The Gurugu Pledge

by Juan Tomas Avila Laurel

  ‘We don’t eat snakes in my family.’

  ‘It is not expressly forbidden in mine, but maybe I was getting carried away.’

  ‘Well, friend, what can I say? This is some acoté we’ve had. But I have to get going, find out what’s going on with my team.’

  ‘Okay, but just let me ask you something: Do you think we have spoken like true Africans?’

  ‘I don’t know. How are true Africans supposed to speak?’ the man from Zambezi asked, puzzled.

  ‘Are we Africans not supposed to be practical people? Is there not something we should do as a consequence of our long discussion?’

  ‘How about I reply with an African proverb?’

  ‘Is concealing our wisdom not part of the problem?’ said Peter. ‘Would it not be hypocritical?’

  ‘No, friend, I don’t think so,’ said the man from the Zambezi. ‘The proverb, whose authorship has long since been forgotten, although it can be traced way back to the first inhabitants of the Zambezi basin, goes like this: If you get lost in the forest and don’t hear friendly voices calling you home, perhaps you shouldn’t have left your house in the first place.’

  ‘And what does it mean?’

  ‘It’s an old African proverb: if I explained it, we’d be here a very long time.’

  ‘Okay, brother, but maybe we can have another acoté another day?’ said Peter, trying to read the other man’s expression.

  ‘Yes, friend, let’s do that,’ said the man from the Zambezi.

  ‌

  ‌V

  So as not to fear the worst on Gurugu, you had to be as positive as the young Malian who’d traded verbal blows with his Gambian counterpart. He’d spoken of having a profession and he’d finished by saying that what went on in Gambia was better described in Latin. He was alluding to a song sung the world over, and indeed the young Malian sang it to his Gambian colleague, playfully and ironically, of course:

  Gaudeamus igitur,

  iuvenes dum sumus.

  Post iucundam iuventutem,

  post molestam senectutem,

  nos habebit humus.

  Following the Marshall Plan, and after huge efforts had been made to forget about all the bombs dropped on bad guys in two successive wars, great wars no less, Europe began to recover, Great Britain included. As the recovery gathered pace, Europeans acquired special powers to put a price on agricultural products they couldn’t grow themselves, and never would be able to grow, even if they turned entire countries into giant greenhouses. In this fashion, they lowered the price of the humble peanut, and with it all its by-products, and in this fashion the poor Gambians got poorer, because, through accident and design, the peanut was their most important product, the thing they most sold abroad. So, in order to survive, the Gambians resorted to tourism. Come and visit me, although I’ve no peanuts for you to spread on your bread, and no bread either in fact, for wheat won’t grow in our humid climate. Englishwomen emerged from the Marshall Plan empowered, but many a young Englishman had perished on the battlefield and those who hadn’t were busy dealing with the repercussions of having survived. Life was very different for an eighteen-year-old lad in Banjul. If the experience of dropping bombs on Dresden had left young Englishmen weary, then all the better for the young men of Banjul, for whom tourism was manna, a desert miracle that might now develop into something tastier besides. So let’s sing the verse again, Gaudeamus igitur/ iuvenes dum sumus/ Post iucundam iuventutem/ post molestam senectutem,/ nos habebit humus. But of course! Why stay in London shivering in the cold and suffering from crises of the domestic, intimate and hormonal kind, when the peanut price has plummeted and you could be enjoying tourist packages over there, packages considered too extreme in some countries? Indulge in a bit of tourism while you still can, before time catches up with you once and for all.

  ‘Young man, do you take Dalila to be your wife, in sickness and in wealth? I’ll skip the death do us part bit, for it’s self-evident.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘And you, Dalila, do you take Okumuru Osong for a husband, to have and to hold, in good times and in bed?’

  ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘Then in the name of the Lord Almighty, I pronounce you man and wife. You may now kiss the bride,’ announced the priest. ‘I said, you may now kiss the bride.’

  ‘Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!’ chanted the assembled well-wishers.

  ‘Hey, why are they taking so long to kiss?’ said someone who’d been passing by and called in as a witness, witness to a spectacle that was astonishing, but now commonplace in Banjul.

  ‘You have to be motivated, I guess, sufficiently motivated,’ the other witness replied. ‘Because the bride …’

  ‘What about the bride?’ said the first witness.

  ‘Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss-kiss! K. I. S. S! K. I. S. S! Kissssssssssssssssssss! Kissssssssssssssssssssssssss! Kissssssssssssssssssssssssss!’

  ‘What about the bride? Oh, nothing, the price of peanuts fell, that’s all. When the peanut price falls, the first kiss takes a little while coming.’

  ‌

  ‌VI

  The man accused of being Omar’s accomplice was Aliko Dangote, or at least that’s the name he went by. He hadn’t acquired mythical status like his associate, and his backstory wasn’t nearly as colourful, maybe because he grew up somewhere without a river and a parish priest in charge of a choir. But he still had a history, of course, and what he was accused of ensured that his past went under the magnifying glass. Indeed Gurugu nearly burned because of it.

  That’s when the decision was taken to suspend the football tournament, something that would not have happened for no good reason, given the times they were living through. The same good reason was why two Gurugu residents had to ask for something their sisters needed when they went into the villages to beg for food. They were told they’d have to try a shop, because in the houses they called at nobody used the item scribbled down on a piece of paper. Besides, why would a woman, be she a Moroccan local or a visiting Bedouin, a Spanish señorita escaped from Cádiz or a French mademoiselle enchanted by the Barbary coast, wish to share personal information about being on her period or having reached the menopause or had a hysterectomy or whatever, with two black male strangers? The two men went back up the hill empty-handed, or without the item in question at least, for they had two potatoes and a handful of onions, a few of which they had to give to the men who welcomed newcomers to the camp and made decisions.

  After the first match had been suspended, the tension grew and rumours took root in different corners of the camp. The mood was so fraught that a lot of people forgot about the circumstances they lived in, the precarious nature of their existence and the severity with which the Kingdom of Morocco’s police were prone to act. If tempers flared in the camp, the police would have the perfect excuse for a crackdown and their actions would go totally uncontested. No dissenting voices would come from the north or south, there would be silence from the west and if the east managed a murmur of protest, it would soon be drowned out by bigger news, a mass shipment of cocaine seized in a nearby port perhaps.

  The four-nations tournament didn’t take place because before the sun had come up on the Algerian horizon, an incident had occurred in one of the caves at the top, a cave known as the residence. It was occupied by a mixture of old hands and new arrivals from greener parts of Africa. Yes, green. In that cave there were many men and a few women. All the floor space was occupied, but an uneasy harmony held, at least until the first match was suspended and home truths had to be confronted. A veil had been drawn over something from the start, and there was a will to likewise shield its ending. In other words, the residents wished to deal with the consequences in the dark, out of sight from indiscreet eyes.

  As night drew in and teeth began to chatter, four men made their way down the mountain carrying two women on their backs. They came from the residence, but took a loop and went the long way r
ound. They weren’t trying to hide what they were doing, but they didn’t want to invite unnecessary questions: the fewer questions they had to answer, the quicker they would reach their destination. Two women carried on the backs of two men, with two other men ready to take turns. They were going in search of help, help for the women, who were unwell.

  The women became unwell after the cave had become so crowded that no one else would fit in it, there was no more floor space. The next arrivals would have to look elsewhere, or build tents out of whatever they could find. ‘I’m going to lie down here next to you, Shania, no disrespect to you and your husband, I don’t mean to be so close, but there’s no alternative, the tent distribution scheme hasn’t reached us yet, so don’t mind me.’ A moment’s silence, then ‘Fine, just don’t mind what you see, brother.’ That was the deal, man-to-man, a deal in which the husband was complicit, although at the time some people thought he was the brother, Shania’s older brother, and so he got to decide things for her, as that was the way things were and were meant to be. And so a veil was drawn over certain activities. The residents began to detect odours that surface when adult men cross a large desert and end up on an isolated mountain. But there was a veil.

  A veil. Sniff, I smell someone’s insides, or something rotten. There are a lot of men in here, of course, and there are even two women, but don’t women have a better sense of smell than men? Why don’t the women complain? Yes, why don’t they complain if I’m about to? Something stinks around here, something hidden, I don’t know what it is, but it gets worse at night. I’m going to have to go to the mouth of the cave to get some air. It smells there too, but not so bad you can’t sleep.

  ‘What is that awful smell?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t know, what do you think it is?’

  Well, there are no wash facilities for women and we’ve got two who’ve travelled through a desert to get here. What little water we have is for drinking, and it’s cold. If there were a big bucket, maybe we could fill it with water, warm it on the fire and the women could take turns showering. But there is no big bucket, so our noses bristle and detect a certain scent.

  ‘Overcrowding, brother.’

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Despair.’

  ‘And what else?’

  Well, nobody will say it, but the smell is particularly strong near sister Shania, the nearest person to me in the cave.

  ‘The lack of water. If there were a river where everyone could—’

  ‘Ah, if there were a river of warm water we’d be the happiest blacks in Africa. But there isn’t. Shall we raise the matter with our brothers?’

  ‘I’d rather not, I don’t wish to speak ill of our sisters.’

  ‘I don’t wish to speak ill of anybody.’

  For the inhabitants of Gurugu, the lack of everything was a constant, but that one of the women was suffering badly from a lack of water became impossible to ignore.

  ‘So, what are we going to do? It’s too cold to abandon the cave and sleep outside.’

  ‘Let’s say something to her brother in private.’

  ‘Somebody already has.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  Such was the state of affairs the day the match was suspended. Everyone, in their own particular way, sought reasons for the suspension. Very few people knew of the expedition down the hill, two women carried on two men’s backs. The women were very sick. They’d been sick for several days, had got gradually worse and were finally carried down the hill in the dark. When they got to the lower reaches of the mountain, they made their presence felt: they wanted the authorities, any authorities, anyone with power, including the Moroccan forestry police, to hear them, to ask them what they were doing and listen to their story, to pity them and take the two women to hospital, where their ills would have been diagnosed and they would have received help. But the men either took the wrong path or simply weren’t seen or heard by the authorities, any authorities. They got all the way down the hill and as far as the main gate to the brightest of the nearby towns, but as they approached the gate there was a bend in the track and they were suddenly blinded by the powerful light of a torch.

  ‘What are you doing down here? Why’s your back covered in blood? What filthy shit have you been up to now?’

  ‘No, brother, please, we have been carrying two sick women, we are taking them to the—’

  ‘Taking them where? What makes you think there’s a hospital for blacks anywhere in this country?’

  ‘Our sisters are very sick, we’ve no medicine for them.’

  ‘We’ve no medicine for them either. And anyway, you can’t walk along these paths at night, you know the rules.’

  ‘We do, but they are seriously sick, please, for the love of God.’

  ‘Liars! Get back! Where are these sick women anyway?’

  ‘Right behind us, carried by two of our brothers. Please!’

  ‘Please? Kidnap and human trafficking are serious crimes.’

  The forestry police proved to be in a particularly vindictive mood that night. Their wickedness was given free rein as they got out their truncheons and showed off their guns, and then used them. Used them with pleasure and impunity. They did whatever they wanted, whatever popped into their twisted heads, and it was ugly. Two of the men managed to escape, leaving the other two, along with the two women, alone in enemy territory. The women never made it to a health centre, ambulance, shelter or mosque. Anywhere someone might have taken them in was too far away, beyond their grasp and energies. When news of the devastating outcome of this failed mission reached camp the next day, it was the spark that lit the fuse that nearly set the mountain ablaze. Outrage brought two names to everyone’s lips: Omar Salanga and Aliko Dangote.

  Those familiar with the camp knew that some people were sent to the upper part, some to the middle part, some to the lower part, but they also knew that others went everywhere and decided where everyone else was supposed to go. Such people knew all the team captains and they talked to them. They were people who had been in many countries and spoke at least two languages. Or only spoke one, but acted like they spoke others. And when these people saw Gurugu inhabitants who were in some way pained, it was as if they had emissaries who’d already informed them of the pain and its causes. Everyone on the mountain had come from faraway places seeking a particular path. But no matter how far they’d walked, no matter how much they’d suffered, no matter how much nature had forced them to forget themselves, there came a moment when their sense of smell sharpened and their nose began to detect something. They smelled more than they should have done and they thought it was because many months had passed since they’d last been so close to a woman. If the thoughts that followed had been articulated, many curious tales would have come out, tales the tellers would have disowned if they’d ever found their way back to the villages they’d come from. In a cave on the top of a mountain they discovered they were men, real men, fully grown men, and that they could smell more than the situation required. But others had realised this before them, which is why things happened – happened and had a veil drawn over them.

  Of course, in a cave on top of a mountain it’s not easy to put up veils, especially when some are quicker than others to realise that men are men, flesh and blood, and especially when those who realise have eyes and a tendency to look, for then they see more than they’d like to see and they realise that a man’s small needs can lead him into big traps. Traps likes the ones encountered on paths through the desert. Those with eyes look and they understand that those who know the desert’s paths and traps can take advantage of that knowledge, which is what Aliko Dangote did. That wasn’t his real name. The man that name actually belonged to was a successful businessman in Nigeria who’d started out selling cardboard boxes on the street, worked hard, applied himself, found backers and become the richest man in Nigeria before he’d even chalked up half a century. Aliko the Rich, they called him. The best part of half a century bu
ying and selling all over Africa and there he was, on the Forbes list of millionaires, among the filthy rich. Private cars, mansions, aeroplanes; bank accounts with lots of zeros: 0000000 … His name became so well known that even in the desert, pathfinders adopted it hoping that some of his magic might rub off on them, even just a little bit. That’s how our Aliko Dangote came into being, a young man eager to make his fortune, as well equipped as the original Aliko, just not as lucky. But he found his calling as a pathfinder and he took every advantage the role presented, and soon Christians were crossing themselves out of fear whenever they encountered him.

  You got to the Gurugu camp and you were received by someone who knew your language, someone who encouraged you to keep your spirits up and remember your survival instincts. Later on, that same someone would tell you what you had to do. So it became clear that those who’d arrived first got to decide things and, if you were a woman, make decisions for you, because women were such delicate little things, especially on desert paths, all kinds of paths through all kinds of deserts. You’re a woman, you’ve just arrived, you settle in and you start to see things, and you go on seeing them and you realise you’re a woman and that men find it hard to live like eunuchs.

  Before the source of the stink became known, or the need to know became imperative, those on the mountain who went about with their eyes open saw that certain people had power over others. Even more so than they’d originally thought. They noticed that Aliko would come along and make a gesture and that someone would respond, as if he were able to exercise his power at the flick of a switch, and as if this was normal. It became a cause of confusion. Wasn’t that man Shania had come with supposed to be her husband? And if not her husband, her brother, or someone she shared intimate words with at least? Her companions in the cave started to notice things. Or sense them, smell them. Because you’ve travelled all the way from your country just like everyone else, you’ve worked en route, catching fish or unloading Chinese lorries in foreign lands, and you’ve dug deep into your pockets and worked and saved whatever it cost to keep going, until you reached the least racist point for miles around, the camp on Mount Gurugu. One night you find yourself lying a few feet away from a woman who covers her head to go to sleep, because the nights are cool, and you see someone enter the cave, someone lit up by the light of … a mobile phone! The person comes over to where the woman is sleeping, taps her gently on the shoulder, lest she take fright and wake up the whole cave, and then the two of them leave the cave and something flickers in your head, or two things do. Yes, two things, because first you ask yourself when you last felt like a man and secondly you wonder whether the man who’s officially her husband has seen what you’ve just seen, even whether you perhaps ought to cough so that he stirs and realises that someone in the camp has a fully charged mobile phone. How many people on the mountain had an operational phone, ready to receive calls? Very few, if any at all, because the nearest city with electricity was not a friendly place, so unless you found a bus station or a bar somewhere that was prepared to let you plug into its supply, your phone’s battery would be flat.