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14.9.2076
Who but my countrymen would imagine that Gambia could survive as a country, narrow strip that it is, on either side of its river? Now, all that remains are the riddled ghost-buildings of Bathurst... as the floatplane began its descent, I doubted. Would I be swallowed like Gambia, poised between tribal wars? Would my warring sides be so consumed until only the dividing river remains?
The heat finally drifts upward, revealing its cold underbelly, showing its true self, that which we always knew it really was. The Fishman's Spine rises to my left as the solarcar lurches into the bend. Cells will last through to Bou Djebeha (where SmoothC waits for the supplies). In places the Spine looks more like teeth, as though teeth were an extension of the spine, nothing else needed for this twisted monster. Nothing else left in this twisted, irradiated land.
16.9.2076
Already I am an anachronism. Solar power took its hold here and has never relinquished, even if transportation is nothing more than solar cells strapped on to older, combustion engine cars. Truly, this place is the desert of the soul. Economy is meaningless. Warfare breeds strange mutations.
When we were children, SmoothC would whisper me tales: Some days the clouds hang so low that their edges droop and touch the ground. Walking then is like finding a way through columns that lean and drift in the air. The needled trees above you grasp and pull in the rain. Your feet sink and suck into the moss. And everywhere greywater falls like coins from the sky.
19.9.2076
Sun and dust fill my pores. I have spent days in this shuddering metal box that skims and screams over the desert. I know true hatred-it is in the disgust that my body's water feels for this place. The Gambia has shrunk until it may be nothing more than cattle pissing in the desert. Certainly it smells as such. How can these laughing, derisive people exist here? Prof. Coral Sabazius has spoken; you must cease to exist. All except for my thief, who is ripe for transplant. You people! You discuss politics under the shelter of animal fodder. Togu Na, your sun shelter: where is the beauty in that?
Yellow sand on yellow sand. Spit-welded takes on a new meaning. In homage and efficiency we round our edges, saving Wind the trouble. Rounded blocks, our homes rise from the sand amongst the cliff's discarded rubble. No one could live here; no one could build here. So we did, in the refuse. But go inside. Where the body's ache is in the dance of the yellow flame. More yellow! But it is warmth on warmth-it blends into browns and reds and greens. Bogolan, our tapestries: colour from mud.
Jenna Manley, 08/12/01
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