The unexpected

One of the things I like best about being in the field is the constant element of the unexpected. Sometimes this can take dramatic forms – occasionally a little too dramatic – but mostly it’s just a product of being in an environment very different to your own. Even something as simple as going to a restaurant for dinner can be full of surprises. Two nights ago, the surprise was going to a restaurant that was “on the street”. When this was explained to me in the car on the way over, I assumed this meant a restaurant that put tables and chairs out on the sidewalk (or, more precisely, at the edge of the road, given the absence of actual sidewalks in Bissau). However, it turned out literally to mean on the street. Anyone looking to drive down the road in question would have been thwarted by the presence of tables and chairs from one side of the street to the other, effectively closing it off to traffic. Don’t ask me what gives the restaurant the right to do this, but the one or two motorists who showed up over the course of dinner seemed to take it in stride, throwing their vehicles into reverse and driving away.

Last night, the surprise was the presence of a baby antelope in (another) restaurant, an adorable fawn about a foot-and-a-half high. Apparently there had once been a pair, but the male had been taken by a stray dog (in what must surely have been an unprecedented bonanza for the mutt). The female had found a substitute for her brother in the form of a filthy little kitten that looked to be about 10 weeks old. They chased each other around the courtyard restaurant, bounding and leaping between the tables, claws scrabbling and tiny hooves clicking as the pair unwittingly played out a miniature parody of a time-honoured African hunt (although in this case the fawn was chasing the kitten as often as the reverse). The fawn had even adopted some of the kitten’s mannerisms, crouching into something resembling a pouncing position, awkwardly long legs akimbo, before launching itself at the kitten hiding behind a plastic table leg. Even more surprising was that I was apparently the only one in the restaurant driven to distraction by their frolicking. The other patrons had either seen it before, or seen enough strange things in Bissau to be unmoved by yet one more example.

By and large, I take comfort in the orderliness of life in the developed world. But there’s something to be said for the unpredictability of a place like this, and all the fascinating surprises it can hold.