Excerpt

In preparation to leave next Sunday, I have been trying to 'hausa-fy' myself. Mostly superficial things, like pulling out the few clothing items I still have from 5 years ago--the headscarves (kalibi) and the wrap skirts (zane); the cheap gold earrings (dan kune) that are only remarkable because every woman wears them; the little cloth purse embroidered by our Wodaabe guards; the silver jewelry sold mostly to tourists and Peace Corps volunteers.

I also find myself thinking in Hausa a lot, which might be due to a memoir I'm reading by a political science professor and former Niger Peace Corps Volunteer, William F. S. Miles--he throws in a lot of Hausa phrases. (The book is called My African Horse Problem.)

Maybe it's a combination of the wine and the heat in my subterranean, un-air conditioned apartment, but I started crying after reading a section where Miles returns more than a decade later and offers help the wife of a friend who passed away while he was gone--not because he's returning and offering help, but because of her reaction and how dai-dai it is.

Once upon a cold and foggy Harmattan, I'd ridden horseback all the way to Alhaji Habou's domain. The sandswept landscape was as bleak as the sky, with no other habitations in range. My host instructed his wife to provide me a refreshment, and she rushed to collect milk so fresh that it was still warm from the cow's udder. Now, well over a decade later, she remembered my visit in fine detail.

To Western ears, the circumstances surrounding Alhaji Habou's demise might sound mildly comical. One rainy season night my friend's roof simply caved in during a storm, killing him as he lay in bed. Shi ke nan. Finished. I often thought of my own leaky roof in Yardaje, the clumps of mud falling on me and--worse--soiling my research papers. That's all it takes to die in Hausaland: a heavy rain. It is one of the innumerable reasons why death is anticipated so matter-of-factly.

Mourning in Massachusetts, I wondered: What could I do for my deceased friend? It was then that I though about the widow he'd left behind. Would he not have wished for me to somehow help her? When, or how, was secondary...

Now, with the slight, elderly, bent woman draped in shrouds at the door of my guest quarters courtyard in the nighttime...Habou's widow is anxious about having been summoned to my hut. So I explain.

"You know, Alhaji Habou was my friend. A very good friend. And he was a good man."

"Yes, he was."

"I was used to him, he was used to me."

"So it was."

"When I learned of his passing, my heart was damaged. I wanted to do something for him. But do what?"

"We have a custom," I continue, though not really quite certain who this "we" is or to what custom I am referring. "If a friend dies, we try to help those whom he has left behind."

As often occurs when speaking Hausa to remote herdspeople and nomads, especially female ones, I ceased to be understood. Unaccustomed to ever seeing white people, some rural folk assume that I can only speak in a foreign tongue. Already confused by her presence in my home, Habou's widow asks Lawali the schoolteacher what is going on. Lawali "translates," repeating what I have just said in Hausa.

I reach into the folds of my ashera, my open slit shirt with deep pockets, and fish out a fistful of twenty naira bills. "Take it," I say. "On account of him."

In the nighttime dark, Habou's widow can not see from across the courtyard what I have extracted from my pockets. Slowly, cautiously, she walks over. Her small and bony fingers touch mine as I make the offering. Recognizing what I have placed in her frail hands, she promptly collapses to the ground.

"No, don't cry," Lawali pleads, such displays in front of unrelated menfolk being exceedingly embarrassing. But her tears are already flowing, accompanied by mournful gasps of ambivalent emotions.

After Habou's widow recovers, her first words are not addressed to me, but to Lawali. "Does he"--"he," in this context, meaning the strange Bature, the White Man, "Does he eat millet pasta? How long will he remain in the village?"

"No, he's cooking for himself and his son," Lawali explains. "You need not prepare any food for them."

Repayment, thanks, dignity, reciprocity: all the Fulani widow can think of doing now is to cook our meals for the duration of our stay. But all she knows how to cook is millet--millet pasta dough, millet balls in sour milk, maybe even fried millet fritters. She must not misunderstand. She must not think that I have given her money to serve as our cook.

The next day, Alhaji Habou's widow reciprocates in the only other way she knows: dispatching one of her sons to show himself. To be there. To be seen. Making the effort to travel from your home--however distant--to that of another. Herein lies the heart of the Hausa way: one human being presenting himself, herself, to another. Person to person. Soul to soul. (Miles, 79-81)