Everything Makes Sense

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Miles was in the school computer room, shooting the bull with Bill Robinson, a computer room boss in the Jerry Garcia mould: hairy, venerable, big, erudite. They were talking about Macumba. Macumba is big in Salvador. Macumba and Candomble. As the discussion ranged over their panglobal experiences of Juju, Voodoo and instant Karma, Bill said, "I was reading a paper last week that said about 80%!o(MISSING)f people in West Africa who believe they are dying as a result of 'Voodoo', die of kidney failure," and as Bill talked about rat poison, Miles drifted to Nigeria, where everything suddenly made sense.

Teaching at the Chief's Complex was a complex business indeed. It was the most expensive private educational establishment in some part of Africa or other. Miles had a lot of things to worry about, being crap at his job the biggest of them. His job was manifestly more challenging by association with his Nigerian co-teacher, Jefferson. Like all the other Nigerian staff, Jefferson had been given an expensive heroin-funded training in London, but he was a compete anomaly in a Montessori kindergarten: moody, brooding, discomforting, and a rotton teacher; much worse than Miles. The headmistress hated him. Early in the week before the BBQ, Jefferson approached Miles in class and whispered in his ear, "Will you come with me to the janitors shed and drink palm?" Miles just said, "No." What else was he supposed to do at 10am in a kindergarten.

"It is my birthday."

"Oh! OK!" says Miles robotically and watches Jefferson leave.

The strangeness of the whole affair was compounded ten minutes later in the Headmistress's office, when she punched the air, shouted "Yee-HA!" and ran squealing to the janitors. And then of course, a week later, things started to get really strange.

http://s7.zetaboards.com/PPooDD/topic/8389947/1/

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