by P J Skinner
By the time they got to the village, the whole population had assembled in front of their round huts, fear and incomprehension written on their faces. A strange bleating sound emanated from one hut.
‘What the hell is that?’ said Sam.
Hans shrugged. He turned to Mbala.
‘Ask them,’ he said, but she didn’t need to.
‘The elephants. They’ve killed many. The forest is full of blood.’
‘Massacre.’
The bleating started again. Sam gestured towards the hut.
‘Bébé,’ said Ota.
‘Christ. A baby elephant? It will die if we don’t get it some milk,’ said Jacques.
Sam found her legs and staggered to the hut. She peered through a crack in the door. A hairy trunk searched the crevice to sniff her. The infant bleated again. Her heart threatened to break.
‘We need to ask Jean Delacroix. They know what to feed it. Can you go with Mbala and find him? He should be in town today helping the environmental team teach the ladies how to grow broccoli,’ said Sam.
‘And you?’ said Jacques.
‘Hans and I will go with Ota and find out how bad this is. We need to count the elephants. I must take photographs as evidence.’
‘But Sam…’
‘I have to do this. There’s no choice. Hans will look after me.’
Jacques and Mbala headed back to town. Ota jumped into the jeep with Sam and Hans gesticulating and mouthing strange words as it threw them around on the terrible road. Soon the car entered the dark coolness of the forest. They did not have to drive for long before Ota made them stop the car and get out.
There was a smell of death in the air. Sam tried to breathe through her mouth but the taste of iron clung to the roof of it. She was drowning in blood way before she waded into it. The dead elephants resembled a field of boulders dropped by a glacier. Their corpses had sunk nearer the ground as the life force ebbed away into the soil but the large grey bodies still intimidated with their extraordinary size. They exuded sadness and fear.
Sam got close to one big male and could see an axe leaning against his bloodied head. The skull was split and torn where the killers had hacked at it to prise the tusk loose. Hans came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder making her jump. She turned to him to say something, but the words got stuck in her throat. Tears coursed down her cheeks as he pulled her into his massive chest.
‘You shouldn’t have come. This is too much,’ he said. ‘Those bastards. Some of these elephants are almost one hundred years old and someone has cut them down for money.’ His voice was ragged, and he clung to Sam like a drowning man. ‘You’ve got to take photos. I’m sorry, I know you don’t want too but we must get the evidence. I’ll take the axe with us. Maybe we can get fingerprints or something.’
Sam nodded, struck dumb in horror. She moved between the bodies taking photographs of the carnage. Their tails were missing, hacked off at the root.
‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘The bastards took trophies.’
‘We need samples in that case,’ said Hans.
‘Samples?’ Sam almost vomited.
‘For forensics. If we find the tails, we can prove they belonged to this herd. I will come back tomorrow with Jean.’
‘But where are the tusks? They can’t have taken them out yet. The baby elephant would have died after a short time alone. Two days perhaps?’
‘You’re right. If we couldn’t get here in the small jeep, there is no way they could get a lorry through. They must have stored them nearby.’
Hans straightened up and crossed to Ota who was sitting on one body as if in a trance.
‘Ota.’ His voice echoed across the glade. ‘We must find the tusks.’
Ota moaned, a broken man, but Hans shook him and mimed the carrying of the tusks on his back and the resulting fatigue. ‘Where is the road?’ he said. ‘La route?’
Ota pointed through the trees.
‘You track the men. Cherche les coupables.’
Hans raised his hand to his brow and mimed looking at the ground and picking up twigs. Ota sprung from his gruesome seat and onto the ground. He grabbed his spear and gave his honey to Sam for safe keeping. Moving to the edge of the glade, he made a circuit, crouching so low he was almost invisible. He stopped, his body rigid, and he picked up some leaves from the forest floor sniffing them with concentration, his eyes shut.
Suddenly, he stood bolt upright and pointed into the forest indicating that they should take the road and meet up with him on the outside.
‘That makes sense. They have moved them nearer the road for easy removal. We can meet him when he emerges from the forest,’ said Hans.
Sam was already walking to the car. Ota set off trotting through the forest following the trail. Soon the shadows swallowed him.
They jumped into the jeep and took off towards the main road. Sam changed the film in her camera and stored the used one in its container. Her mood had changed to one of vengeance and the muscles in her cheeks became white balls.
The subtle change in his companion did not go unnoticed and Hans nodded at her in admiration and respect. Sam glowed. He had picked up the change in her attitude, hardly surprising, since he was a soldier, he must know all about revenge.
Chapter XXIV
As Hans turned the car out of the forest and up the muddy track running alongside it, Jacques and Jean Delacroix drove up in the other vehicle. Signalling for them to follow him, Hans led them along the road as Sam kept an eye out for Ota in the gloom. They needn’t have worried. His face grim and shoulders slumped, the pygmy stood in the centre of the muddy ruts in plain sight.
They pulled the cars into the side of the road and followed Ota to the tree-line. He trotted into the forest for about a hundred metres and stopped in a small clearing in front of a pile of what appeared to be tree trunks covered in palm leaves and other vegetation and stacked between six holding posts hammered into the ground, three on each side of the pile.
Sam shrugged at Hans, but he headed towards the pile. He lifted the covering from one end. Dark red stains covered the ends of the trunk-like objects. Hans stiffened with suppressed rage as he recognised the tusks. Sam watched his chest heave as he steadied himself. How could a man like that control his anger when her blood was boiling in her veins? She shoved her hands into her pockets and bit her lip. Bastards.
Hans, Jean and Jacques cleared the camouflage from the tusks exposing their pinkish hue to the light. Sam steeled herself to take photographs at each stage, including objects against which to gauge their scale. Hans put his hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, her distress unhidden.
‘We must burn the ivory,’ said Hans
‘Ivory doesn’t burn, or at least, it does, but it takes days,’ said Jean. ‘It’s almost impossible to destroy.’
‘What else can we do?’ said Sam.
‘They have tried crushing it in the past but it doesn’t work well either and these tusks are super hard,’ said Jean.
‘If we burn it for a day or two, that should destroy the value, don’t you think?’ said Sam. ‘We only need to make it unsaleable.’
‘That’s true,’ said Jean. ‘But how do we find the culprits?’
‘The pygmies can watch the site and report back to us when someone turns up to collect their booty,’ said Sam.
‘They must be careful. Whoever they are, these people are armed and ruthless,’ said Jacques.
‘Do we have any gasoline?’ said Jean
‘There’s a canister in each car. Emergency supplies,’ said Hans.
‘Let’s fetch them. Sam, stay here with Jean,’ said Jacques.
The two men set off through the forest leaving Sam and Jean standing together. Only the sound of leaves falling through the canopy disturbed the silence.
‘Did you see the bodies of the elephants?’ said Jean.
‘Yes, I took photographs. It was like a scene out of a n
ightmare. The elephants had their faces and trunks hacked away to get at the tusks. And the smell…’ Sam’s voice broke.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Not really. I’ve got blood on my boots to remind me,’ said Sam. ‘How much is the ivory worth?’
‘About two thousand dollars a kilo,’ said Jean.
‘That much? No wonder the elephants aren’t safe.’
Sam approached the stack of tusks and stroked the pink ivory. She leaned her forehead against one post feeling its rough bark pushing into her skin.
‘I can’t understand why the people who buy it still think it’s okay. Haven’t they watched David Attenborough or any documentaries about poaching? Don’t they know how intelligent and magnificent elephants are?’ said Sam.
Jean grimaced. ‘Culture,’ he said. ‘There’s an emerging middle class in Asia who buy ivory as a status symbol. They don’t care about elephants, only their tusks. Organised crime has got involved now. There’s talk of them stockpiling the ivory to avoid any vetoes.’
‘They’ll come back and kill the others, won’t they?’
‘Yeah. Elephants represent mountains of money to the poachers. They don’t think of them as sentient beings.’
‘We’ve got to stop them,’ said Sam.
‘But how? The stakeholders don’t want to use money for rangers,’ said Jean.
‘We need to show them the evidence of the slaughter. Surely, they’ll agree to support them when they see the carnage.’
‘They might. It’s worth a try. How can I help?’
‘Does your organisation have printing facilities?’ said Sam, an idea forming.
‘Yes, we have all mod-cons in Kampala. We can print posters.’
‘If I give you the film with the photos of the massacre on it, how fast can you get them developed and made into posters?’
‘Almost immediately, I should think,’ said Jean, brightening.
‘Soon enough for the stakeholder meeting next week?’
‘Yes, if you give it to me now.’
‘I want to get some photographs of the ivory stack on fire and then I’ll rewind the roll and take it out of my camera.’
‘Okay, that sounds perfect. No-one could fail to be moved by what you have seen today.’
The sound of branches being pushed aside interrupted their chat as Hans and Jacques arrived back at the clearing with two canisters of gasoline. They went straight over to the tusk and poured the gasoline on the top of the heap. The strong fumes entered Sam’s nasal passages making her feel as if they were on fire too. Nausea rose in her throat.
‘Has anyone got a match?’ said Jacques.
***
By the time Sam got back to her prefab, her head had cleared enough for her to appreciate the thrilling blanket of stars thrown over the dark town. The starlight cleansed her eyes after the horror of the carnage in the forest. Despite smoking two of Hans’ cigarettes, the acrid smell of the burning tusks clung to the lining of her nose.
A cry of protest escaped her before she could prevent it. She roared with impotence and fury like a lioness whose cubs have been killed by a rival male. Anxious faces appeared at the windows of several prefabs but she had gone inside to make tea, the only remedy she knew for her troubles.
Once inside, she curled up on the reclining chair and sipped a cup of tea so hot that it threatened to remove the roof of her mouth. This job made everything else she had every done look like sucking eggs. Not only was someone siphoning money from the project, but poachers were slaughtering elephants with impunity in the park Consaf was sponsoring. Added to that, the pygmies were being killed and even eaten by rebels because people thought they were subhuman. Somehow, she had to deal with these problems at the same time.
And then she remembered seeing the Asian man talking to Joseph Kaba outside the stakeholder meeting. Could that meeting be related to the slaughter? What on earth could they have in common besides that? He was the only Asian she had ever seen in Masaibu, and the markets for ivory were all based there.
She lay in bed tossing and turning but sleep wouldn’t come. Images of the large grey bodies had seared into her eyeballs and the smell of blood kept coming back to her, dense and metallic.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door. Her heart leapt in her chest. She lay there quivering with fear. Who would be at her door at this time of night? Maybe they would go away if she didn’t answer.
Again, she heard knocking, gentle, insistent. She dragged herself out of bed and felt her way to the door.
‘Who’s there,’ she said.
‘It’s me, Hans.’
‘Hans? What’s wrong?’
She pulled the door open to find him leaning against the wall. He turned his head to her and she saw distress in his face.
‘Come in,’ she hissed, grabbing his arm and tugging him, terrified someone would see him, add two and two together and make twelve.
He stumbled into her sitting room and slumped into her reclining chair.
‘Hey,’ he slurred. ‘This is like mine.’
Drunk.
‘What are you doing here,’ she said.
His face worked and he screwed it up as if trying to banish his demons but when he turned to look at her, the sorrow showed.
‘I miss her,’ he said. ‘Today, you reminded me of her again. I wanted to…’
He trailed off. Sam could see tears glinting on his cheeks. Her soft heart ached for him. She had never suffered a loss like that but her empathy for him made her sad too. She felt her eyes filling with tears to see his huge frame shaking with grief.
Hardly knowing what she was doing, she got onto his lap and pulled the lever of the chair so that they were both leaning back. She put her head on his shoulder and her arm around his chest and held him while he wept.
When he fell asleep, Sam threw a rug over him and tip-toed back to bed. The relief he felt had crept through her pores and comforted her. She turned over and fell into a deep slumber. When she woke the next morning, he was gone.
Chapter XXV
‘It was bound to happen. Fucking savages.’ Frik thumped the table with a massive fist. ‘What did you expect?’
The racist overtone of his statement hung in the air challenging someone to disagree. Sam rolled her eyes to heaven.
‘If the rebels are killing the elephants, someone is paying. We intend to hunt down the source of funds,’ said Hans.
‘I can give you a head start on that one,’ said Sam. ‘I remembered last night that I noticed Joseph Kaba having lunch with an Asian man in the restaurant run by Mama Sonia.’
‘And what were you doing there?’ said Hans, knitting his eyebrows together in fake jealousy.
‘Having a rather delicious lunch with Jean Delacroix. I hear the standards have slipped since you disrupted her supply chain,’ said Sam.
She winked at him and he threw his head back emitting snorts of laughter. It was such a relief to see him back to normal. His nocturnal visit already seemed like an odd dream.
‘I also saw Kaba talking to the same man outside the last community meeting before I went on leave. It can’t be a coincidence. There aren’t any Asian businesses in town that I know of,’ she said.
‘But why are you so concerned about these elephants? They are wild animals,’ said Ngoma Itoua. ‘We need to focus on the people.’
‘But that’s just my point,’ said Sam. ‘If we keep the elephants alive, we can encourage tourism here, to create jobs for local people.’
‘What about the mine? Consaf told people they will have jobs when they build the plant,’ said Philippe. ‘Someone asks me about the mine most days.’
‘The mine? But we don’t have a resource yet,’ said Sam.
‘What’s a resource?’ said Dr Ntuli, never one to shirk a silly question.
‘It’s a measure of the amount of gold in the ground. We have to find enough gold to fund the building of a plant, cover
all the costs of drilling and make a profit,’ said Alain.
‘But Consaf have been drilling for years. How come they haven’t finished yet?’ said Kante.
‘It’s difficult to find enough gold in one place that’s also feasible to take out. Most projects fail to become mines because there isn’t enough metal in the ground to make it economic to take out. That’s why it’s so important that we have a backup plan, to ensure that there are always jobs for the people of Masaibu, even if there is no mine in the future,’ said Sam.
The meeting dwindled to a close. Sam was left sitting on her own as the managers filed out. A black depression descended over her as she struggled to make sense of their reactions to the slaughter. Being worried about the fate of the elephants was a white person’s concern, nothing to do with the local poverty and violence. Was it racist to save the elephants while women were dying in childbirth?
She lifted her head as the loud thud of raindrops hitting the zinc roof reverberated around the room, intensifying with every wave of rain that swept over the camp. Soon the whole place would be a quagmire and the daily fights over the heavy machinery would get worse.
Sighing, she got up and went to the front door of the office building. The rain was being driven in at an angle, hitting the floorboards of the verandah and splashing her work boots with dark stripes.
All day the deluge fell, yellow streaks of lightning racing across black skies. The gutters overflowed and leaves clogged the storm drains. Large pools of standing water sat waiting for the mosquitos to deposit their eggs. The frogs croaked their love songs and hopped into the grass, prey for waiting constrictors.
Sam took the chance to go through the musty files stored in the cabinets under the book shelves in her office. She emptied them one by one, reviewing the contents before putting them into new folders with clearer labelling. Some pages were damp and had stuck together, but she dried them with a hairdryer, borrowed from a woman in the kitchen.
She could not find any evidence that the machinery had ever arrived at Masaibu, but proving the absence of something was a lot harder than it had seemed when she left head office, buoyed up by her discovery. The whole job was getting on top of her. It was always one step forward and two back. Her small victories appeared pyrrhic beside the enormity of the problems facing her.
