"The final is our last big event for right now, but basically it has gained so much momentum that right after the final, our next step is to have a big meeting and discuss how we are going to assure sustainability, which I think is actually completely possible," she said.

Women's soccer has been slow to catch on in francophone West Africa, where girls, when they participate in sports, more frequently play basketball. Senegal's women's basketball team is a nine-time African champion, and has participated in the Olympic Games.

Nigeria has frequently represented Africa on the international stage in women's soccer, participating in all five FIFA Women's World Cup Finals. More recently, Ghana has qualified for the last two finals, after the field was expanded to include two African sides.

8. The Mayor in the City

Something hidden in the disorganized bustle of that hectic capital had called to me since the day I set foot in this country, perhaps even before. At night, from the perch of Doña Marta’s home on the hillside in Santa Lucia, I would often gaze transfixed at the city lights, as they illuminated the broad expanse of the valley below. There, the city resonated with life, crying out expectantly into the dark, sleepy countryside.

For months, those lights in the valley had served as a constant reminder of the transitory nature of my situation. Shining there, the light beckoned me back to the familiar from the brink of the unknown. When I departed for San Juan, I crossed that threshold, and that shining beacon in the valley was darkened. The shadow of that isolated village had immediately begun its deliberate work of slowly enveloping me in its peculiarities. But still, in the back of my mind I carried the memory of the city and its lights, over the mountains and past the valleys. Already, on the those weekends during my stay in Santa Lucia, when I would ride the bus down the hill to roam about for a time among the buzzing streets, with their roadside stands and dilapidated homes scattered among crumbling infrastructure, the busy days and bright nights of that incorrigible metropolis had etched their essence indelibly onto my spirit.

Given its chance, the city wasted no time pulling me further into its web. I was surrounded with activity and budding relationships, among the first of which was the friendship with Jorge, begun on that night out on which we first encountered him. Jorge Luis Raudales lived in a small, indistinct home among a row of similar dwellings on the outskirts of the capital. That house, in which he, somewhat unusually, lived alone, was much like his life, in that it seemed to have plenty of extra room that he was anxious to fill with friends. The residence had been built in the 1960s, when the Raudales family arrived in the still small capital from the countryside nearby, having won, in a government lottery, an empty lot in this new neighborhood called Kennedy, named after that famous American president who so influenced affairs in this nation, even if no one was quite sure anymore just how. The lots were parceled out by the benevolent government on high ground, far enough at the time from the busy downtown area to have little feasible economic use, at least for the relatively immediate future that those leaders had in mind. The Raudales home proceeded to grow over the years, along with the prominence of the neighborhood, which, as the capital expanded, gradually became a busy and congested urban zone, with easy access to the rest of the city. But the particular piece of real estate upon which the Raudales family built their home had fallen on hard times more recently, beginning around the time Jorge’s mother had decided, over a decade ago, to join her sister in the United States. In the following years she had conspired to transplant the entire immediate family, and a good number of more removed relations, one by one, to that magical land to the north, from where, for a time, occasional reports reached Jorge, the family’s only son, left behind with his aspirations in this less promising land, to make his own way and to watch over the family’s single story abode, by then dwarfed by the neighboring buildings springing skyward all around, among which the home sat meekly behind a once proud but now rusting gate enclosing a crowded front patio shaded by overgrown trees, under which Jorge parked the dilapidated old car in which he, whenever he could manage to get it in working order, navigated the streets of the capital.

The house offered the advantage of being among the few with direct access to one of the streets that split the immense blocks of the neighborhood, traversed primarily by narrow pedestrian corridors. But any such benefit could do little to distract attention from the advanced state of disrepair in which Miguel and I found the house on our first visit, a condition matching Jorge’s disinclination, not atypical of this land, to undertake any work not completely and immediately necessary. Upon passing through the tall gate, kept double or triple locked against the perceived threat of burglary, the façade of the house came into focus behind the thick foliage of the large trees growing on the edges the patio. Once neatly painted, the cement block of the exterior walls was now visible in spots, where large strips of paint had peeled off and fallen to the ground. Large cement planters, still filled with soil and an occasional dry plant, long perished from lack of water, were scattered around the driveway, where clearly, once upon a time, a well kept garden had grown.

The condition of the front patio created expectations for the interior that were not wholly unfounded. Through a heavily weathered front door hewn from the type of heavy wood that must have been abundant in the area many years ago, a plain living room opened, furnished simply with a few vintage chairs, and an old television. The main luxury was a deteriorating but comfortable old couch, somewhat of a rarity, placed along the stark cinder block wall. In the corner, under a lamp which could no longer be switched on or off, and had to be unplugged after use, sat an old rotary dial telephone that, nearly alone among technological devices in its staunch entrenchment against incessant progress, had managed to remain useful for the last few decades. To the immediate left of the entrance, a small foyer facing the street incongruently housed the appointments of a small and basic dentist’s office, where one of Jorge’s sisters had practiced her trade before retiring from that life to follow her mother north.

Further towards the back of the house, also off the main living room, was a bedroom, where Jorge slept in one of two large beds. At its far end, the living room gave way to a humble but neat kitchen, stocked with the necessary adornments for preparing a variety of dishes, trappings which were seldom if ever utilized by the lone occupant of the house, who preferred the instantaneity and convenience of the many small restaurants or mobile vendors who operated on the busy streets nearby.

The kitchen opened to a back patio, around which the house had been haphazardly expanded in the crowded space available. As if by afterthought, two more small bedrooms had been constructed to one side of the patio, their rackety wooden doors hardly sufficient to separate the outside from the interior. Jorge had converted the room at the far extreme of the property into a storehouse for the remnants of the family life for which the entire house once served. The second back bedroom Jorge referred to as his, though he did not sleep there anymore. The suggestion that the room, detached as it was from the otherwise open floor plan, might have belonged to him in his childhood, helped explain some of the more confounding aspects of his personality. The space had likely once afforded him a good deal of privacy, though isolated as it was behind the main house, with no other way in or out but through the living space of the rest of the family, Jorge had grown up facing the conflicting reality of essentially being ostracized from family life, while at the same time trapped in it. The room, which I often used myself, would have continued to offer a good deal of intimacy, had the surrounding homes not grown by several stories in recent years, to the point that their upper floors now commanded a clear view down into the back patio. That detail was doubly inconvenient for those like Miguel and I, less accustomed to the familiarity bred by relative poverty, since the house’s outdoor bathroom also opened onto that patio, where, as running water was seldom available, Jorge had become accustomed to bathing in the open, half-nude, by scooping water out of the large pila and pouring it over himself. I quickly formed a preference for taking my baths, such as they were, under the cover of darkness, when the cold water pouring over my body combined with the cool night air to revitalize me for evening activities.

It was in those back two bedrooms that the mayor and his cousins spent the night, after our aborted return to San Juan following the shopping excursion. With darkness falling over the city, we had crossed town in the mayor’s truck, as I pointed out the route to yet another part of the metropolis with which my now trusting travel companions were unfamiliar. Jorge was, predictably, nowhere to be found when we arrived at the house, but that was of little concern since, before I left for San Juan, he had entrusted me with my own set of keys, as he had Miguel, while encouraging us to come back as soon as we tired of village life, which Jorge was convinced would be very soon. It was almost dawn, and I was asleep on the extra bed in his room, when he finally arrived home.

“Kawil,” he said, in a festive stupor, still inebriated after a long night out. “So you’ve returned from, where is it – San Jose? Whose car is that out front? Where is Miguel?”

The late hour was of no concern to Jorge, who was anxious to catch up on the details of my expedition to the countryside, from which he was sure I would be ready to take a long, if not permanent, break. We talked for some time, as I related the more believable happenings of those first weeks in San Juan, ending with a detailed description of the trip back to the capital with the mayor.

“We will have a good time in the coming days,” Jorge said, as he finally lay down to go to sleep, still fully clothed. “I should get some sleep. I have to go to work in two hours. How many weeks will you stay for?” I knew that if it were up to him, I might have never again left the capital. In that moment of anticipation, I might have felt the same.

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Jorge had already left for work later that morning when I went out to the back patio, to find the travelling party fully dressed.

“Ready to go?,” the mayor asked.

“Well,” I said, debating how to remind him that I was not planning to return with them to San Juan. “Now that I have thought about it, I am going to stay a few days here in the capital and take care of some official business for work.”

The mayor smiled. His cousin elbowed him in the side. “Official business, with the ladies,” he said, laughing.

The previous night was the first any of them had spent in the city, and after some convincing, and enlisting the aid of the mayor’s cousin and nephew, I was able to get the mayor to agree to an outing for a few beers at a local club. The sight of the mayor sitting at the bar, with dance music playing loudly all around, as he looked about, distracted by the attractive, smartly dressed young women surrounding us, was one I would not quickly forget.

“But I will go with you as far as the road out of town, so you can get your bearings from there,” I said. I feared the mayor could become disoriented in the web of avenues around the neighborhood, and I didn’t want him to stray into one of the more dangerous areas that dotted the urban map.

So I rode with the mayor one more time, down the long thoroughfare, to the beginning of the main road leading out of town to the north, where we said our goodbyes.

“It’s only one turn to San Juan from here,” I said, recalling the mayor’s comment the previous day. “Make a left at the restaurant where the nice looking girls work.” Chago insisted on giving me money to take a taxi back to the house. He wasn’t willing to discuss the matter, he said with his broad, kind smile, before driving away, up the road that would, eventually, lead back to San Juan.

I was suddenly alone, my feet planted firmly on the hard cement of the city streets, removed from the safety of the mayor’s car, no longer surrounded by well-meaning, sincere friends.

And I wasn’t quite sure how to get back to Jorge’s house. I knew the route, along which I had guided the mayor. But in my haste to assure that my companions from San Juan were taken care of, and to demonstrate the depth of my knowledge of the city, for which I had gained so much respect from them, I had refused to let on that I didn’t know exactly how to get back without a car.

Of course I could have simply taken a taxi, as the mayor had urged, but I faced several days of expensive city life, and the money the mayor had given me could be put to better use in many other ways. So I set off on foot to find a cheaper, collective option for transport.

“Where can I find a stop for the busses that run along this street as far as Kennedy?” I asked an old man who I soon came across standing by the roadside.

The man paused reflectively. “Kennedy?” he said slowly, as if it was the first he had heard of the neighborhood. Then he pointed up the road. “Two blocks down that way, and three blocks over,” he said decisively.

I thanked him, and continued quickly off in the direction he had indicated, anxious to get the bus and get back to Jorge’s house. But I was disappointed, upon following the instructions precisely, to find absolutely nothing of interest to me at the indicated spot.

Confused by authoritative manner in which the man had sent me off in the wrong direction, I repeated my request for guidance to a group of middle aged men who appeared to be passing the morning lounging in front of a corner store by the roadside. After their own contemplative delay, during which they consulted each other at great length, with frequent gesticulation, an older man who appeared to be the leader of the group directed me back the way I had come.

I began to suspect something was amiss, as I was quite sure there were no bus routes in the area I had come from. Still, with the group of men watching intently and urging me on, though I knew I was wasting my time, I felt obliged to head in at least close to the direction indicated, lest I be judged unintelligent. So I walked back towards the main road, a bit annoyed that twice in succession now, I had been energetically and authoritatively led astray in a manner that was at best disingenuous and worst close to intentional.

I began to suspect an ulterior dynamic at play in all this false direction giving. Perhaps, I thought, these men had conceived the erred instructions mainly to put an end to the uncomfortable possibility of potentially having to admit that they simply didn’t know. Maybe they weren’t even willing to admit to themselves that such a large group of neighborhood residents could be unaware, while still maintaining their manly dignity, of a detail of their local environment such as this. As such, the main goal of this exercise, whether consciously contrived or otherwise, would seem to have been to send me far enough away as to eliminate the possibility of any further contact between us, thereby reducing the chance that the direction giver would be forced to face his lack of knowledge on this particular, if somewhat trivial, issue. If that was the intent, the plan had worked perfectly, I thought as I made a broad turn around a neighboring block to avoid crossing paths a second time with those who had just given me another set of useless instructions.

Working within that context I was eventually compelled, after considerable time walking about aimlessly, to accept that there was no noticeable correlation between the directions that presumably well-meaning bystanders, one of whom directed me back to the place where the first man had begun the whole process, were giving me, and the location of a bus stop. After a string of such false starts, as the sun rose in the sky, I found myself in a neighborhood that looked as if it would have been frequented by individuals I might rather not have come across, had it not been the common practice of delinquents to sleep in well past that hour of the morning. I hailed a taxi.

“Where are you from?” the taxi driver asked as he drove me back down a particularly steep incline up which I had come on foot, following the whim of a shopkeeper who claimed to be intimately familiar with the location of the departure point of the busses that run to Kennedy.

Before I was forced to answer the taxi driver’s question, traffic slowed. A policeman appeared, and signaled for the taxi to pull over to the side of the road.

The officer stared coldly into the car. “Documents,” he said, unceremoniously, to the driver, and then looked over at me. “Your identity card, please.”

The Peace Corps, before dispatching workers around the country, had anticipated situations like this one, and furnished each worker with a number of identifications. As the driver reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a stack of well-worn papers of different colors, I handed one of my identification cards to him to give to the policeman.

The officer glanced through the driver’s paperwork with a frown, then looked back down into the car. “Your authorization to carry passengers has not been properly stamped,” he said to the driver. Used to such routines, the taxi driver complacently began to reach into his back pocket for his wallet. But before he could extract the subtly requested payment, the policeman handed the papers back to him, along with my identification.

“Your passenger’s status exempts you from problems, this time,” the officer said, as he gazed down the road, intent on identifying the next target of his scrutiny.

The driver took a long look at the identification before handing it back to me. When he did, I looked at it closely for the first time. On the card was the wildly scrawled signature of someone identified as the High Commissioner of Police, along with instructions to a group of people whom he referred to as his “sub-alternates,” who, upon being presented the card, were commanded to let me and my party, which in the estimation this officer, at this moment seemed to include the taxi driver, pass without any unnecessary inconveniences.

“I have seen these roadblocks all over the capital, as if there isn’t enough traffic and crime in this town,” I said, as we pulled away. “Don’t these police have anything better to do?”

“Actually, most of the time that you see a policeman inspecting the documents of passing motorists, stopping cars like that, he’s not even on duty,” the driver explained matter-of-factly. “They’re just trying to make their money for the month. Each of these officials has a quota of fines that they must turn over to their commanding officers. Those officers have bosses and quotas as well. It works that way all the way to the top. Even the correct permits can’t prevent the police from extracting their bribes. In this case, that card of yours says the man at the top doesn’t want his bribe from you, so this guy didn’t bother to ask for it. I would have had to pay him fifty lempiras otherwise.”

“But if there was nothing wrong with your car, why would you pay?” I asked, naively.

“There’s always something wrong. If it’s not a missing stamp, it’s some paper that I didn’t even know I needed. They’ve passed so many laws in this country that there is now a law for and against absolutely everything. It’s impossible to not be violating one law or another.”

“I’ll give you an example,” he continued, “take that taxi over there.” The driver pointed out a yellow taxi with darkly tinted windows. “A few years ago, the government passed a law that taxi windows should be tinted, to protect the identity of passengers, after the President’s daughter was kidnapped while she was riding in one. But because of all the crime these days, they just passed another law prohibiting tinted windows, so that the police can see what is going on inside cars. When they passed the new law, they never cancelled the first law, so right now, a taxi is illegal whether it has tinted windows or not. There are countless examples like that.”

“It sounds like being a taxi driver is more trouble than it’s worth,” I said.

“It can be a difficult job, my friend,” he said, “with the security problems on top of the everyday stresses of car maintenance, and the rising gasoline costs. But the biggest problem is the corruption. That really eats into profits.”

“So why do you still do it?” I asked.

“It’s not really a choice, my friend. Taxi driving is one of those professions that someone starts as a last resort, between other goals and dreams,” he said with a hint of sadness. “I went to college, and studied to be an economist, but here, there is no economy to speak of, and no work in my profession. Every taxi driver is something else before, and hopefully after, he belongs to this profession.”

With that he became quiet, and we rode in silence for some time. Eventually the driver picked up where we had left off before the policeman’s interruption. “That card says you’re from Intibucá.”

“Yes,” I said, hesitating slightly before once again assuming the character of a San Juaneño. “I’ve come from Intibucá. I live in a small town called San Juan.”

“You looked like a gringo to me,” said the taxi driver. “I mean with your skin, and your accent, I thought you weren’t from here. “

“My parents are from the outside,” I said, co-opting unabashedly the blanket manner of referring to the vast world outside the boundaries of this small country.

“But then, I thought,” the driver continued, “a gringo would never be roaming around that neighborhood where I picked you up. It’s too dangerous.”

Amidst such generalization, I recognized a problem with disguising my identity. My success in passing for something else was undermining my chance to counteract the stereotypes faced by the person I actually was.

“I hate that word, gringo,” I said, trying to reclaim the identity I had been anxious to divest just seconds before. “It divides us, when we are in reality so close together.”

“Well, anyway, it’s a pleasure to have you here in the taxi, to converse in this way,” he said, as we stopped at a red light just outside Kennedy.

When the light turned green, we started to move forward, but the taxi stalled. Immediately, there was a commotion from behind the car, accompanied by frantic honking. The driver and I both turned around to see a large car behind us, which suddenly began forward towards the taxi. With a loud crash, it rammed into the back of our vehicle, which lurched violently. The driver surged forward and hit his head on the steering wheel. He sat up quickly, then looked at me. Gathering that I was all right, he slowly exited the car, bleeding slightly from the forehead.

I watched in the rearview mirror as an irate man shouted from the driver’s seat of what I now saw was a large Land Rover behind us. “Why don’t you move your heap of trash out of the way,” he yelled at the taxi driver.

“Why did you ram into me? What’s the rush?” the taxi driver asked, quite calmly given the circumstances.

“I have no time for discussion with you,” the other man screamed, as he maneuvered his car into the next lane, and quickly drove away.

The driver jumped back into the taxi, and followed behind the speeding Land Rover, up the road a short way, where it turned into a small hospital just off the main road. From the distance at which we followed, we saw the man get out of his car and run into the hospital.

“My car is badly damaged in back,” the driver said as he pulled alongside the Land Rover. “This will be very expensive for me to fix.”

“Something must be wrong with that man for him to be in such a hurry,” I said, as the driver got out of the car once again.

Waiting in the Land Rover was a middle-aged woman wearing far too much makeup and jewelry. She quickly explained in contrite annoyance that her husband worked as a doctor at the hospital, and they were in a tremendous hurry to pick up his paycheck and get to the bank.

“Your taxi was in the way,” she said with a frown. “It is entirely your fault. My husband and I are due at the airport for a flight. You should stay out of the way of people with more important things to do,” she finished, as her husband emerged from the building with an envelope, most likely bearing his paycheck.

The doctor looked surprised and annoyed to see us there next to his car. He motioned for the guard, who rushed over, brandishing his firearm menacingly.

“Please remove these indigents from my path,” the doctor said to the guard.

I felt I had been quiet for long enough. “How can you act like that after you intentionally rammed this man’s taxi?” I shouted. “You are a doctor, and you are willing to harm someone who is between you and your paycheck?”

The man stared fiercely at me, outraged at my intervention. “Shut up gringo,” he said, “about things here, you know nothing. These taxi drivers are not good people. Now get out of my way.”

I was enraged. In my estimation, this man, who demonstrated great self-esteem but seemed to have no sense of justice, refused to take any responsibility for intentionally ramming the taxi, and had now capped it off by telling me that because of my skin color I knew nothing, proving that he was, on top of everything, a racist. Nevertheless, given his level of formal education, presumably ample paycheck, and possessions like his expensive car, he was convinced, as were his wife and the guard who stood at his command, that no one riding in a taxi could ever know nearly as much as he did.

I stared at the doctor with all the intensity of my rage, as, driven by my fury, I considered more drastic options. But just as I had decided to rush him, the taxi driver stepped in front of me. I opted instead to unleash a torrent of obscenities that I had learned on the soccer field in San Juan, where my teammates had made a game of teaching profanity to the foreigner.

“He does know how to be crude,” the doctor’s wife said, taken aback by the intensity of my foul language. I was content to have proved that I did in fact know something.

The guard raised his gun and pointed it at the taxi driver. “Go on, you heard the doctor,” he said. “Your type has no business interfering with the missions of important people. Get back in your taxi and go home.”

The driver shrugged, admitted defeat, and returned to the taxi. I watched as the doctor got in his car and drove away, after which the guard lost interest, and walked away as well, leaving me standing alone.

“Are you coming?” the taxi driver asked me with a smile, through the open window. I returned to the car, and got in.

“That guy is unbelievable,” I said, still fuming.

“Yes, people with money think they can do whatever they want. Where exactly did you say we were going?” the driver asked, as he backed away from the hospital, forgetting the incident and returning to the business at hand.

“Aren’t you going to go to the police?” I asked incredulously. “That guy intentionally rammed your taxi with his car.”

The taxi driver laughed ironically. “Go to the police? No, that would cost a fortune, and it wouldn’t do any good. The best course of action is to get back to work. It is only noon, and perhaps I can make enough today to pay for the damage to the car.”

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The antique stereo in the living room slowly came to life with a hiss. The old couch, upholstered in bright green and yellow, creaked with my weight as I sat down. I was back in the capital, between four walls of cement rather than mud, electric lights over my head, some of which functioned in the desired fashion, and a telephone to connect me to the outside world. I was energized.

From that living room, I thought as I picked up the phone, I could have spoken with almost anyone I knew, anywhere in the world. Even if I wasn’t inclined to call anywhere very far away, this level of interconnection was a far cry from the Don Angel’s telegraph.

I put the receiver to my ear, but there was only silence. The service had been disconnected, again. Jorge seldom paid any of his bills, and I knew I would have to cover this one if I wanted the line hooked up again anytime soon. The phone company, like any other attempting a business venture in a land where unprovoked bill paying is not a common practice, has adapted to the general delinquency of its clientele by installing a system which cuts service remotely when a bill becomes more than a few weeks overdue. Service is restored expediently upon payment of the balance and a reconnection fee, which can conveniently be made at locations all around the capital, including one with which I was already familiar, around the corner from Jorge’s house.

I went out to take care of the bill, since I had calls to make. I had found myself at first overwhelmed by the staggering amount of girls interested in spending time with me. At any given time, there was a collection of half a dozen or more that I had met somewhere around town, or who had met me, expecting my call. I had even acquired a couple fresh numbers on last night’s adventure with the mayor, as an example for his young nephew.

With Miguel, I played an informal game, complicated by the pitfalls of cut telephone lines, uncooperative family members, and the call of work in the countryside, of setting up as many encounters as possible in a day, then trying to break that mark. Miguel held the record, having scheduled and kept four dates in one twenty-four hour period. I found that after two or three, I had tired of the superficiality of most of the girls I met, as well as the omnipresent sensation that lingered just below the surface of these encounters, despite my attempts to postpone a sincere analysis of the counter-motives of my temporary companions, that much of the interest in me was based in economic or social considerations rather than any particular differentiating characteristic that I might exhibit.

If pure economic interest was the worst case scenario, superficial attraction seemed to be the best. The girl with whom I had spent much of my time, Vanessa, described herself as a model, with a level of seriousness which she seldom displayed when addressing any other matter. She was one of a pool of hundreds of young girls who advertising agencies around town would look for when, in one of their ridiculously conceived but constant attempts to promote one product or another, they found themselves in need of an attractive young woman to dress up in a revealing costume designed to create a life-sized incarnation of some consumer good, for example a soda can, or a pack of cigarettes.

That explains why, when I met her, Vanessa was dressed as a bottle of beer. She wore a tight green shirt, and skirt to match, emblazoned with the brand name of the beer in question, placed in the most eye-catching locations of her costume of shimmering material that caught and reflected the low light of the restaurant. Since she sparkled in that distracting fashion, it would have been impossible for all but the most oblivious of observers to not spot her long before she approached the table where I was sitting with Miguel and Jorge.

“Wouldn’t you like to try a Port Royal beer?” she asked us, pointing to the logo that stretched snugly across the curves of her chest.

“You’re quite a large beer, and I have to drive home,” I quipped. Miguel and Jorge laughed, but she just stared blankly, perhaps confused partly because drunk driving did not seem to be actively discouraged, at least by anyone I had come across.

“You look appetizing enough though,” I added, trying to communicate on a more direct level I felt she might better appreciate. It was the type of comment I would have avoided even thinking a few months earlier, but I had quickly learned that such bold observations were better tolerated by women here. She proved me right with a satisfying smile, as she batted her dark eyelashes, and leaned forward.

“I’m not a beer,” she explained patiently. It was impossible to tell if she truly thought it necessary to sort that detail out, since she seemed perfectly capable of being convinced that she was, indeed, whatever she had been contracted to be.

We ordered a number of drinks from her, as she remained standing at the tableside, and spoke with us for a while, until her boss, looming impatiently across the room, began to stare over reproachfully.

“My boss is jealous,” she whispered to me, leaning closer as she placed her hand gently on top of mine, before scurrying away.

An hour or so later, as we got up to go, she hurried back over, as if she had been closely monitoring the table. “Here is my phone number,” she said, handing me a napkin. She grasped my arm firmly and pulled me back, as I inched away in an attempt to follow my friends.

“Allow me to explain,” she said. “This is my neighbor’s phone, but if you ask for her, Diana, she will come get me. Don’t forget to call me,” she said, looking at me for a moment with her deep black, imploring eyes, as she pressed the napkin into my hand and squeezed convincingly with her two hands.

After a number of aborted attempts, I managed to follow the complicated process required to speak with Vanessa on the phone. As she had explained, by calling her neighbor’s phone, when she wasn’t gallivanting about town on other dubious business, she could occasionally be located in her mother’s small house, perched on a precarious hillside, in a recently constructed neighborhood of marginal dwellings not far from Kennedy. “Don’t come around here by yourself, it’s dangerous,” she told me the time I had insisted, boldly and perhaps unwisely unafraid, on accompanying her home.

Soon after our first meeting, she began to frequent the street outside our house, looking for me. She passed by so frequently that Miguel and I, likening her behavior to Jorge’s unfortunate propensity to stalk the targets of his own infatuations, began to think such conduct quite common. Both obliged by her constant presence, and motivated by a tepid but growing desire to find out where a relationship commenced under such absurd circumstances could possibly lead, I had spent a good deal of time with Vanessa, and her model friends, on the weekends at Jorge’s house when Miguel and I were down from Santa Lucia.

Vanessa was representative, in many ways, of the type of relationship it seemed I could expect in the immediate future. To say she was particularly intelligent, or even intellectually curious in the least, would have been a stretch, since any conversation not based in fashion or music fell outside the limits of her tolerance. She had her own charm though, in that she displayed a marvelously unique way of thinking that for some reason I found refreshingly direct. Jorge, who had no tolerance for his countrywomen, particularly those of her ilk, lost patience with Vanessa immediately, and warned me repeatedly about wasting my time with her.

When I first left for San Juan, Vanessa refused to understand the situation, finding the details of my unusual job far too complex to even begin to attempt to comprehend. Even after I departed, she continued to call Jorge’s house so frequently that he was forced to stop answering his phone altogether for a time.

“That girl has called for you about a thousand times,” he had told me with slight exasperation the night before, as we were catching up.

Now, having straightened out the matter of the delinquent phone bill, I called and left a message with her neighbor. When Vanessa called back that evening, Jorge signaled to me to answer the phone.

“My love, you’ve finally returned, I thought you had left me,” she said, in an overly childish voice, even for a nineteen-year-old. “Don’t move. I’ll be right over.”

“That girl, again?” Jorge asked with feigned annoyance when I set down the phone. “Don’t you have any other numbers in that phone book of yours?”

She arrived promptly, and our relationship seemed to instantly resume in much the same way it had been a month before. Vanessa immediately began to enumerate her usual list of desires, and communicated her various demands for the coming hours and days, all of which superseded any interest in my recent life or activities.

“Take me out to dinner, then we’ll go out to a club,” she said, as we sat on the rusted old bench of Jorge’s front patio. Since she didn’t demonstrate the least interest in where I had been or what I had done since last we had seen each other, I sat and listened, thinking about what would become of this relationship the day I ceased to be amused by this sort of behavior.

For the time being, I considered her potentially frustrating narrow-mindedness to be teaching me valuable lessons in patience and manipulation, particularly in evading logic and reason.

“Why should we go out to eat when we just cooked dinner here? There’s plenty left,” I would say, for example.

“Because yes,” would be her predictable and complete reply.

“But why wouldn’t it make more sense just to eat here, since that is what we planned?” I would then follow up, probing the fantastically shallow limits of her rationality, to little avail.

“Because no,” she would say, sure that the matter would be decided at that.

Vanessa habitually answered questions beginning with “why” with those words, “because, yes,” or “because, no.” I saw how that ingeniously elegant answer normally proved sufficient to quench the curiosity of most everyone around, and so it would sometimes have to be good enough for me, as well. Rather than become irritated by the exasperating lack of communication, I instead adopted the strategy myself, and soon was dodging even the most reasonable demands for justification of my own inexplicable behavior with the same befuddling capriciousness.

“I can’t go with you.” I told her, when she finally slowed down for a moment. “I’m going out with Jorge tonight. I already made plans with him.”

She sighed and stomped her foot on the ground like the child that she was.

“He can come too…” she extended the last syllable like a whining three-year-old. The way she acted when she didn’t get her way made me laugh, after which there was little other option but to give in. “I already invited my friends. They are on the way. So there’s really no discussing it.”

I went inside, and found Jorge in his usual position, lounging on the couch watching television. “Are you finished with the romance for tonight?” he asked.

“Why don’t we all go out to dinner?” I said, hopefully, knowing that he would be disappointed with me for changing our plans. “Vanessa told her friends to meet us at the mall.”

Jorge frowned and returned his gaze to the television before he spoke. “That girl takes too much advantage of you. She never stops getting you to take her out. I bet she tries to get you to pay for her friends too, no? Go on, without me. Take the car if you want. I don’t want anything to do with those girls.”

He tossed me the keys to the car, and then went back to watching television. Ashamed to take his car and leave him behind, I put the keys back down on the table before I left.

“You know, you really should get a car if you’re going to be going out with a model like me,” Vanessa said as we rode in a taxi to the mall. There, we ate at one of the more fashionable, and expensive, restaurants. Vanessa spent much of the time on her cellular phone, and the rest talking about her modeling career, before two of her friends showed up, sat down with us, and wasted little time in ordering drinks and dinner for themselves.

I knew this routine well enough from my previous trips out on the town with Vanessa and her friends. Not one of the girls had any money. It was assumed that I would cover whatever expenses were generated by the party. At first I had been surprised by such a brazen arrangement, but I had accepted the economic burden, considering it a bonus of being with several attractive girls at a time. But that evening, as I looked around and saw an overweight, balding, middle-aged man across the room, having dinner with an attractive girl about Vanessa’s age, I couldn’t help but think about what Jorge had said.

I looked at Vanessa, talking with her friends, relatively oblivious to me. She had said almost nothing to me since her friends arrived.

“I’ll be back,” I said, as I stood up. The girls didn’t pay much attention as I walked quickly out of the restaurant, and continued out to the street, where I hailed a taxi.

“To Kennedy, please,” I said when the driver rolled down the window.

I found Jorge still at home, watching television. “What happened?” he asked, surprised to see me back so soon.

“You were right,” I said. “Let’s go get a beer.”

Scientists in Ghana Use Mosquito DNA To Fight Tropical Disease

By Brent Latham

Dakar

30 April 2009

A research team from the University of Ghana is employing a new scientific technique to identify mosquitoes that transmit elephantiasis, in an effort to control the disfiguring disease. Scientists hope the technology will lead to breakthroughs in the fight against other maladies as well.

DNA bar coding is a new process which promises to help in the fight against tropical diseases by isolating populations of insect species with a role in transmitting sickness from one human to another.

In Ghana, the technology is now moving from the lab to field tests. Scientists plan to use the bar coding technique to identify a particular species of the anopheles mosquito, an insect with a large role in transmitting tropical diseases including malaria.

The Ghanaian research team is targeting the species of anopheles which transmits the disease lymphatic filariasis, commonly known as elephantiasis for the grotesque swelling it causes in some of its victims. Daniel Boakye is a professor at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research at the University of Ghana, and heads the research team.

"The first objective was to look at the diversity in anopheles gambiae varieties and then see how it can be related to the control of lymphatic filariasis globally," Boakye said.

Boakye says his team will use the bar coding technique to analyze a segment of mosquito DNA, which they will then compare to a catalog of samples to determine the exact identity of the species transmitting the disease. By isolating the population that serves as a vector (carrier) for the disease, scientists hope to better prepare communities and governments to target the spread of elephantiasis.

Over two hundred different species of mosquitoes belong to what scientists describe as the anopheles genus. Boakye says different species play a role in the transmission of a diverse range of tropical diseases. With the beginning of this study, Boakye says the technique is taking a large step towards usefulness in epidemiology.

"It will move from the lab into looking at the usefulness of DNA bar coding in medical importance," Boakye said.

Boakye says successful implementation of the targeting process in fighting elephantiasis could mean a reduction in the use of pesticides, and a more eco-friendly approach to fighting endemic diseases spread by insects.

He also hopes the bar coding technology will have an impact in fighting other insect born diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa, including malaria.

"It will work with malaria because it is known that with malaria not all bugs are as efficient at transmitting the parasite," Boakye said.

Like malaria, elephantiasis is endemic in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. World health authorities have targeted the disease for eradication by 2020, largely through medications donated by large drug companies.

The drugs are meant to reduce the ability of mosquitoes to transmit the infection, but the plan has failed with certain species of anopheles mosquitoes, now the target of the bar coding initiative.

Professor Boakye says he hopes the project serves to shed light on the tremendous biodiversity displayed in the insect community, which is often overlooked by the general public.

Experts Probe Urban Growth, Climate Change Links in Africa

By Brent Latham

Dakar

24 April 2009

A new project has united researchers exploring the connection between rapid urban growth in Africa and climate related emergencies, in an effort to safeguard vulnerable urban populations from the effects of climate change.

The Climate Change and Adaptation in Africa program, or CCAA, aims to increase the capacity of African people and organizations to cope with the effects of climate change.

Sponsored by Canada's International Development Research Center and the United Kingdom's Department for International Development, the project hopes to identify strategies to help the urban poor in Africa's largest cities to adapt to challenges posed by the changing environment, says project manager Francois Gasengayire.

"The program supports research that helps reduce poverty by improving the environment. And the goal is to harness the capacity of the poor to reduce environmental degradation as it relates to natural disasters, and enhance the use of natural resources for food, water, and income generation," he said.

Gasengayire says program organizers sought out proposals from across Africa for research projects exploring the links between urban growth and climate change. The researchers, who have assembled in Dakar, represent a range of institutions working with the diverse climate-related issues facing urban areas throughout Africa.

Gasengayire said that an increase in disasters caused by climate change is likely to be felt most acutely in Africa's urban centers.

"There is a kind of link, and at the same time a vicious cycle between poverty, urban poverty, and environmental burdens," he said.

Experts say the effects of climate change are already being felt across the continent, and fear that incidences of flooding and drought, and the frequency and intensity of severe storms, will continue to increase in coming decades. Gasingayire says recent shifts in familiar weather patterns, caused by climate change, have made traditional agriculture across Africa less profitable, and driven Africans from rural areas to cities in unprecedented numbers.

The resulting population growth of urban centers, in turn, places stress on natural resources, such as arable land, natural fuels, and fresh water supplies, according to Liqa Raschid-Sally, program manager in Ghana and Ethiopia for Sri Lanka based International Water Management Institute.

"When you move water from agriculture to cities, you can also have an aggravation of the situation in the rural area, or the suburban area, affecting the city, and so there are a lot of issues around this rural-urban interface which could be aggravated by climate change and therefore also affect the cities," she said.

Sally says increasing numbers of poor migrants to an urban area also heavily tax infrastructure, placing higher demand on already inadequate water and sanitation systems, and creating a challenge for urban planners. She says her work is aimed at giving policy makers some tools to employ in their planning.

"The approach is to try to have a science-based decision tool to help policy makers and planners, decision makers at the city level essentially, to address these questions," she added.

Such policy tools are necessary because the urban poor have fewer resources to adapt to climate change, and are extremely vulnerable to natural disasters, says University of Ghana researcher Samuel Nli Andey, describing an urban settlement outside Accra.

"The problem is you have this huge migrant settlement, which is located on a flat plain, these areas experience floods on a normal basis, every year there are floods, and we think this is going to increase. And once it increases it is going to affect the lives of the people there," he said.

Andey says his research will focus on surveying houses in the effected zones, and studying the anticipated responses to flooding. He says the problems caused by flooding are likely to worsen as new residents move into flood plains around Accra.

In 2008, floods struck several countries in West Africa, including Ghana, Liberia, and Senegal, and caused significant damage in Accra. Ghanaian officials and urban planners blamed overbuilding in low-lying, flood prone areas for exacerbating the damage caused by the disaster.

7. The Mayor in The Country

The village was asleep, and must have been quiet, since it was four in the morning. Then the singing started. It was not a soft chorus, but a large number of individuals wailing in unison, accompanied by tambourines and drums, that raised me from my bed in temporary confusion.

This had gone on for several nights now, and if it followed the pattern established on previous nights, would carry on until dawn. It was coming from the small church next door, though perhaps next door inadequately described the center of worship’s proximity, since the long lateral wall of the chapel was shared by my bedroom.

Since it was impossible to sleep, I had little choice but to listen to the inane chanting until daybreak. Shortly after dawn, as the noise gradually dissipated and the congregation dispersed, I made my way up the road to the Perdido house for an early breakfast.

“Oh mister, you’ve been arriving early lately,” Patricia said with her usual surprise, as I took a seat at the table in the kitchen.

“There’s no way to sleep at my house,” I said with irritation that must have been apparent. “The church next door has begun to meet at four in the morning every day, and they sing very loudly.”

“Four in the morning?” Patricia repeated in astonishment.

“Yes. I have no idea why, though,” I said.

“Who understands these Evangelicals? Maybe God ordered them to wake everyone up as a sign of their superiority to other Christians,” Patricia said, with a forced laugh. “They have their own way. Isn’t that right mama?”

“Ah-the Evangelicals…stirring up the spirits at unnatural hours,” Aida said reflectively, looking over at me as she continued to stir a mixing bowl. “The Evangelicals have caused problems here ever since they first showed up. It was your countrymen that brought that religion here, you know,” she said, as she turned her concentration back to her work.

“That’s why most people around here think of Americans as clueless missionaries with a Bible in their hands, talking about Jesus through a translator,” Patricia said, picking up the story. “As close as this country is to your land, it has been full of missionaries from there for a long time, but those groups usually stick to the beaches on the north coast, which are more tourist-friendly. Except that one time a group of them lost their way somehow and ended up in San Juan.”

“You mean missionaries have come all the way here?” I asked, surprised.

“Once, yes,” Patricia said. “It all happened when I was still a little girl, too young to remember. Mama prefers not to talk about it, but as she tells it, that group rolled into town on an old bus soon after the road to La Esperanza was finished. They set up shot in a tent on the edge of town. At first everyone thought it was a travelling circus. That’s what travelling circuses do – set up tents. So the people welcomed them. By the time people figured out that wasn’t it, the missionaries had already set up shop, so the mayor said it was all right for them to stay for a few days. They had trouble communicating exactly what they had come for, since none of them really spoke the language well, and they hadn’t brought much along with them, except Bibles, and they didn’t have any food. The townspeople thought it would be a shame to see these gringos starve, right there on the edge of town, so, like good hosts, people brought them food.”

“It wasn’t that we had much food ourselves,” Aida interjected, excited by what was for her a more prescient memory. “In the years after the war, we struggled here to make ends meet. But these people needed to be fed. Everyone thought they were some kind of refugee group. The mayor said those of us who had restaurants should take them food. Well, some of us did that, and they ate – a lot - for several days. But then when the mayor tried to settle accounts with them they refused to pay. They said everything on this earth belongs to God, and comes from him, and that the food we were giving them was not ours to sell. They offered Bibles instead. But I already have a Bible. So they didn’t pay for their food.”

“You mean they hadn’t brought any money?” I asked.

“On the contrary, Mister Kawil,” Aida replied quickly, still indignant, even after several decades. “They had plenty. They used it to hire a translator, who they paid a ridiculous amount to walk around the town with them, knocking on doors, and walking into houses uninvited.”

“They chose Adib for the job,” Patricia added, with a smirk, “that rascal from around the corner – he’s an old man now -who is always up to no good. He was an ideal choice for the missionaries because he speaks a little English.”

“And because he didn’t mind translating the missionaries’ message,” Aida interrupted again, this time throwing aside her mixing bowl and fixing her gaze on me, as excited as I had ever seen her, “that we are all going to Hell, because we don’t share their beliefs, exactly. Here, we are all Christians, Mister Kawil, and we believe in God. We always have. But these people said God has a trick, that there are certain words one had to say to win his favor. They marched up and down the streets with that silly book of names in their hand. When they get to the gates of heaven, they said, that list of names was going to serve as some sort of celestial bartering device to speed their entrance. Whenever they caught up to anyone they would try their best, through that scoundrel Adib, to extract some sort of magic phrase of salvation. Well I’m no genius, God knows, but that is about the most ridiculous thing I have heard. There’s no tricking God.” The old woman paused for a minute to attend to the pots on the stove. As they simmered, she gradually calmed down, and continued the story.

“The mayor asked them to leave, politely, but they didn’t want to go. They had had some success converting, as they called it, a few of the townspeople. They said that God had provided food and shelter for them here, and he had shown them that this was their place to work. Well, even though they didn’t want to believe it, the food came from the people, and as soon as we got fed up with them and stopped feeding them, they had nothing to eat, so God told them to move on. Good riddance, if you ask me.”

“It still makes mama mad,” Patricia said, “but the way those gringos behaved- they believed they were sent directly by God to deal with us, and we were not worthy of being in their company unless we accepted their teachings. But they came here, and this is our land! We have our own traditions and beliefs.”

“And even though they wouldn’t pay for anything given to them,” Aida continued, returning to the subject of finances, which clearly still distressed her, “those people threw money around everywhere, giving it out for everything. They paid for people to improve their houses, to buy things for their children - but only for those who accepted what they said. And there were quite a few who let themselves be convinced by those gringos and their money. It was an easy transaction actually, all you had to do was say the magic words they asked you to say, and they would begin to give you money. There are some easily corruptible people in town who accepted that, but those of us whose faith is strong remained true to our upbringing.”

“Eventually the gringos left,” Patricia said, “but many people that had learned their ways from them.”

“Ha! Learned?” Aida cried out. “They learned principally to judge others who don’t think the same way they do, and that the gringos will pay them money to do it. And the gringos later sent ministers with more money, to build all the churches you see around town, including that one next door to you, Mister Kawil. So really, it’s your own fault that the evangelicals are waking you up early every morning. If it weren’t for your countrymen, everyone would still go to the Catholic church on Sundays like they always did before, and we could continue to live without judging our neighbors, and the spirits could rest in peace without all that nonsensical wailing at ungodly hours!” With that she stormed out of the kitchen.

“As for your problem,” Patricia said, “there’s not much that can be done about it. Those people are not reasonable. They refuse to speak civilly with their neighbors about anything. Everything, to them, is a matter of God, about which they will always be right.”

Despite that warning, I attempted to speak with the pastor, who, because his affairs and finances seemed to be inextricably interwoven with the particular religious scheme with which he and his congregation identified, lived next door behind the church. I hadn’t yet met him informally, since he was one of the few men in town who didn’t play soccer, and he never seemed interested in greeting anyone he saw on the street. Besides not making himself available on the soccer field, the pastor, citing matters about which God had spoken to him directly, indeed proved unwilling to speak to someone of a different denomination about anything related to the church, which from his standpoint seemed to be an all-encompassing criteria.

So I had little choice but to take the problem to my own version of a higher authority. Don Santiago had been mayor of San Juan for nearly a decade. He was the first eminent authority in the history of the town to come from outside the patriarchy of the Sanchez family. I had first met Don Chago, as he liked to be called by those familiar with him, on the soccer field, where the mayor occasionally doubled as one more old man for the teenagers to run circles around. He seemed like a simple man, often donning the straw hat, ripped jeans and soiled shirt indicative of a life of manual labor on the farms of the region, of which he now owned several. Santiago had grown up cultivating coffee on a plantation in a village just outside San Juan, where he had come to understand the use of fertilizer, and the promise to be realized from its sale, a business that no one in the Sanchez family, for which fertilizer had never interfered with success, had ever chosen to understand.

Don Chago had told me when we first met that, as the mayor, he intended to see to it that the municipality took full advantage of my presence in town, and that furthermore, I should call on him for anything I might need. That morning following breakfast, with the very reasonable need of a restful night’s sleep foremost in my mind, I headed around the corner to town hall, to seek him out.

The municipal hall, stretching the length of the block to the north of the central plaza, was built in 1908, according to a faded inscription on the front on the building, and it looked every bit that old. Behind the hall, newer offices had been erected a few years before my arrival in town. Constructed of sturdy concrete for the municipal workers by an extremely, if not uncommonly hapless international aid organization, they lacked the cool air flow of the antique adobe building that they adjoined, and as a result were used mostly for storage, with the exception of the largest office, built by the concerned aid workers to the exact specifications of the mayor himself, which, in the sometimes frustrating way that things here designed for one specific purpose were often used for another, less optimal one, had been converted on the suggestion of one of the mayor’s regents into a barn for the municipal livestock, most of which the same man had then sold to the municipality to fill the new structure, which would otherwise have most likely remained empty.

On the days he was in town, the mayor could sometimes be found in that long space, seated behind a desk on a slightly raised platform close to the tall wooden doors that opened into the hall. Perhaps Don Chago preferred to use that building, nearly a century old, out of tradition. Supported by tremendous, though thoroughly deteriorated beams, cut from the kind of sturdy local tree that could no longer be found anywhere about the region, except perhaps on the highest, most inaccessible slopes of Cerro Grande, the cavernous structure was bathed in a perpetual twilight, lit only slightly by the cautious sunlight that ventured timidly past the large overhang outside, and through the open doorway, at an angle to the platform on which the mayor and his board of regents carried out the most official of the town’s business.

After allowing a minute or so for vision to adjust from the bright day outside, it was possible to discern, in the receding dimness at the far end of the hall, large piles of sacks containing food. Those piles were divided into two groups. There were bags of coffee grown in the communities in the hills around town, stored there for the farmer’s cooperative, ready for transport to market, and also a large number of sacks of grain, corn, and rice, which were donations from concerned international organizations, on their way in to those same communities. A large quantity of that stockpile, the mayor later explained to me, contained the remnants of a failed state plan to distribute disease-resistant corn seed. The seed, treated with a bright red pesticide, had been parceled out, with the hopes that it would lead to a record corn crop, among the aldeas, where the women promptly ground it into cornmeal, in turn producing bright red, and possibly noxious, tortillas. Unable to convince the hungry people to use the distribution for seed instead of food, the mayor, suspicious of the unusual color of the tortillas, decided to suspend the project indefinitely.

Back at the near end of the hall, flanked by instructive depictions of revolutionary leaders in their most belligerent poses, which hung on the wall high above his work area, Mayor Santiago was challenged by such quandaries on a regular basis. So it could hardly have come as a surprise to him when the newly arrived foreigner in town stopped in to denounce the early morning ruckus emanating from the Evangelical church next door.

As soon as he saw me in the large doorway, the mayor jumped up out of his large, stately mayor’s chair, and hurried down from his perch for a greeting befitting my status in the community.

“Good morning, Don Kawil,” the mayor said warmly, with a smile and a firm handshake. “How is your health? How are you keeping up in San Juan?”

“Good morning Don Santiago. I hope it finds you well, in your important job as the leader and purveyor of the well-being of this community,” I said, pleased with my increasing propensity at weaving large quantities of meaningless words into my sentences, in a way very typical of the most educated members of the community.

As part of the standard formal greeting, which would occupy some quarter of an hour, we exchanged mundane questions about uncontroversial items of little relevance. The mayor inquired as to my progress in San Juan, my opinions of the food, and a handful of other topics, which naturally included soccer. I asked about the health of his family, and the weather, which, as the mayor, was among his responsibilities, at least on a local level.

“The climate is improving. Perhaps there will be no rain this afternoon,” I said, inquisitively.

The mayor peered contemplatively through the large door towards the sky outside. “It will rain for several weeks more,” he said, definitively. The experienced farmers of the region, I had already learned, have an uncanny penchant for predicting the weather. A simple glance at the sky by a seasoned coffee grower would yield a forecast as accurate as any meteorologist’s. Those ad-hoc predictions were so reliable that I soon developed the habit of stopping on the street men who appeared to be farmers, the older the better, to ask for a weather prediction whenever I was curious, for whatever motive, about the climate in the coming hours or days.

“And how are things here in mayor’s office,” I asked, now steering the conversation to an eventual turn towards the matter for which I had come.

“Fine, thank you,” he said. “In reality, I am quite busy. We have a trip planned to the capital soon, to purchase school books and supplies.” His face lit up with an idea as he spoke. “You, Kawil, should accompany us on that trip. We will enjoy ourselves.”

The mayor began to explain in depth his motives for the trip, which he described, once again, principally as the purchase of textbooks and supplies for the school. He spoke loudly, as if in general to the all the occupants of the hall, to convince them of the validity of the excursion. The idea of taking the new community worker, as he described me, along, seemed to bolster his previously lukewarm determination to undertake the journey. The mayor described his plan to make the trip to the capital and return to San Juan the same day, which sounded ambitious to me. Seeking to avoid getting myself into something I wasn’t sure I wanted to be involved with, I tried to come up with an excuse to avoid the long trip, but there seemed to be no escaping my role in the mayor’s plan, which continued to evolve by the moment.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow,” Chago said, “at Doña Aida’s house. We’ll be back tomorrow night.” As he completed his loose description of the on-going preparations, one of the mayor’s regents called him to attend to another matter. “It’s been a pleasure as always Don Kawil, is there anything else I can do for you now?”

“In reality Don Chago, there is one issue that seems to need attention,” I ventured. The mayor looked on with concern as, recognizing my opening, I called his attention to the early morning meetings of the church.

“We will have to see what can be done to remedy the situation,” the mayor said when I had finished. The members of the board of regents, five stoic old men whose principle job was to support the mayor in his decisions, had become curious about our now lengthy conversation, and had assembled behind the mayor, mirroring his indignity at this unfortunate breech of peace, between nods of profound agreement after either of us spoke.

“Perhaps there should be an ordinance on the municipal books, to prevent waking up community workers at four in the morning,” I joked with a wide smile. But as I spoke, the mayor’s expression turned from mild consternation to relief.

“Kawil, my friend, don’t worry,” he said, placing a hand on my shoulder, “there is such an ordinance, I believe, or one is currently in the process of being written.” The regents again nodded, and muttered amongst themselves in firm agreement, after which one of them scrambled up the platform, perhaps to seek out the necessary items to initiate the process of emitting such a decree.

My cause was likely aided by the disagreeableness to the mayor and his board, as Catholics among the majority of the town’s residents, of the persistent Evangelical insistence that they were headed straight to Hell. But the group seemed genuinely concerned as well, less over the problem itself, since making noise was hardly unusual in San Juan, than that the issue seemed to be of importance to me.

“Just one more thing, Don Santiago,” I said, seeing that the mayor was anxious to attend to the others waiting for his attention. “What time shall I wait for you tomorrow?”

The mayor was staring blankly at a villager who had come into town from an aldea, precisely for the purpose of registering his inconformity with the weather of late. Chago had a wry smile of amusement on his face.

“We’ll see about that immediately,” he said to the farmer, smiling as he turned back to me. “Ah- what time? After breakfast.” He looked puzzled, but that was not unusual. Perhaps he was considering what steps he would take to change the weather.

“No,” I insisted. “What time, what hour?”

“Breakfast time – six o’clock?” the mayor said matter-of-factly, and turned back to the patient but disconcerted farmer.

Satisfied, I left. I was never again bothered by the early morning revivals at the church next door. At the time I was convinced the mayor had, through decree, put a stop to the gatherings. But now I think it might have all just been coincidence. Most everything that happens in San Juan, I have learned, is.

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A long siesta was the best way to pass the summer afternoon, out of the stifling midday heat of San Juan.

Long after awaking from my afternoon nap, I would lie in bed, staring out through the small window of my room into the blue sky, as I considered the indifferent stillness around me, and contemplated the tendency of time to move at the pace least desired by he who perceives it. Three weeks had slowly passed in San Juan, and the novelty of the village was beginning to wear off, amidst too much time spent resting in the hammock, or staring out of that window, screened as it was with a transparent fabric, to keep out the dust raised by the occasional vehicle that happened into that forgotten corner of town. Through that portal sunlight passed into my one room dwelling, but any interaction between inside and outside seemed stopped there. Looking out onto the street where so little happened, as I did each morning and afternoon when I awoke from sleep, was like looking at a painting. Outlined by a makeshift curtain was the full crown of a mature tree, growing in the courtyard behind the large iron gate across the street. From my vantage point inside, the tree seemed huge, as it filled the small wooden frame of the window. When I opened the front door to go outside, I would sometimes look for that tree, but in its place see only an unrecognizably small plant reaching skyward timidly against the backdrop of distant hills. Such was the difference between inside and out.

On that particular day, as I lay in bed, my mind was occupied with thoughts of the next day’s trip with the mayor, to the capital. Throughout the first few weeks in San Juan, I had been anxious to return to the city, at first to escape from the reality of my isolation in this small village, and later, as a break from the monotony. But I was unable to ready myself to attempt the all-day trip on public transport. With the mayor, however, I would travel by private car, and, besides agreeing with him that the trip would be a good chance for us to discuss my work in the community during my time in San Juan, I was making my own plans to stay behind for a few days in the city. As I batted those thoughts around in my head, I was startled by a loud rap on the door.

“How are you today, mister?” yelled a voice, in broken English. “It’s Jhonny.”

The oldest son of the Diestra family, the inhabitants of that compound behind the large gate across the street, Jhonny had learned a bit of English from watching movies on television during his many journeys far from San Juan. He had taken a keen interest in me soon after I arrived, perhaps thinking I could be of service in furthering his interest of travelling to the United States.

“I have a trip planned up north,” he told me during one of the first of a string of painfully long conversations that took place on the street between our respective homes, with me anxious to move on to wherever I was headed, and he eager to share more trivial information. “It is beautiful there, with all the blond women, the televisions, houses, and cars,” he rambled, winking at me as if we shared some sort of exclusive understanding that things were much better, in every way, outside this village.

“I am practically a gringo myself,” he added, “my name comes from your President Kennedy.” The confused spelling of his name, he explained, in some detail, was a curious result of the under development which still hampered the town. When he was born, his mother wanted to name him after the long-deceased American president who had done so much for her country, or so she had been told. But if the young woman had only a vague idea of who the president was or what he had done, she had even less idea how to spell his exotic name, so she made her best phonetic guess. Her mistake would remain with Jhonny, and a host of others in this country with the same name, but, since few people knew the difference, it didn’t bother him in the least.

Seeing me speaking frequently to Jhonny, Juan immediately warned me that he was not the sort of person with whom I would want to develop a relationship. Rumors were that he drank far too much, and used his collection of guns unwisely. But Jhonny proved impossible to avoid. Behind the large wall immediately in front of my door, he and his brothers oversaw a large concrete patio for drying the coffee beans that they, as middlemen, purchased from local growers, to later package and transport to market. The activity that accompanied those operations was incessant during the coffee harvest, which was just beginning to wake our sleepy corner of town in earnest, and Jhonny could constantly be found just inside or outside the large gate, engaged in his coffee-related dealings. During the intervals that he was not busy presiding over the purchase, preparation, or resale of the beans, he had developed an unsettling habit of showing up at my door, and inviting himself into the house.

“Mister,” he said loudly, on that warm afternoon, as I opened the door to find him smiling at me through a mouthful of gold-capped teeth, “how are you? I’ve just finished buying seventy quintales of coffee that should arrive in a few hours, let’s celebrate.” Holding up a bottle with one hand, he pushed his way into the house, using his other hand to secure the pistol that he perpetually carried in a holster on his hip.

“Where are the glasses?” Jhonny asked, inspecting the contents of my barren room. I had explained to him several times already, on similar occasions, that I didn’t have any glasses, or any proper silverware or dishes at all. And I hadn’t yet developed much tolerance for aguardiente, the local grain alcohol widely consumed in San Juan despite the prohibition laws still on the books, perhaps because it was the most concentrated form of alcohol available and thus easier to smuggle.

“We’ll have to make due with these plastic cups,” I said, taking a pair of small, disposable receptacles from the desktop. Jhonny frowned, expressing profound disappointment at a level of poverty he understood to be feigned by this person from the great, rich empire of the north. As I ushered him out onto the back patio, he looked around with curiosity, inspecting the meager contents of the room, and possibly, as Juan explained, searching for the hidden cache of gold that it was generally agreed I must have, hidden, somewhere inside the house. On past visits, with little pretext, Jhonny had made off with several items he thought exotic enough to merit his attention, including a handful of books in English, and a soccer ball, which Juan had admired and continued to lament the disappearance of for some time. He left behind a small radio, which he had no use for beside the impressive stereo which had recently began to emit constant, loud music from his truck, parked on the street out front.

Out back on the patio, Jhonny took off the belt that held his sidearm, which he laid on the ground before sitting down. I positioned myself at what I considered a relatively safe distance, and sipped cautiously from the generous portions of alcohol that he dispensed. Jhonny was less reluctant, and became gradually inebriated, as he shared, in the vein of a delinquent proud of his law-breaking acts, the intimate details of the life of a middleman in the countryside.

“My father disappeared on a trip to the border years ago, so I replaced him as head of the family business when I was seventeen,” he began, without the least hint of sorrow or remorse. “Buying and selling coffee is not a difficult job. You set a price, and the people take it or leave it. They really don’t have much choice.”

Jhonny anxiously enumerated the distinct advantages local middlemen enjoyed over their less fortunate clients. Virtually assured a profit, unlike the farmers who supply them, coffee buyers are not subject to the vagaries of the international market. The only necessity, Jhonny explained with a good deal of bravado, was the capital to maintain the tools of the trade: a few large trucks to move the coffee from the farms to the refining facilities, and then onward to the larger coffee buying centers of the west, and the requisite political power to protect their local monopoly.

“And,” he added, glancing at his pistol, “the necessary security precautions.”

Jhonny told me how three families controlled almost all the profits of San Juan’s coffee harvest. Don Nicho Sanchez, the great grandson of the town’s founder and former mayor, had followed in the footsteps of his own father, who had invented the job of middleman in San Juan when he legislatively cornered the market on cattle all those years ago.

“But Don Nicho has diversified into other businesses,” Jhonny explained, “and he didn’t have enough time to handle all the trade in the coffee business, so they left some of it to us, when my father agreed that I would be married to Don Nicho’s oldest daughter.”

Jhonny said the mayor had also managed to secure a small share of the business for himself, around the time he was elected to his post. Between those three businessmen, the zone was divided, and prices paid for coffee carefully regulated. The new coffee cooperative had since begun to eat into the business, Jhonny mentioned, but not significantly.

“There is still ample income to be had trading coffee,” he told me, as he greedily downed another cup full of aguardiente, “and I have become quite wealthy.” As if to justify his boasting, we heard the sound of a large truck arriving on the street outside, at which Jhonny sprang to his feet. “I’ll leave the rest of this bottle here, for later,” he said, as he hurried to the door, and out onto the street, where he met the delivery with a torrent of shouts which I could easily hear as I retook my place on the back patio, to notice that, in his haste, Jhonny had left his pistol behind.

If it was impossible to confirm all that Jhonny had told me through observation of his negotiations with farmers, which took place in far-flung villages in the hills, I understood, having taken in a good deal of information about his business from the conversations which he undertook, at all hours, on the street between his large gate and my window, that his account was generally accurate. Living in a house with walls made of mud meant everything said or done within a fifty foot radius might well have been taking place inside my room. I learned quite a bit about Jhonny in that way which he might never have told me, even under the influence of alcohol, and I wondered, as I stared at that pistol, what stories it might have added to the account.

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It was late the next week, as I was finishing breakfast at Aida’s house, that I heard a car pull up outside, and begin to honk loudly.

Patricia went to see who it was, then rushed back into the kitchen. “Kawil, Don Chago’s outside – he says you’re going with him to the capital,” she said.

“That was supposed to be last week,” I said, frowning with noticeable irritation. Patricia shrugged indifferently and returned to her work. I put down my coffee and went out front.

“What’s going on Kawil? Let’s go!” said Don Chago, rolling down the darkly tinted window of his late model pickup as I approached the driver’s side. Grinning widely, he extended his hand and firmly gripped my arm. “To the capital,” he declared, with a level of glee fit more for a twelve year old than a man of his importance in the community.

“Don Santiago, I thought we were going last week,” I replied slowly, a bit confused and still slightly irritated by the ubiquitous lack of precision in defining dates and times to which I had recently been subjected. It had been almost a week since the mayor had failed to materialize on the agreed morning, and I had not seen or heard from him since.

“Ah yes, delays, delays. But now, we go!” The mayor shouted, still smiling, as he gazed past me into the bright morning. “The capital calls! We have no time to lose.” With those words, he looked back into the vehicle, where two young men were seated behind him, nodding their heads in affirmation of the mayor’s statements.

This sort of haphazard rush, following an incomprehensible inability to plan ahead, was just the type of behavior that had me more than ready to take a break from country life. There was no sense in discussing further. Chago was headed to the capital now. If I wanted to go, I could get in the truck. Or else I could stay in San Juan, indefinitely.

“Let’s just stop by my house so I can get a few things for the trip,” I said. The mayor threw his hands up in delight. He signaled to the person in the front seat next to him, and the young man, who I recognized from the soccer field as the mayor’s cousin, scrambled down out of the truck, and edged his way into the backseat alongside a second young man.

We stopped briefly at my house, where I hastily packed a bag of clothes meant to last for several days.

“Such a large bag for a day trip?” the mayor asked as I returned to the truck. Not ready to reveal my plans to remain in the capital, I quickly changed the subject.

“So we finally go,” I said, returning the mayor’s broad smile, at we sped past the crossroads and out of town. The mayor honked repeatedly, and waved at the people we passed there, as they waited patiently for the morning bus. The early day was bright and clear, and we moved up the road quickly in the mayor’s new pickup.

“Yes, off to the capital. This is a good car,” I observed, as we wound through the valley towards the climb into the mountains west of La Esperanza. “We’ll be there soon, God willing.”

The mayor’s cousin, and the other young man, who turned out to be a nephew, leaned forward curiously from the backseat, interested in my every word, but trusting the mayor to handle the somewhat disjointed dialogue. The two were menially employed by city hall in indistinct but relatively lucrative jobs, and, according to the mayor’s vague explanation, were along on the trip to assure that, at least in his capacity as town leader, he would not be forced to lift anything.

Chago drove rapidly along the dirt highway, which he knew well, towards La Esperanza, leaving in our wake, raised from the dry road bed, a broad trail of dust which blanketed the small groups of people we occasionally encountered, waiting on the roadside in hopes of finding a ride to La Esperanza, perhaps in the bed of a pickup like the one in which we were riding. There would often be no more transport along this route for the rest of the day, once the bus coming from San Juan had passed, and plans for a day of shopping in the regional capital for food, fuel, or medicine would have to be postponed. I watched the weathered faces of distinguished men and women, old and young, dressed in their finest clothes for the expedition to town, fill with hope as our truck approached, only to be disappointed as the mayor sped by, then doubly insulted by the trailing dust cloud, which forced those who wished to remain unsoiled to scurry away from the roadside in a most undignified fashion, as the difference between the haves and have-nots of the countryside was once again subtly outlined in white, chalky earth.

But on this day we were well ahead of the bus, and the mayor was anxious to let the would-be hitchhikers know that hope remained. Rolling down the window just long enough to justify his haste as he sped past the stranded villagers in his shiny, private car, he would shout in their direction.

“The bus is coming behind,” he yelled, after which he quickly rolled the window back up, to preserve the cleanliness of the car’s pristine interior. The mayor would have liked to take everyone along, he explained to me apologetically, but he couldn’t be seen taking business away from the local bus. Each of these waiting villagers meant twenty lempiras more for the bus owner, Don Nicho. It was one of many tacit understandings that allowed Don Santiago’s profitable fertilizer and coffee trading businesses, his position as mayor, and the rest of San Juan’s commercial structure, to continue prosperously intact.

We sped onward, up the mountain, towards La Esperanza. As we reached the peak of the mountain road, where it summits and begins a slight decline into the high basin that holds La Esperanza, the mayor motioned out into the wide valley that we had left behind. “The aldea here is called Membrillo,” he said. “It is the highest point in the department. If you look down into the valley to the left, on a clear day like today, you can see all the way to San Juan.”

“How high up are we, here?” I asked, noticing the chill of the morning air, and seeing that in this place, the clouds meandered about closer than usual to the earth, occasionally colliding with the ground and hillsides, as if perplexed that the land here had subtly maneuvered its way upward into their realm.

“High enough,” Chago replied, “to grow unusual fruits and vegetables that won’t grow lower down.”

“You wouldn’t want to be stuck out here at night,” the mayor’s cousin offered from the back seat. “It often freezes.”

Just as quickly we were past the small village, and racing downhill, until we reached La Esperanza. We continued rapidly through town, then across the mountains again and up the road towards the country’s principal north-south route. Near the place where that main highway intersects with the road running west on which we had come, Chago pulled to a stop in front of a restaurant.

“We’ll have some lunch here,” he declared as we stepped down from the car and stretched out legs. It was late morning, and hardy seemed like lunchtime, but my companions seemed intent on stopping at this particular place.

“This restaurant has very good food,” the mayor’s cousin said, grasping my shoulder firmly as we approached the entrance, “and also very good ambiance, if you know what I mean.”

I wasn’t exactly sure that I did know what he meant, but I found out soon enough. The restaurant was staffed by a host of relatively attractive young women, at least compared to the paucity that seemed to exist in San Juan. Here, outside the confines of the constricting context of village life, the mayor’s twenty-something cousin and his teenage nephew were instantly emboldened. Their interest was immediately piqued by our waitress, a young girl with dark features punctuated by deep black eyes and far too much makeup. After taking our order, she milled about, frequenting the unoccupied tables nearby, and bending into impractical positions in a practiced effort at feigning to clean, while she glanced towards our table as the four of us hungrily lunched on steaks of a quality not to be obtained in San Juan. When, on one of her trips past the table, she deposited a plate of enchiladas, saying they were a special gift, Chago’s cousin and nephew began to discuss, egged on by the mayor, which of the two of them she was interested in getting to know.

Because I had seen this kind of behavior before, on my frequent nights out with Miguel and Jorge in the capital, I knew the answer. But, not wishing to dishearten my travel companions, I kept my appraisal to myself. The gaze of that young girl, more than interest me, reminded me of the lack of such attention in San Juan. It had been nearly a month since I had been looked at by a girl close to my age as anything other than an intimidating abnormality. Invigorated by the waitress’s stolen glances, I found myself quickly returned to a profoundly humanizing world of possibilities embodied by her shy smile.

The waitress was waiting for us eagerly as we approached the register to pay. Don Chago took out his wallet.

“Allow me,” I said, reaching into my pocket and offering my share of the cost of lunch.

“I won’t hear of it,” Chago said, pushing my hand away, as he passed a number of crisp, new bills to the girl.

“Where is he from?” The waitress asked the mayor, glancing timidly at me as she took the brightly colored money.

“You don’t hear me speaking?” I quickly said, in annoyed reaction born from a now deeply ingrained unwillingness to stand by passively, while being discussed as if I were an inanimate object. “You can ask me directly if you want to know.” The mayor opened his mouth in surprise, then smiled broadly, as his young relatives looked on with interest at these new developments.

“Pardon me,” the waitress said, blushing as she looked down into the register to make change. “You speak our language? Do you live around here?”

I glanced at the mayor, who stood there at my side, taking in the action as if watching a football match.

“We are from San Juan,” I said proudly. My words elicited an even wider smile from the mayor, followed by an approving pat on the back.

“San Juan? Where is that?” The girl asked as she handed the mayor his change. Chago folded the bills into his wallet, having made clear that there would be no discussion that this trip, including my lunch, was going on the municipality’s tab. I was along at his invitation, and by the look on his face now, it seemed I was already providing sufficient entertainment to warrant any extra expenditure.

“San Juan is near La Esperanza, not far from here,” I said.

“That’s good,” she said, with an unmistakable air of excitement, as she wrote on a small piece of paper. “You can visit here more often. Here’s my phone number. You will find me here most every day. You can call me when you’re in town.”

I smiled at her and took the piece of paper, then confidently turned and began to walk towards the door. My three companions stayed behind for a moment, unsure if the exchange had ended definitively, then came to their senses and followed me out to the car. They didn’t wait to get back on the road to begin to assess what they had seen.

“So Kawil likes the local girls…” the mayor’s nephew shouted, slamming his palm repeatedly against my shoulder in a congratulatory fashion.

“And they like him,” the mayor’s cousin added. “That’s the effect we San Juaneños have on women. Isn’t that right, Kawil? You’re a full-fledged San Juaneño now?”

Back on the road, we headed south over the remaining hills towards the capital.

I watched the passing scenes on the roadside, and recognized some of the landmarks I had noticed as I travelled with Juan in the back of the cooperative’s pickup all those weeks ago, through the falling night in the other direction. The world in which I now found myself, and my place in it, seemed irrevocably separated from that moment only a few weeks earlier, as if the continuous fabric of time had been broken.

The mayor’s nephew, still interested by what he had seen at the restaurant, leaned forward, and, draping his arms over the front seat, asked me what I would do with the girl’s phone number. In this complex interaction of space and time through which my journey was beginning, I had little idea what I might do with it. I did know that I had a list of phone numbers to call once I got to the capital. Girls like this one seemed to be just about everywhere outside San Juan, and tracking one down in the countryside was likely to prove to be a task not nearly worth the effort. But I also knew that my masculinity, the end-all be-all of these country-bred men, would be assessed upon my response, and that such a complicated explanation would have dashed the expectations of my travelling companions, who were vicariously enjoying the possibility of future exploits with the young waitress. So I gave a less ambiguous answer.

The mayor had grown quiet, as he conducted the vehicle around the twists and turns of the final mountain passes leading to the capital, and his young attendants continued the dialogue with me. The mayor’s plan remained unaltered; as far as I knew he still planned to return to San Juan that same day, and perhaps he was beginning to realize the difficulty of achieving his goal. If the mountain crossing from La Esperanza to San Juan wasn’t completed by nightfall, it could become dangerous. In the dark of the night, the mountain road could be difficult to decipher from the precipices.

We drove down the final steep hillside into the city, and continued to the warehouse district, where parties on official business, like ours, would frequently make bulk purchases. The mayor soon became disoriented, making a number of ill-advised turns among the capital’s tangle of streets, and eventually arriving at a dead end.

“These streets are too many,” Chago lamented, with an expression as serious as I had yet seen on that jovial face. “We’ve made only one turn since leaving San Juan, all the way here, but now streets run in every direction.” I remembered having been in the area on some previously pointless outing with Jorge, sometime during the training period.

“The shops that sell books should be down that other road, the one we just crossed. It leads towards the city center,” I said, as the mayor turned the car around.

“This Kawil is a good person to have along on the trip,” the mayor said as he steered the car back onto the correct street. “He knows his way around the city as well as the women.”

We eventually found the district we were looking for, and parked the car. We spent the next few hours running item by item through Chago’s municipal shopping list, which he had made official, by stamping it with the mayor’s seal, before leaving San Juan. When he discovered that the makers of the list had failed to include the books for the school, the mayor registered his disappointment at the oversight, and declared that we would instead spend our time looking for a few other items that might be used about town, so as not to waste the trip.

“We’re not going to buy the school supplies? I thought that was the point of this trip,” I said in measured disbelief.

“We will get what is on the list,” the mayor said. “But the rest has not been authorized.”

“But didn’t you authorize the list yourself?” I asked, less perplexed than I might have been a few weeks earlier.

But the mayor had refocused his attention on finding a place to have afternoon coffee. I knew that part of the capital well, so I suggested a place nearby. There, as we drank our coffee, I pointed out shortcuts to different stores that could fulfill the needs of the official list. Here, we were in my domain, and I was indeed useful. We searched for a small generator for the town hall, several lengths of cloth for one purpose or another, and a handful of other items, before stopping into an auto accessory store to investigate the possibility of having new features installed on the mayor’s car. By then it was growing late, and the mayor should have been in a rush to get his shopping done and get back on the road, given the rapidly advancing afternoon. But the mayor’s sense of time appeared to remain as unrefined as it had been in San Juan, and he was relaxed, enjoying himself thoroughly as we walked together from store to store, his cousin and nephew trailing behind.

Darkness was already beginning to fall by the time we returned to the mayor’s car. “We’ll have to hurry to make it back to San Juan tonight,” the mayor said, not willing to admit just yet that amendments to his original plan were needed.

“I think I’m going to stay here tonight, in the city,” I said, perhaps too abruptly, judging from the expressions that suddenly covered the faces of the party members. “It’s late, and I have a few things I should take care of here before going back to San Juan,” I explained. Though I was sorry to have to part with the group after the long day, I was determined to stay a few days in the capital.

“Here? In the capital?” the mayor asked, furrowing his brow in a look of deep concern, before continuing. “That may not be a good idea. It’s my responsibility to get everyone back to San Juan.” He paused and looked up at the darkening sky.

“But at the same time, we may not make it to San Juan before nightfall,” Chago said, only then demonstrating a willingness to partially admit the impossibility of his planned undertaking. “Perhaps we should all stay here,” the mayor said, “Kawil, do you know of any acceptable hotels?”

But I had another idea.

BACKLOT DIAMOND MINING

Brent Latham - Thursday, April 23, 2009

If you don't watch too much television in Spanish - where, with a few notable exceptions, you can find the most knowledgeable coverage of American soccer - you may have missed the news, but Univision is at it again.

The cast from La Republica Deportiva, now including Marcelo Balboa, recently completed what has become an annual tradition of uncovering a budding American talent in their reality TV contest "Who Wants To Be an MLS Player?"

The competition is in fact called "Sueño MLS." As if the message wasn't clear enough, this year's winner, Alberto Lopez, secured for himself a youth contract with the Chicago Fire, and will be playing under the nose of the USSF offices in Chicago.

Now, no one is saying that Lopez, who is a star in high school, but has never played on one of the youth clubs that USSF promotes through its development academy, will develop into the next Claudio Reyna, or even the next Jorge Flores - the 2007 winner - for that matter.

The point that Univision seems intent on making is that there are tons of American kids out there who have the talent to be stars, and want to at least try their luck professionally, but are still on the outside of the system looking in.

As obvious as the situation has become by now, I wouldn't bother to touch on another angle of the same theme, except that I continue to hear and read that one reason the US isn't developing star field players is because the club system is too expensive, and excludes players from families who cannot afford to pay the fees for their son to join a team.

While it may be true that the families of many promising stars can't afford club soccer, one of the most commonly accepted fallacies of youth player development in America is the notion that those costs make it too expensive for economically disadvantaged youths to play soccer in the US. That, my friends, is specious reasoning of the highest order.

Even if the conclusion - that the US needs to involve more economically disadvantaged kids in the club system - didn't smack of classism, first in that it assumes the expensive system is superior to others, and second that poor kids are better athletes than rich ones, there would still be no evidence anywhere to support the idea that the youth club system is even capable of producing soccer players of an international caliber in any quantity.

On the evidence of the world's great soccer nations, many of which are not economic superpowers, and have no such thing as an elite, amateur youth club system, we can conclude that there are high quality players everywhere in the world who have learned the game, at least at the youth level, largely without expensive cleats or perfectly groomed fields.

What the otherwise forgettable Univision contest proves is that these days, such players exist in America as well. The problem is not that they're not being produced; the problem is that they are being ignored.

Such potential stars might be found in pickup leagues organized by Mexican-Americans in California or Georgia, or in the backyard of a family in rural Texas, or, in the oft-referenced case of Neven Subotic, playing pickup in a park in Florida.

Many are first generation Americans, and that makes them highly prized commodities outside the United States. And if these players prove one thing, it's that a kid can become a great soccer player in the US without spending a dime, just as youths around the world do.

But the kid who doesn't spend, still will likely never be seen by the USSF, MLS, or anyone else that matters to American soccer, save Univision, and perhaps the Mexican Football Federation.

What is being done about all this, you ask?

The USSF, for one, is at least trying. They have recently increased greatly the amount of scholarships they will give out, allowing underprivileged kids to participate in the scores of clubs that form the US development academy. That is a bold, presumably expensive step forward. But increasing the number of scholarships, even to a couple hundred, still leaves the vast majority of economically disadvantaged youths on the fringes of the formal American system.

Other than a few small tweaks, the powers that be in American soccer appear content to work within the existing system, and the talented players outside the establishment are left to register on other radar screens.

Persistent reports in the Mexican media insist that the Mexican federation has placed youth scouts around the United States to look for young Mexican-American talent, and the Mexican professional league, whose scouts continue to frequent American youth tournaments, is the natural choice and by far the best option for young Mexican-Americans who choose to pursue a career in soccer.

The first big casualty of the process for the US was Edgar Castillo, a New Mexico native who could really help Bob Bradley on the left side of the field right now. (Castillo did play for a youth soccer club, and excelled, but was still overlooked.) Naturally, many other prospects will continue to end up in the Mexican national team setup long before the US can identify them.

Even given this continuing oversight, the American system admittedly works reasonably well. The United States continues to dominate Mexico and the region, particularly on the youth level, so why be concerned with this problem?

For starters, including the best possible talent on the field will obviously make American teams more competitive. Perhaps finding a way to merge talent produced by the formal and informal US systems could provide the boost that finally puts the United States over the top as a soccer nation.

In addition to the question of competition, however, this issue is in essence one of fairness and equality.

National soccer teams are the international representations of a country in many important ways. As long as the predominant route into American national team programs runs through an expensive, and therefore exclusive, club system, our national teams will move further and further from being a true representation of the nation's complex socio-economic makeup.

We should ask ourselves if that is the type of representation we want, as soccer fans, and more importantly, as Americans.

Academics Study Link Between Climate Change and Urban Development in Cape Verde

By Brent Latham

Dakar

22 April 2009

Like other small island nations, Cape Verde faces uncertain but potentially serious consequences from global climate change. Now, scientists and academics are studying the consequences of climate change in the West African nation, with the specific goal of understanding the link with urban development issues.

The new project led by researchers at the Instituto Superior Tecnico, or IST, in Lisbon, Portugal, seeks to more precisely identify the impact of climate change on Cape Verdeans, and suggest programs to help alleviate potential problems caused by the changing environment.

The project aims specifically to evaluate the links between the effects of climate change and problems faced by city dwellers in the West African nation, says Luis Manuel Alves of IST.

Alves says climate change threatens Cape Verde in a number of ways, including rising sea level, an increase in frequency and violence of storms, coastal erosion, and prolonged drought.

He says the results of climate change are driving more Cape Verdeans to urban areas, increasing stress on urban resources and raising new concerns for urban planners.

Financed under a pan-African initiative called the Climate Change and Adaptation in Africa program, the IST program in Cape Verde is studying urban problems worsened by climate change, including increased stress on fresh water supply, inadequate drainage and sanitation systems, and lack of zoning and urban planning. Officials at the program say these problems result from climate change, and also exacerbate its effects, in what they label a vicious cycle.

Alves says that through dialogue with communities, governments, and other stakeholders, the researchers hope to propose ways for urban dwellers on Cape Verde to adapt to climate change without suffering a reduction in their standard of living.

Alves says the potential dangers to Cape Verde from climate change also threaten other parts of West Africa, particularly low-lying coastal regions, and other small island nations. The institute is undertaking a similar program in Sao Tome and Principe.

West Africans Find Success in American Professional Soccer League

By Brent Latham

Dakar

14 April 2009

West African representation in the top professional soccer league of the United States has grown quickly in recent years. As they reach the highest level across the Atlantic, African soccer players are seeing America as an increasingly attractive option.

Before Aboubakarim Ndaw arrived in the United States late last year from his native Guinea, he had heard about the success of some West African players in Major League Soccer, the United States' growing professional league.

Having set up trials with teams across America, Ndaw, 20, hopes to emulate the success of players like Macoumba Kandji, a native of Senegal, who plays for the New York Red Bulls, and Gambian Sainey Nyassi of the New England Revolution.

The number of West Africans playing professionally in the United States' top league continues to grow, to more than two dozen at the beginning of the 2009 MLS campaign.

America has provided an alternative stage for some of Africa's young talent, says Kandji, a forward for the Red Bulls.

"Since I was back home, since I was a little kid, always in the back of my mind I said I want to become a professional soccer player, even though I did not play for any team," Kandji said. "Once I came over here, it gives me a big opportunity because they have club soccer here, they have people to see you play, and there is a lot more opportunities here than back home.

Kandji says he did not come to the United States intent on becoming a professional soccer player. He says after he moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, with his family, he enrolled at a junior college. While playing soccer there, he was spotted by a scout for the United Soccer League, the United States' second division. After a year-and-a-half of outstanding play in the second tier, Kandji earned a transfer to Major League Soccer.

Former American international player, Mike Burns, is the vice president of player personnel for MLS team New England Revolution. He says in the past many West Africans who joined the league had some pre-existing connection to the United States. Some are picked up from lower-level American teams, and others chosen after they attend college in the United States.

Burns says the success of those players has led teams to send representatives, such as Revolution coach Steve Nicol, to Africa in search of new players.

"In the case of our latest two signings, Steve Nicol made two trips over to Ghana this off season and scouted each player and we were able to get them signed in dealing with agents and dealing with the clubs that they were currently on," Burns said. "So in total we have five Africans, and we acquired those players in three different ways.

Burns says aside from helping to improve the quality of play on the soccer field, scouting trips to Africa offer a number of other benefits for the cost-conscious clubs of the Major League Soccer.

"I would say first and foremost would be value, value that we think we can obtain in going there," Burns said.

The Revolution have been among the trailblazers in uncovering hidden gems from West Africa, beginning with the 2007 acquisition of Gambian players Sainey Nyassi and Kenny Mansally, who signed with the team after starring for The Gambia in the FIFA under-20 World Cup played in Canada that year.

Nyassi in particular has enjoyed a high level of success in the league, quickly becoming a regular in New England's lineup. Though the native of Bwiam state grew up admiring European professional leagues like England's Premiere League, he says has been impressed with the quality of Major League Soccer.

"I think they are coming up. It is really growing up," Nyassi said. "Soccer here is now really important. It is getting better every year. Hopefully things will come up because you can see that big players are going to come. As time goes on it will be a big league, a proper league like the Premiere League, hopefully."

Nyassi's twin brother was signed last year by the new MLS team in Seattle, and Nyassi says he is looking forward to the day the two meet on the field.

Despite the success of the Nyassi brothers, the road to professional stardom in the United States is still a difficult one for West Africans, says Guinean player Ndaw.

Ndaw, who is still searching for a team, says American clubs are mostly interested in older players who they can insert directly into their lineups. He says there is not much structure for development of younger players, and that teams are limited by roster restrictions that allow them only a small number of foreign players.

Reflecting on his own success, Nyassi offered some advice for young players like Ndaw, as well as the scores of youths back home in West Africa who long to play soccer professionally overseas.

"Let them just work hard and have patience," Nyassi said. "Work hard, that is all. Success, you never know, it does not come just one day. If you want to be something, imagine that other people are making it so why not you. So work hard and focus, you will be there one day. You will get there."

Nyassi says veteran American players have helped him improve his game, and he intends to learn all he can. After developing as a player in the United States, he hopes to earn a transfer to one of the well-known teams in England.

6. You Are Here Because You Are Not There

The state paid handsomely to maintain the telegraph line to San Juan. It paid people like Angel Perdido, after he was hired as the telegraph operator in San Juan, to learn Morse code. Chunks of the state budget went to train would-be technicians of that nineteenth century art. Having painstakingly learned the intricacies of his post, a telegraph operator in a small town like San Juan could then expect to sit idle for hours, or even days, at a time, at his work by the telegraph.

In the years since he had taken over the job from his father, Angel Segundo had become quite adept at sitting, as he labored in the relative tranquility of the self-employed, even if that description did not exactly fit his situation, which was similar mainly in that he worked unburdened by the threat of supervision, given that those directly tasked with overseeing his work lived in large, comfortable houses, in the capital far away, and a supervisory trip to a far-flung place like San Juan was not high on their agenda, since such an endeavor implied certain inconveniences, such as an overnight stay away from the comforts amassed through years of exploiting the state bureaucracy, and the even more grave and undesirable possible consequences of being physically absent from such post. One simply never knew when the fleeting opportunity for further exploitation of the system might arise. Faced with those circumstances, officials of the telegraph company, like those of other state run enterprises, preferred whenever possible to avoid work that required them to leave the immediate vicinity of their homes.

It was quite a simple matter, then, for the elder Angel, when he grew tired of working daily, to teach his only son to man the infrequently used line, then gradually disappear into the inner sanctum of the Perdido home, from his long-time post in the front room that doubled as the telegraph office. The townspeople carried on sending their occasional telegrams through Angel Segundo, and little changed. A smart man, Angel Segundo, rather than take his chances with the government bureaucracy, simply assumed his father’s identity, and collected the monthly paycheck. The switch worked flawlessly until the elder Angel finally passed away, at which point, in order to avoid inconvenient interruptions in their comfortable income stream, the Perdido family was forced into the unfortunate charade of reporting the death of the younger Angel on all official paperwork. The Perdidos buried the elder Angel, and mourned the younger, in a way that, if disingenuous, was apt given the new responsibilities Angel Segundo would take on as head of the household. After such a confusing experience, Angel Segundo felt obligated to more permanently and dramatically assume the person of his father, referring to himself as Don Angel, and behaving in every way like a man several decades older.

Given the circumstances surrounding the history of the post, it could be said that Angel took his job quite seriously. According to the operator’s manual, the telegraph technician was expected to man the machine all day long, lest an urgent incoming cable arrive and find no one to interpret it. His duties also included attending to the local population, eager to communicate with the outside world.

By the time I arrived in San Juan early that summer, however, it had become relatively clear to even the most aloof observers that not even the most traditional townspeople continued to believe, generally speaking, that the telegraph was a good way to communicate. Given its less than fail-proof design, the antique system was vulnerable to replacement by just about any medium. Indeed, the reliability of communication by telegraph left much to be desired by any standard. If, for example, a telegram came in, and Angel wasn’t at his desk in the office, awaiting it, the senders were apt to give up, and the communication would be permanently lost. It was partly for such reasons, and also because the conformity of the townspeople with of the idea of an outside party receiving and reading their personal messages had decreased significantly, that important communications to and from San Juan had long since begun to be carried in sealed envelopes on the bus, to La Esperanza, where further action was taken.

But no one had explained any of that to me. Indeed, my supervisors had quite the opposite opinion. In the short period our discussion had continued, after the Peace Corps sub-director had told me of my assignment in San Juan, I objected to the placement on the grounds, among other things, of lack of viable communication. The Peace Corps bylaws list reliable communication means in a work site as a fundamental necessity in case of emergency. The sub-director dismissed my concern by encouraging me to make frequent use of what she described as “the efficient and reliable telegraph system.” She further indicated that she felt it a good idea for me to, immediately upon arrival in San Juan, familiarize myself with the system by sending a telegram to her to convey my well-being and safe arrival. I suspected that request was designed mostly to assure her that I had in fact made my way to San Juan instead of off somewhere else, the latter option seeming to be the general consensus for the expected behavior of a worker facing the sort of non-sensical assignment I had been handed.

Nevertheless, that first afternoon in San Juan, after cleaning out as best I could the room in which I would sleep, hanging the hammock out back, and taking a rather extended nap in the shade of the patio overhang, I went straight to the telegraph office, anxious to make good on my promise to report my arrival, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that I was, in fact, in San Juan. It seemed like a simple enough task.

In the years since the first Don Angel had evicted Felicidad from her bedroom in his efforts to fashion the original office, the telegraph had been moved across the street to a front room of Felicidad’s house. After the death of her brother, Soledad had decided that there was no longer space in what was now her house for Angel Segundo and his telegraph, which she deemed to be irreconcilably haunted by Angel’s spirit. Angel tried incense, incantations, prayers, and overnight vigils, and even brought in the local priest, but Soledad was not to be convinced. In an ironic twist which no one in the Perdido family seemed to appreciate, Felicidad came to Angel’s rescue, renting a space to the telegraph company, at a slightly inflated price that took into account the unpredictable consequences of bringing a spirit into her home in such a cavalier fashion.

It was in that new office that I found a middle aged man with unusually light skin bent over a table, distracted in the process of rewiring one of an assortment of old radios, and similar devices, piled on the floor behind his desk, an activity which I would later find occupied the majority of the time that the second incarnation of Don Angel did not dedicate to shouting insinuating comments at adolescent girls as they passed by on the street in front of his office.

I stood in the doorway quietly.

“Ah, mister gringo,” the man said, when he eventually looked from his work. “Don Angel Segundo Perdido, at your service.”

“Good afternoon,” I said. “This is telegraph office?” I stepped forward into the room.

“Come in, mister gringo. I heard of your arrival.” Word had spread, at least through this house. “You’ve come to Aida’s for dinner? That’s good. Sit down, have some coffee first.”

“Patricia, some coffee for the afternoon break. The gringo has come to visit,” he yelled through the doorway at the back of the office, which opened into the corridor leading to the kitchen. A loud yelp signaling affirmation emanated from space beyond the doorway.

“Thank you, Don Angel. In reality I have come to see about sending a telegram to my supervisors in the capital,” I said, handing him a small piece of paper with the wording of the message to be sent.

“Ah, a telegram.” He took the paper and placed it on his desk, smiled at me, and then looked out the front door. “Greetings, Don Jose,” he yelled through the open door in front, at a passing man. A similar cry came from the street outside. Angel smiled as he continued to look out onto the street. Slowly, he focused his attention back on me, “tell me mister gringo, how do you like San Juan?”

“You can call me Kawil, Don Angel. Kawil is my name.”

“Kawil? Gringo is easier. Like me. They call me chele because of the light color of my skin.”

Patricia came in with two cups of coffee on a tray. “Ah mister gringo,” she said, “you’ve met chele Angel? So many white people in here it would seem we are in the U-S-A.”

“Yes,” I replied, giving up on the name issue for the time being. “I came to see about sending a telegraph.”

“Ha!” She laughed. “Send a telegram, mister? I don’t think chele Angel even knows how! Forget about that and come have some dinner.” With that she left the coffee on the desk in front of us, and walked out through the back door.

“Yes, the telegraph’s down,” Angel continued, as he stirred a heap of sugar into his coffee, with a matter-of-factness that should have made it apparent there was nothing unusual about such a state of affairs. “The line is - not so good. Do you like much sugar in your coffee?”

“When do you think the device might be fixed?” I asked, pressing the matter.

“It’s not the telegraph that’s broken,” Angel replied patiently, as he took a sip of coffee, and looked up at me once more. “It’s the line to La Esperanza that is down.”

“Well, that telegram is urgent. It is going to my supervisors to let them know I have arrived,” I explained. “When do you think I can send it?”

“Your supervisors?” Angel said with a laugh. “They should know you are here from the fact that you are no longer there. Tell me, where are your supervisors, if you are working for the cooperative?”

Angel seemed intrigued, both by my arrival, and my interest in his telegraph line, which must have been unparalleled in recent memory. I thought it impolite to press the subject of the telegram further just then, so I let the conversation turn to other matters as the street outside grew dim in the fading afternoon light. I worked on convincing him that my name was not in fact Mister Gringo, and he told me a little about San Juan, the telegraph business, and fixing radios.

In the last light of dusk, Juan arrived, having shut the cooperative for the night. “I looked for you at the house,” he said, stepping into the office from the patio, and taking a seat comfortably on a bench along the wall of the office. “Then I imagined you might be here.”

As the night quickly descended on my first day in San Juan, Angel closed the door to the street, and the three of us passed through to the corridor, and on to the kitchen for dinner. We sat down around the old wooden table, placed in the alcove in a way that left its occupants staring into the adjacent kitchen, where Aida and her two daughters were at work preparing the evening meal.

“Ah, Juan,” Patricia said, with the same surprise that she had greeted us earlier in the day. I was beginning to think that bewildered demeanor to be her natural state. “You’re early. No football today?”

“No Patti, it’s been a long day, with the journey. We are hungry. Let’s see if Aida can move a little faster tonight,” Juan replied, laughing again.

“Savage Indian,” Aida quickly snapped, this time with much more energy than she had displayed in the afternoon.

The only thing I had eaten all day had been the small lunch, and I was hungry. Aida served plates of chicken, avocado, and refried beans, accompanied by the ubiquitous corn tortillas and a salad of vegetables. I began to eat eagerly, as Juan picked the onions out of his salad. Angel observed me closely.

“He eats with a great appetite, not nearly as picky as Juan, but this is not gringo food,” Don Angel said out loud, as I grabbed another tortilla.

“No, Don Angel, but it’s very good,” I said, loud enough so that Aida, who was glancing at us furtively from her post in the kitchen, could easily hear. “I usually don’t eat much after travelling.”

After the meal, we lingered around the table, as we drank our evening coffee. Other diners, who had been served at the tables in the front room by Nancy and Patricia, had come and gone. I gazed into the dark kitchen, where the embers of the fire burned orange in recess of the earthen stove, fighting a losing battle with the encroaching dark of the country night. Blackness seeped through the open windows and doors, and swept in from the gaps in the roof created by the broken, irregular tiles. There the night momentarily sequestered the furls of smoke as they huddled among the rafters of the dilapidated roof, each awaiting patiently the chance to escape through one of the openings, to meet the stars shining in the cool night beyond that precarious barrier.

My mind drifted as well, as Juan told Angel of the journey to the capital and back, and of the plans for the cooperative. As they spoke, Aida, nearly finished with her daily work, took a moment’s rest, motionless in a chair along the wall of the kitchen, next to the warm stove. As the flickering light from the fire bounced weakly off the mud walls, her profile was occasionally revealed amidst the shadows there. As a slow current of cold air began to flow in, conspiring with the darkness in its battle against the light from the dying fire in the corner oven, another shadow rose from the courtyard and stole into the kitchen, gliding on worn, bare feet across the dirt floor, towards the place where Aida rested. It was a woman, her slight frame bent against the weight of her body, covered in loose garments, a faded old dress and apron, a shawl covering her head. Aida moved gently aside, and the old woman fell onto the bench next to the fire. She spread her bony fingers in the front of the stove, as the shadows danced along the walls and ceiling.

“Good evening, aunt,” Don Angel said solemnly.

“Good evening, Doña Felicidad,” Juan called out.

The woman said nothing. Angel turned to me. “My aunt is old and doesn’t hear very well. Mama,” he said, calling loudly into the kitchen, “here is mister gringo. He has come to work with Juan in the cooperative here.”

The old woman continued to sit silently for quite some time, warming herself against the stove. Eventually, she lowered her hands and turned slowly towards the table.

“A gringo,” she said slowly, long after it seemed as if she would remain quiet. “That is good. He will do good here,” she whispered as she squinted towards me, through the darkness. Her dark eyes caught the low glint of the fire as they peered at me from a warn face starkly outlined by her coarse, white hair. “He looks like others who have come,” she said quietly, turning her attention back to the fire.

Juan stood up. “Ready to go?” he asked, as he headed into the kitchen to bid goodnight to the women there. I slowly got up as well.

Aida had returned to work, washing dishes in the basin by the sink. I approached her carefully, stopping a few steps short of the countertop. She hadn’t directed a single word towards me yet, and I was a bit wary of her.

“Doña Aida,” I said quietly, “may I eat here each day, as Juan does?”

She paused from her dish washing and looked at her mother in the corner. The old woman gave a quick, firm nod. Aida then slowly transferred her gaze to me. With a sincere nod, she communicated a thousand words of sincere acceptance.

“While there is food, you can come here to eat. It’s late now, go home,” she said. I began to open my mouth to speak, but I was interrupted by a loud voice from the corner.

“Go home, you silly Indians,” cried Felicidad, in a commanding voice, markedly different from her previously whispers. “Get to your homes before the spirits come.”

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Those first days in San Juan passed in the slow motion that mocks those with few immediate plans or prospects, exacerbating the quandary of the present. The roosters woke me each morning at daybreak, as the gentle morning sunlight streamed through the small window of my room, coaxing me from the long, deep sleep that can only be had away from the loud, bright inventions of the modern world. Awakening there, in that starkly outfitted, four walled room, I would wonder for a moment, as so often is the case after a long sleep in an unfamiliar bed, where I was, before recalling the strange reality that had suddenly become my life. Perhaps in those days it took a few moments more than it might normally have to convince myself that San Juan was not an invention of some long, mid-summer’s dream. It would be quite some time before such confusion ceased to invade the first consciousness of my days.

Confronted with long, empty days, I needed to find a way to pass the time. Working at the cooperative did not seem to be the immediate answer. Juan was constantly in and out of town, and we delayed talking about work, as he was repeatedly called to make runs on his motorbike between San Juan and La Esperanza, in order to pass along messages or retrieve cash. Indeed, his role as a courier seemed to be the most important aspect of his job.

As a consequence, he would often be away overnight, and I found myself quickly and frequently alone in the house. Much of those first few days I spent at home in the hammock out back, wiling away the hours, as I stared at the mountain in the distance. I needed some time to assimilate the shock that the sudden change had brought to my life, and I soon found that quiet time by the garden was one way to slowly adapt to my new surroundings. There I passed the long afternoons, watching the weather pass, from sun, to rain, then back again. I might have remained there indefinitely, when I wasn’t taking my meals at the Perdido house, had it not been for one particular factor, which motivated me to leave the house, late each day. Following the afternoon showers that transformed the hot, hazy midday into a cool cloudy afternoon, I would make my way to the town’s soccer field.

One of my first discoveries in San Juan had been a shared passion with every other man and child, from six to sixty, in town. In those first days, the routine of soccer became a crucial element of adaptation to my new life. Juan, when he was in town, would hurriedly shut the cooperative a few minutes before five, then hurry home to change into soccer gear. Not anxious to let on that I had spent the better part of the afternoon lying in the hammock, I would quickly scramble to my feet when I heard the rattling of the door to the patio from his room, as he unhitched the internal iron bar he used as a lock. Juan would soon emerge onto the back patio, and with the excited smile of a small child anticipating a game, would ask, “Kawil, are we going to play football?”

The answer had been established on the second day after my arrival, when Juan had mentioned the afternoon game. Even on the days that Juan was away, I would go to the field alone to join a game. When he was in town we would religiously follow the same routine. After he arrived and dressed quickly, we would head out the door together, towards the field, up the road past the Perdido house.

The field spreads over two city blocks at the far end of town. Like many fields I would come to know, in the rural areas of this country, it was less than perfect. Sloping gradually downhill along its length, it provided a subtle advantage to the side that played in that preferred direction, causing the players, when assigning teams, to define the two sides as “up” and “down.” The grass would grow to nearly knee length in the rainy season – the condition I found it in upon arrival - then dry out and disappear completely, turning the pitch to a dustbowl by late summer. Cows and other livestock generally displayed less than the desirable hesitancy to meander onto the field during play, roaming about wherever they pleased. But like any other unexpected obstacle, these obstructions were considered part of the game, and were played around without a second thought, except on the amusing occasions when a player of some repute in the village, for example the mayor or one of his staff, on one of their occasional forays onto the field, would haplessly tumble into a pile of cow manure.

But before getting as far as the field, Juan and I had stops to make along the route. The most important detour was to the corner store.

“He’s going to say that he is too busy to play,” Juan would say, as we approached, of the store’s proprietor, Sandro.

“We will convince him, in the end, that sport is more beneficial than work,” Juan continued with a smile, as we stepped off the road into the store, speaking in his particular way, loudly enough to be overheard but not to be accused of speaking directly to anyone.

The store’s owner, Sandro Martinez, was one of San Juan’s success stories. He did not come from one of the traditional families of San Juan, but had still managed to build on that corner a large and successful general store, which amply supported his family. Sandro loved to play football, but his economic endeavors and family took precedence. Sandro had befriended Juan years before, when Juan first arrived in town. Having made his own lot in life, Sandro was not intimidated by outsiders, unlike many of the established families, who perhaps feared losing their tight grip over the town’s affairs.

Each day, despite being short of time on the way to the field, Juan insisted on stopping by Sandro’s store, in an attempt to convince him to leave his affairs at the shop for an hour or two of sport. Invariably, we would find Sandro behind the counter, twirling the end of his long black moustache with long, bony fingers weathered from years of hard work, as he contemplated the barren street in front of his store. And each day, the exchange followed the same basic pattern.

“No football for me today,” Sandro would say, as he looked at us, dressed in our sporting clothes, cleats in hand. “I need to count the inventory.”

“All right Sandro, give up the charade,” Juan would quickly reply. Juan preferred to budget an extra five minutes or so along the way for this conversation, but the soccer game was a pressing engagement, and there was little extra time for the beating around the bush that was standard in discussing less important affairs.

Temporarily frustrated, Juan would take a seat restlessly on the large sacks of grains stacked in the corner, and begin to talk to whoever was in earshot, describing the fun we were about to have at the soccer field.

“It’s a shame you won’t play,” he would say to Sandro, opening whatever product was close at hand, and beginning to snack, “because the games have been very good lately.”

If Sandro refused to give in easily, Juan would scale up his efforts at persuasion by moving behind the counter and raiding the store’s gas-powered cooler, extracting soft drinks, and handing them out as if he were the owner of the store.

Sandro might resist for a few minutes more, before throwing his hands up in capitulation. “If I don’t go,” he would yell out, calling in his wife to look after the store in his place, “these two will eat the entire inventory and there will be nothing left to sell.” Then he would disappear into the back of the store, which doubled as his family’s home, where he would dress quickly, before the three of us headed for the field.

On any given day, anyone might show up to play. High school students played, alongside their professors. Don Angel and Anhiel were there as frequently as their work and past-prime legs would allow. They had formed a team which they called the “Veterans,” a collection of older men, bellies rounded by the years, who attempted to make up for in guile what they had lost in mobility. Even the mayor would come out on the rare occasions that he was in town.

The number of players varied by day as well. Some days, only a dozen or so showed, and we played a small-sided game. Other days, there would be more than thirty men, too many even for that huge field. But seldom was anyone left out, and the game could grow into a fifteen-a-side melee.

I met most every resident of the town on that field in those first few weeks, excluding, of course, the women, who stayed at home at that hour, preparing the evening meal. Soccer was a part of village life in which even an outsider could have a role that everyone could understand. On the field all the rules changed. In a place where clocks have very little use, the one punctual engagement each day was the football match. The game began each afternoon at five sharp. And the criteria for understanding one another changed as well. It no longer made sense to judge by appearance, language, or anything else not directly related to the play on the field. Young and old, conservative and liberal, local and foreigner, all began as equals there.

So in soccer, which, happily, I had grown up playing, I found an equalizing factor that highlighted my similarities to the locals. My work at the cooperative couldn’t do that, since few understood what I, or anyone else there, actually did. Even if my association with the bank did give me a certain immediate legitimacy in the community, the institution of banking was unfamiliar to most in the area, and though my presence in town could be more easily understood through my presumed role in the mysterious activities taking place behind that counter where money was dispensed and collected, in that context I remained a foreigner engaged in generally incomprehensible work. But with each day on that rain soaked, overgrown, bumpy soccer field, I became that much less of an outsider. On the field, I was judged by what I did with the ball, and that was a language in which I was much more proficient.

After each daily session wound to and end, the players would gather together for a moment’s rest on the sidelines, as the sun sank low in the sky. Then each would head for home, several of us, including a number of Perdidos, Angel and Anhiel, and their nephew Oduber, down the same road.

“The gringo is not a bad football player,” Angel began, on one such afternoon late in my first week in town. “He plays as well as some of the better players from this town.”

“Better,” Juan said, in his usual congratulatory manner, to which I was growing accustomed. I appreciated his flattery, though I had been a bit surprised to find that I wasn’t as good as the best players in that town. Soccer was like a religion there, and I was amazed at the concentration of skill. Juan, himself, I later found out, had played semi-professionally in La Esperanza before retiring to a more sensible life in banking.

“He plays so well, in fact,” Angel continued, “that the teams in town are wondering for which one he will play.” I knew that he was talking about the local tournament. It hadn’t taken long for me to be made to understand that, aside from the friendly scrimmages during the week, the town put on weekend matches in which teams from the village played against teams from the outlying settlements.

“There is no doubt which team he will play for,” Anhiel interjected authoritatively, embracing me firmly with one arm as we walked. “He is from the Perdido house, and will play for the Eagles.”

“Sandro might have a different opinion, as the captain of the Independent side,” Juan said, somewhat bashfully.

“But Sandro is not here,” Oduber said. Sandro had left town on one of his frequent trips to purchase merchandise for the store. “Besides,” he said, looking at me as he spoke, “it wouldn’t be right for someone who lives and eats with us at the house to play for the opponents.”

As we arrived at the Perdido house, and the group filed in for dinner, Angel pulled me aside.

“About that telegram,” he began. I had been by his office frequently to ask about progress in sending the telegram to the capital, but the line remained out of order. “Tomorrow I will go to fix the line. Perhaps you are as good with a horse as you are with a football. You can come along if you like.”

In a moment of confidence inspired by the newfound feeling of inclusion on the soccer field, I didn’t think twice. “Of course I will go with you,” I said.

“Tomorrow we go after breakfast then,” Angel said with a pleased expression.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

“Aida, prepare two lunches to carry away– one for me and one for my assistant,” Angel said in a commanding voice. He had come into the kitchen to find me finishing my morning coffee and chatting aimlessly with Patricia.

“Wait for me here,” he said, as he headed out the door.

“So you’re going out with Uncle Angel to fix the line?” Patricia asked, smiling cheerfully as she came over to clear the table.

“Yes, we’ll go fix it, I suppose, we’ll see what it takes,” I said, realizing that I had little idea what fixing a telegraph line might entail.

“So you know how to ride a horse?” she asked. In truth, I had never ridden a horse before. But I assumed that I could.

“Of course,” I replied confidently, with a feigned air of assuredness that made me feel uncomfortable. I was not anxious to provide ammunition to support the idea that I was getting into something over my head, “- so the horse is necessary…” I said, trailing off and leaving the sentence unfinished, hoping that she could complete it with more information.

“The horse is necessary,” she said, echoing my words but failing to add anything. She extracted a few potatoes from of a sack next to the table, then headed off down the corridor to wash them, smiling at me as she passed. “Oh, mister,” she sighed.

I was left alone in the kitchen with Aida. She paused from her work in the kitchen, slicing vegetables, and looked up at me, intently. “You really want to go jaunting off through the countryside to try to fix the line?” She asked, with a serious expression. “It’s Angel’s job, not yours.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” I answered, growing a bit concerned. It was the first time Aida had showed any interest in my affairs, but my answer must have seemed overly terse, and dissuaded her from pursuing the matter. She put her head back down and continued her work.

“May God protect you,” she murmured. I finished my coffee in silence.

Angel returned after about a half hour. “Let’s go,” he said. “The horses are waiting outside.”

I went outside with him, and surveyed the animals, which he had hitched to the post of the front door. They were smaller than I had expected, and seemed calm, grazing on the overgrown grass alongside the road.

“That one is the more docile,” Angel said, pointing at the smaller of the two horses. “You can ride her without any trouble. Get on up there.”

He leapt effortlessly onto the other horse, with a degree of dexterity that surprised me, after having observed his almost comically uncoordinated exploits on the soccer field. I mounted my horse with considerably more difficulty. Once up, I grabbed hold of the reigns, and we were off. My horse followed along slowly behind the one carrying Angel, with minimal instruction or coaxing. I was pleased to learn that I seemed to know how to ride a horse after all, at least this one.

We rode out slowly along the main road, along a wide stretch frequently travelled by residents of the outlying villages, as they made their way to and from town. Homes, humbled in their isolation by the expanse of the countryside, sat perched above the route every so often. Smoke spat unevenly from the soot-blackened chimneys at the corners of their bright-red tiled roofs. At irregular intervals on either side of the road, small trails and footpaths led off into the countryside. Angel pointed each one out to me in turn, along with the names of the settlements to which they led.

As we advanced around a wide corner, flanked by low embankments where the road bed had been cut through the middle of a low hill, a group of middle aged women, dressed in colorful patterns of bright green, pink, and red, approached on foot from the opposite direction. Many of them carried small children on their backs, tightly wrapped, and clinging to their mothers. Along with their offspring, they carried an assortment of fruits and vegetables which they appeared to be bringing, slowly, to market in town.

“These women come down from the hills with their produce,” Angel told me, as he tipped his wide brimmed hat to the women. I was sorry to not have a hat like his to tip. He spoke loudly even with the women close by, as if they could not understand him, and indeed they seemed not to. Their loads looked excessive for their small frames.

“Don’t they have husbands to help, or animals to carry their loads?” I asked, observing how the women, already weighed down with their children, still managed the heavy loads by carrying larger burdens in pairs, each taking one handle of a woven basket. As I spoke, one of the women happily yelled something at us in a tongue I couldn’t understand.

“They don’t trust their husbands to bring the goods down to market,” Angel said, as we left the group behind. He interrupted his explanation to shout a greeting at a man who was making his way quickly along the road towards town on a large horse, unburdened by cargo. “Perhaps the produce would arrive,” Angel continued when the man and his horse had passed, leaving us and the women in his wake, “but the money would not get further than the cantinas at the crossroads.”

“What was it that the woman said to you as we passed?” I asked.

“I have no way to know,” Angel said. “These women speak Lenca, as they have for centuries. I can not understand them and they cannot understand me. In communicating with them, you and I are equals.”

As we continued out along the road, winding through the valley, among the low hills and bluffs, I tried to envision the life of those women, deep in that countryside. The telegraph line which we were monitoring split from the main road, and ran off into the fields, following a more direct path to La Esperanza than the road. Angel soon guided us off onto one of the rough side roads.

“Down this road, we’ll find the line again,” he explained.

Far narrower and less manicured than the main road, the trail would have been impassable by all but the most rugged vehicle. It was deeply rutted and had not been graded for years, if ever. Large shade trees grew overhead, providing a refreshing break from the growing intensity of the mid-morning sun. We advanced down that road at more leisurely pace, descending gradually towards a slow river, where the path disappeared under a clear, meandering current. When his horse balked at the notion of entering the water, Angel gave a shout and, twisting a small branch off a low hanging tree, whipped the animal into motion, as it splashed its way across the river. I gave my horse a little kick, and she jolted quickly behind, following her companion across the shallow, rocky stream.

“That’s the way,” Angel observed, looking back with approval, “you’re the boss of that beast.”

Angel had been relatively quiet on the way down the road. But as we ventured farther down this side road, in the unhurried manner that comes most naturally in places where time is just a glare, the old man began to speak in low intonations.

“We head this way another two or three kilometers,” he said, trailing off, as if he were trying to convince himself of the route. I thought I heard him say something about climbing a mountain after that, but I wasn’t sure. He repeated the instructions to himself every so often as we moved along.

In that way, we rode along the shaded bank of the stream, to an opening in the forest, where the road led into a large field. The trees on the edge of the field were shorter, but no less thick than those of the wood we had passed through. I could see the ruins of a number of mud brick houses scattered around the clearing.

“Here the road ends,” Angel said. “Before there was an aldea– a small village, here, many years ago, but it is gone.” He got down slowly off his horse.

“We must leave the horses and walk from here. They will tire on the hill faster than we will.” He tied his horse to a tree, and then, as I dismounted clumsily, secured the second horse. The horses began to graze indifferently in the shade of the forest, as Angel led the way out into the field, towards the battered frames of the abandoned houses.

Suddenly, I felt the odd sensation that sets in innately, if inexplicably, when one is being watched. I looked up towards a house at the far end of the clearing, but saw only Angel racing on ahead of me. Moving at an impressive pace for a man past his prime, he had already rounded a corner where the forest juts out into the clearing, and hurried on, away from the ruins. I had to move quickly to catch up to him. He stopped on the edge of a broader, open area where the forest met the rocky incline of the hills, now before us, at the beginning of a long ascent to impressive pine-covered peaks well above. Angel, a bit winded from his sprint, sat down under a tree and opened the pack he carried with him.

“Lunch time,” he said. “Aida has packed our meals.” She had prepared corn tamales wrapped in banana leaves. We ate in the shade of the trees at the point where the clearings came together in a narrow field, as we looked, slightly downhill, at the abandoned town below.

“At the far end of that field,” Angel said after several minutes, pointing to the area below the hill on the other side of the clearing, where the trees were shorter than elsewhere, “you can see the half buried homes. The avalanche that wiped out this community buried many of its people alive. The elders in San Juan, my sisters, for example, insist that their spirits are still here.”

“They don’t like me to come here,” he continued. “And they were quite irritated at the idea of bringing you along. But it is mostly superstition.” With that he finished his tamale, tossing the banana leaf off into the field. Then he leaned against the tree under which were sitting, and pulled his sombrero down over his face.

“Time for the siesta,” he mumbled.

As he slept, I lay in the cool grass of the shade along the edge of the field. This trek had already taken much of the day, I thought, with questionable results. I gazed out towards the buried town, and breathed deeply, drawing the pure country air into my lungs. The thought of spending the entire day on such a dubious adventure didn’t bother me in the least. I had no appointments. Time had suddenly become as meaningless to me as it was to Angel, or anyone else I might find out here.

My mind clear with those thoughts, I gradually drifted off into the shaded realm of a mid-afternoon nap surrounded by nature. I had little idea how much time had past when Angel woke me up, but the afternoon breeze was lisping through the trees, and the air had cooled significantly.

“Ready for the climb?” Angel asked, with renewed vigor in the cool of the afternoon. “God willing, we will find the problem with the line.” He was already on his feet and headed for the base of the hill. I scrambled up quickly and started after him, still a bit disoriented from my deep sleep. The incline was just steep enough to take on upright, but required significant effort. As we climbed, I could see the lay of the land around us. The forested ravine through which we had approached the hills engulfed the mid section of the valley, on either side of the small river we had crossed. As we climbed a bit higher, I could make out among the trees the shaded road we had taken, as it ran between two steep hills into the clearing where the abandoned town lay. Every few steps brought us several meters higher, and before long, the entire valley was visible, San Juan at its center, a large cluster of deep red roofs, flanked by the stark backdrop of Cerro Grande. From the town, the main road ran northwest in a chalky white strip along the base of the mountain, towards the dryer, flatter west. Angel took a seat on a boulder, pausing for a rest as he stared out into the valley.

“In the west on the horizon, that mountain you see is Celaque. It watches over Gracias, the capital of the province to the West, just as Cerro Grande guards San Juan. Jaguars and other creatures still roam those mountains,” he said, mysteriously. “To the south, over there, that long hill is known as the Retumbador. Its name comes from the sound that the thunder makes as it bounces off the side of the hill, and resonates across the valley. There is no way out of the valley on that end, except over the hill. Much as there is no way out in this direction, except over this hill.” With that, he sprung back to his feet and continued quickly upward.

“No time for sight seeing,” he called back as he hurried on, “we should get up the hill. The sun is beginning to drop and the afternoon will be cold if we’re stuck too high on the mountain.”

I scampered upward after him. When we reached the top of that hill, several hundred meters above the clearing where we had started, Angel paused. On the other side of the peak, the telegraph line appeared, held aloft by occasional poles forged from tree trunks, as it ran along the side of an adjacent slope. Every so often, just as the line nearly reached the ground, a flimsy wooden post would appear a few hundred meters on, to affect a gradual climb back upward. It was no wonder, I thought, that the line was usually out of order. We walked down towards the cable, and Angel continued to a place where he could reach up to handle it. There, he pulled an apparatus out of his pack and connected it to the line.

“It’s dead here as well,” he announced in a matter-of-fact way. “The problem is onward.” He paused for some time, considering the line as it ran into the distance, up and over another large hill on the horizon. The sun had sunk behind the peak we had just summitted, and clouds were beginning to set in. The breeze picked up, as if to remind Angel of the limited time. It was already getting cold.

“On the other side of this mountain,” Angel said after some time, “is the town of Yaramanguilla. Those volcanoes in the distance belong to the country to the south.” He pointed to two cone shaped hills on the horizon.

“You’ve been there?” I asked him, as he put away the device he had used to test the line. He began to walk along the line, and I followed, up the next hill, climbing to a peak even higher than before, from which we could once again observe most of the valley below.

“There? Never,” Angel answered after a long delay. “The domain of the Perdidos, is this valley,” he said, still moving along as he turned back towards the valley, partially hidden behind the summit of the first hill. “Onward, by those hills, over there on the other side of Cerro Grande, is Belen. That’s where our family comes from. My father left Belen with his sisters, Felicidad and Soledad, to come to San Juan. But that was a long enough trip for us, at least for a few generations. We stay here, in this valley. Aida, for example, has never been beyond the valley, nor has tia Felicidad or Soledad.” He stopped talking as the climb became a bit more strenuous. When we reached the top of the hill, he spoke again.

“I have been as far as La Esperanza many times, and to Gracias, near Celaque, that mountain we see in the distance.” Angel motioned deliberately as he looked into the distance beyond the valley. He seemed intimately familiar with the geography surrounding this hill, from which he could map out the comings and goings of several generations, and his entire lifetime.

I was still considering the uniqueness of his situation, in a world as big as the one I knew, when Angel started off, back down the hill. I followed after him as he hurried quickly downward.

“And the telegraph line?” I yelled after him, unable once again to match his ambitious pace, as he descended, back towards the valley below, at nearly a run.

“The problem is onward, towards La Esperanza,” he said definitively. “My responsibility ends at the top of the hill.”

The descent was breathtakingly quick behind Angel, who moved down the hill with the agility of a person who had lived a lifetime among rocky inclines such as these. Painstakingly measuring each step as I broke my descent, I fell well behind. The sun was sinking quickly in the sky as we reached the clearing of the buried village. Behind the forest, the setting sun cast long, dark shadows across the field, as dusk visited once more this town that many dusks ago had ceased to count in days. As we walked among the abandoned homes, I again felt a strong premonition, which this time gave rise to a desire to move on as quickly as possible. The horses seemed to share the concern, as they wasted little time, once we untied and mounted them, in trotting quickly back down the path towards the river crossing, where they galloped across the water without any of their previous hesitation.

Angel said nothing as we forded the stream once more, and rushed through the darkening woods towards the main road. When the forest gave way and we had reached the familiar expanse of the main route, he slowed his horse to a trot and pulled back, alongside me. “The spirits are all about out here in the night. They listen to everything we say, and consider each thing we do,” he whispered. “But we are safe now. They have let us pass the woods without problems. They recognize me, but I worried that you would be unfamiliar to them.”

“You said that the stories about the spirits were superstition,” I said, speaking too loudly for Angel, who glanced about worriedly.

“Superstition, in the midday sun, my friend,” he said in a solemn manner, once he had assured himself that we were alone, “becomes reality in the country night.”

Despite his concern, Angel was obviously relieved to be free of the forest, and he became more talkative as we rode along the wide road back into San Juan. The horses themselves strode rather triumphantly back up the hill into town, past the main square and up the block to Aida’s house. There I dismounted, and Angel took his leave, pulling my horse along behind his. I went inside, tired and suddenly quite aware of the soreness of my body.

I found the kitchen dark and empty, with only a glimmer of light from the receding flames of the stove complementing a dim lantern on the table. I took a seat at the table and gave a shrill call, trying to imitate the greeting I had now heard on several occasions. Soon Patricia emerged from one of the back rooms. Yet again, she looked surprised to see me.

“Oh, mister, how did it go? Did you fix the telegraph?” she asked as she continued into the kitchen.

“The problem was farther along the line. Our efforts were of no use.”

“Yes, the problem is always along the line further on. Nothing ever happens on this side to disrupt it,” she said, as she shifted some pots around on the stove. I got the sense she had already known the answer to her question, as, it seemed, did Angel, even before we had set off in the morning.

“Then, Patricia,” I asked, as she began to pile food onto a plate for my dinner, “why did we go? Why would Angel allow his time to be wasted?”

“It’s not a waste,” she said. “That is Angel’s job. You need to send a telegram, you have asked, and his job is to send it. Just as my job is to provide this food for you,” she said, setting a heaping plate on the table in front of me. “Each in this world has his role.”

I wouldn’t ask again about telegrams. When the line was fixed, months later, Angel sent the telegram anyway. He had kept the paper I had given him in a drawer in his desk. Nevertheless, when I eventually spoke with the sub-director about the issue, she complained that she had never received news of my arrival. Perhaps the operator in the capital had not been at the telegraph when it came through, I explained to her. But she had no way to understand what I meant.

American Soccer Player Returns to His Malian Roots

By Brent Latham

Dakar

02 April 2009

Bakary Soumare (file photo)

Bakary Soumare (file photo)

A soccer player who has made a life and career in the United States has chosen to represent the country of his birth at the international level. Bakary Soumare discussed his recent experiences with the Malian national team in an interview with VOA.

A native of a small village near the border with Mauritania, in the northwestern Kayes region of Mali, Bakary Soumare fulfilled a childhood dream when he suited up for his native country in the just-completed round of World Cup qualifiers.

The tall defender, who plays professionally for the Chicago Fire of the United States' Major League Soccer, had a choice to make regarding his international affiliation. He was also being recruited to play for the United States national team, as they edged closer to qualifying for a sixth consecutive World Cup. International soccer players may represent only one nation, according to FIFA rules.

When he learned that he would be unable to obtain U.S. citizenship until after the World Cup, Soumare chose to accept the call of his native land. He says it was a decision his mother, who recently passed away, had urged him to take. "She would much rather see me representing Mali than the U.S., obviously because that is where she was born, that is where we were from. And my dad is really, really excited about me joining the team. It is exciting, you are representing the flag on the front of the jersey, and on the back of the jersey, your last name, you are representing your family," he said.

Soumare played his first official match for the Eagles, as Mali's national team is known on the continent, when the squad traveled to Sudan for the first match of the final round of African qualifiers for the World Cup.

Despite having lived for most of the past decade in the United States, Soumare says he felt 100 percent Malian by the time he arrived in Khartoum from Chicago. "When I go to Sudan, I do not go there thinking I am an American. I go to Sudan with the national team, defending my national team colors, so I go there as a Malian. I had the option to play for the U.S. or go for Mali, I felt that I would have to wait too long to play for the US, and I wanted to go back and play for my country," he said.

In search of economic opportunity, Soumare's parents brought him to Paris from the village where he was born when he was two years old.

Soumare has become a standout on the soccer fields of the United States, after moving to America from France at age 15. He attended the University of Virginia on a soccer scholarship, before joining the Chicago Fire in 2007. "Part of me wanted to play for the United States, actually, because I owe a lot to this country, especially in my growth and development as a player. A lot of it happened over there," he said.

Despite his affinity for American-brand soccer, he would also like the opportunity to play in Europe, in the world's biggest soccer leagues. He considers playing with Mali, alongside several stars who play for big European clubs, to be a good way to showcase his talents.

The year-long final round of African qualifying continues in June, with winners of each of five groups advancing to the World Cup final to be held in South Africa in the summer of 2010. Mali has never qualified for the World Cup final tournament.

5. Like the Fields Wait for the Rain

For the final act of training, Peace Corps invited representatives of the organizations that would be working with volunteers to a ceremony in the capital. After the trials of the training period, most of us could have predicted that such an event, requiring planning, coordination, and promptness, was sure to be disaster. In the end most of the volunteers were left jilted, their new work partners having failed to show, or never having properly received the elaborately drafted, stamped and certified communication announcing the event.

But my case was different. The general manager of the cooperative had come from La Esperanza, along with the manager of the branch in San Juan, in the organization’s new pickup truck. The pair was anxious to retrieve their two new consultants – Sally on her way to La Esperanza, and me, to San Juan.

“I am happy to finally join your team,” I told the two men after the event, as they shepherded me through the parking lot towards the vehicle which would take us on to La Esperanza.

“So we will be travelling in luxury today,” I said, doing my best to emphasize my admiration for the shiny new car as we approached.

“We just bought this truck,” Renan said, smiling proudly. “And we are glad to inaugurate it with the important task of bringing our new advisors to La Esperanza for the first time.”

“And also to San Juan,” chimed a voice from behind Renan. It was Juan, the manager of the San Juan branch, peeking over his boss’ shoulder. “We can’t forget Kawil’s new home,” he said, smiling.

Sally, who had been following behind at a distance, caught up to us at the car. She was talking with another volunteer, Katie, one of the many who had been left waiting by her new work partner. She was assigned to a project near La Esperanza. The two girls handed their bags casually to Juan, as they continued their conversation.

“Kate’s going to come with us as well,” Sally announced, to no one in particular, as Juan carefully loaded their suitcases into the bed of the truck.

“That one needs to go inside, with us, to keep it safe” Katie directed, as Juan lifted one of her bags into the back of the pickup. Following the instructions, he carefully pulled the suitcase down and placed it on the back seat.

In the meantime I was observing Renan. I thought I caught a brief expression of concern on his face as he surveyed the amount of luggage the girls had brought. But his countenance quickly transformed into an accommodating smile.

“That will be fine,” he said, “but we have to pick up some other employees, so we will need to make room.”

Sally and Kate didn’t hear him. They had already gotten into the backseat.

Juan jumped down from the back of the truck, where he had been wrestling with the luggage. He smiled as he held the door open for me. “We’ll have to squeeze in,” he said, still smiling. “There are two more to pick up.”

I got into the back seat next to Sally. The pick-up had a double cab which could hold five people. With the three of us in the backseat, it was now full. I wondered where the others that we were going to pick up would fit.

Juan closed the door and walked around to the front, and we were on our way, as Renan began to tentatively navigate the busy streets of the capital. Next to me, Sally and Kate continued their conversation in English.

“Where are you headed exactly?” I asked Kate, in Spanish, trying to change the language to one our new coworkers in the front seat could understand.

“Near La Esperanza, you know that,” she snapped back, in English, frowning harshly at me, before resuming her conversation with Sally. I gave a concerned glance towards Renan and Juan, but rather than worrying about the foreign language being spoken behind them, they were distracted in an attempt to extricate us from the maze of traffic-congested streets that lead to the road north, out of town.

I tried to relax, and looked around. The vehicle was indeed luxurious, in more than one sense, though I’m not sure I realized it at the time. In retrospect, that trip to La Esperanza was the easiest I would make along that route for quite some time. It wouldn’t be long before I would learn that intercity trips tended to draw out, on the decrepit, second-hand school busses imported from the United States for use on these routes - the only choice for travelers without their own vehicle, a group to which I would soon belong.

As I was beginning to get comfortable in the backseat, we pulled to a stop in front of an office building. Juan hopped out, and greeted two older men. “These men are co-workers,” Renan said, turning half way around. “They have come for a meeting here, and will return to La Esperanza with us.”

I could see Juan, behind the truck, climbing into the bed of the pickup. One of the older men opened the front door, had a quick look at the full backseat, and began to slide into the front, as the second newcomer pushed his way in, attempting to squeeze into the front seat alongside. I opened the door and stepped out onto the street, and around to the bed of the pickup, where Juan had already sat down on one of the suitcases.

“Juan,” I said, “shall we travel together back here?”

“No, no,” Juan quickly protested, “there is room for everyone inside.”

“No,” I said, “I prefer it back here.” It was difficult to say those words convincingly. I shuffled back to the driver’s side window, where Renan was looking on with curiosity.

“You can spread out in the back,” I said, talking generally into the car, to Renan and the two men, who had accommodated themselves uncomfortably, together in the front seat. “I’m going to go in the back with Juan.”

Returning to the back of the pickup, I pulled myself as gracefully as possible over the side of the truck, into the bed, and sat down, leaning against a suitcase.

“Come back here, against the window,” Juan said, when he saw me sit down leaning against the side of the truck. “It is more comfortable in this area- with the bumps of the road, and the wind.” As I was resettling myself, the car pulled away with a jerk.

Renan must have felt more comfortable driving on the highway than the packed streets of the city, because he increased velocity considerably as we headed north through the early evening. The first part of the journey passed like a whirlwind. The truck sped across a wide valley towards a mountain range ahead.

“Renan will want to make up time,” Juan shouted. “It’s late already, and the trip is not short.” I nodded. I could only make out some of his words over the roar of the wind. We sat next to each other, but with little communication, and I slowly sank into my thoughts.

I took in the sights along the road through the countryside. Headed out into this new world, as the cool evening breeze caressed my face, I suddenly felt freer than I had for the last few months. Out here, my actions and words could no longer be so closely observed and manipulated. Now I was far away, and the distance grew further mile by mile, from the burdens of the oversight of training; free from judgment; free now, to make my own way. It was what the feeling I had come to this country in search of.

But the sense of calm that accompanied my newfound freedom quickly dissipated when the car climbed into the next set of mountains. Frighteningly sharp curves twist around the corners of those high passes, a few feet away from an imposing vertical drop to a death that more than a few unfortunate motorists have met. Racing against the falling night, as if our lives depended upon speed rather than caution, Renan wheeled the vehicle around each corner, as I felt the truck, and my own weight, shifting too close to that drop. I held my breath as the car rounded each turn, and forgot about the increasing cold, as I bounced uncomfortably around the bed of the pick-up.

Juan smiled broadly, holding one hand over his head to secure a baseball cap against the wind, as he held on. Imitating him, I firmly clenched the sides of the pick-up, but he must have guessed that fear rather than experience was driving me to grasp at the sides of the truck.

“One has to have faith on these roads,” he shouted, trying to reassure me. But the numerous small wooden crosses planted here and there along the roadside, each memorializing a motorist whose premature death on this road had come suddenly, in an instant much like the one I was now living, was the first of many lessons leading me to understand that faith in this land is too often inadequately tempered by caution.

Perhaps, it occurred to me, as I sat in that decidedly unsecured state in the back of that machine, speeding through the green hills into the twilight, premature death is a normal probability given the risks one is compelled to accept in a place like this. I thought of Miguel and his theories, which now seemed to be permeating my own way of seeing things. I had little choice but to ride on, and hope for the best. I took a deep breath of the crisp mountain air, and looked at Juan, sitting in a profound state of distraction, as he gazed calmly into the darkening valley below. Then, I was again glad to be free, under the open sky, in the back of that pickup.

Despite my fleeting attempts to emulate Juan’s relaxed state, it was a long, cold trip to La Esperanza. Pressed for time against the falling night, we wouldn’t stop even once along the route. Not long after we turned off the main north-south highway, and began to head west on a secondary road, I tired of asking Juan how much longer the trip would last, even if he never stopped answering me good naturedly. There, in the dark of the night off the main road, few other vehicles were to be seen. The rutted and desolate highway continued its game, climbing and then descending hill after hill, and though I felt that we must be getting close after what seemed like several hours had passed in that way, each turn revealed only another one ahead, until finally, where a cold ascent up another mountain gave way to yet another climb, further upward, into an even more painfully frigid climate, the road gave up its thankless task, and yielded to the town of La Esperanza, its streets black under the cover of night.

When Renan finally pulled to a stop in front of a hotel, I jumped eagerly out of the back of the pickup, and found my legs reluctant to bear my weight after such a long period sitting awkwardly. Still, if I was tired, the completion of the journey put me immediately in much better spirits. I smiled, putting my hand on Juan’s shoulder. He had endured the journey with me, and, though a veteran of such trips, must have felt much the same.

“You’ve passed the first test,” he said with a broad smile, as we shook hands firmly. “Tomorrow, we go on to San Juan. There, the weather is more agreeable.”

I was awakened early the next morning by a rap at the door. “Who is it?” I called from the warm comfort of the bed. The temperature had dropped further overnight, during which I had been forced to search out an extra blanket in the closet.

“It’s me, Juan,” a voice answered from the other side of the door. “Are you awake yet? Good morning!”

I stumbled out of bed and pulled on the clothes I had worn the previous day, then made my way over to the door.

“Good morning, Juan,” I said happily, as I opened the door. “I wasn’t expecting you quite so early.”

Juan smiled. “I wanted to give you a tour of the town before we leave for San Juan,” he said. “The bus leaves at ten thirty, and we’ll need to be on it if we’re going to get to San Juan today. It’s the only one of the day. What if we go get some breakfast and see the city first?”

“That sounds great,” I said, stepping out into the hallway. “Shall I get Sally?”

“No,” Juan said. “Let her rest, don’t you think? Later, Renan will come by and pick her up to take her to the office here in town. But our mission today is San Juan. Let’s go,” he said excitedly.

We left the hotel into the bright, clear air of the mountain valley. I was relieved after the cold night to feel the warm sun on my face. Juan led the way downtown, through a colorful market, where women in bright dresses sold equally colorful assortments of fruit from makeshift wooden stalls.

We stopped in a store front, and Juan bought several items, including a number of packages of batteries. “For my radio in San Juan,” he explained. “It is very difficult, and expensive, to find things there, so it’s best to stock up here if you have the chance. Is there anything you need?”

“Nothing in particular,” I said, eyeing the merchandise. A brightly colored hammock caught my eye. “How much is that hammock?” I asked the storekeeper.

“Three hundred lempiras,” the man replied quickly.

“That’s absurd,” Juan snapped back, before I had the chance to think. “We’ll give you one hundred for it.”

“One hundred and fifty,” the man said.

“Done,” Juan said, pulling out a pair of bills from his pocket.

“Allow me, Juan,” I protested, taking out money of my own. But Juan pushed my hand away.

“The hammock is a good idea - for the siesta. We can hang it behind the house. It will be of much use to us,” he said as he paid the man, and handed me the hammock.

From the market, we continued up the town’s main street, which gradually ascended from the city center, up a long slope. Towards the edge of town, the road turned into a cobblestone footpath which led in turn to a long set of white stone stairs.

“Up there,” Juan said, pointing to the top of the stairway etched from the rock face of the hill, is the shrine of the virgin of Suyapa, the matron saint of the town. “Shall we climb?” he asked rhetorically, as he took off, bounding up the trail.

“I’ve known this area since my youth,” he continued as we climbed. “I studied here, and began working for the cooperative after I graduated. The cooperative has its main office here,” he said, as we reached the top.

I turned around to behold a panoramic view of the city, stretching across the valley below. In the distance, I could see the road leading into town.

“That’s the road we came in on last night over there. It leads east to the main road. This area, when I was a child, was a backwater, but the completion of that road through the mountains improved the prospects significantly. The town has grown.” He then turned and waved in the opposite direction.

“Beyond those mountains,” he said, smiling, “are more mountains. And beyond them, lies San Juan. I have been working out there for four years now. The office there was something of an experiment. Around here, people grow fruit and potatoes. But in San Juan the crop is coffee. Following the last boom in coffee prices, the cooperative’s board decided to try opening for business in San Juan, since there was no other bank there. They sent me to manage the branch.”

So Juan was not from San Juan either. As he gazed over the hills in the distance towards that place we were headed, I thought perhaps I could understand him a bit more. It seemed like he, too, saw at San Juan as a far off place, lost to civilization. Perhaps we had more in common than I would have dared to believe.

Suddenly, as quickly as he had come up the hill, Juan began back down. “Let’s go get some breakfast,” he said.

“San Juan is a prosperous region, then?” I asked as we walked back down the street towards the market.

“The coffee boom, like many such things, has come and gone,” hr replied. “Many of the businesses, and our loans, have turned bad. We are counting on you to help fix the situation.”

Nothing I could have learned in training would have prepared me for the moment later that morning, when I climbed on board the old yellow bus that runs the route between La Esperanza and San Juan. Formerly employed somewhere in the United States, to take children to and from school, the bus had seen a drastic change of proprietorship at some point, after which the present owners had sloppily crossed out the previous route information – the name of some rural American school district - and replaced it with the words “San Juan” scribbled in bright red paint across the front windshield. Born in the USA, its present incarnation was a much more rugged and utilitarian version of the previous one.

Juan boarded the bus ahead of me, with the air of a parent who has lied to his child to get him into the car on the way to a dentist’s visit. He rode along next to me, crammed into the child-sized seat, perhaps reluctant to explain to me how long this leg of the trip would take, for fear that I would refuse to go on. After all, I had withstood a four hour jaunt the day before in the cold, and was in little mood for further travel. But if the previous day’s adventure had brought us several hundred kilometers from the capital in four hours, I might also have found it hard to comprehend how the ride I was about to embark upon would take nearly as long, if it covered only a small fraction of the distance.

I would soon learn. The road made it so. All the roads I had travelled to that point had at least been paved, imperfect as they were. But the route to San Juan was unfinished in every sense. The road was founded of dirt and clay by necessity, as it snakes along the edges of hills and across the mountains westward, where a paved road could not pass without the help of extensive feats of modern engineering.

Adding to the bumps of the rough ride, the sun of the early summer made itself felt along the route in a way it had not among the green hills to the east of La Esperanza. The heat baked the white clay of the road, sucking the moisture from it, so that each passing vehicle raised a thick cloud of chalky white dust. The roadside and everything I could observe alongside it – coffee plantations, the isolated houses with chimneys puffing out black smoke, numerous farm animals large and small, and even small children playing in the yards of their homes- were all covered in a blanket of white powder. To protect the passengers from similar inconvenience, the bus windows were kept closed, a measure which exacerbated the stifling heat, but did little to prevent the dust from covering everything inside the bus as well.

Hidden under that layer of white was a beautiful countryside that I could not yet see. Blinded by frustration, realizing that after all the hours of travel the day before, it would still take several hours more just to get to the place I was expected to live for the next two years, I needed to concentrate on understanding that there was a place so remote, and contemplating what was to be done about my situation. It would have been quite different if I were just passing through, I thought. But I was meant to live out here.

Juan, on the other hand, was seated comfortably next to me, aided by his short stature, which was much more compatible with the limited space provided by the school bus seats. He demonstrated unlimited patience in once again explaining to me repeatedly, like a parent to an irritated child, how much further we would need to travel.

“This is the town of San Miguelito, which neighbors San Juan,” he said, as the bus gained speed and descended a hill into a small town. “It’s not much further now.” In a very real sense, he would have been right had he said that upon leaving La Esperanza. The trip is only about thirty kilometers, in distance as the crow flies.

When I had finally given up on the idea that the twists and turns leading to this place at the far corner of the world, as known to me, would ever come to an end, the bus rounded a large bend, and a town appeared on a ridge, above the river ahead. It was past noon as the bus crossed a small bridge and rolled to a stop at a crossroads at the edge of the town.

“Welcome to San Juan,” Juan said, perhaps sharing the type of tempered relief which accompanies those who have overcome the first in what is sure to be a long series of obstacles. He pointed to a road that diverged from the main route. A collection of tired people, women in bright dresses, and men with their sombreros pulled low over their eyes, waited in the shade at the crossroads.

“The road here leads south to the border region,” Juan continued. “Those passengers getting off here will wait for another bus south. It takes several hours to get to the border from here.” San Juan already seemed like the end of the earth to me, I thought.

The bus workers finished unloading the cargo of those who would await the trip further afield, a long process only after which the machine again began to advance slowly, up the small hill and into town. I mustered what energy I could after the long, hot trip, to look around as the bus rolled into town, and I found San Juan to be like nothing I had yet seen. The streets were completely abandoned in the midday heat. Like the roadside along the route, the whole town was covered in white dust that, along with the faded roofs of red clay tiles on every building, gave the motionless town the dull tone of a sepia photograph from many decades past.

Juan stood up as the bus screeched to a slow halt at a plaza in front of a large church. As we stepped down into the full sunshine, I realized how warm it was. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve.

“As I told you, the weather is more temperate here” Juan said, as the bus rumbled away, leaving us alone on the streets of the quiet town. “The altitude drops significantly from La Esperanza.”

Without the noise of the bus engine, the street was eerily quiet, and it was not obvious that anyone actually lived in the town. “It’s quite empty here,” I said. “It seems like the town has been abandoned.”

“It’s a little barren at this time of day,” Juan offered hopefully, as he picked up my bag. “The people are in their homes sleeping their siesta. The businesses - our bank and the coffee producer’s cooperative - have closed for the midday lunch break.”

If Juan had not been with me, I might have been inclined to board the next bus back to Esperanza, never to return. If I felt that way at any rate, turning back was impossible, since the bus we had just came on was the only way out, and it wouldn’t return until the next day.

I said nothing as I looked around. My irritation at going through with this farce was beginning to grow. A few days here, I thought, and then I’ll return to the capital and demand to have my work changed to a more reasonable place.

“Let’s go get some lunch,” Juan ventured, chipping at my silence with an optimistic smile. “Then I’ll show you where we live.”

We crossed the street from the central plaza and started up the street. “The cooperative is right down that street, on the other side of the police station. Further down is the market. Down this street here,” he said, pointing towards a perpendicular road, “is Dona Aida’s house, where we will eat our meals.”

He led me up the narrow street towards the next block. In front of me, I saw the face of the jagged mountain as it towered above the homes on the other side of the road.

“That’s Cerro Grande,” Juan said, pointing at the hill by piercing his lips together, in a very particular way of signaling that I was yet to learn. “Around this corner is where we will eat lunch. You must be hungry after the trip.”

We turned to the left and climbed onto the step in front of a house, across the street from those on the ridge in front of Cerro Grande. Juan tossed the loosely hinged screen door to one side. It opened with a bang, and we passed through. “Doña Aida…., Patricia…., wake up,” he yelled into the interior of the house.

The screen door slammed abruptly behind me with a loud pop. The room we had entered, a dimly lit space with crumbling walls of gray mud and straw, was sparsely furnished with a few plastic tables, and chairs to match. On one table, closely surveyed by a swarm of flies, was a plate with the remains of a meal. Except for the tables, the room was bare, with the exception of a metal shelf in the corner, which held a scant assortment of random mementos, including a timepiece. I inspected the device, which proudly bared a sticker declaring it to be a “high class quartz clock.” But the time keeping mechanism seemed to be broken, as I knew it was not nine o’clock.

My appetite had returned the moment we stepped into the cool room, from the sunshine outside. “I am hungry,” I said to Juan, just realizing it myself. The frame of a woman appeared in the doorway in front of us, lit from the back by the sunshine streaming through opening that led to the interior of the house.

“Hungry? You’ve brought your friend to the right place, Mr. Juan,” the woman said in a song-like tone. “Good afternoon!”

“Good afternoon, Patricia. As you can see, I bring company.” Juan smiled as he strode confidently forward. “This is Kawil, he’s come to live in San Juan, from the United States.”

It was obvious that this was the first this woman had heard of the plan, and Juan’s explanation must have seemed as strange to Patricia as it had sounded to me when I had first been told by the Peace Corps that I would be coming out here, because she couldn’t hide the confusion that such a paradox provoked.

“Come to work here, to San Juan, from the United States?” she gasped, in thorough disbelief. “A gringo? For what?”

It seemed strange to me that this was the first Juan would have mentioned, to this person with whom he seemed to share intimate contact, a new worker at the cooperative, especially one so unusual as I. But perhaps he had shared my reluctance to fully accept that such a moment as this would actually materialize. Under the circumstances I thought it necessary to corroborate Juan’s assertion.

“Like Juan says, I’ve come to work at the cooperative,” I offered blandly.

I mustered a smile as Patricia grabbed my wrist tightly with both her hands. Her unassuming expression now beamed with acceptance and understanding. Her confusion at seeing me in her house now seemed as if it had been feigned, and she hugged me as if I were a long lost family member, finally returned home.

“Come in, come in, meester Juan and meester gringo.” Patricia said as she pulled my arm, leading me through the doorway and further into the house. “How did you say he was called, Juan?”

But Juan didn’t answer. He had already proceeded through the corridor and into the kitchen further inside the house. I followed Patricia through the doorway, where the house opened onto an inner patio. A walkway, covered by a rickety tile roof, sloping down from the main structure of the home, ran along the inside of the house. The cement path led past a series of doors opening onto the patio from individual rooms. To the other side of the walkway was a lush garden, full of flowering plants and trees, many of which bore fruit, some of it now scattered about the ground below.

“Sit down, mister, you are at home now,” Patricia said, as we stepped off the patio into the adjacent kitchen. A rickety wooden door loosely tied to a post was the only element discernibly separating the cooking area from the patio outside. The floors in the kitchen were of packed dirt, enclosed by four smoke-stained adobe walls surrounding a covered rectangular room containing a rudimentary sink, and a large, wood burning stove crafted from mud, in the far corner.

Patricia pointed at a long bench, paired with an old wooden table placed against the wall next to a small window, in an alcove at the entrance to the room. “Our closest friends, like Juan, eat here in the kitchen, so we can keep an eye on them.”

“Mama, two lunches for the new arrivals from La Esperanza,” Patricia yelled into the smoky depths of the kitchen.

By the light of another small window inside, I could see Juan, next to the stove, at the far end of the room. He had taken a corn tortilla from its place on the stovetop, and with it began to scoop from a pot on the countertop. Close to him, a woman of impressive girth attended to another pot, her back turned towards me.

“Leave the tortillas and sit down, you wild Indian,” the woman suddenly cried, noticing Juan behind her, pilfering the stovetop. She turned and swatted dramatically at him with a large wooden spoon, as he hurried over with a smile and sat down next to me, stolen tortilla in hand.

“Doña Aida is very irritable this afternoon, perhaps she missed her siesta,” he said in a loud voice, meant to be overheard. Patricia laughed.

The large woman turned towards the table. Her face was worn with the care of one who has slowly lost youth to time, with little in return. A thick mat of gray hair outlined a dark countenance that spoke of more promising years past.

“And how would I sleep a siesta if a bunch of wild Indians come to eat at any hour they see fit,” the woman exclaimed, shaking the wooden spoon in the air and frowning to emphasize her displeasure.

“That’s Doña Aida Perdido,” Juan said, again speaking loudly. “Her last name is the best indication of her mentality. Doña Aida, this is Kawil, he’ll be working with us in San Juan.”

The large woman shrugged, and turned back to her pots. “Savage Indians,” she murmured, “don’t know what hour is lunchtime.”

Juan continued to laugh as he described the trip to the capital to Patricia. A teenaged girl soon came in to help with the food.

“What did you bring me?” the girl asked, as Juan described a trip to the mall in the capital.

“Nancy!,” Patricia cried, “such indiscretion.” She turned to Juan with a smile. “So what did you bring us?”

Before long the old woman emerged from her kitchen with two small plates of chicken, rice, and beans. She set the plates on the table in front of us, long with a separate plate heaped with corn tortillas. She then glanced quickly at me, turned, and walked back to the stove.

Juan began to eat, and I followed his lead. He ate with a fork in one hand, and a tortilla in the other, taking a bite of tortilla for each accompanying mouthful of food. I tried to imitate him.

Aida walked past the table and out into the hall. “Savage Indian,” she yelled at Juan as she passed, “don’t waste your food!”

Juan laughed. “You know not to serve me onions,” he called after her. I looked down at his plate. He had meticulously picked the small bits of onion out of the rice. “I don’t like onions,” he said, as Aida returned from the corridor with a large pot.

“It’s all there is to be had in this town,” Aida said, unapologetically. “At this hour, one eats what food there is.”

As we finished our meals, the noise of the screen door could be heard from the front room as it swung open.

“Is my lunch ready?” A voice called from the other room as the door slammed closed.

Patricia looked up from her work in the kitchen. “Uncle Anhiel,” she cried, with a smile, as she tossed down the knife she was using to cut vegetables, and hurried towards the front room. Before she could get out of the kitchen, a balding, middle aged man with a graying beard appeared in the archway. He stopped there and straddled the entrance, supporting himself against the pillars on either side.

Juan, sitting next to door, stood up. The man grabbed his hand and shook it energetically, as he smiled broadly.

“So you are back from your trip,” Juan said to him. “I thought you would have been back sooner. How did it go?”

“Well, very well,” said the man, still smiling.

“We expected you days ago,” Patricia said. “Where is my brother Oduber?” asked Patricia.

“He is on his way with the things. We came back from La Esperanza with Santiago. He is just getting some packages out of Santiago’s car,” Anhiel said.

Patricia frowned. “But you went in Oduber’s car? Why did you return with Santiago?”

The man turned his attention towards the table where I was still seated. “And who is this?” Anhiel asked, looking at me.

“This is Kawil,” Juan said. “He has come to work at the cooperative.”

Before more detail could be added, the door opened and crashed shut again, and in hurried a rotund man in his late twenties. He brushed past Anhiel and into the kitchen without looking up. There, he dropped the bags he was carrying onto the floor, and collapsed into a chair next to wall. The old woman continued washing dishes without looking up.

“Hello mami, hello sisters,” he said, turning towards his sister.

“Welcome back to San Juan, Oduber. How was the trip?” asked Patricia. He looked at Anhiel with a puzzled expression, then turned back to his sister.

“Anhiel didn’t tell you? It didn’t go well. The car was stolen from us.”

There was a deep gasp from Patricia. Nancy turned around in concern. Aida continued her dish washing.

Patricia looked at Anhiel, who was standing silently in the doorway. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

But she immediately forgot that question, and turned back to Oduber. She already knew the answer. Anhiel, this jovial uncle who had just come in the door, wasn’t eager to begin a controversy by speaking about something unpleasant. Better to ignore it and hope it would go away.

Juan seemed to be in on the plan as well. “We were just on our way to see the house where we will live. So long,” he mumbled, mostly to himself. He slipped by Anhiel and through the archway, discreetly signaling me to follow.

The sun was still blazing down outside, and the streets remained empty. Though the desolate nature of the town purveyed an unwelcoming air, I was glad for it, since I didn’t have any patience left for meeting anyone else just then. We walked downhill, in the direction of the road to La Esperanza. It was no more than two hundred meters, down the road where that secondary street curves abruptly to meet the main road.

“Did that man say that his car was stolen?” I asked Juan, slightly concerned.

“Things like that are always happening to the Perdido family,” Juan replied. “It’s best not to get involved.”

“Here on the corner is Sandro’s store, where you can get most things you might need on a day to day basis,” he said, quickly changing the subject. I glanced over at the store, which looked like the rest of the houses, save a few product advertisements glued on the walls and the door, which was tightly closed.

“It appears to be closed,” I said.

“Our house is down this road on the corner,” Juan said, either not hearing me or choosing not to explain again that it was time for the siesta.

At the next corner a wide street, which seemed heavily travelled, ran back to the main road. There, the street we were following turned quickly from a well travelled and groomed dirt road to a narrow, barely navigable trail littered with small rocks, and rutted from past rainfall. In that condition, it continued downhill to the point where it turned to the right suddenly, to avoid falling of a sudden precipice.

Juan led me to the crumbling façade of an old house just before the turn. Covered in dust, the house looked like it had not been lived in for years. Juan approached one of several splintered old doors that lined the street under the overhang of a decrepit tile roof that had fallen in at the far end of the narrow walkway in front of the house. He reached in his pocket, and extracted a key.

“I just rented this house from Don Luis, who is a member of the board of directors at the cooperative,” he said, as he struggled to force the key into the lock. “He lived here with his family some time ago – but no one has kept the house up since. He has agreed to fix a number of things, such as this lock, but we will need to encourage him, since he lives in La Esperanza, and never comes to San Juan.” With a loud creak the heavy wooden door swung open, revealing a narrow passageway to an interior patio.

Juan pushed his way inside, forcing the door further open with the weight of his shoulder, as he entered the passageway. I followed him across the dust-covered floor, past the empty frame where an inside door had once hung, and onto the rutted concrete floor of the interior patio, where the deteriorating house gave way with little pretext to an overgrown garden in full bloom.

“It looks as if the garden has had its way for many years,” I said with a smile.

Juan reached for a machete leaning against one of the posts holding up the roof over the inner patio, and began to hack haphazardly at the vegetation.

“I have been working on that,” he said, giving up the task almost as suddenly as he had taken it up. He looked over at me as I considered the next thing to catch my attention – the sweeping view of the valley behind the house, with the mountains towering behind.

“The house is a bit run down but we will have it fixed up,” he said, repeating himself apologetically. “It costs only four hundred lempiras a month, so we will save on rent.”

Following what I now understood to be a standard design for its period and place, the house was built as a single line of rooms along the street. I followed Juan as he led me from one room to the next. There was a large room at either end of the house, and two smaller rooms, which were more like hallways, in the middle, one of which we had come through on our way into the house. Each of the four self-contained rooms had an exterior door which opened to the street, and an inside door opening to the patio.

“I’ve put my things in the room down there,” Juan said, pointing to the far corner of the house. “The other room is the one over here,” he said, as he continued to a large room on the other extreme of the patio. It was a dark space, the walls stained from years of rain seeping down them, and the standard layer of dust covering the floor. Inexplicably, there were two separate doors to the patio, the larger one of which had rotted and fallen over, leaving the room exposed to the elements.

“We’ll have to get that door fixed,” Juan said, as he walked down the corridor to his room.

“I meant to get someone to come tidy up,” he continued as he reemerged quickly, with a broom. “I have arranged for Soledad, Doña Aida’s aunt, to lend us a bed for you, until the carpenter can make one. We can pick it up after dinner tonight.”

At that moment, for the first time in the bustle of the trip from the capital, it dawned on me that I would be sleeping there, in that dirty room, with no door, in this dilapidated old house, open to the elements in this wild, deserted place. I wasn’t ready, but there was no other option now.

“I’m glad you thought of the bed,” I said to Juan, as he handed me the broom.

“I’m going to head over to the office and see how things are going,” he said. “I’ve been gone several days, with the trip to the capital.”

“I may spend the afternoon cleaning out the room and arranging my things,” I said, contemplating the single duffle bag I had brought. Having decided to travel as lightly as possible, I had left the rest behind, stored at Doña Marta’s.

“Don Luis has left some furniture – a few desks - that you can use,” Juan said. “He was a school teacher, and it seems he borrowed some of the desks from the school, which now turns out to our advantage.”

I unzipped my duffel bag and took out the hammock we had bought that morning. Juan’s face lit up.

“We can hang the hammock out here, on the patio” he said excitedly, as we stepped out of the room, into the bright sunlight.

“In fact, feel free to hang whatever you want from the walls, without worrying about making holes or anything like that. It’s a benefit of living in a house that is falling apart. I’ve got a hammer and some nails in my room,” he said, as he once again scampered off down the passage.

A long, ample covered area ran the length of the house, down towards Juan’s room, tucked in the opposite corner of the dwelling. Below a high scaffold of exposed wooden beams, an extensive roof of red clay tiles provided cool shelter from the midday sun for that half of the patio. Beyond the shade of that space, the garden had begun its gradual process of reclaiming the sun-bleached cement. An overgrown tangle of weeds and bushes sprung from the planted area in the center of the outer patio, between two large cement slabs. The collection of plants included flowers and fruit vines overloaded with their fresh burdens.

Where the cement of the patio ended, the property began to ease downhill, towards the valley. On that slope, an orchard of mature fruit trees grew. At first glance, I could see an assortment of mangoes, lemons, and avocadoes, in the early stages of development. Framed starkly against that natural green background was the bathroom area, a rickety construction of deteriorated cement and iron housing a medal tube emerging from the top of one wall, which apparently passed for the shower, and second, closed door, behind which I would find the open latrine which was to be used as a toilet. The roughness of the setup seemed quite appropriate given the surroundings.

Further out in the field, beyond the trees, horses grazed the green pastures of the valley. Behind them Cerro Grande began its climb from the valley floor, its green, pine covered slopes slowly giving way to sheer granite cliffs.

“In the distance off to the left,” Juan said, interrupting my survey as he returned with the hammer, “you can just make out a brown line. That is the road to La Esperanza, which we just travelled, as it climbs the mountains.”

Rather than focusing my attention on that distant point, his words brought me back to my immediate surroundings. I walked over to a large, detached room to the side of the patio. Pushing aside another fallen door, I peaked into the darkness.

“That is meant to be a kitchen,” Juan said. “There is a stove in the corner. There is another kitchen on the other side of the patio,” he said waving his hand across the open space.

“But we won’t be using those,” he continued, “since we have Doña Aida to cook for us.” Looking towards Juan drew my attention to a large cement basin in the middle of the patio, half covered in growth from the plants in the center area, upon which he was supporting himself.

“This is the pila, where we gather water. We should keep it full” Juan said, demonstrating the necessity of which he spoke by turning the faucet knob. There was a hiss followed by silence. “When there is water,” he said with a smile, “we collect it here - for the inevitable shortages.”

Juan must have detected a look of further incredulity in my expression. “No water right now,” he observed. “It comes at night, usually,” he said, again smiling apologetically.

“Would you like to accompany me to the office?” He asked. “Or do you prefer to stay here and tidy things up a bit?”

“I think I’ll stay behind for now and prepare for the evening,” I said, trying to veil my concern at spending the night in that house. “We have two years to get our work done at the cooperative.”

“Yes,” Juan said, “two years.” He smiled again, as if he believed only slightly more than I, that staying in San Juan for so long would be possible.

“We have waited for you, like the fields await the rain,” he said. Then he left through the passageway, closing the door behind him. I was alone.

World Bank Suggests Guidelines for Social Security Programs in Senegal

By Brent Latham

Dakar

02 April 2009

World Bank Suggests Guidelines for Social Security Programs in Senegal

By Brent Latham

Dakar

02 April 2009

World Bank Headquarters, Washington DC

With Senegalese officials studying social security plans to help some of the country's poorest citizens, a World Bank economist has outlined suggested procedures to properly design and implement effective social safety nets.

At a Dakar meeting, World Bank officials shared the institution's recent work on social security programs, in light of Senegalese officials' plans to search for ways to provide safety nets for vulnerable groups of the nation's poor.

A recently completed World Bank report details aspects of effective social safety net programs, which World Bank officials hope to help put into practice in Senegal.

World Bank Senior Economist Carlo del Ninno, a specialist in social protection, says social security programs must fulfill a number of criteria to be successful.

Del Ninno says that social safety net programs, which include direct monetary transfers as well as public work programs, food distribution programs, and education or health subsidies for the poor, are needed in every country to help reduce poverty and inequality.

Del Ninno says each country must adapt its social safety nets to meet the realities of its citizenry.

Senegal, he says, could begin by focusing on reducing the high percentage of income that the average family spends on food and transport.

The World Bank report suggests government officials concentrate on making social security programs fair, lasting, and dynamic, in order to avoid inefficiency and waste.

Economically vulnerable groups in Senegal have suffered in recent years from increases in the prices of basic necessities such as food and transport. Government subsidy efforts and the worldwide pullback in commodity prices and basic materials have at least temporarily eased the burden on the nation's poor.

Experts believe any social safety net program should be aimed at consolidating those improvements.

IMF Says Ivory Coast Loan Provisions Will Improve Transparency

By Brent Latham

Dakar

31 March 2009

International Monetary Fund officials say they are optimistic provisions for a new loan to Ivory Coast will help increase transparency in the West African country, as it continues its recovery from civil war.

The IMF insisted on provisions increasing the transparency of government spending when they agreed to extend $570 million in new loans to the Ivorian government and forgive $3 billion worth of previous debt.

The main objectives of the new pact include offering fiscal consolidation and achieving sustainability, says IMF Ivory Coast mission chief Arend Kouwenaar.

"There is a particular emphasis on budget transparency and increasing poverty reduction and pro-poor and pro-growth spending," he said. "There is a lot of emphasis on monitoring of that spending to ensure that the budgeted amounts get really spent in the way the budget lines foresee, and that the population, the council of ministers, Parliament, and then the population see how that money has been spent."

Kouwenaar says extra budgetary spending has been a concern in Ivory Coast in recent years. He says large-scale works such as a presidential palace, a senate building, and monuments have been undertaken with revenues from Ivory Coast's booming oil sector.

"Last year about 0.7 percent of the budget was spent on large scale works outside the budget, which would maybe have a return in the very far future, and the example is the senate," he said. "The senate is being built, or was going to be built - had started to be built - but there is no senate in the constitution of Ivory Coast."

Kouwenaar says the government will now publish an annual budget, and give quarterly updates verifying that spending matches the budgeted amounts.

Kouwenaar says government spending will shift toward growth-oriented initiatives that benefit the broader population.

"The focus in coming years will be on spending for rehabilitation of infrastructure, social services, and some other crisis exit, rehabilitation needs," he explained.

Ivory Coast suffered through a civil war beginning in 2002. Fighting ended in 2003 and the country has been moving slowly towards unity.

A power-sharing agreement between rebel forces and the government led to progress toward presidential polls, which had been scheduled for last November. But the elections were delayed indefinitely when the voter identification and registration process failed to move forward at the projected pace. Observers hope the polls will take place this year.

4. A Town Built on a Plateau

“I can barely remember my first years, before I came here, to San Juan” Anhiel said, as he grinned in a way that had, over the years, etched an indelible smile on his good natured face, now highlighted by a beard grayed through the slow, steady passing of time in that village.

“Coming here to build this house was a great adventure for me. I had never left Belen before that.” If four decades had gone by since then, his weathered face made the time passed, much of it sitting there on the stoop of the house he had built watching the townspeople go by, seem like much more. As he leaned back, and stared up at the massive rock walls of Cerro Grande, which jut upward, across the valley behind the original Perdido home, his face mirrored the sincerity of those hard, cold granite peaks, softened now by the slowly dimming afternoon light, as it faded from bright yellow to a faint orange.

“It wasn’t easy,” he continued. “Until the opening of the road to La Esperanza, there were no building materials in San Juan.” A sparkle glimmered in his eye as he remembered those days. “No cement. No steel rods. Everything was made of mud. There was no way to build upward.” He thrust his arm skyward, to show the height that he now understood could be expected of buildings elsewhere.

When Anhiel was sent down from Belen, at the age of thirteen, the family had finally outgrown that rambling house overlooking the valley, now unrecognizable from the one-room structure built by Angel all those years before. The arrival from Belen of new family members had been a constant strain on resources, including space in that home. But Soledad and Felicidad, like good matrons anxious to accommodate, were reticent to concede the improbability of fitting an indefinite number of relatives under the one roof.

As the head of the growing household, Angel, who could do little to stem the flow of new inhabitants into his home, was left with no option but to look for ways to improve his economic lot. He now had a child of his own to support as well, his new wife having given birth to a son, Angel Segundo. Through the class of sheer determination born of absolute necessity, Angel managed to secure for himself the job of telegraph operator in San Juan, a coup at least partially attributable to the not unimportant detail that there was, at the time, no telegraph in the town.

While rooting about Gracias one day, Angel had the fortune of being the first to discover the possibility of the existence of such a post. Slowly sipping a beer at the local cantina, he overheard two patrons talking about their work for the state-owned telegraph company. They were telegraph operators in nearby towns, they told him when he investigated further. It didn’t take them long to disclose, over several more beers, that they also earned ample salaries for limited work.

Angel was intrigued. As the liquor continued to flow, he was able to convince his new acquaintances of the existence of San Juan, of which they had been in doubt. They explained to him how an obscure state statute, designed to integrate the municipalities of the area, would provide money to run a telegraph line to any town in the region where someone was willing to purchase a telegraph machine, and learn how to use it. The job came with a handsome monthly salary in perpetuity, the bi-monthly collection of which, it turned out, was the motive for their journey to Gracias on that day.

Not more than a couple hours later, having spent the last of those particular paychecks, and then some, at the cantina, the pair of telegraph technicians stumbled out of the bar and down the street to the local telegraph offices, Angel in tow, determined to see their new friend employed as well, so as to augment the salary pool from which to pay for their bi-monthly drinking expedition to Gracias. Finding the office closed for the siesta, the increasingly unruly group clamored onward to the home of the office administrator, who, on the condition that the three drunks leave the vicinity of his premises without delay, agreed to meet with Angel about setting up a telegraph office in San Juan.

Saving up from his occasional cattle herding, Angel was soon able to purchase, from the same office administrator whose home he had visited that day, his own telegraph machine, at a markup from the normal price which would have been considered outrageous, had it not been for the further understanding, completely unspoken and undocumented though it may have been, of the administrator’s agreement to initiate the necessary paperwork to have Angel hired, and the telegraph line extended to San Juan. If the process of setting up the actual line from Gracias took nearly a decade more, and in the end had very little to do with the hiring of a paid operator for the post in San Juan, the contracting of Angel as a permanent employee of the state was handled in a much more expedient manner, given that once a new employee began to collect his salary, he could in turn pay monthly association dues to the company’s state appointed representative in Gracias, in this case that same administrator in charge of the hire, who had also sold Angel his new telegraph machine, mostly on credit.

Content with his new employ, Angel would wait patiently for the line to be up and running, an undertaking for which the level of motivation on the part of the company authorities left much to be desired, largely because no one stood to gain from the accomplishment but the public who might have used the line. In the meantime, and there was quite a lot of that, Angel was content to sit day by day in the would-be telegraph office that he fashioned by clearing Felicidad and her children out of their bedroom, which, inconveniently for her but ideally for the telegraph business, opened directly onto the street in front of the house, which had slowly become a major thoroughfare, such as there was in San Juan. Angel painstakingly went about the facets of the job possible without a working line, namely collecting his bi-monthly government salary, and the rent the government paid him for the still-useless telegraph office which had necessitated the displacement of his sister. When passersby eventually began to mock his perpetual inactivity, sitting as he did all day long behind a desk, for no apparent reason, Angel made further plans to have a sign made to hang out front, but he quickly abandoned them when he realized the risk of being prematurely associated with the state government, which ran the telegraph operations, and, like all other things foreign, was of general suspicion to the San Juaneños. Still, he opened the office doors each morning, and dutifully sat behind his desk, awaiting further instructions from his supervisors in the capital, who were for quite some time, unbeknownst to him, completely unaware of his existence. With time, Angel became so comfortable in that routine, that he would have rued the day many years later that the telegraph line was finally enabled, had he or anyone else in San Juan been informed in anything resembling a timely manner that the feat had been accomplished.

Whatever the seriousness of his work, word of Angel’s newfound economic status enticed even more members of the Perdido clan to come down from the mountains to San Juan, where they installed themselves, each in turn, in his house. Clarita, the youngest daughter of Angel’s generation, came with her three children during a particularly bad drought during which Belen, like so many small towns in the hills, ran dangerously low on food when the corn harvest failed. Then came Metches, the next oldest sister, who arrived with her six children, who she planned to leave with their aunts in San Juan, to attend the newly opened primary school. That group installed themselves in a newly added room at the far corner of the property, which Angel had built months earlier for his own private use. Metches became quite comfortable there, and though she constantly intended to do so, she never found the time exactly right to return to Belen.

In the end, only two of the elder generation of Perdidos remained in the mountain home in Belen. Constance, Angel’s aunt, if only a few years older than he, stayed behind to take care of his mother, who was growing older and lonelier by the day. The two old women subsisted off their modest collection of livestock and a small but healthy garden, as they slowly slept away the numberless days and nights on the mountainside. Left behind, the woman who had given birth to Angel, and had bestowed one of her own given names on each of his two oldest sisters, Felicidad and Soledad, fluctuated for a time between those two dispositions, and finally settled on the first, wrapping her solitude in the embrace of the happiness derived from a deep and intuitive feeling of completion born of the understanding that her children were, now, better off than she had been.

In that way, the woman and the old mountain home faded slowly from memory. It was not until several years later that Angel awoke from a siesta at the desk behind his telegraph station on one hot summer day, and came to the realization that all the family members of such a mind or a viable age had moved in with him in San Juan, that he decided to return to Belen for his mother and aunt. But time and events intervened, day by day delaying any such excursion, to the point that it would be several years more before he made the trip. When Angel finally undertook the long hike up the mountain towards his birthplace, for the first time in decades, he was unable to locate, among the now unfamiliar twists and turns of the hills, the house in which he grew up. When he had wandered the countryside for three days, and slept two nights under the stars, without success finding familiar ground, he quietly returned to San Juan, and never spoke of Belen again.

While the Perdido homestead in Belen was withering in silence, the representation in San Juan flourished. Felicidad, slighted when Angel cleared her out of her room to make space for his office, and unwilling to continue to live ten to a room with her younger sisters, nieces and nephews, set Anhiel in motion on the building project.

Anhiel was a mason trained with utility rather than longevity in mind, and his works reflected that approach. If he couldn’t remember exactly when the house he built was finished, or for how many years it has stood, he did know that it was completed around the time Don Teyo, the local master carpenter, whose story Anhiel enjoyed telling time and time again, died.

“Old Don Teyo,” one of Anhiel’s variations would begin, “eased into San Juan more than thirty years ago. When he got here, he was already so old, he could no longer remember exactly where he had started from. He wasn’t planning on staying here for long. He was on his way out west to the town of Ocotepeque. He came riding in, from over the mountains, on a mule caravan from La Esperanza. The way he used to tell it, that day he arrived, that caravan went south towards the border, and there was no way for him to continue onward to Gracias, which wasn’t unusual in those days. Sometimes there were no caravans for weeks. You could walk from here to Gracias in a day or two, but Teyo was old and tired, so he took a room on the outskirts of town, near the fork in the road where the trail splits and heads west. He wanted to be near the spot where the caravans come together, before leaving town. He thought that way, he could be informed quickly when the opportunity came up to join a caravan headed west.

“In the meantime, Teyo started looking for temporary work to tide him over. He started a few construction projects here and there. Before long, he got his chance to go on to Gracias, with a group of traders headed west. But Teyo was in the middle of building one of the houses up the road, so he passed. That’s about the time when I first met him. He was eating his meals in Mama Feliz’s kitchen, in that home, that house right in front of us,” Anhiel said, pointing at the old Perdido house. “Before she moved over to this side of the road, Aida used to cook meals there, for passers through, to earn some extra money.”

“Well, old Don Teyo saw me at work on this house, and he wasn’t the type of person to see someone needing a hand and not lend it. He knew a lot about building that I didn’t, then. I was about thirteen or fourteen and had never really built much of anything. Mama Felicidad wanted to make a deal with him. She would trade room and board if he would work on her house. She was still mad at Angel for kicking her out of her room, to make space for the telegraph office. She wanted out of that house as soon as possible. But Teyo wanted to stay where he was. He wanted to always be close enough to that route to Gracias, so he could pack his things and leave town on a moment’s notice when the chance came up. Or so he said. But he agreed to help on this house part time in exchange for the meals, so we went to work together.

“Over the years, that path to Gracias turned into a road. The cars began to come and go soon after. They built the restaurant at the crossroads, and once the road had been widened and plowed, there was pretty regular transit between here and Gracias. Don Teyo watched all that from the patio outside his room by the crossroads, still renting by the week. But he never took any of those cars leaving San Juan.

“The town grew, and so there was always enough construction work to keep him busy. When he wasn’t working elsewhere, we worked on Mama Feliz’s house. We built the front room first, and the walls facing the street to block off the property, and then we closed in around them. Mama Feliz came over as soon as we had the roof of the first room covered, and she brought Aida with her to cook. It was warm and dry that summer. She said she had slept in worse her whole life, and she wasn’t about to let the lack of a few walls keep her out of her house. She was so proud.”

“Once we had the basic parts of the house finished, Teyo took me on as his apprentice, and we started doing some other jobs. As he told it, he had never actually been trained in anything in particular, and I could learn that way too.”

Anhiel remembered when the Teyo had told him how, in that place he couldn’t quite remember anymore, where he had grown up, the old master had been confronted with the necessity to build, or maybe rebuild something, though it was never clear exactly what, possibly as a result of one of the frequent natural disasters that frequently tormented the very poor both in San Juan and in the area where Teyo was from, wherever that was. That informal training resulted in a practical ability to build structures which were just good enough to pass muster upon inspection by the proprietor, and thus for Teyo to avoid most of the responsibility for repairing any defect discovered at a later point, be it ten minutes or ten years. Walking around with the tools of the trade, a rock tied to a string for leveling, and his spade, crafted from a sheet of scrap metal tied to a rather dubious sprig of pine, he had slowly become the local authority in matters of construction.

All the other professionals in San Juan, such as they could be considered, had gained their positions through a similar combination of longevity, tenacity, and sheer connivance. For most of the history of San Juan, professional training hadn’t been an issue. The simplicity of design of village life limited the necessary professions roughly to the fields of construction, agriculture, and food preparation. To that group of jobs, over the last few years, had been added the new fields of school professor and policeman, but those were staffed by outsiders sent by the government.

“Teyo thought the lack of formal training made him less suspicious,” Anhiel continued. “He spoke about building in a way people could understand, and I learned that way.”

“That was around the time they first started sending teachers to San Juan, and they opened the school. But I never went, Mama Feliz didn’t believe in it. At that age I was too old to learn anything new at any rate. Back in those days, people were suspicious of the teachers, because they were sent by the national authorities. This is a Conservative town, and the Liberal government sent them. It was the same with the soldiers, who showed up suddenly to police the town. No one thought a job should pay if it was something that a person could do himself. San Juan has always been safe, and gotten by fine, so what use did we have for teachers or policemen? “

So Teyo was also Anhiel’s teacher, if only in the local sense. And Teyo had also become the town’s expert carpenter, if by chance, just as Angel had become telegraph operator. In this new and growing place, one could be almost anything desired. As the local builders, Teyo and his apprentice Anhiel would do the best job they could with limited supplies and knowhow, and come back and fix what needed fixing later. Unfortunately for San Juan, and other towns like it, the same principal applied in somewhat more pressing professions like medicine and governance. In the face of a lack of choice, presence and willingness was necessarily substituted for ability. Only in the eminent matter of religion was a respectable expert sent by an outside authority, deeply concerned with leaving nothing to chance.

But there was less worry regarding Anhiel’s chosen profession, and there was much building to be done, so Teyo settled into his place. In that way, working by day and taking his meals, morning, noon, and night, in Felicidad’s kitchen, Teyo had lived most of his life in San Juan, day by day.

“With Teyo, I built half of San Juan,” Anhiel boasted. “But we never built a home for him. That is one regret I have. He always planned to move on somewhere else. Even after three decades, to the end, he still planned to go. Mayor after mayor tried to offer him land to build on. But they gave up. Teyo refused to put down roots.

“So in between jobs, we kept working on this place. We built the rest of the rooms you see now, one by one. Aida was making some money selling meals, and Mama Feliz began to raise her pigs out back. And slowly, room by room, we built the house up around the courtyard, as it is today. Aida gave birth to her first child – Oduber - right away too,” Anhiel said, laughing, “to help fill up all the rooms we were building. Then Tito was born, and then Delma, who lives in La Esperanza now- she was Aida’s second, then came Patricia and then Nancy, and there was my cousin Maya with her little baby son…,” Anhiel trailed off into a deep, extended silence. Moments later, as gradually as he had slipped away into his memory, he came back into the present. “As we built, the house filled itself.”

“It was years before everything was finished. And that very week that we finished the back room by the gate, when Mama Feliz finally declared that the house was finished, and we opened the champaign to celebrate, that was the week Don Teyo died. It was sudden - but somehow his death was not unexpected, not to me, or to anyone in the family. We had skipped around, Teyo and me, from project to project over the years, but we were always working on this house, throughout. We knew he would leave us when it was finished. When he saw it complete, when he had spent his energy, he had done what he had come to do, and he was satisfied.

“That day, he told me something I never thought I would hear. After all those years, he said that maybe San Juan was the place for him. He said he felt like he was finally home. That afternoon, he went to his room to rest. When he didn’t show up for dinner, I knew what had happened. He was always at the table just before sunset. But not that day.

“I walked up the road in the dusk, with the light fading like it is now. I found him in bed, alone, peaceful as could be. We tried to figure out how to contact his family, but no one knew. He had never told anyone where he had come from, not even me. He always said he didn’t remember anymore. He didn’t have any money saved, but everyone in town pitched in to pay for his burial. By then he had built almost every house in San Juan. My last job, with him, was to build his tomb, down in the cemetery. I could feel his spirit looking over my work, as he had all those years.”

Anhiel stopped again, this time to behold the setting sun in silence, as it sped towards its daily resting place behind the mountain. It was dusk in San Juan. When the light was gone, Anhiel turned to me and, placing his hand on my shoulder, spoke again. “But I will always remember Teyo by the work we did together. Speaking of which, the kitchen is still just as we built it then. Let’s go have some dinner.”

I would eat countless meals sitting in the alcove of that kitchen, my back pressed tightly against the mud wall. Quietly I would sit, morning, noon, and night, day after day, as this man Anhiel described, but who I never knew, surely did as well, accompanied only by those heirs to the Perdido legacy, at work in the kitchen before me. One rotated meat over the open flame, and another pounded cornmeal into tortillas, their frames, plump from working with food all day, rescued from the darkness by the warm glow from the stove in corner. Sometimes, like Anhiel, I thought I could feel Don Teyo with me there, too. The amateur arrangement of the kitchen, sprung from the minds of those two untrained masons years before, yielded an inexplicable feeling of companionship amidst isolation. Perhaps, I would think in the years to come, the unusual design that placed the dining room in such proximity to the warmth of that kitchen, had been no accident.

Red Cross, Meteorologists to Improve Africa Disaster Response

By Brent Latham

Dakar

23 March 2009

The international Red Cross has signed an agreement with an African meteorology organization, hoping to better predict and respond to disasters caused by climate change.

A cooperation pact signed Monday in Dakar will give the Red Cross inside access to weather prediction and data produced by the African Center for Meteorological Application in Development.

The agreement will allow cooperation between organizations with complementary expertise and know-how, says ACMAD director general Alhassane Diallo.

Meteorologist Diallo says climate change will continue, and likely will happen faster in coming years. He says Africa is sure to be further effected and Africans can expect worsening and more frequent droughts and floods.

The organizations say the partnership is encouraging, because together they can predict problems and help alleviate them. Diallo called the effort a "work of pioneers."

The Red Cross plans to use the data to better predict and respond to disasters caused by the planet's changing climate, says Regional Disaster Response Coordinator Youcef Ait-Challouche.

Challouche says Africa has already seen an increased number of disasters spurred by climate change. He says floods, droughts, and epidemics are all increasing on the continent, and the need to better prepare beforehand is driving the coordination with meteorologists.

The consequences of climate change for Africans will continue to be far reaching, Challouche says. He pointed to the disruption of traditional planting patterns and calendars, and resulting population movements, as recent and significant problems spurred by climate change.

Challouche emphasized data provided by the meteorologists will allow the Red Cross to plan their activities based on probabilities, rather than possibilities. The organization plans to undertake food security programs in areas where the data suggests vulnerability to future climate-related disasters.

The Red Cross and international community are interested in helping Africans cope with climate change out of fairness, Challouche says. While Africa is estimated to have produced about two percent of the carbon dioxide emissions that lead to global warming, experts say the continent will bear the brunt of a disproportional amount of disasters resulting from climate change.

Chapter Three of my work in progress. Chapter Two is here. There's no chapter One, yet. All rights reserved.

3. An Old and New World

I arrived on a warm January day. I remember those first days now as if it had all been a dream. Of course, I had never heard of San Juan or Intibucá those few short years ago, when I first arrived in this country. The serendipitous circumstances that led me out there are, in a way, a much less inspiring part of this tale than the rest. It’s a part I usually just skip.

The plane, a jet much too big for the runway it landed on, slammed to a halt amid the green hills surrounding this noisy capital city. Over the years I have become quite used to that landing, but the first time it was a bit nerve racking. Years later, one plane wouldn’t stop in time, and ran off the runway onto the road beyond, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the eventual overthrow of the government. That is yet another tale that could only have occurred in a land such as this, whose acquaintance I made on that dream-like day. But that, like much else that could be told but might not be believed, is beyond the realm of this story.

On the day I think I remember, the plane landed without incident. I would have taken a deep breath of the cool air, but I was either too anxious or the city air was too contaminated, perhaps both. Descending from an airplane directly onto the concrete of the runway provided a certain sense of liberation and adventure. For an American, such as me, taking such a step has become quite an unusual experience. Reasonably sized airports have walkways connecting the plane to the terminal. That made the runway to me a foreign, prohibited place, to be avoided except under unusual and perhaps calamitous circumstances. I still remember that first step onto the tarmac, as the first into the unknown.

I maneuvered my way deliberately through the customs and immigration areas, and out into the open in front of the airport. There, holding a sign with my name on it, just outside the exit, was a fat, short man who appeared to be about my age. He wore dark glasses and a deep frown, which did little to disguise the fact that he looked quite annoyed. I approached him.

“Allen?” he asked in a disinterested fashion, using only my last name, as if that were all that interested him. “Come with me,” he said briskly, in response to my nod. I extended my hand, but he had already turned and was walking away. I pushed my way through a group of taxi drivers and porters that seemed determined to do all they could to obstruct my forward movement. I hauled my two bags alongside, packed with my belongings for this new life, deeper into which each forward step now led me.

The man who had held the sign looked back disapprovingly as I pulled the heavy bags through the small parking lot. “You should pay someone to take your bags,” he said, nodding at the group of porters following closely along behind me. I shook my head, but didn’t reveal the reason for my obstinacy. I had brought no extra money. My new employer, the Peace Corps, would take care of all the expenses here, or so they had told me. This whole experience, the choice to leave my well-paying job in banking in the United States, to come here to work as a volunteer helping small businesses grow, meant throwing caution to the wind, I had thought. Why change the rules of the game by bringing along a financial safety net? I hadn’t brought even a dime.

The man turned away again and marched off into the parking lot. Weighted down as I was, I struggled to keep up. He stopped at a large, white Land Rover. He unlocked it, climbed inside and triggered a switch, popping open the back. Arriving at the car well behind him, lugging the bags behind me, I lifted the two suitcases up into the rear of the car, shut the back gate, and walked around to the passenger side. The door was locked. The man sat alone in the driver’s seat looking at his cellular phone. I tapped on the window. He looked up at me, again with a look of irritation, and signaled with his thumb towards the back of the car. “Get in the back” I think he said. Though I couldn’t hear him through the closed glass, I understood clearly enough when the back gate popped open again.

I walked around the back, climbed over my suitcases, shutting the hood behind me, and took a seat sideways in a reclining position on the fold down bench, next to the luggage. The man swung his shoulders around towards me, and extended his arm across the empty back seat. “Give me your passport,” he said.

My hesitation to follow the abrupt command seemed to irritate him further. “I need your passport right now, it is the rule,” he said, beginning to raise his voice. “You must follow what I say - the rules - without questioning,” he snapped, again frowning at me. For a moment, I looked at him as he stared back at me with the intentness of a drill sergeant. I conceded, looked down, and, fumbling around in my bag, extracted my passport. I held it in my hand and studied it for a moment. I knew that, as my sole identification, it represented my ticket back, and I wasn’t anxious to part with it. Without it, the reality of being here, perhaps for a long time, was more concrete. My freedom would be limited.

The fat man continued to stare at me with growing impatience. I handed it over. Document in hand, he turned without saying anything. Haphazardly tossing the passport into the glove compartment, he backed the Land Rover out of the parking space, rammed the car into gear with a jerk, and drove, much too quickly, out of the airport parking lot.

It was obvious this man wasn’t interested in conversation, so I stared out the window at this new scenery. Everything, from the surrounding mountains and hills to the litter strewn paths beside the road, seemed so green. And yet, on those hillsides, there was not a tree in sight.

The people I observed from that privileged perch, secure in the sealed and locked rear of that new Land Rover, looked more alive, going about their daily activities on the roadside, than I felt, trapped behind that sterile glass. The freshly washed window panes of the pricey machine created a transparent but formidable barrier, separating me from their exotic lives, as if they were part of a television documentary, and I watching from my living room.

The sun was bright, but I wouldn’t have known if it was hot outside because of the air conditioning blasting on me from the front of the car. The fat man, nonetheless, was sweating. Perhaps from his current state of irritation, I thought, or perhaps from a generally irritable character. I chuckled to myself at the cleverness my insight.

“Something funny back there?” The man asked with frown, glancing in the rearview mirror. “I’m surprised you’ve already found something to laugh at in our country.”

I had no idea how to respond to such a comment, or indeed the coming battle that hastily drawn conclusion would foreshadow. I did know this man’s continued terseness made me uneasy.

“What is your name?” I asked, trying out a basic sentence in Spanish, partly to demonstrate that I didn’t have any contempt for this country I had just become acquainted with. But he ignored my question. It was a simple phrase in any language. I knew I had the words right, but the man just kept driving. I asked him again in English. Surely giving his name was too simple a request to refuse.

“Oscar, I’m Oscar,” he said after a delay of a minute or so, glancing quickly at me through the rear view mirror, as if watching to make sure I wasn’t about to make a break for it. “I am your boss here,” he added immediately, as if he had been looking for the chance to tell me that for some time.

“OK,” I said slowly, finding the addition of those details a bit forced and extraneous. “Nice to meet you, Oscar. I’m Kawil.”

“I know who you are,” he snapped back. “You are the one who has arrived late and made this unnecessary trip to the airport my work, on a Sunday no less,” he continued. So now at least I knew the immediate cause of his obstreperousness.

“Yes, sorry for that,” I replied cautiously, thwarting his obvious attempt to kill the conversation, and my nascent quest for information, there. “But I couldn’t do anything about the airline schedule. So where are we going, Oscar?”

Speaking in English was already beginning to bother me. The cryptic comment Oscar had made about laughing at his country had hit home, not because it was on the mark, but because I already knew I needed to be as culturally sensitive as possible. From the onset, I wanted to fit in. Obligating a person to communicate in my language in their country, even if it was this curious, rude fat man, seemed like an imposition, and at any rate would certainly make me stand out for all the wrong reasons. And it was clear Oscar already felt imposed upon by the situation.

I did speak some Spanish. But my fluency was limited to the niceties learned in classes, and on the streets back home playing soccer with the immigrant Mexicans. It was sufficient to communicate, but not to adequately convey exactly what I meant. Otherwise I might have asked this man, with a degree of subtlety that I only now manage after years here, what exactly was going on.

On that trip, unable to find out from Oscar where we were headed, I first realized the implications of that lack of language ability. So we rode the rest of the way in silence, and I in the dark as to where we were going, or how long the trip might take. It was clear that we had left the city and were headed up a steep, winding road into the hills. As the journey wore on, I shuffled around uncomfortably in the back of the Land Rover, which clearly wasn’t designed for a full sized person. As I was wondering why I couldn’t have sat in one of the many available seats made for an actual human being, we finally pulled into a small, picturesque town next to a lagoon formed among the hills.

The paved road became a bumpy, cobblestone track, which eased down a steep hill, then curved along the hillside. Oscar parked there, in front of a small iron gate, just across from a whitewashed Catholic church facing a wide, green valley that opened in front. Oscar, saying nothing, got out of the car and walked over to the gate, leaving the back door locked. A group of children stopped their play in front of church, to run over to the car. They began to point at me and laugh. I must have looked helpless and out of place trapped in the back of that unusually large car, with the luggage. I sighed and turned my gaze out over the valley below. The view from that turn in the road, which swept across a panoramic vista, was my first of the scenery with which Santa Lucia, perched on the mountainside above the capital, is blessed.

It was several minutes before Oscar emerged with an old woman, her dress covered by an apron, a dishtowel slung over her shoulder. They were followed closely by a teenage girl. Oscar opened the back door, and spoke to the woman.

“This is the gringo that will stay with you,” he said in Spanish. He turned to the girl. “These are his things,” he said to her, nodding at my suitcases. The young girl came forward bashfully and began an attempt to extricate the smaller of the two suitcases. I leaned forward, and helped push it down, where it fell with a thud to the ground. I wanted to get down from the car, to stretch my legs and to help, but Oscar’s wide frame, his back turned to me, was a notable impediment.

Then the old woman stepped up to the back of the Land Rover, casually pushing Oscar to one side even as he continued to speak to her. She smiled at me. “I’m Marta,” she said in Spanish. “Welcome to your home, at least for the next three months, during your training.” She put her arm out and feebly helped me down from the car, and ushered me towards the gate, as her daughter struggled with my luggage.

Those first few weeks went by quickly. Ideally, I would have been slowly learning the skills that I needed to adapt to life as a rural advisor living on my own in the countryside. I would have only three short months in Santa Lucia to prepare, and then I would be sent off on my own to work.

It turned out that Oscar was not my boss, as he had described himself in the Land Rover on that first day. In fact, we shared a common supervisor, a rickety old man who worked from an office down the hill, as the locals in Santa Lucia would say, in the capital. I saw that man, who really was my boss, only once, on a day early on in the training period, when I had been brought to the office for a medical checkup. Asking around, I was referred to a quiet, crumbling old wing of the expansive building, where I found the head of the small business development program asleep behind his desk. Waking up unhurriedly at my unexpected arrival, he pulled my resume out of a dusty file, which he had tucked away in a rusting old filing cabinet. He glanced inquisitively at it for what must have been the first time, and then expressed mild surprise at my work experience. For some reason, his enthusiasm was heartening to me. But that would be my only encounter with him. That he was Oscar’s boss as well explained what gave Oscar the impression of being in charge back at the training center.

As the training instructor in the field of small business consulting, Oscar’s job was to teach our group of six new volunteers in the field. “You’ll be competing against each other here,” Oscar announced at the first meeting of the group. “The best performers, in my estimation, will get the best assignments. Others may have less desirable postings. All this will depend on my reports and decisions.” He paused, clearly for effect, and then began his monologue anew. “And others,” he said, as he turned and made eye contact with me, “will be going home, if I determine they do not fit the proper volunteer profile.”

“You gringos,” his opening speech continued, “are no longer in the comfort of your homes.”

I struggled through those first days of training. As Oscar’s speech indicated, the approach of the training staff that Peace Corps had contracted was paternalistic and demeaning, and revolved around the constantly perpetuated stereotype of the foreigner lost in this complex new world. I didn’t feel like having a babysitter. I had expected to lose myself in the new experience completely, not to be reminded constantly how out of place I was. Most of all, I expected to be treated with respect, as a professional who had come to do a serious job.

But that respect wasn’t forthcoming. If most of my fellow trainees were unsympathetic to my plight, others seemed to fit the stereotype created for them: a group of soft, overeducated, underachieving strangers out of touch with the reality of poverty. Many, happy to accept the defined haplessness thrust upon them, even began to refer to themselves with the forced moniker of gringo. Perhaps it was no coincidence that, among the crowd of future volunteers, the one who I shared most in common with was also the only one who could not justifiably be called, or call himself, a gringo. Miguel was Puerto Rican, and if he didn’t share my opinion on everything, he at least knew how to listen and think independently.

“Oscar’s just like everyone else in this country,” Miguel said, after a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one could overhear, and in turn misconstrue, what he was about to say. We had gone to the local restaurant for a drink, after another day at the training center ended. That day, as on many, we sat apart from the other groups of trainees, an action which aroused suspicion and irritation. But we had important matters to discuss. “He’s just releasing the sociological tension that comes from years of lack of access to consumer goods.” Over the coming years, Miguel’s elaborate theories about cultural misunderstandings would prove entertaining. Here was one of the first.

“Well,” I said, slightly amused by his roundabout tack, “anyone can serve as verbal punching bag for people here. That requires far too much patience for me.” We slowly sipped on our beers, and I continued. “I mean – I need to be an active part of the conversation, if there is going to be one - not the passive recipient of cross-cultural angst that could be directed against anyone. It’s a question of self worth. I just want to get to the point where I don’t stand out, and I can do my work, and just be another person. But that means not letting myself be defined in this stereotypical mode of a gringo.”

“I don’t know. You, and the rest of the gringos,” Miguel said with a smile, knowing how I hated the word, “stand out here.” I stared at Miguel. He looked up, before continuing. “You know we don’t use that word in Puerto Rico. We say ‘yankee’.”

“It’s not the word itself that bothers me,” I explained. “I’m sick of being categorized, and the use of that word is the central tenet in the categorization process. It’s completely racist, if you think about it.”

“I don’t think so,” Miguel replied, unconvinced. “It’s just a simple linguistic tool for saying foreigner.”

“But they don’t call you a gringo.” I had already gone through these arguments in my mind one hundred times, and was glad to finally have an outlet for my thoughts. “They don’t call Asian people gringo.”

“That’s true,” he said with a smile. “There are like four races here – countryman, gringo, black guy, or Chinese. In my case I’m Latino.”

“Right. What I’m saying is the overuse of those words furthers a simplistic understanding of race and culture that over generalizes and separates everyone into large, polarized groups. You can only be one thing, and that thing is your race, as determined by the color of your skin. Everything else about you assumed from there. “

“What I think is stupid is separating everybody into either foreigner or local,” Miguel said. “I’m Latino. I share a lot with these people. But still I’m categorized as a foreigner because I’m not from this country. The world ends up polarized into groups of six million, the number of people this country, on one side, and six billion, that is, everyone else in the world, on the other. As if everyone not from here shared common characteristics. It’s such a small way to view the world.”

Miguel trailed off, so I continued where I had left off. “So this whole gringo word problem is really part of that larger problem of poverty and cultural misunderstanding. Just look at the kids around here. They have all been conditioned to yell gringo at anyone with light-skin. They say the word then put out their hand. Even kids sometimes just old enough to speak. They all know that word. Why do they do that? Because they’ve learned it. It’s a conditioned behavior that’s paid dividends once or twice, earned them a coin or a lempira or two. So by accepting that word, and that treatment, you’re just part of the problem of entrenching that dependence and poverty. I’m not going to be part of the problem I came here to try to help solve.”

“Hold on,” Miguel interrupted, “that’s way too complicated to try to explain to anyone around here.”

“But that’s just it,” I said, eager to continue. “These people at the training center, they are the bridge between us and the people we will be working with. They should be connecting us, not building artificial barriers to separate us. Take that gringo adaptation speech which they’re constantly giving to the community.”

“You mean the one where they explain how we’ve left behind all our comforts, our luxury, to come work here with the poor people?” Miguel laughed. “My trainer actually said we had left our TVs and sofas at home to come work here. It does make us look bad.”

“Right, they act like we should be accommodated for those so-called sacrifices, as if we are some kind of lost foreigners that need help. Well if it is that way, what are we doing here in the first place? I, for one, came to help, not to be helped. And to help I need to be accepted as a serious person, not a helpless, hapless, lost gringo. So that type of introduction doesn’t do anything for me.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Miguel added. “Imagine being Latino and still not fitting in. I mean, I’m Latino, just like them, but still I don’t fit into the stereotype. I mean, I grew up in poverty, not like this, but close enough to understand what’s going on here.”

“At least you speak the language well,” I said. “Try saying all this without being able to express your opinions properly. It feels infantile to the point of exacerbation. It makes me physically tired.”

“You might think the language helps,” Miguel replied slowly, “but I stand out just as much as you do. I don’t know how they know I’m not from here, but they know. I mean, yes, my accent is different, maybe I dress differently, but I don’t think it’s that. I just don’t know what it is, but people here know who is a foreigner – they just detect it.”

“The physical judgment is hard to understand, but you’re right, there’s no way to disguise it,” I said contemplating the problem. “The more you fit in, the more serious you will be taken when you go to work. But it’s hard to fit in, when people are more interested in you as a novelty, or someone that can give them money, than a serious worker. I don’t get it either. I’m not blond with blue eyes like those guys over there,” I nodded at the table behind us where a group of volunteers were talking loudly in English as they gulped down beer. “Sure, I have light skin and clear eyes, but there are more than a few people here with the same features. The guy who works on the bus looks just like me.”

The waitress, who was proving to be a favorite of Miguel came by to see if we needed anything. As she turned to walk away, more slowly and dramatically than necessary, the topic of conversation quickly changed to lighter issues. Miguel and I had quickly noticed that we shared common interests, among others observing the deep dark eyes and voluptuous figures of the women here. While the other volunteers, most of them in their mid-twenties, seemed to have enveloped themselves in a self-contained orgy, it was less than a revelation to me, and none at all to Miguel, that all our social relations need not be with the other volunteers. We finished our beers, and, the sun having set, decided it was time to head back to our respective houses for dinner. “Anyway,” I said, as we got up, “this has made me think. I’m going to take it up tomorrow with the people at the training center.”

“You’ve been here for two weeks. You don’t understand anything about the culture.” It was more a rant than a simple statement that came from director of the training center the next day, when I went to have the conversation that I had told Miguel I would.

“It seems to me like a simple issue,” I replied in disbelief. “It’s not a cultural issue at all. I don’t like being called gringo, and I want it to stop. You claim this is a professional environment and yet you let the instructors call us racist names.”

“It is insensitive of you,” he continued as I gnashed my teeth and squinted in irritation, “to object to a word we have always used to describe foreigners. You gringos understand so little about other cultures. You are the one who is a racist. There’s no way you’ll fit in here if you don’t accept things the way they are.”

“But isn’t that why we are brought here?” I asked, trying to ignore his assertion, and sensing a hole in his logic that needed immediate attention. “To help change things?”

But the fat man behind the desk only smirked in proud irritation. “You are brought here,” he said, “to serve the community and the country. Not to question the authority of people like the trainers, or me – people who know much more than you ever will. If you’re not interested in learning in the way we propose, perhaps it is best for you to go home.” His cell phone rang, and he answered it, turning his large office chair around, his back to me. I got up and walked away.

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Everyday at the training center was a similar frustration. Everyone was constantly being judged and evaluated on what could only be considered the most random and inane of criteria. To exacerbate to the problem, the judges were unfair. Oscar would make notes of perceived offenses in what he called the “permanent record.” Each time I questioned his domineering leadership style, or the relevance of the material he assigned, such as the time he sent us home with hours of accounting journal entries to practice, I would receive a written warning.

One afternoon he called me into his makeshift office after lunch. It wasn’t the first time. “Your fellow volunteer, Sally, who has been doing a tremendous job of cultural adaptation, tells me you have been drinking alcohol at lunch today,” he began.

“That is possible,” I replied, not understanding what he was getting at this time.

“That is clearly in violation of our cultural rules,” Oscar continued. “Public intoxication is not fitting of a volunteer.”

“What are talking about? First of all, I’m not intoxicated. Second, my host family offered me a beer at lunch. They had some extended family visiting. Sally only found out because I just told everyone about the lunch – how good it was.” That had been less than five minutes earlier. Apparently Sally had made a bee line for Oscar with the news.

“At any rate,” Oscar said, taking out the little book where he documented offenses, “in our culture, it is not proper.”

“How can you say that,” I replied, quickly losing my patience, “when it was your countrymen who offered the beer to me? They drank with me!”

Oscar stared at me. “Are you questioning my authority as the boss here?” he sneered. “This is not your country, gringo. Your list of offenses is growing long, and soon I will have no choice but to send your case to the director.” Seeing that I was being provoked, I stood up and walked quickly out of the office. I tossed the light screen door open in front of me, and walked through. The door was much lighter than I had expected, and it slammed emphatically behind me.

“Don’t slam that door!” Oscar called after me. “Get back in here!” But I was already on my way out of the training center.

At Dona Marta’s home on the hillside, things were different. Marta and her daughters had a way of making me laugh about my linguistic inadequacies. They seemed to know, poor and humble as they were, that no one is perfect. They had lost, or never shared, the pretext of pretending to be, from which their professional countrymen at the training center suffered.

“What’s wrong, little American?” Marta asked that day when I came through the gate, earlier than usual, and found her working in her garden. Marta never called me gringo; she had quit using that word immediately, and permanently, the first time I told her I didn’t like it. I had tried to explain why I took offense, in what was still very broken Spanish, but there had been no need. If I didn’t like that word, she said, then it wouldn’t be used in her house.

In return, I became more flexible about other things, like eating corn flakes in the morning with warm milk, after separating out the small roaches I always found in the cereal. I also learned to try to say what I wanted to say, and not to be ashamed of failing, and in that way I slowly improved my Spanish.

Over the three months I lived in that crumbling old house on the mountainside in Santa Lucia, as Doña Marta would cook up refried beans and corn tortillas for me over her wood burning stove, I would stare out the open kitchen door at the blue sky, and down over those green hills to the distant capital visible in the valley far below. And I would slowly piece together her story from fragments of a language new to me. The language she used conveyed none of the trivialities one could learn in Spanish classes, but rather the pieces of lives and events that, woven together, comprised the proud history of several generations of a humble family. That is how I perfected my Spanish, and it explains why my diction and understanding grew to be as oblique as the history of that place where I learned, and those who taught me.

Dona Marta lived as so many others in the countryside, alone with her children. With her two remaining single daughters, who still lived at home, she inhabited the mud-walled tile-roofed house that stretched out intrepidly along the hillside in a straight line of rooms, built in the manner so common in that country, one by one over the last century, as family size necessitated and finances provided. The home had first belonged to Marta’s great grandparents that many generations ago, and she had never known any other. The capital being so close, and growing gradually closer, if not in distance then in time, as transportation and roads improved over the years, Marta’s siblings had emigrated one by one, leaving her, the oldest daughter, in charge of the homestead, which they visited on holidays.

If the house had grown years ago to accommodate a larger family, it now seemed an unwieldy and dilapidated relic of a more hopeful era. The kitchen, on the far end of the hill from the gate, near the outdoor bathroom, gave way to a bedroom where Marta slept, behind a curtain hung from the ceiling, with her two daughters, adolescent Anni and the older, but still single, Jenny. The next chamber was a living room, adorned proudly with the finest mementos of all the family’s generations, including the greatest prize, a black and white photograph, framed in old mahogany with golden trim. The picture, Marta said proudly, having taken down from its perch to consider it more closely, had been taken years ago in far away Madrid, of a distant uncle, standing next to the King of Spain. She could never fully explain the circumstances that led to that meeting.

The last room, the end room next to the small iron gate that opened to the courtyard in front of the church, had become surplus years ago. It was used for storage, and sat vacant until the fortunate arrival of the Peace Corps, intent on renting what accommodations there were to be had in the small and hotel-less town for living quarters for soon to arrive trainees. As such, it had been reserved all those years, as Marta explained, for me, and was painstakingly cleaned and arranged before my arrival. It was furnished simply enough with a bed, nightstand, and shelf. Perhaps the most interesting feature was the door that opened directly to the walkway in front of the house. “All of the older houses had that feature,” Marta told me when I expressed interest in the house’s design, with every room opening to the next and to the outside. “The home is a family dwelling, for all to share, inside and out.” Since no one transited through the end room as they did the middle rooms, that space provided me a degree of privacy that proved to be a luxury. Other trainees, who had arrived earlier, had been inserted into newer homes, where they often shared a room with a number of children, or a single uncle. That was generally considered preferable to the dilapidated old room I lived in, which had been left unfilled until the last, with its stained, crumbling mud walls and arching tile roof above. Everyone who saw it expressed their sympathy. But I was happy in that room, in the house of Dona Marta.

Across the path that ran along the front of the home Marta kept a garden, which she prized highly. With Jenny off at work in the capital below, and Anni in school or lost with her teenaged friends, she spent her lonely afternoons tending its manicured plants and flowers from across the region. I found her there the day I returned home from that heated exchange with Oscar.

“You look quite upset,” Marta repeated. “What has happened?”

“It’s the people at the center,” I told her bluntly, having not yet learned to pose my words in an adequately circumspect manner. “I’m not sure what is wrong with my instructor, but he is quite irrational.”

“That fat man who came here with you the day you arrived? He’s an imbecile,” Marta said, surprising me with her own bluntness. Perhaps she had been drinking with family more after I had left. “I wish my countrymen could stand to have a good job and a good salary and not become like him.”

“You know him well then?” I asked.

“Not so well,” Marta said. “But I know his type. He and the director came around when they were searching for places for the volunteers to stay. They talk down to the people here as if we were stupid, just because we are poor, and they have good jobs. They said my house wouldn’t do, because it is old. Then they came back and said they had a last minute addition to the group, and you would be staying with us.”

“I’m not sure it’s about poverty, they talk down to us as well,” I said.

“They don’t have a very high opinion of foreigners either. He told me that the money they pay me, which is more than enough, would not compensate for the burden of hosting a gringo,” she said, wiping her brow and gazing into the hills beyond the church. “Sorry for the word, but that’s what he said. I remember his words. I tell you this because we have come to understand one another,” she continued, “unlike your teachers, who assume understanding because we are countrymen, but understand nothing.”

“Don’t worry Marta,” I said, leaning on the gate and staring at the bright blue sky. “I understand what you are saying. I’ve learned more from you than from those people at the center. I mean at least the cultural training they give-”

She interrupted with a deep laugh, such as I had never heard from her. “Cultural training? How could one learn from such a proud man, how to deal with people, I mean real people, from the countryside? These people from the upper class in the city, how can they ever hope to teach that, when they can’t do it themselves? No my son, stick to your ways, and you will be better off.

“We may have needed the money,” she continued, “but now I have met you and I can say, I would have taken you in for free, it is not at all as they said. We may not be countrymen, but there is much more in common between the two of us than with his type. Now come in and have something to eat. It will calm your spirit.”

When boredom got the best of us, as it would in that small town over the course of three months, Miguel and I eventually began venturing down to the capital. Leaving Santa Lucia was forbidden by Peace Corps rules. It was a lose prohibition that no one paid much attention to, and we missed the excitement that couldn’t be provided by that parochial mountain town, especially on weekends.

It was an easy trip down the hill to the capital. The local bus made the journey, which was more like a freefall down the steep hill, hourly on weekdays. That ride brought liberation from the frustrations of the training environment, and a rush of exhilaration that came with gaining back some degree of anonymity in the larger, less observant capital. Stepping off the Santa Lucia bus onto to the congested, hazy streets of the capital was like stepping back into the real world, even if that bustling version of it differed significantly from the any world I had known before.

We got into the habit of leaving Friday evening under the cover of darkness. We would spend the night out, returning early the next morning. Marta, when she noticed, never seemed to care. We were also lucky to come across Jorge on one such nocturnal adventure. The night we met him, he was alone at a bar, sucking on a cigarette, beer in hand, much too solitary and relaxed to stand out. It was still early that night, and the three of us were the only ones at the bar. As Miguel and I spoke, in Spanish, as I always insisted we do, so as to stand out less, when we were in the city, the thin figured man eyed us circumspectly from across the room. He finished his cigarette, tossed the butt onto the floor haphazardly, picked up his beer, and came over.

“Peace Corps?” he asked as he sat down next to Miguel, with a level of assuredness more robust than his thin frame.

I frowned. I had already become suspicious of approaches like these. Miguel, always more optimistic about the benefits of speaking to strangers, responded. “That’s right.”

“I’ve known a lot of people in Peace Corps,” the thin man said without delay, as he began to recite a list of names we had never heard.

“Congratulations,” I said sarcastically, already a bit irritated. “We don’t know any of those people. We work on our own.”

But the man was clearly undeterred. “Surely you’ll know some people I know as well,” he insisted. “Anyway, you should be careful in this bar. There are many thieves, and girls who will try to take advantage of you for your money.”

“They might get a surprise when they learn we have no money,” Miguel laughed.

I laughed too, but it wasn’t clear the man was listening to the other side of the conversation. “Don’t worry,” he proceeded. “I’ve known many people in Peace Corps. I’ll keep an eye on you. I’m Jorge,” he said, offering a half-full pack of cigarettes instead of his hand.

Not so interested in either of his offers, having already escaped one level of supervision just to be there, and being non-smokers ourselves, Miguel and I continued our evolving discussion of the socioeconomic manifestations of the unusual Central American circumstances that led to the phenomenon of having a preponderance of beautiful women living amongst a population of short, ugly men. Seeing that we were determined to get to the bottom of the issue, Jorge sat back and listened, and before long, he had caught on.

“I see,” he interjected, “you guys are different from the usual volunteers. You come out for the same reasons we do,” he said nodding at a group of girls who had just come in the door.

Jorge’s persistence paid off quickly, and by the end of the night, despite my continued reticence, he and Miguel were acting like old friends. When we decided to go, Jorge offered us a ride across town for a late night snack of baleadas. The sun was rising as we got back in his car, full and tired.

“Where to now?” Jorge asked.

“Back to the bus to Santa Lucia,” I said. “We need to get back. You know where it leaves from?”

“You’re not staying in a hotel?” Jorge asked. “You can’t go back to the mountains on a Saturday morning, there is too much to do on a weekend in the capital.”

“As much as we love the nightlife in the capital,” Miguel said, getting right to the heart of matters, “we can’t afford to stay long on the small living allowance we get from Peace Corps.”

“Don’t worry, my friends,” Jorge said. “You’ll stay at my house. I have extra beds, and we can buy food at the supermarket and cook it. It will be inexpensive.” As we would learn, there was no sense in arguing with Jorge once he had a plan. He was already driving home, down a road neither Miguel nor I was familiar with, so the matter had been settled.

That would be the first of many weekends at the home of Jorge Luis Raudales, a quiet young man, a little older than Miguel and me, but certainly no more mature. He was a chain smoker and serial worrier, but enjoyed the capital late nights and a good time as much as we did. He also preferred the company of those not exactly like him, an uncommon characteristic in a land of stereotypes. And he did have a car, and a house, which were very useful traits.

Jorge lived alone in a marginal neighborhood, named after former American President John F. Kennedy, on the outskirts of the city. He didn’t like to speak much about his family. It was clear from what he did say, and the occasional calls from the US, that his mother and three sisters were quite different from him. When they called, it was invariably to order Jorge to do something, or to ask about the completion of a previous order. Jorge tried his best to miss such calls, and always preferred for someone else to answer the phone.

That inclination was a manifestation of his general preference to be left alone, and he was quite happy by himself in his deteriorating house. But it was clear from that first weekend that he enjoyed our company anyway. We had to argue to get him to let us take the bus back up to Santa Lucia on Sunday morning. It seemed he would have had us stay on indefinitely.

“What do you think of Jorge, really?” I asked Miguel, as we rode the bus back up the mountainside. “It’s a bit strange how he took to us so quickly, don’t you think?”

“He just seems like a nice guy, looking for friends,” Miguel said, trying to sleep after the previous two late nights.

“I mean, it doesn’t feel quite right to me,” I continued. “It feels like he wants to be our friends because we are foreigners. He talks about all the people he knows in Peace Corps – even though I’ve never heard of any of them. I’m not sure I want friends like that.”

“Let me ask you something Kawil,” Miguel said, temporarily rousing himself from a half-slumber, in the vein of a person who realizes that waking up for the moment will allow them a longer, undisturbed slumber at later time. “All those nice looking girls you were talking to last night, the ones who gave you their phone numbers, you think those girls saw something deep within you that instantly attracted them to you?”

I smiled. “That’s just physical attraction my friend. You know that.”

“Well I don’t hear you complaining about them,” Miguel said quickly. “I can’t see how Jorge is any different. Everything in this world, here - every relationship in this country - is a matter of convenience. You just have to recognize what is convenient for you.”

We wouldn’t get the chance to go back down to Jorge’s many more times. It wasn’t long before I realized that even if everyone else was breaking the rules, with justice being metered out so arbitrarily at the training center, I was putting myself in danger by doing so. I gave up those weekend trips. But Jorge was never far away. He would often come up to Santa Lucia to visit, sometimes showing up unannounced at the restaurant. We learned that he would stay for a beer even when we weren’t there, and he would drop our names when approaching other trainees. Unfortunately for Jorge, he was slow to realize that mentioning us to the other trainees probably reduced his chances of making new friends. His primary motivation, or the convenience that drove him, as Miguel put it, was meeting foreign women, an undertaking which too frequently manifested itself in shameless episodes that would be considered stalking elsewhere. Despite that inconvenience, our friendship would last long past those days in Santa Lucia.

So things improved slowly.

But it was already too late. After three months, when the time rolled around for each volunteer to be assigned his work site for the next two years, the Peace Corps officials, who normally would have had the input of a project manager, had had no other contact with us but that garnered through Oscar. They read his notes.

“We would have liked to put you in a larger city, working with a bank, but we’re concerned about your temper and cultural sensitivity,” the director told me, as he explained the work that awaited me in the remote town of San Juan, Intibucá, with Oscar looking on in satisfaction. “Your training review suggests you may not be able to handle yourself in an urban environment.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, shocked at the news, quite annoyed, and deeply concerned. The Peace Corps had said they wouldn’t put anyone in a place with no electricity, or more without a telephone for emergencies. San Juan, they told me, had a population of about five hundred, was seven hours from the capital by bus, and had no electricity or phone.

“You have a long series of transgressions,” the Peace Corps representative said. “You laugh at the misfortune of others, such as the first day you were picked up from the airport.”

“What?” I gasped in confusion.

“I have told them about the first day I picked you up from the airport,” Oscar said, with a feigned air of concern, “I was very concerned that we passed some poor people on the street and you began to laugh at them.” I remembered that car ride distinctly. I had laughed, but at Oscar’s attitude, and at my sorry state in the back of that car, but not at all at the poverty.

“I would never do that.”

“You slammed the door on me after I tried to meet with you about drinking during training, about cultural sensitivity, and you walked out on the director while he was speaking to you about sensitivity as well,” he continued.

“You have displayed a great deal of inability to adapt to the culture here,” the director continued.

“Have you asked the family I live with about this? They will tell you…” but the director again interrupted.

“We are not going to discuss this further. The training staff has made their evaluation. We are excited about your partnership with the cooperative in San Juan. We have placed Sally in La Esperanza, with their main office. She will be helping us to coordinate your work, given the remote location of your assignment.” She looked at Oscar, then at me. “That’s your assignment. You can accept it," she paused as she smiled, before completing her thought. "Or you can go home."

WHERE HAVE THE PROS GONE? II

Brent Latham - Sunday, March 15, 2009

In my last piece, I asked why the American Under-20 team that has just qualified for the FIFA World Cup in Egypt is still comprised mostly of amateurs, seemingly putting them at a disadvantage to largely professional rivals.

This time I will try to shine some more light on the topic, and propose a simple way to increase the U-20 professional player pool, and improve player development between the vital ages of eighteen and twenty-one.

Much has been written piecemeal about player development in the US. But getting to the bottom of this complex problem, which involves disparate facets, including a willing federation with a highly successful youth program, youth clubs scattered around the country, and a stubbornly independent professional league, all operating in the context of a global game, requires a disciplined approach.

So let's go about it in a methodical way, by first asking how the US is different from countries that are producing global stars, from Germany to Brazil to Ivory Coast.

The United States is, of course, unique in many ways among the two dozen or so foremost world soccer powers. Perhaps the two most important differences are the prevalence of universities as centers for amateur sport, and the corresponding lack of league substructure to encourage professional talent development.

Interestingly, the American system, presided over by USSF, is already doing a world-class and rapidly improving job in developing talent at the Under-17 level, for what that is worth. Having failed in the narrow Bradenton strategy of selecting a handful of young players to groom, the Federation quickly learned to cast a wider net. This year, it brags that over three hundred graduates of the recently formed national development academy are headed to the next level.

That's quite an advance for USSF. The problem is, in the US that next level is college, not a professional league. For young players in the prime of their soccer development, that misstep may represent a diploma and a door to a better life, but it will represent a serious delay, or even an end to, their professional soccer aspirations.

It is easy to rationalize that decision by thinking that collegiate soccer is a good development substitute for the pros, but hardly anyone associated with the game in the US would argue that point for long.

But what about the young talents in American soccer who do opt to pursue a professional career rather than college?

A handful of American youth are trying their luck in European systems. Many of these are Bradenton graduates who have benefited from the international stage of the U-17 level on which to market their abilities.

Also interesting is that more and more Americans youths of Mexican heritage are now trying their hand in Mexico, with sometimes disastrous results for the USSF - such as the case of Edgar Castillo.

The common thread is that at about eighteen, the approximate age at which the best players around the world are moving to bigger teams and beginning to develop into true professionals, the chances are much better and the incentives much greater for an American to take that college scholarship.

MLS recognizes this tradeoff. As part of Generation Adidas, players are offered money to go back to school if their careers don't pan out. But only a handful of players, some of whom are not even American, are offered the Generation Adidas option each year, and those who are form far too small a group to adequately stock an U-20 pool.

It's simply not enough.

Now, if we are going to bring MLS into this discussion, we must do so in the context of what MLS is - a league run by very rich and intelligent businessmen with designs on creating the dream of such types: a money printing monopoly.

It would be easy to declare that MLS should solve the problem by recruiting more American youth players and pay them more, or to make up new rules forcing the teams to do so, but until we have a soccer czar in America who rules by decree - the case of Sunil Gulati not withstanding - a realistic solution will work within the guidelines of MLS to propose an outcome that is universally beneficial. So let's try that.

MLS is a large part of the developmental problem mostly because the owners insist on tediously following the business model of established American sports leagues. They do so because that model works very well, and the story would end there, except that there are a number of good financial reasons why MLS should seriously consider ways to get more young American soccer talents to turn pro at an earlier age.

Leagues like the NFL and NBA, selling still predominately American sports can afford to let the college systems take on the expense of scouting and developing talent for them, without a resulting decline in the quality of play.

But an interesting lesson can be learned from baseball. College baseball, for one reason or another, has never been quite the revenue generator that football and basketball are, and so money in turn doesn't get invested in developing college baseball players. It's no coincidence that Major League Baseball opts to do much of the development itself, in the minor leagues. In baseball, top prospects sometimes pan out, and others don't. MLB casts a very wide net so as not to miss out.

While MLS copies the NFL and NBA on the development front, MLS inhabits a world in which the other American professional sports leagues would love to reside, where its sport is the dominant one, driving millions of fans around the world to spend. Some American businessmen even richer than those involved in MLS, those investing in the Premier League, already get it.

The MLS guys clearly understand the marketing side, hence the David Beckham saga. But they still seem intent on overlooking the player development and market side that has made clubs across Latin America richer and improved their level of soccer considerably.

It's no coincidence that Mexican clubs now frequent the US looking for youth products, and Scandinavian clubs raid colleges and MLS for free agents. The talent is here, it is free for the taking, and MLS is a hindrance rather than a conduit to the flow of the international player market. Agents know it. They regularly advise promising college players to stay in college until the jump directly to Europe rather than get caught up with MLS and their low-ball contract offers. Even the players know it. Younger Americans are moving to Europe, and now Mexico, en masse, rather than mess with MLS.

The only group that seems to be out of the loop here is the MLS. And they are perhaps the entity with the most to gain from American player development, both in financial rewards and improved quality of play. Further, MLS does not need to revamp its cautious financial approach to take advantage.

In fact, the solution to the player development quandary is really so simple and universally beneficial that it's hard to believe it hasn't been implemented. In its haste to copy other American sports leagues, MLS has made sure to put the clamps on player salaries, and that's fine. But it has also implemented one other rule ubiquitous in American sports, with again the interesting, if partial, exception of baseball, but rare in international soccer: a limit to the amount of players on the roster. Doing away with that limit would not only lead to a surge in quality American youth players and the game in the US, it would almost certainly benefit MLS financially.

Right now MLS teams can have twenty players on the senior roster and four more developmental slots. That's a decrease from a couple years ago, after the elimination of the developmental league.

The player cap is the biggest factor preventing MLS teams from taking a risk on young players, opting instead for middle of the road foreign players or mediocre veterans, who may cost five to ten times more than an anxious 20-year old, but take up only one roster spot. If you are an MLS team with only twenty spots and cap space, you can't take a risk on a young guy when a proven quantity is out there. Eliminating the player limit would immediately reverse that equation for teams willing to develop players.

This may sound expensive, but it needn't be, and shouldn't be if the goal is to encourage development of young players. Keep the salary cap, and let more enterprising teams with better management and coaching focus on stocking up on more, cheaper players. For the $720,000 price tag of one aging veteran like Luciano Emiliano, an MLS team could sign an entire squad to a $40,000 a year deal, and invest the leftover money in coaches, scouting, and facilities, then see which players pan out.

There will be arguments that this will reduce the quality of play, but I would respond with the LA Galaxy as exhibit number one that spending money in MLS does not improve play substantially. Why not give clubs the option of trying it a different way and seeing what happens? With larger rosters play in international tournaments is sure to improve as well.

Other restrictions, such as the draft, free agent restrictions, and allocation, need to go too. It is obvious that MLS also needs to allow its clubs to ramp up their nascent development academies, and let them sign, retain, and sell players from them. But the key is the roster limit. It's a simple process of incentivizing the desired behavior. The team that uses cap space on an expensive player misses out on a slew of developmental players.

Of course the cycle of player development, once begun, should also provide some income through transfer fees for new and improved training that facilitates development of new players. But notice -and this is important - that money from selling players is icing on the cake. Becoming a feeder league is not the primary financial driver motivating player development in this scenario.

The MLS could choose to keep the stars it develops if it wants to pay them, and financially it would be a wash. The goal is to incentivize MLS teams to take a chance and spend money on development, not penalize them for it. The teams will then in turn incentivize young players to turn pro, and the cycle begins.

Another beauty of the system for US Soccer is that college soccer isn't going anywhere, even if it loses the majority of its potential stars. College would remain an option for those players who choose not to sacrifice their education to pursue their soccer career, and it would be a developmental safety net for players who are late bloomers or don't make the cut at the developmental academies.

Furthermore, such a system would provide umbrella motivation for American players to pursue a professional career. There would be no need for the MLS, or USSF, to pick out a handful of stars to motivate individually, hoping they turn out to be the best choices over the long run. That means more players with a chance to develop to the fullest of their abilities.

Most importantly, a wealth of young, professional American talent would finally have the setting to emerge, from which the U-20 team could simply cherry pick. That would make the FIFA Youth Championships, instead of a late spring break trip for a group of college players, a legitimate showcase for American players, as well as a shop window to strengthen MLS' bottom line.

The opinions expressed are those of the author only. While others at Yanks Abroad may hold similar opinions, they do not represent the views of Yanks Abroad or any of our partners.

Mauritanian Military to Proceed With Polls Despite Opposition

By Brent Latham

Dakar

15 March 2009

The leader of Mauritania's military government has confirmed his intention to proceed with presidential elections in June. The plan has raised concern among the political parties that formed the government before the coup.

General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz said Saturday the military would proceed with the plan for presidential elections on June 6, saying the polls would be free and fair, and open to all.

Speaking at a rally in his native city of Akjoujt , General Aziz said Mauritanians have the duty to register and to vote for the candidate they feel will best lead the country forward.

General Aziz said Mauritanian politicians calling for further sanctions against the country have already caused chaos and disorder, and now wish to worsen the crisis by starving the citizens of the West African nation.

In response to the military ruler's plan, a spokesman for deposed president Sidi Mohamed Ould Sheikh Abdallahi called for the restoration of democracy.

Mauritanian politicians have urged the African Union to maintain travel sanctions and an asset freeze levied against the military government.

AU chair Moammar Gadhafi, who was in Mauritania for talks aimed at resolving the crisis, said would recommend the AU sanctions be lifted. Talks fell apart Thursday, with Mr. Gadhafi accused by politicians of siding with the coup leaders.

Mr. Abdallahi, who is still constitutionally president, is urging the international community to enact further sanctions. He is joined by Mauritania 's main political parties.

Mohamed Mahmoude Ould Lematte, spokesman for the main opposition party, says a consensus among the parties needs to be reached before elections can take place.

The politicians that oppose the plan say elections organized by the junta cannot be free and fair. They also object to the intention to open the elections to all.

A Mauritanian law prevents members of the military from running for office. Unless changed, that law would leave General Aziz, who is widely believed to be planning a bid for the presidency, out of the running.

Gadhafi says AU Should Lift Mauritania Sanctions

By Brent Latham

Dakar

13 March 2009

Libyan leader and African Union chair Moammar Gadhafi has said he will tell African leaders to lift sanctions on Mauritania's military government. The pronouncement came as Gadhafi prepared to leave the country after failing in an attempt to mediate the crisis.

Preparing to board his plane after spending four days in Mauritania, Libyan head of state Moammar Gadhafi declared his intention to recommend that the African Union lift the sanctions imposed on Mauritania's military government.

Mr. Gadhafi, who holds the rotating head of the AU, also said he supports the Mauritanian junta's plan for June elections.

Mr. Gadhafi says the African Union should lift the asset freeze and travel ban on the military government, led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who seized power last August in a bloodless coup.

Mr. Gadhafi was sent by the AU to mediate the political crisis in the West African state, with the mandate to find a solution acceptable to Mauritanian stakeholders and the international community.

His efforts appeared to fail on Thursday, when leaders of the National Front for Democracy Defense, or FNDD, a coalition of thirteen political parties that have opposed the coup since it took place, walked out on talks. The leaders of the organization accused Mr. Gadhafi of mocking their democratic principles and siding with the military junta.

Abdel Koudousse Ould Abdeidna, leader of the FNDD, said Mr. Gadhafi was pushing the agenda of the military junta.

"Most of the conversation was leading us to accept the coup d'etat as, what we say in French, as a fait accompli, and that we really should embrace that reality," he said.

The FNDD has said they disapprove of the junta's timetable for elections. The military government has scheduled elections for June 6, a date Mr. Gadhafi also said he stands behind, saying the AU will send election observers to assure that polls are free and fair.

But politicians across the spectrum in Mauritania have expressed doubts that elections held under the rules of the military regime can be fair. They are also intent on upholding a law which prohibits military personnel from holding public office, in response to widespread belief that General Aziz is planning a run for the office.

Observers Congratulate Ghana on Transparency in Oil Sector

By Brent Latham

Dakar

13 March 2009

An international governance watchdog group says Ghana is to be commended for keeping contracts in the oil industry transparent to the public. Observers hope the move will help spread the wealth from an anticipated oil boom.

Revenue Watch Institute, a non-profit institute that promotes responsible resource management, says Ghana is keeping its promise to make public current and future contracts in the oil industry.

Industry analysts in Africa say the promise will go a long way in helping the public understand what can be expected of the oil companies and their own government.

"We thought that that was a very important step, and if we live by that promise, it will not only ensure that the citizens will not only have detailed information about what is contained in these contracts, but it will also enable the citizens to be able to hold the government accountable for its promise," said Emmanuel Kuyole, Africa regional coordinator for New York-based Revenue Watch.

Kuyole says the disclosure will also allow institutions like Parliament to play a supervisory role, ensuring revenues are properly utilized.

Ghana is poising itself for an oil boom after British and American companies discovered offshore deposits in 2007. The companies say the Jubilee field, named for its discovery during the celebration of Ghana's 50th year of independence, may contain as many as one billion barrels of crude oil.

Kuyole says Ghana hopes to avoid the experiences of neighboring countries including Nigeria, Cameroon, and Equatorial Guinea, which he says have suffered from rampant corruption since their own oil finds.

"None of these countries have the contracts available to the public. The indication that contracts are going to be made to the public is in itself a bold step," he said.

Kuyole hopes civil society group and local communities in Ghana will now be motivated to push an agenda of environmental and social responsibility from both government and oil companies.

"If the communities are not involved, or even if they are and do not have detailed information regarding what commitments have been made, especially in issues regarding compensation but also around respect for environment, around livelihood and so on, we know that part of the challenge, apart from management of the revenues, are issues regarding development and issues regarding environmental and social impact," said Kuyole.

Ghana, which is a leading producer of cocoa, hopes a profitable oil sector will add to its relatively strong export sector. Ghana's mining industry has also historically been among the most important in Africa.

In January, Ghana celebrated democratic elections in which the opposition candidate, John Atta-Mills, won the presidency by a narrow margin.

NGO: Multi-National Banks Aiding Corrupt African Regimes

By Brent Latham

Dakar

12 March 2009

London-based watchdog organization Global Witness is accusing several of the world's largest banks of playing a role in supporting some of West Africa's most corrupt regimes.

A report entitled "Undue Diligence" tracked the flow of money out of a number of the world's most criticized regimes. According to Global Witness, the trail leads to, and through, a handful of the world's largest international banks, including Citigroup, Barclays, and HSBC.

The report documents the involvement of multi-national banks with dictators in countries including Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Equatorial Guinea. Anthea Lawson is a campaigner for Global Witness.

"By doing business with corrupt regimes and their family members, these banks are facilitating corruption and therefore poverty in some of the poorest countries in the world." Lawson said.

The links between banks and corrupt regimes are sometimes direct, Lawson says, citing the case of Barclays. Global Witness says the English bank maintained accounts for Teodorin Obiang, son of the long-time ruler of Equatorial Guinea.

The report says Barclays has done little to investigate the provenance of the funds in the Obiang accounts, thereby helping the family launder millions of dollars of oil revenue from the West African country.

"This particular customer, Teodorin Obiang, earns $4,000 a month as a minister in his father's government, yet we revealed a couple of years ago that he owned a $35 million mansion in California and a fleet of fast cars that he has bought in France." Lawson said. "The question is what due diligence has this bank been able to do in order to reassure itself that the funds in this account are not the proceeds of corruption."

The report says even in cases where the trail of money can be followed, regulation is lax, and incomprehensive across international borders.

Lawson says the global nature of the banking industry means that banks are often also involved with corrupt regimes in indirect ways. She says U.S.-based Citibank helped former Liberian president Charles Taylor, now on trial at The Hague for war crimes, to launder ill-gotten timber revenues through a partnership with a Liberian bank.

"So effectively what this means is that Citibank, through its relationship with a Liberian bank, was allowing a warlord such as Taylor access to the financial system, which Taylor was using through timber revenues to fuel the conflict," Lawson said.

Lawson says Global Witness wrote to the banks cited in the report, asking them to explain their relationships with corrupt regimes.

"Those that wrote back are not able to tell us anything specific about the customers, because it is all under confidentiality, and this is the problem." Lawson said. "All of this is occurring underneath the usual cloud of banking secrecy that has also allowed banks to destabilize and cause such damage to some of the world's largest economies."

According to Lawson, Global Witness hopes the report will lead to changes in the way international banking is regulated. The organization released the report intending to focus attention on the matter on the eve of this week's meeting of the G-20 finance ministers in London.

In response to the report, Barclays offered a statement saying it complies with applicable laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which it operates, and has a global money-laundering policy in place.

By Brent Latham

Dakar

12 March 2009

Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi left Mauritania on Thursday after failing to bring the political crisis there any closer to a resolution. Mauritanian political leaders have accused Mr. Gadhafi of siding with the general who orchestrated last year's coup.

The head of a coalition of Mauritanian political parties opposing the military leaders who seized power last year has said that talks toward the resolution of the country's political crisis have ended unsuccessfully.

Abdel Koudousse Ould Abdeidna, leader of the National Front for Democracy Defense, said mediation had failed, and accused Libyan leader, Colonel Muammar Gadhafi of favoring coup leader General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

Abdel Koudousse Ould Abdeidna

Abdel Koudousse Ould Abdeidna

"They failed during mediation because obviously they cannot separate themselves from the general. And I am surprised to see a general listening to orders of a colonel. This is a surprise," he said.

The Front for Democracy Defense, or FNDD, is one of three principal parties involved in negotiating an end to the crisis, along with the military government and a third political party that formed the main opposition group before the coup.

The FNDD has opposed the coup since it took place in August, and is demanding a return to democracy and constitutional order. Members of the coalition walked out of the negotiations soon after they began on Wednesday, citing what they called Mr. Gadhafi's lack of respect for the democratic principles they espouse.

"He said for him democracy and coup d'etatwere equal," said Abdel Koudousse Ould Abdeidna. "We believe that in order to avoid coup d'etat, we need to have fair elections, but not only fair election - we had fair elections - and then we need democracy. This is why we have been fighting. So for us, it is extremely important that people understand that it is the population who is asking for democracy and not the West that's imposing democracy upon the population," he said.

Abdeidna said it was disappointing to hear what he called the anti-democratic principles of the mediator sent by the African Union, but that he was not surprised given that Mr. Gadhafi is, in Abdeidna's words, "a man of coups himself."

"We don't understand how come a mediator who was supposed to defend the cause of democracy will help us to embrace something we've been fighting for nine months, thinking that we were willing or keen to accept a token of gratitude from the general," he said.

The African Union sent Moammar Gadhafi, who currently holds the rotating head of the pan-African body, to mediate the crisis, hoping he could find a solution acceptable to Mauritanian stakeholders and the international community.

But Abdeidna says a resolution in Mauritania is less likely than ever.

"We believe that the African Union and the international community should help Mauritania get rid of the general, in a very peaceful way, by pursuing what the international community has decided to do. Other than that I don't see any solution in the near future," he said.

The African Union has imposed sanctions and travel restrictions on the government of General Aziz, and the European Union is threatening to do the same if democracy is not restored.

Libyan Leader Gadhafi Presides Over Mauritania Talks

By Brent Latham

Dakar

11 March 2009

Libyan head of state Moammar Gadhafi is in Mauritania, where he opened multi-lateral talks aimed at resolving the months-old political crisis there.

In his capacity as current head of the African Union, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi has opened talks in Mauritania with representatives of the deposed president and the armed forces leader that seized power last August in a bloodless coup.

A Gadhafi spokesman announced that all parties had agreed to pre-conditions in a meeting at a conference center in Nouakchott, and that a memorandum of understanding for the talks had been signed.

In an attempt to establish a dialogue, Mr. Gadhafi met last week in Libya with Sidi Mohamed Ould Sheikh Abdallahi, Mauritania's first democratically-elected president, who was toppled last August in a bloodless coup led by General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.

The parties, which include a coalition of political parties opposing the coup, representatives of the military junta now in charge of the country, and the former elected government, all insisted on addressing certain issues before beginning talks.

Mauritanian law prevents members of the military from running for political office. One of the sticking points of the discussions is a proposal to open the election to all Mauritanians, paving the way for General Aziz's candidacy. Members of the political class would prefer to see the ban on his candidacy upheld.

Late Tuesday, Colonel Gadhafi led a heavily attended prayer service at the national stadium to honor the anniversary of the birth of Mohammed.

Mr. Gadhafi was accompanied at the service by representatives of all the parties involved in the talks, including junta leader Aziz. It was the first time military and political leaders had come together since the coup. Mr. Abdallahi was the only important absence, having returned to his native village after arriving from Libya.

During the service, the Libyan leader reiterated his belief that what he calls "outside parties" are attempting to influence events in Mauritania, and called once again for an African solution to the crisis.

Junta leader Aziz has repeatedly refused demands from elements of the international community to restore democratically-elected Abdallahi to power. The European Union has threatened sanctions, and the United States has withheld millions of dollars in aid and funds for military cooperation.

The African Union has imposed its own sanctions, and after a February meeting in Paris, called for Mr. Gadhafi, as the current head, to seek out a solution that will be acceptable to Mauritanian stakeholders and the international community.

Slain Guinea-Bissau President's Funeral Raises Questions About Legacy

By Brent Latham

Dakar

10 March 2009

Long-time Guinea-Bissau President Jaoa "Nino" Vieira has been laid to rest in a state funeral in the capital, amid doubts over the future of the country, and the long-time leader's legacy.

Large crowds of Bissau-Guineans and a smattering of foreign diplomats paid their last respects to Mr. Vieira in Bissau. The slain president, whose life was integrally intertwined with the brief and violent history of the small West African country, was laid to rest at the Bissau cemetery in front of a large number of his countrymen.

The funeral was scheduled to be attended by only one foreign leader, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who arrived on a plane that also brought members of the slain president's family, many of whom reside in Portugal.

A handful of other ambassadors and foreign dignitaries were also present, though many African leaders preferred to skip the ceremony, leading to speculation that some feared for their own safety following Mr. Vieira's assassination.

Mr. Vieira had served as Guinea-Bissau's president for all but five of the past 27 years, before his death at the hands of mutinous soldiers last week. The revolutionary turned politician, who played an integral role in Guinea-Bissau's war of liberation from colonial power Portugal, leaves a country in desperate need of stability and reform, says International Crisis Group's West Africa Program Head Richard Moncrieff.

"I am afraid to say he does not have a very good legacy in that respect. Guinea [Bissau] is really a broken country," he said. "The infrastructure is virtually non-existent, certainly outside the capital. Other issues such as security sector reform, reform of the administration, and even democracy and voting issues have not really been dealt with at all under Vieira's presidency, or indeed before that. So I am afraid he leaves his country in a very poor state."

Moncrieff says there is hope for calm and progress after the dual assassinations of Vieira and his long-time rival, former armed forces chief of staff Batista Tagme na Waia. Moncrieff says the peaceful transition of power after last week's upheaval is a hopeful sign for violence-plagued Guinea-Bissau.

But Moncrieff says though events in recent days have been encouraging, meaningful reform will be needed for things to improve over the long term.

"What really needs to happen is the antagonisms and the intense and violent rivalries among the top elite in Guinea-Bissau really need to stop," Moncrieff said. "I think people are fed up with the fighting between the elites constantly dragging the country down, constantly scuppering the efforts and preventing the country from moving forward."

Vieira served as president of Guinea-Bissau for nearly 20 years after taking power from fellow revolutionary leader Luis Cabral in a bloodless coup in 1980. Vieira was toppled by a coup in 1999, and went into exile in Portugal, before returning in 2005 to win a second term as president in openly contested elections.

The constitution of Guinea-Bissau stipulates new presidential elections be held within 60 days of last week's swearing in of National Assembly speaker Raimundo Perreira.

Note: This is chapter of the novel based on my experiences in Honduras early in the decade. Chapter one is not finished and not really necessary yet. I will post the chapters, then take them down, one by one approximately weekly/bi-weekly. This is a work in progress and there may still be some incongruities. I appreciate your comments. All rights reserved by the author, me.

The working title is Description of Service though I have some others in mind as well.

2. October of 1974

In October of 1974, after the excitement of the war with The Sister Republic to the South, the western part of the country had fallen back into the almost unbroken slumber it had enjoyed for centuries. The region had seldom been visited by outsiders, not even in the long since forgotten time of the conquistadors. Out west, the hills, in their role as eternal witnesses to action and inaction alike, rise to smooth, green peaks with none of the silver to be found further east. Nor are those western lands close to the sea, like the coast to the north, where fortune seekers arrived from Spain many moons ago. The fortunate geography helps explain why this land has been left to its own devices for so long. It could boast only, on the one hand, a clear blue sky, merging in the distance with the green hills, the white tufts of summer clouds their intermediary, and, on the other hand, the fierce bands of Lenca Indians, who still defended the terrain even centuries after Columbus, on his fourth voyage to the new world, had set foot for the first time on what would become the Republic’s north coast. For centuries, the occasional light-skinned trader or explorer traveled as far as the capital of the republic, but seldom would they venture west, over the hills, to this land. There was no way to get there, or reason to go.

In the heart of the mild region has always sat a narrow plateau between two rivers, which was to become the site of the town of San Juan. The foreboding topography of Cerro Grande to the north, towering over the plateau, and its sister hills, flanking it to all sides, assured that even after the war, travelers so inclined could arrive in San Juan only from the northwest, onward from the shady backwaters of Gracias. The town of Gracias itself sits at the end of the road south from the large western settlement of Santa Rosa, high in the mountains towards the coast, and the settlement of San Juan onward still from there. To reach San Juan from the eastern regional seat in La Esperanza called for a more than thirty-mile trek by mule over tortuous mountains where temperatures drop below freezing too often. Those who migrated to the town had always come from the other, milder direction, and finding the passage onward, for all practical intents, closed, would be left with the choice to settle in San Juan, or go back.

Along that road from Gracias in more recent decades had come a handful of light-skinned people, speaking an unfamiliar dialect. These strange travelers would arrive in San Juan every dozen years or so, though no one kept an accurate count. But none had come in the years following the war, until one October afternoon in 1974. When the man people say was my father arrived in San Juan that October, the weather was unusually cold.

Spring, such that there is in Intibucá, usually comes around that time of year. It’s not that the seasons are reversed from northern lands, as one might guess when hearing that spring begins in what is usually considered fall in lands farther north. After all, in southern lands, spring starts in tandem with the fall to the north, creating an easy to grasp inverse relationship that is quite reasonable, once explained. It is important to understand, though, as you begin to read this story, that such rational conveniences seldom maintain their power of explanation in places like San Juan, Intibucá. The inverse season rule of thumb, for example, can only be successfully called upon when the seasons have conspired to maintain the traditional order which they follow in the more technologically advanced places where some brand of regularity has come to be demanded of everything from mail delivery to weather. It turns out such regularity is far more essential in countries where people plan in several degrees of complexity more than is common in San Juan, leading to things like space programs, or indoor systems to change the air temperature year round, making it uncomfortably hot when it is cold outside and unbearably cold inside when it is warm out, to the extent that often one is forced to remove layers of clothing inside when it is cold outside, or to carry a sweater about when the summer sun blazes down, as was not uncommon back home in the United States. Such preoccupations may add a desirable level of complexity to the lives of those in places that are not San Juan, Intibucá, but at least in that valley, the weather does what it will and the people adapt without much discussion.

In San Juan life was already complicated enough without concerning oneself with the irregularity and unpredictability of mother nature. To address the issue of temperature control, the homes were built of simple mud and straw. Besides the fact that those materials were all that was available in those white, dry Central American hills, such a construction also provided a formidable and cost-effective insulation, making the interior of a dwelling cool in the summer and warm in the winter, much as the technologically advanced devices of the north do in their areas. Along with the residents’ usually calm demeanor, the mud obviated entirely the need for air conditioning, and the mild climate usually made heating unnecessary as well, all of which was a happy coincidence in itself because, in 1974, the closest town with electrical power was still hundreds of miles away.

Even in the face of such inconveniences, the people had managed to feed themselves adequately throughout the century or so since the cattle ranch on that site had slowly metamorphosed into a town on the plateau above the bank of the San Juan River. The ranch, miles from the nearest large settlements in La Esperanza far to the east, and Santa Barbara, through the maze of mountains to the north, turned slowly from a seldom-visited way station into a small, self-sustaining town. The neighboring cities were known to the San Juaneños, as the village inhabitants called themselves, through the tales of a handful of local traders who would make that long trek over the mountains from La Esperanza, to continue on to Gracias and Santa Rosa.

By 1974 the government of The Republic was opening a paved road that would lead from La Esperanza onward to the capital. Since there were no paved roads anywhere closer to San Juan, neither Felicidad Perdido nor her sister Soledad had ever seen a car. Felicidad thought she had a good concept of what an automobile might look like, though. Only four years earlier, the San Juaneños had been blasted into the modern era when the bombs began to fall. Before that unfortunate chapter of the town’s history, not even those in San Juan who had journeyed across the mountains to far away places, not the mayor, not the carpenter, or telegraph operator, not even the priest, had ever seen an airplane in flight. While the concept of the airplane was not unknown to the small group of more cosmopolitan town residents, the idea that one would drop explosive spheres of metal on their homes made little sense to the villagers, particularly in absence of any news. The telegraph, which, other than the traders, was the only means by which news could reach the village, had been down since before the planes began to appear. That in itself was not unusual, but under the circumstances it had become quite inconvenient that the miles of cable running off through the woods along the dirt track to Gracias had ceased to bring news of the outside world.

For a time, no one came from La Esperanza either. The war would, in the end, prove the impetus needed for the government to fund the project to build a road connecting San Juan with La Esperanza. The opening of a pass running along the side of the mountain range high above the valley, then down across to the next valley, would begin once the war ended and the skies were clear again. But for the time being, the residents of San Juan knew nothing of any of that, or of the war with The Sister Republic to the South that would lead their government to deem it finally necessary to connect the southwestern towns to the rest of the country, in so doing taking a giant step towards ending centuries of regional isolation.

The falling ordinance and general mayhem that accompanied those first days of war was discouraging enough to convince the citizens of San Juan to abandon the village. Don Nicolas Sanchez, the third, the town’s mayor and grandson of the owner of the ranch between the two rivers, fled with his family to Gracias. But the rest of the San Juaneños had no choice but to head for the cover of the caves on Cerro Grande, which had served as a refuge many times over the long history of the region. The pine covered slopes of Cerro Grande tower not only over the village but also the region, rising hundreds of meters above the valley before giving way to sheer granite. Since the town’s humble beginnings as a cattle ranch in a valley among the hills, Cerro Grande, aptly named “Big Hill” in the line with straightforward speech of the people who lived below it, had protected, provided for, and most of all frightened the inhabitants of the valley below. It is there, Felicidad would explain to me years later, that the spirits of the departed go to wander, dwelling in the limestone caves on the mountain, and coming down to the village only occasionally, by night, when they have business with the living. The universal agreement among the townspeople was that the mountain was for spirits and not for people, which made the trip up to those caves unsettling for Felicidad Perdido and her family.

The San Juaneños eked out a meager existence for several weeks from what remained of the corn and beans harvested earlier in the summer, and by foraging on the mountainside. The planes and their bombs ceased to appear after a few days, but the San Juaneños, fearful of attack by land, and in absence of any leadership after the departure of the mayor, remained on the mountain for some time, awaiting what might come. But there was to be no invasion by land. In a twist typical of this land, where the reasonable seldom happens but the incredible almost always finds a way to occur, it turned out that most of the country’s army existed only in the imagination of the General-President, and the speeches which he concocted from it. The money intended to pay for munitions and soldiers that might have made up the regiments the General-President had in mind had instead been used for residential construction projects in the zone of the capital where the country’s leaders lived alongside the most successful businessmen. The war had provided a convenient opportunity to write down imagined army forces by publicizing remote battles that never actually took place, in which great victories were proclaimed, at the unfortunate cost of even greater arsenals of imaginary supplies. A similar version of the same story took place on the opposing side.

So the actual imaginary nature of the non-existent forces on both sides of the conflict ensured that the war was to be as short-lived as it was glorious, which would have been a benefit to the San Juaneños, had they found out in anything resembling a timely nature. Instead they stayed on the mountain clear into spring, which followed summer that year, when they finally decided, timidly as individuals but a bit more ambitiously as a group, to come down and re-inhabit the town. The general disbelief to be expected at finding out that the war had been fought over the outcome of a soccer match, which they did the next year when the telegraph was restored, and traders started to reappear, never materialized, mitigated by the passing of time, and further reduced by what turned out to be relatively scant damage to the town. Only the market and the home of Don Nicolas had been destroyed.

Since the market was rapidly rebuilt, following the more immediate and concerted effort to rebuilt the mayor’s homestead, the Perdido sisters also quickly forgot the war. Their dwelling, which had gradually expanded over two decades from one room to several along the edge of the plateau overlooking the river valley, was intact. From this turn of fortune they understood intuitively that San Juan was now their permanent home. Two decades earlier, a small part of the Perdido clan had come to San Juan, a growing town of still no more than a couple hundred residents, from the hills of Belen, just across the municipal border to the west. In a move that would preface a much larger and more common migration in the coming decades, they left behind the matriarch and the land where the family had lived for as long as oral tradition provided a history, to move to a larger settlement and seek better economic conditions. From the small grouping of houses outside Belen where the Perdido family had always resided in its entirety, Angel Segundo Perdido brought his two sisters to establish a new homestead where the San Juan and Erandique rivers converge, a more promising terrain than those ancestral hills around Belen, where as Angel still says, one is as likely to fall off a mountain as to descend it in tranquility.

Upon arriving, Angel sought out the local patron, Don Nicolas the third’s father, Nicolas Segundo, the oldest son of the original Don Nicolas Sanchez, who had founded the town on his cattle ranch in 1908. By the time Angel Perdido showed up, the cattle business was failing to pay dividends for the Sanchez family as it had in decades past, so Nicolas Segundo had turned to selling land, which the family had in abundance, having been granted “the terrain in the valley of the San Juan River as far as the eye can see from the top of El Pelon hill,” by command of the viceroy of Spain on the eve of the war for independence, when land was abundant as ever. So Angel purchased, on credit, a large, barren parcel in the middle of the town, between the municipal square and the road to Gracias, on a small escarpment overlooking the river where it flows eastward just beneath the foot of Cerro Grande. He wasted no time in planning the home he would build there for himself and his sisters, beginning by ordering that mud bricks be made to construct a small room. Since bricks dry quickly in the summer heat, the foundation of the home was soon laid along the top of the escarpment to form a one room home. Having spent the one hundred lempiras he had brought from Belen on the bricks, Don Angel enclosed the room himself, using reed polls harvested from along the riverbed. Then he roofed the house with mats of woven leaves and as many palm branches as could be found at such altitude. So the family was only a few days without a roof.

The sisters quickly got to work planting a garden behind the home, and Angel sought daily work herding cattle in the hills around town. Aida, Felicidad’s first daughter, was an infant then. In a later era she might have been destined to be educated, and to go on to study in a faraway city. But in that day she was raised in the tradition of her ancestors in Belen, milling cornmeal and making tortillas throughout her youth as a kitchen apprentice. Even years later, by 1974, after sixteen years in San Juan, that was virtually all she had learned to do. Her cousin Maya trained her each day. Aida called Maya sister, though they were in fact cousins, Maya the oldest daughter of Soledad, born in Belen long enough before the move to remember her origins. As the elder Perdidos no longer considered Belen a place with a promising future, that entire generation of Perdidos had matured together in San Juan, either sent down from Belen at appropriate intervals, or, in the case of many of the youngest, born in the house overlooking the San Juan valley. So it was an unnecessary complication to remember, much less explain, exactly how each of the children roaming the house and the street in front was related to any other. The failure to prioritize the process of documentation of the provenance of family members provided the added advantage of helping the Perdido girls to overlook the perpetual absence of any male figure, save Angel, from the home. Long before adolescence it had become completely unclear who either girl’s father might be.

San Juan proved a fertile breeding ground, and Soledad and Felicidad each produced a number of children. Added to the number of children sent down from Belen, determining who belonged to whom was an undertaking forgotten after the time-consuming work of maintaining a bustling and healthy household. So few of the preponderance of siblings and growing children in the Perdido home knew who exactly their father was. At eighteen years of age Aida gave birth to her first child, Oduber, who was in turn presented with the unusual possibility of witnessing the birth three years later of his uncle Tito, Felicidad’s youngest son. Oduber still calls Tito his “little” uncle, though he calls Felicidad his mother, relegating Aida’s role in that three-way relationship to the kitchen, where she gradually turned into one of the village’s renowned cooks.

Adding to the confusion, the lack of a fatherly presence only encouraged the perception in town that each of the household’s children, in his or her own way, seemed to be the result of divine intervention. While the possibility of any such divine conception could be immediately ruled out in the case of Aida, who was course, stubborn, and often insolent, it seemed like the most probable explanation for Maya. Her green eyes and wavy black hair mysteriously punctuated a heavenly face light as anything that had ever been seen in the region, in a land where such features were unknown.

At any rate the indirect approach to defining the girls’ lineage had distinct advantages. Aida and Maya had both understood from an early age that there were many things about the world which they would never understand. Where or how they had been conceived was one of them. It was not that their mothers would ever have taught them to lie. The complete lack of information about the existence or lack thereof of a father was for the pair of adolescents simply a chance to master the avoidance of getting to the heart of matters, a necessary coping skill in an age and place that almost universally refused to provide even the most basic of answers to life’s most profound questions. Furthermore, any inborn temptation to search for truth, and its derivatives of justice and liberty, pursuits which had no practical use, and held no promise of making things any better, was healthily expunged at an early age.

Though the girls could never have suspected it on a conscious level, this socially conservative approach shared by their countrymen would save the family, and indeed the town, a great deal of suffering in the immediate future. Steering clear of the fundamental questions of life, and concentrating on one’s own immediate affairs, could assure that no one ended up in an unmarked grave. The family knew how to not discuss matters, and so the members never crossed anyone of importance, and so it grew and prospered. For each new pair of children to arrive, either by birth or from Belen, Angel would begrudgingly send for the builder to add another room to the house along the edge of the precipice overlooking the valley. In that way the house had grown from one room, to two, to three, to four, until it was easy to lose count of the bedrooms in the maze of dimly lit passages concocted by the local brick-maker turned mason, who doubled as a novice architect.

And as the home and family grew on the escarpment above the ravine, slowly the town grew around it. Paths were opened where streets would one day run. But well before the grid of roads in San Juan had been cut from the weeds and bushes of the dry plateau, the plans for the town had been derived by San Juan’s first mayor, Don Nicolas, the first. Just after the turn of the century, when the Sanchez cattle ranch still occupied the place where the town would one day sit, and the valley still looked as it had since time immemorial, it was mutually decided by the local landowners, of which there were two, that the area’s future would be great. Planning was needed, the eldest Don Nicolas thought. In the evenings after his day’s work on the ranch, the ambitious young man would sit by candlelight over a map in progress, connecting with short strokes of his plume pen three parallel streets crossing the plateau from southeast to northwest, along what would eventually be the main road between La Esperanza and Gracias. The plaza for the yet-to-exist ville he placed in more or less the middle of the map, where a giant Ceiba tree had already, unbeknownst to it, been at the business of marking the center of San Juan, at the spot where the town was founded on a bright afternoon in 1908. For witnesses, Don Nicolas called on the handful of local Indians who worked on his ranch, and the neighboring rancher who had dropped by from the next valley on unknown business, and helped conceive the idea of the ceremony christening the town over a few bottles of aguardiente the previous afternoon.

That Don Nicolas proclaimed himself the mayor didn’t bother anyone, since, for several years, town or not, little happened. Despite that inauspicious beginning, at the urging of the new mayor, the Catholic mission in Gracias saw fit to employ a score of newly baptized natives to build a large church on the square across from the Ceiba tree. Long before its tall white facade was finished, the church was dedicated in the name of San Juan, and as such gave the town its name, which would stick, with adaptations over the years to distinguish the town from other nearby settlements of the same name, largely because of the immensity of the church relative to everything else in the region. Thus was replaced the original name which Don Nicolas had given to his town at that ceremony years earlier under the ceiba tree, which had at any rate long since been forgotten. Even in 1974, the large Catholic temple could, on Sundays and holidays when Christians were so disposed, easily have housed all of the town’s residents below its impressive mahogany vaults, which tested the limits of the local mud masonry. The building had presumably never been filled to capacity, much less in the era when it was built, at which time the presence of entire population for many miles around would not have exhausted the cavernous space inside, even had the locals understood the intended use of the grand structure, which many, still to be introduced to western religion, did not.

The church had been built on the one side of the town plaza without direct access to the main road, much to the dismay of Don Nicolas, whose plans demanded otherwise. Unfortunately Nicolas had been absent on one of his long business trips to the capital when the construction began. Noting upon his return, with a degree of irritation, the erroneous location of the house of worship, Don Nicolas assured that the main path from the direction of La Esperanza was made to lead directly to the small municipal building being installed on the corner facing the plaza, the construction of which he supervised himself to avoid any further discrepancies. The main road was then carved from the plateau by the whole of the ranch’s staff, the members of which were beginning to wonder if Don Nicolas intended to give up the cattle ranching business completely to pursue the planning of the still empty town. Following their boss’ strict orders to the tee, the caused the road to run, as it still does, from the southeast up a hill, and into town, passing the town square, and continuing northwest, where it merged with the track to Gracias. Don Nicolas also felt obliged to order the opening of a second main street to the southwest, lest the bishop think him a less than god-fearing man, leading directly to the church, which due to the space constraints of the plateau ended abruptly at the central plaza in front of the church. The mayor was quite irritated at having to do open two roads when one would have done if his original plans had been followed. To make matters worse, the locals refused to use the roads, since they didn’t lead anywhere in particular, and Don Nicolas was forced repeatedly to order the tracks reclaimed from the infringing bush. This process frustrated the patriarch to the point that he eventually ordered the workers quarters leveled and moved to the other side of the plateau, an action which finally produced the desired effect of increasing traffic along the main road and establishing it as a major thoroughfare, along with a third, parallel path which split the block that was eventually sold to Angel. The path leading to the church was still overrun with growth, but Don Nicolas felt he had complied with his duty towards the church where roads were concerned, and let that one fall gradually into disrepair.

The third path, which led to the homestead of the mayor, would then become the town’s other main road, running northwest for about a mile, directly to the gate of the Sanchez compound, home in Angel’s day to the family of Don Nicolas Segundo, who became the town’s second mayor after the death of his father. In addition to selling some land, Segundo, as he was called when he was not present, also began to encourage the villagers to take over the cattle raising in the area. Having been duly encouraged, occasionally at risk of losing the property Segundo had lent them money to buy from him, they would now lead their cattle up the path in front of the Perdido house to sell to the town patriarch. Don Nicolas had not given up the cattle business entirely. He was now in the business of buying live cattle from the townspeople, at a little below whatever the market price was, and processing the meat to be sold in the town’s market. Due to the town’s unusually stringent health standards, which had been introduced by Segundo after he became mayor, this process could only take place in factories adequately equipped for such processing. It also happened that the only adequately equipped facility, according to the mayor, who decided such things, was in fact an open field behind Mayor Segundo’s home. In that way Mayor Don Nicolas Segundo, as a concerned town leader, assured a healthy and sanitary source of fresh meat and produce for the people.

It was on the other side of that cattle run, in the orange grove between the municipal building and the original Perdido house, that Felicidad eventually began the construction of her own home. Don Angel’s original house had grown laterally as far as it could, sharing a wall with the neighboring homes on either side, and bounded in back by the precipice of the plateau’s edge, and in front by the path to Don Nicolas’ home, which, by the mayor’s edict, was not to be obstructed for any purpose, because of its importance to the well being of the townspeople. So Felicidad slowly amassed supplies with money she saved from selling the meals Aida prepared to what passers by there were, and there among the orange trees, her teenage nephew Anhiel, who had been sent from Belen for the purpose, built, room by room, the structure in which Aida’s children would spend their youth.

By 1974 the path between the two Perdido houses had the semblance of a road, which if followed straight ahead, led all the way to Gracias. It was down that road one cool spring afternoon, soon after Felicidad had completed the protracted move into her new, somewhat completed home, that the first automobile ever to reach San Juan lumbered into the valley under the waning light that blankets the town each afternoon after the sun disappears behind Cerro Grande. At the controls of the machine was a light -skinned man with dark hair and eyes, and a suit to match. In the years since the war, the San Juaneños had become even more disposed to accept the novelties which the outside world seemed intent on thrusting upon them, so there was little reaction to this development, apart from some mild curiosity about the automobile. One of Segundo’s sons, who had picked up a variety of languages on his travels to the capital, was sent for, and it soon became clear that the man inside the machine was something in between lost and crazy. He explained that he had come south from America, an explanation the townspeople considered less than satisfying since America was also where they lived, and it made little sense to them for a recent arrival to departed from his arrival point. The man managed to further convey that he hoped to sell the automobile and move on to La Esperanza by caravan. Having done a much better job, in the estimation of the townspeople, of explaining his destination than his provenance, the mayor was sent for, as the only one in town with the authority or financial wherewithal to resolve such a situation. The automobile being a novelty the mayor immediately realized he couldn’t live another day without, Segundo proved more than willing to buy the car, at a price that, for converse reasons, seemed more than fair to both the parties.

Using the proceeds from the sale, the light-skinned man rented a room from Don Angel, at what might have been considered a slightly inflated price, had there been a going rate for room rentals in San Juan. The traveler enjoyed the hospitality of the Perdido home, and stayed on for what, as Felicidad tells it, turned gradually from a few days into a number of months, in manner quite natural in the countryside. The whole anecdote would have served for little aside from another hazy chapter in the faded and dubious collective memory of the town, except that, a little more than nine months later, Maya gave birth to a light-skinned, green-eyed baby boy.

WHERE HAVE THE PROS GONE?

Brent Latham - Thursday, March 5, 2009

The US Under-20 squad has landed in Trinidad and Tobago to compete for a place in the FIFA U20 World Cup in Egypt later this year, and it is disappointing at best to see that the squad once again is comprised of mostly amateurs, with over half the team still in college.

While head coach Thomas Rongen is sure to come under fire for leaving a number of intriguing and professional options out - especially up front - it is likely that club commitments and other problems - see Felix Garcia - limited his choices, and that the roster for the tournament in Egypt, should the US qualify, will look somewhat different.

More interesting than what Rongen is up to is what the qualifying roster says about the much-debated state of youth player development in the US today.

The FIFA U20 World Cup, and to a lesser extent the qualifiers, is intensely scouted by the top clubs of the world. It is a showcase for talent on the verge of breaking out, earning a major transfer, and in turn a chance for young prospects to develop further in the best of environments, not to mention the occasionally large injections of cash for the team to which the player belongs.

Yet the United States continues to operate on the fringes of this system, fielding a predominately college-based team. For the US, which always seems to qualify and play decently at the FIFA U20 tournament, only to be outclassed in the end by professionals who overwhelm the largely collegiate squads produced by the Americans, putting together the U20 squad seems to be too much an exercise in team building.

While the reality flies in the face of the deeply espoused value system of the American sports fan, as is so often the case with soccer, the FIFA youth tournaments are not all about winning. That's where the Americans are getting the player development story wrong: from the tournaments themselves, back down to the youth soccer system, and on up to the professional league.

The FIFA youth competitions are more about the results of the process of player development, and the further marketing of the players on an international level. Still, it is not a choice between winning and player development. Get the player development right, and the winning will come in turn.

The USSF, and MLS as a still unwitting proxy of American soccer, are missing out on a huge opportunity by continuing to approach the Under-17 and U20 World Cups - and the player development that goes into fielding youth teams - as if the tournaments were one-off events after which everyone goes home and starts over with the next cycle.

This year's U20 pool, a carefully scouted group of more than fifty players from all sorts of backgrounds, comes from a hodgepodge of MLS franchises, colleges, foreign professional teams, and even high-schoolers still with youth clubs.

The final roster for the tournament in Trinidad has six players from MLS, three from foreign clubs, one still in high school, and the rest, the bulk of the roster, from colleges across the land. There is really no rhyme or reason to it, and that's how the qualifying team ends up being largely amateur.

While college players that have represented the US at this level sometimes turn out to be rough gems such as Benny Feilhaber or Marvell Wynne from the 2005 edition, or Sal Zizzo in 2007, there are simply too many players of nearly the same level to pick from. Even for a scout with the experience of Rongen, it is a daunting task to determine which will be the standouts on such a small body of work - witness Rongen's utter failure to predict the rise of Neven Subotic.

Playing with a plurality of college players hurts the US competitively in the end as well. When the competition heats up, the players they will be coming up against, from Brazil, Italy, England, and Germany, are all full-time professional soccer players.

So what is wrong with the US system?

Why is the pool of professional soccer players at this level still not deep enough to pick even half a squad? The simple truth is, despite recent improvements, it is still a numbers game, and not enough professional opportunities are being created for young American players. While small number of youth players are now being offered the incentives necessary to allow them to turn pro, for the vast majority college is still the best option.

The USSF deserves credit for facing the fact that it has been going about player development in a myopic way for the last decade. The Bradenton Academy has developed some great players, but it has long since been clear that trying to pick from across the country at age fifteen the handful of players who represent the next generation of American soccer is impossible.

So there have been strides made in the last few years, and it shows in the U20 player pool. Though this edition may look like a regression from the previous version, which featured such names as Altidore and Adu and was largely a professional squad, the 2007 U20 team was an extraordinary group on top but lacked quality depth. The 2009 player pool features eighteen professionals, of which eight players come from overseas clubs.

With more likely to go pro before September, the US could still field an entirely professional squad in Egypt. Unfortunately, under the current system, further improvement is not likely to come soon. Furthermore, the American representation pails in comparison to the competition, countries which have literally hundreds of professional players to choose from at this age level.

What improvement has been made comes from a hodgepodge of steps taken to assure that at least some promising youth prospects get a chance to become pros at an early age. The MLS' Generation Adidas program, combined with greater initiative on the part of some American youths to move overseas, has been the driving force to a degree in professionalizing the ranks of America's youth teams over the past few years.

MLS development academies are also slowly improving, but teams are still very limited in what they can do with the prospects they develop. Add the handful of promising young players trying their luck in Europe and Mexico, and you get the current player pool.

But these models are still far too narrow and don't produce nearly enough players to fully stock a national youth player pool.

The Generation Adidas program, with its predecessor Nike project 40, has been around for a decade, and has produced some quality players.

But it provides a chance to only about ten young players each year, several of whom often are not Americans. An already small number, the impact is not likely to increase any time soon. Other than moving abroad, only the college option remains. Thus, the largely amateur U20 national team.

In order to produce consistently competitive teams, and take full advantage of the opportunities that youth international soccer presents, there need to be some pretty dramatic changes to the system of professional soccer training for youths in the US, not just the tweaks presently being experimented with.

Next week, in part two, I will discuss a few possible approaches that would change the way talent is developed in the US, and in turn the way American soccer is seen internationally.

By Brent Latham

Dakar

03 March 2009

Following the assassinations of Guinea-Bissau's president and army chief of staff, questions are being raised about the role of drug cartels in national politics.

President Joao Bernardo "Nino" Vieira's assassination Monday brought widespread speculation over the role of Latin American drug cartels in Guinea-Bissau's government and political process. Fear has spread the time may be ripe for the cartels to further increase their influence in the West African nation that has often been called a narco-state.

Economic Community of West African States Executive Secretary Mohammed Ibn Chambas said a group of foreign ministers from the region, due to arrive in Guinea-Bissau, will investigate the possible role of drug cartels in Vieira's death.

"We need to really ensure that some sinister forces were not behind this," said Chambas. "You know Guinea-Bissau has become a transit point for drug traffickers."

President Vieira and army chief of staff General Batista Tagme na Waie, largely considered to be the two most powerful men in Guinea-Bissau, were killed within hours of each other over the weekend. The president died at the hands of a group of soldiers who attacked the presidential mansion following General Waie's death.

Richard Moncrieff is the head of International Crisis Group's West Africa Project.

"We know that accusations were leveled against Tagme na Waie of having been involved in the drug trade," said Moncrieff. "There are allegations leveled at other members of the armed forces."

Latin American cartels have increased their presence in Guinea-Bissau in recent years, utilizing vast expanses of desolate, island-dotted coastline to transport drugs to Europe.

U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime West African representative Antonio Mazzitelli says the drugs are only part of the danger.

"Certainly the major threat that drug trafficking or all other transnational organized crime introduces into the West African scenario at large is the possibility of hijacking and influencing the democratic process," said Mazzitelli. "Thanks to the enormous financial and corruptive power of this money, this is a major concern in a country like Guinea-Bissau."

Mazzitelli says 1.3 tons of cocaine, worth more than $100 million on the streets of Europe, has been seized in Guinea-Bissau in recent years. He points out that most drug shipments go undetected in the remote region.

Mazzitelli says, in a country with a gross national income of around $300 million, the money associated with the drug trade can wreak havoc in society and corrupt politics.

"We know that drug traffickers had at least attempted to directly infiltrate government as proved by a police operation that was carried out a couple of years ago and that showed clearly the way of trying to infiltrate institutions by Latin American drug trafficker," he added. "We know that a number of political and institutionally exposed people have been to a certain extent involved directly or indirectly in the drug issue."

He says though the resource-strapped institutions of Guinea-Bissau are working to fight drug trafficking, incidences of corruption and a lack of institutional capability have continued to plague the country.

"The last case was the plane that landed in Guinea-Bissau in August on the tarmac of the international Vieira airport in Bissau," continued Mazzitelli. "No cocaine was seized, but most probably the plane was loaded with cocaine."

Mazzitelli also cites the mysterious disappearance of 600 kilos of cocaine from a safe at the Ministry of Finance as evidence that the country needs more assistance in fighting organized crime and preventing further inroads into Guinea-Bissau's institutions. He says the weakness of those institutions makes Guinea-Bissau unique in West Africa.

A number of suspects were taken into custody in connection with the plane Mazzitelli mentions, but all, including several South Americans, quickly disappeared after posting bail, partly because Guinea-Bissau has no prison.

"When I first went to Guinea-Bissau and found out that there was no prison, I started to wonder to myself, if there is no prison, what is the meaning of justice? And the very judges I had the possibility to talk with, they told me, look, we are scared to sentence, especially the most dangerous criminals, because we have no place we can make the law enforced," he said.

Despite the ongoing struggle against the drug trade, Mazzitelli says he is optimistic the institutions of Guinea-Bissau are strengthening. He says the absence of a military-staged coup in the aftermath of the president's assassination is evidence of, in his words, the mature approach of Bissau Guineans towards democracy.

The U.N. Human Development Index, which considers factors including education, income, and life expectancy, ranks Guinea-Bissau among the poorest nations in the world. The country suffers from a lack of viable infrastructure, made worse by a two-year civil war.

The war originally ousted Mr. Vieira from power in 1999, after nearly two decades of rule, but he returned from exile in Portugal to win back the presidency in elections in 2005.

Like I was saying about Guinea-Bissau, here's an obituary of the slain president.

By Brent Latham

Dakar

02 March 2009

The death of Guinea-Bissau's President Jaoa Bernardo Vieira at the hands of mutinous soldiers leaves a power vacuum in Guinea-Bissau. The slain president had been a central figure in Bissau-Guinean politics since independence in the West African nation. His two tumultuous terms as president were marked by unrest and violence.

The 2005 inaugural speech of Guinea-Bissau's slain president, Jaoa Bernardo "Nino" Vieira, belied the history of the small, tumultuous West African nation.

He called for reconciliation, wishing social peace and political stability for a country where those characteristics have been fleeting since independence from Portugal in 1974.

In 2005, Mr. Vieira returned from exile in Portugal to retake the presidency, this time through democratic means, after having been driven from the country by a coup in 1999. Then, Mr. Vieira had been in power for 19 years, having taken power in a 1980 coup.

He was elected in early 2005 to a new term as president, which came to an abrupt end Monday when he was slain as he attempted to flee his mansion in downtown Bissau. The president's home had reportedly come under attack from soldiers, though the military denies involvement.

Mr. Vieira's assassination followed the death Sunday of a primary political opponent, armed forces chief of staff General Batista Tagme Na Waie, who was killed by an explosion at his Bissau office.

"The two people who were the power brokers of the country, until they both died within the last 24 hours, knew each other in the independence struggle in the 1970s. So they are old comrades in arms, and I guess rivalries are all the more bitter for that," said Richard Moncrieff, who leads the International Crisis Group's West Africa Office.

Moncrieff says the assassination of General Waie was carefully planned. He says that level of detail may have led the Guinean military to believe that Mr. Vieira was involved.

Mr. Vieira was a principal figure in Guinea-Bissau's long and often brutal struggle for independence from colonial power Portugal. Born in the capital in 1939, an electrical technician by trade, Mr. Vieira rose quickly through the ranks of the liberation army, which formed to fight Portugal. Mr. Vieira trained in China, and upon his return to Bissau, took the leadership of the army.

With independence won in 1974, the army converted into the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Mr. Vieira was named president of the People's National Assembly, and chief of staff of the armed forces. In 1978 he was promoted to the job of Principal Commissioner, a post equivalent to prime minister of Guinea-Bissau.

In 1980, Mr. Vieira orchestrated the coup that would bring him to power, overthrowing fellow revolutionary President Luis Cabral. Mr. Vieira resisted a number of coup attempts as he consolidated power.

In 1998, Mr. Vieira fired army chief staff Ansumane Mane, which led to a civil war that forced Mr. Vieira from power and led to presidential elections in 2000.

Koumba Yala, representing the opposition Party for Social Reform, won office. His term was also tumultuous, and he was swept from office by a coup in 2003, leading to elections in early 2005 in which Mr. Vieira regained the presidency.

But Mr. Vieira's latest term quickly turned sour when he lost the support of the military that had backed him for election under General Waie. The poor relations between the military and the government were demonstrated by lack of cooperation in a high profile drug smuggling investigation last year.

Mr. Vieira was forced to dissolve the unity government last July, after parliamentary elections had been postponed. A pair of coup attempts followed, one of which culminated in the presidential mansion coming under fire in November.

Moncrieff says the president's death leaves the future of Guinea-Bissau in doubt, just months after relatively peaceful parliamentary elections had given hope to the impoverished country.

"It seems that what these events show is that unless you deal with the willingness of the members of the elite to settle their differences you are not going to make progress on the host of other issues you need to make progress on in the country," he added.

He says the dual assassination leaves the embattled country without clear leadership, and Prime Minister Carlos Gomes, Jr. in a difficult position.

"There is a power vacuum. The prime minister does not have a power base within the army. The two most powerful people in the country have died- clearly a power vacuum," said Moncrieff. "There is a great risk."

The PAIGC swept to victory in last November's elections, and hopes were Guinea-Bissau had turned a corner in its violent history. The country is also recovering from a cholera epidemic which swept the country last year, leaving hundreds infected and scores dead.

This is the kind of story that's really fun to report on, because it sounds almost fictional. It has everything, the son of a President and high officials implicated in drug smuggling, confessions on public television, and, of course, the infamous head of the Guinean state, the aptly named Captain Camara.

It reminds me of a story I wrote on Sierra Leone last year. Some drug smugglers crashed a Sensa then escaped, but left behind a cache of weapons. The President arrived at the airport as the investigation was on-going, and ordered them taken to his house, where, presumably, they disappeared.

Anyway, no where is as interesting a place as my favorite West African country, Guinea-Bissau.

By Brent Latham

Dakar

26 February 2009

CLICK HERE

The son of Guinea's late president has spoken for the first time since being taken into custody, accused of trafficking drugs from South America through the West African country. Ousmane Conte admitted involvement in the ring, but said he was not the head of the operation.

Saying he is in poor health and need of medical attention, Ousmane Conte, the son of Guinea's late president Lansana Conte, has confessed to a role in an apparent organized drug smuggling ring that has plagued the West African nation in recent years.

The younger Conte, in his first interview since being taken into custody late Monday, recognized his error in forming part of the scheme, in which a number of other former senior officials have also admitted to taking part. Conte stressed that he was not, in his words, the godfather of the ring.

Conte was arrested after his half-uncle implicated him in an appearance on public television before a nationwide audience. Saturnay Bangoura, younger brother of the former first lady, was detained along with a handful of other former officials of the Conte regime, after appearing on television to incriminate a number of others, including the younger Conte.

Among those arrested were the former heads of the federal highways division, the national police, and the economic and financial crimes unit, as well as a pair of judges. They are alleged to have teamed with Colombian drug lords to transship millions of dollars worth of cocaine through West Africa en route to Europe.

Captain Moussa Camara, the current head of the Guinean government, has made the fight against drug smuggling a primary undertaking since seizing power late last year.

Captain Camara, who took power after the elder Conte's death in December, has said that those responsible for drug smuggling will appear before the nation to explain their actions.

The fact that the suspects have confessed without provocation, and on nationwide television, has led some Guineans and human rights observers to wonder if Guinea's new regime used torture to extract confessions. Some also worry that Captain Camara is using the drug war to settle political scores.

But Minister of Justice Siba Loalmalou said torture had not and would not be used against prisoners.

Loalmalou says the accused have the right to access lawyers, and in the case of Conte, to medical treatment. The minister said the detainees are also free to confess their wrong-doing to the people of Guinea, and ask for forgiveness.

Captain Camara has said the arrests are a first step in imposing rule of law in Guinea. Mr. Camara says he plans to preside over a transition phase leading to polls, which he has promised will take place sometime next year.

I really enjoy talking to Paco and Santi Garcia, the press officers at Xerez. I think they're not used to the international press caring about anyone at the second division side. It also reminds me of those great years I spent in Spain.

XEREZ: ALTIDORE STILL ADAPTING

Brent Latham - Thursday, February 26, 2009

American forward Josmer Altidore is still in the process of adaptation at his new club, Xerez CD, press officer Santi Garcia has told YA.

"He's had a full week of training last week and now this one," Garcia said. "He's still in the process of adapting to the scheme of the squad after being away on international duty."

Altidore was loaned to Primera A leaders Xerez from his club Villarreal, for the rest of the season, but is yet to make an appearance - or even make the bench - for the second division team.

"The decision to not use him thus far is purely a technical decision by the coach," Garcia said, adding that it would be difficult to make changes when the club is playing so well.

Xerez has won its last five in a row, a streak that started before the Altidore loan was negotiated late last month. The southerners now have a five point advantage at the top of the standings and have not lost since December.

The former NY Red Bull standout was called away on national team duty for the Mexico match earlier this month, and played the last few minutes of the Americans' 2-0 victory. Garcia said the time away hurt Altidore's acclimation to his new surroundings.

"Definitely, the time away hurt him. He was gone for a week."

Garcia said the club had not yet been contacted by the USSF about Altidore's availability for the next CONCACAF qualification date against El Salvador in late March, but he said that Altidore will have trouble breaking into the squad if he cannot stay to train consistently.

Altidore will hope to see his first action for Xerez when Madrid-based club Rayo Vallecano, former home to US veteran goalkeeper Kasey Keller, comes to town on Saturday.

click here to go to VOA site and listen to the radio version

Child-Friendly Anti-Malarial Drug Introduced Across Africa

By Brent Latham

Dakar

20 February 2009

A new, child-friendly version of an anti-malarial drug has been launched across fourteen countries in Africa. Health officials hope the launch will help cut the number of infant deaths from malaria, by making treatment easier and more effective.

The Swiss drug company Novartis, in conjunction with Geneva-based non-profit Medicines for Malaria Venture, launched a new version of the anti-malarial drug Coartem at a conference in Dakar.

As the promotional video for the drug explains, the new medicine, tested in conjunction with the Tanzanian Ministry of Health, has been proven as effective as the previous version, but has been given a new child-friendly flavor, and can be administered in child-size doses.

The drug comes in tablets, which are dissolved in a small amount of water, becoming a fruit flavored drink. Children often refused the previous version because of its bitter taste.

Malaria continues to be one of Africa's most deadly diseases for children, responsible for nearly twenty percent of deaths of children under the age of five, according to UNICEF.

Gianfranco Rotigliano, UNICEF's director for West and Central Africa, says malaria is still ubiquitous in Africa, and though adults develop antibodies to the infection, children under five are especially vulnerable. He says that while the child-friendly medicine is an advance, a coordinated effort in administering the drug properly will be just as important.

Experts say new campaigns, including the launch of the child-friendly Coartem, are being monitored closely by health officials. Children must complete a three-day course of the drug to be fully cured. Though the child is likely to feel better after the first day of treatment, the disease is likely to return and even worsen if the full course is not completed. Novartis says they going to great lengths, alongside health officials, to educate the public and health workers about the proper use of the drug.

Senegal's Minister of Health Safiatou Thiam Sy says the stakes are high in Senegal as well as the rest of Africa.

Thiam Sy says malaria weighs heavily upon not only the health of the region, but also its productivity and economic development. Treating malaria in children, she says, is key to the development of Senegal and Africa as a whole.

UNICEF estimates that malaria may negatively effect economic growth by 1.3 percent of annual gross domestic product in the hardest hit Sub-Saharan African countries. The organization says the key to fighting the disease is a combination of programs including wider usage of bed nettings and a more effective distribution system for medicines.

Click here to go to VOA

VISIT BUSUU.COM

Hear the VOA Radio Report

By Brent Latham

Dakar

19 February 2009

The ancient whistled language of the small island of La Gomera, off the coast of Africa, has been driven to the brink of extinction by new technology and globalization. Now, a 21st-century Web company has taken on the task of saving the language by marrying history with technology.

Silbo Gomero, a language used only on La Gomera Island off the coast of Morocco, sounds to the untrained ear like few other known languages.

The sounds that make up this language, used solely by the residents of the island, part of Spain's Canary archipelago, are made by whistling, rather than by speaking. The language, which locals say was brought to the islands by African settlers many centuries ago, has been adopted by Spanish colonists over the years.

To communicate among the sparsely populated inland hills and valleys, shepherds perfected the whistle language, which residents say can be heard and understood over distances of up to eight kilometers, compared to about 200 meters for the spoken word.

With the development of new technologies like the cellular phone, the number of Silbo Gomero whistlers has declined to around 1,000. Many of the older generation of islanders fear the language, which they consider to be a cultural heirloom, may become extinct.

But the incursion of modern technology and globalization that threatens this and other endangered languages worldwide may now help to save Silbo Gomero. Busuu.com, a Web site based in Madrid, has launched a campaign to teach Internet users worldwide to communicate using the languages' unique whistles.

"We really liked the whole story of the Silbo Gomero because it is really a fun language," said Bernard Niesner, the company's co-founder. "It is a real language, people really use it there. The same functionalities, the same methodology that we use for teaching Spanish or English, we use it to teach Silbo Gomero."

Niesner says he and his partner, Adrian Hilti, came up with the idea when searching for an idea for a viral marketing campaign for their company that serves people interested in learning languages interactively. Niesner says one of the founding principles of the Web site was to promote learning languages in danger of extinction.

"If Busuu really works out like we think, it would be an amazing tool for language learning all over the world," Niesner said. "The name of our Web site itself comes from Busuu, the language from Cameroon, which is spoken by only eight people."

Niesner says he hopes the worldwide community of Busuu.com users, numbering more than 80,000 in 200 countries, will take up the call to help preserve Silbo Gomero.

To combat the language's decline, the government of La Gomera mandates the teaching of Silbo Gomero in the island's schools and, with the Web site, has appealed to the United Nations to declare the language a Masterpiece of the Oral Tradition of Humanity.

Busuu.com was named a project of UNESCO's year of languages program in 2008. A language is defined by UNESCO as in danger when older speakers no longer pass it on to younger generations. The organization says that of the world's approximately 6,000 languages, about half are in danger.

Africa is one of the richest, yet least studied continents for language diversity. UNESCO estimates that of the nearly 1,400 local languages, 250 are in immediate danger of extinction.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-02-12-voa28.cfm

West African Health Officials Tackle Resurgent Polio

By Brent Latham

Dakar

12 February 2009

Health officials across West Africa have launched a coordinated campaign to vaccinate the region's children against the polio virus. The campaign is an effort to eradicate the disease, which has re-merged in countries that had been declared polio-free.

Ghana has joined a number of other countries across the region in the renewed effort to control polio, by launching efforts to vaccinate children throughout the country. Polio, a highly contagious disease, has recently reappeared in countries across West Africa where it had previously been controlled.

The vaccination campaign in Ghana includes thousands of volunteers and health workers, who are spanning the country during a three-day effort to locate children and administer the oral vaccine.

Nurse trainee Eva Ewuah is among the volunteers working the neighborhoods of the capital.

"We are doing this exercise for three days. We are starting from today. We are going until Saturday, so three days. We are going from house to house across the whole country," she said.

Ewuah says the campaign is national. In order for the highly communicable disease to be quelled, it is important for every child to be vaccinated.

The campaign is coordinated by UNICEF and the World Health Organization, in conjunction with the Ghanaian ministry of health. A second round of vaccinations, to assure thorough administration of the vaccine, will commence within a few weeks.

The Ghanaian campaign is the most recent in a series across the region aimed to treat 20 million children. Officials in Togo, Benin, and Burkina Faso are also preparing campaigns this month.

The first round of vaccinations is coming to an end in Nigeria, which last year had more than 800 reported polio cases, the highest figure in the world.

Wild polio remains endemic in areas of northern Nigeria, where stigmas against vaccination, including rumors that the vaccine carries AIDS, and that it is meant to sterilize young Muslim girls, have made reaching full vaccination in the area impossible until now.

Much of the rest of the region had been declared polio free in 2005, but cases were found again last year in several countries, including five in Ghana, and three in Togo.

http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-02-11-voa30.cfm

By Brent Latham

Dakar

11 February 2009

Chinese President Hu Jintao will begin a week-long, four-country visit to Africa with a stop Thursday in Mali. Chinese officials say the visit is intended to demonstrate that China's interests in Africa are not purely economic.

Hu Jintao (file photo)

Hu Jintao (file photo)

Arriving in Bamako, Chinese President Hu Jintao begins a week-long visit to Africa with which he will attempt to highlight Sino-African cooperation and relations.

Mr. Hu will be in Mali for two days, before traveling to Senegal, followed by visits to Mauritius and Tanzania.

The Chinese president will join Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure at the opening ceremony for the construction of a bridge in Bamako. Mr. Hu will then travel to Dakar, where he will meet with Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade to inspect the construction site of the Chinese-funded National Grand Theatre.

At a 2006 Sino-African summit in Beijing, China agreed to increase aid and loans to African nations, and the Chinese are helping to finance infrastructure projects in all of the countries included on this week's agenda.

The investments are part of a plan to finish the promised distribution of $5 billion of loans and credit to Africa by the end of this year, Chinese officials say.

China has been criticized in the past for putting profit over people on the African continent, particularly over activities in Sudan's Darfur region. The Chinese ambassador to Senegal, Lu Shaye, says the president's trip proves that China's interests in Africa are not solely economic.

The ambassador criticized members of the Senegalese press for suggesting that Chinese interests in the country are purely material. Lu says Senegal is not a mineral-rich country, and yet China has enjoyed strong relations with the West African nation since the two countries resumed diplomatic relations in 2005.

Lu says China looks to Africa for many reasons, including what Chinese leaders have called a "traditional friendship."

Lu says there needs to be a better understanding of Sino-African relations on the continent. He also hopes for a more accepting attitude towards the Chinese diaspora in Africa, now numbering close to one million long-term residents.

Trade in 2008 between China and the African continent is estimated to have topped $100 billion, a more than 30 percent increase over the previous year.

http://www.yanks-abroad.com/get.php?mode=content&id=4377

The January transfer window has come and gone, and this year has been much quieter than recent ones in terms of Americans moving overseas. Many of America's stars in Europe are riding the pine, hoping for brighter days to come over the summer transfer window.

The dearth of overseas transfers leaves fans in a quandary, especially in the midst of the long MLS winter. Besides Landon Donovan's latest adventure in Germany, there is less to follow right now in Europe. So what's an American soccer fan to do while waiting and hoping things will get better in the fall?

Worry not. This year brings non-stop action for the Stars and Stripes on the international stage to keep even the most soccer hungry fan satisfied.

While the World Cup is obviously the most exciting individual soccer event, the year before a World Cup is arguably a more exciting year for international soccer. For the US national teams, the schedule for 2009 is tantalizing, as youth teams with a good deal of potential join the full national side in a full slate of action.

The US will have further chances this year to earn respect on an international stage, This summer, the full national team will take on top competition, including Brazil and Italy, in its quest for the Confederations Cup in South Africa. The Gold Cup follows that, with the Americans looking to defend their title.

Then in the fall, very promising American U-20 and U-17 teams, if they can qualify this spring, will be searching for the United States' first ever FIFA championship at tournaments in Egypt and Nigeria, respectively.

So American teams will be in action throughout the year, starting with the World Cup qualifying match February 11th at Columbus Crew Stadium. The preliminary stages are over, and the real deal for the Americans begins when they take on arch rivals Mexico in a match that will set the tone for the entire year.

The Mexico match comes at a pretty good time for the Americans. The Mexicans are still reeling from their near-death experience in the semifinal round, from which they advanced over Jamaica on goal differential alone.

Add that a few injuries to top players, and a typically Mexican row over Sven Goran Eriksson's calling of four nationalized players into the squad, and El Tri is in disarray.

Never has a US team been so resounding a favorite over the southern neighbors, and never has the resulting pressure for a result been so high.

So, with the first game that counts approaching, let's take a look at Hexagonal field. While prognosticating a year long tournament with numerous unknowns is clearly fool's errand, I won't let that stop me.

United States

The US can get a result against Mexico that sets the tone for the Hexagonal. For reasons outlined below, I expect the match in Columbus to be as tight as ever, and an American victory is far from guaranteed.

Even if the Americans can't find a way to win, though, there's just not enough quality and depth in this year's hexagonal to challenge Bob Bradley's deep and disciplined unit. The Americans will sail through to South Africa, atop the Hexagonal group for the second straight time.

Bob Bradley's squad, with by far the deepest and most experienced team in the "Hex," can handle the pressure. Experience and poise are important attributes over the grueling, year-long, ten match day schedule.

Those are also attributes that the disciplined Bradley has in spades. Though Bradley has received substantial criticism in the past, much of it from here, he is an ideal coach for this qualifying format. In the Hexagonal, Bradley's ugly 1-0 wins will give the US the same three points as the multi-goal thrashings of El Salvador other teams will post.

Though there may be a few setbacks and moments of individual brilliance from certain teams, especially on the road, Bradley's win by any means approach will be more than enough to see the Americans through comfortably.

Mexico

Even with all the disarray outlined above, I have more faith than most in Sven-Goran Ericksson's project south of the border. By the end of the year Mexico should also be celebrating yet another World Cup qualification.

Frankly, if it weren't Mexico, with their alarmist soccer media, it would be hard to understand what all the fuss is about. True, the Mexicans lost to the same Swedish team that the US "B" team dominated, but Mexico was also playing with the majority of its starting lineup, just called in from Europe. Take Sasha Klejstan out of the American's lineup and the result might have different as well.

Mexico has unquestionable quality all over the field. When their stars are healthy and playing at their clubs, which, right now, they are not, Mexico's lineup is every bit as formidable as the Americans'.

Whether Mexico gets through the hexagonal comfortably or suffers this year depends largely on the team's executives. Ericksson could be out of a job at any moment, even as soon as following the game against the US.

If there is another change, Mexico is likely to continue without direction and will have to battle for qualification. If Ericksson is left to put his plan in motion, Mexico will qualify easily and perhaps surprise in South Africa. I don't, however, think that's going to happen, especially with an American victory in Columbus.

Honduras

Those who follow international soccer closely have great respect for the Honduran game. In recent years, Honduras has, arguably, had as many as or more players receiving quality minutes in leagues abroad than any other CONCACAF team.

But Honduras is traditionally inconsistent, and it has cost them in the past. The 2001 team that came to RFK and handed the USA its first home qualifying defeat in decades turned around and lost two of its last three games and failed to qualify.

This year's team is a mix of veterans, many of who were on that 2001 team, and young stars, some of whom ply their trade in Europe. It's impossible to underestimate how important World Cup qualification is to this soccer crazed nation, and this will finally be their year.

If the "Catrachos" get off to a good start and believe in themselves, they will be the team challenging the United States for first place.

Costa Rica

The ascendancy of a strong Honduran side in the "hex" is balanced by a Costa Rican team less strong then in previous years.

Costa Rica's golden generation, which won the Hexagonal going away eight years ago, and made waves at the World Cup, has slowly tapered into retirement.

Those players have been replaced by a number of promising young stars, but it is not the team of the past. Expect Costa Rica, with its youth, to improve throughout the year. Finishing fourth, they will make the play-in against South America's fifth place team very interesting.

Trinidad and Tobago

Always a scrappy team, T & T surprised some by supplanting Guatemala and taking second place in the United States' semifinal group.

Led by Sunderland star Kenwyne Jones, the Soca Warriors have some fire power, but will find winning on the road nearly impossible.

The islanders have the potential to challenge for the fourth spot and the play-in, but they are a very long shot to repeat their 2005 feat of qualification.

El Salvador

El Salvador has gotten this far only because of the completely unbalanced semi-final format, in which they shared a group with the likes of Haiti and Suriname. This is one of the weakest teams ever to make the final six.

El Salvador hosts Trinidad and Tobago in the first round. The USA comes calling next. If they can't win that first match, it will be a long year for the Salvadorans, one which could see them setting the record for futility by taking less than four points from ten matches.

So mark your calendar now for an exciting string of international soccer action, and take full advantage of this year. That is, up until December, when the crushing reality of the World Cup draw, and the inevitability of another Group of Death, takes hold.

It is six in the morning at Dakar’s Leopold Senghor airport. The African sky is pitch black as I descend the stairs from the cabin of the Boeing 767, onto the wide, black tarmac.

I look around.

A young man in uniform stands next to me at the bottom the stairs. He stares at me with a confused look, urging me along with his gaze.

“The baby stroller?” I ask him, in the best French I can muster after months away. At any rate I can only loosely translate the term into African French. Having had the baby for only a month, and the stroller just a bit longer, all of that time having been in the English – or Spanish - speaking United States, I don’t know what to call this thing in French. Neither does he understand what I am trying to say, it would seem.

“Where is the baby’s little car?,” I ask again, nodding at the infant peaking out from my wife’s arms, as I congratulate myself on how reasonable my request sounds. We checked the stroller at the gate when departing, so technically it should be here now. This plane will soon go on to South Africa, and my daughter’s stroller will too, if I don’t straighten this out soon.

“Move on,” the young man finally says, in a manner as sudden as it is brisk, his deeply accented English striking passively at my attempts to communicate in the generally accepted local language. His boyish face suggests he couldn’t be out of his twenties, but his long, thin frame towers over me.

“I checked a baby stroller at the gate,” I insist, this time in English. The overnight flight with a crying, unhappy baby has done little to augment the patience that I would do well to display.

The young man stares blankly at me. “In this country, one should speak French,” interjects a man standing just behind him, frowning at me sternly. I hadn’t noticed him blending into the black of the night. “Suitcase is in the hall inside.”

I give up, and move on.

Next to the bus to the terminal, there is an older woman with a clipboard. I repeat my question to her, and show her the baggage ticket. She calls to the same man who had just sent me on my way. After an exchange in Wolof, one of the more legitimate local languages, he walks slowly off to retrieve the stroller, after casting a long, serious look of annoyance at me.

Not that there is much use for a baby stroller here in Senegal. I remember commenting to my wife before the trip that I couldn’t recall having ever seen one here. It’s just that there’s not much room to stroll. There are few sidewalks to speak of in the downtown area where we live, at least not passable ones. On the rare days we do take the baby out, I would never trust her security to an apparatus not directly connected to my person, given the way people drive around here. Putting the baby in a stroller adds those extra few feet of insecurity in an insecure land. Here, something as precious as a child is to be wrapped and held close to the body, safe and warm. Last year my wife was hit by a car coming the wrong way down a one-way street, though her injuries turned out not to be serious. The car was driven by the chief of the local police.

So this device now being handed to me, having admirably performed its function in transporting the baby around the grand airport promenades of the United States, has done its job for now. In fact it has already become a bit of a hindrance. I keep it folded next to me as the bus rumbles towards the terminal. When the bus stops, I move it back onto the tarmac along with the rest of our carry-on luggage. Not knowing exactly what to do with it now, I unfold it, and place the baby inside.

But to reach the terminal, we’ll need to climb a short set of stairs. So I pick up the entire stroller, baby and all, and carry it up the stairs to the immigration area. A handful of airport employees look on, less confused than amused. Though they may never have seen exactly this stunt, they have seen similar strange things many times before.

We stop inside, and I pause to fill out the immigration forms on a counter along the side of the hall. It’s not long before a soldier comes wandering along, automatic rifle in tow.

“Bonjour, chief, how’s it going?” I ask with a smile, as he bends down over the carriage, his rifle swinging to one side.

He closely inspects the stroller. “This device,” he asks after a contemplative pause, “transports the little one?”

“That’s right, chief,” I tell him.

He smiles. “That is very good. I also have many children,” he smiles. “Two wives, you know. One is very fortunate to have children, thanks to God, and more fortunate still to have such a device as this.”

I smile as I discretely pull the stroller away towards my wife, and put myself between it and the guard. She takes the forms and the stroller and moves towards the line.

We both know where this exchange is headed. If I allow myself to be engaged for too long, we are at risk of seeing the stroller end up as a “gift” for the soldier’s wives.

With the stroller out of the picture I easily beg my leave of the friendly officer, and, headed for the immigration line, take out our passports. The immigration official laughs as he stamps the baby into the country. “Only American babies need passports,” he says with a half smile, before resuming the serious countenance expected of him, as an official of the Senegalese government.

And so we move on to the luggage carousel, though to call it that is to give it an unearned measure of validity.

It’s here, just outside the weapon-secured officialdom of the closed immigration area, that the real adventure begins. The luggage claim area, aside from the first truly Senegalese experience for arriving passengers, is also the workplace of the most senior of the airport hustlers. A clever breed of men who make their living off the bustling economic activity, and resulting urgencies and necessities, of the airport, they are attuned to searching out profit from the confusion of this overcrowded area. For a price any one of them would make a fine ally in the journey to get out of the airport in tact. Without pay, each seems quite determined to complicate to the utmost this part of the trip.

Unfortunately, for me more than for them, I have long had little patience for buying friendships, and so I usually get into trouble here, much to my wife’s consternation.

“Why don’t we just pay one of them a few thousand francs, and they will keep the others from bothering us, aside from handling the luggage” she always used to say, though she has long since given up trying to convince me.

It’s not that I don’t see the logic of her argument. I just don’t see it as simply as that. First, I tell her, Africans have suffered centuries of colonization and economic subjugation. If this were simply about paying a man a small fee to carry our bags, I would happily do it after the exhausting journey.

But my compulsive habit of analyzing even the simplest socio-economic activities leads me to other conclusions. To me, accepting the imposed services of one of these men enforces the preconceived and deeply held belief that light skinned people arriving from abroad are best, and easily, manipulated for economic gain. Perhaps it’s not a belief universally held across Senegalese society, but it is a perspective the manifestations of which make life as a foreign resident here annoying all too frequently, and it seems to be the fundamental premise of the majority of those working here at the airport, at least in the baggage claim area. And I won’t be a part of it.

Of course my refusal to accept help will not go very far in quelling that general belief. There’s far too much evidence to the contrary here.

On a much more basic level though, I’m also trying to avoid an unpleasant exchange at the end of all this. That exchange will go something like this: once this man’s services have been rendered, and the bags safely conveyed by him to their endpoint, there will be an argument about how much should be paid. Any prior negotiation I might undertake or perceived agreement we might arrive at now, no matter how valid it may seem at this point, will be discarded. No matter how much I give him, he will look at it, then me, and scowl. He does this not necessarily in disappointment at the amount remitted, nor because of any personal distaste or irritation with me, but rather as part of a rational and functional plan to get paid more. When I give him more I will then be seen by him, implicitly of course, as the light skinned foreigner to whom money means so little that I am willing to give more on top of the outrageous amount I already paid for simply carrying my bags for me. And still, there will be no way that, after contracting his services, I can make him go away happy.

I don’t want to get into that situation. So I carry my own bags.

But how to coherently and quickly explain such a relatively complex and unfortunate socio-economic structure to the man who, seeing me taking the bags one by one off the carousel, is now grabbing at my suitcases without any consent whatsoever, as if sent specifically from some bag-handlers’ headquarters to help me with my luggage?

“No, no,” I say, quickly waving a finger at him. He’s unfazed by my resistance, and moves quickly on to the next target, a light-skinned man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, who looks to have gotten off the plane in the wrong city. The presumably Hawaiian man looks on perplexed as this stranger rearranges his luggage.

I shoo a second “helper” away as I roll the overloaded baggage cart towards the customs area. The jilted attendant scowls at me. My theories are reinforced by the rapidity with which his feigned friendliness turns to anger as the realization that, despite my light skin, I am not the equivalent of an ATM, sets in.

The man makes a spiteful but half-spirited attempt to block my progress, but I bump him out of the way with the luggage cart, and proceed towards the x-ray machines at the customs area.

These machines are the final step to freedom from the airport bureaucracy. I’ve never been sure exactly what they serve for, except of course to x-ray the luggage, though usually the attendant is paying scant attention to the results. I have never been stopped or questioned, no matter the contents of my bags, but perhaps that is special treatment as well. An acquaintance, a political activist and strong critic of the government, tells me he has had his anti-government books confiscated here several times, though his story is never quite the same, and he has never properly described how an x-ray could identify potentially slanderous material, though I suppose there are plausible explanations.

At any rate, if we can navigate the traffic jam in between us and the machines, made all the worse by the unorthodox form of line-making that anyone who has travelled in a developing country will be familiar with, then we will be out in the open.

Unfortunately no one seems to recognize the purpose of the baby stroller, and it takes a few bumps from other luggage carts as my wife pushes it ahead. Fortunately our daughter seems to think this is all a game, and she looks about excitedly at the hubbub surrounding her, like a little queen on tour in her carriage.

Before long, after emptying the luggage onto the x-ray machine, then stacking it once more on the cart, we’re through, safely, to the outside world. Just outside the baggage claim, a perimeter has been fenced off, to be used only by airport patrons. Here, only the hustlers with the wherewithal to pay off the police that guard the perimeter can get in, so despite the still numerous taxi drivers and bag handlers in the way, we manage to find the driver who has been sent by my wife’s employer.

But he, and the car he has brought, are on the outside of the perimeter, and we will need to be too, with our luggage, if we are to get home and get some rest.

I wheel the luggage, and my wife the baby, close to the gate which provides the only exit from the relative safety of the perimeter.

Here, where the gate opens to the street in front of the airport, an army of hustlers stands in waiting. These are the airport’s final line of defense, and it will be our last, but most difficult test. Mostly teenagers without the means or experience to get closer in, they are the economic scavengers of the airport hustler set, picking off the remains that those inside have left. But, like any good apprentice, they have learned all the tricks of the trade. An armed guard keeps them at bay, but only menially. If we are to get to where the chauffeur waits, just beyond, we must get past them.

They see us coming from many yards away. The group, in a semi-circle blocking the exit, starts to bustle about in anticipation. It is here that having contracted one of the baggage handlers inside would have been best. He would have kept them at bay. Of course I could just pay these boys to get out of the way, or even to help, but what kind of a lesson would that be for these youths?

I tell my wife to wait as I take the bags out one by one. Only a narrow street now separates us from the car.

I grab the first two suitcases and head towards the wall of boys blocking the entrance. I head straight into them. The wall gives way partially, and I am out onto the street. As I move I am surrounded by a fluid sea of adolescents anxious to discover my needs. I remember how nice it is be in a country with a culture where open thievery is so deeply scorned. One less worry.

“Taxi?,” a few of the boys ask in an a capella chorus, as others try to deftly pry the bags from me, to help with the remaining five feet of the journey. I push them gently away, but they follow intently.

As I lift the bags into the car, a young man puts his hand under one and does his best to help shove it into the trunk, but instead knocks it onto the ground. A few other boys scramble to help me pick it up again and place it in the trunk. Then the first boy puts out his hand. Our driver berates him in Wolof as he secures the baggage.

I push my way back across the street, avoiding the passing cars and spinning around the boys, who constantly seem to be contriving to block my path.

Back inside, I pick up the other two bags. In much the same way as before, I manage to get them across the street and into the car. Now just my wife, and the baby, remain on the wrong side of the fence.

She has already started across the street pushing the baby stroller. One of the younger boys darts towards the baby carriage, and with a jerk, snatches the handle and begins to pick it up recklessly.

I lurch over to the carriage and push him away. He shoves me as hard as his little arms can push. “Bad, bad, person,” he cries disapprovingly, but the other boys are on him in a flash. One of them clobbers the boy across the side of the head. They won’t let the situation get out control. Their position here, and their economic well-being, depends on respecting a certain level of civility.

I use the respite to usher my wife and the baby to the car. With them safely inside, we are ready to go. Several of the boys have now reappeared next to the passenger door, pushed up close to me, hands out. They still require payment for this hassle.

I spot the boy who separated his younger companion from the baby carriage. I reach in my pocket and find a coin worth five hundred West African francs, more than a dollar. It’s far too much, and I realize that by giving it to him, I am incentivizing the counterproductive behavior these boys have just displayed. If everyone would stop paying to be hassled, the airport would become a much more civil place very quickly. But I’m still searching for that middle ground.

I give the boy the coin, knowing it will be shared among the group. He looks at it with a frown. “Very small,” he says, and extends his hand again. But I’m not wiling to negotiate further.

“Bad person,” he yells at me as I wedge myself through the door and into the car. I’m not surprised by his assessment of me.

“Let’s go,” I say to the driver. “It’s quite difficult to negotiate these airport crowds,” I say, a bit saddened and disappointed, as many times before, to have still not found a more agreeable approach to the airport arrival.

“You should just ignore them,” the driver says. But I know there’s no dignity in that for anyone.

http://www.yanks-abroad.com/get.php?mode=content&id=4315

The news that Borussia Dortmund defender Neven Subotic has chosen to play for Serbia came as little surprise to those close to the situation.

Subotic has rebuffed continued overtures from the USSF ever since Under-20 coach Thomas Rongen decided to criticize Subotic on top of dropping him from the Under 20 squad that made the quarterfinals in Canada in 2007.

So when Subotic finally wrote US soccer to tell them he had chosen the nation of his cultural heritage over his adopted homeland, the announcement provoked more self-evaluation than shock.

What went wrong, and when, will be a subject for debate for years to come, especially if Subotic, who just turned 20, continues on the fast track to stardom. All signs indicate that he will, which will in turn be a thorn in the side of US soccer fans for years to come.

Compared to the fervor over previous defections, especially the other highest profile case of Italian-American forward Giuseppe Rossi, the Subotic decision has been met with equanimity. But, in many ways, losing Subotic is much harder to swallow.

While Rossi was born in the US, his Italian father moved him to Italy in his teens to train there. He signed a professional contract in Italy, always wanted to play for the Azzurri, and is largely a product of the Italian soccer system.

Subotic's career, on the other hand, is a largely American story.

His family moved from war torn Bosnia to Germany, then on to the US (when Germany kicked them out) when he was still in his formative years. Subotic, unlike his teammates on the 2005 U-17 quarterfinalists, was not a blue chip youth prospect, but rather was plucked from the parks of Bradenton, where his family moved so his sister could pursue a tennis career, and melded into the squad that finished as quarterfinalists in Peru.

That 2005 tournament in Peru was a coming of age for Subotic, and soon after he impressed in a trial for Mainz, he was on his way from South Florida to Germany. The rest is history.

Sufficed to say Subotic, arguably, has developed into an international star at a faster pace than any field player in US history, with perhaps the exception of Rossi. But the fact that Subotic would never have reached his potential so quickly without the help of the USSF makes this situation much more difficult to swallow.

The fact is, whether fans are willing to admit it or not, the US could use Subotic over the long term, just as it could have used Rossi, or New Mexico native and Mexican international Edgar Castillo.

It could be argued that those three represent more than 25% of the would-be US starting line-up for the 2010 World Cup. Even if you think Oguchi Onyewu and Carlos Bocanegra are superior players at this point, it is impossible to argue that Subotic would not have been among the most important figures in the squad over the next decade.

There is little evidence that the US will soon produce more players of Subotic's quality. The US' next best young central defender is Chad Marshall, who is not only nearly five years older than Subotic, but by comparison recently tried out for the role he vacated at Mainz, and was not offered a contract.

Maryland product Omar Gonzalez is on everyone's radar screen as he heads for MLS, but he is still raw, and was on the U-17 team in 2005 with Subotic, which gives a sense of their relative achievement thus far.

All this understandably makes many American fans furious, and the easy way out is to blame Subotic or Thomas Rongen.

Until Subotic decides to speak to the media about his decision, something he has steadfastly refused to do, we can only speculate about why he chose Serbia, a country for which he will still have to solicit a passport (he has never lived there).

A few months ago, I wrote generally about why dual national Americans would choose to play for another country. A primary reason would be fame in the other country, and Subotic promises to become a very famous Serb. But, in this case, I don't think that was his primary motivation.

In Peru in 2005, I had the chance to sit down with Neven at length for a story I wrote for YA about the team. The story was about the diversity of heritage of the members of that team, whose parents came from over a dozen different countries.

Despite that diversity, the team appeared to be unified, but Subotic was a bit more of a loner. He also struck me as a principled, intelligent, straight-forward young man who was very proud, perhaps more than the other players, to represent the United States, and not afraid to say so.

Neven was frustrated only when some of his Latino teammates spoke to each other in Spanish. He explained that he and others felt excluded. Perhaps Neven longed more than the others for a sense of belonging, after having been uprooted so many times as a youth.

It did look like he had found that in his American teammates. After the final match for the team at that tournament, a disappointing 2-0 loss to Holland in which the US suffered from horrendous officiating and Subotic saw a second half red card, the defender intimated that he felt the referee was “anti-American.” To me, that indicated a strong sense of identity with the stars and stripes.

Subotic seemed in many ways to be, in essence, a typical American teenager, apart from his proficiency in the beautiful game. Given that, combined with his words a few years ago that playing for another national team would, to him, amount to being a traitor, I was surprised to see Subotic give up his US jersey.

I am sure Neven Subotic still feels a strong loyalty to America, and would have liked to join the team. When Rongen cut him from the U-20 squad, it was an opening for others, perhaps his family included, to convince him to renounce that loyalty in favor of their heritage. And being cut was probably a deeper blow than many realized at the time.

When Rongen cut Subotic from the U-20 team, he also, unknowingly, separated him from a group to which he felt a deep sense of belonging. And he cut Neven's strongest tie to America.

That is a shame on a personal level, but in soccer there is little room for hurt feelings. It is especially a shame considering the mediocre defenders that were on that U-20 roster, and how far behind Subotic they are in their development.

It would seem, though, that the experience has made Subotic a better soccer player in the end, even if that was, in many senses, at the expense of the USSF. At this point, the only reasonable option for the USSF is to try to avoid letting this happen again.

On the American side, it does look as if the USSF has learned from this error, as egregious and harmful as it may be, given their perhaps premature efforts to call in Francisco Torres.

In the meantime, the USSF, and Rongen himself, continue to look far and wide for players with potential and American roots, who might one day develop into a Premier League or Bundesliga defender. Every U-20 roster these days seems to produce a new unknown from the depths of some European team's roster. Perhaps in the future it would be best to start with the guys already on the team.