Read Online You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers - Free Book Online

into the airport.
                "This is an African airport," he said.
                It was tiny, and open everywhere. It looked like a minimall. We sat on the cool linoleum floor and filled out our customs forms. When I was done, Hand rested his head on the wall.
                "I can't believe I got to Africa," he said.
                "I know," I said.
                "How did we get to Africa?" he said. "Already I don't want to leave. Did you feel that air? It's different. It's African air. It's like mixed with the sun more. Like our air isn't mixed as well with the sun. Here they mix it perfectly. The sun's in the wind, the sun's in your breaths."
                "I'm glad you could come," I said.

                We passed customs and the cabbies didn't touch us because we had no bags. Carradine was talking to a young lacy white woman, Blanche on holiday, too fair-skinned and fragile to be both traveling alone and sane. What was she doing here? Hair like dead brown grass.
                A large Senegalese woman in brilliant yellow appeared before us and asked us something.
                "What?" we said.
                "Wheech otel?"
                "The Independent," Hand said, cribbing it from a huge backlighted ad above us.
                "I take you," she said, pointing to a small bus out front. We asked her if we could get some money first. "Fine," she said, with an annoyed look at her watch. We were hers already, her children, and we were holding her up.
                We cashed $2,000 in traveler's checks -- swoop! swik! swoop! - - and stopped into the bathroom to hide it. I gave half the stack to Hand, who split it five times and found pockets for each portion. I buried stacks in pockets, in my backpack, in my socks, under my soles.
                We stepped up into the bus. We were its only passengers. The woman sat next to the driver, and the driver never spoke.
                The landscape on the way into the city was dry and dusty, the color of stripped pine. The road gave way to shoulders of sand and adobe homes, condos next to shanties, the condos given ears by hundreds of small satellite dishes. Billboard PSAs featured Senegalese citizens frowning upon littering and public urination, and encouraged the drinking of milk. The road was busy with small blue buses and BMWs. Two cops rode by on matching scooters.
                When the minibus stopped at a light our open windows were full of faces, mothers with babies walking up and down the highway median pointing into their infants' tiny mouths.
                "Bebbe! Bebbe!" they yelled. Boys below them hawked candy and mobile phones. The babies were swarmed by flies. Everything was too fast. We weren't ready.
                "Give em something!" Hand yelled.
                "You!"
                "You!"
                Cars came the other way at 50 mph. We had money and wanted to give it to them -- That's the point of all the traveler's checks, idiot! I know! -- but I was confused, everything had been too sudden, and I was preoccupied by the traffic, the babies were too close -- and so managed only to smile at them apologetically, like a locksmith who'd failed to open a door. I moved in from the window and sat on the aisle, shrinking.
                "Bebbe! Bebbe!"
                The shuttle woman was watching us struggle. Why wasn't she telling us not to give them money? She was supposed to tell us not to give them money. We expect guides to ward off their needy countrymen. Now the driver was watching, too. I smiled more and tried to look confused, flustered. I was innocent! Hand was looking flustered with me, though he was still only half-awake and his bedhead was ridiculous but finally the shuttle lurched forward and we drove on, until the highway