Red Jacket

by Mordecai, Pamela;

  Atule’s account is the story of a brave community, laughing and singing, praying and chanting, sustained by the call and response of purposeful work and instructional songs, the ululation of mourning, the priest’s and muezzin’s summonses to prayer. It argues stubbornly that the principle of double effect allows the use of condoms if one of two partners is infected, since in that case it is intended not to obstruct life, but to prevent death. Grace is thinking that he’s brave to take on Rome as well as powerful, ignorant politicians, when he rides up, parks his bike, and comes upstairs to the verandah, banana in one hand, loose condom in the other.

  “Isn’t that waving a red flag at a bull?” she jokes.

  “If the bull is oceans away, it’s not dangerous.” He chuckles briefly, reminding her of a younger Gramps. “I wanted to give you an example of what we do. It is simple, deals with the basics, and is easy for community workers to replicate.” He becomes subdued as he reports this, sombre even. “Also, it’s time for you to be back inside.”

  She’s stayed outside all afternoon. Now she knows what the buildings are, she can distinguish a big dome swelling in the pink sunset, and some of the small domes peering through the mango trees, the eyes of their double-baked bricks winking in the fading light. She closes the manuscript. “I’m on my way.” He waits on the verandah, no doubt meaning to watch her go in, but she isn’t ready yet. “Father ... Jimmy, I’m way behind. Would it hurt if I sit at my table a few minutes at a time to make notes?”

  He takes his time about replying. “I daresay it wouldn’t. But be sensible and don’t overdo it. For sure?”

  “For sure, Jimmy.” Luck is with her, so she bets again. “Do you think you’d have some time this weekend for a chat?”

  “I couldn’t say just yet.”

  “I’ll be up and about next week, won’t I? I was hoping to go with you on your rounds soon.” She adds, thinking it politic, “I’ll do as you say, of course.”

  “The chat is perhaps possible. For the up and about, we must wait and see.” He dithers a bit, then hazards, “You must please do some writing for me, then.”

  “Absolving you from blame if anything happens to me? Of course.”

  “Not that, no. I told my editor that you were going to be here. He said that I should ask you to write a foreword to the book.”

  She thought he was going to ask her to sign some kind of indemnity. It would be a very sensible rule. “Well, I’d …”

  “Don’t answer now. I’m truly embarrassed to bother you. I said no, but you know these people, they’ve don’t know what the word ‘importunate’ means.”

  “It’s no problem. I haven’t finished but I’ve enjoyed the story so far. If I don’t think I’m a good person to write the foreword, believe me, Jimmy, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you, Grace.”

  “So, what about the chat?” pressing her suit home.

  “I say Mass in three places on Sunday, but perhaps at the end of the day.”

  “Thanks very much. So may I go with you to the centre one day next week?”

  “Why don’t we leave it all for Sunday?”

  38

  Troubling Trouble

  He needs no more women in his life. His sisters, Alleme, now gone, Aisha, Ansile, and Angélique have always been a fistful, not to mention his Ma. He loves them with all his heart, which is easy, for they are generous, funny women, but they are still a big responsibility. Alleme, wife, mother, poet, and storyteller like Mapome, joined her grandma in the family plot in Benke at the start of the previous wet season. Aisha and her daughter are living with HIV/AIDS and so are on his radar, always, as is Alleme’s younger daughter. Ansile struggles with depression. Angélique, his baby sister is fine, thank God, but she has just started sociology at the university and is finding it a challenge. She plans to work at MATE.

  Many women at the centre are also in his mind and heart’s keeping: Sœurs Monique and Tekawitha; Amitié; the twins originally from the novitiate, Elise and Lili; the part-timers at the clinic — not to mention staff at the other centres. And there is Nila, near as his next breath. And of course, the women who come to MATE (there are men too, but mostly it is women) who have for six years made up his life!

  He gets into his clothes, scours his teeth, trims and scrubs his nails; he will shower later, after Mass. Stepping outside, he gazes north towards the gentle curl of the Bandiagara Escarpment visible in the distance, despite the haze — country of the Dogon, his mother’s people. Mabuli’s northwest border curves with the escarpment, then stretches southwest towards the River Bani, finally working its way south through savannahs, wriggling down to the border with Côte d’Ivoire.

  In the far north, a region of dry scrubland dwindles into the great desert out of which come traders, mostly Tuareg, a people restive, aggressive and, when, as now, they judge it fit, rebellious. His father claims ancestry with Kel Tamasheq, through Mapome’s forebears — Mapome, whom he still mourns, who told a tale about her great-great-grandfather entertaining a short white king in his tent near the shores of the Red Sea, Sea of Qulzum, the Great Water. Not everyone believed his forebear met Napoleon, but they were rapt each time Mapome detailed the appointments in Atunkle’s tent, so opulent they overwhelmed the emperor of ashen skin.

  It is true one Professor Egbert Johnson, an Englishman who was a member of Napoleon’s team of scholars, returned to Mabuli with Atunkle, but less certain that he was responsible for disseminating the English language long before the French came. Jimmy prefers another tale, about the Tellem people who lived on the Bandiagara before the Dogon, and who, it was believed, could fly. When some Tellem youth were stolen and sold to slave traders, a group of holy men flew to the coast and snatched an equal number of white men, depositing them in the desert north of Mabuli. They turned out to be English. Those who survived made their way south to barter and then intermarry with Mabuli clans, bringing the gifts of blood and language at once.

  As so often happens, the truth very likely lay somewhere between legend and history, but he treasures the myth of the avenging holy men who inadvertently made a present to the country of the English language. Like him, many young Mabulians are happy to be proficient in it. Often people will code switch, speaking French one minute, English the next. As a Jesuit in training, Jimmy had been glad of his fluency.

  Thickets of kinkeliba and bakin gumbi spotting the steppes remind him of the dwindling benefits of the last wet season. Mabulians farm the green belt that runs south of the scrubland, continuing farther south over low hills, and then across flat country, ending in forested ranges near Côte d’Ivoire. On the Oti’s counsel, farmers keep faith with Mabuli’s sandy soils, inter-cropping annuals and perennials, employing neem, gum arabic, and balanzan trees to improve crop yields. For bees especially, the balanzans are vital. His father, Andri, was once a farmer growing sorghum on land in Oubisi, a town towards the south. As a boy, Jimmy worked in those fields. He also minded the family goats, for farmers were often pen-keepers as well, raising some sheep but mostly goats. Like many others, the Atules kept them for milk, cheese, and meat, but Pa Atule had grander plans and went into keeping pens for gain.

  The Atules’ migration to Benke, the capital in the north, was not desperate. Having learned many lessons from the droughts, his father wanted to form co-operatives for both pen-keepers and farmers. Benke was the obvious place to set them up, for in Benke everything and everyone are to be found. The co-operatives never got off the ground, and his father turned, disappointed, to buying and selling. The Atules grew rich from trading.

  Now Jimmy stretches his ears past the clinic, trying to discover the bleating of MATE’s own herd of goats. From Oubisi days, he’s been a fan of goats, “because” his mother always claims, “you and they have so much in common! Stubborn and stink!” He checks his watch. He has a minute to reach the chapel. He’ll steal some seconds to pause on his way past the visitor’s room. Tiptoeing near the window, he slows down to listen. “Boy child,�
�� he can again hear his Mama Makda say, as she pinches his ears, “rank as a goat, with antennae keen as a bat’s!”

  Grace Carpenter’s exhalations are steady, regular, so he presses on to the chapel, his emotions contrary. It bothers him that he doesn’t have more cordial feelings towards Dr. Carpenter, partly, he admits, because of what he may have to tell her in due course. In the small sanctuary he robes for Mass, giving thanks for all the women who stitch amice and alb, chasuble and stole, who see them prepared every day. His mother is one. He remembers the tiny needle prick on the day of his first Mass. They had that custom in St. Chris too: if you mend a garment on a person, you give them a little jab.

  He counts hosts into the ciborium, for the six communicants: Monique, Tekawitha, Ousmain, Amitié, Elise, Lili. Then he sits in the chapel to consider again the events that brought him to this place, and his life since. If Dr. Carpenter has a reason for not telling her baby’s father, it is none of his business, although no one is more aware than he why the father ought to know she is pregnant. He thinks of all his orphan babies. Dr. Carpenter may be a bright woman and a senior bureaucrat, but he has no doubt about who is in control as things stand. They will do what is necessary to secure her wellbeing and that of the baby. If that means she has to stay close to her room till it is safe to travel to Geneva, so be it. He isn’t his father’s son for nothing.

  It is his tea break, ten stolen minutes before going to give classes to community workers at the centre. He blows on the hot liquid, reflecting. Their visitor hadn’t known she was pregnant. He’s yet to come across a woman at MATE who didn’t know she was making a baby. Amitié, who runs the main house, arrived at Tindi self-diagnosed. A fusillade of thumps on his door early one morning brought him out of bed, sure the house was on fire. She wasn’t twenty, her face and body a mosaic of cuts, scabs, and bruises.

  “Vous êtes le prêtre, Atule?”

  “C’est moi.”

  “Je suis enceinte, et j’ai aussi le SIDA. C’est mon mari. He gave the baby and The Skinny to me.”

  “Come,” he led her inside, through the corridor, down to the room they sometimes used as a surgery. Whatever else might be wrong, she was severely beaten. Ousmain slept on the floor on his mat at the T-junction of the corridors. He nudged the young man awake.

  “Find Sœur Monique, vite!”

  They spent two hours cleaning her wounds, stitching, bandaging, plastering, patching up her body.

  “Did you report this?” Monique asked her.

  “How can I? It is my husband’s doing.”

  “You can report it to the Oti,” the nun insisted. “Your clan chief must take it to them, if you inform him.”

  “Ce n’est rien. Heal my baby. Give me the chance to bring him up.”

  “But why did he do this?” pressed Monique, a terrier, bone in her teeth.

  “He was away. He went with whores. I tell him no sex. You are sick.”

  “What did he say?”

  “ ‘The day I bought you, you swallowed the word “no.” I will show you that you cannot vomit “no” upon me.’ ”

  Neither Jimmy nor Monique saw how she could be so sure she had AIDS.

  After a week at the centre she came to Monique. “Je vais bien, oui?”

  “Yes, your cuts and bruises are healing well, Amitié.”

  “Je partirai demain. I cannot go to my home, but my place is needed for those more sick.” It was true. A dozen new people came to Tindi each day.

  “Where will you go? What about your children?”

  “Ma mère. She is strong. That man will not cross her. The twin healing women say a grandmother in town is dying. Her body is full of sores, and no one wants to look after her. I will care for her in return for lodging and food. The priest says maybe I can have the test in Benke. I pray it may be so.”

  She tested HIV-positive. Her baby came on the date she’d named. In between, she stuck to her plan, guarding her health, tending the old woman until she died. After that Monique suggested they try her out at the centre.

  Jimmy asked Amitié how it was she knew that she had the disease.

  “This body is my home. I know if there’s a guest or if the building needs repair.” Perhaps he should ask Amitié to consult in the case of Dr. Carpenter.

  39

  La Sage-femme or The Midwife

  “You look tired, Jimmy.”

  “I am, for sure. But I’m good for the discussion, as promised.”

  “Do you always say Sunday Mass in more than one place?”

  “Almost always.”

  “So you’re never back here before nightfall on a Sunday?”

  “Not often. But I made you a promise.”

  “You spend most time in the Tindi centre?”

  “I visit one other centre two days each week. I’m in Tindi otherwise, except of course on Sundays.”

  “Are all the centres like this one? The domed brick structures are beautiful, but they’re not typical, are they?”

  “Certainly for Mabuli, these days, typical enough. But it’s so in other places too. Perhaps a decade ago we realized we couldn’t afford to build with adobe and timber anymore. We had too few trees. The Mabenke gives mud; we can fire clay as well as anyone. We must use what we have wisely. That includes time. What can I tell you?”

  “I’ve big and little questions. Maybe we could tackle both?”

  “This is entirely business, then?”

  “Yes. If I can’t be up and about, at least we can talk. I’ve learned a lot from your book.”

  “Not a book yet, but God willing, soon. Shall we start?”

  “When you consider how to deal with HIV/AIDS in Sahelian Africa, what first comes to mind?”

  “Political will.”

  “You mean strong government policy?”

  “I mean it much more broadly. Every citizen. You. Me. Our parents, our siblings, our families.”

  “Has your family played a part in this work, Jimmy?”

  “I’d certainly not have got involved, were it not for my family.”

  “How come?”

  “I won’t tell you the whole story but it began with our discovering, after one of my brothers-in-law died, that my sister was also HIV-positive. She died too.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you. It was just after my ordination. It led me to this work.”

  “You’ve been very successful in implementing community-based education and treatment here, through the MATE Centres. You know they are our primary interest at WHO.”

  “I do. But ours is a small effort and Mabuli a small country, so I wonder why you ask me big questions. I’d do better with little ones, like how much easier delivering babies would be if we had running water through Harmattan!”

  “Let’s compromise. I’ll accept your quirky definition of political and look forward to hearing how Mabuli’s citizens made a difference, if you’ll admit that the folks we usually call political did come on board. They must have.”

  “Okay. I admit it. They did.”

  “What made them so discerning? Many African countries haven’t addressed the disease with enough seriousness. Did Mabuli policymakers know a lot about HIV/AIDS? Did they know of the studies using Tanzanian data, for instance?”

  “I knew of them, and a few other people, but that’s not what made the difference. I’d say God’s grace is what did it.”

  “Well, I’m all for God’s grace, but please tell me how it showed itself.”

  “The chiefs of our largest clans lost their eldest sons, one this week, one the next, one the week after.”

  “Good grief, Jimmy! How awful! That’s hardly grace! Sounds like Old Testament vengeance, with first-born sons slaughtered and similar horrors.”

  “Clan leadership passes through eldest sons. The deaths of those three had a profound, immediate effect. It was a bad thing out of which came a good one. That can be grace too. And number three is very significant in our culture.”

 
; “But did they know it was HIV/AIDS?”

  “There’s knowing and knowing. The three princes’ deaths forced people, the Oti included, to admit the fact of the disease and to recognize it as HIV/AIDS.”

  “Aaah! The Oti! Mabuli’s umbrella council of religious leaders.”

  “Forgive me! I’ve not asked how you are feeling. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Excellent.”

  “For sure, Grace?”

  “For sure, Jimmy.”

  “Good. We can go on, then. Back to political, in your sense: I suppose, ironically, we could say the Oti fit the political bill.”

  “You mention the Oti often in the book.”

  “The Oti need a book to themselves. They include imams, shamans, priests, and marabouts from many belief systems. The organization is quite unique.”

  “That’s a pretty motley crew.”

  “It is. Nature bound them together, long ago, or God, if you wish.”

  “Bound them together how?”

  “It’s a long story, myth some would say, involving our Kenbara Stone Circle, perhaps best saved for another time.”

  “Tell me more about the Oti.”

  “The Oti account for much of our success. Their wisdom extends to all aspects of life in Mabuli: the relative advantages of growing millet over sorghum; habits that make for good hygiene; water conservation; sound agricultural practice.”

  “That’s most unusual.”

  “The Oti also have strong influence on our ruling classes — chiefs, elders, elected officials — politicians, as you say.” The priest smiles, lifting his chin, raising his eyebrows, blinking, St. Chris style.

  “Your father is a clan chief, isn’t he?”

  “Yes. It’s a small clan. He was frantic after Alleme’s husband died. When AIDS took Munti, Pa and I insisted my sisters and their families be tested. Some tested positive. His frenzy galvanized him. All of us.”