they sell water here in little plastic sachets, branded with names labeled as "the truth pure water" or "the lord for drinking" or "heaven's thirst". today, when the heavyset ghanain mama handed me the sachet, it was wrapped in a wilting piece of paper. this paper, i realized upon attentive inspection, was a page torn out of someone's journal. maybe written yesterday or yellowed with the tropical time of an experience years ago. maybe it was a journal page of someone you knew who journeyed to ghana as an NGO director seven months ago, maybe i met this person in a bus in burkina faso and they dropped their precious book in a hasty decent from the tro-tro.
paper lives many lives here. it is sometimes used to serve up greasy skewers of grilled canine chunks, or hot handfulls of boiled peanuts and yams. people burn it to start their little tin-can cookstoves, or to descreetly wipe the e.coli off their well maintained asses.
i am thinking about the unfathomable life being birthed into the pages of my stolen journal. perhaps my dozen haikus on mango trees are transformed to ashes in the flames beneath a roasting rat. the story recalling the time my married dance teacher pinned me up against a wall and tried to kiss me beneath the blue light filtering through the leafless baobab tree-the story is wrapped around a steaming piece of goat meat. the pages of the traditional symbols and ceremonies of the fulani women in mali are covered in urine and decaying in an open sewer.
these words, living some unpredictable destiny, being recycled for a myriad of unfit uses, unknowingly soaking into people's skin, being digested as they dissolve in the goat fat, are inhaled in the kitchen flames and leaving unseen ink prints on children's damp behinds.
dear journal-you are stolen and dispersed and alive. best wishes on your reincarnation.
lis
