These Songs of Freedom, part 1
Here's the first chunk of my entry in ludditerobot's Scatterlings and Orphanages Africander Ficathon.
These Songs of Freedom, R
Xander seeks a slayer in war-ravaged Liberia.
Disclaimer: Xander, Giles, Buffy, et all, not mine but Joss's.
How do you tell Bindu's story?
She's a Kpelle girl, fifteen.
Her parents have died, her brothers were drafted into the army.
She lives with her sister and brother-in-law, helps them with their children and the crops.
None of this begins to touch the truth of it.
Bindu's parents were murdered during the civil war. Her brothers were kidnapped by a rebel faction, forced to become soldiers. Siakoh was thirteen. Dolo was ten.
None of this makes Bindu special, even in her own village. It's an old story.
There's something that does make her special. That's an even older story, one of the most ancient.
If you're reading this diary, you already know that story.
It's come full circle, back where it started. In Africa.
Xander chews his Bic pen. That sounds totally pompous. Doesn't that sound pompous?
He's always hated writing.
Bad enough writing classroom compositions. The idea that his diary is going to be shelved in some future watcher's library someday -- that freaks him out on a whole new level. It's like having someone reading over his shoulder.
***
Emails flow better, but sometimes that's a problem. Like the one he writes Willow his last day in Ghana.
You might not hear from me for a while. I'm heading into Liberia, where the government hasn't paid the postal bill in so long there's no mail service, and the phones don't work either. There's no power grid. Guess that doesn't bode well for the internet.
So when I suggested to the Council they hook me up with some five-star travel arrangements, I wasn't thinking five stars from The World's Most Dangerous Places. I'm wearing the amulet you gave me, which they can have when they pry it from my cold dead hand. Whoever "they" is. Send out a feeler for me every couple of days, will you? If I get disappeared, I'd like someone to know.
Hug everyone to pieces for me, too. Even Giles. He'll survive it somehow. love, x.
He worries about that one as soon as he leaves the internet cafe. He let his anxieties get the better of him long enough to get everyone he loves all freaked out, when he won't be reachable, when he'll be unable to reassure them. Stupid.
He got weirdly lyrical in the one he sent to Giles a couple of days before.
Out of all the places in Africa, Liberia seems like it's most designed to break your heart.
The name says it all. Freedom and hope. Freed slaves making a new life in their homeland. They bring the republic setup from America, and a Constitution. But they also brought the shitty stuff from there: injustice, inequality, slavery. They did what humanity does best, I guess, and fucked it all up.
Spectacularly, even for these parts.
I come in hope too. At the same time, I'm really, really afraid of fucking everything up.
Christ, Giles, are you sure you want me doing this?
He's read the State Department warnings, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office bulletins, and he's doing everything they say not to do. Don't travel outside Monrovia. If you do, be back in the city by nightfall. Nice precautions, if you can afford to take them, but he's got a slayer to find. The coven in Devon has pinpointed the village, and the Council's found him a driver who knows the territory, who'll act as a fixer as well. Xander's loaded up on candy and rolling papers to grease their way at any unofficial checkpoints. Dash, they call it here. The little bribes that get things done.
He's also got a cannisters of bug spray, a stash of antibiotics, antimalarials, oral hydration packets, antibiotic cream, iodine, and enough eye drops to last him through the next millenium.
Or through two and a half days of driving upcountry during the dry season.
His left eye streams like a bastard in the dust, tracking streaks in the grit covering his face.
That's differentiated from the times tears stream down both sides of his face whenever they break for the hot pepper-laced local food. Paye, the driver, laughs and consoles him that this is a common reaction.
Paye's equally amused and philosophical about the effects of hot pepper-laced diarrhea. Which is easy for him, since he's not the one who has it. But Xander's been in Africa long enough to know it's just part of adjusting to a new region (a passing thing, ha ha), so he manages to make a weak joke or two and by the time he's more or less over it, Paye's decided he's an okay guy, a seasoned traveler. He whiles away the long hours on the road by telling Xander riotous stories about the travelers who didn't pass his personal litmus test.
Paye relates these tales in English, which is pretty good after half a life in the capital city. Xander practices his Kpelle, which has been enhanced magically by Willow. Their last day on the road, they stop in a village along the way to visit some of Paye's cousins and their wives. Or cousins of his wives. There are wives, plural.
Everyone must be greeted, handshakes all around. Everyone must be asked after, and all their relatives asked after. Then Paye and Xander are invited to lunch, and then vague movements toward actually making a meal begin. Anxiety wells up within Xander, bubbling close to the surface, but he tells himself his timetable is not theirs. He has to trust that he'll find his slayer when he's meant to. There's no sense in pushing.
Eventually food is dished up. Xander reaches into the pot with his right hand (never the left) and forms the cassava into a ball, which he dips into sauce. A little clumsy still, but he's getting the hang of it.
After the meal, they have barely a couple of hours of daylight, which won't get them halfway to their destination. So they accept the invitation to stay over. Paye tells them Xander's cover story, that he's a graduate student collecting tales of clever and resourceful girls. This brings him a flurry of folk stories, which he captures on audiotape mostly because it looks suspicious if he doesn't, but actually he's glad he'll have these preserved somewhere.
But none of them, no matter how great, leads him to a new slayer. Every step of this journey, it seems, is going to involve stumbling around blindly.
Thinking about the stories is what brings him back to the writing. As he lies on his mat in the heat of the long African night, trying to interpret the sounds of movements out in the trees, he realizes telling his own story -- even email by email -- is important too.
Uncomfortable as he is with the act of writing, it's one of his coping strategies. It's not just the connection with his friends when he finds their responses in his inbox. The act of looking for things to write about colors the way he sees his experiences, the landscape. Finding the breathtaking vista he'll fail at capturing in an email for Willow, describing his misadventures in a way that will make Dawn laugh. It keeps him looking for the beauty and humor when he's physically miserable, depressed or overwhelmed. Though he never thought he'd say this about putting his thoughts down on paper or pixels, he misses it.
He's sure it's fallen to the bottom of his pack somewhere, but when it gets light he'll dig for his watcher's diary. He'll fill it with scrawlings -- notes to Dawn, Buffy and Will, observations to Giles, maybe the occasional actual Watcher stuff. Those last bits he'll transcribe into a new book when he gets a chance, one reserved for the stuffy.
The next morning he's perched on the passenger seat of Paye's jeep, feet cocked up on his pack, waiting for Paye to finish his smoke. His pen pauses mid-sentence as two women walk by, each carrying two huge plastic containers for the walk to the river. It's a pity about someone's cousin, one is saying. The girl refuses to do as the Sande directs. She's unmarriageable as long as she refuses her duty. Her brother-in-law has been more than patient, her sister is furious. The girl claims her dreams tell her what she should do.
This last is what makes Xander look up from his writing.
He's been asking for the wrong kind of story. Though they should be, slayers aren't found in the realm of tales about clever and resourceful young women. They're problem girls. These, unfortunately, are the stories no one wants to speak of, except in hushed tones, and not in front of a stranger.
Dreams.
Xander waits for a good opening to ask about the conversation he overheard. He suspects one doesn't really exist, so he puts some thought into a way of bringing it up that's least offensive. After a logging truck nearly runs them off the rutted road, they swear weakly in watery-kneed relief. Once they recover themselves, Xander decides to trade on this moment of bonding.
"Look, I know I'm a stranger here," he begins, in English. "I'm hoping to understand things that aren't how we do them in the States. If I give offense, I beg you --" the local way of saying please "-- overlook it."
Paye inclines his head, but makes no promises.
"Two women were talking as they passed me. About a cousin of someone who is defying the Sande." He thinks he read that this is the secret society that governs the tribal women. The male equivalent is Poro, the unseen force behind much of the power here. If a chief hasn't got the support of the Poro, he's not going to get much accomplished. "They said she's unmarriageable until she does what they say."
"These are not things we can speak of," Paye says, and Xander swiftly apologizes. "These are not things for men to speak of." Less an outsider issue than a male-female issue, then. "The girls must be initiated, just as the boys must. They must take years of instruction. It is how these things are done. That's all I can tell you."
He thinks he gets it. He's heard about customs that mark the passage from girlhood to womanhood. He did his research before he came here. He's heard Willow on the subject, and this is where her Indigenous Peoples Have the Rights to Their Traditions policy runs up against a big, painful stone wall. "Thanks, Paye. That helps me understand. What's the religion of her people?"
Paye gives him a sidelong look, as if wondering what the hell that has to do with anything. "She is Lutheran. All her village is."
"What happens if she refuses to do what she's supposed to?"
"It depends on the patience of her sister's husband, of her village. She might be brought before the chief. Sometimes the family or village takes matters into their own hands. It's a very bad business."
Xander nods. In touchy conversations like these, half the work is inferring. In his experience he's never gone wrong by assuming the worst. The way he reads it, if someone loses their patience, to use Paye's phrasing, she could pay with her life.
"You are looking for a girl," Paye says.
"Yes. A particular girl, though. One of the Chosen. It's not my place to choose, that's already done."
"But you think maybe this girl could be her."
"It's possible. A friend of mine was one of the Chosen -- the Chosen One, back when there was only one. She had a lot of trouble with her people because of this. Her family, her school, the police. It goes with being chosen. Trouble seeks these girls."
Paye looks unconvinced. Unavoidable trouble is one thing, shirking of duty another. "Still. If she is the one, I advise you to be careful."
"Believe me, that's the plan."
***
Sweet Jesus, Giles, are you really sure I can do this?
***
These Songs of Freedom, R
Xander seeks a slayer in war-ravaged Liberia.
Disclaimer: Xander, Giles, Buffy, et all, not mine but Joss's.
How do you tell Bindu's story?
She's a Kpelle girl, fifteen.
Her parents have died, her brothers were drafted into the army.
She lives with her sister and brother-in-law, helps them with their children and the crops.
None of this begins to touch the truth of it.
Bindu's parents were murdered during the civil war. Her brothers were kidnapped by a rebel faction, forced to become soldiers. Siakoh was thirteen. Dolo was ten.
None of this makes Bindu special, even in her own village. It's an old story.
There's something that does make her special. That's an even older story, one of the most ancient.
If you're reading this diary, you already know that story.
It's come full circle, back where it started. In Africa.
Xander chews his Bic pen. That sounds totally pompous. Doesn't that sound pompous?
He's always hated writing.
Bad enough writing classroom compositions. The idea that his diary is going to be shelved in some future watcher's library someday -- that freaks him out on a whole new level. It's like having someone reading over his shoulder.
***
Emails flow better, but sometimes that's a problem. Like the one he writes Willow his last day in Ghana.
You might not hear from me for a while. I'm heading into Liberia, where the government hasn't paid the postal bill in so long there's no mail service, and the phones don't work either. There's no power grid. Guess that doesn't bode well for the internet.
So when I suggested to the Council they hook me up with some five-star travel arrangements, I wasn't thinking five stars from The World's Most Dangerous Places. I'm wearing the amulet you gave me, which they can have when they pry it from my cold dead hand. Whoever "they" is. Send out a feeler for me every couple of days, will you? If I get disappeared, I'd like someone to know.
Hug everyone to pieces for me, too. Even Giles. He'll survive it somehow. love, x.
He worries about that one as soon as he leaves the internet cafe. He let his anxieties get the better of him long enough to get everyone he loves all freaked out, when he won't be reachable, when he'll be unable to reassure them. Stupid.
He got weirdly lyrical in the one he sent to Giles a couple of days before.
Out of all the places in Africa, Liberia seems like it's most designed to break your heart.
The name says it all. Freedom and hope. Freed slaves making a new life in their homeland. They bring the republic setup from America, and a Constitution. But they also brought the shitty stuff from there: injustice, inequality, slavery. They did what humanity does best, I guess, and fucked it all up.
Spectacularly, even for these parts.
I come in hope too. At the same time, I'm really, really afraid of fucking everything up.
Christ, Giles, are you sure you want me doing this?
He's read the State Department warnings, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office bulletins, and he's doing everything they say not to do. Don't travel outside Monrovia. If you do, be back in the city by nightfall. Nice precautions, if you can afford to take them, but he's got a slayer to find. The coven in Devon has pinpointed the village, and the Council's found him a driver who knows the territory, who'll act as a fixer as well. Xander's loaded up on candy and rolling papers to grease their way at any unofficial checkpoints. Dash, they call it here. The little bribes that get things done.
He's also got a cannisters of bug spray, a stash of antibiotics, antimalarials, oral hydration packets, antibiotic cream, iodine, and enough eye drops to last him through the next millenium.
Or through two and a half days of driving upcountry during the dry season.
His left eye streams like a bastard in the dust, tracking streaks in the grit covering his face.
That's differentiated from the times tears stream down both sides of his face whenever they break for the hot pepper-laced local food. Paye, the driver, laughs and consoles him that this is a common reaction.
Paye's equally amused and philosophical about the effects of hot pepper-laced diarrhea. Which is easy for him, since he's not the one who has it. But Xander's been in Africa long enough to know it's just part of adjusting to a new region (a passing thing, ha ha), so he manages to make a weak joke or two and by the time he's more or less over it, Paye's decided he's an okay guy, a seasoned traveler. He whiles away the long hours on the road by telling Xander riotous stories about the travelers who didn't pass his personal litmus test.
Paye relates these tales in English, which is pretty good after half a life in the capital city. Xander practices his Kpelle, which has been enhanced magically by Willow. Their last day on the road, they stop in a village along the way to visit some of Paye's cousins and their wives. Or cousins of his wives. There are wives, plural.
Everyone must be greeted, handshakes all around. Everyone must be asked after, and all their relatives asked after. Then Paye and Xander are invited to lunch, and then vague movements toward actually making a meal begin. Anxiety wells up within Xander, bubbling close to the surface, but he tells himself his timetable is not theirs. He has to trust that he'll find his slayer when he's meant to. There's no sense in pushing.
Eventually food is dished up. Xander reaches into the pot with his right hand (never the left) and forms the cassava into a ball, which he dips into sauce. A little clumsy still, but he's getting the hang of it.
After the meal, they have barely a couple of hours of daylight, which won't get them halfway to their destination. So they accept the invitation to stay over. Paye tells them Xander's cover story, that he's a graduate student collecting tales of clever and resourceful girls. This brings him a flurry of folk stories, which he captures on audiotape mostly because it looks suspicious if he doesn't, but actually he's glad he'll have these preserved somewhere.
But none of them, no matter how great, leads him to a new slayer. Every step of this journey, it seems, is going to involve stumbling around blindly.
Thinking about the stories is what brings him back to the writing. As he lies on his mat in the heat of the long African night, trying to interpret the sounds of movements out in the trees, he realizes telling his own story -- even email by email -- is important too.
Uncomfortable as he is with the act of writing, it's one of his coping strategies. It's not just the connection with his friends when he finds their responses in his inbox. The act of looking for things to write about colors the way he sees his experiences, the landscape. Finding the breathtaking vista he'll fail at capturing in an email for Willow, describing his misadventures in a way that will make Dawn laugh. It keeps him looking for the beauty and humor when he's physically miserable, depressed or overwhelmed. Though he never thought he'd say this about putting his thoughts down on paper or pixels, he misses it.
He's sure it's fallen to the bottom of his pack somewhere, but when it gets light he'll dig for his watcher's diary. He'll fill it with scrawlings -- notes to Dawn, Buffy and Will, observations to Giles, maybe the occasional actual Watcher stuff. Those last bits he'll transcribe into a new book when he gets a chance, one reserved for the stuffy.
The next morning he's perched on the passenger seat of Paye's jeep, feet cocked up on his pack, waiting for Paye to finish his smoke. His pen pauses mid-sentence as two women walk by, each carrying two huge plastic containers for the walk to the river. It's a pity about someone's cousin, one is saying. The girl refuses to do as the Sande directs. She's unmarriageable as long as she refuses her duty. Her brother-in-law has been more than patient, her sister is furious. The girl claims her dreams tell her what she should do.
This last is what makes Xander look up from his writing.
He's been asking for the wrong kind of story. Though they should be, slayers aren't found in the realm of tales about clever and resourceful young women. They're problem girls. These, unfortunately, are the stories no one wants to speak of, except in hushed tones, and not in front of a stranger.
Dreams.
Xander waits for a good opening to ask about the conversation he overheard. He suspects one doesn't really exist, so he puts some thought into a way of bringing it up that's least offensive. After a logging truck nearly runs them off the rutted road, they swear weakly in watery-kneed relief. Once they recover themselves, Xander decides to trade on this moment of bonding.
"Look, I know I'm a stranger here," he begins, in English. "I'm hoping to understand things that aren't how we do them in the States. If I give offense, I beg you --" the local way of saying please "-- overlook it."
Paye inclines his head, but makes no promises.
"Two women were talking as they passed me. About a cousin of someone who is defying the Sande." He thinks he read that this is the secret society that governs the tribal women. The male equivalent is Poro, the unseen force behind much of the power here. If a chief hasn't got the support of the Poro, he's not going to get much accomplished. "They said she's unmarriageable until she does what they say."
"These are not things we can speak of," Paye says, and Xander swiftly apologizes. "These are not things for men to speak of." Less an outsider issue than a male-female issue, then. "The girls must be initiated, just as the boys must. They must take years of instruction. It is how these things are done. That's all I can tell you."
He thinks he gets it. He's heard about customs that mark the passage from girlhood to womanhood. He did his research before he came here. He's heard Willow on the subject, and this is where her Indigenous Peoples Have the Rights to Their Traditions policy runs up against a big, painful stone wall. "Thanks, Paye. That helps me understand. What's the religion of her people?"
Paye gives him a sidelong look, as if wondering what the hell that has to do with anything. "She is Lutheran. All her village is."
"What happens if she refuses to do what she's supposed to?"
"It depends on the patience of her sister's husband, of her village. She might be brought before the chief. Sometimes the family or village takes matters into their own hands. It's a very bad business."
Xander nods. In touchy conversations like these, half the work is inferring. In his experience he's never gone wrong by assuming the worst. The way he reads it, if someone loses their patience, to use Paye's phrasing, she could pay with her life.
"You are looking for a girl," Paye says.
"Yes. A particular girl, though. One of the Chosen. It's not my place to choose, that's already done."
"But you think maybe this girl could be her."
"It's possible. A friend of mine was one of the Chosen -- the Chosen One, back when there was only one. She had a lot of trouble with her people because of this. Her family, her school, the police. It goes with being chosen. Trouble seeks these girls."
Paye looks unconvinced. Unavoidable trouble is one thing, shirking of duty another. "Still. If she is the one, I advise you to be careful."
"Believe me, that's the plan."
***
Sweet Jesus, Giles, are you really sure I can do this?
***