I looked everywhere for Jacko. I looked around the sides of the 50 gallon water drum in the bathroom (not inside it as it has a lid), amongst the many shoes on the low level shoe stand in one of the two corridors inside the house. I checked out the lounge and the two reclining armchairs that form part of the large corner settee unit. I even went back into the pantry. I wondered where Mr. Jacko could be. Maybe he had made it outside? The single storey house forms a square with a hollow in the middle. A bit like the British squares during the Napoleonic Wars of 1815. The small hollow has some vegetation and each of two of the walls have windows with the steel rods and mosquito nets, while the third is open brickwork that lets through the air but is also covered with a fixed mosquito net. The door to the small square garden is in two parts, the first part is a lockable door and the second is a mosquito net door. The weather had been extremely hot for me, and my hosts had opened the locked door to allow more fresh air into the house. Maybe Mr. Jacko had decided to venture in the garden. Although this was not a European garden, as for us it would serve no practical purpose. There were no flowers as such, and the area was too small to sit out in, or to grow vegetables. But in Africa this small square served a particularly useful purpose; it was a source of cool air.
I wandered back to the bedroom, and there he was. Not singing, but frozen to the wall just above my knee height and to my left. Mr. Jacko had returned! He moved, first left then right, across the wooden door surround and then back again onto the wall and down towards the blue carpet. It was not quite moonwalking, but these were crazy moves. Jacko was back in town, and I was really glad.
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