But I held firm. I didn’t listen to the warnings. My mind was made up — perhaps in part because so often I had felt irritated with people who arrived here, lived in “little Europe” or “little America” (i.e., in luxury hotels), and departed, bragging later that they had been to Africa, a place that in reality they had never seen.
And suddenly, an opportunity arose. I met an Italian, Emilio Madera, who in a back alley not far from Massey Street owned a little warehouse of farm implements. Like many whites who were gradually liquidating their enterprises here, he had closed his business. The two-room service apartment above it was now vacant, and he was all too happy to rent it to me. He drove me there one evening in his car and helped me carry up my things (the metal stairs were attached to the building’s exterior walls). It was pleasantly cool inside, for Emilio had turned on the air conditioner that morning. There was also a working refrigerator. Emilio wished me a good night and quickly departed. He was flying to Rome early the next morning — after the latest military coup, he was afraid of further unrest and wanted to take some of his money out of the country.
I began to unpack.
An hour later the lights went out.
I didn’t have a flashlight. Worse still, the air conditioner had stopped, and in addition to it being completely dark, it now quickly became hot and stuffy. I opened the window. In swept the stench of rotten fruit, burnt oil, soap, and urine. Although the sea was somewhere nearby, you could detect no breeze in this enclosed and congested alley. It was March, a month of crushing heat, when the nights often seemed hotter and more stifling than the days. I looked out the window. Up and down the street below me, on woven mats or directly on the ground, lay half-naked people. The women and children were asleep; several men, their backs leaning against the walls of the clay houses, stared at me. I didn’t know what their gazes meant. Did they want to meet me? Help me? Kill me?
I decided that I could not endure until dawn in these sweltering rooms, and went down. Two men rose; the others watched, motionless. We were all sweaty, deadly tired; merely existing in this climate is an extraordinary effort. I asked them if this kind of electrical outage happened often. They didn’t know. I asked if something could be done about it. They conversed among themselves in a language I did not understand. One of them disappeared. Minutes passed — fifteen, thirty, forty-five. Finally he returned, bringing two young men with him. They said that they could fix the problem for ten pounds. I agreed. Soon, the lights were back on inside the apartment, and the air conditioner was working. Several days later — another outage, another ten pounds. Then fifteen, twenty.
And the thefts? In the beginning, I was filled with rage each time I returned to my ransacked apartment. To be robbed is, first and foremost, to be humiliated, to be made a fool of. But with time I came to understand that seeing a robbery as a humiliation and an affront is an emotional luxury. Living amid the poverty of my neighborhood, I realized that theft, even a petty theft, can be a death sentence. To steal is to commit manslaughter, murder. A solitary woman had her little corner in my street, and her sole possession was a pot. She made a living buying beans for credit from the vegetable vendors, cooking them, seasoning them with a sauce, and selling them to passersby. For many, this bowl of beans was the only daily meal. One night, a piercing cry awoke us. The entire alleyway stirred. The woman was running around in a circle, despairing, frenzied: thieves had snatched her pot, and she had lost the one thing she depended on for her livelihood.
Many of my neighbors here have just the one thing. Someone has a shirt, someone a panga, someone a pickax. The one with a shirt can find a job as a night watchman (no one wants a half-naked guard); the one with a panga can be hired to cut down weeds; the one with the pickax can dig a ditch. Others have only their muscles to sell. They count on someone needing them as porters or messengers. In all these instances, the chances of employment are slim, because competition is enormous. And further, these are frequently only odd jobs — for one day, for several hours.
Thus my alley, the adjacent streets, and the entire neighborhood are full of idle people. They wake in the morning and search for some water with which to wash their faces. Then, those with a bit of money buy themselves breakfast: a glass of tea and stale roll. But many people don’t eat anything. Before noon still, the heat is difficult to bear — one must look for a shady spot. The shade moves hourly with the sun, and man moves with the shade — following the shade, crawling after it to hide in its dark, cool interior, is each day his only real occupation. Hunger. One badly wants to eat, but there is nothing to be had. Making matters worse, the smell of roasting meal wafts from a nearby bar. Why don’t these people storm the bar? After all, they are young and strong.
One of them, apparently, was unable to control himself, for suddenly, a cry resounds: it’s one of the street vendors shouting — a boy snatched a bunch of bananas from her stand. The victim and her neighbors set off in pursuit and eventually catch him. The police appear out of nowhere. Policemen here carry large wooden clubs, with which they brutally beat offenders, striking them with all their might. The boy is lying in the street now, cringing, curled up, trying to shield himself from the blows. A crowd has gathered, which occurs here in the blink of an eye, since these legions of the unemployed have little to do besides waiting for some event, some commotion, some excitement — anything to distract them, to help pass the time. They press closer and closer, as if the dull thud of the clubs and the moans of the victim afforded them genuine pleasure. With shouts and screams they encourage and incite the policemen. Here, if a thief is caught, people immediately want to tear him apart, lynch him, chop him into pieces. The boy is groaning, already he has let go of the bananas. Those standing closest throw themselves on the fruit, tear the bunch apart.
Then everything returns to normal. The vendor still complains and curses, the policemen leave, the battered, tortured boy drags himself to some hiding place — sore and hungry. The onlookers disperse, returning to their places under walls, under roofs — to the shade. They will stay there until evening. After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stupor, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him.
In the evening, the alleyway comes ever so slightly to life. Its residents gather. Some of them have spent the whole day here, tormented by attacks of malaria. Others are just returning from the city. Some have had a good day: they found work somewhere, or else they met one of their kinsmen, who shared his pennies with them. They will be eating supper tonight, a bowl of cassava with a hot paprika sauce, perhaps even accompanied by a boiled egg or a piece of lamb. Some of this will go to the children, who watch the men greedily as they swallow each bite. Every bit of food disappears immediately and without a trace. Everything is eaten, down to the last crumb. No one has any supplies, for even if someone did have extra food, he wouldn’t have anywhere to keep it, no place to shut it. You live in the immediate, current moment; each day is an obstacle difficult to surmount, and the imagination does not reach beyond the present, does not concoct plans, does not dream.