In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  “You felt that way the last time we said good-bye. We’ll see each other again.”

  A breeze dried the sweat on my face as the sun painted Tricia’s skin a soft orange. A tear dribbled down the side of her nose and off her chin.

  Peggy sat on the other side of Tricia. She, too, faced the ocean that spread before us wider than I could stretch my arms. From our high perch, the vista was so broad, the horizon seemed to arc slightly, tilting down at each end as the earth rounded beyond our sight.

  “I went to Lily’s funeral,” Peggy said. “Just before I came here. Everybody from our group was there except the few of you who were overseas. Her parents talked about all the wonderful things she had done in her life. All her travels, everything she had strived for.”

  The wind from off the ocean pushed against the spider’s web. The silken threads dipped with the branches and rippled in the air but held fast.

  “I’ll never forget her,” I said.

  “When I die, I don’t want a funeral.” Tricia still stared out to sea. “I don’t want people to be sad, I want them to celebrate my life.”

  Peggy and I nodded.

  “Let’s make a pact.” Tricia put out her hand, palm down. “Whoever dies first, the other will make sure there’s a celebration instead of a funeral.”

  “It’s a deal.” Peggy and I piled our hands on top of Tricia’s.

  The sun sank into the sea, a great molten ball of wavering colors. We sat in our own quiet for a long time with the noise of Dakar at our backs.

  “So, when do you think you’ll come home?” Tricia finally asked.

  I took a big breath, held it for a few seconds, then blew it out. “I don’t know.”

  Out on the ocean, the sky shed pink light over the water’s surface, hiding the depths below.

  “Sometimes I get the strangest feeling that up until I came to Africa, my whole life was”—I shook my head—“some kind of TV show. And now its finally real.”

  Peggy nodded. “And you’re afraid when you go home, you’ll fall back into that black box.”

  I rolled my shoulders, remembering the Christmas night Philip tried to shake me into awareness.

  “I just need to be here, now.” I turned to Tricia. “Until I find something. Until I figure it out.”

  “Like Unanana-Bosele,” Peggy said, still looking out to sea.

  I turned to her. “Ubungqotsho.”

  Peggy’s eyes shone and she nodded. “Ubungqotsho.”

  We smiled at each other.

  “Do you want to let me in on this?” Tricia put her fists on her hips.

  “It’s a myth,” Peggy said. “About a woman swallowed by an elephant.”

  As the clouds caught fire, Peggy told the story of the woman who built her house in the middle of the road. About a great elephant with one tusk who swallowed Unanana-Bosele and her children. About what happened inside the elephant, and how she and her children returned.

  “Anything a person does to gain self-confidence, power, strength, or passion, ‘all of this is ubungqotsho,’” I said, remembering my house that was so close to the road in Foequellie, one could have said it was almost in the middle.

  The strength of Wagadu comes from the north, the south, the east, and west and endures no matter whether she be built of stone, wood, and earth, or lives but as a shadow in the mind and longing of her children.

  We sat a long time, staring out to sea until the colors faded to dusk, and Venus shone sharp and clear in the western sky.

  “Pan Am Flight 347 to New York is now boarding at gate three,” a generic woman’s voice announced in French and English.

  I stood at the airline gate, holding Tricia’s hand.

  “I guess I’m ready to go back.” Tears pooled in her eyes.

  “You’ve relaxed a lot on this trip, Trish. I hope you take it home with you.”

  She smiled and nodded. A mix of people thronged the airport—white, black, and brown, some dressed in western suits and dresses, others in boubous and embroidered caps.

  “Why is it I’m the one leaving, yet I feel like the one being left behind, again?” Tricia sighed.

  “Give Bob a big kiss for me.”

  “So, what am I’m supposed to tell Mom and Dad?”

  I lifted my shoulders. “Tell them I’ve been swallowed by an elephant.”

  She shook her head at me.

  The loudspeaker announced the final boarding.

  “You be careful, take care of yourself,” Tricia said, tears rolling down both cheeks.

  We embraced.

  She picked up her leather bag and walked through the departure door. Turning briefly, she mouthed “I love you.” We smiled at each other, and she disappeared down the long corridor that led to the plane. For an instant, I saw Lily wave her last goodbye in the Paris airport.

  I stood for a few minutes, then turned toward the exit doors. Tricia had been with me for six weeks. Now she was gone. My feet were suddenly light, as if I were walking a few inches off the ground. I passed the Air Afrique gates and saw the flight I would take in just over twenty-four hours: Dakar to Ouagadougou. Back to Dori and to work, back to Laya, Gray, Hamidou, Fati, Adiza, and all the other members of my Sahel family. That would be good.

  I walked out into the warm evening that bustled with the energy of Dakar and hailed a taxi.

  When Unanana-Bosele reached the elephant’s stomach, she saw large forests and great rivers and many high lands. There were rocks and people who had built their villages. She saw many dogs and cattle. All of these things were there inside the elephant. She found her children and rejoiced. Unanana-Bosele and her children stayed in the belly of the elephant for many days.

  Part II

  Inside the Elephant

  Chapter 18

  Abundance

  May/Rajab

  We sat in our usual places around the conference room table. At the head, Djelal, dressed in a short-sleeved leisure suit, prepared to start the meeting by ruffling through some papers. To his left, Adiza fiddled with the cornrows of her newest hairdo. Jack winked at me from across the table, his new ag assistant Nouhoun next to him. Nouhoun’s eyelids closed and his head nodded. Fati giggled and nudged him awake. We were waiting for Luanne. Next to her empty chair, Nassuru sat, chin in hand. I finished up the circle on Djelal’s right, facing the double doors that opened to the courtyard.

  Outside in the afternoon sun, Hamidou tinkered with the truck engine, the top half of his body blocked from sight by the open hood. Luanne hurried across the courtyard. In her haste, the material of her blouse molded over the hillock of her abdomen. Luanne was four months pregnant by her boyfriend, John. Her face flushed, she came into the conference room, laughed her apologies for being late, and sat between Fati and Nassuru. She had on a new outfit with puff sleeves and folds of extra material in front.

  Fati and Adiza were also dressed in maternity outfits. All three happily pregnant. Fati was nearly seven months, Adiza not yet showing. And Amina, the secretary, had just had a baby. Either God had decided it was time for everyone in the office to procreate, or there was something in the water. Not that I was in any danger of getting pregnant, but I was considering boiling my drinking water a few extra minutes every day; just in case.

  Fati touched Luanne’s sleeve, clicking her tongue in approval over the new print. Maternity clothes in bright batiks were suddenly the rage around the office. Still donning my worn dresses from last year, I was definitely passé when it came to fashion. Though I did feel somewhat left out, I was glad there was no need for me to be ordering new clothes. I mean, yeah, I wanted a baby at some point. But the Catholic/Mormon in me thought it might be a good idea to get married first.

  A cross breeze blew from the windows through the doors and cooled the sweat on my face. Ribbons of bright blue sky colored the spaces between the window slats.

  To the delight of everyone, the first rains had come right after my return from Senegal, breaking the worst of April’s heat. But earl
y rains had meant a rush to get the seeds loaned out for this year’s garden projects when we had yet to evaluate last year’s results. Slow April had turned into time-accelerated May. I had only ten months left on my contract, ten months to complete what I had started. Fired by a sense of urgency, I had spent the first few weeks after my return racing around the office, blathering that there was too little time!

  Hamidou’s shoulders and head appeared from underneath the hood. He took a piece of cloth from his back pocket, wiped his brow, then shook his head at the engine. Weeks before, he had shaken his head at my panic over the projects, saying, “Suzanne! Work that can be finished in one day is not real work.”

  In his gentle way, Hamidou had reminded me what I already knew but couldn’t seem to remember in the rush of day-to-day activities. Good projects that achieved lasting results could not be done in a day, a week, or even a year. Working with communities to improve health care, agriculture, and income generation was a process that would take generations. I was part of one tiny step in a journey of a thousand, a little drop in a great big bucket. After the initial seed loans, we had taken Hamidou’s good advice and spent all of May evaluating last year’s projects.

  Hamidou unhooked the bar that held up the hood and let the hood fall closed with a bang. Nouhoun jumped awake, and Fati covered her mouth with a dainty hand. Djelal still searched through his papers. Adiza yawned and Luanne doodled spirals around the edges of her notebook.

  Only ten months left. Panic jumped on my stomach like a kid on a trampoline. My problem was I looked at time as a straight line stretching into a limited future. Hamidou saw life as circular—the way most wise people did. How foolish to say there was too little time when time was an infinite spiral. I sighed. It was the short line of my life that was going by too fast.

  Outside, Hamidou got into the truck and started up the engine. The truck moved past the frame of the doorway, leaving behind a picture of a neem tree and two windows with green shutters.

  Djelal cleared his throat and the meeting started.

  The first stage of the stove project was complete. We had introduced three stove models in nine villages. Village women were testing the models and making suggestions for improvement. Construction, preparing weaning foods to demonstrate the stoves, and discussions of desertification had all gone well. However, in many cases, the women had stopped using the stoves after a few tries for various reasons. Old habits were proving hard to break.

  The blanket weavers had begun reimbursing thread loans but were not left with enough profit to buy their own thread for next year. We would have to loan thread again when cold season arrived. And what would happen to the artisan center if FDC were to leave? The women’s cotton project had failed. They had weaved the cotton into thread, but traded the thread for cloth and utensils instead of weaving it into blankets as planned. Since they did not sell any blankets for a profit, they could not reimburse the loans.

  Our late night meetings with the villagers had uncovered the fact that the village central committees formed in the first years of FDC had fallen into disuse. No one in the village was responsible for collecting reimbursements. In short, credit and loan structures did not exist outside of the FDC office. The villagers still clung to the idea that a loan was a cadeau. If FDC ceased to exist, so would the projects.

  The breeze had died away and the room turned hot. Nouhoun’s eyelids fell to half-mast, Fati looked dazed, and Nassuru half-dozed, chin in hand.

  “It’s just not working.” I slapped both palms onto the tabletop, and everyone jerked up with straightened backs. “Why?”

  “Handing something out and then asking for it back is a foreign idea,” Luanne said, still doodling her spirals.

  “FDC cannot continue to impose new ideas on the villagers and expect them to use them.” Nassuru rubbed his face with both hands. “We ask them what they need, but then we give them the answers. The villagers have their own solutions.”

  “Then why don’t they use them?”

  Nassuru shrugged. “They don’t want to be rude.”

  My scalp shifted and tingled, slapped by such an obvious concept.

  When you go to someone’s house and she is squatting, you don’t ask her for a chair.

  Djelal nodded. “If we are to develop lasting credit structures within the villages, all levels of the project—ideas like the artisan center, thread and seed purchases, gathering reimbursements—must be done by the villagers themselves.”

  “But they’ll still need loans to start,” Adiza said. “Loans we don’t expect them to give back to FDC.”

  “So they can develop their own credit pools from the reimbursements.” I was getting excited now.

  Jack flicked a finger at the air, as if turning on a light switch. “Startup funds instead of loans.” He had been with me at one of the Ouaga parties where we talked to an American from Partnership for Productivity, an agency that was starting up some credit projects in the south.

  “Like the tontines!” Fati explained that village women pooled their money into tontines, a kind of savings account held by the group in case one of them had a family emergency. Cooperative funds were an accepted and well-used tradition.

  Djelal nodded. “Every village has a committee of elders. They will reestablish the village central committees. They will make the decisions for the villages, not FDC.”

  A breeze slipped through the window again.

  I nodded and a window at the back of my brain opened. “There’s a story about a Peace Corps volunteer who lived in South America!” Every volunteer knew this story.

  Djelal pursed his lips. Luanne continued to doodle.

  “Oui, Suzanne?” Fati was smiling.

  “This guy was new to his village, but saw right away that the village needed a clinic. So, he goes to the village elders and tells them he wants to help them build a clinic and could they organize the people? But the elders inform him that what the people want most is a shrine to the Virgin Mary.”

  Fati knit her brow and said something in Fulfuldé. Djelal explained that the Virgin Mary was the mother of the prophet, Jesus, and that Christians revered her the way Moslems revered Amina, the mother of Muhammad. Fati nodded and her nod passed from Nouhoun, to Nassuru, to Adiza.

  “So, this volunteer argues with the elders. ‘We need a clinic,’ he keeps saying. He tells them a clinic is more important than a shrine. But the elders won’t cooperate. Finally, out of frustration, the volunteer agrees to help the people build a shrine. It takes a while, but all the people participate and they get to know the volunteer and he gets to know them. And in the end, they have a beautiful shrine to the Virgin Mary.

  “After the shrine is finished, one of the elders comes up to the volunteer and says they need to have a meeting. ‘Why?’ asks the volunteer. The elder replies, ‘So we can build a clinic.’”

  A second or two passed. Then Fati applauded, Nassuru smiled, and Djelal said, “Précisément.”

  We all agreed that our goal must be to strengthen existing village infrastructures in order to render them independent of outside assistance. We had to slow down enough to start over. The meeting ended at 7 pm in a flurry of excited chatter.

  Early the next morning, Hamidou drove us to Sambonaye. The women’s gardens sprouted rows of young beans, groundnuts, cotton, and okra. The fields grew green with new millet. It was one of those blue days of clear skies and high clouds when the horizon looked as though God had taken a knife and sliced a clean line between heaven and earth.

  The women chatted with Adiza and Fati, their voices like songbirds as they poured eight-ounce cans of water at the base of each plant. Wet dirt gave off the tangy smell of minerals. Fati, now big with child, led a meeting with Emma and several other women who had once been members of the village central committee. The women liked the idea of using the local tradition of tontine to create a revolving loan fund out of whatever seed reimbursements could be had from this year’s gardens.

  After the meet
ing, we made our way back to the truck where Hamidou tinkered with the engine in the shade of the town tree. At the base of the hill, halfway between the gardens and the millet fields, Jack stood talking to a burly white man I had never seen before. Next to them stood a woman, holding a baby.

  Curious, I walked down the sloped road. As I approached, the man turned with a smile that made me want to get up and dance.

  “Susan!” Jack came forward. “This is Guy. He’s a hydraulic man and will be digging wells here, in Selbo, Toukka, and the oasis.”

  I exchanged les bises with Guy, the French custom of touching cheeks while kissing the air. It was like rubbing cheeks with sandpaper. He introduced his wife, Monique, a pretty dark-haired woman. She held a cherubic little fellow who looked like he’d flown down from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Monique and I greeted each other, one cheek then the other.

  “And this is Luc.” Guy held out his hands and the baby raised his arms. “They came to see the villages.”

  Luc, a tiny carbon copy of Guy, watched us with big black eyes, his little mouth puckered into an O.

  “How old is he?” I asked.

  “He’ll be twelve months old next week.” Guy smiled with such pride, we couldn’t help but smile with him.

  Monique told us they had just arrived in Dori the day before and were settling into a house on the southern edge of town. They were French Canadian and would be staying in Dori for a year. “You must come see us,” she said in perfect English.

  Jack and I promised to visit, then climbed the hill back to the truck. At the top, I turned and took in the scene. Out beyond the green fields, herds of cattle grazed on rain-fed grasses. Behind me, among the huts that clustered at the top of the hill, smoke rose into the sky from the chimneys of several mud stoves. In a nearby compound, two masons spread wet mud over the VW-sized shell of a new grain store. Young trees surrounded by thorn-bush fences took root and grew in the town center.

  Despite so many project setbacks, Sambonaye was prospering, and we drove back to Dori in high spirits. I thought of Lily and our last question to the I Ching of whether we could make a difference. She was there, her fairy-sized spirit perched next to my ear where the sun warmed my shoulder through the window.