A go ka

Moto ga ka. Ma hin suuru Musa. “The truck will come. Be patient, Musa.”

How many times had I heard that while waiting at that barren crossroads? After an exhausting 6-mile morning hike through deep sand up the narrow donkey path from my village, by the time I arrived at the way station (a simple, solitary hut on the desert hardpan), the sun would already be dominating the sky over the scorched Sahelian landscape. The searing heat of the day, while imminent, had not yet begun to oppress, but a sense of approaching heat was already in the air. I had to get to the river market before I melted into my usual apathetic lump of shade and water-seeking irritability for the rest of the afternoon.
Through the woven grass walls of the shanty hut, I heard the intermittent shooshing sound of a calm wind blowing through the straw reeds. But everything else was silent. Standing there in the vast Nigerien shrub and sandscape, I noticed the faint scent of smoke from acacia wood.

That roadway could not have felt more abandoned. The dirt I stood on was packed hard by months of absolute zero precipitation. Beyond what my starved perception craved, there was nothing coming along the road. Not yet anyway. In the stillness, there was no sign of movement: no oxcart, bicycle, camel or donkey--much less any motorized vehicle--within what seemed like a hundred miles of the place. Despite the sinking feeling I had in my chest, I gazed hopefully into the distance.
Several village men sat on their 50kg sacks of millet. They waited with me in the languid atmosphere.  
Watifo moto ga ka? “When is the bush taxi coming?” I asked.

A ga ka sohon. “It will come now.”

Sohon sohon? “Do you mean ‘now’ now?”

Oho. ...Sohon. “Yes. ...Now”

“Now” is such a relative term. It could mean literally now, approximately around now or, quite often, several hours or almost a day from now.

It would still be many months before I would learn to sit down under the shade of that thatched roof, still my impatience and rest my expectations. For now I waited as a tense and restless westerner, standing in my sturdy new Tevas, holding my unscratched Nalgene and full bottle of sunscreen. I even imagined that I could hear the distant hum of the truck motor.

Wa 'Allah i, moto ga ka. Ni ma hin suuru.  “I swear it will come. Have patience.” Those words were lost on me. I had somewhere else I needed to be and simply could not wait.

The experience of just waiting... and waiting... in the parched desert with seemingly nothing to do but perhaps sit until you turned to dust and blew away, was sheer insanity.
I had yet to learn that the wait itself was secondary to the real experience of just “being” there. After all, there was still plenty to do while I waited. Perhaps I could share some hard-learned Zarma conversational phrases over a two-hour tea session. Himadou just bought a new goat for Eid, and Hadissa is getting ready to plant her peanut crop! There is so much happening back in the village! We could spend all day just brewing and sipping tea and discussing these riveting topics. Then we could take a nap on our bags of millet seed, swatting at flies, sweating and wasting the afternoon away until the truck finally came.
I strained to look further, expecting at any moment to see that dented vintage Mercedes Grand Camion spouting its black plume of exhaust and sending a rooster-tail of dust behind it as it growled and scurried over the barren hardpan, hauling it’s daily load of dried fish, gum arabic, cows, chickens, old and young men, women, children—all piled into the flatbed or hanging from the sides of the steel roll bars.

Sure it’ll come. ...any minute now.

It did eventually come. And when it rolled to a stop, the line of live chickens tied upside down at the edges of the truck swayed back and forth in unison. The driver’s apprentice leaped from the top of the human pile he was standing on, and the commotion began: millet sacks were thrown into the back while I bargained for a place in the front cabin. While standing next to the tailpipe and inhaling the mix of crude diesel and cheap cigarette, I communicated in my most well-rehearsed Zarma amid the sound of infants wailing, hens clucking, goats bleating and people chattering.

The next moment I was on my way... finally. How exciting! The front cabin was already full, as it invariably always was, so I hoisted myself onto the rickety tailgate to join the circus. Standing precariously with my hands clinging to the steel frame as the wind whipped at my face and clothes, I conversed with the old El Haji’s in my broken Zarma, pretending the entire time not to notice the huge craters in the road or the alarming tilt of the vehicle as it made its lunatic turns through the scrub and brushlands on the way to the river.

**************

With every passing day on this long journey, we wait. We know our ride will come. And when it does, it will be exciting. For now, we’ll just sit along this quiet roadway, drink more tea, talk about our goats and chickens and go a little crazy. But I know it will come... someday.

A ga ka sohon, wala?

Oho may. Sohon sohon.

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think I can even hear that motor humming in the distance right now.