smacky and bucky

I got an email from a friend from my Peace Corps days the other day, and it brought back a lot of memories. It's amazing that very few of those memories had to do with my JOB over there (teaching English). Rather, I remembered sitting in a plastic chair, at a plastic table in the dirt, the sun setting, music playing on the radio on the counter, a beer in front of me, and just feeling completely contented. Nowhere to be, nothing to do. The students were in the second month of their strike, and the university was still being kept closed by soldiers with machine guns. Despite all this, I was very relaxed, and felt completely safe, and was just waiting for friends to show up. Living on African time is a lot like living on island time. Being "on time" meant getting there within 30 minutes of the agreed-upon time. The biggest decision of the day was whether to order the fish or the chicken (those being the only two choices). Just sitting there with eyes half closed, feeling the harmitan (the hot wind that rolls down from the Sahara), and not worrying about a thing. Not thinking about loves lost, or missed opportunities, or want of anything material. The sandals on my feet causing tan lines in February. During the strike it was a long series of days with just me, my bicycle, and a paperback. I read the entire Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald during the strike. And I rode lazy circuits in the heat around the city, stopping to chat with the guy who sold the bootleg cassettes, or the woman who made the omelet sandwiches.