by Tyrone Malik Cato

Rhythms

This story is for each member of the Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble who went on that trip so that they might once

again recall it with as much clarity as I have.

Also, for my mother and father.

M y family’s house sits at the corner of Colerick and Gay streets in Fort Wayne, Ind. The city is the second largest in the state in terms of population, though it isn’t a dense city, making some areas seem

pretty sleepy. Our neighborhood is one of the quiet areas on the south side of town. We’re across the street from Weisser Park Elementary, a brick building that takes up two city blocks. It was my first school. On the outside of our house, the decades-old white paint job had long since started peeling away.

It was an early fall evening in 2006, as sunlight peeked through our old venetian blinds. My father was home from work, sitting on the larger couch facing the TV. I sat cross-legged on a love seat, playing my Nintendo GameCube. My dad picked this moment to talk about his regret.

My father wore a bandana on his head, as he always did. The hair underneath the bandana received no regular attention outside of him washing it. Every few months his hair locked up like dreadlocks, and he’d shave it all off.

He sat there, watching the game on the TV through his old glasses. One of the plastic rims that held the lenses was broken, and the lens would occasionally fall out, as it had done for years. The front part of his beard was gray while the sides were still black. He had ink stains on his shirt and sweatpants because he worked at Tygeron Graphics, a T-shirt printing business he started in 1993. He was 45 years old and had lived in this house since he was born It became his after his parents passed away by his early twenties.

Every flat surface around us was home to some object. None of it was trash; each item had a potential use. It was when all of it was perceived

as a single entity -- stuff -- that it seemed oppressive. This stuff belonged to my family. We had a large collection of entertainment, be it DVDs, magazines, or video games, a collection we continually added to.

“You know, I haven’t done much with my life,” my dad said. I looked over at him when I heard him speak, my brow furrowing. His

words were a cold splash of water that pulled me out of the game and back to reality. I paused the game as my father had told me to do when someone was talking to me.

“I’ve made sure you knew right from wrong,” he said, “but as you can see, I live a very sedentary lifestyle. I don’t do much. I run my own business, but so what? I could be doing a whole lot better than I’m doing now. I think about how I never went ahead and finished college, but … I don’t know.”

“You do a great job,” I said. Silence filled the room between my sentences. “You’re a great father.”

He kept staring forward, not focusing on the TV and the wall. He shrugged.

I insisted that he was wrong. I listed off reasons why he was selling himself short: He was charismatic; he started his own business; he was owner of the best T-shirt printing business in the city; he ran that business almost single-handedly; he was a caring father and a loving husband; he was genuinely funny; he taught me to know there’s always a reason why people are the way they are.

“You may be right,” he said, sounding unconvinced. “I am right,” I said, my voice straining. My throat began to hurt as it

did whenever I was about to cry. I believed everything I told my father, but he was right too. He did live a sedentary life. He could be running his business far more efficiently. He never finished college. It hurt having these facts thrown out into the open. It hurt even more that they were coming from him. I didn’t want to see my dad like this.

I looked over my shoulder through my parents’ open bedroom door to see my mother sitting on the bed watching television. I hoped she wasn’t listening to our conversation.

We sat in silence. I stared away from my dad, looking from one piece of clutter in our living room to another. My father always had an air of confidence. He would always carry on jovial conversation with customers and old friends who came through his shop. He had earned the respect of everyone we knew, and I never heard a bad word about my father. Yet here

he was, defeated, lost in a sea of trivial possessions, ashamed of his life.

* * *

That night, I lay in bed. Toys and magazines spanning a decade-and-a-half covered every surface except my bed and a thin pathway through the junk. I stretched my legs underneath the covers, my toes brushing against some years-old Hot Wheels tracks that sat atop a full toy chest.

I rolled over on my side and told myself that I should sleep, but I felt compelled to relive the conversation with my father. I thought about how I had slept in this house my entire life, just like him. I was in my junior year of high school and had no plans for life after graduation. The thought had never bothered me until I heard how my father felt about his life.

I thought about how comfortable my life had been. My family had provided me with a living room full of DVDs and video games, and a bedroom full of toys. I faced no hardship growing up. My mother’s and father’s sides of the family were full of dysfunction, but they didn’t let any of that drama get to me.

My dad’s words echoed in my mind, making me look at how I lived my life. Would I move back into this house, years from now? Would I never leave?

A drum called a jenbe (jen-BAY) sat just beyond the foot of my bed amid the room’s clutter. The jenbe was a traditional West African instrument carved from one piece of wood into an hourglass shape. Goatskin is stretched over the top, forming the head of the drum. Rope is laced through the skin at the edges and pulled down, keeping the skin taut. I owned this drum because I was a member of the Three Rivers Jenbe Ensemble, a youth group that focused on African drumming and dance. My parents knew the director of the group, and it was entirely because of them that I joined.

“You won’t be living here forever,” I said to myself. “You’re leaving the country soon, if only for a little while.”

I would be traveling to Guinea, a country in Western Africa, during winter break. The drumming group had spent the past two years raising money for the trip. In Guinea, we would participate in a drum and dance workshop hosted by Moustapha Bangoura, a master Guinean dance instructor whom we invited to Fort Wayne in 2004 to teach us. The trip would last for three weeks, and we’d stay with him in Conakry, the capital

of Guinea. This would be my first time outside the United States.“You have to appreciate this chance,” I said. “You owe Mom and Dad

that much.”I needed to somehow bring this trip back to my parents, to let them get

a glimpse of the world outside Fort Wayne and outside this house. I also wanted to prove to myself that I could leave home. I made it my mission to not suffer the same fate as my father and finally drifted off to sleep.

* * *I strode though the lunchroom of South Side High School. It was filled

with the commotion of students excited for Thanksgiving break. The Guinea trip was exactly a month away.

I placed my tray on one of the circular tables near the center of the lunchroom where my friends and I usually sat. We talked about “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” -- a new video game and the latest entry in the long-running “The Legend of Zelda” series -- rather than what plans we had to visit family during Thanksgiving.

Most of the people sitting at our table were “Zelda” fans. Gabriel (who went by Gabby) was the head of our class with a perfect GPA. Gabby was also on the football team along with Jonathan. Patrick was a wrestler and pole-vaulter. Flynn would occasionally play soccer or golf with the others, as would Bruce Woods Jr., my best friend since kindergarten. Just about all of us were in South Side’s concert and jazz bands, but it was video gaming that was the common denominator.

“You getting ‘Zelda’?” Jonathan asked me. He was a tall white kid who loved vulgar jokes. He introduced disgusting vocabulary into our lives every other day. I took a bite of the school’s manicotti -- which was exactly the same flavor as the ravioli and lasagna, only in a different shape -- before answering.

“I want to,” I said through a mouthful of food. “I don’t even have a Wii yet. I’ll probably end up getting one for Christmas, though.”

The thought crossed my mind that I would be out of the country during Christmas. I was more excited about leaving, yet I wanted to play this video game as soon as possible.

For the previous two years, the “Twilight Princess” release had been delayed, pushed back months at a time. Now that it was about to be come out, I was almost as excited for the game as I was for Guinea. This excitement felt less substantial, however, like eating candy compared to a home-cooked meal.

“It’s gonna be so tight,” I said with delight in every word. “Once you get bombs in the game, you can combine them with your arrows to shoot bomb arrows.”

“What do you think will be better: ‘Oblivion’ or this?” Flynn asked, grinning.

“This,” I replied.The school’s electronic bell sounded, signaling the end of lunch. The

teachers’ aides guarding the doors moved out of the students’ way, and everyone poured into the hallways. My friends and I went back to our band class, our portable video game systems tucked in our pockets.

* * *

The next day, I walked up the steps to the Fort Wayne Dance Collective, a brick building downtown. It was a few minutes before 1 p.m., the start time for my drumming group’s practice each week. My mom waved goodbye from our SUV and drove off.

I entered the foyer as I had hundreds of times. Today, we were going to have a meeting in preparation for the Guinea trip before practice. I walked up the linoleum steps to the second floor and down a hallway that lead to two dance floors. In the smaller dance room, a circle of folding chairs sat in the middle of the floor.

In one of the chairs sat an older gentleman. He had white hair and a soul patch. He looked over at me as I walked through the doorway and gave a kind smile that wrinkled his face a bit. His name was Sox Sperry, and he was our group’s mediator for the trip. He had been a teacher since the ’70s and was the boyfriend of one of the women who founded the Dance Collective. His demeanor was calm and patient. Sox seemed like a hippie because he always called these sessions “peace studies,” and during them, we’d talk about our feelings.

I walked over to the circle. Each student took a chair, picked up small blue journals with our names written on them and sat down. Sox had given us these journals during a camping trip at a place called Joyfield Farms where we had camped at in preparation for Guinea. Sox’s peace studies sessions were designed to prepare us mentally for the trip.

“Remember, I want you to write all of what you’re feeling now,” Sox said. “What’s most important in journaling is capturing who you are at a given moment so you can look back later to see how you’ve changed.

“This trip is going to be a big deal for you guys. You’re going to want to keep track of not only your physical experiences but also what goes on in your mind. I’m going to be there to help you with that.”

I opened my journal and looked at my previous writings.There were only two entries. One entry described how we spent time at

Joyfield Farm, camping in tents, pulling weeds, and planting seeds for the owners’ crops.

The next, most recent entry was from last week.“I feel as if I am not aware,” I had written. That part bothered me. “Not

aware” seemed applicable to much of my life. “I feel as if I am surrounded by a memory, a fuzzy memory of things that have happened long ago.”

I picked up my pen and began to write.“I realize that things are not as bad as they initially seem,” I wrote some

advice my mother had given me. “Please remember this: If ever you feel like you can’t handle all that’s going on, step back, assess the situation, and you will prevail.”

Sox spoke as we were nearing the end of our writing time.“Remember to keep in mind the questions I said to ask yourself when

you write,” he said. “‘What am I feeling right now? What have I learned about myself today? How does life here differ from life at home? What would I have done differently?’”

I told myself I would make sure to have an answer for each of those questions every day in Guinea.

* * *

On the night of our departure, I looked back into my messy room after getting everything packed. The clutter would no longer have a hold on me, even if only for a short while. I heaved my massive duffel bag out of our front door. It was December, cold and quiet. I placed the bag in the car and got inside. I looked back at our house as we rounded the corner without any nostalgia.

We drove to Chicago, flew to New Jersey, drove to New York’s JFK Airport, flew to Casablanca, Morocco, and then flew to Guinea. The entire time, we talked about how great this trip was going to be. We didn’t speak of our anxiety. The constant bustle of passing through checkpoints, metal detectors, and departure gates kept our group of 10 students and seven adults preoccupied.

The day and a half of rushed, air-conditioned airplane travel made setting foot on Guinean soil all the more profound. When our plane touched down at the Guinean Interntation Airport, the preconceptions we held were no match for the real thing.

The air outside the airplane door was oppressively warm. I was wearing a long-sleeved hoodie and sweatpants, so my face made contact with the heat first. It was the middle of the night, yet it felt like high noon on a late spring day in Fort Wayne.

The airport and the runways were lit up. Beyond the tarmac was darkness.

After we picked up our luggage from inside the small terminal, we made our way to the parking lot. Ketu was at the front of our group, leading the way toward our ride. Ketu Oladuwa was a tall man with dreadlocks tied back in a ponytail. He was 61 years old, yet he was muscular with no wrinkles in his face. His goatee was all black. He had an imposing presence, which helped him when giving orders during our practices. Though he was a kind man, I never wanted to defy him.

Ketu led us to the vehicles that would take us to Moustapha Bangoura’s compound. He strode through the parking lot as if he knew where to go. He had visited Guinea before. The rest of us followed closely.

A group of Guinean men stood in the parking lot. I looked from them to Ketu as they walked up to us.

“Hey, how are you?” one of the men said to Ketu in English, but with an accent. Ketu came to a stop. The rest of us stopped too.

“I’m doing just fine,” Ketu said with a slight chuckle in his deep voice. He had told us how he had been approached by people asking for money right after getting off the plane. He hadn’t mentioned, however, how he had dealt with them.

“Hey, man, could you spare some coin, ma-”“No!” Ketu said in a booming voice, accompanied by a dismissive wag

of his finger. His gesture was exaggerated, and his dreadlocks swung about wildly.

“Oh, what the fuck, man,” the panhandler said, dejected. Other opportunists came out of the woodwork, running up to Ketu, asking for money, only to be denied one by one with each swipe of Ketu’s finger.

“No! No! No!” he said, shouting. He threw his head back with each “no,” not even looking at the people he was turning down.

Our drivers were waiting for us on the side of the road in their

magbanas, a Guinean word to describe a van used to taxi people around town. In Guinea, it’s common to have the seats of a passenger van ripped out and replaced with wooden slats to create more room for passengers. We climbed inside the vans and sat on the wooden boards. My magbana had no windshield or glass, and I had to lean out of the window frame to make room. The van started up, and we moved forward.

The moon was the only light source, casting the entire scene in a pale blue glow. Endless rows of gnarled husks that were once buildings zoomed past us as the magbana moved swiftly toward Moustapha’s place. A few minutes into the ride, a foul smell entered my nose, the smell of sewage. I was bewildered, wondering whether this was the norm in Guinea.

I was in awe of how run-down the city looked. I thought it was cruel that Ketu wouldn’t spare some of his money for those people at the airport. I kept thinking of Baghdad and how I couldn’t tell the difference between images from after the bombings and here.

“Don’t judge,” I thought. “This isn’t Iraq; don’t lump all the rest of the world together. We must have just passed a backed up sewer; that’s why it smelled. This place isn’t disgusting.”

My culture shock was getting in the way of my senses. What I saw from inside the magbana was not accurate. I did not see what was out there, only what was different.

* * *

The van slowed and turned off the long, straight road. We entered what looked like a residential area. The buildings were smaller and closer to one another than the structures we saw during our drive. Each home was surrounded by high, concrete walls.

The further into the neighborhood we went, the rougher the roads became. It seemed impossible for the driver to go more than 10 mph. At that speed, we tipped back and forth as if our van was in the ocean being rocked by waves. After a few minutes of trying to brace against the vehicle’s movement, the van came to a stop. We were outside Moustapha’s compound, where the drum and dance workshop would take place.

There were nails sticking upward, lining the tops of the tall concrete walls, serving the same function as barbed wire. We quickly exited the van and unloaded our luggage. No one in our group said much other than “Here,” or “I can get this,” as we picked up our belongings.

The area just through the gate was a foyer open to the sky, like a miniature courtyard. A polished stone dance floor sat to our left, shielded from the sky by a high concrete ceiling. On the far wall at the dance floor’s edge was a mural with the words Le Bagatae written in bold type.

Moustapha’s group of musicians and dancers formed the dance troupe Le Bagatae, named after the Baga ethnic group of Guinea, of which Moustapha was a descendant. Le Bagatae was also the name of the compound itself.

We carried our luggage through a room with couches and a fireplace. There were portraits of people on the wall. One of the photos was of Moustapha. He was wearing a pastel-color suit, like something out of the ’80s show Miami Vice. There was a picture of him standing with a woman wearing a patterned head wrap and matching dress. I realized we were passing through a living room. This compound was Moustapha’s home, and he was opening it up to us.

We moved into a hallway lit by a single lightbulb on the ceiling. One of the people helping us directed us to a room. It was where I would be staying with the three boys from our group. Bruce, my classmate and best friend, had been in the Jenbe Ensemble since 2000, a year before I joined. He had short hair and light skin. Girls always remarked how handsome he was. He and I led performances on our jenbes.

One of the other boys staying in our room was Tim. He was only 10 years old. He had short hair and wore thin-rimmed glasses with oval-shaped lenses. His ears were perfectly round and stuck out far from his head. He had never so much as stayed the night over at a friend’s house, except for the Joyfield Farms trip. Now he was more than 5,000 miles from home.

Sox called a meeting to discuss how we felt about the trip. He described the ride from the airport to Moustapha’s home. He mentioned the smell I noticed earlier, saying he “could smell the shit.” I had never heard Sox swear before. Even after the meeting when we were lying on our mattresses, getting ready to go to sleep, I still thought of Sox cursing.

“Did Sox say ‘shit’?” I asked aloud, looking up at the ceiling through the dark. Of all the things that had happened so far, this was what I asked the guys about.

“I was just thinking about the exact same thing,” Bruce said. We all laughed. We were nervous, and my question had broken the ice. We knew how momentous this was, and I believed everyone felt the same mix of

apprehension and exhilaration I felt welling in my chest.Despite my excitement, I drifted off to sleep.

* * *

The sounds of drumming drifted inside the compound the next morning. Our group stepped outside the living quarters one by one. We were greeted by loaves of bread, butter, teabags, and mugs, which were set on a dining table next to the dance floor outside. Moustapha came out to greet us.

“Good morning,” he said, smiling. “How is everyone doing, yeah?”Moustapha was 51 years old, but he still looked the same as in the Miami

Vice photo inside his living room. He was slightly shorter than me, yet he was strong and fit. Only a few gray hairs atop his head gave an indication of his age. His eyes squinted through his glasses as he smiled. We all got up and shook hands or hugged him. He said we were free to have as much of the bread and tea as we wanted.

We tore apart the bread and dipped the teabags in cups of hot water. During the welcome breakfast, we talked and listened to the drummers playing outside the compound. When we finished eating, our group decided to find where the music was coming from.

I stepped through the green gate at the front of the compound. Conakry was bathed in sunlight, and it was the first time I could clearly see my surroundings. A thin fog blanketed everything.

The streets looked like one solid piece of rock and were as rough as I had imagined them to be. The walls of most of the houses had paint jobs that were chipped. Where there was color, it was faded. Some houses had tiled roofs like Moustapha’s home. Others had corrugated sheet metal roofs. There wasn’t much pedestrian traffic near the compound, although I could see plenty of people passing back and forth on a main road in the distance.

Some street musicians across the street were playing the jenbes and the dununs -- cylindrical drums each made from a single piece of wood that sits horizontally on wooden stands. Unlike the jenbe, dununs are played with sticks. People were gathered around the drummers. Everyone was clapping or cheering.

Being familiar with the music, I noticed their playing was tight and disciplined. We had been running performances of our own in Indiana,

week in and week out, but it occurred to me that for the next three weeks we’d be playing in front of people who actually knew what the music was supposed to sound like.

We crossed the street and approached the drummers as they finished a piece. The crowd turned and noticed that we were not locals.

“Should we play?” Bruce asked, breaking the awkward moment. “I think we should,” said Alexa Alexander, another member, smiling

and looking at the rest of us to be reassured. Everyone nodded.“All right then,” Bruce said. “Here we go.”The performers could read our intentions and handed over their drums

and sticks.“What should we play?” Tim whispered.“I don’t know … Siwe?” I said, suggesting a rhythm we started with at

every performance. We took our positions.“So, Siwe,” said RasAmen Oladuwa, Ketu’s daughter. “Right?”“Yeah,” Bruce said. He gave a nervous smile.I looked up at the people in the crowd and saw skepticism on their faces.

We were welcome, but we were foté (fo-tay), a word used for foreigners that literally meant “white person.” Our entire group was foté, no matter our skin color. This was our chance to prove we were more than foté and that we had respect for their music.

Bruce played the break, and our rhythm began. When a traditional rhythm is played, the lead jenbe player will play a solo. When the lead drummer plays the break -- a musical cue that changes based on the time signature -- it indicates for the dancers to change their movements. Playing the break also tells the other drummers playing the dununs to change what notes they play. The person playing the break plays for the dancers, keeping time and matching the music with the dancers’ moves.

I was nervous. The same anxiety I felt before every performance manifested as butterflies inside my stomach.

Gradually, a few members of the crowd joined in with our dancers. The spectators began clapping and tapping their feet. Ferdinand “Fey Fey” Moussou, the father of one of our members, walked across the street to join our performance.

Fey Fey had always been our hype man. During our performances, he would grab the microphone and talk to the crowd. He always managed to get the audience to dance with us. This street performance was no different.

Fey Fey was from Senegal and was fluent in five languages. He spoke to the crowd in French. Whatever he said seemed to work, as a few people in the crowd came up to dance. One of them was Moustapha’s daughter, M’Mawa. She was in her early 20s. Her slender frame and smooth skin made her look like a teenager. She had long, thinly braided hair, the ends of which almost reached the top of her long white skirt. The skirt had a blue flower pattern all over it. She was a dancer, like her father.

Bruce began his solo as M’Mawa began to dance. Bruce’s playing was full of energy, and he timed his notes with M’Mawa’s moves. Her hair swung about, her arms pulled in then shot outward, and her feet stomped up and down.

A smile spread across my face as I kept playing an accompanying rhythm. It was always fun to perform, but to see the interaction between our music, the crowd, and M’Wawa’s dancing left me elated.

We finished our rhythm and were met with applause. We met the challenge, and the euphoric thrill of performing well under pressure washed over me.

* * *

We spent the day holding our heads a little higher and meeting with the other workshop attendees and Moustapha’s drummers. Moustapha gathered everyone on the dance floor and gave a speech in French. After each sentence, Fey Fey gave an English translation. Moustapha thanked us for being there. He gave an overview of the workshop. We would stay in Conakry most of our time, but we would also spend a few days in a rural village and on an island off the coast of Guinea.

I was excited to hear we would be seeing more than just the capital of Guinea. I began to relax, feeling proud of my group’s performance and happy to have gotten over my anxiety so soon.

It didn’t stay that way for long. That night, lying on the mattress in our dark room, I dreamt I was home.

I sat in the center of our living room, between the big couch and the TV. I was in the brown swivel chair, the backing of which had long since broken off. The mismatched furnishings in our living room were all in their correct places. The lamp in the corner was on. Our massive collection of DVDs sat upon a shelf above our TV and entertainment center. The ’70s-era paint job on the walls was the same pale green.

I was by myself with the TV off. My mother walked in from the hallway and sat down on the love seat in front of me. She had hair pulled back into a ponytail, the strands of which were mostly black with a few wisps of gray. She was smiling -- a kind, yet sad smile.

We started to talk about my father, bringing up good times we spent together. My mother spoke of him in past tense because he was dead. She said he had died only a short while ago.

I couldn’t believe or accept it. I interrupted one of my mom’s stories.“Dad’s not dead,” I said, shaking my head.“Oh baby, I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice breaking. Her eyes welled up

with tears. She held my hand, saying that it was okay.“No, he isn’t dead.”She leaned forward and hugged me. I felt her warm tears on my neck.

She kept talking through her sobs, saying we needed to accept my father’s death.

I awoke, sitting upright in the darkness of our room. I couldn’t see well enough to verify whether I was awake. The dream still felt real. Tears poured down my face and over my hand, which was covering my mouth. I sat in the dark, trying not to make a sound so I didn’t wake the others.

* * *

The sun passing through our room’s window filtered through a wire mesh screen. The light woke us up. I showered, grabbed my drum, and got ready for the morning’s practice. I walked back inside to check on Tim since I hadn’t seen him up yet.

Ketu was standing in the doorway of our room telling Tim to get up and get ready for practice. Tim was sitting upright on the mattress, despondent. His face was solemn, and he was staring forward at nothing in particular, like in photos of war veterans going through post-traumatic stress.

After getting no response, Ketu turned to me and said, “You need to get that boy out of this room.” I wasn’t one to defy an order from Ketu.

I looked at Tim on the mattress.“Hey Tim,” I said. “Hey man, c’mon. We gotta get ready. Are you sick?

If not, then get up. We’ve got to go.”He sat there without looking up.“Tim, we need to go,” I said. I figured he was upset because he missed

his mom. This is the first time he had ever been in a different state than his

mom, let alone outside the country.We had spent the past two years being driven around northeast Indiana

playing in front of hundreds of people just to have three weeks in Guinea. He was letting this opportunity pass him by. I stood there for a minute, waiting for some kind of response. I hadn’t slept well and didn’t have the patience for this.

I walked over to my huge duffel bag and dug out the flashlight my mother had packed for me. It had a small generator and a crank on its side for manual charging. There was an emergency siren that would blare proportionate to the speed the crank was turned.

I sat down in front of Tim and shined the light in his eyes. He turned his head, and I moved the light so that it stayed in his eyes. I turned the siren on and began cranking the flashlight. He would turn his head away from the light, and I would move the flashlight to keep it shining in his face, over and over.

“I can stop at any point,” I said, an evil intonation in my voice. “All you have to do is just get out of bed.”

I continued to taunt him and tell him how getting off the mattress was the only way he’d get me to stop. Tears began to well in Tim’s eyes.

“Stop bothering me!” he screamed. I stopped cranking the flashlight. Tears streamed freely from his eyes. He shuddered and convulsed with sobs. I lowered the flashlight. For a few scant moments, we sat on the mattress, looking at each other.

“Tim,” I said, “we have to go to practice. You can’t sit here for the rest of this trip. If you don’t get up, I’ll be back.”

I stood up and walked out of the room. I went to the dance floor where Bruce was sitting at his drum. I needed to ask him, to ask anyone, what just happened.

“That was OC,” Bruce said, slang for “outta control.”“Was that wrong of me, though?” I said. Bruce shrugged.“Hey, man,” he said. “He has to get out of bed, like, right now, so it

needed to be done.”He was sad about being away from home. I couldn’t understand such a

notion after our experiences in Guinea these past few days. I dragged my drum toward me as the other drummers and dancers took their places.

Tim came out of our room and sat down at his drum a few moments later, right before Moustapha called from the dance floor for the drummers to start. Seeing his tear-streaked face made me feel like shit for pulling my

little stunt with the flashlight. Before I could say anything to him, one of Le Bagatae’s drummers played the break, and practice began.

* * *

Beams from our flashlights cut through the early evening’s darkness and lit up the rocky streets ahead. We were on our way to an internet café, the only place close by where we could make international calls. We scheduled a visit to call home and to let our families know we were all right. The dream about my dad was still vivid in my mind. This was my chance to make absolutely certain it was just that: a dream.

The city’s electricity hadn’t turned on yet, but locals passed without the need of extra light. I wore a small headlamp that my mother had packed for me, indicating to the Guineans taking a stroll just how foté I was.

We stopped at a paved road in front of the café. Suddenly, the city’s power came on, and the buildings around us lit up. Across the street was a gas station that was brightly lit by bulbs in its awning. Lines of old cars ran up to every gas pump, bumper to bumper.

I stood outside the café door watching cars zoom past on the smooth road as I waited for my turn to call home. The café had nothing in it but eight old desktop computers and a man sitting near the entrance at a desk with an old corded phone. Each computer had a blocky, off-white cathode ray tube monitor. Kids were sitting at each one, some using email services and others browsing the internet. The man at the desk was placing calls for customers.

We had to pay by the minute. Money was no issue since a single American dollar in 2006 was equal to about 5,000 Guinean francs. I took my cash out from a fanny-pack-like bag that I wore under my clothes.

My group sat down before the phone one after another. Outside, I stared at the traffic streaking by, my mind conjuring up possible outcomes for my phone call. Had my dream been a premonition? Would I get a chance to speak with my father moments before his death? Was he already dead? I sighed and looked up, closing my eyes.

When it was my turn, I went inside and took the phone. I tried to understand what the operator was telling me to do. I clumsily followed the instructions and called home.

The ringing was followed by the sound of our answering machine. I hung up. My irrational fear that something was wrong grew worse. I asked

the operator if I could try another number.I went through all the steps again. This time I called my dad’s T-shirt

printing shop. “Hello, Tygeron Graphics.”I exhaled.“Hey, Dad, it’s me.”“Hey! … I- … Wow!” he said. “I was just thinking about you.”We spoke briefly. I told him how nice the trip had been. I asked if my

mom was there, but he said she was out at the moment. I said I would try to call again as soon as we got the chance.

As I handed the phone to the operator, I let out sigh of relief. My eyes began to burn as they do before tears came. I stepped out into the warm night air, holding open the glass door for Bruce, who was going to call home next.

“How’d it go?” Bruce asked. I looked at the gas station across the street, avoiding eye contact.

“Whatever you gotta pay, it’s worth it,” I said.I chuckled, wondering how simply hearing my dad’s voice could make

me feel so much better. I wasn’t afraid anymore, not of anything. I could finally move past the dream and get outside my mind. My day had been spent in worry, and now I could get back to savoring this trip.

* * *

We relocated the workshop to the rural village of Kiffinda after a week in Conakry. We were told we would be sleeping outside in the tents we packed. That Saturday, we boarded an old yellow school bus and set off.

When we arrived in Kiffinda, the locals welcomed us graciously. We were given a tour. Circular houses constructed of clay and grass made up most of the village. There was a patch of flat ground on the village’s eastern edge where we set up our tents. Beyond the village, rice paddies and palm trees stretched for miles.

A dirt path from the south of the village led to a clearing where dance practice was held. The dance floor was square patch of golden sand.

After two days of dance practice in the clearing, using the bathroom in outhouses with walls made of woven palm leaves and sleeping inside our cold, cramped tents, Ketu assigned us a task.

“Y’all have been leaving trash around our camp,” he said, making a few

of us look askance at one another. “These people opened up their home to us, and we’re going make sure we leave this place nicer than when we got here. You are going to split up and pick up every last bit of trash you see. Got it?”

We all gave various affirmations. None of us sounded enthusiastic.“Wow,” Bruce said after we picked up the small trash bags Ketu provided.

“We should only have to pick up around our camp, not the whole village. This is crazy.”

“Yeah,” I said half-heartedly. I was annoyed, but I agreed with Ketu that we should do something for Kiffinda in return.

I passed between rows of the clay and dirt houses, picking up bits of crumpled paper and plastic wrappers.

Partway through my rounds, a child from the village walked up to me. He was short and looked no more than 7 years old. He watched as I bent down to pick up another bit of trash. He said something in Sousou, and I just smiled. He stared back at me expecting a response.

“Uh, hello?” I said.The boy held out a candy wrapper he had picked up off the ground and

pointed at my trash bag. I realized that he wanted to help me clean up, so I opened my half-filled garbage bag. The boy dropped the wrapper in the bag and rushed off.

More children ran up to me with trash they had picked up. The first boy returned with a large handful. The children encircled me like electrons around a nucleus, each dashing a few meters away before returning with more trash.

We filled my garbage bag before anyone else had filled theirs. I was back to where I started, near our campsite. I thought of how I could thank the kids for helping. I ran over to our camp, set my trash down, and got my backpack full of snacks.

I ran back to the group of kids with the bag. I took out a Jolly Rancher candy and gave it to a little girl at the front of the group. She grabbed it, smiling. The other children tried to see what it was and pulled at her excitedly.

“Hey!” I said, reaching back into my bag. “Calm down. I got a bunch more.”

I took out a handful of candy and the other children immediately reached out, snatching the pieces away in seconds. Each time I handed

away more candy, I felt more relieved. I didn’t feel like I needed it anymore. Back home, I would have had second thoughts about giving away this many snacks.

A piece of candy fell to the ground and the last kid picked it up, smiled at me, and ran back to the village’s houses. I stood there with the empty backpack, idly wondering whether the wrappers around the village were from previous visitors handing out candy.

I felt a strange sense of pride and relief as I tossed the empty backpack inside my tent. When I gave away the last piece of candy, I didn’t regret parting with it at all.

* * *

After a few days, our time in Kiffinda ended, and we returned to Conakry. I fell ill. It was a couple of days before New Year’s Eve. I awoke that morning feeling weak; every joint ached as I sat up.

Agatha, one of the adults on the trip, took my temperature. She said I had a fever just above 102 degrees. Beyond feeling shaky and weak, I felt angry. A wedding was taking place the next day in Conakry for Mamady Keita, a world-renowned master drummer and old friend of Moustapha. I would likely miss the ceremony.

Some of the other students were asking whether I had come down with malaria. The possibility that I was seriously ill worried me, but the chance that I was going to miss out on anything during the trip, let alone a master drummer’s wedding, was most agonizing.

The room upstairs in Moustapha’s compound had a bathtub, something the restroom downstairs lacked. Agatha drew me a cold bath in the hopes of bringing my temperature down.

Back home, being sick meant I had a reason not to go to school. Being sick gave me a good excuse to play video games all day. All I could do here was hope to get better in time for Mamady’s wedding.

On the day of the wedding, I felt better but still had a fever. Ketu said it wasn’t safe for me to leave the compound. Less than an hour before the others were going to leave, I worked up the courage to try to persuade him to let me go.

“Uh-uh,” Ketu said, declining my request. “You’re still sick. What if you get worse? If something happened to you, what would we tell your parents?”

I was doing this, in part, for my parents.“I’ll never get another chance like this,” I said. The mix of frustration

and desperation burned in my chest.Ketu looked back at me; his brow furrowed with concern. “I’m sorry,” Ketu said. He sounded sincere. “I can’t risk your safety.”I walked back to the boys’ room as the others went outside to get into

the magbanas. Sox volunteered to stay at the compound to watch over me, which made me feel worse because he would miss the wedding too.

Sitting on one of the mattresses in our room, I felt defeated. I thought about how beautiful such a wedding ceremony must be. I thought about having to face the others when they got back and how they would all be talking about the wedding.

My duffel bag lying against the wall caught my eye. The crimson and shiny gold clothes I had purchased a few days ago for the wedding lay on top of my bag. I stared into the outfit’s intricate patterns for few moments.

I got back on my feet. My stomach lurched from standing up so quickly, but I didn’t care. I stripped off my old clothes and put on my new ones. I felt dizzy, but I forced myself to walk. Outside the compound, the sun was low in the sky and the buildings of the neighborhood were cast in a golden light.

Every sensation had a disgusting twinge to it. My clothes felt like they were scraping against my skin, and with each step, the uneven stone and dirt road caused my joints to strain. I wanted to go to the wedding. I needed to recount this event to my folks back home. I wasn’t well enough to go, but I didn’t care.

I saw magbanas in the distance. The group hadn’t left yet. A few of the TRJE members pointed at me and looked surprised that I was going with them. I quickly squirmed inside the van and plopped down by Bruce. I was breathing heavily.

“You’re going?” Bruce asked. I nodded. Ketu stuck his head in the van.“Oh, so you’re going now?” he said. I nodded again without saying a

word. I hoped Ketu would see I was well enough to get to the van and let me go to the wedding. We stared at each other. Ketu shook his head, raising his eyebrows.

“All right then,” he said in a tone suggesting that if I got worse, it was on me now. Ketu stepped out of the van, stopped and leaned right back inside. “Where’s Sox?”

A wave of guilt and realization washed over me. I hadn’t even thought

of Sox the entire walk to the van. My silence gave Ketu his answer.“Uh-uh, that ain’t correct,” Ketu said. “We’re not going to just leave him

here.”I hobbled back out of the van and retraced my steps back to Le Bagatae.

I pushed open the gate and saw Sox near the dance floor. He looked bewildered and angry.

“There you are,” he said, his usually cheerful face replaced with a look of solemnity. “Where did you think you were going to go? You’re still sick, and I promised your parents that I would watch over you. They asked me to do that. I can’t let you go, Malik.”

I walked over to the table next to the dance floor and sat down. I hid my face in my arms. Sox spoke to me even though I wouldn’t look him in the eye. He told me of a time he traveled abroad, bicycling through Europe in his early twenties. I didn’t look up, but I listened.

At the end of his story, Sox said, “You have to take something from this. You need to figure out what this means.”

Sox wasn’t going to let me leave. I felt certain I would never return to Guinea and would never see a Guinean wedding. The situation felt like a failure on my part, a battle I had lost. But I had to take something from this, like Sox said.

If I let myself get sicker, it’s possible I might miss out on even more of the trip, and there would be more experiences that I couldn’t share with my father. And if I didn’t make it back home, then I’d have truly failed. Going to the wedding didn’t matter overall.

I needed to make sure I was better by the time the workshop relocated again. We were heading to Rom Island in a few days, and I needed to be well enough to go.

I looked up at Sox and whispered, “Thanks,” before retreating to my room.

* * *

My feet dug into the sand a few feet under the surface of the ocean. My hands were clasped to one of the two huge canoe-shaped boats we were about to ride in.

We pushed the boats farther into the water and I was glad I was no longer sick. I’d recovered even before our hours-long New Year’s celebration the night before.

A harbor from which our boats were rented sat on the shore behind us. Crowds of people filled the market place. Meat vendors sat behind stands, taking cash from and handing pieces of cooked meat on old metal coat hangers to customers. Other vendors did the same all along the water with myriad products. People were selling dried fish, nets, oats and live chickens.

Boats of all sizes were in the water. They were all like ours, long wooden canoes with a motor hanging off the back. We had to trudge a few hundred feet through waist-deep water to get to the ones waiting for us.

One of the members of Le Bagatae started the boat’s motor, and we took off. I stuck my head over the edge of the boat, staring out at the ocean. It stretched to the horizon. There wasn’t anything but open water west of the mainland except for the islands.

Two larger islands sat on each side of a much smaller one. We rode closer to Rom, one of the bigger islands.

The man running the boat motor turned it off as we approached the beach. The boat drifted to the sand, scraping against the shore. Everyone hopped out and helped drag the boats out of the water.

We walked along a dirt path through a forest lit by the sunlight bleeding through the trees above. Interspersed along the path were adobe structures. One structure looked like a small hotel with a minibar, like something you would find at resort. A rainbow of colored bottles lined the shelves behind the bartender. The bartender and a couple of patrons having drinks watched us trek past along the island’s edge. The patrons had light skin, suggesting they were also foreigners on some kind of trip.

Our campsite was near another hotel. This building wrapped around three sides of a square sand dance floor. This floor belonged to the hotel and we never used it for practice. Our tents were close to the open side of the dance floor near the beach.

Next to the hotel was a rural village similar to Kiffinda but smaller. Once we had gotten our tents set up, we passed through the village to the dance floor Moustapha’s classes would be using. This floor formed a clearing like the one in Kiffinda, but instead of sand, the dance area was composed of dirt stamped flat from the steps of workshops past.

We stared out at the ocean for a few minutes. Bruce started walking along the large rocks on the shore, and everyone else followed. We spaced out, each standing or sitting on our own rock along the shoreline. It was the first time I’d been so close to the ocean and had time to truly admire it.

The sky was overcast. The air felt similar to how it felt at home just before a rainfall.

I welcomed the moment of repose and was thankful the others wanted some time to themselves too. I began to realize the scope of my travels up to that point and just how far I had come.

A few of us went swimming that afternoon. It was difficult getting used to swimming with the constant waves pushing me around. During a game of tag, I cut my foot on a sharp rock. A wave hit me just as I lost balance, sending me tumbling over more rocks and onto the shore. With that, I was done with swimming for the day.

I limped away from the water as the others kept playing. I sat down in the sand, checking to see where I was hurt. The wound on my foot wasn’t big, but the salt water seeping inside stung. I wanted to get back soon so I could at least put a bandage on it. I put my sandals back on. I cringed at the thought of getting sand inside the cut or getting an infection. One by one, the others got out of the water, and we headed back to camp.

Sounds of drumming caught our ears as we neared the hotel. A dounounba, a dance celebration with live music, took place on the sand dance floor. Still limping, I didn’t want to put weight on my foot. I made a beeline to my tent, got some bottled water, and poured it over the wound to wash out any debris. I put a Band-Aid on the cut while periodically looking at the dance floor, which was lit by the hotel’s lights.

Drummers played at the edge of the floor while dancers performed in the center. The two-tiered hotel had a walkway on the second floor from which people, mostly foreigners, were looking down at the performance. No one in our group knew what the celebration was for.

I hobbled over to a log near the edge of our camp closest to the dance floor, watching the performance from a distance. The sound of the drums rattled inside my chest, even from the other side of the large floor. Fey Fey was already on the floor dancing as spectators cheered.

Among the dancers, one woman in particular caught my eye. She looked like she was in her mid-twenties and wore a black tank top and patterned head wrap with a matching skirt. Her feet were in the air more often than they were touching the sand. I stared at her for a solid minute, watching her every movement. I wondered what it would be like to dance with her.

“Why not find out?” I asked myself. I didn’t have a good answer and figured I had missed out on enough fun from being sick.

I pushed off of the log, leaned forward, and stood up. I walked toward

the sand floor. With each step, the cut on my foot stung. I kicked off my sandals before going forward.

I stopped right in front of the woman, near the center of the sand dance floor. She looked at me with a hint of skepticism in her eye, but also with a curious smile. Most everything communicated during traditional West African music and dance was through musical cues and looks. I asked myself what the hell I was doing, but before I let myself answer, the woman began.

I copied each move as she executed them. I recognized a few moves from the dance practices I had drummed for. The gash in my foot slowed me down, but I was able to keep up. We were stepping high, bouncing from foot to foot and spinning around in the sand as the music picked up. The drummers began the echauffement, a French word meaning “warm-up.” Echauffement is used to describe the moment in Malinke rhythms where the tempo picks up rapidly and the bass drum plays a new, lively beat.

The music’s speed grew faster, and the dancer began to spin herself around. I followed her lead. The sand scratched my bare feet as we twirled.

The echauffement ended, and the break was played. We had come to a stopping point. I had kept up with her the entire time. She gave a small bow to me. I returned the bow, grinning, my chest heaving and heartbeat thumping in my ears.

I strode back through the sand to sit with some of the group members at the edge of our camp. They whistled and patted me on the back as I sat down.

As I took my seat, the realization of what I’d just done struck me. I yanked my foot up and looked at the Band-Aid. The adhesive on one side had given way. Granules of sand were lodged inside the wound. I ripped off the Band-Aid and clenched it in my fist.

I looked back at the other dancers. I didn’t see the woman I’d danced with since we parted. I felt certain I’d never see her again once we left Guinea, but I didn’t feel bad about it.

* * *

We left Rom a few days after the dounounba and returned to Le Bagatae. The day we would leave Guinea was steadily approaching. The liveliness of our previous practices was replaced by a bittersweet feeling. The

melancholy was evident in everyone’s playing and dancing. The drummers and dancers performed with even more vigor than in previous practices, but their faces were distant. Before, I’d see people grinning and grimacing during practice. Now, they closed their eyes or stared off into space.

On the night of our departure, I was side by side with my group members in a magbana for the final time. Our luggage was piled high atop the vehicle’s roof. I turned in my seat to face out the window to get one last look at Le Bagatae before our van started rolling forward. Most of my friends in the TRJE were crying, so I had to look elsewhere to keep myself from weeping along with them.

Our final few hours in Moustapha’s compound had been filled with tearful goodbyes. We hugged and cried on the shoulders of people we had known for only three weeks.

The van started moving, rolling over the bumpy streets, jostling us about. After a few minutes of turbulence, we were back on the paved road we drove in on. I looked at my friends in the van. Their eyes glistened. I felt their anguish, but I also felt a sense of satisfaction. I was glad that they were so clearly touched by this experience. I looked over at Tim. He was crying too.

Outside the window of the magbana, the sky was just as dark as it had been three weeks ago. This drive was late at night, just like our first.

There were lights on everywhere. Lights shone from inside the homes and stores we passed. Car headlights lit up the road. People walked along the streets as we zoomed past. Some were sitting outside their houses, others purchasing goods from shops lining the side of the road. Crowds of people filled intersections. The night air brushed my face as we hurtled forward.

I gripped the edge of the window and closed my eyes tightly. I could picture what I had just seen perfectly.

We reached the airport. After getting our luggage checked, I sat on the tiled floor inside the small terminal. The adults spoke with airport staff at the counter next to the gates.

Agatha and Ketu were talking heatedly about something. Agatha had been the one holding our passports and tickets since the adults didn’t want to risk some of the younger members misplacing them. Agatha and Ketu pulled aside three of our oldest members and spoke with them. I wondered what was wrong as I watched their reactions.

Bruce and Julia sat down near me looking despondent. RasAmen

continued talking with Ketu and Agatha. Bruce and Julia told me their tickets were missing. RasAmen’s ticket was gone too. No one knew when the tickets had been lost or whether they were stolen. Bruce, Ras, and Julia would have to get new ones. Unfortunately, no tickets were being sold at the time. The adults said they would have to stay behind until they could get new ones issued. The rest of us would depart on schedule.

Agatha and Ketu had insisted they hold our tickets and passports for the entire trip. A surge of anger passed over me, but it was quickly replaced with numbness. I was emotionally spent and couldn’t muster the energy to be angry.

The past three weeks were the most exciting experience I’d ever had. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t wish to leave where I was. I’d seen the ocean, danced, trekked across islands, stood up to Ketu, learned our music straight from the source, and experienced something new each day. I had traveled the world, and now I was going back to where I came from.

Our plane arrived. Ketu told the rest of our group that he would stay with the three students whose tickets were lost. Fey Fey stayed with him, since he was going to Senegal to visit family after this trip. I didn’t even say goodbye to the others before boarding.

The inside of the plane was cold compared to outside. No one in our group spoke for hours of our flight. Amid the emptiness, there was a hint of jealousy toward Julia, Ras, and Bruce.

* * *

I sat in Mr. John Holmes’ honors-level history class on the second floor of South Side High School on my first day back from break. My right foot rested atop the left one, and I was slumped in my seat. There were about 10 minutes until the end of class, and I hadn’t paid attention to what Mr. Holmes had said the entire period. He had finished and let the 40 students in the room flit around to talk to one another about winter break. Conversations about gifts and inactivity surrounded me as I stared at the blackboard in a trance, my eyes not focusing on anything before me.

Jonathan McCoy walked through my gaze, stopping in front of me. “’Sup, man?” He said. “How was Africa?”“Guinea,” I said. “Just Guinea.”“Did you catch some of that real African AIDS?” he said, grinning. Of

all the disgusting things I’d heard him say over the years, this bothered me

the most.“No,” I said without smiling.The faces of people I met in Guinea surfaced in my mind. I could see

the faces of Le Bagatae and Moustapha’s family and friends. I asked myself how each one of those people and their entire being could be summed up in such a generalization. I wanted to retreat inside my head, relive the moments I spent in Guinea and not have to face the reality of being home.

A few other students sat down near me, asking questions about the trip. I answered all questions in a deadpan tone.

A female student asked where Bruce was. Getting more time away from here, I thought.

“His and two others’ tickets got lost,” I said. “I have no idea how they’re getting back.”

She and a few others stared at me, their mouths agape.“Really?” she asked.“Yup,” I said plainly.Everyone’s shock and worry was strange to me. All I could think was that

Bruce and the others got to spend even more time in Guinea. I couldn’t see why we should feel bad for them.

Since returning from Guinea, I had felt somewhat detached. I didn’t want to sit in this classroom for the hundredth time. I didn’t want to hear the same jokes in the same school in the same town from the same assholes I’d known for the past decade.

* * *

Later that evening, I stood in front of the mirror in my bathroom. We used white Christmas lights in the bathroom because the actual light sockets no longer worked. They cast everything in a slightly yellow light. The room was cluttered, the walls were missing tiles, and the bathtub was stained from having lost its finish long ago. I couldn’t stand looking around our bathroom any more.

My mother had given me a copy of “The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess” as a Christmas gift. The game I had coveted now sat atop a pile in our living room. I wanted nothing to do with it. I couldn’t bring myself to go on a fake adventure after living through such a real one.

I walked out of the bathroom with tears welling in my eyes. My father was still at work. My mother was in my parents’ bedroom. She saw my

face. “Hey, baby, what’s up?” she said. Her voice was full of worry.Realizing I would wake up to this place each day without experiencing

something new was what was wrong, but I said nothing.“Talk to me, okay?” she said with a soothing, concerned tone.I was home. I was happy to see my parents. I knew Guinea was on the

western edge of the African continent. I knew the place I had lived in for three weeks was thousands of miles away. But the rice paddies, the magbanas, the sand dance floors, and Le Bagatae all seemed so close to me still.

I looked at my mother through tear-sodden eyes for a brief moment before I hugged her as tightly as I could.

I finally managed to speak.“I’m going to be all right,” I said.Right then, I thought, I needed to write down how I felt. I hugged my

mom again and walked to my room. I reached inside my still unpacked duffel bag and pulled out my journal. It was almost empty. I scoffed. I had put so much importance on remembering everything about the trip, yet I had just 10 or so entries.

I read the last entry. It was made the day before our departure.“This has been a cruel experience,” I had written. “We have been thrust

into a culture that is completely different from out boring, materialistic, clouded-view-having, money-grubbing, family-forgetting culture. We have been given a true taste of life.

“I haven’t been extremely open to people here, but I still feel as if they are all family members. I feel as close to them as I do to most of my family outside of my mom and dad. And that right there holds everything that I will miss from this place for the rest of my life.”

I sat for a moment, letting my own words sink in. I picked up my pen.“Being back is hard at first,” I wrote, “but it gets easier to deal with. Life

here isn’t as sweet as it is in Guinea, but I’m thankful for being able to have this chance. Now I am home with my loved ones and good friends, so it’s all right.

“Now I have two homes. At first I felt torn between them, but I actually feel my heart has a wider range and scope.

“There’s no fitting way to end this entry, so I’ll just say that the others, including Ketu, will be back soon, and I’ll be there to help them readjust.

“Much love, Malik.”

* * *

The TRJE was crammed into the upstairs hallway of the Dance Collective. Julia’s father, a college professor, had used his connections to a congressman he knew to help extradite Julia, Bruce, and RasAmen in time for the night’s event.

We split into two lines, each starting at the doors to the large dance room. The lights inside the room were low, except for the lights on the drums. All along the opposite wall were people who had come to see our first performance since returning from Guinea.

Bruce and I carried our jenbes. The straps cut into my shoulders. Bruce and I had slid metal sheets into the laces of our drums for the performance. These sheets had metal rings in them that would shake as we played. As I shifted my drum, the rings made a gentle jingling sound. The other drummers and the dancers standing behind me each had anklets with bells attached to them, so more intermittent jingling came from behind as the others moved around in anticipation. We were dressed in outfits we bought from a seamstress in Guinea.

“All right,” Bruce said to me in a hushed voice from down the hallway. “You ready?”

I grinned back and nodded. No matter how many times we performed, I always felt a twinge of nervousness. After being in Guinea, I could no longer be complacent with a lackluster performance.

Bruce’s hands slapped down onto the surface of his drum, silencing the errant chatter from the audience. He strode out into the room. The notes were crisp and loud on his new Guinean drum. His hands were a blur as he played a string of rapid notes. I could see heads turning to look at Bruce as he played his solo.

Bruce’s played a flam -- a loud note played by both hands hitting the drum, one right after the other -- and I knew he had finished. I struck my drum, creating a high-pitched note. The crowd shifted its gaze to me. I walked into the room while playing rapidly, striking the edge of the drum head repeatedly then hitting the center, changing the pitch of notes from high to low and back again.

Bruce and I traded solos until we reached the center of the floor. We started playing simultaneously, drumming simple accompaniment rhythms. The other members of our group marched inside from both sides of our stage, clapping to the beat. They formed a line on both sides

of Bruce and me. The music stopped.“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,” we said in unison.

“Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”We had practiced delivering this quote, created by the activist Marianne

Williamson, countless times and had done so for almost as long as I had been in the group. I had to fight a smile since I was so pleased we had actually all started together this time, a rare occurrence.

“It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us,” we said. “We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?”

I had heard and said this passage so often, it had become routine. However, since coming back from Guinea, it meant something more to me now.

“You are a child of God,” we said. “Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

“It’s not just in some of us. It’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. And as we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Everyone broke out of the single-file line. I looked over at Bruce, who nodded, indicating that he was about to play the break. I looked out into the crowd.

I couldn’t see my mother or father through the dark. The bright light on us made the shadowed areas of the room appear darker. I knew they were there, though. I also knew exactly how I would tell them about our trip, what I saw, what I learned, what I had felt.

Bruce played the break, and our rhythm began.

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