Domestic Tranquility

Greetings friends. It seems, like every lawnmower I’ve ever owned, the engine on this blog is sputtering. No matter—that’s me, not Patrick. But I haven’t given up yet. That would be pretty lame honestly, as he’s working his brains out and I take a two-hour nap every afternoon.

As previously noted, Patrick is back in school and doing well. We converse most days about all sorts of topics as we’ve done for a year and a half. Sometimes I send him pictures; sometimes he sends me pictures. He’s got his hands full taking care of his siblings in more or less the most primitive manner possible—manually washing clothes, cooking over an open fire—and taking an absurd number of classes. The last thing he needs, honestly, is an assignment from me.

So I’m taking over. Let’s do this for a while: I’ll just excerpt interesting parts of our conversations and submit them for your consideration. The differences between our lives are fascinating, and that’s all I ever intended that we should get at, so this ought to work at least for now.

Those of you with paid subscriptions, I am going to restart the billing, so if you don’t want to continue being charged you’ll have to cancel. But I hope you don’t. I really want y’all to share in the triumph I know Patrick will eventually reap. So stick with us and I’ll make it worth your while.

That said I figured you might like a glimpse of where the Mendy family is living now. Most of Patrick’s photos are sad but some uncover the stark, austere beauty of Africa.

The village is located just to the west of the city of Brikama, and it’s a humble place to be sure. They live in just two small rooms, a living room and a bedroom. They sleep on thin foam mattresses. “This is our sleeping room but at night I take one mattress and sleep in the living room with Peter while Fatou sleeps inside”:

Two of Patrick’s siblings have disappeared from his communications. Peter and Fatou are his blood relatives, while Awa and Elie are (informal) adoptees. I’m not sure why he never mentions them anymore—sometimes he’s a bit scattered, but I intend to plumb this question.

The items on the right below are most of their worldly possessions. “That’s my school bag and other goods”:

To say they lack for furnishings is an understatement. They brought the chairs below with them from Kerr Amadou—they had found nicer chairs when they were living in Brikama but the landlord argued that they belonged to him and wouldn’t let them take them.

There’s a small courtyard out back where they take showers. “This is our bathroom. There’s a big tree and a stone where we stand to take a bath. That’s the bucket for water we fetch for bathing and there’s a cup in it which we use to pour the water on ourselves to get clean.”

And that’s their life in a nutshell. As Christians of the Manjago tribe, and as tenants, they are a triple-minority in the village, but they continue to move forward and they find glimmers of joy in family and work. Patrick often shares pictures of their food with me and I think that would be a good note to end on. “We cut a loaf of bread into small pieces and soak them in milk and sugar.”

Bon appetit!