How did I get here?  Sitting poolside, infinity pool side even, at a hotel overlooking the wrong side of the Atlantic Ocean?  Planes creep across the roof of my hotel, their sounds first, then their body, then their shadows briefly cool me as they descend on Dakar’s airport some mile (kilometers now) away.  I marvel at my stupidity and faith for getting on such fragile looking transportation mechanisms.  They seem fine for short hops, DC to NY, San Diego to San Francisco, but crossing an ocean at 5 miles up in the sky, I think something more substantial seems in order.  I remind myself to forget this thought before I have to cross the Atlantic again in another week.  And look for my rosary beads.  I get quite religious when I fly. 

       And yet here I sit, poolside, infinity poolside even, in Dakar, sun baking me as my humble origins and imbedded sensibilities urge me not to pay another $6 for Senegal’s equivalent of a Miller Lite.  I drink this Flag beer because it is 3000 CFA,  $6, the cheapest one on the menu, and I am glad it’s good.  I’m certain I would drink it anyway even if it wasn’t so good.  An ocean between myself and my youth is not far enough for me to hide from the frugality that grew up with me.  And yet I opt for another.  I guess I can’t outrun that either.  So I consume local brew, ice cold, poolside, a continent away from my life, wondering how I got here. 

       Where else could I be?  After graduating high school and having not filled out a single college application I contemplated military service.  I could be in the military.  Army maybe, or air force like my Dad, like a tribute to him, even though at the time I wouldn’t be entertaining the idea of doing anything as a tribute to him.  Maybe be a marine because they have the toughest image.  Maybe the army as a tribute to Big G who was the male role model I would have been more likely to pay tribute to at the time.  Maybe I would have made a good career military man, having benefitted from the strict discipline, the structure and the security of routine.  Perhaps I would have thrived in the environment and still found comfort in it to this day, religiously getting a hair cut every second Tuesday, wearing well fitting trousers, shirts always tucked in, belt cinched tight, my appearance slim, trim and erect having continued to place a strong emphasis on physical fitness and posture long after a drill sergeant had stopped drilling that into me.

       Maybe I would be a construction manager at the Koester Construction Company.  Having a name different than Koester I could never hope to attain a higher rank but I could be happy.  I would be well liked by my boss/father in law, having remained diligent in the good care of his daughter for many years, she having bore me several children including two boys, and I never straying in my devotion to her and the family. 

       I remember meeting his daughter, the year after I graduated high school.  I was always ready for an adventure and JV presented me with one.  He had met a girl, a young woman even, when he was on vacation in Florida.  Their passion had smoldered via mail and phone calls until at last he decided he would visit her.  The plot was laid out.  On spring break from the local community college we attended, he told his parents he would wisely use that time to investigate other colleges in the SUNY system in hopes that he may one day transfer there.  What parent can resist the determination of a self-motivated and ambitious off spring?  Of course you can go for the weekend, take the family car, here’s some money for gas and tolls and incidentals as well. 

       And so we were off on the 10 hour trip to Indiana University.  Or maybe it was more than ten hours but we just trimmed it down to ten hours.  The robin’s egg blue, late 80’s Honda accord still smelled new and drove fast and true, easily reaching 110 miles per hour on the back roads of the back towns in back states.  I started out driving, right after our night class at the Newburgh campus of Orange County Community College finished up around 9PM.  The novelty of having a car to pilot still had not worn off of me.  About 6 hours into the trip it became a matter of pride for me to finish, a test of endurance, to see if I could make the whole trip myself.  JV seemed on board and he slept much of the way until at some point the erratic movement of the car crept into his solitary dream space and seemed to alert him that he wasn’t the only one in the car that was sleeping.  He woke me up before any damage could occur, thanks in hindsight I believe to the flat, boring straightness of the road and his quick recognition from the sleep side of things that something was awry. 

       We eventually made it there in one piece.  I continued the drive because we were so close to the destination and I didn’t sleep that long at the wheel, and I was so determined and at 18 and 19 you know you are indestructible and so lots of things seem like good ideas that in hindsight really don’t.  I had but one traffic ticket to pay for my sins of aggression against the 4 cylinder accord engine, having been pulled over by a trooper in a Camaro less than 30 miles from the finish line of what had become my own personal cannon ball run.

       So there we were at Indiana University, bright sunshine greeting our yawning faces, finely manicured campus carpeted in bright green grass, brick buildings clustered about, carefree students bustling here and there in that carefree manner they’ll rarely feel again. 

       A blonde with a mid-western cuteness in the face and the tautness of a young athlete came out to greet us and I thought to myself “nice work JV”.  And alas, the promises that lured me here in the first place, spread out before me, plush accommodations in an all girls dorm and the sneakiness of it all, as it was against the rules, both of JV’s parents and the University. 

       I fell for the roommate I wasn’t supposed to.  Not the blonde haired, blue eyed, outgoing Julie Love but the quieter, more bookish, Gilligan’s Island hat wearing, unfortunately named Lois Koester.  Her dark eyes peered out from under the dark hat and I couldn’t let go of the gaze.  Everything else just unfolded from there as easily as a sleeping bag being unrolled. 

       The next morning was funny, or at least it seems so now.  I was awakened by whichever roommate and told to go help JV bring the stuff from the car in.  I can still remember him standing by the curb in front of the dorm, our little bags and back packs in front of him but also random things like a soccer ball, a basketball, a box of tissues, a blanket, jumper cables.  It was basically the contents of the car, including the kind of contents you don’t usually remove unless you’re doing a thorough scrubbing or selling it.  Or unless you’ve just wrecked it along some unfamiliar stretch of road, in some unfamiliar town, many miles from home and many miles from a family that thinks you’re in Brockport or Oneonta or Geneseo.  But you weren’t in Brockport or Oneonta or Geneseo, were you?  No sir, no young man, you were making your way out for a romantic picnic, in Indiana, which is coincidentally no where near or on the way to Brockport or Oneonta or Geneseo. 

       Some 15 years later I still don’t know what happened.  Were you getting romantic before you arrived at your romantic picnic?  What caused you to navigate the ditch instead of navigating the road?  Was it worth it?  Did you simply multi task as I had earlier, thinking you could sleep and drive at the same time but without someone like you with your sleepy intuition to wake you up?

       We enjoyed our weekend in the all girls dorm with our prospective mates.  We hid the facts of the future in corners of our minds.  The fact was a phone call had to be made at some point, preferably before Monday morning when the insurance companies would start their work in earnest. 

       When Monday came and JV made the phone call to his folks his conversation ended before he knew it, for he was still speaking and his dad had already hung up.  I think the lack of productive communication lasted for some ten days.  We were getting settled in by then.  After the intended weekend was past we had to be moved from the girls dorm as it would be crowded once again and our hostesses secret guests would be much more difficult to keep secret.  We moved into the grad student apartment of JV’s love interest’s brother.  We established a routine, including basketball in the evenings, we washed clothes, we talked about looking for jobs, we spent quality time with our respective love interests, and then just like that it was over.  Familial bond won out, Greyhound tickets were purchased by the dad I had never met, we endured a 24 hour return trip to NY, in considerably less luxury than we had left in, with JV feeling nervous about the imminent doom that awaited him.  From the bus to Port Authority, to Metro North train to Beacon, to a brutally silent car ride with someone else’s angry Pop. 

       I missed my love interest immensely.  I called from time to time but more often than not I didn’t.  I lived with a family who couldn’t afford themselves with ease yet took on the extra burden of affording me, and occasionally my sibling and other neighborhood cast offs.  Who was I to sit in this packed house, monopolizing a phone line, pining for lost love in Middle America while life went on around me and the meter ran up on the phone bill.  Nobody told me to stop.  I wrote letters instead.  Who knows what happened on the other end of those letters?  The address I had was a home address, not the school one.  Did her parents see the effects of her young love taking a sour turn on her spirits?  When my phone calls stopped and I turned to letters did they conceal them from her, let her go on with the life she had prior to me?  Did she go back to the boyfriend she had left at home, who had already begun to work for Koester construction, the one she broke off her already years old relationship with shortly after my arrival in the Hoosier state?  She had returned from that phone call to the boyfriend, now ex, with tears in her eyes, but unburdened and free to pursue her newfound interest in me.

       I thought I would track her down someday, maybe just show up in her life, tip my Yankee cap to her from across the distance of our past, as she bought diapers at the pharmacy or as she loaded a minivan full of kids in a grocery store parking lot.  I haven’t done it yet.  Maybe the time has passed. 

       For at this time I am now sitting on the balcony of OUR apartment, an OUR that doesn’t include her, in Nairobi, overlooking the pool and hearing and seeing children playing. They are on their winter break from elementary school and their excitement is noisy.

       The apartment compound consists of four buildings arranged in horseshoe shape.  Each building is six stories, one apartment on each side of the center staircase, for a total of 12 units per building.  48 in all.  We all have balconies facing the interior of the horseshoe where the pool and grassy play area is.   This arrangement makes for an Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” type of phenomenon that takes place.  People don’t always close the blinds.  People don’t always view blinds as a necessity.  You begin to know things about some neighbors and speculate, imagine and create realities for the others. 

       There is Philly, a pair of young ladies who live on opposite sides of the ground floor of my building.  Their name derives from the fact that one is named Phil and the other is named Lily and they are always together.  There was talk that Nassra, the sexy Somali landlord who’s father owns the compound, reportedly purchased with Somali pirate ransom money, was going to have to kick Philly out due to repeated complaints from neighbors.  Philly seems to like the music loud, the hooka filled with tequila, the late nights, etc… The neighbors complained, letters were sent, all seemingly ignored.  We thought they were gone.  We were surprised to find that they were still here when we got back from Senegal.  November had ended and December had arrived. They somehow evaded the blow from the eviction horn.  It seems they have shaped up in lieu of getting shipped out. 

       We are excited that Philly seems to have gotten a reprieve.  Philly has two children, Phil’s is Roger and Lily’s is Luke.  Roger calls me Uncle Tony.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Luke begins calling me Daddy because I’m in the questionable habit of greeting him by saying in a stern voice “Luke, I am your father”.  This could potentially cause some confusion in the future, as it appears his domestic and paternal situation is unclear, at least as far as I can gather from my balcony research center.      

       I imagine, in the future, a time when I may be approached by him and have some ‘splaining to do.   I might not have to pay for therapy or counseling but I may have to sit down and watch ten hours of Star Wars with the kid to help him understand what inspired my false claims of paternity. 

       I take a shine to the kids.  Even Luke, who is not my real son, despite the fact that as a child he is already afflicted, with a grown up size case of bitch-ass-ness.  He cries almost as often as he blinks and seems to be scared of his shadow.  Barb sometimes threatens to go down there to give him something to cry about when his squeals and cries repeatedly disturb her from her home academic workday.  But he’s got that annoying ability to turn the tears on as quickly as the ball is snatched from his hands and turn it off as soon as it’s back, so by the time you got down there to whoop his ass you’d be greeted with a happy, playing child wondering what the hell you came to whoop him for anyway. 

       His buddy Roger seems to be quite a bit tougher, laughing with all the glee in the world when you dangle him upside down by his feet or swing him out over the pool by his arms.  

       Sometimes these kids distract me from my task at hand, which apparently is shaping up to be “reflect on how I got here”.   I seem to be distracted by them even now as Rodiat runs around the compound, looking a little too small for her ten years and looking like an old woman who has been shrunken and her skin smoothed.  The scars across her chest and back may speak to sickness or past misfortune, terror, pain.  Her smiling face never wavers even as her younger sister Naheemah grows taller, faster, stronger and more vocal in their pursuits about the compound. 

      There are other children about the compound.  The three little prisoners who sit on their third floor balcony peeping between the railings, never seeming to be allowed to play with the others below.  Their mother, the warden, seeming to be trapped in her own prison, as she wraps her head in the curtains just to look out, as if she is in the veil and full body garments she normally wears when she exits the house. 

       How did I get here?  Where would I be had I wound up spending the last years of my high school career up state at my aunt’s house with my best cousin and her on the rural hill on the farm?  What sort of man would I be now?  What if my dreams of the prep school life materialized and I went off to a dreamy New England campus somewhere like some of my childhood schoolmates?  Would I have made connections of a lifetime, been accepted into the halls of white upper class mobility, gotten summer jobs in wall street firms that would teach me how to conceal my blue collar past, how to order wine, crave European sports sedans and blonde wives with blue blood?

       What am I now?  A househusband, tasked with one job, to be a good one.  What if I am not?  The man who is many things has more opportunities for success.  If I were a teacher, a coach, a father, a hobby model airplane builder and I was good at just two wouldn’t I still be batting 500?  If I have but one task to fulfill and struggle with it what does that leave?

       It leaves questions for another day, perhaps tomorrow, or perhaps sometime in the future, on another balcony, in another city.