Somebody's Heart Is Burning Read Free Page A

I tried to keep a tone of neutrality in the ones I sent back—to let him know that I missed him without raising false expectations. It was a difficult line to walk.

    I arrived in West Africa tired and cranky. I hadn’t slept well the night before, and Abdelati’s six-year-old sister had burst into my room at five-thirty in the morning with a pot of tea. The flight itself had been an exercise in nausea control.
    A con artist accosted me in front of the airport in Abidjan, the capital of Ivory Coast. He’d emerged from a small army of men who hovered outside the sliding glass doors of the baggage claim, jockeying for the attention of travelers. He was a slim African man in his early twenties, dressed in what a cynical volunteer once called “third world chic”—dark blue jeans with bright orange stitching up the sides and a carefully pressed St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt. I made the mistake of meeting his eyes. After that, there was no shaking him.
    “
Bonjour, Madame.
My name is Jean-Pierre. Let me take you to your hotel. They know me; I will help you to get a better price,” he said to me in French.
    “I’ve got no money for you, okay,
pas d’argent.
”
    “I don’t want your money. I help you choose the hotel. If I bring you there myself, they give me commission.”
    “I already know which hotel I’m going to.”
    A boozy expat on the plane had looked through my guidebook and steered me away from the hotel I’d circled in Treicheville, the “African” quarter.
    “Too dangerous,” he’d said. “Stay in the Central Section, or at least here, this one’s right next to the Central Section.” He poked a stubby finger at the page. “Anywhere else, they’ll sniff you out and rob you in a New York minute.” He laughed.
    Although I pegged him as a racist, I decided to go with his suggestion for my first few nights. Later I would stay in the African parts of town. I hadn’t come to Africa to avoid Africans.
    I got into a taxi. Jean-Pierre was next to my open window, still talking.
    “Please,” he said. “This is how I live. I show tourists to the hotel, I get commission.”
    “I’m not a tourist. I’m on my way to do some volunteer work in Ghana.”
    “You pay nothing! The hotel, they pay.”
    I sighed, and taking that as a yes, he got in. The taxi took off without setting the meter or agreeing on a price.
    “Wait,” I said, “
attend
,” and Jean-Pierre, sitting beside me, repeated the phrase in a local language. How could an airport taxi driver not speak French?
    “Tell him he has to set the meter,” I told Jean-Pierre. I’d read this in my guidebook:
“In Abidjan, make sure they set the meter.”
    He spoke to the driver, who just kept driving. Then he turned to me.
    “There is no need,” he said. “He knows the price.”
    “There is a need,” my voice grew shrill, “because if he doesn’t set it, I’m getting out.”
    “Small, small.” He laughed, making a calming gesture with his hand. He spoke to the driver some more. The driver barked with laughter, then slapped the meter. It came on, its electronic digits bright and reassuring. I settled back in my seat.
    I was too tired to take in the rows of dilapidated wood and cardboard shacks and the women wrapped in bright, dissonant cloth with bundles on their heads. Too weary to crane my neck at the colorful markets with their expanse of tables piled high with everything from vegetables to virility potions to auto parts. I’d traveled enough in the “developing world” that these things seemed strangely familiar. Even the thick tropical vegetation reminded me of someplace else.
Jesus,
I thought,
what’s happened
to me? It’s my first day in sub-Saharan Africa and already I’m bored.
    I did notice the peeing, though. It seemed every man in the city had sought out the most conspicuous corner he could find on which to urinate. Again and again I saw them, poised like statues in that telltale wide-legged stance, facing the wall. I