Nighttime

Dusk falls quickly over Parakou while I'm at dinner and I don't even notice. I step out into the cooled night breeze and walk the dusty few hundred yards to my room. In the dark and after my long trip I feel the need to sleep. It's 8:30. I don't care. I tuck the mosquito net that I've come to think of as a white knight precisely in around my little bed and climb under, quickly replacing the untucked folds between the thin single mattress and the wooden frame. After fifteen minutes of reading I'm drifting and reach gingerly out of my safety to set my book down and click the lamp off. The heavy whirring of the fan on its fastest "you're from a cold climate" speed numbs me to sleep on top of my single sheet.

The offending tree

Less than an hour passes and my eyes blink suddenly open. BOOM! I look around as if in the dark I'd find the cause of the explosion that awoke me. I don't hear anything. Was it a gunshot? No, I've heard guns a thousand times. Something falling? Breaking? Someone outside? I strain in the silence. My mind flashes to 2 year-old Daniel's tiny fingers playing with the gas tank for the stove under the sink...I don't smell anything. It was definitely an explosion-it sounded like an explosion. Then the whirring of the fan abruptly begins to slow. I'm descended into the deep, dark silence in the Africa of my mind. The electricity is out. BOOM! Another one. Not as loud. It seems right above me or in the kitchen but I don't see anything and no one's making any noise outside. I have no idea what time it is. I relax my shoulders back on the pillow. It gets hotter by the second and I feel my clothes and sheets dampening with sweat without the artificial breeze keeping me cool. If something were wrong someone would come and get me. I'm not scared. The electricity will probably go out all the time and if that noise were serious...

The next day Bridget and Don (American and Canadian) ask how my night was and both burst into laughter remembering their fearful surprises the first few nights in Parakou. I laugh and listen. Bridget tells me she came to check on me when the power went out but I must have been sound asleep. I told her I noticed but it didn't bother me. "Actually," I start, "there was a huge explosion. Did you guys here that?" They burst into nostalgic laugher again. "The mangos!!" they chime in unison. "Falling on the tin roof!! It's a HUGE crash!! It took me forever to get used to it."