POETRY

Paul

A poem and commentary about my blind African friend

my friend, you cannot see me and in some ways i’m glad because it matters not to you what my clothes appear to be whether silk or rags nor the color of my skin

what matters to you is how i feel and i feel fine when we walk together hand in hand i, seeing for you you, feeling for me

indeed, we make a good pair

Thank you for reading this excerpt from my book, At the Throne of the Mountain Kings: Poems Strewn from Africa to the Himalayas. Follow this link to purchase my book from Amazon.

Commentary

In the 80s, as a young man, the Peace Corps sent me to Cameroon, West Africa as a Community Development Coordinator. I did not know what the hell I was doing for my assignment. I would go to villages with my Cameroonian counterparts and visit the health dispensary or water projects, ask the engineer how it was going, and then clap and say, “Bien fair, tout le monde.” Well done, everyone.

I was the white man. The man who represented money. Older, wiser, smarter, Cameroonians called me Chef, Patron. I tried to correct them. But I was the byproduct of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Children in my town would call me “ndigger” whenever they saw me. At first, I was confused by the word for I thought they were calling me something else, a word my racist father would use. Later it was explained the word meant “stranger.” I never got used to it.

One day, however, a man came to my door. He beamed with a huge smile and introduced himself as Paul Tezanou. I invited him in and he came in using his white cane. He wore dark glasses. He told me of his school for the blind that he had founded and operated, and invited me to visit.

It was a small compound of mud-brick dwellings with dirt floors, topped with corrugated roofs. Several of his students were weaving baskets. Unlike most the disabled Cameroonians, who had begging or being hidden away as the only options, Paul and his students were productive, learning braille, playing music, and weaving baskets as a source of income.

My biggest accomplishment came when I wrote a letter to Ronnie Milsap, a blind country-western singer who was looking for projects to fund. He sent money through Voice of America, which went through the Embassy, which went through some Cameroonian ministry, a big ceremony of presenting a $1000 dollar check came about. While the money helped, the school became officially recognized — the only one in the country. After my service time and departure, the Navy Seabees came in and built a school for them.

We became close, the two of us. One of the beautiful things about living in Cameroon was to be able to walk hand-in-hand with another man. It was especially nice to hold Paul’s hand.

The following are some poems I hope you will find enjoyable.

Please check out my website, mindfulness-meditation-techniques.com, for learning about various meditation practices and reading more articles and other writings. I have authored nine books, including The Teachings of Yama: A Conversation with Death. Visit my Author Page to know more. You can see my artwork on Pinterest. You can follow me on Facebook.