Chapter Nine

If a person isn’t used to dying, once he dies it will be hard to wake him.

—Krio Proverb

As the plane descended at Lungi International Airport, Caitlin viewed the sprawling suburbs and slums of Freetown. The image depressed, and yet fascinated her at the same time. The city seemed to be a jumbled collage of dilapidation and decay, brightened only by the National Football Stadium, a few new government buildings, and a handful of scattered Victorian Age homes. In the bay were tankers, cruise ships, and pam-pam ferries. Bullom boats of local fishermen lined a portion of the beach. Her eyes traced the coastline until the beaches faded into the thick mangroves of a Harmattan-hazed horizon.

Caitlin whispered, “Hunter, I’m scared to death. What have I got myself into? If only you could have come to Africa with me.” She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Von, you better be there like you promised me.”

A flight attendant passed by as Caitlin spoke. “Excuse me?”

“Nothing. Just thinking. I was wishing my boyfriend could be here with me.”

“Well,” the attendant said. “Welcome to Africa.”

Von met Caitlin at customs. He embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. “At last, you are here. I know you probably have jet lag, so let’s plan on starting work tomorrow. I’ll help get you settled, and then I have business I must attend to. In order to save time, I’ve already taken care of customs for you.”

They claimed her luggage and Von hired a porter to carry it to his Mercedes. They drove onto a ferry that would take them across the bay to Freetown. Von said, “I started to rent a helicopter, but I wanted you to see the bay as the first Europeans saw it—from a boat.”

Caitlin gripped the handrail as the ferry bounced on a wave. Across the bay and veiled by a smoky haze, the city of Freetown sprawled along cloud-robed mountains.

“It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?” Von said. “You are flushed from the heat. Let’s go inside the ferry’s sitting area. It’s air conditioned.”

“I’m fine here, Von. Please don’t baby me too much.”

“Have you thought of where you will live?”

“Father Robert said I could stay at the mission.”

“I wouldn’t hear of it. You are more than welcome to stay at my house.”

“You have a house here?”

“Oh, yes. And it’s quite nice by Freetown standards.”

“I might take you up on that later, but for now, I think I should stay at the mission. They said they had an extra apartment I could use. And hopefully my uncle will be here soon. He’s a rather strict priest, so I don’t think he would like the idea of my living in the same house with a single man.”

“Of course. I understand. But the offer will remain open.”

“Thank you, Von.”

When the ferry docked, Von drove her into Freetown. On a hill overlooking the city, they could see the parliamentary buildings of Sierra Leone. They passed the St. George Cathedral, then the Cotton Tree, where the first settlers had gathered in 1787 to praise God for their newly found freedom. No one knew how old the tree was. It was and is a national landmark, and a symbol of Sierra Leone. A group of men wearing embroidered lapras chatted beneath it, oblivious to the flock of huge fruit bats roosting above them. Nearby, Caitlin saw a sign for the National Museum.

“Von, have you been to that museum?”

“Oh, yes. I found their displays honoring the Mandinka Warrior Kings quite fascinating. Before the trouble here started, I even saw the De Ruyter Stone in 1987. Absolutely marvelous. I’ll take you there first opportunity.”

Near Siaka Stevens National Stadium, a taxi narrowly missed them. “Damn these African taxis,” Von said. “I’ll never complain about a New York cab again.”

“I can’t get over how much you’ve traveled, Von.” Caitlin sighed as she turned the car’s air conditioning vent so it would cool her face. “Compared to yours, my life seems so dull. Do you think my life is dull? Am I a dull person?”

Von lit a cigarette and rolled down his window enough to draft out the smoke. “How can an artist’s life be dull? I mean, yes, you live in a po-dunk town that drives me crazy, and yes, you should travel more. Perhaps I can help with that. But you, dull? Not a chance. I think you know what’s important in life.”

“I’m not so sure I do. What do you think is most important in life, Von?”

“Getting what you want.” He took her hand. “Don’t you agree?”

“Pshaw. What would you want with a country bumpkin like me?” Caitlin said this, but she squeezed Von’s hand and wound her fingers into his.

“Von,” Caitlin said, “I’ve told you about my family. Tell me something about your family. Do you have any sisters, brothers? Are you close to your parents?”

“I have no family.”

“Do you have a brother named Larry?”

He said fiercely, “Someone’s feeding you information about me? I told you I don’t have a family and I want you to drop the subject.”

“Okay,” Caitlin said, “Don’t be so touchy.” She sensed it would be better to not tell how Larry Vermeer drowned in the Ouachita River.

In the center of Freetown, they stopped at a bazaar. The market was a cacophony to Caitlin’s ears. Tourists and vendors argued, at times almost shouting, while boom boxes blasted music so distorted that it was unintelligible. Von took Caitlin’s hand and strolled past tables laden with fruits, bags of rice, vegetables, guinea corn, cocoa pods, cassava, jars and cans of palm oil, fish, and kola nuts. Other tables were covered with animal skins, tourist bric-a-brac, bolts of brightly colored cotton cloth, and musical instruments—drums, something resembling a xylophone called balungi, flutes, kurs, and other stringed instruments of the nomadic Fula herdsmen. Caitlin picked up an oddly shaped three-string instrument and thought about buying it for Hunter. Its resonator was made from a large calabash, with leather stretched across it. The strings were nylon, each string attached to a metal ring on a bow-shaped wooden pole.

“This make good-good music, Missy,” the vendor said. “The bolon is a harp of warriors and hunters.”

Perfect instrument for Hunter. “Can you play it?”

“I can make only a little music.” He took the bolon and held it with the strings facing him, closed his eyes, and plucked the strings with his thumb. The notes sounded like the strings on the lower register of a harp, the melody that of a forgotten way of life, of a forgotten people.

He paused for a moment with his eyes closed, then opened them and set the instrument on the rickety table. “The bolon was played before battle or before a hunt, to praise bravery and urge them on to great deeds of courage and endurance. Trained horses would dance for the warriors when they heard the bolon.”

Caitlin bought the bolon.

After they had lunch at a hotel restaurant along the beach, Von hired a motorbike taxi to take Caitlin’s written message to Xaverian school administrators and let them know she had arrived safely in Freetown and would be arriving shortly. Von drove her to see Bunce Island, then drove her on to the mission, which was located on the grounds of an old British Army barracks in the Western District.

At the gate of the mission, an armed guard rose from his wicker chair and raised his hand, signaling for Von to stop the car. He looked inside and waved them on.

“Some security,” Von said. “He didn’t even speak to us. It makes me feel uneasy about your staying here. Are you sure you don’t want to take a room in my lonely house?”

“I’m sure, Von. But thank you. I’ll be okay here. The guard was probably told we were coming.”

While Caitlin searched for the mission administrators, Von unloaded her luggage. When Caitlin returned, she said, “Okay, I’m set up. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes, I’ll pick you up early. We have much to do, you and I. Shall I carry your luggage to your room?”

“No, it will be a while before I get my room. I must fill out papers and such. You go on. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Von leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.

“Von!” she said. “What are you doing?”

“You know exactly what I’m doing.”

Uneasy about Von’s earlier harsh reaction when she asked him if he had a brother named Larry, she did a genealogical search on the Internet on Von Vermeer and discovered that he did have a brother whose name was Larry. More unsettling was the Times Picayune article she found telling of the murder of Von’s parents. The killer was never found.

Why would Von lie to me about Larry, she asked herself, concluding that perhaps the memories were too hard to dredge up. She herself had often refused to talk about the death of her parents. Besides he didn’t really lie. He actually did not have a family anymore. She would have to trust Von and give him the benefit of the doubt. He would likely tell her everything when he was ready.

****

Caitlin’s roommate was Mandy, an American nurse with UNICEF and who had been assigned to the mission. After Caitlin dropped off her bags, Mandy took her on a walking tour of the grounds and then to supper to meet the two doctors working with the school, one an M.D., the other a child psychiatrist. After a meal of rice, broiled fish, and tea, the M.D. suggested that Mandy immediately give Caitlin a crash course on how to identify various tropical diseases, how to deal with severe trauma, and how to identify and treat the endemic drug addiction. Then he told her a little more about what the school hoped to accomplish.

Before their capture or desertion from the RUF, some of the boys had lived in the bush for four or five years and were in immediate need of medical, psychological, and emotional care. The mission’s goal was to rehabilitate as many of the boy soldiers as possible and somehow reintegrate them into society. The intensive education and counseling program was designed to take the boys from their present soldier/savage mentality to their appropriate social, educational, and emotional levels. Caitlin’s role in the redemption of these lost boys would be to assist the doctors as and where needed and teach the boys art and English as she had opportunity.

Caitlin had arrived in Freetown during Harmattan, and the suffocating dry heat drained her energy. As she and Mandy walked to a nearby beach to watch the sunset, Caitlin said, “God, this is awful weather. It’s a lot drier here than I thought it would be.”

“You’ll get used to it. We basically have two seasons: Harmattan, which is dry, dusty, and hot, and the rainy season, which is wet, humid, and hot. The rainy season has its own set of problems, but for now you need to take care of your skin. Use lots of lotion, because if you don’t, your skin will dry out and crack.”

Caitlin looked up. The sky was enveloped with a yellow haze and thick with dust that clung to her clothes. “Look at this.” She brushed at a clump of dust on her shoulder.

“Here, I’ll get it.” Mandy slapped at her shoulder. “There’ll be lots of dust. Our apartment fills up with it some days. I’m told it comes all the way from North Africa and that sometimes thick layers of it are even dumped on ships off the coast.”

Caitlin cringed at the thought of days of heat and dust. That first night in their small apartment, Caitlin said, “Mandy, I don’t know how much of this I can take. Africa’s worse than I could have imagined. And the boys… I didn’t know such suffering could exist anywhere in the world.”

“Welcome to Sierra Leone, which some say is the most unlivable country in the world,” Mandy replied. “I don’t think we’ll ever get down to the bottom of the barrel of misery here. I’ve worked here for two years, and just when I think I’ve seen it all, a worse case arrives. Medically, this group is in fairly good shape compared to some of the other boys I’ve worked with. I’ve seen hemorrhagic fevers, tungiasis, typhus, bilharziasis, dysentery, cholera, sleeping sickness, alimentary helminthic infections, hepatitis, Lassa fever, Ebola and Marburg fever. It’s very easy to die in West Africa.”

“Do you think some places on earth are cursed?” Caitlin asked.

Mandy shrugged her shoulders. “I think Sierra Leone might be a good argument for the existence of cursed places. People here are certainly having a hard time of it.”

Mandy pointed to a small chest-of-drawers. “You can put your things there.” She turned on a small oscillating fan and sat down on the bed, leaning back on her arms. “One of the doctors said you had another job?”

Caitlin unpacked her bags and sat down beside her. She found herself longing for the fan to turn toward her. “Yes, my employer had business here and he asked me to come and do his bookkeeping.”

“What kind of business is he in?”

“He owns a diamond company.”

“Oh.”

“What do you mean, Oh?”

“Well, there’s so much talk about diamonds creating the problems here—you know, smuggling, the whole issue of conflict diamonds.”

“Von’s a legitimate businessman, and he has a good heart. I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything illegal. He’s licensed, and he just wants to build up his diamond stores in Louisiana.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest anything. I’m sure he’s a fine man.”

“I have an uncle here, a priest. Von knew I wanted to see him, so he arranged the trip for me. I find him incredibly generous.”

“Yes, he must be.” Mandy stripped down and slipped on her nightshirt. “The mosquito net hanging above your bed—be sure and drape it over you when you sleep. I’m sure you’re worn out from your trip. Get some rest. Your first class is tomorrow.”

“I feel like I’m the one in school, Mandy.”

In spite of bone-weariness from her trip, Caitlin lay awake long into the night. She thought of her past sheltered life, of Monroe, of Hunter, of Von, feeling a pang in her heart when she thought of Von’s brother Larry sinking to his death in the Ouachita River. She listened to the fan’s oscillations until she finally fell asleep.