Bea flung the shit covered banana leaf away. It didn’t go far. She threw like a weak-wristed white girl. Gripping her tired pants to pull them up, the wind hurled the soiled leaf back at her, striking her bare ankle. Another rejection. First her ex-boyfriend back in Bristol, the one she cheated on who won’t take her back, and now the African desert. Everyone’s done taking her shit.

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She wanted to go to Africa so people knew she was going to Africa. It was a noble thing to do: to help the Africans. She didn’t say that, but she hoped others would. This morning like the mornings of the past two-months, Bea woke with her nose and body pressed up against a cold stone wall.  Fátima, the family cow along with two goats and eight children had gone to bed after her, all sleeping in the one room that was the family house. If Bea needed the loo in the night it quickly became a game of sleeping lions; tiptoeing between scrawny limbs and open genitals. The children’s mum, Awiti, or something that sounds like that, used to make the children cover their privates, out of respect to Bea, de white gurl. But after Bea palmed off helping with the plantain harvest on account of real bad anxiety that day, Awiti, along with the other villagers thought ahapụ m n'aka ya, i.e. fuck it.

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Bea booked the ‘African Adventure: Volunteer with the Locals’ the day she f*cked her boyfriends’ brother. She hoped building a school in some village would absolve her sins. She never told him she was going. She never told him she cheated. She just disappeared. Once on the baked African soil she lost signal and the online world would not know of her selflessness until she returned home, in three months.

 

On her first day after the 4x4 dropped her off, the younger children ran up to her and tugged at her clothes. She felt like their saviour, like David Beckham in a Comic Relief video. What Bea remembers most is Awiti’s tired but kind smile and the smell of palm oil when pulled in for a hug. Awiti had unfolded Bea’s hand and in it placed kola nut. He who brings kola, brings life, she was told.  During Bea’s stay they said she would prioritise finishing the build of the health centre. Awiti’s eldest son lead her towards it, a sloping clay wall sinking into the mud. Bea didn’t know how to fix it.

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Four weeks into her stay Bea met Kanye. He was well known throughout the villages because many moons ago he wrestled an elephant to the ground, or something like that.  Her favourite thing to do was watch him sweat. She’d follow him up and down the maize fields as he ploughed, jabbering about her life. Occasionally he’d lower the plough and turn to her and speak, “the antelope does not limp when walking on thorns”. She’d try to relate his voodoo words to what she’d been saying but wondered if he understood what she’d meant by ‘slides into your DM’s’. She’d compare his likeness to Kanye West and said he was probably named after him as they both spat mad rhymes. The final time she said this he took offence. Kanye meant Freedom, he’d told her this many times before. They didn’t speak after that. She wondered why she always felt the need to push people away. To lead them to the middle of the ocean and paddle away before they did the same.

 

At church Bea felt less alone. Frequently she was pulled up from her stool to rejoice de Lord, oh! She’d shake her rigid body to the thrashing of the tambourine, suddenly empathising with Teresa May dancing with the Ghanaians.  Fresh bush meat blessed in holy water flung in her face. She’d watch the rock of the women’s shapely bodies and envy their freedom of movement. Once, out of nowhere she did a slut drop. Jumping down, legs apart, to sensually slide her body back up. Flashbacks of dancing like a drunk whore in Bristol’s Oceana. This was how she’d attracted her ex, falling backwards in a slut drop, misjudging her balance. He’d heaved her back up, shouting loudly in her ear if she was alright. Bea watched Awiti who was trying not to smile as her daughters went mad for the move. The girls rolled their tunics above their waists, spread their legs in the dirt, and went up and down like a game of whack-a-mole.

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One day Awiti died of Ebola. Bea recognised the name as being one of many jabs she’d had before her visit. That evening Bea slept outside on a bamboo mat. Awiti’s family mourned loudly like wild animals howling in the night. The sloping clay wall, still sinking into the mud, still untouched, stood where Bea lay, blocking the moons light. It was a reminder of how little she’d done for the village and herself.

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The end.

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