This morning, Mattieu and I took the project vehicle and drove to Sidakoro, a village nearby. We needed to buy some fruit for the chimps, as our supplies were dwindling. The mission also served as an escort for Moussa, to be hauled out of town, as he was a military soldier who was fired from the project. Because the government of Guinea is unable to pay the salaries of its National Park staff, who work under the auspices of the Dept. of Water & Forests, our project has offered to pay for 2 park guards (who know the park well and patrol it, unarmed) as well as 6 military soldiers. They are supposed to go on daily patrols and they are armed with rusted Kalashnikovs but we don't give them bullets. They are young, uneducated, undisciplined, and simply cannot be trusted with a firearm. Basically, they are just a dissuasion force. They wear military fatigues, combat boots, carry a rifle. But the whole program is a joke. They do nothing. Their days are spent drinking tea, playing cards, sitting around in a numb silence, a perpetual torpor. Moussa became a constant problem. Some suggested he might have some psychological issues. He would routinely berate other staff and display entirely inappropriate behavior. In addition to not doing his job, he was harassing the females who work on the project here. Watching them bathe in the river, offering massages, walking around in his tighty-whities. Finally, he was reprimanded by Carol, the Belgian vet. She overheard him say, as he stormed off, "If you were a man I'd punch you in the face". That pretty much sealed his fate. His final week of salary has been withheld as was his food ration. But now, we had a new problem on our hands: we have an angry, potentially psychotic man in possession of a weapon in our midst. If he was resourceful enough, he could get his hands on some ammo. Everyone here slept with one eye open last night.
Two other soldiers, who live in a hut just across from mine, are high nearly every day. Lamin & Poppeese. Smoke wafts over to my place and it ain't cigarettes their smokin'. I am careful to stay on their good side and to make them believe that I actually like them. They are friendly enough with me but sometimes I catch them eyeballing me, cold and steely. On a good day, they might take a 1 hour stroll into the bush to give the appearance of actually working. The problem is that, although we pay their salaries, they don't technically work for us. And worse, they are military, and they refuse to take orders from anyone. They prefer to give them. And their attitude matches their work ethic. Pathetic. Every morning, one of them comes to our camp complaining of some imaginary illness that he made up on his way over. They feign an ache and ask for medicine (and for the day off, of course).
Poppeese trys so hard to imitate a gangsta thug. Every morning when I pass his place, my "Bon Jour" is met with a "Yo, Mike, wassup"?! He looks for approval from me, hoping I will think he's one cool cat. I don't acknowledge his "I wanna be an American rap star" frontin'. This makes me cringe with disgust. There are millions like him, on all continents, who have been infected with this malignant American tumor. Above all else, supplanting every American original: film, jazz, technology, Levi's- the export of our hip-hip culture has milked the minds of kids in even the most remote villages on the planet. It's what defines and represents America now, for the youth abroad. Through music videos, we dangle dreams of living poolside with porn stars in G strings or driving the coast in a drop-top candy apple Caddy with 22" spinners and a Glock stashed under the seat. Somewhere in Antarctica, there is a teenage Eskimo with a poster of Puff Daddy on the wall of his igloo. I am gay with delight to witness our primary global influence is to pimpify the planet. 'Nuff said on the perpetration tip.
Mattieu returned today from the rescue mission in Kouroussa. They had driven 8 hours each way to go and see what happened to the chimp in the village at the park boundary. The letter we had received had asked us to come and retrieve this chimp. We were too late. The chimp had entered the village and the people panicked. They tied his hands together and then hacked him with machetes until he bled to death. A slow painful agonizing torture. No matter how hard I try, I will never understand how human beings can be so savage, so heartless. Nobody spoke at dinner tonite. We ate our disgusting food in silence, a lull weighing heavily on everyone's mind. I returned to my hut, laid down, and imagined the terror that chimp must have felt. The thoughts sickened me. I tossed about, anxiously, until 3am, and finally slept.
"There is no need for a supernatural belief in evil. Man alone is capable of every wickedness." - Joseph Conrad
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