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thought? Actually, who knows what Vivian’s like?
    â€œNext Sunday would be good.”
    â€œAre you in the phone book, Viv?”
    â€œYep. Brooklyn. Suarez. With a Z at the end. Just like always.”
    â€œI’ll call you tomorrow.”
    She got back to her seat as the curtain was rising, and quickly told David about Vivian in the bathroom. Then, despite all her preparation for the opera, and all her involvement in the story, she never heard the second half. She never saw the slave girl kill herself, never saw the prince answer the riddles correctly, never saw Turandot realize her love. She never heard the piercing aria she’d been looking forward to, Nessun Dorma. She was back in Africa.
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    VIVIAN TOLD HER she could just dump her stuff anywhere while they went around to greet the members of the family compound, then the village chief himself. “It’s a village. It’s safe. Trust me.”
    They walked from one hut to another, trailed by the dust their feet kicked up, dust Ruth would eventually learn to live with almost constantly, except during the brief rainy season. A throng of children followed them wherever they went, chanting and laughing, dressed in a melange of African fabrics and such exotica as a Detroit Tigers tee shirt. One or another of the kids was occasionally emboldened to wipe a finger across Ruth’s bare arm or leg, then look at the finger to see if her strange color had wiped off.
    Each time Ruth entered a hut for the introduction, she’d take a minute to adjust to the dark, the coolness, and the lingering smell of thousands of cooking fires. The people inside looked up at her and smiled in an international nonverbal welcome even though they didn’t know her and probably thought she might as well be a space alien. Then came the ritual greeting.
    â€œAsalaam-malekum.”
    â€œMalekum-salaam,” she said.
    â€œNanga def?”
    â€œMangi fi rekk,” she said.
    â€œNaka waa ker ge?”
    â€œNunga fe,” she said.
    â€œNaka sa baay?”
    â€œMunga fe,” she said.
    â€œJamm nge am?”
    â€œJamm rekk, alhamdulilay,” she said.
    Taken literally, she was answering questions about her parents and her house—she thought—but accepted the Peace Corps’s wisdom that it was all ritual, like saying “Fine” when someone asks “How are you?” even when you’re sick as a dog. And it was the only currency she had to respond to the warm welcome she was receiving.
    By the time the introductions were over, Ruth had begun her own transition to dusty monochrome. They retrieved her belongings and Vivian delighted the proud guardien of the luggage with a reward of five francs CFA, worth about two cents. Vivian took her to the living quarters she’d built two months before, over by the dunes, while providing a non-stop commentary on the construction process.
    â€œThe walls and roof are made of crintin. I didn’t actually make the crintin, some of the villagers made it for me. They were anxious to do anything they could for me, but I really think they mostly wanted an excuse to just stand around and look at me because I was such a curiosity to them. After all, they’d never seen a creature like me before. It was wild, really wild.”
    Ruth could see that the crintin consisted of the spines of palm fronds woven into a flexible mat, about five feet high and of any length desired. She didn’t ask for any more details, fearing the length of the answer.
    â€œSee, I stuck these poles in the ground. Well, they’re not poles exactly, they’re saplings, but I had to look for saplings that were about eight feet tall and had a ‘V’ at the top, and I stood the crintin up to be the walls, and then I attached it to the poles so they stand up straight. Neat, huh? And then I put more saplings between the V’s to be like rafters, and the rafters hold the crintin that goes