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| Sketch of my living room, 1994. The 5-kg wooden carving of the elephant is still proudly in my living room. |
Oof. Had another tiring weekend. I went over to the girls' house in Limbe on my own Friday afternoon (no, hitching didn't work) and met up with both Wendys, Ken, his friend Nathaniel, Nat, Joe, Jason, Janine, Jacqueline, Peter, Lorinda, Troy, Katie, Mike, Mike, Dave, Anna and I think that's it. Drank a lot Friday night, had even more Saturday, including a few with some guy named Abe at the Shire Highlands who told us (Mike, Dave and I) his life story over beers. Ken got sick and drank flaming ouzos, Joe got buzzed on one puff of a cigarette, I had some Chibuku, and everyone loves my bottle opener but thinks it's a phallic symbol. I made tentative plans to go to Zanzibar for Easter, so we'll see what happens. Oh yeah, Dominique also showed up. And we all agree the field director's a loser.
Saturday, February 19, 1 PM
I got here 5 months ago today. Just got back from playing chess with the girls at the Kuchawe Inn. I'm taking over Mrs. Ntata's math classes next week, to bring my workload from 26 to 41 periods, and I made out with Susan [not her real name] last night.
Sunday, February 20, 8 PM
Sometimes I just don't understand women. They say one thing, then do another, and always manage to mess me up. When I was on the couch the other night with Susan, she got to the point where she said she was comfortable holding me but wasn't going to kiss me. Fair enough, I thought, although I almost blurted out, "If you want a friend, buy a dog." Now what do you suppose she does not five minutes later? Unh-huh, right on the lips. So it's going like that for a while, then she gets to the "I'd better go home now" stage. Okay, I could handle that, I thought, because I wasn't feeling all that great plus I didn't have a fresh pair of underwear on. So she left me leaving me with the impression that she'd partially regretted it. Oh well. I should write a goddam book on the subject.
So then she comes around Saturday afternoon, hands me some fudge, and whisks away. When I passed by her place at about 7 that night coming back from Gary's on my defective bike (No, I don't want to talk about that), I was rather quick in telling her I was going home as if to suggest to her to pass by. So I left and haven't seen her since. Yeesh. Women. Can't live with them, pass the beer nuts. Obladi-oblada, life goes on.
Postscript 2010: I am so happy to be married. I cringed typing this entry, dismayed at how much importance I accorded to this episode at the time. Getting involved in a relationship with someone was the furthest thing from my mind back then. I immersed myself in teaching during the week, trying desperately to find interesting ways to teach mathematical equations I found challenging to explain (I also wondered why i had to teach impractical mathematics). The weekends, as is apparent from the earlier entry, were often spent consuming alcohol in the company of other volunteers. In my quieter moments of solitude, I did imagine what it would be like to be with someone.
At the time, my Peace Corps neighbour's boyfriend showed me a bar graph that was shown to all new volunteers. I doubt the data in the graph were accurate, but the message was clear: it showed that sexual activity among male and female Peace Corps volunteers grew steadily from the time they arrived in country.
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| An unscientific but relatively accurate picture of sexual activity among Peace Corps volunteers, circa 1994. |
My entries at this point in time reflect an immaturity concerning relationships and a prose saturated with clichés. I would have expected nothing less from the man I was back then. If I could go back in time and give advice to the 23-year old me, I probably would have said not to worry about things so much, just have fun, and realize that, however improbable it is to have a friendship with a woman, it's certainly not impossible. But no matter what sage advice the 40-year old me could give to the 23-year old me, I doubt I would have listened.
