Whenever a nation grows sleepless with worry, its soul turns into a single human being who spends the wakeful night thinking of ways to solve its problems. On any given night you could find at least two or three souls thus engaged, if you knew where to look. Sometimes they try to put their heads together, but more often that's an excuse to gossip for hours. Chad and Haiti are paying lip service, at least, to the issue of charcoal production's environmental consequences.

Chad is in a tepid bubble bath, his bony knees towering over undulating white foam. The bathroom is dimly lit and a lace curtain flits in and out of the window in the restless breeze. He is talking on the speaker phone and tapping the side of the tub with one big toe in time to some perky dance music wafting up from the street. A small black and white TV tuned to CNN sits on a ladderback chair pulled from the kitchen. And for additional stimulation of the creative process, Chad sips from a china teacup balanced on the edge of the tub.

Chad and Haiti, whenever they find themselves transformed together on the same night, like to choose five socioeconomic problems to mull over. One of the five has to be something they have in common, and tonight it's charcoal. In both countries, poor people desperate for
cash and energy are rapidly reducing the forests to stumps, the bird-filled skies to a smoky pall. But how can you forbid the practice when a man wordlessly points to his hungry children, and with his eyes pledges to defy you? Some, maybe many, of the charcoal burners understand that they are sowing the seeds of their own destruction, but they see no way out.

And that is what Chad and Haiti are commiserating about. When sleep eludes a nation, its millions thrash and murmur in their beds. Visions of bankruptcy, war, and humiliation taunt them -- life itself becomes a bad comedian and they its captive audience. Communal misery
robs them of their individual dreams and forges a shared soul. This soul could be forgiven for at times retreating to a warm bath.

"I can't help but feel that these problems are connected," Chad is saying. "That to conquer one of them is to overcome them all, eventually if not immediately." He sips his tea noisily, excited by this new insight.

"I can't help but feel that you are the prince of wishful thinking," Haiti purrs, as she admires her freshly lacquered nails on the veranda thousands of miles away, and laughs lightly, without malice. She rotates her hand and the tips flash in the oil lamp's honey-colored light.

Chad puffs out his cheeks in annoyance, then frowns and sits up to hear the television. The news is startling. "A man has become a country!" he informs Haiti.

"What? Where?"

"They say a man suffering from narcolepsy has transformed himself into the soul of a troubled country. It's extraodinary. It says...Apparently his disorder cost him his job at a pin factory, and he came home and fell into a deep sleep; he was dreaming of a strange interview for an urgent vacancy, they're saying, and he's now -- hey! Hey! he can't do that!" spluttered the newly-deposed soul of Chad.

Haiti was stunned, and uneasy. "What...what will you do?" she wondered.

"The thieving bastard! He can't -- well, I suppose I have no idea," he admitted, baffled. "Take more bubble baths? Drink more tea?"

"There's an opening at a pin factory," Haiti reminded him.

"But that's so banal, so boring!"

"Exactly so," she agreed. "It will bore you to sleep. And the charcoal burners will keep the new soul awake, and one night -- poof! You trade places again."

Thus the unforeseen sixth problem proved not insoluble.

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