My time with the African monk.

My time with the African monk.

My time with him was over a course of ten months. Some would say it felt longer given the situations I often found myself in during our time together, but I don’t regret a moment of it.

I had been working the same dead-end airport job since I had entered the work force after graduating from high school.  

A job working for a contract for profit corporation cleaning airplanes and finding out that dreams of performing in the arts were not only limited, but in their own way, foolish. 

Never the less, I worked this job and came in contact with all so rt people, from immigrants hailing from countries I couldn’t hardly pronoun in those days to retired work veteran looking to make something of their time before actual retirement settled in. This was absolute. We were contractors.  We were to work for the airline, but not as airline employees. 

The average airline worker was someone nearing or coming out of their prime in the work force.  People who would just showed up and did their time for the next paycheck and not need extra steps like green cards or doctor’s notes. All of them milling pass each other in safety vest bright orange and highlight yellow. One of them, a boy I came to one day call a close friend, was merely a shy individual back then. He and I bonded over the usual millennial trends, trading card games, video games, and the popular television series “Archer” because of the hilarious usage of word comedy.

It had to have been four years I had been at that job when we meet and after the occasional hang out, he proposes a living arrangement when I needed new accommodations from my previous residence. His mother had decided to rent out the house they had lived in for years and was relocating to another state. The living conditions were simple. He and I were to share the house with a third tenant and split the rent three ways. 

The idea was to still attend my online college for my bachelor’s degree while laying low as far as using my credit to secure a place to stay by way private agreements between landlords looking to rent a room. I would quit my job working at the airport and go into working with my father and grandfather on a delivery contract. As it turned out, I was already familiar with the family as I had attended high school along with my friend’s older sister. A girl who I fondly remember being entertained by my wacky stories just as her brother would be years later doing sanitation duties on Delta Airline flight alongside me. Small world I guess.

The house was lovely and charming. It reminded me of my grandmother’s house in Louisiana. My friend’s mother, who I’m sure to this day felt that I talked entirely too much, was a fair and just landlord and her tenant she had planned to move in with her son and I was someone that would come to be called “The African Monk”. 

Aiuwetu was a libra like me, and that would be the first fact about him that comes to mind. He wore clothes made by people who frequent the West End area of Atlanta I’m sure and he had a kindness that gave you a warmth and calmness during conversations. He had dreads grey as the clouds that blossomed in the sky during time there. Blue eyes that maintained skeptical when he was told about trends going on in the modern world. 

He was from a simpler time. A time he found in old television reruns and talks I had with him while being fascinated by his ability to seem wise and be wise. A skill few men his age could have done.

I remember when going to sleep and shaking his hands how soft they were. Not to say they had no business being soft but the simple fact that they were always threw me.