The Tragikal Tales of the Sometimes Princess

This is based on the first two chapters of my book, a sort of autobiographicall novella published by Lulu. Copyright © 2019 by Chris Sylla. All rights reserved. Illustrated here with photos, mostly from Guinea, but a few from the Gambia and Senegal also. These are the three real West African countries which combine in the story to make the fictional one—The Hot Country/the Other Place. The people in this story, including the princess herself, are loosely based on real people but are fictional constructions, and several actual people have sometimes been ‘collated’ into one character.

Chapter One: A Very Disappointing and Smelly Princess Indeed. Or: The Problem of the Cockroaches.

Once upon a time, and only yesterday, there lived a woman who loved a man from a different place. Because of this she had two lives. One, in her own country, where she was an ordinary person, and another in his, the Other Place, the Hot Country. This was, in fact, several different countries: one in which he was born, several in which he worked as a musician and one in which he was currently living. Here, because of the colour of her skin, cultural difference and relative wealth, plus the stories told about the easy life where she came from and the money that falls from the sky there, she was a princess.

The Princess & the tall thin prince on the beach.. He is VERY tall as you can see, also she is quite short. Sometimes people look at them & laugh, but love, as well as caring not a fig for cultural boundaries, can join any two people of any size...

But a very disappointing princess indeed. No treasury funds at her command, no servants, no social standing, few resources and lacking many of the right skills. Princesses, as a mythological species, are generally incredibly well-dressed, over-dressed in fact, befrocked, bejewelled, bedazzling. They possess a massive wardrobe, travel with a lot of baggage and have great self-confidence. They are imperious and well used to command. Although often felt to be bossy, our princess lacks many of the other attributes of a typical princess, very particularly in the financial department.

At the outset of this story the princess has gone to visit her man, her husband, the tall, thin prince; who has returned to the country of his birth to perform a complicated Bureaucratic Manoeuvre relating to a Visa Refusal Difficulty. There is no room in the Family House, because he has been gone a long time, so he has been forced to rent somewhere for the duration. He is (obviously) not really a prince, quite the opposite in fact, more of a pauper in fiscal terms.

The tall thin prince in the Hot Country, where the division of ground into 'bin' and 'not bin' is blurred to say the least, there is rubbish everywhere!!

In the Other Country it was hot and dusty and there were very big cockroaches in the toilet (Blatta orientalis probably but she only found that out later). Cockroaches are fast and the princess had not learned how to kill them with her shoe. So, although she didn't like them, they continued to live happily in the toilet and make the princess jump, especially at night. The princess was unhappy about this and sometimes her man, the tall thin prince, would come and kill some for her; but there were a lot of them and he wasn't always there. Nor did he really understand what the problem with them was.. Although he didn’t like them, (nobody likes them surely?) cockroaches in the toilet were just an ordinary part of his life.

Sometimes, in the night, the prince was sleeping and the princess knew he was very tired so she would gather her courage and take the torch and go outside and down the path to the toilet alone. The movement of the cockroaches, that scuttling and darting around, and the way they looked, plus going outside into the dark, was beginning to seep into her dreams and cause her to sleep badly and wake afraid. The princess knew cockroaches cannot hurt you, but still her spirit recoiled from them and slowly the toilet became Cockroach Country in her mind and a terrible trial of her courage. There was a bucket, with a lid, inside their room, for the deepest part of the night but you cannot totally avoid a toilet, even when you have a bucket.

The toilet in question. The princess couldn't get any cockroaches to pose for their portraits but this is where they lived.

Where they were staying there was a problem with water. The well was contaminated and there was a tap, but the usual kind, the ‘mostly for looking at’ sort of tap, very common in The Hot Country. The princess was very small, and tired, and had not learned how to find water from a long way away and carry it home in the containers other people put on their heads and she couldn't even lift! The princess could sweep and clean, just like all women everywhere have to. But without enough water to wash herself, her clothes and her environment she was often a bit of a smelly princess. Because her prince didn’t know the area, and there were no family members nearby, he couldn’t help much with solving the problem of their being, quite seriously, an insufficient amount of water to be had.

There was a bit of a difference in what they considered to be ‘enough’ water for daily use and this had caused Marital Friction in the past. This time however, he agreed with the princess that there was Not Enough. The truth regarding the water situation hadn’t been fully revealed when renting negotiations had taken place and there was, indeed a Problem with not enough water. The well had been mentioned, the fact it was contaminated had not. Although concord over the water situation was nice, agreement with your lover always producing a warm glow; it didn’t make any difference to the lack of actual water, or anywhere much to get it from or anyone who would actually help. In the princess’ experience this was typical of the Other Place; you were often told about what there was but seldom informed of its inability to actually do the thing you were going to need it to do. Pointing this out seldom helped. The toilet, of course, was also the place you had a wash (only not very often in this case) and so the princess was very uncomfortable for several reasons. She was also becoming really quite smelly, because it was hot!

An Insuffiencient amount of water, in containers that are quite heavy to lift.

Chapter Two: How the Princess has Become Flat
Or: The Weight of Circumstance

The princess, and her man, the tall thin prince, were flat. Flat here, in the Other Place, means something a bit different: ‘flat out’ as in exhausted, discouraged, depressed, low in both mood and energy—deep in Cockroach Country with almost no hope of return. She hadn't always been flat, neither had the prince. Once she had been happy and lively and could dance and sing and play music and laugh with other people. But Circumstance, with all its weight, had flattened her, had flattened them both in fact.

The prince had put on the pantalons of resolution (trousers for the Anglophiles among you) and gone, yet again, to The Ministry. This was his daily attempt at achieving an impossible thing regarding a data error which was preventing him from entering the princess's country. The Bureaucratic Manoeuvre he was here to perform, and she was here to help with. Bureaucracy, with its rules about who could live where, was one of the main reasons they were flat. It was also dominating both of their lives at this point.

The prince, as you can see, is flat!

Her life was made difficult because of the absence of certain pieces of paper, some issues with her health, her housing, her work and her parents. Plus a difficult sibling situation and the very tricky Circumstances the prince had been forced to endure because of his association with her. Gradually his life had become eroded and this was a Hard Thing. The disappointments around him caused by the princess having no access to treasury funds and the stories of money falling from the sky meant that his friends and his family believed he was married to the bank and that he and the princess were living a fine life with all the money and clothes and gadgetry and fripperies their hearts desired.

This story wasn't the truth in any reality, but it was widely believed and over time people's mood moved from disappointment to anger. Why didn't the prince and princess share their money and their possessions, of which they must have an infinite supply? Why couldn't the princess bring everyone a smartphone? A car? A fridge? Some shoes? A magic box of some kind that would connect them to the Facebook, or Instagram, or any social media which would create instant (remunerative) contact to happen and build them a digital bridge to the land of opportunity and money falling from the sky? Why not buy a generator? Build some houses? One house even, they didn’t even have a house! Dig a well? Sort out a tap? Pay for all the children to go to school. There really were A Lot of children, belonging to family and friends. Too many to count easily and too many to all be helped to send to school, as school was not free in the Hot Country as it was in the place where the princess came from. Even where it was free there were transport costs, and books, and dinner money and those sort of expenses and money for these was difficult to find.

These are some of the families' children, only 3 of them currently have sponsors and so can go to school.

The princess had some friends who WERE paying for some of the children to go to school but there were always more children who needed this, needed shoes, needed feeding, needed a bicycle fixed or a football or just some small thing and surely the princess could help? Or the prince? Some of the children needed medicine, or hospital treatment and this was Very Expensive in the Other Place. Some of the grown-ups needed medicine too, or hospital treatment and although the princess had Fund Raised and helped as often as she could there were quite a lot of people in the prince's family and the Hot Countries were hard places to live, so people were often unwell. Aside from the usual Malaria, T.B and Yellow Fever botherations there were a host of problems associated with pregnancy and childbirth, issues caused by poor nutrition and not having had quite enough to eat since being born type problems. A whole host of Health Issues inside the princes’ family, some of whom had dies since he and the princess had been together, of things they would not have died from in the princess’ country. This was a painful and difficult situation for the princess and yet another thing she could do nothing about.

Everyone believed that because the princess came from a place where everyone has a Car and is rich, that money falls from the sky thing, and because she very obviously loved the tall prince, she must surely cover him with money every time she saw him; and send it too, by the case full. So why didn't he share it and where did he keep it? It was hard to find—people knew this, some of them had looked VERY hard. Some of them had searched his house, under his bed even, but all that was there was some dust, and the floor! Some of them searched his pockets when they saw him, but all they could find were small bits of money. The prince said he needed those for transport, for food, for his telephone so he could talk to the princess. They didn't believe him and they took those small bits of money whenever they could—because everybody knew he had LOADS somewhere (if only they could find it!)

So the years passed and the prince and princess got sadder and flatter and the prince got very thin. Not many people wanted to play music with them now because of a CD they had made. This had caused a slightly different money falling from the sky type problem. Everyone knows that if you take something to Europe and it gets on the internet it creates MASSES of money. There were resentments and tales of woe from some of the musicians they had worked with, who, despite very clear explanations, felt there was money being made that was not being shared. There had also been some workshops they had run in the Other Place, with students from the princess’ own country, and other European Nations, and these had caused similar issues, but that's a different story! Suffice to say their working lives in the Hot Country were beset by complications, resentments, unrealistic expectations and not much financial remuneration.

This is the CD (and a very fine piece of work it is too, purchasable through the Toumaranke website or on our bandcamp page if you should feel so inclined) that has caused some of the Unrealistic financial Expectations.

The princess was getting older and some of her teeth came out, which made it harder to eat. There was no money to get this fixed as she truly had no access to treasury funds and money doesn't really fall from the sky, in any country. Also her car broke down, her drums were ruined by moths, she broke her finger, was too flat to work and then her father had a stroke and she had to move away from the city by the sea where she had been happy for many, many years and live in another place with her mother and father who were now too old and ill to manage alone. Becoming A Carer and returning to live in the place she grew up had been a big change. The aforementioned problematic sibling situation, and lack of nearby friends, the Ebola epidemic, with some other, (less easily explainable) factors ruining musical tourism and thus the only financially viable part of the Princes and prince’s working lives, these were some of the underlying reasons for Cockroach Country becoming so unmanageable in her mind.

Because the princess wasn't really a princess her mother and father were not the king and queen. So although their house was nice, and they had several toilets, it’s true, without any cockroaches at all (and they were shining clean because the princess cleaned them) it wasn't very big and the princess had to sell and give away most of her things and live in one small room. So the years had passed and the princess got one of the gaps in her teeth fixed. That particular tooth had however, just come loose in the Other Place. She was now having some trouble with her stomach and her bones, especially her right hip and left knee, and then the tendon in her left ankle developed a problem and she wondered if she had accidentally fallen into another story...

The princess was rather worried that what with the tendonitis and all, that she may have fallen into the tale of the Little Mermaid… each step hurting like walking on cut glass, or a thousand needles, or hot coals, or whatever it was. Although that story has no cockroaches and the princess can't remember anyone being too hot in it, it does NOT end well as a love story so it just won't do!

The prince is fond of mermaids.

Turning her mind firmly away from mermaid comparisons the princess needs to find her courage (and the small kitchen knife, not really very useful for cockroaches, but vital for many other tasks). The tall prince, who so bravely set forth in the pantalons of resolution, is having some problems with the trafic and his phone, but will undoubtedly return with insecticide (having been reminded twice because he's not great at remembering at the best of times and this is so NOT The Best Of Times). The insecticide will help with the actual cockroaches and then all the princess has to do is deal with the metaphorical ones lodged in her psyche. Tricky but not impossible. Plus, she has been gifted a special magical jewel and various amazing powers, as yet to be revealed, by kind and loyal friends.