Bye bye safe journey, part 4

Lumumba is a young man, in his mid-20s. He wears aviator sunglasses, a Quicksilver baseball cap, baggy jeans and flip flops; he wouldn’t be out of place hanging out in the parking lot of some high school. At first, he seems to take no notice of us.

We’re on the road about 15 minutes when he calmly ventures back, wearing his salesman’s smile. He even removes his sunglasses. I expect him to ask what happened, why we decided to abandon the taxi. But he doesn’t, and the fact that he doesn’t only fuels my suspicions about him.

“Nice tactical move, obroni,” I imagine him thinking. “But rook takes castle, I’m afraid. Here I am. Your move.”

Instead of asking about our abrupt change in plans, he says, “Your friend, the one with the motorcycle, they said he didn’t have the proper paperwork so they wouldn’t let him cross the border. But I helped him. I led him to the place to get the papers.”

“Oh … OK,” we say.

He stands in the aisle, a hand on the back of the seat on either side, and nods confidently, as if everything is falling nicely into place. There is a long moment of awkward silence. When he doesn’t return to his seat, Jeanne speaks up, “I’m sorry, but we just want to be left alone. We don’t want to talk.”

Fire, meet tinder. In an instant, his mood changes. He stiffens and his face goes hard.

“Who are you?” he demands. “You are no one. You cannot speak for everyone. Who are you? Did you ask the others what they think? That is rude. I was talking to Mr. Greg. I don’t care what you think. Who are you anyway? You come to my country and be rude? You can’t come here and act that way. Why don’t you leave?”

There is a pause. He is waiting for an answer, but we remain silent, as do the rest of the passengers. This seems to anger him further.

“You think you are so important because you travel to all these countries. I have traveled. I have been to many different places outside. Just like you. So you are not special. I am as good as you.”

Still no response. So he picks up steam, adding new energy and new historical dimensions to his tirade.

“You come here and treat people like that. You are racist. You are a racist. This is my country. Not yours. Why don’t you go? Get out. You are racist. You come to Africa and you steal all of our resources. You come and take and take. Because you are white you think you can take whatever you want around the world. That is why we are poor here. You enslave our people. You don’t think we remember but we remember. We will never forget. Now you try to put chains on our minds but you cannot. We won’t let you. We are strong. We are just waiting. Now you have a black man as president. In the Black House. We are just waiting. And then we are going to rise up. We are going to control you to the max. Who cares about you?”

By this point, he seems to have finally talked himself out. A few more words sputter free, but without a response from us he soon seems to have lost interest. It is a startling rant, but revealing about a guy about whom we all had misgivings. Can a person embrace notions of the kind he just spouted, calling himself Lumumba, while also being truly the chummy, glad-handing helper he set himself up to be? Seems unlikely.

He finally resumes his seat and no more is said on the subject of plundered resources or chained minds. For the three hours to Ouaga I do, however, imagine scenarios in which we will greeted at the bus station by his friends. I try to prepare for the inevitable dust-up.

(Picture: Scene from a typical village in northern Ghana/Burkina Faso)