America, The Beautiful

The other night, as I lay waiting for sleep's happy attendance, I hear Raju's TV floating across the yard from his bedroom. I can make out American accents, though I can't make out the words. Intermittently, a laugh track flares, then recedes. Like a crashing wave, the laughter rolls for two seconds, crescendoes, then fades, repeating. Wondering what show uses a laugh track every five seconds, I then hear singing, “I'll be there for you, you'll be there for me, too.” Friends!! So I drift away with Phoebe, Joey, Monica, Ross, Chandler and Rachel talking between waves of laugh tracks. I picture the Central Perk coffee house and their purple apartment with the exaggerated picture frame outlining the peephole on their door. I'm in Africa, with giant, exotic plants growing in the yard just beyond my window. Africa, with people living in mud houses two blocks away. Africa, with cows and sheep tucked safely in their pins next door and rooster crows mingling with the waxing and waning New York laughter.

Yesterday, as I put clean sheets on the bed, I hear the kids from next door, playing and shouting. Their father has recently chopped down the corn plants and tilled the yard in preparation for the next crop. Through the hedge of Lantana outside my living room window, I see chickens pecking the newly-turned, dark soil. Then a child's voice sings out, “Who let the dogs out?! Homf, homf, homf, homf, who let the dogs out?”

On our way to Chiga the other day, our taxi driver pushes a cassette into the tape player. Traditional country music rushes out of the speakers and soothes my heart. There's a slide guitar and lots of minor chords, words about love being hard, so hard it turns into a diamond. We roll over dirt roads, passing weathered, shrunken men who swat cow butts with sticks, passing cautious girls with bundles of tree branches balanced on their heads, passing slender lads pulling hand carts of potatoes and beans. Country music, soundtrack of the American blue collar worker, reaches out of our windows to serenade the weathered men, cautious girls and slender lads.