Tribal Scars

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TRIBAL SCARS

H.D. LYNNE

Am I deep enough for my own thoughts

Am I strong enough for my own body

Am I pure enough for my own heart

Am I old enough for my own soul……

1- PROLOGUE

Oh my God almighty. What have I gotten myself into again? Another travel to an unknown place, where I stand out like a sore thumb or some meaningless, famous, apparently soulless, hollow, fragile, skeleton of what might somehow represent a human being.

I recall it like it was yesterday or maybe the day before which maybe means nothing really as on most occasions I have to think long and hard about what I did actually have for dinner last night, or what the weather was like or what I need to put on the grocery list for what could end up being a day never to be seen or a last supper I would not be able to prepare for carrying the burden of a temporary and futile life surrounded by greed and famine, superstition, anger and soon to be extreme poverty and sickness.

What prepares one for the next journey? Only courage and faith which seems to be what I am always testing in myself and learning as such. I realize that one can never prepare for those dilemmas in character. These traits must be continuously tried and tested otherwise they will be worn out like the old rusty tin man without a heart and scarecrow without a brain. Well, the two outta three ain’t bad as I can look at myself like the lion who desperately needs courage, whimpering and hobbling through in a make believe land, following the yellow brick road until I get to Oz and realize that it is all a hoax and that I had it all already no matter where I go.

It is true that home is where the heart is and where you hang your hat but I still need to know where that is as well. I seem to have gotten lost just before first base, being extremely sensitive and unappreciated as a youth and having to rebel against a lost and lying culture that tries to tell me to follow and not lead, to stay on the main and safe path instead of blazing the wild and beautiful road less traveled that only a few of us can blaze going from rebel to soldier to warrior to diplomat, the epic novel of life. The story repeated and rehashed, blends itself to death even by simple untalented souls that wish to try to get a piece of the action, even if it does not belong to them in this life. They were so bad and didn’t listen when they had the chance to live the last time.

A mistake can become wisdom but when repeated without understanding it will indeed become insanity unless of course you just get sick of beating yourself up and playing the game with yourself as you have no good company anymore for shenanigans and games. The place to fit in becomes the place to hide, the quiet slumber you were in before; being woken abruptly and dragged back into a world you did not want to be in, separated from your own soul birth somewhere else across a galaxy full of wormhole memories from past and the past before. Oh God help me.

This is where the traveling begins. Unacceptance and indifference become your best friend and you must go and lick your wounds alone in some foreign place where you understand that being foreign and alienated is where home really is until you can go gently back into this good night, back to your soul and sleep until being woken up for yet another seemingly unfulfilled journey to the human realm where destruction, broken heartedness and ruthlessness seem to be the only constant daily event somewhere or another. Although hindsight and foresight without pity and sympathy for oneself tell you that the only constant thing in this human dimension is change.

One of the most relevant of human flaws is change oh sweet change. So we Westerners try so hard to run from this inevitability, surrounding ourselves with pretend and temporary comforts becoming fat and fearful adding false comfort upon false comfort, misusing and exploiting religion and God or saying there is no God because it is so much easier to carry the burden of reality on your own shoulders and take the responsibility of possible separation from God or human evil and flaw and just deal with the facts instead of some tangible aesthetics maybe, somewhere out there away from this madness in this terrible and rarely redemptive and rarely sweet existence.

We fill our bodies with chemicals and smoke. We fill our minds with antidepressants and pain killers because we know we are spoiled, and if we do not realize this then we should stop believing in the lies and face the reality of our condition. Oh yes my friend, less is more. The beauty of the small is where the detail lies. The things we chose to overlook in our day to day desire to escape the mundane; The daily quest for momentary pleasures, the lack of being able to handle each precious moment and savor it so we don’t have to regret losing it all later; this is the tragic beauty of the human condition which none will escape but by death alone. This is the day we patiently wait for from birth; to get the hell out of here and get back to the garden or at least a long and undisturbed sleep in our soul without another rude awakening to be thrust back yet again.

HIGHER PLACE

I will walk in the faithful sound

That lays my head to rest

I will lie in the cold cold ground

I’d hope I’d done my best

For life is a stranger

A stranger to me

In which I found no rest

And surely this hope

Will carry me

Into the higher place

I will toil almost effortlessly

To which this deed I’m due

I will sing unto a holier one

Until my song is through

For life is a stranger

A stranger to me

In which I found no rest

And surely this hope

Will carry me

Into the higher place

And when I’m gone

No comfort I’ll need

No arms to hold me tight

The wind will be your fond beckoning

To bring you back to me

For life is a stranger

A stranger to me

In which I’ve found no rest

And surely this hope

Will carry me

Into the higher place

And so here we are, losing and gaining love, missing so much and yet having it all at our finger tips, faking it or just empty, humble and contrite. I feel the need to laugh out loud. No, I think that is a roar I feel brewing in my belly, at yet another tragic comedy that is about to unfold, somewhere in time. I wonder if I will ever get out of here alive in my soul. I feel I am somewhere between fuck you!! and Never let me go!!!, between Why?? and Thank you so much… which is what I find when someone is selfless and kind. That is the only thing that can make me blush and it is indeed as rare as rocking horse shit.

Yes, less is indeed more. To savor something. How can you savor too much??? Bite by bite perhaps but too many bites are unsavorable. I truly believe that suffering purifies one’s temperaments if you can live through it and get the hell outta there for some reflection. Otherwise you will die there fighting until the only redemption you ever had besides poverty over riches is that little white light you might see as you leave your weary body and travel in your soul, free once again from the agony of this warzone.

There is a time for losing and a time for notification. I wouldn’t be a hero if I wasn’t such a zero, often applies. The truth is real but often times unspoken as faith moves specifically in action. And what to say about timing? All of your dreams will come true if they are pure and you can wait. The temptress in the idea is impatience and the willingness to sell yourself short in hesitation over what you need to wait for.

If you wait for the right time believing in your own destiny and your dreams, you will often get what you want. It will come smoothly and you will, in essence almost need not move a single finger and you will not flinch, get nervous or throw up out of anxiety or guilt. Your redemption will come streaming into your window like a ray of positive light after your suffering and patience has fulfilled its’ time. The true test of these qualities, always believing that they are the ones that rule your life as such. No media, fakeness and vanity can control you because you have overcome the falseness of this life except what is absolutely necessary to get around and move like a disabled human far away from your real home. What a Happy Halloween Day it will be when you realize that the Day of the Dead in Mexico, is a much better way. We must retrain our brains and learn that what society says is actually wrong and right is a shorter word for righteousness. We have to read between the lines because that is of the spiritual world and this life is lower, like a test to rise again….

And now we begin the story of my quest for love after losing the only open door I had before. The open door that could only be closed by death itself. My screams at God as to why and how if he was there; I truly did hate him in my moments of rage; My willingness to separate myself even more from the one chance I had to get back to the heavenly places and the risk I take to find out, my willingness to die on this meaningless planet, to never see grace again and go in steaming pots of shit anywhere at any time, regardless of race, sex, religion or what many would think is criminal, sublime and sleazy. The way that I will never lose as a predator and what life has taught me through every mistake, any wisdom gained and my insistent insanity, to always be free even if chained eternally to my cast out reputation and hero- zero status amongst the humans.

2- LANDING

It was a sunny and bright day descending from the inter-atmospheric regions back through the green, wild, untamed landscape swiftly turning into red deserted barren planet Earth. I knew yet again that I was on new, foreign territory. The wheels bumped, skidded and braked and there we all were lining up for exit like little lambs being led to the slaughter, unknowing and naïve as to the ruthless reality that lay ahead not only in our daily lives but also in our subliminal consciousness or at least in mine, as reflection over time has proven. Oddly enough, I have never had bad dreams of this hardship as over the course of my time spent, I would always dream of being in Europe and of people who understood me better. These were the people I was so happy to get away from in my quest for new worlds and exotic new experiences.

I think the shocking reality of my primitive impoverished life had choked me in my core, badly enough that I didn’t need to dream about it at night. Sleeping would be my only way out; I could run, get away and hide from the previous day. I remember crying every morning when I woke up realizing where I really was and then I would shake myself back together again like a cold wet dog that just took an invigorating, unwanted swim overcome with the insatiable urge to retrieve the only stick in the world at that moment and that lucky stick somehow had been thrown to special little me.

I had had correspondence with the NGO I was going there to work with for many months before so as I jumped into the dark I did seem to have something that might resemble a small cigarette lighter to guide me down the unknown forbidden roads I was about to embark on. I guess that’s better than nothing if the moon isn’t helping me on the trail.

The smiling coast on the other hand seemed to only be smiling at the airport or in tourist meat markets. When you get into the real live local culture one can see the other side of a smile more clearly. I was greeted the smiley way after disembarking. I had already psyched myself out of realizing that I would usually be the only light skinned person most places I would go. I had decided early on that there was no such thing as black and white, only different shades of brown. I just happened to be beige, a debate like a broken record continuing to replay the same phrase over and over and over again. Try convincing someone who has had little exposure to information, education and media.

This is the very strange thing about this culture clash coast. Village life would prove to be easier after everybody knew your real name or African name but until then one would be referred to as white man (a translation from the local language.) In town where people have more access to Hip Hop, Dance Hall, Reggae and MTV, you are nothing but an object or a money tree as money falls from your lips and miraculously appears everywhere you go as a foreign intruder, even if you come here broke and make only pennies for your work.

As I came through customs I had ten different men with carts ready to escort me; gleaming at me through missing or gold teeth, picking up on my money scent and beige color and waiting for the pennies to drop from heaven. To appear and reappear because if not me, it would be the next lamb in line who would obliviously think that this is all a part of their ethnically enriched first time experience. Oh these natives are so sweet. These tourists don’t realize that their pity and supposed generosity inspires laziness and greed when fallen into the wrong hands and hearts.

Unfortunately, I can only learn through my own personal experience as wisdom from others is like a Beginners Story Telling Class for me. I fumbled through and let the funny little man help me with my bags and gave him some American money now realizing that it would then feed him and his family of eight for the week, which is wonderful if he did in fact spend it on his family. Everybody screaming and yelling, bantering and lathering, this would become my new way of life. Oh God, what have I gotten myself into again.

I approached the main door in this tiny little airport with two gates and immediately started scanning the people standing in a semicircle lined with what appeared to be a few flimsy hollow metal partitions. I couldn’t recognize who was supposed to be there picking me up and then took to one tall man speaking English on a cell phone that looked about thirty years old. I walked around the fence and had to walk right up to his face before he noticed me and then he just continued his conversation making me wait patiently before he acknowledged my existence in his world.

He acted as if he had not been the slightest bit rude and proceeded to tell me that he had been waiting for me for quite some time and that he hoped my trip to the unknown had been easy on my soul. Little did he know that my soul has been in unrest since the moment I was woken up from my sweet death like sleep on the other side, before abruptly and quite harshly being thrust back down to planet Earth, even before my birth in this life. I shrugged my thoughts off gracefully and told him the journey has been smooth sailing all the way across the pond.

A feeling of complete unease was beginning to settle in as I began to realize that all of the declarations of intent that had been passed through cyberspace between us, may not be as real as they seemed on paper and that maybe many of our conversations might have just been dreams of the future once the beige woman with blue eyes arrived with the money trail that flowed from my lips and all around me, and that alone would cradle us back to the land of milk and honey; those spoken and documented words would be hollow intentions and hopeful affirmations of my martyred and savior-like persona seen by me, him, the locals and of course God Almighty.

3-LIES

He was a tall Nigerian man. He had long fingers and women’s hips that suited his body nicely. He had broad facial features and wore glasses. His lips were nice and full. His hair was shaved very short and if I hadn’t already realized before I would have mistaken him for a wannabe business man or in our culture, some kind of used car salesman. He was very intelligent and held a Degree. His name was too long to pronounce, even for himself. He was full of laughter almost in a feminine joyous kind of way. As he put us into the beaten up old yellow and green taxi, I understood that the company car we spoke about in our online discussions was a future goal.

I was here before once a few years earlier but only briefly and as a tourist. As we drove deeper into local life my heart continued to sink in my chest down to my stomach where I felt I would vomit from it being in the wrong place in my body so I tried to hold back the flood of what would have been tears and sweat and regurgitate my heart just before I threw it up out of my mouth and quickly swallow it back to its’ rightful place of origin. I was in a total state of shock almost completely immobilized and far beyond what panic might wish it could ever be when it grew up.

The tourist area I once saw was no more and all I could see was trash, mud and wreckage. He just kept chatting along and laughing oblivious to my deep groans of grief that only God and myself could hear. It felt like the sound a humpback whale would make in the abyss moving farther and farther down never reaching as it kept its search of the bottomless pit it was born to roam. I just wanted to hide, to go somewhere safe, and this feeling would be continuous until if ever I got out and didn’t die here. This was the beginning of finding my dignity although at the time I felt it was the most painfully excruciating experience I had ever encountered besides losing my soul mate two years earlier, the feeling that your heart has been ripped out of your chest, stomped on over and over again and repeatedly spit on by the dirtiest filthy life forms imaginable.

He took me to what was supposed to be my new living place. It was a huge ghost house mausoleum like Hotel California, right in the middle of one of the busiest towns in this little coastal country. I would roam the hallways of numerous rooms within rooms but I was the only one to stay there besides a man who I would like to refer to as Egor. He was a soulless, night- of- the- living- dead kind of guy who continued to smoke weed almost as an atonement for selling his soul to the devil in some previous life. The acoustics were great there but as I would sing I seemed to only quietly enchant myself and the ghosts that awaited my accompaniment back to their lost world and away from the middle world or limbo they lingered in until they could bring a human sacrifice back to their place of origin for some kind of redemption for themselves.

Unfortunately, I could not be that for them as I am a spiritual warrior and quite aware of my destiny, which is not in acceptance with laying down and rolling over for someone else’s spiritual mistakes. We stayed for one night and I drank a beautiful bottle of aged cognac to calm my nerves. I could feel the spirits trying to tempt me but I fought against them and would not let them have me, girded by my strong faith and unbridled spiritual disposition. We had long Nigerian style sex that acted as comfort food for the eternal love I was missing for so long, but it kept my mind busy and almost acted as a safeguard to the spirits that were trying to lure me. It was a very long night, and I slept little like a security guard on the third shift.

Morning broke and the spirits went back to bed. I roamed the empty halls and found a picture of Celine Dion and another of Youssou N’Dour, the Senegalese singer. I knew we couldn’t manage another night there and as the Nigerian went for some toothpaste and beers, I began to plan my escape. I got into the taxi and heard distant echoes in the mausoleum representing some kind of argument. I should have handled it as the Nigerian was too temperamental and as he huffed and puffed his way to the taxi I interjected. He was in a right lather so I shut my mouth, unusually. Egor said we had to pay for days we had not yet consumed explaining that we had booked for a longer stay. I let him know that I had nothing to do with the booking but that a longer stay would be too costly for my priceless soul to bear. He quirked his head at me like a cat that licks its paw and has an idea of something forgotten and now realized. My monkey year birth is often a help to me in times of need and although the demons continued to try to keep us there and over long argumentative dispute on his part, we ventured to the next endeavor.

We ended up at a housing agency and got a small place in a line of other places but we were the only ones there. We had a shower, toilet and bathroom sink but had to buy a gas bottle with a head to rest the would-be meal on. I had some money at the time and if I had known what I know now I would have spent it much more wisely. I came there to work with the Nigerian but his NGO was bellying up on an event they put all of their money into that had no ticket sales. So there went my return ticket reimbursement, my dream car and any income. I was fucked.

It took me about a week before I could brave even going to buy bread. The little shacks that sold bread made me sick to my stomach. I could not even think about how many dirty hands had touched this bread and how far it had to travel to make it to my mouth and back out again into the highly unsanitized wasteland I was living in.

The first night I was there alone and the power cuts began. I wasn’t prepared and scared shitless as I was alone in Africa. I didn’t have a night watchman yet as I came during rainy season so nobody was ready for tourism yet. I didn’t know what was happening and was ready for some kind of a raid to again use me as a human sacrifice for some tribal ritual. The only solace I had was in the Muslim prayers from the Mosque across the street but this was well after the fifth and final prayer for the day so there I sat with my guitar, writing and playing new bluesy renditions of the melodies I was hearing from the Mosque all day.

After about six weeks of drinking myself calm on Guinness I began to come to terms with the fact that I had to begin to try to handle my environment. Everywhere I went which was chiefly for beer and bread, I was looked at as being different. I was shouted at, followed and watched anywhere I would go. It was like being famous but without money, your own personal car and compound. There was no rest except to hide. This would be the next two and a half years of my life, but every day seemed like it was the end and I did not think I would ever bear the next day.

The Nigerian and I had many good ideas but he was weaker than me and he could not handle my self-medicating ways of coping with my newfound situations. He had no trouble spending what little money I had and would run away when he couldn’t handle something. I on the other hand always faced everything head on even if it made me throw up. I have always had the philosophy that you can take my life but you can never take my soul. I had to find a new way and place in my life and after some stupid discrepancy of my bringing a drummer back to listen to my music and catching this Nigerian in lies about Visa charges, his overly jealous ex-girlfriend and his childlike running away, the unbearableness of the lies overcame me. My previous Rock and Roll lifestyle helped me to cope with these kind of situations in such a way as to end it in a phone conversation where my last words were fuck you, you fucking cunt and that was that. Little did I know that the lies had just begun. This was a mere introduction and welcome to my new home.

4- DRUMMER

I met the drummer at his Drum Shop on the side of the main road I would walk up to get my beer. I had taken my guitar up there and jammed with him and his entourage of drumming buddies. He was Guinean and shaved his head as many Muslims had done in this country. He had a sweet face and almost Chinese eyes, a nice firm body, nice lips and beautiful strong hands and fingers for playing. The drums were beautifully hand carved wood and they would hand string them with cow or goat skins repetitively pulling and jerking until it was tight enough and resonated the perfect tone. It was a long and hard job and he would sit with his buddies day after day and sometimes even a month without a sale. Some days he or the others would hustle on the beach and sell these lovely instruments for much less than their worth just to get something to eat that day. They would spend the rest of their time playing which made them very good musicians. When they played together with four or five using all different sized drums and rhythms you could feel the power and the release of frustration of being born with bad directions in this life.

Since I am a Libra, I believe I have always taken to Art and beauty in any form, no matter how vast or finite it shows itself to me. Although I am extremely attracted to the aesthetic side of life, my Monkey razor sharp mind tries to balance the tangible and intangible as delicately as it can in my heart and psyche. Having predatory instincts, I was well aware that things were not panning out as planned so I had to move on to another situation and I would need outside help of some sort to dig deeper into this culture.

Musicians always suited me best as I am foremost a Singer/Songwriter and Musician. They would be the only group who could look at me for more than money in this particular culture although every red blooded male here would also like sex as a complimentary gesture and especially with a beige girl with blue eyes who had musical talent and was foreign. I have always wanted love monogamously with one perfect partner but if the timing could not be right for that then the act of sex could be used as a means of survival in extreme conditions. It could hurt my spirit at times but my struggle as a Warrior in this life could override the pain in my heart and it certainly could not be any worse than being thrust into this world from my beauty sleep in the reaches far beyond.

I had met a nice English woman at the airport in London and before disembarking, I had asked her for her phone number. She was a nurse for many years and had kind warm features. I called her up and she said I could stay at her Guesthouse for a month and only pay for electricity. I was hard up, no job and very little money. It was quite a change as I had another foreigner to talk to. There was a pool there and it catered to foreigners. In a way it protected me for a short time from what was to come later.

The drummer helped me move my things and spent a night or two enjoying the atmosphere and having a swim but soon the time came for him to return to the beaten down roadside shack where his buddies were waiting for some instruction from their leader. We had gone previously to a little recording studio around the corner from his shop. It was a big bedroom with a little eight track mixer and a microphone but even I didn’t have the money for such lavish endeavors so our playing dreams were slowly dissipating as I was sinking slowly into local life with them.

After my month was up I had found a job teaching English at two schools. I would float and work with children from Grades 1 to 3 at the one school and Grades 4 to 6 at the other one. The woman who owned the schools had graduated in the States and was sympathetic to my predicament. I found a new Guesthouse that was closer and commuted by bush taxi to school.

I was backing off the drummer as I had learned that he was married with three children. He told me he was single with no children but one day as I was walking by his shop a woman was calling me and following me. He said she was crazy and he didn’t know her but later the truth was made known. He continued to pursue me which didn’t bother me so much as he was kind, speaking English with an African French accent which I always like more than the French speaking their own language; and he had a beautiful deep voice that could probably just about put me to sleep. I enjoyed his company until he began asking me to help him and give him money, which I did once or twice but I was on such a local budget myself that it was becoming tiresome for me so I slowly backed off of him while the others were lining up for me.

THE MALARIA

I came home one day from school and thought I was getting the flu. I lay down in this terribly hot and uncomfortable country where the electricity never stays on, got under my mosquito net and began to shiver incessantly. I thought this isn’t right and then began burning up like I had entered hell for the first time ever. This was repeating in twenty to thirty minute cycles and I felt as if I had been hit abruptly in the head with a machete. I then understood my symptoms and called the Head of my schools and she had someone at my house within two hours or so to take me to the lab.

Sure enough I had second degree Malaria and only had been showing symptoms for two hours. It takes two weeks for it to attack your system and then you have it forever. In this part of the world it is the most dangerous. If not caught in time it can go to third stage malaria which is brain malaria. You can lose your mind and die which is pretty much how I was feeling now anyway at stage two.

Many Africans will die without treatment or go where they can get the treatment for free and stop taking the medication when they start feeling better. One must take all five days of medication but it will never leave your body. You can only put the parasite down for a while and hope that he will stay asleep forever without another attack. It feeds on sugar and attacks your bones and leaves you with severe arthritis and a caved in chest. I lost so much weight and my arms and chest were like those of a skeleton hanging in the anatomy lab for dissection.

Oh God this place is overwhelming. Everything is amplified, from the words to the jerky movement everywhere and anywhere and the hostility is enough to choke you to death if you manage to survive the malaria and daily life. I didn’t take the anti-malaria meds before coming as I did the research and found that upon staying long term the risk of letting my