Greetings, folks. It’s been a minute, and for that I owe you an apology. I’m also going to give you an excuse, which is that it was my birthday last time around and I was up in North Carolina falling out of a boat. Anyway, I wouldn’t have had a whole lot to say. Patrick continued working under his tutor toward his math (“maths” in his British-inflected vocabulary) exam resit. He did come across an interesting opportunity to study abroad—either Estonia or Cyprus or Rwanda, which to the American ear sounds like an odd trio, but I suppose the First World kinda hangs out with the First World and the Third World with the Third. He applied, but his chances of going are pretty slim.
This week, however, I have news! Patrick took the resit. We waited. And waited. Then, yesterday morning, I got a message, “Good news for you. I have made it on my maths resit exam.”
This was immediately followed by grief for a peer, “I am still not happy a colleague couldn’t make it as he was seriously sick when doing the exams. He had malaria.”
I really am ceaselessly blown away by his generosity.
The other thing that happened in the intervening period is that Patrick had an accident trying to bicycle in the rain. He damaged his phone but the clever Nigerians—phone repairmen are apparently universally Nigerians in The Gambia—repaired it. He also sprained his ankle, but the clever Cubans—Cubans represent a very large percentage of The Gambia’s medical professionals—repaired that as well.
I also got an update on the mysterious John, the American living—possibly incognito—near Brikama. A message appeared one day with two photos: “Good morning and how are you doing today? Your fellow citizen is so hardworking and now adapted to life here as if he was born here.”
He looks like he’s made of wire. What a curious figure. I do wonder about him.
He also sent more photos of mummers in Brikama:
The costumes, I am told, are made of shredded plastic bags. I don’t know, ya’ll—these guys would have scared the piss out of me when I was a kid.
Patrick has also gotten back to reading The Hobbit. He sent a slew of words for me to define: crept, astonished, shriek, menacing, glimpse, gleam, screech, shiver, scrabbling, spluttered, squirmed, antiquity, devours, slays, clinking, luster, gnaws, ogre, lummox, throttled, bulging, yammering. I feel like I’ve been given the opportunity to pour the absolute cream of the English language into West Africa. He got very excited about the chapter “Riddles in the Dark,” in which the hero Bilbo meets Gollum, Tolkien’s most interesting character. They engage in a riddle game, and Patrick was transfixed by the riddles. He kept sending them to me, even though I told him I knew them all and even had some of them memorized. I imagine he’s telling them to everyone he can find. What a strange stone to have thrown into such a strange pond, and watching the ripples move outward is by far and away the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me.