Reality and Mystery

I'm sitting on a plastic wire strung chair but I'm really suspended somewhere between reality and mystery. The stars are clear overhead while the air I breathe is filled with the smoke of burning wood. The outline of red mud wall compounds is barely visible against the light of the fires around and the TV. Three hundred passive faces, young ones sitting in the dirt, the older ones on benches, watch intently as the TV screen belches out its electronic light, singlehandedly lighting up the village square. I'm with some of the staff from Danja Hospital who visit the villages surrounding Danja with AIDS and Leprosy education videos. The film is about AIDS. It is set in Africa but its setting is much more affluent than the setting in which I watch it for the first time.

The video is in French so Gouda, one of the staff members, provides a Hausa commentary over the PA system as the film is shown. I don't think I have ever sat in such incongruous circumstances. There is no electricity, no running water, no evidence of motor vehicles, no telecommunications in this village. The children around me are scantily clad in oversized T-shirts and sit impassively as the film progresses. The petrol generator hums in the distance and we all sit in the open air, in the village square, glued to the TV screen. I think it is the vulgar nature of the light that the TV throws across the square that is so disconcerting as it represents the reality from which I come.

When we arrived here the place was in darkness. At least it felt like darkness to me. The stalls around the square had their kerosene lamps lit to just about illuminate the roast yams, mangoes and cheap Chinese batteries for sale on the stalls. Small fires burned at the side of compound walls. Tea makers carried their containers of burning coals glowing comfortingly in the night. There were plenty of people milling around, for darkness does not equal inactivity or silence in Africa. While some of the team set up the TV, video and generator, three of us went off to pay our respects to the village chief. It was pitch dark as we walked down the street, without light, one of the villagers leading the way. Eventually stopping at the entrance to one of the compounds we await his arrival.

I don't know what the chief has been doing before we arrived but after he has shaken my hand there is a strong whiff of kerosene left on mine. The mumbled greetings are lost on me, "Lahia, Lahia", I mutter back on the basis that Lahia (which means 'fine') is usually the appropriate response. A discussion follows in which the chief denies all knowledge of the arrangements to show the video but he thinks it's a good idea all the same. We have no sooner made our way back to the village square through the darkness than we are being led off in the opposite direction. The reason for the chief's ignorance of our visit is about to be revealed. We meet another chief. He knows all about us and the greeting process gets under way once more. There isn't one hundred metres between the two compounds we have just visited but there must be some fascinating politics.

So I'm sitting here suspended somewhere between reality and mystery in the village square watching the TV. I am terribly aware that the vulgar light of the TV is the reality from which I come and in which I live. The mystery is the people and place in which I find myself. The little girl whose silhouette is dancing against the red mud wall across the square, illuminated by the freshly stoked wood fire, typifies the mystery. Who is she? What will her life be like? Will she ever visit Maradi? Will she ever read or write, or need to, or want to? In which canton of the village will she live, under which chief? Will she contract AIDS?

When the TV is turned off and the generator is silenced, the village square returns to darkness. The crowd disperses within moments into the shadows. The afterglow of the TV screen gently fades, we load the vehicle and I'm still suspended somewhere between reality and mystery.

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