One day, Joe walks off into the African bush and doesn't come back. Where did he go? When did he go?
Walking out en brousse from Boubara is like walking into the sea; it's only hard going until you reach the point of no return. There is a dark line of blue on the horizon behind me. I can see the whole of the West African savanna band from here. Distant thunder makes my teeth itch, driving me westward. Leaving the house behind me, unlocked for once, I cross my backyard, hoping no one will see me. I don't run and I don't look back. The rest of the village can steal everything I have, for all I care now. I head past the kitchen house, past the polluted well and trash pit and old latrine hole, for the trail that begins at the edge of the savanna. All the trails from the village's other houses join it, making one broad footpath as I pass the river. Three women look up from banging their washing on the flat rocks. They watch me pass, but say nothing.
When Peace Corps left me at my new post, they told me to stay by the road. "Bad things happen if you go out en brousse, Joe," Dave, the Provincial Representative, told me. "Don't do it. We'd have to come and get you and we might not get you back like your predecessor."
It's an interesting question, whether or not they really got my predecessor back.
