The Eves

by Grace Sammon

  Roy senses my tension but has no sense of the details and pain ever-present in my head. He tells me I don’t have to go. I know I must. The gnawing pain of the last years, so much more intense at Christmas, makes the holidays, or sharing the holidays with others, unbearable for me and for them. I’ve thought and rethought trying to contact Ryn and Adam again, but decided it might upset their holiday. I am sure that James, mocking and taunting me, full of mean-spiritedness, will send pictures of an idyllic visit showing that, in the end, he has our children. As painful as it is, I will relish just seeing their lovely faces.

  After the other night, our time on the boat and our texts, I am not sure how to approach Roy for a good-bye and simply wait as he hands my large suitcase to the skycap for check in. As he returns to me, he takes my hands and leans in to kiss me, slowly, purposefully. As I breathe him in, I relax, ready to leave behind my nagging thoughts and set out for adventure.

  “Go have fun, Jes. Really. Enjoy yourself. I’ll be here when you get back. Right here in this spot. I like you a considerable amount, you know.” Before I can respond, he leans in, kisses me quickly, and is gone.

  Tossing my small, tour-supplied duffel bag over my shoulder, I make my way from curb, through security, to the gate. I go through the bag and re-catalogue what I’ve been instructed to pack. I’ve left an extra day on the front end of the tour for any travel delays and in order to arrive in Tanzania refreshed. I go over the flight itinerary: Dulles, Frankfurt, Addis Ababa—Ethiopia, Kilimanjaro. I text Roy a thank you and send “I love yous,” and “Merry Christmases,” to Sonia and Erica. I turn off my cell phone. Then, I turn it back on. I text Ryn and Adam, “I love you beyond measure. I hope your Christmas is happy and safe,” and hit send.

  I turn off the phone and tuck it into the bottom of the bag. For the next fourteen days it will be useless. No need for the international service option, there will be no calls.

  The trip over is easy and uneventful. Upon arrival in Frankfort, I immediately miss my first connection. This poses the threat that even the window for travel snags might be lost. An historic ice storm is closing in and threatens closing down the airport for a few days. The news fuels a sense of tension, urgency, and doom throughout the airport. So far undaunted, I run between gates and airlines as each carrier promises me that they have booked me, rebooked me, and have transferred my luggage with each change. Five hours later, spent, I arrive in the Lufthansa Airlines’ lounge seeking help. The line goes out the door, tempers are short. However, there are snacks and vodka, and the tension here, at least, is at a lower decibel than in the airport as a whole. Computer access helps and I’m able to email the tour company explaining my dilemma. When Lufthansa tries to close the lounge at the end of its long day we, the stranded, protest. Two days later I am still enjoying gummy bears and vodka and a host of really excellent food services. I see the narrow window for making the safari connection all but vanish.

  The first small miracle happens in the middle of day two when the weather breaks and I get placed on a plane bound for Addis. Personally, I insist on calling it Addis Ababa, simply because it is fun to say, and it calls up images from a sixth-grade geography project of Haile Selassie and Ethiopian royalty. In truth, everyone else now calls it simply Addis. As I get ready to go to the gate headed for Addis, the gate agent tells me the connection to Kilimanjaro is frightfully close. She warns me to, run, run to your gate upon arrival.

  Once we take off and before darkness falls, I look out the window and trace the boot of Italy from the sky, land of my mother’s birth.

  Flying through the night, the sense of adventure begins to give way to the sense of loss. It now seems foolhardy to be taking this trip to Africa, the one everyone thinks I am so brave to take. I feel decidedly un-brave as the stars go by the window. Then, as if I could reach right out and touch his belt, there is Orion straddling the equator. Tobias! Tobias’ grandfather and grandfathers before that and right back to this African continent. Tonight, whatever time it is in the States, maybe Tobias will be looking up for Orion, and we will be connected. Deep breath. I am okay. Just for today.

  The bouncy landing in Addis is met by a blurred cacophony of sights, smells, and sounds. I run out one secured gate and meet with security at another. If I miss this connection, I am in Ethiopia with no plan. If I make the plane, I still may have missed the connection to the tour. If that happens, I then have to figure out how to catch up. There is no time to think these things through, or to ascertain anything about the airport or the country’s history beyond the barrage of sensate impressions. I make it to the gate and find it is only dimly concerning that when the guard takes a bottle out of my bag and I tell him it’s water, he takes this at face value. He replaces it in my bag and sends me on my way without a thought to what the clear liquid could be. All passengers clear the gate and board a bus and head off down an unlit road, nothing visible on either side. The road is unpaved, made passable only by the tire ruts of previous voyagers. We travel for an extended period of time, finally pulling into a grassy area lit only by the bus headlights. The bus maneuvers in order to light our path to a very small plane for less than twenty passengers. This is now day three of travel and I have lost my sense of day and time and time zone.

  The tired band of travelers arrives at Kilimanjaro, a tiny, one gate airport. It’s two o’clock in the morning, the smell of fresh cut, heather-like grass fills the air. Those with luggage pass quickly through customs. The agent wants to go home. I am the one person left standing at the luggage carousel as it goes around and around, empty. I wait as if somehow the bag will make it on the next go-round. The customs agent takes my tour information and promises my luggage should arrive by morning, later this morning.

  Not brave, nervous, I leave the tiny airport, hoisting my small duffel bag on my shoulder and make my way the few feet to the parking lot. There is but one vehicle, a dusty jeep, with threadbare tires. A tall, lean, Black man clad in a red tunic with blue trim and a large ceremonial necklace is leaning against it, a long rod in his hand.

  He looks up from his cell phone and notices me, “Jambo, jambo! You must be Miss Jessica. Jambo! My name is Robert,” he says, righting himself from the jeep.

  “Jambo, salama,” I reply to the most common of Swahili/Bantu greetings I have committed a handful of useful Swahili phrases to memory. As Robert launches into a full welcome, all in Bantu, I realize I have been in Africa a very short time and have made my first, of what I hope will be very few, blunders. I stop him, probably rudely, mid-sentence. I had forgotten that adding the “salama” is only done if you want to indicate that you speak Swahili. Gratefully, Robert lapses immediately and amicably into fluent English. More gratefully, I slide into the safety of rescue in the dusty jeep.

  Explaining that it seems my luggage has failed to arrive, he loads only my small duffel bag and me into the jeep, assuring me he will check after the luggage. We drive through the still night to Arusha, the poorest place I have ever seen. We pass men with bows and arrows along the road. Robert educates me as we drive, indicating these are not hunters, as I guessed, but armed guards to protect, largely, the tourists. When we make the final turn into the tour-associated hotel, I am in a different world. Inside the fence, lush, well-manicured grasses surround idyllic, posh “huts.” Immense trees encircle a large and prestigious manor house. The disparity between inside and outside the gate chafes at my sensibilities, but not enough to stop me from appreciating my accommodations.

  Robert has escorted me to a perfectly lovely “hut” with a lighted path, air conditioning, mosquito-netted bed, a shower, and a note from the tour director saying she’s already been on the phone with the airlines and they promise my luggage by morning, later in the morning. This is to be the theme of the next fourteen days of the journey. My ill-fated luggage will fail to arrive.

  I shower, delightfully shower, and slide between the crisp cool sheets. Luxuriously in bed for the first time in an uncountable number of
days.

  By morning the tour participants assemble for the traveler welcome meeting. We scope out those who will be our fast friends by the end of the journey in the contrived false intimacy of tours. There are always “types” on these tours. I have been many of them—the newlyweds with their perfectly appointed themed outfits, the perfect family, the grandparents and grandkids, the single woman, the Germans—there are always Germans. This time, I am “the single woman.” As anticipated, I’m a little harder to slide smoothly into the couples and family groupings. Everyone silently wonders why the single woman is here by herself. They assume there is a story. And, of course, there is.

  Africa amazes. There is no amount of Nat Geo or PBS Nature that can prepare you for the sheer enormity of the savannahs, the herds of elephant families, your first giraffe looming over the trees, or for giraffes fighting—slapping and wrapping their necks around their opponents’. On Day One we are all “safari virgins” gawking at the massive herds of gazelles and elephants. By Day Five the gazelles go practically unnoticed as we focus on covering “the big five”—lion, elephant, Cape Buffalo, leopard, and rhinos white and black. The deadly Cape Buffalo and hippos abound. Zebra (said here with a short ‘e’ zeb-ra) and an array of the world’s most amazing birds surround us at every turn. The cheetah are most elusive.

  Each night we relax to a white gloved served dinner. At the close of the evening we are escorted to our private five-star-hotel-rated accommodations by armed guards, ensuring we will not be mauled by lions and such. The richly crafted raised tents are outfitted with hardwood floors and wrap-around porches, mahogany furniture with marble tops and brass fittings speak of unbridled elegance. Plush towels and robes hang in our elaborate bathrooms in what I imagine are the equivalent of the poshest of British touring train coaches. Flaps up or down you can hear the hyenas yipping in the night. I am treated to the sound of lions roaring most nights, and my heart aches for my tiny rooftop porch and the closeness of Ryn and Adam.

  At dawn we are awakened to the tinkling of Robert ringing a small bell announcing that the birds are awake, that coffee or cocoa is being left on our porches, and the fire, bringing us hot water, is being lit under our tents. At the sound of the bells I think about Tobias and his grandfather and how the cliffs wake up.

  Each morning, I pull from my duffel the same clothing, the only clothes I have. By Day Three, I’ve worn everything but one of the T-shirts Erica and Sonia gave me. Each morning, a proper British breakfast greets me, and we are on our way for the morning game drive. There are the occasional opportunities to visit a school or a market to purchase items. At each stop there are male merchants who overwhelming, and by some quirk, introduce themselves to us as Uncle Sam. “I am Sam,” they say. “Remember my name, tell your friends, buy only from Sam, Uncle Sam.”

  Day Six. It is Christmas. Despite my upbeat façade of the last few days, it is just that, a façade. I am longing for Ryn and Adam, wondering how they are, wishing we were together, or at least in touch. They don’t know where I am. Yet, stupidly, I expect that they will get in contact with me. After all, it is Christmas. The internet is a hard thing to secure on safari, even at this level of service. I annoy the kitchen staff by asking more than once if I can try their internet. I can’t quite pull off the merriment of the group or the outrageously misplaced “White Christmas” carol music playing on a loop in the tent camp. I long for something more authentic than the white-gloved service and the seemingly staged visits to Bantu bomas, the fortified enclosures for homes and livestock. I beg off the morning and afternoon game drives. From my duffel bag I pull out Erica’s still unopened card and the T-shirt with the mtDNA on it, my last remaining clean clothing item. I slip it on and sit in the silence of my luxurious porch in silence.

  Before I have a chance to open the card, my solitude is interrupted by the tingling of a little bell at the end of the small path leading to my tent. “Excuse me Bwana Bibi, I am wanting to check that you are OK this Christmas Day.” It is Robert, greeting me with the respectful Swahili greeting roughly translated as ‘Boss or Spirit Woman.’ He has his long staff in one hand, bell in the other.

  “Thank you, Robert. I am fine. Thank you for checking. Why aren’t you out on the game drive?”

  “It is my day off, Bwana Bibi. I have the time to pray and to sit, and to check on you.”

  I am wondering if he has been assigned by our tour guide to make sure I have a good day. He comes closer but keeps a comfortable and formal distance on the path. “Robert, I am fine, really. Thank you.” Somehow, this doesn’t suffice, and he continues to stand in the path.

  “Would you like to come up and sit for a moment, Robert?”

  “No thank you, Bwana Bibi, but I will sit here for a moment.” With that he easily collapses his enormously long legs into a squat, sitting on his haunches, sideways to me, and gazes out into the savannah. He seems content to keep silence with me. Minutes later, “Bwana Bibi, it is very brave for you to come to Africa by yourself.”

  “Robert, why do you say that? When I was preparing to come here many people said that to me as well, and I don’t understand it. There really has not been one moment when I have not been well looked after, safe, well treated.”

  For the next forty minutes we engage in amicable conversation. All the while he is squatting and not meeting my gaze. He shares that it is rare for a single woman to come on safari. He tells me he is saving up for three more cows in order to make the requisite ten needed to be able to buy his bride. He wonders if no one had enough cows for me! He is intrigued by the idea that he could come to the United States and not have to buy a wife. Eventually, we wind our way back to the topic of me being brave.

  “I think you are brave, Bwana Bibi, because in Africa you really cannot hide, and you cannot really be alone. In Africa you must know who you are, where you fit, where you are going. Africa is a very big place and we are only a little speck of it, but we are each a speck that must fit someplace. You must be very secure in this, very brave, to come here.”

  He continues, “The next two days are my favorite part of our journey. Are you anticipating it well? Is this why you have come to Tanzania?”

  I have to force myself to focus on his questions, not really hearing them. I’m too taken aback by his statements about bravery. It’s embarrassing to admit to him that I didn’t have a specific reason for coming here. I leave out that I am hiding from the reality of my life. I tell him that I did very little research on this trip or the itinerary, just booked it because the brochures keep coming year after year and that I needed to get away. Far away.

  “Ah, Bwana Bibi, tomorrow we are going to the birthplace of all civilization!” he says, hardly able to contain himself. “Tomorrow you will be in a very luxurious hotel that sits high above the Ngorongoro Crater, part of the Great Rift Valley that extends all the way to Israel and Mesopotamia, to Eden! To the Promised Land! It is one of our seven natural wonders. It is a most amazing place. It is clearly, a place that God created.”

  I encourage his enthusiasm and marvel at his faith.

  “Bwana Bibi, it is the world’s largest inactive, intact, and unfilled basin made from a volcanic implosion three million years ago. Your brochure will describe it as “the world’s most unchanged wildlife sanctuary.” As I said, I think it is a place for God. When we move to the Serengeti, you will be in the Great Migration. Your brochure will describe this as ‘The World Cup of Wildlife,’ but I am not really sure what that means. There we will see rafters of hippo, crèches of ostrich, kaleidoscopes of giraffe, parliaments of vultures, and sounders of wart hogs. There we will see dazzles of zebra in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands, only surpassed in numbers by the two and three times as many implausibility of wildebeest.”

  I stop him, amazed at his words. Words so richly cast and toned they draw me in, and I catch his enthusiasm. An “implausibility” of wildebeest. Rafters, crèches, kaleidoscopes! Really? What would Jan call all these descriptors
? Ah, delicious! I ask Robert if he knows that we have very few words for what he is describing, mostly a flock for birds and sheep, or a herd of almost any other land animal.

  “This is very limiting is it not, Bwana Bibi? What you will see in the day after tomorrow cannot be described with just the two words you use. Oh, and I have saved the telling you of the Olduvai Gorge. No white man walked here until 1892. Tomorrow, you will walk where the great Mary Leakey made her discovery. From your hotel tomorrow, go to the rim of the crater and gaze out. You will see that the hand of God, may His name be praised, indeed moved over the land.”

  With that he comes easily up to his full height, tells me he will bring me my dinner if I like, and thanks me for passing time with him this Christmas Day.

  the crater

  T

  hat night I finish the supper, and the very thoughtful sidecar of vodka, brought to me by Robert. He tells me that the others saw cheetah on the afternoon game ride, and it is unlikely that they will appear again.

  It is OK, Christmas was still, somehow, a full day. As I slip into bed, I remember the card from Erica that accompanied the T-shirt I am still wearing. Aunt Jessica, Merry Christmas. Have a great trip. Take photos. Find Eve. Love, Erica (and mom). Under her signature she has drawn the same six scratchy blobs that are on the back of my shirt. I’m assuming the Eve reference is to my nerdy mtDNA thing. You’ve got to hand it to Erica, she really listens. Between her note and Robert’s words, today I realize that I should have done more prep in coming here and then remind myself that it is OK. I can go with the flow and simply experience what unfolds. Hopefully, Erica won’t be too disappointed that there will be few photos. Camera separated from suitcase-packed charger worlds ago, my camera died on day two. Remarkably, the loss of it is freeing. I get to be “in the moment,” face-to-face with the beasts, rather than separated from them through a viewfinder.