And so it went. Despite a weird dream about the kids he reached the next day without a bad head. Heading for Legon, Makola wanted to give the American a glimpse of Independence Square and the Arab market but Mason saw them through haze. Clusters of sidewalk vendors were everywhere. Their leather crafts, dresses, jewelry, masks, were spread out on sheltered tables along the main streets where the traffic was hectic, stalled, and where dust clouds lifted to the bat-filled grand old trees also lining the roads. Every street corner was a small community focus of solemn women and men and children who waited to sell their wares and produce: plantains and shrunken fruit and palm oil. Dogs lean and hungry wandered restlessly in the dust in and out of side-streets. Neighborhood women set up blocks to force drivers to pay to pass along their pitted, rock-laden dirt roads…. Part of the presentation was a flop because nobody'd heard of the Afro-American writers he referred to: Wideman, Shange, Reed, Charles Wright, not even Zora Neal Hurston. Cultural gap? Distance. It left him gloomy. Catching, huh, Makola was apologetic, reassuring. Then Mason read from his infamous work-in-progress: