In the lower belt of the Sahel, in the middle of West Africa, on a blazing hot day, about three miles outside of Ouahigouya in 1984 I am standing in a line sweating with all the other bus passengers breathing in the hot dusty air wafting up from the rusty sun-baked land. We have been ordered out of the bus by a squad of commandos who are going through every bag one by one. 

It was maybe a year after the Sankara coup and there was a lot of apprehension on the part of the new government, a lot of good ‘ole revolutionary rabble rousing with pick up trucks blasting revolutionary slogans, “L’imperialisme! A bas! Le Neocolonialisms! A bas! La Patri ou la mort! Nous vaincrons! La patrie ou la Morte! Nous vaincrons! Merci Camarades!” As a part of the new revolutionary agenda, it was concluded that more teachers were needed and thus batches of revolutionary “teachers” with minimal qualifications were given a cursory indoctrination and, with opaque objectives, sent off to schools to assist in the new revolutionary anti-neocolonial, anti-imperialistic educational intervention. That’s where Yalpoudougou Jules comes in. He had a shaved head and always wore green army fatigues. He was skinny, maybe in the mid five-foot range and was a hard headed type, self-righteous and easily triggered. A number of meetings and social gatherings among faculty had, at his instigation, degenerated into polemical exchanges. A more adamantly contentious individual would be hard to find. He was one of these revolutionary teachers thrown into the breach, and he miraculously happened to be on that bus with me.  Also on that bus was a nice package of shinkafa (that was rice in Hausa, our code word for weed) and it was in my bag on the roof of that bus and a commando who had tossed down all bags forward of it had his hand right on it. That was when Yalpoudougou Jules saved my ass. He was already into the thick of a diatribe of increasing intensity that began when we were stopped at the anti-imperialism road block. He had a high voice and the words came quick. “Je connais mes droites! Je connais mes droites! Vous ne pouvez pas faire comme ca camarades! Vous ne pouvez pas faire comme ca!” Everyone was mum baking under the sun and those commandos were sweating right through their uniforms. And the sun was baking and baking and Yalpoudougou Jules was getting louder and louder. The officer was arguing with him back and forth and Jules would not back down. It was the sun and Jules and Jules and the sun and louder and hotter and hotter and louder and flop—my bag dropped down, sending up a cloud of red dust when it landed on the parched laterite. And when a soldier was just crouching down beside my bag, to open and search it, the officer reached his limit. “OK  tout le monde monte! Sauf toi!” (Everyone back on except for you!) He said to Yalpoudougou Jules. “Tu prends tes baggages et tu vas a pied!” (You take your bags and walk!) I didn’t get busted and Yalpoudougou Jules had to walk into town.

Back to the present … It had been a long day skinning knuckles, squirming beneath the cabin sole running wire and squeezing my eyes closed to try to see with my fingers the head of a bolt I had to access on the blind side of a joist. You know when a prodigal returns and the blind sage is called to lay her wizened palms upon his face to verify his identity by touch? She gets a sketch more detailed than that of a police artist only with feeling, texture—it’s rhythmic and projects images of decades past of a joyful youth full of life who once skipped joyfully down the village lane. Believe in the concept. With a pinch in the dark, and a bit of practice, one can access angles and bolt size, even metric or SAE, or one can utterly fail, retreat like a sprained pretzel, resort to religion, the chisel and hammer or the sawsall. The results were miraculously positive for me that day. I had completed my list of tasks and there I sat reclined in the cockpit, sipping on a cold IPA when in the gathering dusk I did hear the familiar notes of the warbler. 

As we were hundreds of miles from our port of departure where I last saw him, I was a bit surprised as to how he had found us or how he had escaped the sanitarium, but there was little time to come to any resolution there uponst as with a pock and a stomp, and the pronouncement, “Bit of sun today and could be usin’ a nip of brew if it please yee,” he plopped down onto my cockpit grate. I produced the requested beverage and he ensconced himself along the port settee, myself on the starboard and we sat there staring out over the stern at the passing seabirds, the forest of masts set against the fading orange glow of the sunset.

And so, as he was there and knowing the old salt had visited countless countries and conducted boat repair around the world, I decided to share with him my dilemma of how to get boat parts I would be needing in several months in the next country of destination.

He let out a long sigh, gulped down the last of his beer, let out an air horn of an ancient belch and signaled by the raising of one bushy gray brow that he would like another. Once restocked he leaned back and let into a diatribe, both reflective and admonitory, the theme he called “the easy way.” 

“Now decades ago on an August day on a weekend I was pulling into Bonga Bonga. Now mind yee it was one of the smaller islands, not the main one, but I intended there to check in. I get to the police station and immediately the “official” there starts a homily of lamentations, oh that this is not the proper port of entry and oh the customs officer comes but once a month and oh we were hard upon the lee of a national holiday, of such a holiday I had never heard a peep, but I could sense a crescendo, a pat judicial tactic, and so I let him lead on to his intended theme. Well we could radio the capital and request that an agent be dispatched, or we could fill out an apppeal for an exemption, or we could file for a re-registration of your vessel as temporarily domestic. How long might that take? Nine months. My face was a mask of stoicism. Or we could just handle all this the easy way. Easy way, I responded with alacrity. Easy way! Of course the easy way was two thousand cowries and then the stamps, signatures and flashing photocopy lights were triggered. Easy way, he told me. Easy way. Get an engine into a remote harbor in East Asia at night? Easy way. Account for a passenger not on the original list? Easy way. Deliver a large bail of merchandise to a remote river town in the Northern Territory at zero dark-thirty and be gone? Easy way! I waded ashore, he said knocking on his wooden leg with a winch handle at his side. Easy way! Had no idea there might be a crocodile in that river. That was a tussle but did get some steaks out of him and sold his hide to a bag maker in New Guinea. Easy way! You get to customs, just hit that green button … nothing to declare and walk on through. Easy way! Easy way! And the bottom of another bottle swung up to the sky, the air horn blasted and the brow went up.

In theory, I like the easy way. Who could not ascribe to something called the easy way? What would be the alternative? However, I was arriving at the airport with a poop tank, a water heater and a roller duffle full of new tools. There was no concealing the obvious. I therefore took an alternative approach. I asked myself if I needed this kit and was willing to jeopardize all I went through to get it and possibly get the whole lot tied up in customs. Yes and No were the answers, so I went for an alternative to “the easy way “ called “shut up and pay up.” It’s usually what I end up resorting to unless, on the outside chance, there happens along some divine intervention in the form of Yalpoudougou Jules.