I am writing a ridiculous travel novel, just for fun. Well, right now it’s just a dozen or so jumbled memories disguised as fiction through composite characters, but it feels good to write. Here’s a page I just wrote.
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When I get home later the same day, Adjara and Mariam are sitting outside my door.
“Ca va?” I ask.
“Ca va!” they both chirp in unison.
I go to open my door, but then Mariam produces some paper from her pocket. She has other ideas. “Can we play the game with the future?” she asks.
Remember that game M.A.S.H.? If you are around my age, you probably played it in grade four. It’s the game where you write down prospective husbands (some boys you like, some that are gross), jobs, number of kids, cities and so forth, and then through a complicated counting technique you predict your future. “M” means mansion, “A” means apartment, “S” means shack and “H” means house.
Anyways, I taught the girls a week ago and now they are hooked. I would think that telling the future more than once might sort of invalidate the results, but these never get tired of it.
“OK.” I sit down and pull out a pen. “Who wants to go first?”
“It’s my turn,” Mariam says.
We go through cities, number of children (Adjara makes me put down “100”) and then we get to husbands. Mariam pauses, and then lists: “Suleyman, Etienne, Adama and… Lamine.”
Adjara pokes her. She says something in Bissa, which I can’t understand but roughly estimate to mean “you can’t marry your brother, stupid.”
Mariam laughs and replaces Lamine with the two-year-old down the street. We then turn to jobs, and she lists her usual doctor, lawyer and President of Burkina Faso.
I then ask Adjara “What two other jobs should we put down?” In M.A.S.H., the person getting their fortune told writes down three jobs they want, and their friends write down “embarrassing” ones. Usually, in Canada, we’d write down “garbage collector” or “toilet cleaner” but these never seem to spark any giggles from Burkinabe girls.
“Clown?” I suggest. They give me blank looks.
“No… Smelly fish vendor! And… second hand shoe vendor!” Adjara suggests, and Mariam laughs.
“Alright.” I begin the counting process, and Mariam’s future emerges. She’s going to become a doctor, marry her neighbor, live in Canada and have two children. They are all going to live together in a mansion.
Sometimes, I don’t know whether it was a good idea teaching them this game. But they’ll want to play it again. Tomorrow, Mariam will be a lawyer and Adjara will be president. The next day they’ll be a judge and a university professor. They will choose who they marry, and they’ll live all over the world.
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