I’d imagine Thoma is around 26 years old. He has two wives (one recently acquired) a son and another baby on the way. He’s a farmer and never been to school, but somehow he has learned to speak French. He’s my best friend in village.
Fighting boredom, isolation, and loneliness during the first few weeks at post, I would often find myself sitting under a tree behind my house—to meditate, to read, or to just pass the time. On day I walked out to visit my tree and saw Thoma digging a huge hole right next to the tree that I had come to value so much. I asked Thoma what he was up to and with sweat on his brow said that he was going to build his house. He said it so calmly, holding his pickaxe over his shoulder that the only way I could respond was by nodding as words of encouragement where not needed. He’d found that gumption long before he broke the earth.
For the next few months I would often find myself sitting under my tree watching Thoma work and offer any assistance I could. I’d sit and we’d talk about various things. We’d talk about hunting and the work he’s doing on the farm. He’d talk about his wife and how he doesn’t want any girlfriends and I’d talk about relationships in the U.S. and the different ideas about marriage. One day he told me that his son was his fourth child. Confused, I asked him about the other three and he told me they had all passed away over a span of three years. He only smokes when he drinks, which is on Saturdays and Sundays and often tells me that I remind him of Jean Claude Van Dam.
Five months have gone by and the mud house is finished, for the most part. I walked over as Thoma was nailing on the last of the tin roof and we sat under the new shade. I couldn’t help but feel the giddiness jumping off of him. Thoma’s house doesn’t have air conditioning, high-speed Internet, running water, electricity, or a toilet. Nevertheless, it is what it is, a home. I told him that he has claimed his stake in the world and that not many people can say they’ve got a home of their own and even less can say that they built their house from the ground-up, with their bare hands. He laughed as if I was joking, but toward the end of his tee-hee, I recognized a proud glimmer.
Our friendship has grown since he finished his house and he is often one of the first people I see in the morning. He spends weeks at a time at the farm, sleeping under the stars and cooking over an open fire. I’ve gone to the farm with him a few times and enjoyed my time there wandering around and beating the heat by sleeping under the shade of the huge mango trees that provide a canopy over his farm huts. I’d sleep; he’d cook and would be woken up by Thoma telling me to wash my hands. We’d eat fufu au champ with our hands. It was the first time I ate a mouse.
He’s a hunter, legally or illegally, by night and knows the bush around Bikotiba and surrounding villages the way most people know their bathrooms at night, orientating himself by the stars and the greegree he performs before he goes out on a hunt. He once told me that he could run for twelve hours during the night, using a gas head lantern for light, only stopping if he kills something. He carries a single shot 12-gauge and fabricates the shells himself, as the sporting goods section of wal-mart is 7,000 miles away.
In Thoma’s family’s compound one afternoon an elder excitedly invited me into his room because he wanted to show me something. I slipped off my sandals and ducked into the 6ft x 6ft musty, cool mud hut that smelt of wood-smoke and dried grain and immediately spotted a pile of different types of animal skulls and two shotguns that looked like they were held together by some crazy African greegree. Next to the pile of hand-made shotguns shells, that I gathered from our discussion, only worked half the time was a straw mattress, which no doubt was the conception point of all his 9 children. He reached to the side of this mattress and handed me an attached bundle of extremely bristle, thick hairs. It wasn’t until he made hand motions forming tusk that I realized I was holding the souvenir of an elephant he had killed. He looked at me and proudly poked his chest and said “moi meme.” There are many times here, in many different situations, where life doesn’t exactly seem real. Sometimes it’s a giddy feeling when you get pulled into a group of people singing and drumming so loud that it is impossible not to join in the dancing. Other times, you feel like you are in a really weird dream and wonder if Mr. Webster has the words necessary to explain it. You can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out how…I ducked out of the mud hut, squinting at the morning sun, and slipped on my sandals, thanked the elder for the visit and bid Thoma and family farewell as I walked back into my village to take on the day. I thought about the idea of hunting here and how this idea is wiping animals clean off this continent.
Bush meat, most of which is acquired illegally, serves as the only source of protein for many people in my village and throughout much of Africa. Bush rat, Biche or antelope, a funny lookin’ lizard, hares, monkeys, and elephants too offer a chance to feed a hunter’s family and also a chance to supplement the meager income of a village farmer in Africa. Shrinking the demand for this time of meat is something that is difficult as there are few alternatives and a huge lack of foresight. Also, it is difficult to argue against someone, ahem Thoma, who is trying to feed his family because after all, meat is meat. The other night Thoma told me he ran across a lion in the bush. It was dark, it looked at him and he dropped to the ground. He changed out the single shot slug to put in the nine-shot slug because he thought he would have a better chance to take out its eyes if it charged at him. He told me he never would try to kill a lion, but in a situation like the one he was in that is all he could do. Kill or be killed I guess. He waited, slowly raised up and when he looked the lion was gone leaving a rustle of branches in its wake.
