Sometimes it could be chased away by a string, or by a necklace of bone and gold. Sometimes by vaccinations, sometimes by rehydration fluid. The little girl in Liberia could have lived had we given her fluid early on, had her mother boiled her water, had she been better nourished. Some death should come later than sooner. But we cannot stop it altogether. Luc had been a healthy baby, but there was no vaccination against meningitis. His death could not have been prevented anymore than Lily’s could have. How could she have known she had a gas leak?
Africa had taught me there were two kinds of death. There was man-made death, the evil kind that haunted Somalia. That death, I would never accept. Then there was death as part of life. The kind of death Foequellie and Dori had shown me. The kind that Drabo and Hamidou had understood and accepted.
Kisu drove off slowly, then accelerated over the dirt path, across the plain. I watched the lions blur until they blended into the grasslands, trees, and distant mountains.
Back at camp, after a late-morning breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and bread, Tricia crawled back into her tent to take a nap. Bob and I walked the perimeter of the campground and found a shady spot under the umbrella of a thorn tree’s branches. I crouched at the base of the trunk.
The cool of morning was long gone. The camp monkeys had disappeared. A heavy quiet grew with the heat of the day, broken only by the chirping of cicadas.
Bob sat on a broken log. You’ve liked it here, living in Africa.”
I turned to Bob. His brown eyes were soft and kind. I wanted to be able to explain. I wanted him to understand five years of loneliness, heat, sickness, laughter, death, hard work, and love. But how do you sum up something like that? How could someone who had never seen Foequellie, who had never been to Dori even begin to understand?
“Dori was a good place. A true place.”
“But not a place you could stay?”
I shook my head. “Do you know, I haven’t lived in one place longer than two years since I left home at eighteen? Wandering around for eleven years. I liked it up until a few years ago.”
“Is that why you’re not taking the job in Somalia?”
“Yeah, partly. But mostly, I’m just tired. But I feel bad about it, like I’m abandoning everyone I’ve known in Africa.” I took in a deep breath, then laughed sadly. “I still believe it’s good work, that we have to try.”
A breeze blew off the plains and the tree branches sighed.
Bob picked a stalk of grass. “You can always come back.” He chewed the end. “You don’t always have to pick the hardest job, you know. There’s all kinds of work to be done. There’s nothing wrong with starting with the people closest to you.”
Mom, Dad, my aunts and uncles, Republicans, Democrats, Americans. “It also helps to stay in one place long enough not to have to panic about getting things done.” Bob stared off toward the horizon. “You know, longer than two years, maybe.”
I stared at Bob as goose bumps rose along my arms. Like the old marabou.
He has lived in that very spot for many years. It is his place.
I saw the fields of Idaho, the land my grandfather had homesteaded. The place where my soul lived. I had been looking so hard for a place to belong, when what I needed to do was sit down in one place long enough to be.
Small birds peeped from a nearby copse of bushes, music so sweet it curled around my heart and brought tears to my eyes.
Like the people of Foequellie whose ancestor spirits lived in the town cottonwood tree, like the people of Dori and Sambonaye, I would return to the place where my ancestors lived, preserve and pass on its stories, accept its people and their imperfections, ride through its political and natural disasters, and sit down long enough to make it into a place where my heart could stay.
In the story of Elephant and Spirit Rain, out of stubbornness and pride, Elephant died rather than ask Rain to return. I wouldn’t wait that long.
Accept the rain as it comes and people as they are.
After all, couldn’t a house be built in the middle of just about any road?
*
By afternoon, clouds had gathered over the western horizon sending distant rumbling over the plains. Sheets of rain fell as gray lines against the sky.
We spent late afternoon cruising the dirt paths of Masai Mara. Herds of elephants splashed dirt over their backs, and a black rhino, a real one, ran and snorted alongside the van. Giraffes galloped in slow motion. It was a place of such immensity and sheer beauty, my heart expanded with it.
Back at the campsite, as the sun set, Mbulu prepared the evening meal over a large fire. Cutlery and plates lay in precise rows along the wooden dining table. I stood in line behind Tricia and held out my plate for grilled steak, potatoes, and spoonfuls of cabbage slaw. Over dinner, I looked down the long table at the shared food and the laughing faces and thought of Laya, Aissatou, Issa, Hama, and Ousmann.
“Bismillah!” I lifted my fork. Begin.
After dinner, we sat around the campfire with Kisu while Mbulu washed the last of the tin plates. Silver light surrounded the tents. The thorn trees threw ink-black shadows as clearly as if cast in daylight.
A three-quarter moon sailed the sky among scattered wisps of cloud. I cupped my chin and stared at the same moon that had shed its skin so many times in Dori. “Look at that craggy old face.”
Kisu raised his head. “The Masai say that the sun once married the moon. One day the sun and moon fought, and the moon struck the sun on the head. The sun, too, damaged the moon.
“When they had done fighting, the sun was ashamed and did not want human beings to see his battered face. So he became dazzlingly bright. People were unable to look on him without first half-closing their eyes. Old woman moon, however, was not ashamed. She allowed human beings to look at her face and see that her mouth was cut and that one of her eyes was missing.”
There she was, Old Woman Moon, shining in the sky with all her imperfections. She shone down on me with the same face she had shown me for two years in Dori, telling me that I could be like her. I would be like Old Woman Moon. I would go home to Idaho, let my family see my flaws, that I had no job, no relationship, none of the things they expected. But I had stories of where I’d been. Of life and death, of wealth of character in the face of poverty, of optimism and generosity even in the worst of times. I’d let my family see that I had a few expectations of them.
And suddenly, I yearned to stand in the shadow of the Tetons, to hear the trill of a meadowlark in a field of grain, to feel snowflakes on my face.
Kisu continued, his voice soft and lilting. “The sun, feeling remorse at their fight, now follows the moon in the same direction for many days. After a time, the moon gets tired and allows her husband, the sun, to catch up and carry her. He carries her for two days, and on the third day, she is left at the sun’s setting place, a thin smile to show her pleasure.”
The crescent moon, still edged with the light she gathered then gave back during her wax and wane, reminded all of us who looked upon her to give back what we gathered. And even though the moon goes dark for a day or two, Bismillah! she begins again, a thin smile on her face at the chance to start anew.
To start anew. “Ensha’allah!” I whispered.
All the times Hamidou, Nassuru, Laya, Fati, and Djelal had said, “Ensha’allah.” Not a passive acceptance of the here and now, but a hopeful one. Hamidou, Nassuru, and Fati all believed that if we just waited long enough, worked hard enough, prayed and didn’t give up, paid attention to the day and lived it, then tomorrow would be kinder and more merciful.
Kisu finished his story. Our group of bedraggled world travelers talked until the moon set and the stars brightened. The far-off roar of a lion stopped our conversation. I lifted my face to the sound. One by one, the British couple, the Italians, the Scot and finally, Trish and Bob drifted off to their tents.
I walked to my tent and crouched outside the flap. Kisu passed, placed a lighted kerosene lantern ten feet away, then
moved on to set up a wide circle of lanterns around our cluster of tents. Mbulu threw wood on the fire until it was a healthy blaze. Two tall figures emerged from the trees, separated, and walked to each end of the campsite. Starlight illuminated their high foreheads and glinted in their eyes. They stood with one leg bent, leaning against tall, slender staffs. They were Masai.
Still distant, the lion roared again. The Masai shifted their weight and turned in the direction of the sound. I breathed in the night air, so rich with life and death. The only things between me and the lions of Masai Mara were a thin canvas tent, a circle of kerosene light, and these African men of the Serengeti. It was enough.
Epilogue
July, 2006
I worked in Washington DC and Connecticut for three years until my soul called me back to the West, where I’ve lived ever since. I did go back to Africa. When I told my Dad I was returning once again, he told me to follow my dreams.
From 1983 to 1999, I returned for short-term assignments in family planning, AIDS education, and small business development for women in Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Nigeria, Cameroon, the Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Uganda, and Tanzania.
World events—U.S. actions in Afghanistan, Iran, and Iraq that took place while I was in Dori—put us on a course that led to where we are today. Moderate Islam, the kind I experienced in Upper Volta, now struggles with a growing movement of militant fundamentalists. America’s image overseas still goes up and down.
I dream almost every night. Most of my dreams are of Africa. I am in a village, in a house with whitewashed walls, but the rooms are crumbling, filled with spiderwebs, abandoned. I don’t know why I keep having this dream. I still regret that I didn’t bring Laya and her children home with me. Maybe that’s why I dream of empty rooms. Or maybe it’s because there is still so much left to do in Africa.
Over the past twenty years, many countries in Africa have made strides in democracy, sustainable development, and human rights. But the continent continues to be plagued with AIDS, genocide, and war. Today, about 160 million Africans live inside or near a war zone in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, and the Congo, where conflict has killed 2.5 million people since 1998. There are an estimated 200,000 orphans in Rwanda. Where there is war, all work, all progress is undone.
I was never strong enough to put myself in the middle of a war. But there are those who are—Doctors Without Borders, The Red Cross, and The Red Crescent. Over 40,000 other non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) are working on projects in education, health, agriculture, human rights, and small business development in over 165 countries. They are fighting poverty, injustice, and despair.
Nineteen thousand children die every day in African countries from preventable diseases such as malaria, dysentery, measles, and meningitis. Worldwide, 17 million children die from malnutrition and starvation each year. Nearly half the estimated 515,000 women who die annually from pregnancy or childbirth are African.
For those of us who cannot manage elephants, there are ways. We can do something. If everyone in the United States gave even as little as five dollars annually to an NGO, we could prevent disease and malnutrition. If everyone paid attention, participated in our democracy by demanding action from our government and voting, we could slow the pace of war.
Over the last ten years, thirteen countries in Africa have achieved an 80% immunization coverage against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus, and measles has declined by nearly two thirds globally. In Africa, Guinea worm infections have dropped 88%! Imagine if we each gave fifty dollars, or a hundred. Imagine if we each wrote our congressmen and women and held our government accountable.
I am not a member of any religion, but I still pray.
The world will be a better place. It won’t happen in a single day, but it could happen in our lifetimes. If we work hard enough, don’t give up, and pay attention. If we all listen to one another and will it, we can make it happen.
Ensha’allah!
When I came back in 1982, I called Steve. He was still single. In 1986, I took him to Dori to meet Laya. She gave us her blessing. Steve and I have been married for twenty years. We have two fine boys and a dog.
In the Belly of the Elephant Page 30