They took them to Mgoro in a Land-Rover Doug and Penny, with Major Marcel M'Bonu, the Mgoro District Political Officer, driving. They had planned to leave the following morning, as it was a considerable drive to Mgoro Village, but the Norths at the bequest of Headmaster La Pierre-had supplied the new arrivals with a long shopping list of things that were presently in short supply at the school. Indeed, they had spent the better part of the cool, morning hours the best time of the day for travel scrounging the waterfront warehouses of Dakar for such items as nails, rope, string, soap, a washbasin, several wooden buckets, a hammer, paint and brushes, various cases of canned meats and vegetables, and many tins of paraffin oil, since there was no electricity in the village but for that produced by a small generator at the school itself, and none at all for cooking or lighting. It wasn't until early afternoon that they managed to get away, and by that time both Doug and Penny were ready to collapse from sheer exhaustion.
In addition to Major M'Bonu, they were accompanied by four regular soldiers of the Senegalese army who were armed to the toenails with submachine guns, a bazooka, and a small flame-thrower. Major M'Bonu, seemingly, did not like to take unnecessary risks. Indeed, as the Glassers later discovered, the accompanying troops were no more nor less than his personal bodyguard; the only reason he hadn't brought a full detachment of regulars along is because he had heard that there would be an entire regiment of the Senegalese Militia in convoy along the route.. in case he needed assistance. But, in any case, the threat of unprovoked attack seemed almost surreal in contrast to the tooth-shattering reality of the "road".
Just a few very few kilometers southeast of Dakar, the simple tarmac highway returned virtually to nature. And each time a wheel slammed into a pothole or a cabbage-size rock, the young couple could hear the bouncing troops in back emit a united curse, alternately in French or in one of several tribal languages. Doug estimated, conservatively, that he had learned at least fourteen different words for "Fuck!" that day. Carol North, it seemed, had not exaggerated about the condition of the road.
Still, once the party got underway, young Doug and Penny Glasser found themselves getting caught up in the adventurous spirit of things. The low southern mountains began to rise up to their right, while in scattered clearings in the forest to the left grew occasional stands of cotton or peanuts. Sometimes they would see a man in one of the tiny fields, invariably white-haired and stooped, holding a makeshift wooden hoe and wearing only a pair of tattered khaki shorts on his withered black frame. Again invariably, he would stop his work and look up at the Land Rover as they passed, staring silently, becoming smaller and smaller in the distance. To the Glassers it was all very picturesque. To Major M'Bonu it was just a pain in the ass a capitalist plot to keep him away from the comfort and, more importantly, safety of his Dakar office.
The harried little African Major kept glancing down at his watch every few minutes, shaking his head and muttering, "We're going to be late as hell!" He did it with such frequency that Penny was tempted, on those occasions she found reason to address him, to change his title from Major to March Hare, after the time-pressed rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. Doug, talking up a blue streak, could have cared less what time they got to Mgoro, the welcoming "party" Headmaster La Pierre normally planned for new arrivals, notwithstanding.
Occasionally, they drove past clusters of little huts flanking the impossible road on either side. There would be ten or fifteen of them together, with walls of yellowish lateritic mud, and roofs of palm thatching or, infrequently, corrugated and rusting iron. Sometimes, they could see smoke seeping through the roofs, which more than likely meant that there was cooking going on inside. Often, too, there would be a few old men sitting in front of the huts, wearing only a wrap-around sheet or a loin-cloth. They'd wave to them as they passed, and sometimes they would slowly lift their arms to wave back, but mostly they just stared off into the bush without making a motion.
Then there were the animals…the snort of an elephant, a lone giraffe grazing somewhere off in the distance, a family of gazelles bouncing across the road. And there were children…children standing on bird-thin legs with only a black cloth around their skinny little bodies covering them from shoulder to thigh. If they were standing near the highway, they could see how dirty the little waifs were, with mud caked all up and down their matchstick arms and legs. Or, sometimes they would see great scab-like sores and blotches on their faces. They would wave to them, and they would nudge each other and jump up and down, waving their arms and shrieking, "Djambo! Djambo!", laughing with enormous white teeth as the Land-Rover sprayed pebbles at their bare feet.
"We'll be in Mgoro country soon," Major M'Bonu laughed suddenly beneath his worried brow. "Then nobody will be wearing anything!"
It was already beginning to grow darker it darkens quickly in the tropics when they raced onto a strip of tarmac. On the left, there was a native market with swarms of Africans, while to the right, uphill on another street, stood a row of ragged wooden buildings. The Major pulled a sharp right on the uphill street, then braked to a dusty halt in front of a ramshackle building with the name, "Jungle Bar," emblazoned across the front in drippy red letters. It reminded Doug of an old western saloon.
"We'll stop here for a beer," explained the Major, conveniently forgetting the late hour.
"Why not!" Doug and Penny echoed in unison.
In all-too-short a time, they were back on the road, continuing along the same uphill road that the bar was on. The four soldiers in the back, in lighter spirits after beer and the brief respite of the tarmac, broke into a popular native song.. until the road changed back into granite again, just a little ways east of the town the Major called Liberte.
Farther on, with the mountains ahead of them turning heavy gray with the coming of night, they turned down yet another dirt road, so narrow that it more closely resembled a path. Banana trees grew on both sides, their thick green foliage reaching across the road to brush along the top and sides of the Land-Rover like the muted sounds of a drummer's brushes. The road was bumpy, rockier even than the main road. It was filled with potholes, and as they bounced slowly along they came across a large truck turned over on its side. Penny's heart turned an anxious flip. Had it been the work of the Djambulu renegades? she wondered.
The Major, too, appeared concerned as he inched slowly past. Then, seeing only large cartons strewn about and no bodies, he let out an anxious sigh of relief. Apparently, it had skidded into an oversize pothole when the road was wet and had gone over on its side.
A short distance further on the road forked again and they made another gear-gnashing right turn onto a "road" that was yet narrower than the last. There were huts on either side with people standing in front of them. "Mgoro," the little Major mumbled, but in the mounting darkness it was difficult to verify his statement. Then there was a sign that read, MGORO TECHNICAL SCHOOL 1 KILOMETER, and ahead a large stone arch that looked as though it would collapse at any given sneeze.
Major M'Bonu, in an impressive show of courage, drove beneath the arch, and there inside stood a group of Africans, a dozen or so, and they fell back into a semi-circle as the Land Rover came to a halt and its occupants stepped out. They were all wearing slacks and crisp new white shirts, and highly polished black shoes. A portly middle-aged man wearing thin-framed gold spectacles that looked somehow out of place against the grotesquely welted tribal markings that covered his black face, stepped forward and introduced himself as Monsieur Paul M'Jabu, the Assistant Headmaster. "We've been expecting you for hours," he explained with almost-fawning politeness. "Monsieur La Pierre has only just this minute returned to his house!"
While one of the Africans trotted off to fetch the Headmaster, Major M'Bonu made the appropriate apologies for their tardiness. In contrast to the spiffily-attired Africans, whom they learned were fellow teachers at the school, Doug, in a khaki bush suit, and Penny in a flimsy cotton short and halter ensemble, felt a little uncomfortable and out of place.
In a few minutes they were joined by Headmaster La Pierre. He was a wiry old Frenchman, somewhere in his late-sixties, who'd stayed on after I'independance. He was short and thin, with a bushy white moustache that hid a liver-spotted upper lip. "How do you do," he said in English. Then, in French, "Welcome to Senegal."
In keeping with the international spirit of the greeting, Doug accepted the old man's extended right hand and gave it a vigorous shake. "We're happy to be here," he responded in respectable Mgoro.
"Tres bien!" the old man sparkled delightedly. "I'm sure you will get along very well here, if you don't talk too much politics!"
Another prophecy fulfilled, thought Penny.
The old man turned then, pointing toward a tidy row of concrete bungalows with corrugated iron roofs and real windows. "The second one from the right will be yours," he said.
"How nice!" Penny brightened with a pretty flash of dimples. Somehow she'd half-expected something out of Better Muds and Waddles, like those they'd passed on the road.
Then, as the wiry little Headmaster led them to the crowd that had gathered around a group of picnic tables in the center of the compound, they heard the plaintive far-off thumping of a native drum, as if to remind them that they were really in Africa.