The Desire

by Gary Smalley

  All the Andersons were present, except Uncle Henry and Aunt Myra and Michele’s husband, Allan, who technically wasn’t an Anderson. Michele missed him terribly. She was becoming less a fan of his short-term mission trips to Africa. For one thing, she hated being so disconnected. When he was home, they talked every day; he would even call her at lunch.

  She looked toward the far end of the table, the place where Uncle Henry and Aunt Myra usually sat in big family gatherings. They were traveling out West on a two-month trip in their little RV. But Charlotte was there, sitting next to her mom, talking up a storm. Her New England accent in full bloom.

  At the other end of the table next to her father sat Audrey Windsor, looking regal and refined, as always. Michele thought she looked like a character straight out of Downton Abbey. She had come earlier to talk with Michele’s dad about something, but Michele didn’t know what. Whatever it was, it put an interesting smile on her dad’s face. She also noticed he kept looking down the table at her big brother, Tom.

  Michele was sitting in the midsection of the table, next to Doug and across from Jean, Tom’s wife. Tom sat next to her and was busy feeding the baby. Michele and Jean had become close friends over the past year. Even though Michele envied Jean’s ability to get pregnant so easily, she loved her dearly. Jean was totally on her side and very sympathetic toward Michele’s situation. She knew how much getting pregnant mattered to Michele and told her she prayed for her every day.

  “So Tom,” Michele said, “how are you liking your new job? How’s it feel to be an IT guy again?” Over the last year, Tom had finished his schooling and finally got his coveted IT certification. He hadn’t found an IT job until a few weeks ago.

  “It feels great,” he said. “It’s taken a little getting used to working eight to five again. Especially having to put a tie on every day.”

  “But he’ll get used to it just fine,” Jean added.

  Tom smiled. “Yes, I will. But I miss working at the Coffee Shoppe. It was a totally different atmosphere than any job I ever had. If only it paid more, I might have considered staying.”

  “Was it a big difference?” Michele asked.

  “A huge difference,” Jean said. “Almost double the pay.”

  “Wow.”

  “And,” Tom added, “at the ninety-day mark, we’ll get full benefits. So yeah, I can get used to this again.”

  “How far do you have to drive every day?”

  “Twenty minutes. Way better than when I worked at the bank. Now I miss the rush hour traffic completely.”

  “Allan hates driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic,” Michele said. “Maybe more than anything else in the world.” She looked at her watch. It was 1:30. What was he doing now? It was already nighttime there in Ethiopia.

  “Someplace you have to go?” Doug said.

  “No,” Michele said. “Just counting down the hours till Allan and I can talk again.”

  “When’s he going to call?” Jean asked.

  “Not until midnight.”

  “Midnight?”

  “Well, it won’t be midnight for him. It’ll be nine in the morning, tomorrow morning. There’s a nine-hour time difference.”

  “That’s so strange,” Doug said. “He’s living in the same moment as we are, but in a totally different world. So it’s, what, 10:30 at night for him now?”

  Michele nodded. “And it’s not a pretty world where he is. Those poor people live in more poverty than you can imagine. I’ve seen pictures and videos. It breaks my heart. I can’t even look at them very long or I’ll start to cry.” That was one of the things that had attracted her to Allan—his willingness to give his time away so freely to others. But she wasn’t so keen on this now as she had been back then.

  “But I still don’t get why he has to call you so late,” Tom said from across the table. “Cell phone service is so cheap now, even international long distance.”

  “Not in Africa,” she said. “Allan said it’s crazy expensive there. We’re not even connecting by cell phone. We’re using Skype. For some reason, internet service works a lot better than cell phone service. But even that doesn’t work very well, if you ask me.”

  Jean set her glass down. “I’m surprised they even have the internet over there.”

  “I know, but they do. Allan says it’s not up all the time. It can go down for three to five days at a time.” She looked at her watch again. “I hope it works tonight.”

  “Why so late?” Jean said. “Aren’t you teaching school in the morning?”

  Michele nodded. “We don’t have a choice. Allan said the internet connection is the strongest in the morning. Well, their morning. The times that work best for me don’t work for him. He either can’t get through at all, or it takes forever to say things back and forth. We tried it once, and it was awful.” Michele wanted to stop talking about this.

  “So what’s he doing over there this time?” Doug asked.

  “Who wants coffee?” Michele’s mother stood at the end of the table, counting the hands.

  Michele raised hers, hoping this coffee call was enough to change the subject.

  It wasn’t.

  Doug leaned toward her. “So what’s Allan up to in Africa these days?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I asked.”

  “He’s got a blog about it, if you want the link, with lots of pictures and videos.”

  “Maybe I will look at it . . . later. But can’t you just give me the highlights?”

  “Sure. I guess the main thing is reaching out to orphans. That’s the focus of their trip, all these street kids in Addis Ababa. There’s so many of them, thousands, I think.”

  “Addis Ababa? Sounds like a town from Aladdin.”

  “From the pictures I’ve seen, it’s nothing like the scenes from that movie.”

  “How’d their parents die?” Doug said.

  “Mostly from AIDS, some from other things. But no one takes care of them. It’s not like here at all.” Images from Allan’s pictures and videos started flashing through her mind. “They live in tiny little shacks and beg all day. Most don’t even go to school.”

  “That’s horrible,” Jean said. She looked at her children, Carly, Tommy, and Abby, the baby. “I can’t even imagine that.”

  “You should see those videos. Or maybe you shouldn’t. I couldn’t get the images out of my mind for days after I did.”

  “That’s pretty heavy.” Doug looked at the spread of food laid out on the table. “They’ve probably never seen anything like this.”

  “It must look like heaven to them,” Tom said.

  For the next few moments, no one said a word. Michele felt that same guilt feeling she always felt when this subject came up. One of the hardest parts of her conversations with Allan was the unavoidable small talk. How are you doing? How are things going? What did you do today? Allan would answer, and the things he said were equal parts horrifying and heartbreaking.

  She didn’t know how he did it. She understood how he got talked into going the first time. But why did he keep going back?

  Her mom, who had been in the kitchen for the last several minutes, walked back into the dining room. “Coffee’s on. Who’s ready for dessert?”

  4

  ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

  It was hot and muggy, even at 1:00 a.m. Allan tossed and turned on the lumpy bed in the modest bedroom of an equally modest guesthouse. Street noises sailed through the open windows at constant but irregular intervals. But these weren’t the causes of Allan’s insomnia. He’d grown used to these things in the first few days of his trip.

  Allan couldn’t get the images he had seen earlier that day out of his mind. Not just the sights but the sounds . . . and the smells.

  He thought he’d seen it all before. This was his fifth trip to Africa in three years. His third to Ethiopia. Extreme poverty, the wholesale lack of basic goods and necessities, broken down or nonexistent roads . . . he had seen all of these things
plenty of times. Allan knew you didn’t get used to it if you were from America, no matter how many times you came here, but the shock value wore off after the first few days. You couldn’t function or fulfill your mission if you let it get to you.

  But nothing Allan had seen thus far prepared him for what he had seen today, about fifteen minutes outside the city in a little village named Korah.

  8:30 A.M.—THE DAY BEFORE

  Allan and his friends were just finishing their breakfast when Ray Jenkins walked in all excited. Ray was a full-time pastor, in charge of evangelism and missions at the church Allan and Michele belonged to back home. Ray was leading this trip, but he had unofficially made Allan his right-hand man. Beside Ray stood a short African man, who Allan guessed was a native Ethiopian. A troubled expression on his face caught Allan’s attention, since it contrasted with Ray’s smile.

  Everyone stopped talking. They had been expecting Ray to lay out their marching orders for the day. “Guys, let me introduce my new friend here. This is Henok. Met him last night after our outreach meeting. We stayed up talking for hours. He has some amazing stories to tell about where he grew up. It’s not far from here. There are hundreds of orphans living there. Right, Henok?”

  Henok looked around nervously, as if concerned someone might be listening. “Yes,” he said quietly, with a strong African accent. “Many orphans there. Many lepers and elderly too. Many people with AIDS.”

  “Henok and his wife have been trying to start an orphanage for two years,” Ray continued, “but they lack the funds and resources. They actually adopted a little boy from there themselves.”

  “But our home is very small,” Henok said. “There are so many more who need help. Our hope is to get a bigger home and rescue other children.”

  Allan started tensing up; he didn’t know why. Well, he knew one reason. He wasn’t nearly as adventurous as Ray. Ray seemed fearless, willing to go anywhere or do anything if there was even the slightest chance of reaching people for Christ. Allan was just getting used to the routines they had established on this trip, and they only had a few more days to go before they flew home. He wondered what new adventure Ray had in store this time. “Is this what we’re doing today?”

  “I wasn’t thinking all of us,” Ray said. “At least not right away.” He looked at Allan and said, “I was thinking you and I could go check this place out. See if we think it might be a fruitful place to spend our last few days as a team.”

  Allan smiled. Inside, his stomach was still tensing up. “Sure, Ray. I’ll go,” he said as he stood.

  “Ed,” Ray said, “why don’t you lead the guys back out and pick up where we left off yesterday until Allan and I get back?”

  “You want to meet back here?” Ed said.

  Ray looked at his watch. “Sure, how about 12:30 for lunch? Henok, we can get back here by then, right?”

  Henok nodded. “No problem. The village is only about fifteen minutes from here.”

  “Great,” Ray said. “Then that’s our plan. How much time before you’re ready to go, Allan?”

  “I’m ready now.” Technically, that was true. He was ready on the outside. What he wanted to do was suggest Ray let him and Ed switch places.

  “Then let’s go.”

  The rest of the men stood, and each one, in turn, shook Henok’s hand. Allan noticed he was actually smiling by the time they finished. But Henok’s smile faded as they made their way through the tables and out to the street, where their car and driver awaited.

  Allan’s smile had faded well before that.

  Allan had grown used to driving through the streets of Addis Ababa by now. Parts of the city were quite modern. Large commercial buildings were beginning to appear. More of them with each trip. Lots of construction was under way. Plenty of paved roads. There were still far more people walking to their destinations than you’d ever see in a US city, and far more merchants selling fruits and vegetables along the curb. But Addis Ababa definitely gave the appearance of a city trying to find its way into the mainstream.

  Still, unmistakable poverty abounded. Even more so the farther they drove from the center of town. After five minutes, the paved roads disappeared, and things became very bumpy.

  The driver did his best to follow in the ruts created by a large garbage truck ahead. Ray sat up front with the driver; Henok and Allan sat in the back. Henok sat on the edge of the seat, leaning forward, answering Ray’s questions. “So the village is named Korah?”

  “Yes,” Henok said. “Korah.”

  Ray asked the driver, “Have you ever heard of this place?”

  “Yes. It is a terrible place. People from the city never go there. It is where we dump our garbage.”

  “It’s the city dump?” Allan asked.

  “Yes. You will begin to smell it long before we arrive.”

  “After you are there awhile,” Henok said, “you get used to the bad smells.”

  “I don’t agree,” the driver said. “The smell stays in your nose for days, and on your clothes. It is a town of lepers. It is where they have always sent the lepers, for many years. Many with AIDS are there too.”

  Allan looked at Henok. “Didn’t you say last night that you grew up there . . . in Korah?”

  The driver shot Henok a look through the rearview mirror. A sad look came over Henok’s face, and he slid back in his seat. Allan realized he had asked the wrong question. Henok was clearly embarrassed.

  Henok looked out the window. “Yes, I grew up there. But that is not who I am anymore. I escaped.”

  “Do any of your family members still live there?” Ray asked.

  “Yes.” Then a long pause. “Some do.”

  5

  As they got closer to Korah, the driver began to get visibly nervous. Allan noticed Henok was sitting fully back in the seat now, mostly looking out the window. He wore a distant expression on his face, as though seeing different things than what everyone else saw.

  “Is there another way in?” the driver asked Henok. “I don’t believe the guards will let us in the front gate with these Americans.”

  “Yes,” Henok said. “Take a right up here, just past that cluster of bushes. It’s a narrow dirt road.”

  “More narrow than this?” the driver asked.

  “Yes. And you must drive slow, even slower than we’ve been driving on this road. With the rain we’ve had these past few days, there will be many ruts and mud puddles. Follow the road around the big mountains of garbage you see out the window. It will lead to the back way. We can sneak these men in there, no problem.”

  “Why do we have to sneak in?” Ray asked. “All the people we’ve met in Addis Ababa have been very nice to us.”

  “This is a place of shame,” the driver said. “The government would not want Americans to see this.”

  “But every country has garbage dumps,” Ray said.

  “Yes, but not like this,” Henok said. “You have never seen anything like this.”

  After the driver made the right-hand turn, they saw many people walking on either side of the road, different ages, all dressed in rags. Many were women and children wearing blank stares; most were barefoot. Some carried dirty white bags and sticks with hooked ends. Allan began to see rows of the most pathetic little shacks as the road widened up ahead. He had seen impoverished areas in Africa before, even in Addis Ababa. Those places were like middle-class subdivisions compared to what he saw now.

  The strong odor that had been coming in the windows was now almost unbearable.

  “How long have these people been living here?” Ray asked.

  “Many years,” Henok said. “Since before I was a child. And before we came, the lepers were here. Long ago, a king banished all the lepers to this place. Mainly to die, away from everyone else. They still come here to die. But then this became the place where all the trash was brought from the city. Trash means food for the hungry. So, the orphans and widows began to come in search of food.”

  “This is what
they eat every day?” Allan asked.

  “It is all they have to eat,” Henok said. “Without it, they would starve. You’ll see as we get closer. The garbage and dump trucks bring the fresh trash, and the people swarm all over it, picking through the piles to find bits of food and little things they could sell in the market. That is why they carry these bags and sticks.” He was pointing to a cluster of young boys walking by. “They will sort through the garbage for hours, putting anything they find in those bags. When they are full, they will carry them back to their homes—these little shacks you see—to feed their families.” Tears filled his eyes. “That was me just a few years ago. I was like that boy there.” He pointed to one young man hurrying to catch up with the rest.

  “You were responsible to feed your whole family?” Allan asked.

  Henok nodded. “Me and my two brothers. There were seven of us living in one room. It’s not far from here.”

  Allan hadn’t seen any strong, older men. “Henok, where are the fathers?”

  “There are no fathers,” he said. “That is why the widows and children and the elderly come here. This is their only hope.”

  They drove a few moments in silence. Out the side window, Allan saw a little boy maybe six years old sitting against a broken sign. Next to him, a dirty white bag, half full. He pulled something out of it, smiled at the sight, and held it up. It looked like a crunched-up yogurt container. He straightened it and, with his left index finger, began scooping out little bits left inside. His eyes closed as he swallowed the few remaining bites, then he licked his lips. When he opened them, he looked right at Allan and smiled even wider. You’d have thought he’d just eaten a chocolate sundae.

  A little farther down, the road narrowed again. They drove past another row of shacks made of mud and sticks with rusty metal corrugated roofs. A woman squatted outside one, arranging bundles of rotten bananas in neat rows. A few still had small sections of yellow, but they were mostly bruised and blackened. Allan couldn’t imagine eating even one.

  “Pull over here,” Henok said. “We must walk from this point.”