The early evening air felt close-to-comfortable. The little balls of West African heat that had seeped into everything during the day, like the fine red dust that did the same, rested, stayed still.

Sten Hendricks hunched in the splintery wood chair the village carpenter had made for him, bringing his eyes close to the five small, dirty uncut diamonds in his palm. One of his chickens scrambled into the mud hutch at the corner of his yard, which Sten had made with the help of his village friend Moussa, where it would spend the night on the bamboo roost that hung over the floor of straw and feces.

Moussa sat on a stool a few feet from him, legs crossed, swinging the one on top. He wore a traditional robe, dark blue, the length of his body, and gnawed on a fibrous stick to clean his teeth. Strips of wood stuck on his lips. “Stey,” he started, not saying the final “n.” “You have to go back to Ameriki, for good.” He spoke in Banofa, the language Sten had learned over the past two and a half years he’d spent in the village, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and more recently on his own, as he started to buy gems from local miners. “It will be much worse next time.”

“Don’t you think it will hurt a little less when I have enough money to eat American dollar bills for dinner?” Sten asked, only a hint of a smile in his dry way. He rubbed his scraggly red beard, which covered shallow acne scars.

Sten eyes floated over to Amina, who stood near the entrance to his compound. She was the youngest, and most beautiful, of Moussa’s three wives. She watched Sten, her loose fist covering her mouth, almond-shaped eyes wide. He looked at her breasts, covered by her worn yellow t-shirt.

Sten’s nose throbbed; the skin on its bridge felt smooth, swollen, pulled tight. Moussa brought out from under his robe, like a magician, a small mirror, the reflective part made out of some kind of plastic. He handed it to Sten, who grabbed it and looked at his reflection.

He pulled back after he saw his red nose and the starting-to-turn brown-purple-black-yellow sacks under his eyes. “It will be worse next time. That’s what they were telling you,” Moussa said. He left the mirror in Sten’s hand, sat back down and yelled Amina’s name without turning his head toward her.

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