Seidu was crazy. He was dangerous. Numerous incidents support these statements; how he got us thrown off a bus in the middle of nowhere for insulting the driver's mate, how he started a very bloody machete fight in front of a crowd of children one Easter sunday, how he held a taunt slingshot loaded with a big stone in front of my face because I wouldn't buy him gin one morning, how he threatened to disembowel an old farmer who complained because he trampled the cassava. I could go on but it's all in the past and maybe best forgotten.

One day Seidu found a white lizard.I wasn't there and I only heard about it six months later when we met. He dug it out of a hole on a riverbank. Usually nobody wants to buy that species of lizard there because of a law forbidding their export, but there was a lot of interest in this one because it was white. I don't remember exactly how much he sold it for, it was somewhere between 5 and 10 US$. I was too uneasy about his volatile temper to tell him what i thought it was worth, but I told him that if he ever found another he should call me and let me negotiate a price in the US or Japan.

He never did find another white lizard. A couple of years later he went to work on construction sites in Spain, and a few years after that I heard that he had killed somebody and was in prison. Last week I saw a pair of albino mampam advertised for $25,000. The older animal was said to be eight years old, so maybe it was the one that Seidu had caught. I'm glad he won't see the advert. It's all in the past and maybe best forgotten.