Somebody's Heart Is Burning (37 page)
I flashed on Michael’s presence then, the warm curve of his back, his morning scent: a loamy blend of soap and sweat. The way he sang made-up songs in my ear as I woke up:
It’s going to
be a beautiful day . . . Tanya’s going to make the ocean spray . . . She’s
going to laugh and shout and play. . . .
My heart expanded painfully in my chest. I loved him. That’s what this feeling was, wasn’t it? Love?
I closed my eyes, Michael’s song still unraveling in my head.
On the tree there cries a bluejay; people eat Grapenuts and horses eat
hay. . . .
As I floated away on my mattress, I saw donkeys, one after another, plodding down a dusty trail toward the sea.
Author’s Note
In the early 1990s, I was fortunate enough to spend a year in Africa, mostly in the western part of the continent. This book is based on memories of that year. I offer it to you, not as a journalist or a scholar, but as a storyteller. Names and identifying details have been changed to protect the identities of those involved. Characters, conversations, and events have occasionally been combined or streamlined to evoke the essence of the experience more clearly.
During my time in Africa, the AIDS virus had not yet taken its toll in an obvious way on the places I visited. This isn’t to say that no one had contracted the virus, but that the scope of the problem had not yet become apparent, especially in West Africa. In that sense, this book offers a glimpse of a bygone era. Not an idyllic time, by any means, but one in which the preoccupations of the communities and individuals that I met were different than they are today, when this disease has claimed so many millions of lives.
Acknowledgments
My deep gratitude goes out to the following people: Ali Caddick (née Bacon), travel partner extraordinaire, who listened to my scattered scribblings with unflagging enthusiasm; Jonathan Lethem, under whose wise guidance this material began to find form; Carol Lloyd, without whose intervention these stories might still be sitting under my desk in a dust-gathering heap; Don George, who shared his excitement and published many of these stories on
Salon.com
; Jeff Greenwald, who generously and skillfully helped steer this book through crucial stages of development; Elena Felder and Laurel Carangelo, beloved house-mates and insightful readers; Tanya Pearlman, Larry Habegger, and James O’Reilly of Travelers’ Tales Books, also Kristin Herbert and Brad Newsham, all of whom contributed valuable suggestions and support along the way; Amy Mueller, for expert dramaturgy; David Dower and the Z Space Studio, for time, space, and encouragement; my agent Richard Parks, who ushered the manuscript through the world with kind and diligent attention; Maura Santangelo, in whose Umbrian farmhouse I completed a substantial chunk of the rewrites; my editor Edward Kastenmeier, for guiding me gracefully and adroitly toward the finish line; Russell Perreault and Sloane Crosley, for making me feel so supported by Vintage; Stuart Friebert, Diane Vreuls, and the late Del Fambrough, great teachers who instilled in me a love of language and respect for words; Debbie deNoyelles: dear friend, great reader, great travel companion on the road of life; Richard Talavera, who held onto the original documents and taught me a lot about unconditional love; the individual Moroccans, Ghanaians, Burkinabes, Ivorians, Togolese, Malians, Tanzanians, and Kenyans, too many to list, who blessed and astonished me with their openness and generosity; and finally my family: Harry and Betty Shaffer; Juliet Shaffer and Erich Lehmann; Len Shaffer; Ron, Mary Frances, and Gabriel Shaffer; Sophia Lehmann, Jonas Duke, and Jacob Lehmann Duke; David Green, the Green family, and Niblet; all of whom supported me throughout this process in innumerable ways.
Tanya Shaffer
Somebody’s Heart Is Burning
Tanya Shaffer has spent much of the past decade wandering the globe and writing about it. An actor as well as a writer, she has toured nationally and internationally with her award-winning solo performances
Let My Enemy Live
Long!
(based on her African travels) and
Miss America’s
Daughters
, and her original play
Brigadista.
Her travel stories have appeared on
Salon.com
, in
Speakeasy
magazine, and in numerous anthologies. A native of Lawrence, Kansas, she now calls the San Francisco Bay Area home. Visit her on-line at
www.TanyaShaffer.com
.
A VINTAGE DEPARTURES ORIGINAL, MAY 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Tanya Shaffer
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Departures and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The photos courtesy of Ali Caddick. The photo courtesy of Ultimate Africa Safaris Inc. All other photos courtesy of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shaffer, Tanya.
Somebody’s heart is burning: a tale of a woman wanderer in
Africa / Tanya Shaffer.—1st Vintage Departures ed.
p. cm.
“Vintage Departures original.”
1. Africa, West—Description and travel. 2. Shaffer, Tanya.
3. Women travelers—Africa, West—Biography. 4. Travelers—
Africa, West—Biography. I. Title.
DT472 .S45 2003
966.03’29’092—dc21
[B] 2002193353
eISBN: 978-0-307-42787-8
v3.0