White Man's Grave: A Novel by Richard Dooling

Author:Richard Dooling [Dooling, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bush Devil Press
Published: 2023-08-18T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Bo—which means "the potter's clay"—is the capital of Mendeland and is situated in the lower midsection of Sierra Leone almost equidistant from Freetown on the west coast, and Sierra Leone's border with Liberia to the east. Bo grew from nothing around an ill-fated railroad that once joined the hinterlands to Freetown and hence the world. Since the mid-1960s, when a former President decided the country did not need a railroad, the rusting, overgrown tracks have stood as a monument to failed human endeavor in a country and a continent jinxed by colonialism, witchcraft, political disasters, and corruption.

With a population of 40,000, Bo remained—even without the railroad—the third-largest city in Sierra Leone, consisting primarily of dusty roads lined with shacks, where tailors pedaled at their sewing machines, Fula men and other petty traders sold matches, cigarettes, and aspirin, matrons of chop houses served platefuls of rice and sauce, and bartenders sold tepid beer out of kerosene-powered refrigerators. The roads wound into roundabouts with small markets or lorry parks, then spun out again into a sprawl of ramshackle buildings and pan-roofed arcades. Taxis roamed the roads, coasting down hills with their engines switched off whenever possible. In dusty trails on each side of the roads, strings of women and children bore headloads and buckets, led goats, and shouted "poo-mui!" at the passing white man.

As it turned out, what Sisay had called a "bush taxi" was nothing more than the first car or truck to come along with room for a passenger and a driver willing to negotiate a fare. Boone simply stood at the side of the road with a cupped, supine palm, which in Sierra Leone means: How about a lift? I'm willing to pay. Within half an hour, he had a ride from a Sierra Leonean government employee who spoke Krio so quickly and used so many proverbs and slang expressions that conversation was impossible. The man was not Mende, so Boone's prolific Kaye ii Ngewo ma's were politely ignored. They rode in silence, except for an occasional burst of Krio from the driver, and an awkward shrug from Boone, followed by irritation at each other's inability to understand plain English. Still, compared to the podah-podah, the bush taxi was luxurious. He was dropped off at the intersection of Damballa Road and Fenton Road, across from a prosperous Lebanese market, at the doorstep of an institution Peace Corps Volunteers have been patronizing since President Kennedy sent them to Sierra Leone in the 1960s.

The Thirsty Soul Saloon began as a counter facing out into a roofed concrete veranda, open on three sides, where tables of planks and barrels were flanked by long benches. The clientele consisted of white people—Peace Corps Volunteers, USAID workers, European development Workers, British, Dutch, and Canadian Volunteers, and the occasional diamond prospectors, though their tastes ran more to the casinos, discos, and resort hotels along the beaches in Freetown. Now and again, a black African came in—a government clerk or a low-level administrator from one of

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