Doug started to refill the wine glasses. "You haven't lost us so far," he said.
Howard went on, "Thanks to American aid, the Portuguese have been well supplied with napalm. When things get too hot down south if you'll pardon the pun the poor bastards cross over the border and spend a little time with their Yankee cousins."
Penny was the first to respond, with an audible, "Wow!"
Carol, smiling, reassured her with, "Don't worry about it, hon, as long as you stick pretty close to Mgoro village, you'll be okay."
"Yeah, that's right," added Howard.
A minute or two of silence passed as the foursome polished off the remainder of the langouste. Finally, Carol said, "Actually, the biggest surprise you're apt to encounter is the nudity…naked breasts are de rigueur you expect them. But "
"But, the Mgoro consider it unhealthy to leave the penis covered," added Howard. -
Doug managed a wan smile. Penny stared red-faced at her empty plate.
"A bead belt and a pair of leather sandals, and they're ready to go to market," continued Carol, with a sip of wine. Then, "Now get ready for this one, kiddies. Mgoro is no nudist colony an erection is considered to be the biggest compliment a Mgoro boy can pay to any woman he encounters!"
A wry smile spread across Howard's face. "And the Mgoro are noted for their big compliments!"
Penny nearly spewed a mouthful of wine on the table. Doug calmed her with a timorous, "Easy, baby. You're an anth major, remember? Unshockable?"
Howard looked at his watch. "Carol, it's after eight," he said. "We'd better get moving if we're going to catch that plane."
Doug started to offer to see them off, but Howard held up his hand in protest. "Thanks, anyway, kids. If I were you, I'd trot right back to my hotel room and get some sleep…believe me, you're going to need it."
"The road to Mgoro is paved with boulders!" quipped Carol.
CHAPTER TWO
They took them to Mgoro in a Land-Rover Doug and Penny, with Major Marcel M'Bonu, the Mgoro District Political Officer, driving. They had planned to leave the following morning, as it was a considerable drive to Mgoro Village, but the Norths at the bequest of Headmaster La Pierre-had supplied the new arrivals with a long shopping list of things that were presently in short supply at the school. Indeed, they had spent the better part of the cool, morning hours the best time of the day for travel scrounging the waterfront warehouses of Dakar for such items as nails, rope, string, soap, a washbasin, several wooden buckets, a hammer, paint and brushes, various cases of canned meats and vegetables, and many tins of paraffin oil, since there was no electricity in the village but for that produced by a small generator at the school itself, and none at all for cooking or lighting. It wasn't until early afternoon that they managed to get away, and by that time both Doug and Penny were ready to collapse from sheer exhaustion.
In addition to Major M'Bonu, they were accompanied by four regular soldiers of the Senegalese army who were armed to the toenails with submachine guns, a bazooka, and a small flame-thrower. Major M'Bonu, seemingly, did not like to take unnecessary risks. Indeed, as the Glassers later discovered, the accompanying troops were no more nor less than his personal bodyguard; the only reason he hadn't brought a full detachment of regulars along is because he had heard that there would be an entire regiment of the Senegalese Militia in convoy along the route.. in case he needed assistance. But, in any case, the threat of unprovoked attack seemed almost surreal in contrast to the tooth-shattering reality of the "road".
Just a few very few kilometers southeast of Dakar, the simple tarmac highway returned virtually to nature. And each time a wheel slammed into a pothole or a cabbage-size rock, the young couple could hear the bouncing troops in back emit a united curse, alternately in French or in one of several tribal languages. Doug estimated, conservatively, that he had learned at least fourteen different words for "Fuck!" that day. Carol North, it seemed, had not exaggerated about the condition of the road.
Still, once the party got underway, young Doug and Penny Glasser found themselves getting caught up in the adventurous spirit of things. The low southern mountains began to rise up to their right, while in scattered clearings in the forest to the left grew occasional stands of cotton or peanuts. Sometimes they would see a man in one of the tiny fields, invariably white-haired and stooped, holding a makeshift wooden hoe and wearing only a pair of tattered khaki shorts on his withered black frame. Again invariably, he would stop his work and look up at the Land Rover as they passed, staring silently, becoming smaller and smaller in the distance. To the Glassers it was all very picturesque. To Major M'Bonu it was just a pain in the ass a capitalist plot to keep him away from the comfort and, more importantly, safety of his Dakar office.
The harried little African Major kept glancing down at his watch every few minutes, shaking his head and muttering, "We're going to be late as hell!" He did it with such frequency that Penny was tempted, on those occasions she found reason to address him, to change his title from Major to March Hare, after the time-pressed rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Doug, talking up a blue streak, could have cared less what time they got to Mgoro, the welcoming "party" Headmaster La Pierre normally planned for new arrivals, notwithstanding.
Occasionally, they drove past clusters of little huts flanking the impossible road on either side. There would be ten or fifteen of them together, with walls of yellowish lateritic mud, and roofs of palm thatching or, infrequently, corrugated and rusting iron. Sometimes, they could see smoke seeping through the roofs, which more than likely meant that there was cooking going on inside. Often, too, there would be a few old men sitting in front of the huts, wearing only a wrap-around sheet or a loin-cloth. They'd wave to them as they passed, and sometimes they would slowly lift their arms to wave back, but mostly they just stared off into the bush without making a motion.
Then there were the animals…the snort of an elephant, a lone giraffe grazing somewhere off in the distance, a family of gazelles bouncing across the road. And there were children…children standing on bird-thin legs with only a black cloth around their skinny little bodies covering them from shoulder to thigh. If they were standing near the highway, they could see how dirty the little waifs were, with mud caked all up and down their matchstick arms and legs. Or, sometimes they would see great scab-like sores and blotches on their faces. They would wave to them, and they would nudge each other and jump up and down, waving their arms and shrieking, "Djambo! Djambo!", laughing with enormous white teeth as the Land-Rover sprayed pebbles at their bare feet.
"We'll be in Mgoro country soon," Major M'Bonu laughed suddenly beneath his worried brow. "Then nobody will be wearing anything!"
It was already beginning to grow darker it darkens quickly in the tropics when they raced onto a strip of tarmac. On the left, there was a native market with swarms of Africans, while to the right, uphill on another street, stood a row of ragged wooden buildings. The Major pulled a sharp right on the uphill street, then braked to a dusty halt in front of a ramshackle building with the name, "Jungle Bar," emblazoned across the front in drippy red letters. It reminded Doug of an old western saloon.