[A Journey to Benin] The African Fable of Paul the fly

[Andrew Searles]

Once upon a time, a momma fly landed on a pile of poop. She stayed there for about 2 seconds and laid some eggs. These eggs, like many others, she didn’t even realize that they were there. She has a very experienced mother, being that she had had about 1,235 other babies in her lifetime, and she was young. So, like every other time, she just flew away. These babies would hatch, already know how to fly, and find their own way in the world without ever knowing their mother or for most that they even had a mother. This is how Paul was brought into the world. He, along with all of his many other brothers and sisters, hatched and flew around trying to get a bearing on their new living situation. Actually this is not far from how I feel now. After 9 weeks of training, I left for my post and flew around trying desperately to get my bearing on the city that I live in. Paul the fly flew around and realized that he was in a deep hole. He saw many of his brothers and sister get trapped in the webs of spiders and stuck in the dark liquid at the bottom. But he was smart he avoided those things and lived a conservative life only landing to eat and when he was tired. Paul lived many hours and for most flies this was a good life, until there was a disturbance in the hole, which he had known for his whole life. It sounded like a waterfall from above. He had never been out of the whole. Why would he? He was everything that he needs here in hole, and he had seen many a fly flew out of the hole and never to return to the hole they called home. But now there was this disturbance un-like anything he had known. He knew that it went against everything in his character, but he just had to know. So, he flew up. Past the cockroaches and past the metal pipe that jutted out from the wall. He flew out of the hole the whole time wondering what was causing this flow of liquid to fall down into the mysterious dark pool at the bottom of the hole. But what he saw at the top was huge. It was a monstrous creature that was throwing its appendages all over the place. Apparently it was annoyed at Paul’s presence outside of the hole. He had to fly all over the place just to not get hit. He had never bobbed and weaved so fast. In the middle of an upward spiral he saw a safe heaven away from the creature, where the light that was imitating from its hand was not. He flew there more tired and worn out then ever in his life. It was there that Paul the fly was going to die. He knew it when he landed two inches before he planned on actually landing. He knew right away what had happened because it had happened to so many other flies. He was in a spider’s web. Doomed to die a death that almost all of his brothers and sisters had suffered already. Paul the fly lived a total of 5 hours and died in the web of a spider after annoying the crap out of a human being. That human was me and you know what, I don’t regret it at all, because if you are standing in an Africa latrine trying to finish you business there, thing you want is a fly to fly into your face. I’m just saying these flies are huge and loud. They sound like the flies from the movies when something is dead and the director really wants you to feel sickened. I think they come to Africa to get their flies here because they are uncannily huge. So, when Paul the fly hit the web, I was happy and relieved because I just wanted some peace and quiet. By the time everything was finished there was pee all around the hole and I knew I was not going to clean that up. So the moral of this African Folk tale is don’t kill the spiders in your latrine because if you do your fly population will get out of hand. Sleep well tonight knowing that you don’t have to defecate in a hole every night.

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Posted By Andrew Searles to A Journey to Benin at 8/25/2007 02:48:00 AM