African Silences Read Free Page A

that has come about through enforced exposure to the white man’s way.
    It is midday, very hot. We head west on the red dusty road to Velingara, in a landscape desiccated by the desert winds.
    At Kolda, near the Guinea-Bissau border, the road enters a green tropic of banana groves, oil-palm plantations, and rice paddies like bright green glades among the huge boles of the gallery forest. Here the villages are prospering and the road is surfaced, and Baba Sow is driving hard again, one hand perched upon the horn. Repeatedly we ask him to slow down; there are too many goats and cattle on the road to drive so fast. But very soon he regains his speed, turning his head incessantly to address his passengers, and eventually a steer jumps out in front of him. Gil Boese yells a warning, and he swerves, brakes shrieking—BOOM!—a hateful jolt of metal upon flesh, a sprinkling of breaking glass as the heavy carcass looms, cracking the windshield, then spins, still kicking, into the ditch, its head wide-eyed on the road shoulder.
    The car stops and its door creaks loudly as Baba Sow gets out; he inspects his car, ignoring the dying steer. A startled man in yellow rags—is he the herder?—had dropped his handful of long pods and now, without a glance at Baba Sow, far less the steer, he stoops over straight-legged to pick them slowly one by one off the hot pavement, continuing this for minute after minute in thedead silence as if unwilling to raise his eyes to the kicking animal, to us, to the silent folk hurrying this way from the nearby village.
    Baba Sow in his green woolen cap is glaring at his shattered headlight, dented fender, the manure streaks down the side of his white car. “
Ils sont fous, ces bêtes! Et ces gens
”—he indicates the people—“
Ils sont comme leurs bêtes! Ils sont stupides!
” Baba Sow is very upset, but he does not bother to upbraid the herder, saving his energy for the owner of the steer or the village headman. For want of a better way to help, Boese and I are kicking glass shards off the road. We eye the approaching villagers, feeling white as milk; incredibly, a slow tom-tom has started up behind the trees.
    By the time the villagers arrive, the steer is still. A stern old man yanks the steer’s head up, lets it fall. Now he straightens, glares at Baba Sow; he looks at the whites not even once in the whole episode. The people steal glances but do not giggle or comment; for an African crowd, they seem ominously silent.
    Baba Sow’s nerves give way first; he mutters something. I expect an angry retort from the old man, but his answer is quiet. I do not know what dialect is spoken, but the sense is apparent even to the whites: Baba Sow is told that he drives his car too fast, that he must pay, and Baba Sow answers that peasants should learn to keep their animals off the highway. Both are correct: drivers in the new Africa go too fast, and life in the old Africa moves too slowly. A paved road has no place in medieval landscapes.
    There is nothing to be done. Both sides wait politely in the glowing dusk, ceremonious, unhappy. The discussion is finished but abrupt parting would be rude. The village has lost a fine young steer, Baba Sow’s new car has sustained grievous bodily harm, damage that in this inflated economy may cost much more than the steer is worth.There is only silence as we get back into the car and drive away without good-byes to Ziguinchor.

    In the morning we cross a tidal river on the ferry and drive mile upon mile to the south and west across the salt marshes of Casamance. In the Palearctic, it is nearly spring, and the African marshes are peppered with migrating shorebirds bound for Europe—mostly ruffs and whimbrel, marsh sandpipers and stints.
    Nearing the coast, the road enters a romantic region of old oil-palm plantations and high forest, old weathered gates of colonial times and old stone walls. Small Diola settlements crouch at the edge of jungle. Diola houses are larger