9/29/09
I am uncertain I can stop crying long enough to recount the tale. First, you should try to pronounce his name. Bilambiliba. Try to imagine what a black Robin Williams might look like. That’s him.
Some things that are flashing around my mind are the way he laughs – his shoulders shake a little, his chin is tucked towards his chest, he’s smiling and making a scratching noise in the back of his throat.
It always kind of annoyed me the way he ate peanuts; he wouldn’t place them in his mouth. It was more like a projectile launch from around the region of his chest to his mouth. But, why be annoyed by this? Death has a way of turning a person’s idiosyncrasies into something dripping with nostalgia.
He was one of the only people here that consistently gifted me yams, as if I am lacking the resources to eat let alone march out into my courtyard and pound yams in a giant pedestal and mortar. But, we know this is not the thinking. What about his family? I am the one who should be giving him food.
It’s what breaks my heart now. What are his three wives and twenty-two children supposed to do now? He now makes my case against polygamy here. There are so many things wrong here. What a mess. The least of my concerns now is polygamy.
I feel just a little more defeated when one of the good ones is lost. This world needs all the gems it can get its dirty, grimy hands on.
I went to the burial yesterday. I lost it, just f**king lost it. I didn’t care. Some woman tried to make me stop crying by clawing at my face. People don’t show this kind of emotion here, not really, not as an adult, not even when someone dies, at least, not publicly. Since this death was personal, all bets were off and I went there with all my American sentimentality hanging on my sleeve.
It’s amazing how much his brothers, and definitely one in particular, look like him. Every time I saw that brother and the sympathy I felt for him it was enough to bring forth fresh wells of tears to my eyes.
What really got me shaking with grief was seeing the photograph famed and hanging next to the entrance to his home. It was us – my homologue and I having a calabash of Tchouk in Kossia’s stand at the market. How classic.
A votre santé!
Vous reposez en paix.
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