In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  My jaw dropped. Bullet holes pocked the walls. The taxi pulled to the curb and stopped.

  “The matatu station to Mt. Kenya is just around the corner at the end of the street.” The driver turned and held out his palm.

  “Here?” Tricia’s voice squeaked. “We have to walk down this street?”

  “Excuse me, bibis,” the twitch in the taxi driver’s cheek was on triple time. “You said you wanted to find a matatu to Mt. Kenya. Now, please, just walk quickly to the corner and you will find the station. I do not wish to stay here any longer.”

  I paid the driver while Tricia, mumbling expletives, scooted out the side door. We started down the middle of the street as the taxi screeched around the corner. Above us, a woman opened a second-story window and shook out a rug. When she saw us, she stopped and stared, then shook her head. A soldier with a machine gun stood at the far end of the street.

  “I can’t believe you’ve dragged me to this place!” Tricia gripped my arm.

  “Just keep walking.”

  A man with an armload of clothing darted out of a side door, nearly running into us. He stopped with a startled look then ran on. The soldier yelled and ran past us with his gun drawn, chasing the man. Their footsteps echoed off the shop walls and into the empty street.

  “Let’s get out of here.” I grabbed Tricia’s arm and we ran.

  Past the corner, the narrow street gave way to an open square strewn with rotting fruit and vegetables. On the far side, people crowded around three medium-sized buses painted in bright colors. We hurried across the square to the first matatu.

  “Mt. Kenya?” I yelled out.

  We worked our way past the first matatu, already bulging with passengers. A man strapping luggage onto the roof of a second matatu waved us over.

  “Mt. Kenya?”

  The man nodded and motioned for us to hand up our backpacks, which he wedged into a ridiculously high pile of bags and cloth bundles.

  Tricia shook her head. “We’ll never see our bags again.”

  The man pulled a rope over the top of the pile, then across the opposite direction, and tied the ends to the luggage rack. We boarded the bus to find each double occupancy seat filled with three to four Kenyans. There wasn’t a single tourist on the bus.

  Tricia groaned. “It’s full.”

  “No, this is good. This means we’ll leave soon. Come on.”

  Down the aisle to the back, the last seat was occupied by a little girl and a woman holding a baby.

  “Jambo, bibi,” I said. “May we sit with you?”

  The woman smiled and pulled the little girl closer to her. Tricia and I sandwiched ourselves in, our knees pressed against the back of the seat in front of us. The man who had loaded our bags boarded the bus and counted the passengers. Content that he could not possibly squeeze another person onto the bus, he grunted, sat in the driver’s seat, and started up the engine with a chug and a roar.

  “Hoo, we made it. Lucky.” I smiled over at Tricia.

  “Lucky?!” Tricia’s voice was somewhat shrill. “I guess we were lucky! We get to Nairobi and the first thing you do is take us to the most dangerous part of town!” Her face flushed red. “We could have been shot back there!”

  The little girl next to me peeked over at Tricia, then covered her mouth and giggled.

  “Well, we made it. We’re OK now, so relax.” I tried to stop the shaking in my knees.

  “Well, you’re damn lucky we’re OK.” Tricia squirmed. “Half my butt is hanging off this side. Can’t you scoot over more?”

  The little girl was so squished between me and her mother, her arms were crossed at the elbows. I tapped the woman on the shoulder, pointed at the little girl, and motioned as if to lift her onto my lap. She nodded. I patted my lap, and the little girl, after a cautious glance at her mother, crawled on.

  Feeling better than I had all day, I settled in for the three-hour drive to Mt. Kenya. Three hours if we didn’t run out of petrol or have several flat tires, or if a contingent of soldiers didn’t stop us at every turn.

  The little girl was warm and solid in my lap. I absorbed the comfort that holding a child always gave me.

  The matatu started off and moved slowly through the crowd. We drove down a side street, then turned onto an avenue. Soon, we passed out of the environs of Nairobi into lush countryside. Tricia fumed behind her newspaper. The more miles the matatu put between us and Nairobi, the more I relaxed. My knees finally stopped shaking.

  Chapter 36

  Naro Moru

  August/Ramadan

  Along the two-lane road, a patchwork of garden plots surrounded clusters of mud houses. Maize stood in rows and groundnut and sweet potato vines spread over the dark soil.

  Tricia still hid behind her newspaper. On the back page, a line of flowing script arched across the top of an advertisement for a Nairobi florist. Bring me flowers while I am still alive.

  “Oh, great!” Tricia elbowed me, both hands holding onto the open pages of The Nation. “It says here that a band of air force officers involved in the coup attempt have barricaded themselves on an air force base near Mt. Kenya! ‘An army contingent has secured the area just north of Nyeri.’” She turned to me. “Do we go through Nyeri?”

  I nodded toward her basket. “Check the map.”

  Tricia folded the newspaper and pulled a map out of her basket. She traced the wiggly lines of routes from Nairobi to Mt. Kenya via the Naro Moru River Lodge. “Looks like we miss Nyeri by about eight kilometers. But we drive right by it!”

  “Will you stop?” I whispered.

  Out the window, behind Tricia, an army truck covered with a green tarp passed our matatu. Soldiers in camouflage fatigues sat on benches in the back. They passed, unnoticed by Tricia.

  The little girl’s head rested against my chest, lolling with each bump in the road. I wished I could sleep, preferably in somebody’s comfortable lap. Instead, I laid my cheek against the girl’s head. Her hair and skin smelled familiar—a healthy smell—like green grass and rich soil mixed with sunshine and rain. Not a perfumed smell, but innocent, earthy, and warm. It was a child smell, a promise of all the seasons to come. I closed my eyes and hugged Luc and the little girl in Liberia, both of them part of this child in my lap.

  The matatu hit a pothole and Tricia’s accusations on the train jarred their way into my thoughts.

  In-between. Committed to nothing. After all, freedom is having no ties. No expectations.

  Geese that never landed.

  The ticket to Somalia separated the pages of a book in my basket. I would leave in just a few days. The woman next to me sang to her baby in quiet tones as it suckled at her breast. I closed my eyes and dozed.

  I stepped off a curb, someone grabbed my T-shirt just as a yellow blur sped by. My head fell forward and I jerked awake. I licked dry lips.

  Tricia blew a quiet laugh through her nose. “You’ve been snoring. How’s your neck?” She laughed again and went back to her book.

  A sign out the window said, “Naro Moru River Lodge, 35 kilometers.”

  I took a sip of water then whispered into Tricia’s ear. “Any sign of a barricaded air force base?”

  She ignored me. The little girl still slept on my lap, the peaceful slumber only children can manage in a crowded bus on a bumpy road. Wet warmth touched a spot on my thigh and grew across my lap. The little girl breathed a soft sigh.

  The girl’s mother tapped my shoulder and pointed out the window. The matatu crested a hill overlooking a wide valley. The far side of the valley ended abruptly against a blue wall curtained with thick clouds.

  The woman pointed again, up toward the sky. “Kere-Nyaga.”

  Through the clouds, a row of jagged peaks materialized—Mt. Kenya. I caught my breath, and the woman smiled at me as though proud and happy to share her mountain. It was as thoughtful a gift as a fistful of flowers.

  God made a second man and named him Sekume. But God did not want to leave him alone. So God made a woman
from a tree and called her Mbongwe.

  When God made Sekume and Mbongwe, he made them in two parts—an outer part called Gnoul, the body, and the other that lives in the body, called Nsissim.

  As we approached the mountain, more people appeared along the road. Farther on, sunlight glinted off tin roofs. We reached town, and the matatu pulled into an open square lined with stalls. People bustled throughout the market, picking out fruits and vegetables. At the far end, a crowd surrounded four matatus. Drivers stood on their roofs, straddling overloaded luggage racks.

  “Things look a little more normal here.” Tricia wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

  The little girl awoke and gazed at Tricia with cloudy eyes and a blank face. Her mother gently pulled her arm and spoke in rapid Kikuyu. She picked up the baby and grasped a bundle tied up in a red checkered cloth. Passengers stood and, without haste, gathered belongings and moved off the bus. We followed the mother and little girl down the steps.

  “Excuse me, bibi,” I said. “Which way to the River Lodge?”

  She pointed to a small street that branched off to the right of the square.

  “Asanti.”

  The woman smiled, balanced the baby on her hip, took the little girl by the hand, then disappeared between two market stalls. The driver handed down our backpacks.

  “What’s that all over your lap?” Tricia squinted and reached over to touch the material of my pants. “You’re all wet!”

  “I got peed on.” I swung my backpack up onto one shoulder.

  Tricia stared at me for a few seconds. Her mouth twitched.

  “What? You’ve never been peed on before?” I grinned.

  Tricia snickered, then laughed. I laughed. We laughed together, bending over, slapping our thighs in the best of Adiza and Fati fashion, releasing all the tension of the past few days. People around us paused and smiled.

  I laughed until my sides hurt. Tricia held onto her middle. We wiped the tears from our faces and breathed for a few minutes. Then we hoisted our backpacks, linked arms, and took the side street that led to the Naro Moru River Lodge.

  Chapter 37

  Mt. Kenya

  August/Ramadan

  Steam rose from my mug and tickled my face. Sitting on the porch of our tiny cottage, I sipped coffee and smelled pine. Fourteen miles by foot, but an arm’s reach by sight, the peaks of Mount Kenya glinted in the morning sun. A stream trilled its water-song a stone’s throw from the porch steps.

  Pine trees surrounded the lodge where, the night before, Tricia and I had dined on fresh trout and orio, a local concoction of mashed potatoes, peas, and corn. The Naro Moru River Lodge was a small piece of Yellowstone Park lifted off the Idaho/Wyoming border and placed at the foot of Mount Kenya. At an elevation of eight thousand feet, we’d found a little bit of home on the edge of the equator.

  I inhaled morning air as sweet and cool as the freshest Idaho dawn.

  “What a beautiful place you are,” I said to the trees and the stream. A cool place with grass and animals. A wonderful place to work. Friendly people, humane temperatures, great coffee. If only I could get a job here. I could hang out in Nairobi, look for a job. Nairobi was full of NGO’s.

  Tricia walked out onto the porch, yawning. Best not to even think about finding a job in Kenya in front of Tricia. She would only remind me that Nairobi was also full of tanks, soldiers, and looted stores.

  “Ready to hike around the base of Mt. Kenya?”

  Tricia nodded, yawned again, and stretched.

  An hour later, hoping to hitch a ride the fourteen miles to the base, we set out in knee-length shorts, T-shirts, tennis shoes, and baseball caps. Clouds had already crowded the mountain, covering its face.

  Not a car or truck in sight, the dirt road stretched ahead through a valley of green fields.

  “I can’t believe how much this place reminds me of home.” Tricia smiled over at me. “Doesn’t it make you homesick?”

  “Homesick?” Was the hollow feeling I’d had since leaving Dori homesickness? If so, it was not for home, but for family. Anyway, it had been so long since I’d been home, I wasn’t sure if I’d even know what homesickness was anymore.

  Corn stalks crowned with golden tufts, coffee trees with snowy flowers, and low growing tea bushes covered in pink blossoms formed a tapestry of richness and plenty.

  “If heaven were defined purely by resources,” Tricia said. “This place would be it.”

  “And poor Upper Volta would be hell.”

  A desperate wish bruised my heart—that Laya and Aissatou, Hama, Issa, and Ousmann could be there, sharing Kenya with me. I stretched my arms wide to absorb all that green, the memory of a thousand shades of brown in my bones.

  “You’ve been green starved.”

  I nodded. Upper Volta had given me a great job and a wonderful family, but its physical harshness had withered me down to a stick.

  Tricia picked a yellow daisy from the side of the road, walked over, and wound its stem into my cap. She gently pinched the skin of my upper arm. “You’re looking a little less scrawny. The food here is doing you some good.”

  We walked on, our faces to the sun. Birds sang, flitting from tree to tree. Across the fields, clusters of huts huddled together like mushrooms. Cows mooed, chickens chased each other between rows of corn and over mounds of potato greens.

  After about half a mile, Tricia stopped to look up and down the empty road. “I hope a truck comes by pretty soon.”

  “They’re probably all out looking for the rebel air force guys.” I pulled my cap lower to shade my nose.

  “Don’t joke about that.” She squinted. “For all we know, they’re hiding out somewhere in these fields.”

  A flock of birds exploded from the top of a nearby tree in a flurry of blue and violet wings. We both jumped. The birds flew overhead across the field, and settled into the topmost branches of a pine. The branches swirled and twisted and, moments later, wind, fat with the smell of rain, blew cold against my face. I slung the daypack off my shoulder and took out two sweatshirts.

  Tricia pulled hers over her head and smoothed it down over her chest. A bright orange salmon in the woodcut design of the Northwest Kwakiutl Indians leaped from blue waters against a dark green background. “Salmon Days” crowned the picture in black letters.

  “Nice sweatshirt.”

  She tucked her chin to look at her front. “Bob gave it to me.”

  “He comes in two days.”

  “Yep.”

  “He’s a good man.”

  She nodded. “Lots of good men back there. If you come home, you’ll find one. Somebody you can sleep with who you actually love for a change and it’d be OK if you got pregnant.”

  I stopped. Damn! Did she lay awake at night, thinking these zingers up? Writing them down in her little mental zinger book? “Look, Trish. Like it or not, I’m going to check out Somalia, OK? It’s just something I need to do.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Check out Somalia.” She sighed and walked on ahead.

  Over the next hour, clouds continued to pile around the mountain, stretching dark underbellies out over the valley. Thunder rolled toward us. Still, no car or truck passed.

  Something wailed—the high bleat of a baby goat. I turned. Halfway across the field, a little girl in a tattered cotton shift chased a white goat. She caught it, tied a rope around its neck, then looked back at me with round eyes. It was the little girl from the bus. I waved.

  A crack of thunder cuffed the air. Tricia crouched, covering her head with her arms. I turned and found the little girl and her goat running toward us. She stopped in front of me.

  “Will you come to my house?”

  With her small body, I had thought her to be only three or four years old. But her speech told me she was at least six or seven. She had the same round face and almond eyes as the little girl who had died in Foequellie. Raindrops scattered across the dirt like seeds. The little girl tugged at my shirt, pulling me and the goat farther down t
he road. The drops turned into lines of silver, coursing at a slant across the green of the fields. We followed the girl and her goat through high grass and down a dirt path to the nearest clump of huts. By the time we arrived, the sleeves of my sweatshirt clung to my arms and cold water dripped from my hair down my neck.

  The little girl opened the door to the first hut and invited us in with a wave of her fingers. I ducked my head and entered through the narrow doorway. The room was round and small, but felt spacious with its swept dirt floor and two small windows. A conical ceiling of thatch reached to a high point in the middle and we were able to stand. The hut held a scent of cleanliness and order. I turned in a slow circle. Mats rolled into long tubes were piled neatly between the windows. Cooking pots, piled three and four high, sat against the opposite wall.

  The little girl motioned for us to sit on two stools near an indentation hollowed out at the base of one wall. It was blackened with soot. The girl gathered dried grass and sticks from a bundle, piled them together in the fireplace, and lit a match. A baby cried from a nearby hut and I wondered if the girl’s mother was at home. Thunder rumbled in through the door and windows.

  The little girl fed more sticks to the fire, releasing the smell of pine. She came over, tugged at my sweatshirt, then lifted her arms.

  “She wants our sweatshirts.” Tricia hesitated, then pulled hers over her head.

  I did the same.

  The little girl took each one then smiled at us. “Usijifnaye mgeni!” She turned and trotted out of the hut.

  Tricia turned to me, shaking her head. “Just like that, come into my house.”

  I nodded. “Just like that.” I’d had four years of this kind of hospitality. Four years of being welcomed, taken care of, even though I was a stranger.

  The rain fell in sheets outside the small windows, pummeling the roof and spreading white noise into the air. Tricia and I sat on the stools and stretched our hands to the warmth of the fire.

  After a few minutes, the girl returned carrying two mugs. Steam spiraled out the tops. She stood before us and offered us the cups.