Four men sit around a derelict wooden table at the local bar. Two men look strikingly occidental; one adorns a clean, white t-shirt and wind pants, the other wears a pair of jeans with a grey UNICEF shirt. The third dresses in a traditional fabric,
pagne, his chosen design a redundant mug shot of Togo's first President glowing from head to toe. The last man looks like an outsider, but not only from his Sahalian clothing. His disposition, his cool smile, the way his eyes hold water all highlight that he is not from here. He is a stranger. Seven bottles are on the table: three empty beers, three freshly opened beers, and a half-full Coke reserved for the last, faintly exotic man.
The outdoor tavern is nestled up next to the market. Although protected both from the noonday sun and the gaze of the market-goers by a blockade of woven straw held up by termite-infested wood, the men do not escape the clamor—nor the excitement—of market day. Two general stores blast local Afro-pop from blown out speakers. The giant truck carrying goods of all kinds has arrived, parking parallel on Ogaro's sole narrow, dusty road. Orders are given left and right as the market women, packed like sardines in the back of the truck, rush to set up their items and land their first sale. The cacophony from the mill churning grains into flour and the blacksmith bending steel lends an industrial air to the scene. The intermittent clicking of a foot-powered sewer comes from a tailor frantically stitching up school uniforms. The meat vendors are out, selling skewers, innards stew, and rare meat, leaving the heads of animals tied to a tree branch, blankly staring at the scene before them. Other vendors pile giant potato sacks filled with charcoal outside the mosque, waiting for any wandering eyes drifting their way. One would be hard pressed not to note the scarcity of trees off yonder, leaving only barren corn and millet fields. Dispersed throughout, thousands of discarded black plastic sacs, like fallen soldiers on a quiescent battlefield, litter the landscape.
Inside the bar, the men have just been served a heaping plate of dog
au jus. An aged blue plastic cup, looking like it might have been lifted from a daycare, is passed around to wash their hands. Conversation around the table doesn't deviate from the norm; the meat is too salty, political affairs are undesirable, the price of food is rising, if the rains are coming.
Simultaneously, two things occur. A wind cyclone stretching 150 feet into the air plows through the south side of the market. The wind velocity rips off several straw roofings and hurls them violently unto the ground some thirty feet away. Goods have scattered, clean clothes are coated with a filament of dust, but no one is injured. Amid the raucous of wind and screams, a man's cell phone rings. Diverting half of his attention to the temporary chaos outside and the other half to his cell phone, he is not sure what his next move should be. Before his mind is made up, the ringing stops. His brow furrows in contempt. Then comes a gesture reserved only for the most hazardous of social situations: a long pause, his facial muscles frozen, his eyes wide with madness, in the tune of a falsetto, his voice breaks the silence with a short, precise, “oh!” The man has just been beeped.
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Now I've always held to the tenet that a man's money is his own business, no if, and, or buts. There are, of course, certain indicators in which society judges a man: his car model, his house, which company made his watch, etc,. Here in Togo, such indicators are often opaque.
Tangible signs of wealth would enable one to ascertain a man's net worth, so to speak. But this task proves difficult. Building anything more than a three room, cement rectangle would be viewed in Ogaro as an abomination, a flagrant, nefarious display of arrogance and excess. The result is a remarkable uniformity in appearance when looking at family compounds. Sure, some will have more mud huts than others, some with a cement building and others not, but no blatant signs to discern wealth. Motorcycles are one area where there are fewer shades of gray.
Lengthy and engaged talk of motorcycles seems a universal quality in men. Engines and pistons and such are more commonly conversed about, but prices come up as well. Most men calculate with amazing precision the price of any motorcycle in town. But even so, the men with motorcycles in town are few.
Perhaps bank accounts could provide us a much-needed hint. Truth be told, few men have any money in a financial institution. It was not until last July that Ogaro's first micro-finance institution set up shop. Before this, money was placed clandestinely, evoking images of buried riches and treasure maps. Imagine a family's savings for an entire generation stored underground. The ground has been dug, then packed tight as to leave no clue in case of an intruder. Or a woman scurries off to a nearby grove, performing a similar task in the still of the night. Maybe digging isn't her bag. She prefers to wrap it tightly in some old worn pair of slacks that her husband has outgrown. Or better yet, spread out the wealth a little bit. There's also a pair of long johns in the corner...
Let me be clear. All these scenarios are hypothetical, but this is, in short, what Togolese have with which to work. In the long run, this is far from a fail-proof plan. Mud huts can catch fire. With roofs made of corn stalks and a few branches to support them, the hut will immediately go up in smoke with no chance for entry. Or sometimes, a person simply forgets where some—or all—of his or her savings is hidden.
So where does all this nonsense leave us? It leaves each man uncertain of how much his neighbor has stored away. Imaginations run wild with thoughts of neighbor's riches. This causes much strife with cell phones and particularly, the beep. A beep is a device used to signal that the caller lacks phone credit to call. He wants the receiver to call back. This sparks incredulous responses.
“What is this guy doing? He's beeping me? Let me ask you a question, 'do I have the money to buy credit?' There isn't the money!”
Many times, the receiver of the beeped talks into the phone as if he wants to transmit his thorough disgust to the other end of the line.
But I will say one thing, phone credit is extremely high relative to income. There are no pre-paid plans to be had—no free nights, weekends, or Holidays. Any call is automatically emptying the pockets of the caller, although no charge is applied to the receiver. No exceptions. A one-minute call amounts to the cost of a deluxe lunch at the market: rice, peanut sauce, and a small morsel of hastily cut goat. To compensate for the exorbitant price of calls, Togolese have developed an incredibly efficient system: hello, how are you (and your wife, kids, health, fields, fatigue, etc.), goodbye. No joke, I've seen such a call clocked in at nine seconds. The consideration however is rarely taken for granted. What is not appreciated is the beep. Some see it as an insult, a blatant signal saying “you have more money than me, so why don't you call?” Beeping after a long separation is particularly bad etiquette. Who, after a long absence, calls for a favor in the form of a beep?
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
The audible sound of laughter prevented the beeped from advancing towards the market. He knew all was well. The man's calloused, dark hands slid down into his pocket. His expression slowly digressed from a furrowed, compact anger to raised eye-brows and pursed lips, as if waiting for a response from his child rolling in two hours after curfew.
He held the phone at eye-level, starring blankly at the number. His eyes showed no change in emotion. The only difference in fact was a subtle change of hue in his cheeks. They blossomed into midnight crimson, the color one might imagine being formed in one's mouth after five seconds of squooshing a chocolate-covered cherry. Unnoticeable to him, his head gently shook from side to side. His pursed lips gave way to a pure smile, holding unquantifiable amounts of both joy and sadness.
“Ohh, my dear friend!”
He soon told marvelous stories of adolescent merriment and mischief with his friend, who has since moved to the Ivory Coast in search of work, a better life. If only for that one moment, the beeped and the beeper were one.
... ... ... ... ... ... ...
I forgot to mention one exception. The love beep. A beep that necessitates no return call, but is merely an action to express, “I just beeped to say I love you.” When pressed for answers—how do you differentiate any ol' beep from the love beep?—only wholly unsatisfactory answers will follow. “You just know,” they will say.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the love beep is as rare and pure as true love itself. An indestructible bond that is formed in the deep, mystic abyss of the human spirit.
