robin

I met Robin Hood the night before my trip to Chutes de Sala. It all started at the restaurant, the one where the waiter was nice and went to get me veggie food. Well when he left to check for leaf sauce in the market we realized belatedly that we should have told him there was only one person who wanted it--the other guys were drooling at the thought of meat and potatoes. I ran off after him but when I got out to the deck and looked down at the busy road I realized that I had no idea what he looked like, not exactly like waiters here wear a uniform you know? So I turned to one of the guys standing around staring at me (there were quite a few to choose from) and asked if he had seen the man who works at the restaurant go by. "Yes, I did! He went...!" jumped up and started running down the stairs, then ran back up. "I don't know." I thanked him and went back inside. Luckily, because this is how Guinea works, the waiter came back to say yes, there's leaf sauce, how many plates did we want? then grabbed a plate from the kitchen and left again. While he was gone the man from outside came in, walked up to our table, put his hand on the table and said "cadeau" and then walked away smiling leaving...a piece of bread. Torn into four tiny pieces, one for each of us. Nice. Looks like we made a friend.

Dinner done, we started walking back to Amy's and our new friend came with us. He lit up a cigarette and the offered me another one, I said no thanks "c'est pas bon pour la sante" so he lit it up and started smoking it too. He started singing, kept running off, running back again, Amy was worried that he was going to follow us all the way to her house and (understandably) didn't really want him knowing where she lived. We decided to stop by her neighbor's house first--her neighbor who happens to be the Sous-Prefet, kind of like the town mayor. We trooped up to the porch where he was sitting, "Nice night, huh?" "Yeah, nice and cool. How's the family?" "Fine, fine." Our new friend asked the Sous-Prefet for money and got a few cents (that's cent as in hundred Guinea francs but might as well be cents with inflation). Our friend turned around and put the money in Ashley's hand, then ran off. Ashley looked at the bills for a second and silently handed them back to the Sous-Prefet. A second later our friend came running back and demanded "What did you do with the cadeau I gave you?" and without a beat Ashley answered "Oh I gave it to my friend here to guard." "Oh, ok!" he said and ran off again. We all started busting up laughing and the Sous-Prefet tapped his temple and said "He's foo." Yeah, got that.

Foo is a catchall term for any sort of mental disability here. There aren't really the resources for treatment and the social response seems to be that families take care of their own, if someone is dangerous it's the family's job to keep them under control, and people get by by doing small chores like pulling water from the well. Not that different from how things work in the US, I think, although people in the US seem more likely to live on their own rather than with their families.

Anyway, since our new friend apparently steals from the poor and gives to rich Americans of course we had to name him Robin Hood. The next morning Ashley and I went to the market to get food for our trip to the Chutes and Robin tracked us down. He gave us some bush fruit and followed us through the tangled wooden stalls of the market. We bought some oranges and heard a shout and laughter as we were leaving--Robin had just stolen some oranges and was running away. A few minutes later, buying eggs, Robin came up to us again and offered...some oranges. Thanks, Robin! He brought us a bench and made us sit down while we waited for the egg lady, then followed us when we started back to Amy's. We weren’t sure how to shake him, we needed to get back and get going on our trip, so when he left on one of his sidetrips we made a dash for the house but there he was behind us when we got there. Sorry, Amy! She was not thrilled.

Well off we went for our wonderful trip, meeting up with Andrea, good times. The next morning we woke up and, uh, Robin was sitting on the front porch making Nescafe. "Would you like some coffee?" No thanks. Next time we peeked out the window he was over at the pump taking a bucket bath, various articles of clothing hanging up on branches of a nearby mango tree. He was wearing a lot of layers so it wasn't indecent or anything, after hanging up a couple of jackets and or shirt or so he still had on a shirt, pants--and electric blue underwear. Over his pants. When he was done washing up he started picking up some of the trash that was lying around in front of Amy's house (her neighbors have a "chuck it on the other side of the yard" approach to waste disposal). At one point Amy stood in her doorway and said something like, "There's a man in blue underwear picking up trash in my yard" and as you could see her struggling to deal with it added "At least the yard's getting clean."

We had to leave pretty soon after that so we wished Amy luck and set off. I was hoping there would be more peaceful and funny adventures of Robin Hood to come but I guess after a couple of days on Amy's porch some guys ran Robin off and Amy hasn't seen him since. I'm sure we'll see him around again someday, not at Amy's but around, offering an orange cadeau and scampering away. Oo-de-lally