Stolen Voices

Sing! I Want to Hear You Sing!
Twenty-five hours from JFK to Dakar, Senegal where we refuel without getting off the plane, then another 14 hours to Johannesburg, South Africa over the Kalahari Desert. Flying into the sun, we keep the shades down at all times.
Once checked in, we meet friends at a restaurant called Xoi-Xoi, pronounced "Shy-shy." The menu includes sardines in spinach and tomato sauce, mussels, snails, liver, line fish (catch of the day), prawns, crayfish, raw calamari in a salad, squid and lots of other things with eyes, heads and tails you have to rip off before swallowing.
After dinner, we hit a favorite haunt, Roksa, which used to be known as the Colour Bar. The guards with Kalashnikovs are gone but there is a formidable bouncer and there is now a cover charge. The jazz is fresh and sweet by talented, underpaid musicians. During sets, patrons grab the mic to belt out a few bars of their favorite songs. Directly across the table from me, a straight couple needs to get a room as soon as possible. They are in the middle of a passionate fight while he rubs her arm and holds her face as he kisses her tenderly. She calms down temporarily, then suddenly erupts into tears and pleading. More calming, followed by more anguished outbursts. Just as he thinks he's made a kiss landing, he skids off the runway. While watching this out of the corner of my eye--okay, while it is taking place practically in my lap, one man (who is holding hands with another guy) stares at me and screams over the music that his violin is under the table and that he's going to write me something. In the brief pause before an African beat explodes into the musicians' break, he yells that I am a shaman; I know everything! He knows this because I look at him directly, my gaze in unwavering and I have big ears! Before we start our lives together, I excuse myself and disappear around the corner into a darkened courtyard that compromises most of this outdoor jazz bar, hoping he will latch onto someone else slightly less sober than me. He is an eager beaver about to be abandoned at the brink. I assure him he is not prepared for flight.
During the break for the band, the DJ throws onto the turntable a great CD of skull-busting tribal drummers so loud that you are sure there is about to be a sacrificial virgin dragged in by several scantily clad warriors and thrown into a volcanic pit. I need a helmet-cam to capture the terror. It's all good.