øøø No Country For Smart Men øøø

It always seemed to be raining.

Without fail, upon completion of language class, I would step out of the apartment building into a downpour. It wasn’t always a hard rain, but it was always rain. Perhaps the worst nights were when the air was filled with a thick mist. It settled into the dirt that covered the streets and turned into a slick mud. Not that the streets weren’t muddy to begin with. In fact, it’s almost a stretch to call them streets.

Rainy. And dark. There were no streetlights and my host brothers had stolen my flashlight for more devious purposes: it was taped to the muzzle of their pellet gun to aid in the shooting of dogs. So I made the hazardous trek without illumination. And, more than once, my foot found a majority of the potholes in the road. I wasn’t actually aware that gravel roads were susceptible to potholes.

But back to the tale at hand:

It was a Tuesday, our lesson had run longer than usual, and host families had picked everyone else up. This left me to walk alone. My umbrella would not open, and so, as I made my way, my head and face grew wetter. The water running down my face didn’t help in my avoidance of potholes: both of my feet were inundated within the first fifty yards.

I slogged along in the dark with only my squishing feet to accompany me. And then there were headlights coming towards me. I stepped to the side of the road to allow them passage and continued walking. The vehicle that passed me was a minivan. I glanced back and saw that the minivan had come to a stop farther down the road. I then saw its reverse lights come on. It maneuvered itself into a three-point turn and made its way back down the road, in my direction.

Um, I thought, that’s odd. But it’s probably just going to the turn it must have missed. Except that there were no intersections on the road but the one from which (obviously?) they turned onto the current road. I didn’t stop walking. I was nearing the intersection as the minivan drove slowly past. It didn’t stop at the intersection, nor did it turn off. It drove past and then came to another stop. I had reached the intersection and stopped to watch the minivan.

Once again it put on its reverse lights and executed a three-point turn. While it was in the middle of its turn, I took a left at the intersection and picked up my pace. The intersection was not where I was supposed to turn. In fact, I’d never been on this road before. My host family lived at the end of the other road, but I assumed I could find a street that ran parallel, or parallel enough for me to find my way back. I heard the minivan, could see its headlights on the wall next to me. I turned to watch.

The minivan turned onto the road.

It turned onto the road I had turned onto.

Fuck, I thought. Fuck.

I took off at a dead run. The rain had increased and I didn’t know where I was going, but I ran. My feet seemed to find every pothole. My pant legs were soaked and covered in mud. To my right was a smaller street. I had gone around a bend in the road and could only see the glow from the van’s lights. I assumed they couldn’t see me and turned off onto the narrow street. I kept running. I looked over my shoulder as I ran and saw the van pass my street. I had given them the shake.

But I was lost.

And there was a minivan looking for me.

So I did the only thing that made sense: I kept running. The street I was on turned gradually to the left until it was running at a perpendicular to my host family’s road. Not what I had hoped for. But I continued to follow it. It brought me out onto the main road of the town. Which was a place I didn’t want to be. Normally, in countries other than this, the main road will offer streetlights and possible places of refuge. Not here. The main road was just as desolate as the rest of the community. The only reason it was the main road was because it ran the length of the town. It also had the most traffic, which meant that I would have trouble differentiating between the headlights of my pursuers and any other vehicle.

I kept running.

The road eventually wrapped me towards a street which I knew would take me to my host family’s house. I took it. I didn’t stop running until I reached the gate of the house. Once inside, safe and sound, I was yelled at by my host mother for getting my pants so dirty. I was then served a dinner of goat.