Did you hear about the lady who lived behind your house, the wife of the old guy we went to visit last year? She died about four days ago.” Mama Augustin was telling me the news of the neighborhood.

“Oh, that explains why they are fixing up the house,” I replied.

“And another old lady over by the creek died, too.”

“You mean the one who lived next to the creek where everyone dumps their trash?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. That is why I haven’t seen her recently on my way to church.”

“She got sick and went to several doctors. They didn’t help, so she moved out of her house because it isn’t good there. Earth people [something like fairytale dwarves] live in the rocks of that creek and inside the wall of the Catholic boarding school next to it. They cause all kinds of problems. In the boarding school, students who live on the creek side of the compound don’t sleep well at night. During the night, the earth people open their doors and let them flap around. This is why that lady was leaving to go to another part of town. But, alas, death caught up with her even there.”

Mama Augustin continued, “Before she left the house, she offered the kitchen room to a woman accused of being a sorceress and her son who had gone crazy. No one else wanted to live there, but they accepted.”

“Oh,” I responded, “that is why I saw the young man there last Sabbath when I came home from church. He greets me all the time, and I don’t think he is crazy anymore.”

“No,” Mama Augustin admitted, “it seems he is doing much better. Before he went crazy, he was friends with my son, Emile. One day when they were working in the field, he said to Emile, ‘You know, crazy people have it good. They can just wander around, and people give them food.’ A week later, he went crazy. Maybe he went to a fetish and asked to become crazy. I don’t know. But he is better now.”

I said goodbye to Mama Augustine and thus ended the evening news from Natitingou’s Winkè neighborhood.

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