by Tuttle, Dan;
the custody falls to another chap,
in Tanzania laws were not applied
such that a kid with means could stage escape.
In lack of oversight thus lay upside.
She happened on the only way to scrape
together means enough to go, the prize –
still theoretical, in planning phase –
was using littleness as her disguise
to bankroll cash a four-cow sale could raise.
To milk this bovine liquidation meant
inheritance made Stel the one percent.
18.
The distance you could travel on your feet
was limited, like distance crossed by car.
She knew that flight belonged to the elite,
reduced to meaningless the concept ‘far’.
So flight was where her flighty sights were set,
to unlock lands dissimilar in ways
so varied in her mind mere silhouettes
did stand where human details ought to lay.
When lightest blue and lime tipped night to dawn
the path to market glowed with daybreak hue,
this slightest girl roped cows, set foot to pawn
all four and thus turn Grandmum’s residue
from beef to soulful freedom. Shillings bought
a liberty that circumstance could not.
19.
Her steely-girded scaffolding of nerves
was nearly vibrating upon receipt
of stacks of cash beyond any reserves
she’d seen in life to date. In total, meat
weighed seven hundred kilos, every one
another bill that flipped from red to black.
Bereft of standard upbringing, she’d done
the final needed act to let her pack
her suitcase for planned rocket launching ride.
She knew the market’s traders each were marked
as targets by pickpockets alongside,
while little kid could move through unremarked.
That’s why she’d hid the plan. She’d trust Abu,
but mission best fit her and BLING, just two.
20.
In ingot-sized block, shilling volume’s threat
was possible detection by the thieves.
She didn’t want the packs to make vedette
of her on market’s stage. She placed bill sheaves
in pack that she had stitched four years ago
that tightly fit on BLING’s small, sturdy back,
sized rightly so no notes would overflow
and give the robbers signal to attack.
Disguising thus her fortunes as but grains,
the loyal pair made lightly-toed vamoose,
escaping market and unlocking chains
that poverty itself could not have loosed.
Enough was stashed from sale of cows that day
to free her from the housegirl sobriquet.
21.
Across the village, parallel in time,
discussions in the Abu family home
hit ever-graver tone: their paradigm
of farming their prosperity from loam
was being undermined by climate’s drought.
Ten huddled in their den, debating what
small livings they could eke from soil without
improvements. Other farms to theirs abut,
to obviate expansion. When the sons
divided up fixed maize-cropped land between
themselves, their buffer’d shrink from tens to ones,
each year of rainfall risking submarine
security of food as stores recede
and hungry mouths maintain caloric greed.
22.
In all-hands conversations Abu shrank
to corner, as was customary since
his birth. In family he was lowest ranked,
forgotten often. Yet his competence
was known—he was the quiet, clever boy,
too young to care to hear opinions from.
In time he’d find some suitable employ
and bring home for the family minor sums.
He neared the age where secondary school
was imminent. The grades on next exam
would over every scorecard overrule
and thus determine where on histogram
his future academically would lay:
with luck, he’d have the rightmost dossier.
23.
The swirling talk was anxious, voiced in haste
by heads perturbed. They’d climate havoc wrought
by once-sequestered carbons now displaced.
Heat scrambled weather. Normalcy turned not.
A hundred thousand duplicates – or more –
had had, were having, or would soon have this
fraught conversation of what heretofore
was land without a mass-indebtedness.
These echoes nationwide came oft from youth,
whose prevalence had reached historic highs.
Their futures bent to hydrocarbons’ truth,
and lacked recourse to fix polluted skies.
Such problems of the commons, common are.
But new was their effect felt so afar.
24.
Their talk discharged frustrations, much as boil
produces bubbles freeing water’s gas
built up from heat-resisting rangetop coil,
once pushed beyond its standard liquid mass.
Such periodic venting verbal jabs
released held ire before it turned revolt.
They slept, the days progressed, the words left scabs
on walls and ceilings. Would these pressures jolt
enough to movement? Civil war? None knew.
His family’s warmth was taken from it by
uncertainties from rainfall through to coup.
Still Ab hoped to his good name gentrify
once more. The fog of sorrow spread in home
turned will ablaze when breathed through anger’s ohm.
25.
Ensuing days he studied very hard.
His chin stayed low as if desk’s gravity
against the greater planet’s therein sparred.
He longed to fill his mental cavity
with every ounce of knowledge teachers left
for pupillary gobbling. Next test
would be so broad and weighty in its heft
that every hour was therefore repossessed.
Adventuring with Stella took a pause
and naturally, so she could solo mourn.
He knew when things are heavy she withdraws,
these times when living feels itself outworn.
So Grandmum’s secret passing stayed on ‘mum’
while Abu paper genius did become.
26.
He had no photographic memory,
built recollection talents through sheer will,
abilities innate in others he
lacked genes to automatically instill.
A brain that thought in shapes, however, was
an ally to his willpower. He would
mnemonically construct what science does
suggest is good technique that often should
augment the memory: he would weave a tale
with clues from schoolbooks he would need to know.
Remembering adventuring prevailed
above rote-memorizing folios.
His study candle burned through thick of night,
in hope success would bring escape in flight.
27.
To punctuate the dryness of the sky,
and sate the shriveled souls on plains who prayed,
a single day of storm swept to supply
the creeks with flows enough to ankle-wade.
Deniers on the radio used this
and recency (a bias humans share)
to say that Man’
s done naught to shake earth’s bliss
with CO2—the Right’s clown doctrinaires.
As rain made waterfall of cloud, Abu
attached his sensed self-worth to mastery
of syllabus his country’s retinue
of ministers, professors, teachers see
as critical to education for
the youth, New Tanzania’s guarantors.
28.
Curriculum they’d test spanned many parts,
its subjects ranging English, history,
mathematics, civics, science (though not arts)
and writ, of course, in language Swahili.
That language observation cracks divide
between the kids who’ve resources and not:
one-hundred twenty tongues used nationwide
meant expectation kids were polyglot.
For tribal language used at home was first,
and hopefully Swahili’s learned at school
though learning in a second tongue reversed
some students’ scores from genius-grade to fool’s.
To navigate the language gauntlet took
genetic luck augmenting studied books.
29.
His fam’s trek from Aleppo to lands north
where Bosporus splits Asian politic
from Europe’s, meant that English was his fourth
known language, if you count writ Arabic.
Advantages were many for the mind
whose training showed that subject, object, verb
are interchangeable. Which order binds
words into meanings couldn’t Ab perturb.
In Turkish, every permutation of
these parts of speech grammatically correct,
an object, verb, then subject’s not above
a verb, then object, subject. Who’d suspect
agility to modify his speech
begat a cleverness that none could teach?
30.
Linguistic mastery is but one face
of all intelligences body has.
Its kinesthetic form allows for grace
and tonal place births unexpected jazz,
its numbers side perfected by savants
allows near-instantly computed sums,
its introspective side dissects your wants,
and geospatial side makes true maps’ rhumbs.
As many kinds of smarts exist as lives
are postulated for a cat to hold,
yet placement test would eight of these deny
and simply ask retell what has been told.
Evaluations sadly thus exclude
assessment of a kid’s full aptitude.
31.
Young Abu’s brain plasticity was high
matched by his dread and drive from family’s chat
about today and futures it implied.
He’d seen hand-lettered poster, dirtied matte
hung low beside headmaster’s broken door
so kids could read it. There would be reward
from China’s embassy for s/he who scored
the highest on the test: they’d be offshored
and sent to Middle Kingdom on exchange,
overtly building business ties between
the countries. They were wise to prearrange
such opportunity to make serene
their future interactions. Abu’d rest
not one whit till exams showed he was best.
32.
Adventuring as Pioneers once did
thus paused as heavy waves of pressure rolled
onto the Abu-Stella shore. Amid
concern about exams, the boy was holed
up in the post-class classroom. All meanwhile
with hidden treasure Stella felt compelled
to act as normal. Wealth would not restyle
her Tanzanian life. She, rather, held
tight-gripped to secret she could buy one pass
to leave the country’s border. Studies took
a seat in traincar clearly lower-class:
that part of her shrank from demands schoolbooks
could make, despite their prize. She shined when floors
gave way to soil and dirt of great outdoors.
33.
The only clouds that circled fortnights hence,
semester creeping toward its apogee,
were mental cirrus strands of penitence
for Stella, partly burdened, part carefree.
And yet the winds persisted, circular
in orbit topping Abu’s thund’ring brain,
hell-bent on winning prize to be chauffeur
for kinship’s clan to China’s pending reign.
Convinced was he of Asian futures nigh
compounded by the pressures there at home
that even if this test went all awry
he’d somehow find a way to China roam.
His vigor bellowed by willpower’s blast
grew from need to match future with the past.
CHAPTER 6
34.
Extreme examination day arrived
posthaste to those whose cramming time felt short,
as time is wont to do to those deprived
its surfeit due deadlines of import.
The questions ranged from relevant to ir-,
with unexpectedness in every flight,
yet Abu moved through each like summiteer,
his sights exclusively on apex height.
Exhaustion followed pencil’s blunt. The day
expired at twelve Swahili time, which counts
from six a.m. as zero all the way
to dozen, then resets—norms set amount
of daylight sensically as paradigm
befitting near-equator’s telling time.
35.
In classroom tightly monitored nearby
young Stella took the same exam, and knew
her marks were not as low as to deny
her passing near the bottom of the crew.
Although she sought to drop from school and class,
her masquerade that all was right at home
mandated she not stand out from the mass
in ways that could have perfect cover blown.
As twelve-o’clock Swahili time soon struck
and tinny peal from nearby church bell clanged,
the pupils turned in tests then ran amok
around the football grounds: there freedom rang.
Two months they’d be a-waiting the adults
to tally, grade, and collate their results.
36.
Far-off dry season morning when the list
of school marks would be pasted publicly
was quiet, calm, and cool, as if it missed
the memo that today they’d handpick the
one lucky student who’d to Beijing go
to study on behalf of Bongo, ‘brain’
in word, but also slang here apropos
as ‘Tanzania’. They’d be preordained
to future of employment, business, sway
by knowing Chinese, English, Swahili,
a conduit to commerce they’d purvey
across the oceans. Abu saw he’d be
returned to dignity he’d hoped achieve
if given chance to this home lengthy leave.
37.
The throng of kids was riotous when soon
the principal arrived with folder thin
to differentiate the picayune
mark-getters from those bolder-bent to win.
The kids who knew their English poor stood mum
near edges of the teeming crowd, heads low
in worry that their futures would succumb
to farming and their peers would them outgrow.
Most wouldn’t make next grade, the up-or-out
of school was tragic testament to place
with resources too scarce to offe
r route
for all up opportunity’s staircase.
Joy goosebumps rose when Stella glimpsed the board:
the bongo of Abu had won reward!
38.
The moment that his eyes alighted on
his name atop the list of pupils, he
felt like the caterpillar trading brawn
aground for mothlike wings, cocoon cut free.
Kaleidoscopic glee cascaded ’tween
his brain and eyes and arms and legs and knees,
as if ecstatic waves on trampoline
were bouncing ever higher toward trapeze.
He snapped back into body when embrace
of friendly strength arrested reverie
and brought his feet to earth from hyperspace.
A hug from Stella there wrapped every
fantasia of his future in regret:
they’d separate adventuring duet.
39.
“You did it, Ab, you finally found your launch-
pad out into the wider world! I’m so
excited for you,” Stella said, with staunch
companion’s words said ex officio.
“Hey, thanks,” Abu replied, his jelly legs
still searching for their standard steadiness,
“I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” Egg-
returning mission felt like eddy this
quick shift in river flow of time left far
ago. “Don’t worry,” Stella said, “you’ll find
so much to do, so much to see bizarre
you’ll not be interested in what’s behind.”
He looked at her with eyes that disbelieved,
excited as he was, he partly grieved.
40.
He sought to change the subject, harking back
to times that ended recently before
results were posted, wedging open crack
twixt two kids’ futures not felt heretofore.
“I saw you made the secondary list.
You think you’ll go? There’s only so long you
can hide that Grandmum doesn’t quite exist.”
But Stella played it cool, deferred in lieu
of keeping her surprise in pocket. “I’ll
keep going there, I think. I’ve got some time.”
She’d prayed Abu would win, planned out her pile
of cash from selling cows so she’d be primed
to sneak away from fate as housegirl. She’d
self-fund as stowaway if he were freed!
41.
That night at home Abu’s new life became
the topic of their conversations. Soon
a well-dressed Chinese man arrived, proclaimed
the benefits the government festoons
upon the winners of this scholarship.
Ab’s passport, visa, papers, transport, food
would be arranged with speed. Soon squalor’s grip
would loose for would-be scion. Grades renewed
