Close Encounters with Me

Mom called, as she usually does, on a Sunday evening and pestered me (as she had been for a while) about how my beard looked. I'm squeemish about flashing my SLR around the village lest it render me rich white man, and since I'm usually the man behind the camera, when I do take photos, I'm not in them.

That didn't deter Mother. "Riana (my kid sister)takes photos of herself all the time," which made me 1) think maybe I'll take a photo of myself and 2) worry about my sister. The inclination to self-document passed, though.

About five weeks later, I was preparing to come to Lilongwe and thinking about this neglected blog, and as I stroked my beard, I wondered how it looked. There isn't much of a mirror in my house, just a broken shard that I glance at to fix my hair in the morning. So I took a picture.



And then I understood I had gone mad. The date of this photo was after nearly nine consecutive weeks in the village, and you know, village life is strange because even though there are people all around, I sometimes feel alone. As I stared at the picture, I remembered all the conversations I'd had with Freckles, the lame, ugly dog that I've befriended and the mice I'd eaten and the aliens I'd seen--those last two are jokes, JOKES--and realized I'd gone mad.

I cut it off. Balls of girzzly, food stained hair fell off my face and with it, I hope, my madness. Now, Mom, I look like a real nice guy, don't you think?