SERENDIPITIES: Beware the Orange Corpse
While backpacking the highlands of Guinea, in West Africa, I met two girls who took me to a football match. Spectators packed the stands and overflowed behind net-less goals, except I soon r
While backpacking the highlands of Guinea, in West Africa, I met two girls who took me to a football match. Spectators packed the stands and overflowed behind net-less goals, except I soon realized few watched the game. My companions Idiatou and Baile waved at classmates, and half the bleacher called to the other half. Down below, the sidelines bustled. Children ran their own games, football free-for-alls with twenty players per team. Women sold meat kebobs, bananas, and oranges.
Without warning, midway through the first half, the bleachers erupted in screams and the people disappeared, as if vacuumed. Baffled, I sat transfixed until I heard Idiatou cry, “Descend, Amy. Descend!!” I scrambled to the field, where people swarmed like bees protesting a disturbed hive. Around us flew a glut of bizarre missiles: orange corpses. Guineans don’t eat their oranges; they drink them. You shave off the rind in a spiral, remove the top toupee, and squeeze the orange from the bottom up. When the juice is gone, you have an orange corpse, a deflated sac eaten by goats. Thanks to strong sales, orange ammunition littered the ground.
The kids had taken over, launching long-range heaves over bleachers and direct shots from execution range. Baile wailed, walloped by a chest shot. Herded by midget generals, the crowd fled, laughing as kids raced by for final shots. I begged Idiatou, “Is this normal?” She shrugged and replied, “When the kids aren’t happy.” Meanwhile the game continued, without spectators.
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