Eventual Exit

I started getting bored when I'd made a decent run of the writing and my boots had gathered enough dust and there was very little left to see in Blaize's little big city and my yearnings started to be for my children and the familiarity of wet streets train journeys and the possibility of new work. You just know don't you when the lounging around the sun the new language creaking in your head the new friends have exhausted their welcome and while the moped city's pleasant my restless gene started kicking in so hard I ventured down the road and asked the airline if I could move my ticket forward and the lady said yes for so much Euros and I went down to the bank with my last clutch of sterling and the banks all seven of them said they don't take the queen's quid and I kicked myself for supposing that they do for this part of the world is under the influence of the tricolour with all that implies mainly imperial rivalry set in place long before we were all born and nothing British is valued here. So I hang around for a few more days and Pierre the old journalist called to say his wife would like to know when I'm leaving so she can invite me over to their house for a nice meal and I was up for that because I'd seen so little of how ordinary families live. I passed the time too with Bernard and Souleyman and went shopping for African shirts all sold in tiny boutiques dominated by air-conditioning units until Bernard reprimanded me for shopping in rich men's stores where the clothes all have labels saying made in Abidjan or Paris when in fact I could get the same stuff in any local market. Why don't I stay in because the sun is strong as usual and tell him my sizes. They are not for me they're for my father his wardrobe was burgled and he lost everything even his vests and I thought he might get into West African fashions and Bernard says leave it to me and one lunch time two motorbikes laden with bags park outside and a tailor brings all his wares to the table and lets me choose. A novel way of shopping although I suspect every tourist gets the same deal and money is exchanging hands behind my back but it is convenient and I find what I was looking for and grab a couple of Drogba wraps for the sisters in my life too.

I work into the evening on most days keen to hit my producer with new words and new worlds and the sum of my experiences as I write on the human condition as it affects Africa. As usual the gathering of creatives about a week ago had produced many verbal agreements on collaborations and there's nothing like a lone spell to dispel professional doubt but this city continues to surprise and amuse me and I put it all away for several more wanderings in the neon lit dust and walk into a perfume shop to discover that the new American President has a fragrance out in Ouagadougou of all places called Yes We Can. Could I smell it? The savvy woman behind the counter is talking too much everything is hard sell and the Nigerian accent lowers my trust levels not because I don't trust Nigerians but one can tell a con when one smells one and she won't even let me do that. Oh no ma broder our sample bottle is finish that is the last one there you are looking at. So what does it smell like? Oh what do you think? Fresh like the man. Is it sexy? Oh what do you think? Sexy like the man. So why does it have a picture of his kids on the box? For a moment words fail her and I reckon she's going to come back with the unforgiveable line that his kids are sexy too but she opts for my broder giggle giggle it can also be a family fragrance. But 55000 CFA works out to be £74 because currencies are collapsing all around us and the pound has been taking a hammering and that's just way too much to pay for the bottle of illegal unlicensed perfume bearing the Orator's name which is being ripped off all across this continent because of the sense of hope it represents and because West African traders know what sells and that's the names of new heroes from Drogba to Essien to the Kenyan-American never mind that we could all be splashing unpurified petrol mixed with lavender on our skins after that morning shave. I wouldn't trust the Gaultier nor the Jazz nor that Aqua pour homme neither.

Some days later I leave as quietly as I arrived like a thief in the middle of the night and my guides my new friends are fast asleep and I head out to the smallest airport in the world and the immigration officers are grumpy and rude because it is after all two thirty in the morning and our plane is coming in from Niger to take us on to Casablanca and some of them are sleeping at the xray machine and as I board a bus for the 75 yards to the plane stairs one of the cops gets shirty and says show me your resident's card for London and I say I've never had one in 21 years and he opts to shout at me and I smile at him and think it's ok brother, Blaise did this to you, made you mad.

Dawn is breaking outside the porthole on the aeroplane and the sight has become so familiar that the clouds look quite firm like the terrain of a country I know and recognize and I write into the dawn and avoid the crappy aeroplane breakfast and this time I'm being terribly self indulgent and writing a letter to a dead woman and telling her that I feel her thinking about us and I wonder which of us will have the courage to die or to live and then the plane touches down on a bright calm day to busy Casablanca and the connecting flight to London town is not for another four hours and I wander this Mecca of merchandise and piss poor coffee thinking north Africa is just South Arabia but the women in the sports shop selling Ivory Coast football shirts are chatty and cosmopolitan and one of them says her friend just loves Africans and the point is proved for me because what the fuck is she? From above the city whose airport I know well buildings seem to be built upwards with tower residential blocks stretching between neat roads and the greenness of the dying desert as the Mediterranean pulls us north to the land of empires and the sands below betray a long history stretching to the Romans and the Pharaohs and the Nubian kings of the Sudan many of whose descendants are scattered in the plane with me together with the NGO's putting up water wells here and there and the missionaries heading home for the Easter break.

Sleep takes me over and I wake up to find a yellow light outside announcing the end of England's long winter and I change sim cards and learn that Arsenal have beaten Blackburn in the game I missed this afternoon and that the kids fancy a game of cricket when I head down tomorrow. Joy in the familiar.