Finding Lassine

We took off without calling, a mistake which can only be explained by the strange mix of cultural values and the daily realities of W.Africa.  It would otherwise be unthinkable—to take off on an hour-long drive to visit someone at their home without calling them, even though cell phones make such calls possible. 

As we climbed on the motorcycle, I turned and asked Israel, “Did you call to let them know we were coming?” 

“No, didn’t think of it,” he replied.  “They probably wouldn’t have signal anyway.  It’s December, the harvest is in, I’m sure they’ll be around.”

So we took off, assured that calling would be futile and that our visit, popping-in unexpectedly as it might be, would be perceived as an honor.  My American tendency to critical hindsight just shakes its head, but sometimes you’ve just got to live in the moment, do what the Romans do, and all that nonsense.  Besides, I’d been busy, and my thoughts were preoccupied with other issues.

We had heard from Lassine several times since his brother’s funeral.  There was our visit to his place as we passed through on our way to another town, when he told us that he wanted to give us his deceased brother’s one-year old son.  And then there were the long, rambling, somewhat strange calls, in which Lassine would tell us about how he was going to bring the child to Coco so we could “make him a C,” and that he, himself, was interested in knowing Gd.   When finally he hinted strong enough to his fears, it dawned on Israel that Lassine thought the whole family had been cursed and that he was seeking a solution to that curse.

The last call came about a week and a half before, and try as I might, I couldn’t make head or tails of what Lassine was saying.  I asked Israel to call him back, but by the time the call was placed, Lassine no longer had reception.  A week later, we received the news via the grapevine: the boy—“our child”—had died.

So we took off to find Lassine, give our condolences, and try to make sense of what was happening.  Of course, our nonchalance in calling proved to be a mistake.  Arriving at the family’s home, we found neither Lassine nor his father.  Lassine had gone to a neighboring village to thresh grain, and the old man was somewhere in the village.  An army of children riding their corn-stalk horses was dispatched to find their grandfather.  When 15 minutes later, the tired army returned without success, two older boys, now driving toy cars attached to sticks, were sent to even farther reaches of the village.  They too returned empty-handed.

Israel turned to me, sighed, and said, “We may be here for while.  Unless… We could go find Lassine.”

“Do you know the village?”

“Yeah, it isn’t far from here.”

The impossibility, the ridiculousness, the needle-in-a-haystack nature of what we were about to do had not yet occurred to me.  I just figured, “Why sit here? Let’s go find him.”  So with the same optimism that had brought us this far, we climbed on the motorcycle again and took off.

Five minutes down the road, we did a u-turn to talk to a group of men standing beside the road.  Israel had thought we would have seen the sign for the turn off by this point.  Again…hindsight, red-flags and all that.  The men pointed directly across the paved road to a narrow, dirt path that cut into the brush.  So we roared off, in amongst the brush on our mission to find Lassine.

The hardest part of navigation in the back-country of W.Africa is deciding what actually constitutes the “main road” (road being a designation lightly-used).  The problem is that these paths are simply the result of tires, feet, and hoofs tracing out a route in a general direction.  In rainy season, when the now-exposed soil absorbs enough water, it becomes an impassable mud-pit.  So bicyclists, walkers, and donkey cart drivers simply veer off and trace out a parallel bypass.  These bypasses can be longer than a quarter mile.  In the dry season, it becomes impossible to distinguish the difference between the main path, a bypass, and other paths that veer off in completely different directions. 

Fifteen minutes later, after having done my best to distinguish the main path, but seeing nothing that resembled human civilization, I turned to ask Israel if he thought we were still on the right road and if he thought we would be arriving soon.  He replied yes on both accounts.

An additional fifteen minutes past without us seeing a soul, and I knew we were lost, but there was little that could be done about that.  The paths had narrowed to the point that it was quite impossible to call one path “main” and another “accessory”.  We were in a labyrinth and the only thing to do was to continue chasing the path, hoping it would eventually dump us back onto a main path, or bring us to some person who could direct us on.  Even back-tracking would have been futile, since it was impossible to know at what point we had left the “real road.” 

We finally came into a clearing and saw a house.  We stopped, greeted, and asked for directions.  Israel was speaking Mka, so I have no idea what was said, but the men didn’t laugh or acted shocked that we had ended up there on our way to the village—that had to be a good thing, right?  One of the young men took us to the edge of the clearing, pointed to a tiny path, and began to list out directions.  I attentively followed his body language—right, left, slight curve to the right again, zig-zag?, a hill??  I was lost before we started.  I only hoped that Israel was following what I was sure was something like, “at the medium sized bush, turn right.  Hang a left at the tree…”

We took off again, and Israel laughed to himself as he said, “I’ve only been to the village once and it was six years ago.”  It was a confession, but it was also a warning that he hadn’t been able to follow what the man had said.  As is so often the case in these situations, you have a choice: you can become angry and think about killing your guide, or you can laugh about it and start writing the story in your head.  Now you know where this story was born.

Every ten minutes or so, we would come across another little house, or a man on a bicycle, and we would ask them for directions.  It was more of the same—left, right, right again—that was sure to be impossible to follow.  Eventually, an hour and a half later, the paths began to widen, and we caught sight of a cell phone tower.  Another 10 minutes brought us into sight of the village.  It was here that my sudden relief and joy turned into bewildered disappointment.

I had figured that the machine used for threshing grain would be in some central location in town and that people would bring their grain there.  All we would need to do, once we found the village, was to ask were the machine was, go there, and find Lassine.  On the border of the town, we stopped and talked with a man, who informed us that the machine traveled from outlying homestead to homestead.  The location changed just about every day.  He wasn’t sure where it was but had heard rumor of it being at such-and-such a place.  A passerby agreed with that thought.

So once again, we drove away from town and into the brush, now digging deep into the haystack.  After only 3 U-turns and the retracing of many steps, we arrived at a large homestead.  As we pulled up, we saw piles of newly threshed grain.  Could it be?  Did we really find it?  We parked the bike and walked up to a group of men eating their lunch.

We were greeted warmly, with a touch of astonishment.  (I’m’a guess they don’t get a whole lot of white guys visiting.)  And then it came: Why yes, the thresher had been here, just yesterday.  But now it had moved onto another homestead.  The road getting there was very difficult and no one was quite sure how to explain to us how to get there.

Israel and I exchanged knowing glances.  This was the end of the line for us.  We thanked the men, climbed back on the bike and took off.  By no small miracle we found a main road back to the paved road, and 20 minutes later we pulled into Lassine’s house again.  He was still absent, but the old man had wandered back in sometime during our almost 3 hours in the bush.   Exhausted, we greeted him, gave our condolences, and after a little pause, announced that we needed to head back.

I made Israel drive on the way back.  As I reflected on the whole situation—the unexpected death of a friend, the subsequent loss of his baby, the desire to reach this family—and tried to make sense of it all, I felt quite lost.  Every time things seemed to head in a more positive direction, like all the loss would finally be redeemed, everything just got more confusing. 

It isn’t all that unlike being lost in that W.African, back-country labyrinth.  The goal is finding someone because of your love and concern for them, and yet it doesn’t seem like you’ll ever make it.  All you can do is keep chasing those paths hoping it will dump out into something clearer, wider, easier to navigate. There are voices of encouragement and people who say they’ve been down the same road, but it turns out it has been awhile or the road they took was different.   You need them, and they are indeed encouraging, but it doesn’t cut the chase any shorter.  Then just when you think you’ve arrived, you are sent away empty handed.

Two days later, Lassine called, rambling incessantly.  Israel only says, “um-hum, yes, uh-huh” then hangs up and translates:  He said he was sorry that he had missed our visit, that he appreciated our concern, and that he had indeed called to tell us about the child’s death but wasn’t sure how to say it.  And he was sorry that he hadn’t brought the kid to us sooner, though he fully intended to when he heard that the boy was sick; it just happened so fast.  He was sorry; he should have done things differently.  One day he is coming to Coco so we can talk about all this.  He’s noticed our life, and he is on the road.  He is coming.  He is convinced.  One day he will arrive.

Lassine, I’m sorry.  I’m not sure why we are lost in this wilderness, but I promise you this:  We’ll keep chasing these paths until we find you.