The life of a chomeur (bum)

Classes have been suspended nationwide. I find myself suddenly unemployed. Yesterday I busied myself with cleaning my house. I think my house maintains an acceptable level of cleanliness. My visitors disagree. Funny, I had the same problem in college. 

Poignana and Pascaline wash clothes

I wonder why I get satisfaction in cleaning places I never see, touch, smell. Do I sense they are dirty? Does merely knowing the floor under my bed is littered with mouse poop keep me from a good night’s sleep? Do I better enjoy a book that comes from a shelf under which is clean and proper? I hope the answer is yes to all these questions because I labored in sweat all day cleaning places I never see. At the end of the day, my house pretty much looked the same. But I knew it was clean?

I didn’t even get to enjoy the clean floor under my real bed as I slept outside for the first time last night on my cot. The heat in a sun-baked, cement-walled, tin-roofed house has become unbearable. I will continue to sleep outside until the rainy season starts – May or June depending on the year. 

The air was cool and the stars bright sleeping on my porch- my new bedroom for the time being. Contentment and restfulness accompanied the rising sun erasing like fog nightmares of nocturnal scorpions and serpents. 

My neighbors were stirring at daybreak. Unfortunately, they are not equipped with a snooze button. Poignana swept the courtyard and Pascaline washed the dishes from the day before. The days of illegitimate children start early in village. Even now, my ragged clothed bastard neighbors are shining shoes, fetching wood, and have not yet finished washing the dishes. My well clothed legitimate neighbors heat water for Nescafe, play with the baby, and mix in sugar with a spoon that the illegitimate Pascaline just washed. My neighbor, the father of all the children, both ‘legit and not, only the former of which he finds the money to send to school, greeted me this morning in broken English. 

“I love you. You are kind.” He said with a chuckle. 

I don’t know if he understood what he said or was just saying what he could with his limited English. 

Regardless, this warm greeting made me cold. It’s not his fault really, it’s the injustice of it all that makes me sick. The world around groans for better days.