Ndong.

Between Abanga and Ndjolé there are places where the train has no official stop: no platform, no sign with a name, nothing in the schedule that mentions it. People stand at the edge of the track with a kerosene lamp or the flashlight of a phone switched on, and Ndong brakes. Nobody has ever forbidden it in writing, and nobody has asked him to do it either. He waits while people load their bundles, counts who gets on, and starts moving again. It's the line people know him by all along the route, and he says it like he's giving an instruction: show me the light, and I'll stop. If you've ever lit up a train with your phone, you know not all of them stop.

Mandrills groom each other a lot, but not everyone equally: they groom group-mates with intestinal parasites less, and they detect them by smell. When a research team dewormed the affected ones, the group went back to grooming them normally. In his story, Ndong's mother, Mengue, counts the days out loud in front of him — "the fourteenth was a month ago" — and falls silent. He answers with the date of his next day off, and both things are left understood.