Special To Tudla:
This piece was originally posted by Roberto Alaban Jr. (Batch ’79) in his LiveJournal blog.
January 26, Wednesday, Makeni. This is my mid-point stop-over on my way to Kabala, my final placement base, after the In-Country Training the week before . I am here for an orientation with my employer MADAM, which has its office in this city. One of the watchmen of this compound, which includes the VSO house and the UN Staff house, is a nice, jolly man named Alfred; not his not real name (get it?). Back in the Philippines, where I come from, they are called “security guards” (watchmen being those who repair watches and clocks) and are almost always armed with a handgun while on duty, sometimes even a shotgun. But Alfred does not even carry a chewing gum with him to last him his long shift, much less a gun, which is understandable in the light of the country’s recent history. He eats his meals at home before reporting, there is just not enough, he says, to take some with him to tie him over eight hours of unsleep.
I share some of my food with him, and some Aikido moves which he awkwardly imitates and yearns to learn; he reciprocates by helping me in my Krio struggle, and we chew the rag in between his required walk-arounds in the compound.
Shooting the breeze, killing time in Makeni with Alfred the watchman
Lying in bed
I count his footsteps—
The night watchman
January 30, Saturday, Makeni. Nine-ish in the morning, I hear the voice of an uman, not in the peculiar Krio lilt, but Brit English. Then she emerges through the open door, in midriff pink top, navel sufficiently peeking, well-worn jeans and sandwiched between front-and-back packs. She knew my name, expecting to meet me there. Ditto. I learned she is a VSO-YFD Volunteer based in Kabala, and her placement has just ended, passing her room in the VSO house there to me. Might there be a hint of her former presence there?
Makeni United. Saahiel (India), Roberto (Philippines), Josphat (Kenya), John (Uganda), Amy (UK)
Amy—
auburn braids
Krio tongue
January 31, Sunday, Makeni. It is night, and I am alone in the house, except for Alfred, the guard, I mean the watchman. John, Amy, and Saahiel are out. Josphat too, but not before handing me out a local beer in what looks like a 7-UP jade-hued bottle. I take out a lounge chair to the porch to compare it with our own San Miguel Pale Pilsen. No contest there. It’s now dark as the gen-set is still off, and without the glare of the perimeter lights I can see that the night sky is hazy.
Few stars tonight
I hold one
in a green bottle
February 2, Tuesday, Kabala. My second day here. All that talk about Kabala being nippy seemed just hot air. Easily in the mid-thirties in mid-day. This morning I attended presentations of the UN-FAO about its Italian-lead project FSCA (Food Security through the Commercialization of Agriculture), a study on Salone biodiversity and medicinal properties of some local plants, and the secret life of bees. Not the movie, but serious talk about honey value chain. Like the almost alphabet soup of local and international NGOs represented there, I met some people of equally diverse provenance: Felix, a German working with CARE-SL, Italians Laura and Fulvio, German-speaking Peruvian Valerie, Dutch Froukje, and Spanish Lydia Martinez. The Philippines was under Spain for more than 300 years, and of the more than 85 million Filipinos there could be a million Lydia Martinezes, a name that is just so so common there. She laughed.
Last Updated on October 12, 2016 by Tudla_Admin
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