In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  I shifted in my seat and peered out the window. The streets were empty. I flashed on the crowded streets of Ouaga. “Where is everybody?”

  “Staying at home where it’s safe.” Don glanced at me. “People here are much more cautious than in Upper Volta. How is everyone there?”

  “About the same. Though, Djelal softened a bit toward the end of my stay. Adiza got married and everybody had babies, including Luanne.”

  Don laughed.

  “What’s it like here?”

  His smile faded. “It’s not as peaceful as Dori. The Somali clans have been feuding over land, water, and grazing rights for hundreds of years.” He shook his head. “And no one forgets or forgives anyone else.”

  “What about Barre?”

  “It’s complicated. The clans seem to accept whoever has the most power at any one time. There’s a local story that sheds a lot of light on why things are they way they are here.” He turned a corner, then grinned at me. “Once upon a time there was a lion, a jackal, a wolf, and a hyena.”

  I looked over at Don and saw Drabo, his beret cocked to one side, a twinkle in his eye. There was once a tortoise who discovered that all the birds had been invited to a feast in the sky.

  “The lion, the jackal, the wolf, and the hyena had a meeting and agreed that they would hunt together and share what they caught equally among themselves.” Don paused a moment, checking the rearview mirror. “So, they all went out and killed a camel. As they began to divide the meat, the lion said, ‘Whoever divides the meat must know how to count.’

  “The wolf said, ‘Indeed, I know how to count.’ So, the wolf divided the meat into four equal portions and placed one before each hunter.

  “The lion said angrily, ‘Is this the way to count?’ And he struck the wolf across the eyes with his great paw. The wolf’s eyes swelled and he could not see.

  “The jackal said, ‘The wolf does not know how to count. I will divide the meat.’

  The jackal cut three pieces that were small and a fourth piece that was very large. He placed a small piece before the hyena, the wolf, and himself. Then he put the larger piece in front of the lion. The lion took his meat and went away.

  “‘Why did you give the lion such a large piece?!’ the hyena said. ‘We agreed to divide the meat equally. Where did you learn to divide?’

  “The jackal replied, ‘From the wolf.’”

  I laughed, but at the same time felt myself sinking. “So, Barre’s the lion.”

  “No, he’s the jackal. The lion has always been one of the superpowers. Today, it’s the United States.” Don turned the car east onto 5th October Avenue. “Barre was backed by the Russians until the Ogaden War when they decided Ethiopia was a better strategic ally. So, in the late seventies, the U.S. took the opportunity to get a foothold in the Horn of Africa. Now we supply all the rifles and the tanks and have opened the market to Western arms dealers.” He shook his head. “Guns are everywhere. You have to be careful, even on the streets. Don’t go out by yourself after dark.”

  No wonder the streets were deserted. I suddenly had a really bad headache. I was glad Philip wasn’t in the car. He would have been sneering at me, shaking my shoulders. I want you to wake up!

  One of these days, the U.S. was going to fall from its place in the sky and break into a thousand pieces. Who would be around to glue us back together?

  He who stirs up a wasp’s nest must be sure that he is able to run.

  “Wow, what a difference we’ve made in Somalia.”

  Don looked over at me. “Nothing happens without both good and bad consequences. If you’re going to work overseas, you have to learn to understand and accept all the negative we have done, then try to do as much positive as possible.”

  He patted my arm. “So, we do what we can. There’s a drought in the north, and refugees are coming in from Ethiopia with no food. There’s no government plan to deal with them. The infant mortality rate up there is close to fifty percent.”

  One out of every two babies born, dying.

  “So, water, agriculture, and health projects?”

  Don nodded. “CARE is doing most of the refugee feeding programs.”

  I looked out the window. A few people mingled around some market stalls. That was what Rob had done, before Cameroon, before meeting the old girlfriend. He had worked for CARE in Chad, feeding refugees.

  “Save the Children’s work is with refugee resettlement near Coreoli. To help them get started again. We’ll be going there tomorrow.”

  We turned north and drove along the coast. A strip of white sand rimmed the ocean, reaching north and curving out of sight.

  “The beaches are beautiful. Can we go swimming?”

  Don laughed and pointed. “See those shacks over there?”

  A line of squat stalls straddled the edge where dirt and grasses met sand.

  “Those are abattoirs.”

  The stench of dried blood drifted into the car. My stomach tilted.

  “Slaughterhouses on the beach?”

  Don nodded. “They dump all those delicious guts into the ocean. Sharks come from miles out for a daily buffet. Lots of sharks.”

  Holy shit. The hairs raised off the back of my neck. Forget the swimming. No cooling off in blue water.

  “We would have given anything for a beach like that in Dori. What a waste.”

  “Well, every country can’t have its Club Med, now, can it?” Don raised his eyebrows at me.

  I turned my attention to the crumbling buildings, the empty streets.

  That night, Don took me to a gathering of the expat community in Mogadishu. I perused several interesting looking men. One was married, one too young. The other turned out to be a very East Coast La La Preppie. What was I thinking anyway? That my dream man would somehow appear on the streets of Mogadishu? Yeah, the way Rob had shown up in Monrovia. The way Drabo had been stationed in Dori. That had all worked out so well. Why not do it again? I knew better. Even Abena had learned her lesson after her Prince Charming had turned into that nasty python. The parents of the maids the python had eaten came to the river and killed that snake.

  Thin and wan, Abena climbed from the python’s hole and collapsed weeping on the bank. No one had the heart to blame her so they carried her back to the village.

  Abena warned the young girls that the seemingly perfect man often shed his skin. Beware of outward charm, she told them, shaking her finger, for beneath a glittery appearance lay dark holes and suffering.

  I had redefined my idea of the perfect man, and he had nothing to do with rogue Cossacks or relationships of convenience.

  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 drank my beer and wondered how Tricia and Bob were doing on the shark-free beaches of Lamu. I stayed up too late and drank too much, unable to shake an empty, sad feeling.

  Over the next two days, we visited projects in Coreoli. So many displaced people on the edge of so much conflict. So much work to do. But everyone talked about massive government corruption and how difficult it made the work. One step forward, twenty steps back. So much suffering—women and children, the few elderly. The weakest were always the collateral damage of greed, politics, and war. Here was where Death became the Devil, an evil creature who lurked in every doorway, feasting on the tragedies made by man. Somalia was a morass of despair. How could anyone make a difference in this chaos? I thought of Lily.

  Somalia was so much worse than Upper Volta, so much harder.

  Every place you go is just as good and just as bad as the last place you left.

  Tricia had been wrong on the train. Some places were a lot worse than others.

  Back in Mogadishu, the director, a guy named Lance, sat me down and offered me a six-month deputy director position. I could even go home, he said, take a break, and come back in October. My professional head argued fiercely. Yes! Take the job. Don’t give up just because
you’re tired! Wasn’t it better than going home unemployed? And deputy director! A good career move.

  But my heart, my poor heart begged. No, no, please don’t. My intestines and my body’s overworked temperature regulator took sides with my heart.

  I’m sorry, Lily, I’m not strong enough to cater to elephants.

  Dust blew across the blacktop of the runway and in through the glass doors of the terminal lounge. I hoisted my backpack and faced Don. Jet engines drowned out conversation inside the room. The plane passed, did a 360-degree turn, and stopped. The engines whined down.

  “Thanks for the tour of Mogadishu, Don. I hope I haven’t disappointed you too much.”

  Don wiped his forehead with a hanky and smiled. “Oh well, it was worth a try. I’m glad you came.” He shrugged. “If you change your mind, let me know.”

  I didn’t think I would, but who knew?

  I gave Don a hug. He grinned. Another goodbye. I walked through the glass doors, across another stretch of tarmac, and onto another plane.

  Chapter 39

  A Circle of Kerosene Light

  September/Shawwal

  Back on the runway of Kenyatta International Airport, I stepped out of the plane into the cool of 5,500 feet. The air smelled of flowers and dried the last of Mogadishu’s dampness from my clothes. As I descended the stairway, my feet grew lighter with each step. Tricia and Bob waved from behind a high chain-link fence. They were holding hands and smiling.

  The tarmac warmed the soles of my feet through my sandals. Inside the terminal, I approached a customs agent who glanced at my passport and smiled, “Welcome to Kenya.”

  Amidst the noise and bustle of the baggage claim area, scenes from Somalia kept creeping back—grim, hopeless faces, soldiers and guns in Mogadishu’s streets and markets, refugees, imminent war. Darkness and damp squeezed into my throat. I turned my passport in my hands, ran my finger over the gold embossed eagle that clutched arrows in one talon and an olive branch in the other. Inside, on the third page, was my visa to Somalia with the footprint of an exit stamp next to it. My ticket out of prison. And for the first time, really, the first time, I understood. A current shivered to the end of each and every nerve.

  Somalia, Beirut, Soweto, Afghanistan—there, but for the grace of God, went I. I possessed freedom not because I had worked for it as my ancestors had, or risked imprisonment or death. I possessed freedom simply by the grace of where I had been born. Unlike the refugees of Coreoli, unlike James, Gnalima, Laya, and Nassuru, when wars broke out, floods destroyed a season of crops, or despots ruled by gunpoint, I could get on a plane. I could fly away from the bloodbaths of Liberia, the poverty of Upper Volta, the sorrow of Somalia.

  The randomness of who was born free, who was born oppressed, rich, poor, loved, or abused, was so utterly and profoundly unfair. The world of Africa teeming around me, I bowed my head. But I could not make the injustice go away. I could not imagine it around a bend or over a waterfall. So, for that moment, I closed my eyes in gratitude for who I was, simply by the luck of the draw, and thanked the spirits of my ancestors.

  I gripped my passport and tucked it into the pouch beneath the waistband of my pants, then pressed the crescent moon and star against my skin. It was time to go home. There would be time to gather myself together, to become stronger. And there would be time again, to come back. I picked up my backpack, breezed through customs, and exited into bright sunshine and a sky full of clouds so high and white my eyes watered.

  My plane is about to take off. I still have no ticket; my luggage is still lost. Out the airport window, the lake winks and shimmers in the sun. I turn and walk out the airport door onto the end of a dock. The same tall man is on the boat, waiting. I walk down the dock and step onto the boat. The boat casts off and catches a current out onto the wide expanse of the water.

  The warble of a bird awakened me, the distant howl of a monkey, soft Kikuyu voices alongside the crackle of a fire. I lay in my sleeping bag with my eyes closed, surrounded by the sounds of dawn in a campground on the Serengeti. I remembered the dream and decided then that when I got home, I would track down Steve. Like Laya, Steve had loved me unconditionally; had believed me to be a goddess just as I was. And I had left him.

  I pointed out to you the moon and all you saw was my finger.

  I had grown up some the years we had not seen each other. I had trusted to ubungqotsho. Maybe he had, too.

  Scratching and a breathy hoo hoo came from just outside the tent. Slowly, I unzipped the canvas flap, peeked out, and met the eyes of a small monkey with a long tail. The monkey picked at tufts of grass, watching me with quick jerks of its head. Five other “camp” monkeys strolled the grounds, inspecting other tents. The Kikuyu cook clapped his hands and sent the monkeys scurrying. The last and largest monkey shook a limp hand at the cook as he knuckled his way to the trees.

  I slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, soft from wear and just the right amount of dirt, and crawled out of the tent. The rising sun painted a thicket of thorn trees with salmon colored light. The camp monkeys trouped into the branches of the trees and screeched at all of us to get our lazy butts out of bed so they could ransack our tents while we went on safari.

  Bob crawled out of the tent next to mine stretched, and scratched his tangled mop of hair.

  Mbulu, the cook, handed us two mugs of steaming coffee.

  Bob and I took our coffee and sat on a log by the fire.

  You know what they say about the glories of coffee on a crisp morning in front of a campfire. Take that and add freshly brewed Kenyan coffee and a front-row view of the plains and hills that formed the cradle of humankind, and you have perfection.

  “Did you hear the lion roaring last night?” Bob cupped his hands around his mug. I nodded. “Sounded pretty close.”

  I had not yet seen a lion, and wasn’t sure if I wanted to, not up close anyway. Don’s story about the lion, the wolf, and the jackal came to mind. Tricia shuffled up and bent to warm her hands at the fire.

  “Those damned noisy monkeys.” She yawned. “Where’d you get the coffee?”

  Mbulu brought over a cup, smiling.

  “Asante,” Tricia said and sat. She blew the steam from the top of her mug. “Did you hear that lion last night?”

  Bob and I nodded.

  Tricia sipped her coffee then yawned again. I told them the story about the lion, the jackal, and the wolf.

  “I’m glad you’re not taking that job,” Tricia said. “I’m assuming this means you’re coming home now.”

  I saw myself in Aunt Nonnie’s kitchen, at a table surrounded by family, eating a supper of baked ham, scalloped potatoes, and mustard pickles.

  “Think Dad will let me in the house?”

  “I’m sure he will.” She paused. “Though, I wouldn’t be telling stories about Drabo anytime soon.”

  “Who’s Drabo?” Bob looked from Tricia to me.

  I shook my head, imagining the look on everyone’s face if they knew. “Nothing will have changed there.”

  “Maybe not, but you have and I have. And Bob.”

  I told Bob who Drabo was. He raised an eyebrow and nodded.

  Kisu whistled and motioned us toward the van. It was 6 am, time to head out on safari.

  We drove out of camp and turned north toward the Sekenani Gate where we entered a Masai village. A group of women with shaved heads were dressed in bright red cloth and wide collars of multicolored beads. A yellow dog with Rocky’s pointed nose and brown eyes sat in the shade of a hut. The same kind of yellow dog who had kept me company through so many solitary sunsets. Who chased chickens and gave me eight puppies. Several small boys ran past and the dog trotted off.

  We left the village and climbed a hill along a dirt track.

  Dikdiks raised their delicate antelope heads above the grass. Baboons strolled among outcroppings of thorn trees, turning to watch as we passed. We drove by ostriches and hyenas and caught sight of warthogs at the edges of bushy areas. All of them
in family groups, each watching out for the others.

  A trio of buzzards flew in a high-altitude circle. Kisu drove the van in the direction of the vultures until we reached a solitary tree. A pride of lions lounged in a lazy circle around the gutted carcass of a zebra. As the van drew near, I counted five female lions and three cubs. Two of the cubs scampered around a lioness, climbing on her back and pestering her until she sent them tumbling with a swipe of her paw. The lionesses watched the van approach with bored looks, as though we were just another animal on the food chain they were too full to bother with.

  The van stopped ten feet from the pride. A cloud of flies buzzed from the torn body of the zebra to the blood-crusted muzzles of the lions. The grim reapers of the Serengeti. Adrenaline pumped through me like flushed water through plumbing. People weren’t meant to be this close to lions, unless, of course, they were lunch.

  Despite the dry air of Masai Mara, sweat seeped from my palms. The lionesses watched us, hypnotizing me with their golden eyes. Here was death, quiet and watchful in the day, alert and deadly at night. But they were beautiful and proud.

  What would the Serengeti be without the lion? Though certainly more beautiful and more frightening, when it came to death, was the lion really any different from meningitis or a gas leak? The lion killed to live. Meningitis used the body to reproduce, evolve, and spread. A gas leak was just a plain tragic accident. None of them were malicious acts, just three things in nature that did the job.

  Do you think you are the only one who has lost someone to death?

  It was Drabo’s voice inside my head.

  People die every day, even people we love. The rest of us live.

  Drabo had tried to tell me. Hamidou had shown me. Death by natural causes or by accident was not an evil creature.

  Foolish Miss Soosan, thinking that by blowing, she could chase away death.