I am not an early mover in the morning, never have been. Generally I prefer to sleep until the sun has had time to reacquaint itself with the sky. I leave the virginal rapture of the sunrise to the Dawnists and content myself with the more tranquil termination of day into night, which the dusk proceeds. The colors are after all the same. “But the morning is such a peaceful time.”, some, like my spouse, would retort. And I couldn’t agree more- nothing like peace and quiet for a pleasant sleep.

The only exceptions to my prejudice against seeing the sunrise, which have proven consistent over the course of my life to this point, are either those evenings when I have managed to stay awake all through the night or when I am going on a trip. When I was a small child in Nebraska I remember the hazy time period of the pre-dawn when my parents would lift me from my bed and shuttle me to the packed Volkswagen bus, where I would fall back to sleep on the floor sharing the inside of flannel sleeping bag with my sister and brother. When we awoke again, miles had gone by underneath our heads, we were much closer to Chicago, and family, and Christmas, and the day was indeed a different and exciting place to enter into. Other mornings in the mountains, in the wee hours of an alpine start, I have gladly jumped out of the sleeping bag into the day’s fresh chill, downed a quick hot cup of tea, and gone ever upwards through rock and snow until at last reaching the High Point: if I were allowed to see it that day. There I would sit still and quiet in the exposure: everything dropping away. Then back down again to safety before the storm came or the night fell. On these days it was imperative to rise early, the outcome of the day, perhaps even the safety of my person depended on an early start.

While in Guyana I have been starting my days on average around 7:00 (5:30 on Sundays of course), mostly having to do with the proximity of our rooster to the bedroom window and Miriam’s regularity with making a cup of coffee. I can not say it has ever felt necessary to be up at that time, it simply seems like what is expected in this land when the sun always rises around 6:15 give or take a half-hour. Day comes so you rise; shinning is not required. But last Friday the prospect of rising before the dawn in order to meet Braks and the rest of Congo-Nya at the ferry terminal for the first boat to Georgetown had me bouncing out of the bed. Here again was a chance to move before the sun, to climb towards a place where I might find something new to listen to in the quiet of the High Point( if it were to be reveled to me) past now not the Rock and Ice, but the sun and city of this tropical costal capital in South America. As the blind Reverend Gary Davis sings, for this weekend at least: I belong to the band Halleluiah.

The Cricket World Cup has started to take over the country of Guyana. It started last week with the West Indies defeating Pakistan. In the Caribbean everyone celebrated, in Pakistan (especially when the team lost their next game to Ireland) people rioted, burned the team in effigy and threatened the autocratic cricket team selection board with overthrow. Interestingly the political climate in Pakistan also suggests that the military dictatorship is in trouble. It is not a stretch to say that the Cricket World Cup can influence political events. Not really knowing anything about cricket before moving here I can understand that Americans perhaps have not even heard that this event was being held. It is in fact the third largest sporting event held globally after the Olympics and the Football World Cup. A lot of people are flying from around the world to the islands to watch matches for a month’s time. Guyana, because it really is an island in the Caribbean, which happens to also be attached to a mostly unpopulated rainforest section of the continent of South America, is part of this event. Starting on the 28th of March, 8 games will be played in a brand new stadium, financed by India, in Georgetown during the second round of the tournament. The government is placing the growth of the tourism industry and even Guyana’s future on the ability to host these games. Georgetown is going through a massive clean up in order to make it hospitable for foreigners. Hotels are being built and upgraded, roads are being repaired, and there has even been some talk about installing traffic lights and garbage cans. Braks has been talking about going to Georgetown for some time now and it is in order to get a feel for what is going on in the city in the weeks leading up to the games here that we headed down on Friday. Most simply put the event is exciting, but also a possible way for the band to actually make some money.

I showed up at the ferry at 5:30 for the 6:00 first boat. This of course is ridiculous here in Guyana, being early, but I still get a little nervous about time. You would think that weeks of watching school children slowly dribbling into class for the first two hours of every school day would set me straight with what time means here, but I cling to start time as always. Everybody else showed up by 6:30. The boat had just stopped loading by that point and the large two story gates had been closed and locked. It is an interesting moment at the ferry; the crowd is somewhat arbitrarily cut in two by a large fence even though nobody on either side is going anywhere as the boat has already been loaded. Sometimes a person will be able to convince someone to open the gate by the not so subtle use of explicative combined with apparent personal power, but mostly everyone is either locked in or locked out. The crowd stands around talking to each other, and passing things through the links, and then the boat leaves and the gates are opened and the crowd becomes one again. I don’t understand it, but there is a lot I don’t understand down here. Cast upon new ground, first realize that you know nothing.

I had spent most of the time waiting sitting on a set of wooden bleachers off to the side watching the constant flow of people. It was fun to realize that I knew a good many of the people walking around this foreign city in the early morning. There were two buses full of my fifth form Tutorial students on their way to Georgetown for a field trip, a few little children from Miriam’s parish with their mothers, market venders, taxi drivers, a doctor, and my newspaperman. It was good for me to start early on my weekend practice of sitting still and watching the world pass until somebody else told me it was time to move on. I wasn’t quite there yet, I was fidgety, kept getting up and walking around, trying to get comfortable, not being sure where I should stand, then returning to the bleachers off to the side to attempt to observe unobtrusively. Then the band arrived. Seven men from the age of 17 to 58 carrying drums and bags for travel. As naturally as I could I jumped right in with them, picking up a drum and a bag while moving into step besides Braks. We had missed the first ferry, but that was because Braks wanted to take the smaller passenger transport instead. I hadn’t known it existed, but then again I know nothing.

I have tried before to explain some of the monetary values of the Guyanese economy, usually the exchange rate and that sort of simple building block. What I perhaps have not stressed enough is that there really is no work, especially for the poor young black men who make up the band. They have not been shown much in the way of education by the school system, but even if they had been their options are pretty bleak. Maybe a clerk’s job at a store along with thirty others waiting on five customers. Or perhaps a governmental job with say the post office, or the schools, hospitals, or police. All these pay at an average of less than a hundred dollars a month. The electric bill at our house where we mostly just have a fridge and a few lights runs about 25 dollars a month. What happens is that just about anyone who can get an education and then pull all the right strings leaves the country to find work abroad. The remainder of the young men are part of a large pool of unskilled labour and are treated as so many mules- weither it is cutting sugar cane all day in the fields with a machete or mixing cement in huge piles by hand in the middle of the street for hours on end for the occasional house that is being built by someone with overseas funding. The lucky ones are those who get to actually do this punishing labour, everybody else has to figure out someway to get a little cash to live. While sitting in the house some days I think to myself that I am strange. I sit inside the house many days reading and writing not going anywhere at all. Then I look out the window and see that in every other house there are men and women of all ages sitting in their houses or on their porches day after day not going anywhere at all. The only strange part about me is that I don’t need to be making money while I am here and I will continue to eat. That and come August I will be going somewhere. In this economic context the Conga-Nya Cultural Foundation is not only a keeper of the communities culture, but a very necessary employer. I have been going around to the schools in the area with the band for about a month. The show that they provide for the children and staff of these schools is a great event in the school year and one of the best things I have seen happening in these schools which all too often are chaos and mental drudgery. The average amount that the band gets paid for each show is probably around 6,000 Guyanese dollars. Take out 1,000 for transportation, divide the rest somehow between the six members of the band (not even including Braks the leader in the cut) and maybe everyone walks away with 800 Guyanese. That’s about four dollars U.S. The work is not consistent and it don’t really pay, what do you say want to join up? Or course it beats shoveling concrete.

Now here we all were headed to the capital to get a feel for what was going on. New world and new situations, for me as well as for some of the members of the band who had not done this before either. I was glad for the time I’ve spent talking with Braks and sitting in his home often times for hours with nothing in particular to do. I felt that our friendship had been allowed the time to grow in trust and openness that made it possible for me to accompany then on this trip to Georgetown. As much as I like to think I am a good guy to have around, Braks was only adding to his burdens by inviting me into the group. An extra person to squeeze in a bus, an extra person to house, an extra person to feed.

Right before I left the house I realized that we only had 3,500 guyanese dollars left. 18 dollars US for two days in a capital city didn’t seem like a very significant amount of money. I took all of it and figured I would go to the bank sometime in the weekend because, well I can, I have a bank account, unlike everyone else in the band except for maybe Braks. Besides I had heard that supposedly the city now had ATM machines that would take foreign bank cards, for the tourist of course, and I was interested in seeing if I could actually simply walk up to a machine and take out cash with my plastic. When you haven’t done that for a while it is pretty amazing when it works again.

Immediately I gave Braks 700 Guyanese for transportation to Georgetown enjoyed the fast river crossing (have to take that boat more often), and then jumped into a Volkswagen bus with everyone else. I rode the whole way with a drum between my legs and my head banging the roof on the bumps, but it was a pretty comfortable ride all told. I knew everyone in the bus, the driver only sped when it was appropriate and the music blasting out of the speakers was at least good. One of the popular songs at the moment came on as we neared Georgetown. Everyone perked up and smiled widely as we all sang loudly with the Chorus. “I’m gonna get on a plane with my baby one day and fly, fly, fly away. I’m gonna get on a plane one day with my baby and fly, fly, fly away.” I’ll admit that the thought made me pretty happy and that for me at least it was also true.

The driver dropped us off at the corner of Regent Street and Camp Street. Congo-Nya had played this corner many times. It is in a busy shopping district and it had provided good money. This is what we were going to do in order to get a feel for what the streets were like, set up on a corner and start playing. We piled up the bags on the concrete and I sat on mine and read the paper becoming the guard of our stuff in the busy street. The band looked around for a few things to sit on: a broken chair, a crate, a plastic packing case, and some cardboard to rest the bass drum on. They set up a stand with handmade crafts, mostly beaded jewelry that they spend off days making. They squeezed over for a woman who obviously was a vendor on the street often. She started to set up her cardboard stands and pulled out underwear, socks and slippers to sell along with all the other little street stands that sell underwear, socks and slippers. A man showed up with two wooden cases filled with watches and some vague plastic items. He opened up and started to set up on the other side of us. At one point he told the band he needed a little more room and the bass player squeezed over, the bags got piled higher up, and I stood up and moved out of the way. Somebody handed me a cowbell and a stick.

Braks took up his shaker, which was made from a calabash tree in his yard, and the band started hitting the drums.

The reaction from the people passing by was pretty incredible. Braks would stand on one side of the sidewalk, facing the band and point occasionally to a box on the street with a slot for money. Men and women would start dancing as they walked by. Braks knew everyone and almost everyone smiled at him and put money in the box as he exhorted. “A donation for Culture, Support Culture.” I stood out front near the street, turned towards Braks my back leaning on a concrete column. A guy named Bunny stood on the other side of him playing a long piece of bamboo. Eventually I got over my shyness and started trying to play the cowbell. I have no idea how to play a cowbell. I felt like I had a pretty good little three beat swinging flourish going there for a while, trying to at least move in time to the music and not make too much noise with my instrument as it was sounding kind of like a dull piece of metal being hit with a chopstick. Actually I was pretty proud of myself; I had never played with a band on the streets before. I was pretty proud that is until later in the day when a guy named Blackie picked up the cowbell and started hitting it with a plastic lighter. Somehow he made the thing sound like the heavy strings of an electric guitar twanging out a surf rock riff, and I again realized that I know nothing.

We played for about two hours, taking a few five-minute breaks in there. The band members are all talented musicians and it amazes me how they can make impressive percussion music for hours without ceasing. Invariably I would loose the beat and drift away. Only to hear them steadily playing onwards on the right note, all the while Braks calling out and shaking the gourd like it held the very spirit inside it.

There are police everywhere on the streets of Georgetown. I don’t think this was the case when we first arrived. Since Christmas the government has been increasing the police presence in the shopping district especially and now that the World Cup is here they are very visible everywhere. There are trucks with about 8-10 machine gun armed young men with a military style jersey and a beret who roll by and jump out in twos to walk the street. These guys don’t really talk to anyone; they just try to look as hard as their weapons. The average age might be 20. There are unarmed constables who walk among the people more or less giving orders. And then a variety of other uniformed ranks of different specialties I guess. At one point there were about six armed men standing around us on the corner watching. The police are not the most respected group in the country. In the last week a family in Miriam’s parish was robbed at night by a group of armed gunmen and when the police finally responded, at 8am the next day, the mother felt that she recognized the voice of one of the police as being that of the bandit who had held a gun to her head while she held onto her baby boy and said she didn’t know where the money was hidden. So it was slightly disconcerting to be surrounded by the men with guns, but Braks didn’t seem to be bothered so I just kept hitting my cowbell and smiling.

Out of the blue the watch seller started agitating the bassist to move over another few inches, for all of us to move over so that he could get his stand flush with a window even though it was standing up perfectly straight as it was. It was quite obvious that we had no room to move without packing up. Braks told him that we couldn’t and wouldn’t move anymore. We had gotten there first and the streets were supposedly free territory. The watch seller appealed to the constables and they stepped up to tell the bassist to move. Braks then stop everything and in a calm, but aggressive way, started telling both the watch seller and the police what he thought of the situation.

I had heard that the government had been clearing the streets in certain areas of vendors, and that there was a system of bribes that vendors paid for the police not to move them. It was not he first time Braks and the watch seller had been down this road and I suddenly understood that this was one of the things Braks meant when he said he was trying to get a feel for the streets. He has been playing for years in Georgetown, at official events, schools, and on the streets, providing just the kind of cultural atmosphere that the government has been saying that the city needed to welcome the tourists. Now he wanted to see what that actually meant. Could he play easily on the streets, showing people he was in town and thereby start the process of finding more jobs or would it be a constant hassle. He has had the hassle before. He wasted no time when this one showed up.

Braks obviously did not like the watch seller very much. He did not appreciate him bringing the police into the affair. He stood in the face of the officer and told him that he was sick of the corruption of the police in the country. He called him “a ten cent police- do anything as long as you get your ten cents.” Then Braks started to really get into and I saw again that he has a pretty serious voice in this county and he is very unafraid to let it sing loud. He can become the fullness of the Rastafarian Warrior and his speech is filled with the prophecy that the bible uses for the denouncement of the ruling corrupt world and the uplifting of the righteousness of truth. The constable and his partner said nothing after a few minutes and then they actually backed off and walked away. I don’t think I have ever seen this happen and it seemed like a good victory. But Braks was too hot to be finished and the watchman did his part keeping it up as well. Without warning, perhaps as fed up with the inaction of words as Jesus became in the temple with the moneychangers, he reached over and tore down part of the watch seller’s stall. Unlike Jesus he didn’t break anything, but it was still a clear violation. He shouted with all his fury: “These streets are free for the peoples use, but you have made of them the paths of robbers.” But he realized that he had gone too far and he walked away to simmer down.

The watch seller went to get the police. The police came back, but nobody had seen anything; it must have been an accident. The police left, the watch seller folded up his cases and locked them and then he left. Braks returned and the band started playing again. Shortly a police vehicle pulled up with the watch seller in it. A woman with a uniform of superior rank got out and very calmly told Braks he would have to leave, he could play somewhere else but not here. Everyone started packing up and Braks was smiling and laughing and shaking his head while occasionally repeating the phrase “the stone that the builders refused, will be the corner stone.”

Later I learned that this woman had given him permission to play at that spot. Something had changed. The vendors on this street now pay money to someone, unofficially of course, and so they should get something for their money. Apparently for the watch seller that meant he was entitled to the space right up to the windowsill and wouldn’t settle for a few inches less.

Braks had gotten the taste of the street that he wanted. Now we would move to another spot and see what the reaction was there. We walked as a long train of drums and bags heading towards the Starbroek Market and the heart of the city. Braks confided in me that he would have to go to the Deputy Mayors office in the next week and get a letter from him giving him permission to play anywhere. He was hoping that it wouldn’t have been necessary. I started the band up singing one of their songs called Harmony needing a little myself to take the edge off the encounter where I was merely an onlooker.

Braks stopped us on a side road one half-block from the market. Everyone threw down their gear and sat on the sidewalk while Braks went to talk to the owner of the building. He had played here before, then gotten kicked out, but it was a new owner so who knew. At least there were no vendors around.

The band bought local juices from a guy with a cooler on wheels. All day we drank these juices, which come in a tied plastic bag. You get a little straw and poke it through the plastic and drink while holding the bag with a certain pinch of the forefingers around the straw and the knot. They are all over Guyana. The juice inside is sometimes pineapple passion fruit, or star fruit cherry, or whatever is plentiful at the time, blended with water and cane sugar. They are cheap. You can buy about four times as much juice for the same price as that which comes in sealed bottles. You just have to trust the vendor and his water supply. I had a loaf of bread in my bag, which I took an occasional bite out of, but nobody ever wanted any when I offered it and I didn’t see anyone eat anything else during the day until dinner. Even though they were playing music for about seven hours. Since my time around the group I’ve gotten the impression that there is one meal a day and then whatever juice or fruit you can find.

The new owner gave the go ahead to Braks and soon the band was at it again. More people here, crowds pressing in, men watching from their permanent spots leaning against the walls, children sitting on the curb right at the feet of the drummers, street people dancing crazily and women smiling as they passed on the way towards market. And all the time money coming into the box. I never saw just how much money was made, but I was surprised at how quick people were to add what they could. Probably 8 out of ten people gave something. I think that one explanation is that in this country people carry loose bills in their pockets. There are only four denominations 20, 100, 500 and 1000. The twenty is virtually worthless by itself (10cents) and very easy to take out and put in the box. Loose change. But people were also genuinely respectful of the band and the music. I got the sense that what they were doing, playing on the street, wasn’t that common, or that if it was this band Congo-Nya was the ones who did it. In the end it was a powerful reminder that small amounts of almost useless money, when given by many hands to one collection, has the potential to make a substantial sum. It certainly was a better paying gig then the school jobs and the Ministry of Education sanctioned those. Here all they had to do was avoid the hassle while they hustled just like everyone else for the money for the day.

What did I do this whole time? Amazingly I was able to just stand and sit and watch the world go by as if I did not exist. That sounds not so amazing, but after you’ve been one of the only people that looks like you walking around in an entire city for awhile it is pretty hard to feel invisible. Being part of the band made me anonymous, at least if I didn’t make any sudden movements. The stiller I sat the better. The taxi drivers who swarm the town didn’t pester me, nobody tried to figure out where I was from and tell me how they had been to New York, nobody even asked me for money. I stood on the street in the busy market area and didn’t have to speak or think twice about guarding my person. And what did I see? One of the most entertaining sights in the world for my money: the constant flow of people of many shades interacting. Just sitting still everything dropped away and I could see more clearly. Could see that human beings are beautiful, as beautiful as the most pristine mountain vista.

. At one point I did get up and go with a friend named Rascal to try to see about getting more copies of a brochure I had made up for the foundation. We ended up traveling around the city to different copy shops and at all of them, including the biggest one in the city, we were told that the machine that was needed to make the copies was broken until Monday. While we were traveling in search of the impossible copies Rascal updated me on the health of his mother. I had heard that she had entered the hospital earlier in the week. It turned out that she was dying. By one of those multiplications of misery his son also entered the hospital this week for an illness. Both of them live in New York. Despite many attempts he has been unable to get a visa from the U.S. state department to visit his dying mother and ailing son. He is too poor to demonstrate the type of assets and ties to Guyana that will assure the U.S. government that he is not a risk to overstay his visa and become a dreaded illegal alien. Rascal is well educated man in his fourties. Governments are not as beautiful as people.

The day ended early for the band because nobody had seen the place we were going to sleep and Braks wanted to settle in there before it got dark. So again we picked up and walked away. We walked down the middle of the streets, a larger group now as another drummer had chanced to join the players, and two singers, who did the school tours but lived in Georgetown had also show up. We were headed to a place that one of the singers had arraigned for us to stay. It wasn’t far to walk and the mood was pretty uplifting as we strolled the streets. I noticed a bank and asked Braks if I should stop and get more money. He pointed to the line that wrapped around the block and told me not to worry about money. As it turned out, even after spending 2,000 on transportation, I would return home with 1,000 guyanese left in my pocket. The trip costing me about 10 US dollars total.

I have stayed in Georgetown a few times now. Usually I stay at a guest house, which for Miriam and I costs 5000 guyanese (25 US) a night. Not a bad rate, but also not a possibility for the band. The only way the trip begins to work financially is if they find free lodging. As it turned out the place we were staying was only about 2 blocks from the guesthouse I usually stayed at. We arrived at it unexpectedly. I was simply happily bouncing down the lane.

In the middle of a block there was a series of non-descript wooden houses stacked on top of each other. Hardly noticeable at first glance, there was a walkway going into the middle of these houses with a framed wooden portal, which served as the entry gate. Next to this portal was a small caged shack where we said hello to someone inside I could not make out, and who apparently was on watch at the gate as well as selling little pieces of packaged and homemade food stuffs. We were waved in and started single file through the portal and down a slanted wooden raised walkway missing a quarter of its slats. As we walked farther into the interior of the block the wooden houses started to rise all around us and within twenty steps we were completely surrounded. A young girl was bathing in a bra and panties using a flexible pipe, which was connected to the main water supply. In order to wash her hair she had to bend her head very close to the drainage ditch, which the wooden walkway ran above. We then entered a maze in a confusing narrowing of walls, windows, doors and roofs which all ran together in the urban palate of gray wood, rusted metal, and green mildew floating atop mud. We turned once right, then left. At a concrete pillar holding up a sagging roof corner we turned right again down a narrowing broken pavement alley. In twenty feet there were some plants that had been potted in an absent section of concrete. It looked like a dead end, but everyone ahead disappeared to the left one after another. When I got to the plants the small narrower alley became visible. It was lined on one side by a pockmarked concrete wall and on the other by a fence made of 20 foot high sections of metal roofing standing on end and nailed in place with bleeding nail heads. It was darker suddenly, and the walkway was slanted so precariously, and so narrow that I had to use the concrete wall to pivot my shoulder on with every other step while being constantly mindful of the jagged metal on my other side. At the end of twenty feet of this there was another vertical sheet of zinc, which formed a gate and once inside the gate we were home.

The ten of us filed in past the gate and stood where we could find room on either a set of wooden stairs leading up to a door, or on parts of a wooden platform on the front and side of a little one room roofed house that stood directly in front of us and filled the rest of the space. While Braks went in to inspect the lodging, the rest of us stood against each other in the enclosed space. All around the zinc roofing fence blocked out all view. The sky was cloudy I think, but almost immediately the sense of a sky, or the openness of the sky ceased to be tangible and instead the gray clouds became instead a type of ceiling. Braks came out and declared the place perfect. Just what he wanted a quiet place where he could escape the bustle of the city.

There was one queen-sized bed, space perhaps for 1 person to sleep next to it on the floor and a space at the foot of the bed, between the bed and a defunct stove, where another person could conceivably curl up. That was what four- five people. Outside maybe a person could sleep on the wooden decking in front of the door if they lay diagonally and maybe another on the side next to the fence. Both of these wooden areas, in fact the entire area were above what appeared to be a swamp. Some other members of the band were skeptical. Braks would have none of it; he was grateful for the free spot and made the necessary gestures of appreciation now. “One night is nothing, if need be I’ll sit out here all night while you all cuddle on the bed.” “We’ll sleep in shifts” his son quickly joked. “Four people could sleep under the bed if it came down to it” Braks said quite seriously. Then he turned to the young man who had provided the place for us and declared that for four or five people it was of “International quality”. Of course there were seven of us but we would figure that out when the time came. Bags and Drums were shrugged off shoulders and people picked out a space to sit, while others started getting buckets to haul water from the girls bathing pipe so we to could wash off some of the days dirt and sweat.

Braks went inside and divided up the day’s money, then handed it out to everyone. Bunny went out to get provisions for that nights meal. Everyone settle in, stripping down to vests (undershirts), or changing into a clean shirt after their turn at the bucket. I washed my face and put some lavender oil on my forehead and at the base of my skull. I noticed a stool in my quick glance inside and pulled it out. It was about 5:00. Everyone sat back and let the night move in. From somewhere a TV was placed on the counter inside the room and turned on. It stayed on throughout the night.

We spent the first few hours talking until dinner had been made. When it was ready everyone got a plate heaped with rice and a side of vegetables and Soya chunks. A group of kids and young women from inside the enclosure came in to get some of the food, which had been prepared knowing that they would come. The kitchen was up the wooden stairs and was the back of the singers girlfriends parents house, I think. It looked like any kitchen anywhere: pots, pans, water bottles, Tupperware, sink, stove, fridge. From the top of the stairs the view expanded out a little. I could see that beyond the fence at the back there ran a wide concrete drainage ditch filled with sludge and water but most likely cleaned in the city push for the World Cup. Across the ditch there was a large warehouse with cemented up windows and barbed wire everywhere. Behind the fence on the side was an empty lot about forty feet across and filled with the remains of half burnt dwellings and overgrown bush. The house with the kitchen blocked the view in one direction entirely and a two-story wall without windows was the vista from the front door of the lodging. There was a door under the stairs, which I was told was the entrance to another dwelling place, but it remained closed while I was there.

Neither Braks nor I left the area all night. The other guys came and went, but I wanted to take in as much of the feeling of the enclosure as possible. Plus I had been out in the open on the streets under the bright sun all day so it felt pretty good to be surrounded. Late in the evening I did go back out the narrow passage and to the concrete pillar, but the view only changed in that I could now see more wooden structures, narrow two story places leaning sideways, and many little garden shed, which turned out to be where people slept.

After dinner I learned that the whole place from the guard cage to the back fence was an illegal squatters tenement. Even the nice kitchen was constantly under threat of being torn down. The police had been there already two times that day looking to harass and get what ever they could from whom every they cornered.

Around the city there are many other areas, which have been declared illegal squats even though often times people have been living in these places for decades without assistance from anyone. For the World Cup the government was putting up large freshly painted white walls and then lettering them with advertisements to hide the eyesores from the tourists. Some of the lots are terribly run down, though often not much worse than the legal lots right next to them. Some of the squatters keep immaculate houses and gardens, though most don’t have room to grow food. I didn’t see any men except those in the band the entire time I was there. It appeared that only women and children inhabited the place.

The group sat talking well into the night, seats shifting, sometimes leaning against the wall, other times on a stool, still again with legs crossed and square on the ground. Actually I moved the most. Everyone else had the ability to sit mostly still in one place on the unpadded wood for hours on end.

At some point people started to drift away. One of the singers had a gig that night. Bunny had found a place where four of them could sleep. One or two just disappeared somewhere for the night. Finally Rascal left to go home and it was just Braks, his son Ras LJ and I. We went inside and closed the door and window and watched replays of the days World Cup Cricket matches. Ras LJ took the floor at the end of the bed, curling up on the hammock that he had brought with him. Braks took a small side of the bed near the door and the bedside near the wall was mine. Before falling asleep Braks said “You don’t snore do you, I can’t stand snoring, If you snore I’m gonna be out the door” I sat outside on the hammock I had brought for a little while trying to take in the night and the solitude. I knew that Braks usually woke up around 2 in the morning and then sat alone outside with his thoughts until dawn. It was the only time he ever got to himself.

Eventually I came inside and tried quietly to crawl over Ras lj and into the corner of the bed without making too much motion to wake Braks. I used the hammock for a pillow and my shirt as a cover from the mosquitoes. It was hot inside that little room, the TV played on, and the single naked bulb shone directly in my eyes unless I coved my head with my hat, but I really didn’t care that much about sleep. Sometimes it is more interesting to stay awake all night long and see how the morning shapes itself from deep inside the dark. So although I did drift off here and there, I mostly tried again to stay still and let everything drop away. Braks got up in the night and disappeared outside leaving the door open. Then the light from our outside ceiling slowly dimmed back on. The dawn from inside the enclosure wasn’t, that morning at least, a stunning revelation of renewal.

The band returned member by member and I got up and sat with everyone again on the gray wooden decking in the gray light coming down from the outside ceiling. No one spoke for a long time. Then the outside ceiling started dropping rain and we all retreated into the room, stacked on top of each other now, legs and arms intertwined except for the space given to Braks, who napped again on his sliver of bed. I got up from my stool in the middle of the entangle to check on the rain and lost my seat. I stood by the door, half in half out, not quite able to take the constantly droning television, but enjoying the cooling wetness of the rain. A clay-mation cartoon of Peter Cotton Tail from the seventies came on the television suddenly and everyone laughed along to the story. I felt like I was 8 again and had gotten up extra early and sat dumb in front of the television while the Nebraska Agricultural report droned on about the price of hogs and soy. And then just when I didn’t think I could take it anymore the cartoons had begun and my sister and brother had joined me for the fun. When the rain stopped we went out into the streets and played all day long.