Finding Jesus In Mud And Wattle - How A Simple Man Found Sex And God In The African Bush

Henry Dodd was a simple man, born to simple parents in a mill town of western Massachusetts, who summers and after school unclogging textile factory drains pouring into the Reacher River - a nasty job pulling gobs of gunk that had backed waste water up into the floor sluices and put the looms on hold. 

He hated New England, the long winters, the ice dams that built up in the gutters, the car batteries that died, the shoveling, the salting, and the endless black, cinder-pocked snow drifts. Winter seemed endless, and Spring on the river when the shit from the mills upstream, loosened from their ice shelves, drifted past like flotsam and jetsam, stray bolts of gabardine, chocks of organza, and bits and pieces of lumber and restaurant trash from Worcester was no idyll. 

And so it was that Henry had dreams about Africa, a hot, tropical place of untold mystery, romance, and adventure.  He  bought the latest copies of Captain Marvel and The African Queen and wished he were there, on safari on the veldt, the great white hunter tracking wildebeest, rhino, and lion; or in the lairs of the great silverback gorillas in the mountains of the Congo. 

 

Henry was an impressionable boy, and early fantasies stayed with him; so when it was time to decide on a career, it was Africa.  Not only would he be able to track antelope and springboks, but he would be able to help black people out of the miasma of poverty. 

He was the first of his family to to to college, so he had no Ivy League pretentions, and applied to forgiving Midwest schools.  He was accepted at Miami of Ohio and said his goodbyes on a bright September day hoping for the best. 

College was about what he expected - remember, Henry was no great shakes, a good boy, good student, faithful, and orderly but not about to move the world - and this minor academic stage was perfect for him.  The school demanded little and he asked even less but the flame of Africa remained burning bright despite his remedial courses, physical education, and final exams. 

The Peace Corps took him, for he was an ideal candidate.  The agency not unlike long distance bus carriers wanted someone smart enough to drive the bus but not so smart as to be distracted by Kant or Heidegger and land in a ditch.  There was a position open in a Sahelian country of West Africa and he felt blessed.  Chicken raising, although far from his textile background, was just the thing to build a career from the ground up. 

Now, Henry knew nothing about Africans except from Captain Marvel, and so was unprepared for village life.  Not only was there no adventure there, no wildebeests, no romance, and no excitement, it was a penurious, miserable existence far worse than he ever could have imagined unclogging drains over the Reacher.  The Africans were an indolent, buggering, capricious lot, rutting day and night in the the flowering bushes, cadging cooking oil and sardines, getting drunk on palm wine and fermented cassava and sleeping it off through the heat of the day. 

No one cared about chickens, development, improvement, or betterment.  The villagers were an intellectually destitute, morally absent crew; and Henry wondered what exactly was the point of his tenure. 

'Cheer up, bro'', said Pharoah Jones, his Bamako-based Peace Corps handler, formerly from Anacostia, Washington DC's most pestilential slum, chosen in an international DEI program to 'add diversity' to a classically all-white cadre. 'It's all up from here'. 

Pharoah, true to his pimping, hustling ghetto roots, knew what was what; and had already made his way on the Dark Continent.  He had never bothered with 'that cracker thang', the traditional Peace Corps experience in the village, and had managed a city sinecure - Fulani mistresses, Brittany oysters, and a suite at the Independence. 'Stick with me', he said. 

At first Henry was hesitant - where was this man's dedication to the poor, the very ethos of the Peace Corps - but he soon realized that there was no way he could survive two hot, dry, senseless years in the misery of the sub-Saharan wasteland. 

'Ebony and Ivory', he said to Pharoah as he agreed to join him in his sybaritic life, two of a kind, both American to the core, just not the long haul Greyhound drivers the Peace Corps had envisioned.  There was a way, Pharoah said, into the USAID treasury, a goldmine of unaccountable resources without lock and key available to all with a bit of savvy and street sense. 

Pharoah had charmed and bedded Alicia De Nero Barton, USAID Health Officer whose portfolio was in the millions.  She was chary of African lovers, but was delighted by the attentions of an African diasporite, close enough to the Motherland to count for something, and she granted him inestimable favors. 

'Nose wide open', said Pharoah to Henry.  'She never saw it coming', and with that and her favors, he and Henry set up their own NGO, a small non-profit designed to help poor women take charge of their lives. 

It was beautiful - the USAID money came with no strings attached, so linked as it was to rural African women, ipso facto deserving beneficiaries.  The Peace Corps was happy to have such a multi-sectoral American partnership, and the two boys - Pharoah and Henry - made thousands, enough to keep them in the manner to which they had become quickly accustomed. 

The shell had to have some warm bodies, and so one of Pharoah's Fulani mistresses agreed to show up every Friday before evening prayers at the Center for Malian Women, sign a few papers, and go home to her nearby village while awaiting Pharoah's call.  

Partnership in Pharoah's eyes was sacred, share and share alike, so when Henry asked, quite demurely and respectfully if he might 'see' Usha, the Fulani beauty, Pharoah immediately agreed.  'What's mine is yours, bro'', he said and the delightful affair began

Now for the Jesus part, something long brewing in the mind of the simple man from Massachusetts. Here he was in the land of his dreams, living the life of the Arabian Nights, lying by the side of a miraculously beautiful woman, as sumptuously treated as a pasha, and he was giving nothing back, not a penny, lira, or dollar. He was living in the lap of luxury, fulfilling his childhood dreams, and offering nothing but empty pockets.  He owed something, and he would pay. 

'Jesus comes to those who wait' he had always been told, but the debt was coming due.  Was it to be paid to Allah, God of Islam, religion of peace now fueling the bloody ISIS terrorists to the north? To the totemic gods of native Africans - trees, mountains, crows, and crocodiles? Or to Jesus who seemed very distant indeed.  The nostrums of his old Methodist faith seemed watery and indifferent at best; but he had promised, and so he prayed for a visitation. 

No apparition occurred and after each session on his prayer mat he remained empty of God and faith.  What was he to do?

The Africans in nearby villages were still worshipping trees - red smudges on eucalyptus passed for an altar to God - so there was no hope for spiritual reconciliation there; and the chances of Jesus visiting him as had happened to many in his charismatic church back in Worcester, were nil. 

'What the fuck, man?' said Pharoah when he saw his friend's frustration. 'Armageddon will come soon enough' and with that fired up a Jamaican-sixed spliff, took a drink of his Courvoisier Five Star, and beckoned to his Fulani darling to come to him. 

So the trifecta - sex, fairy tale adventure, and doing good - was won in a penthouse suite in Bamako, Mali, and Henry Dodd was a happy man.  How many men can realize their adolescent dreams?