The sound of women pounding yam resonated through the village. A mangy dog walked past the doorway, caring little for the philosophical import of their discussions. Flies buzzed around its patches of bare skin.
The chief’s retainers looked at each other, perplexed. Femi drew circles in the clay with his toe, avoiding lines of sight. Aminah put her hands on her immense hips, wondering what spirits she had offended to bring this woman to her.
Femi then embarked on a long whispered interchange with the chief in a local language. The chief seemed to grow more concerned as Femi spoke, glancing in Barbara’s direction with a look of compassion, accompanied by a hint of alarm. She smiled back at him.
“I’m sorry,” the chief replied in a muted voice to Femi. “May Allah take pity on her and her family.”
“Thank you, sir,” Femi bowed, his face rigid with sorrow.
“Please, sir.” Aminah’s voice rebounded off the walls of the concrete building as if it were made of rubber. “Who is Victoria, sir? Why would Kolo come to see Victoria?” Three aides flinched as her utterances detonated.
The chief waited for the walls to be free of all vibration before replying. “Victoria took care of Kolo when he was a child. But when I mentioned her name, he stood up and ran, as if he had heard of a ghost.”
Aminah’s eyebrows shot up in enquiry. “Why, sir?” Her voice blasted across these two syllables.
The chief waited for the echoes to end and silence to return to the room. “Victoria knows something about his childhood, some terrible secret that Kolo has hidden from everyone. We don’t ask her, because it frightens her to speak of it. And it happened a long time ago. However, let me show you something that maybe you can use.”
He turned to a retainer and murmured something. The man left the room, while the rest of them hung their heads, grinning, unable to contain their amusement.
After a few moments, the aide returned and handed a photo to Femi, whose eyes crinkled until he wept with laughter. Aminah peeked too, then set off on a journey through laughter’s wild and varied landscape. All Barbara could see was Kolo kneeling before the village chief. She did not understand what was so amusing. In fact, she was surprised that the president still respected the traditions of yore.
“We took this photo of Kolo after his company put meters on our wells to charge us for water,” the chief explained.
The jeep bumped along the road out of the village, swerving past potholes and chickens. As it jolted along, Barbara gripped the back of the seat in front of her to stay upright, using long forgotten muscles to counterbalance the swaying of the vehicle. After half an hour she grew quite exhausted with the effort.
They moved through the faint odour of decay, carried by winds held in brown clouds. She tried to fan the smell away, but it only grew stronger, more rancid, the entire sky a hazy brown. It seeped into her clothing, clung to her hair, leached into her skin. Its pungency was unlike anything she had ever smelled—a bitterness that she felt on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, right through to the back of her throat, as if she were being force-fed decaying meat.
The jeep struggled through the mud until it reached a village blanketed by the smell, a choking stench of putrefaction. Stinking mist with a biting sweetness brought tears to Barbara’s eyes and stung her nasal passages. Though she tried to breathe through her mouth, she could not escape the noxious gases, the fetid stench of decomposing bodies.
The jeep turned a corner. All around, flung recklessly like clothes in a bedroom, were bodies swollen to the point of puncture, bodies disembowelled by that which once cleansed them. Birds pecked at them, throwing the crimson flesh up in the air and then catching it in their beaks.
Barbara spotted one man trying to move, his body writhing on the ground, twitching as he willed himself to live. As the jeep approached him, she saw his open wounds, through which maggots crawled, wriggling under his skin, squirming for dominance. Someone screamed—an ear-splitting, unending screech. After a few seconds Barbara realized that the voice was her own.
In the midst of the horror, she was transfixed by one sight: a hand sticking out of the mire. She could not embrace the logic of what had occurred. Why was it there? Had some wretched being struggled frantically to free itself from its muddy tomb? Or had the water, in a brief moment of mercy, allowed it to fashion its own bloody headstone?
She sat, rigid, in silence, staring at the hand—a hand that beckoned a gory greeting to all who saw it, a hand that bid a frightful farewell.
As the mud grew deeper, the group had to abandon the jeep. Each step they took, over pieces of flesh, fragments of bone and the remnants of people’s lives, sucked them deeper into grief’s belly. They reached the trunk of a baobab tree that had been snapped off in the flood; this mutilated landmark indicated that they now stood at the heart of the village.
Here, a few people engaged in a forlorn search for bodies, wandering as if in a dream. One or two had managed to find their dead relatives and were digging rectangles of differing sizes in the mud. Others nailed papers onto the tree—pictures of people still missing. Some just sat, stunned into inertia or keening with voices that had grown weak.
The stench that winds would not bear away suffocated her, causing her muscles to pull in hard like stone; wails that usually evaporated into the air vibrated on her skin and lodged in her spine; images of life that often flitted past without note now became etched as separate visions with their own individual power; thoughts that might have fluttered away were stamped into the permanence of memory. She hunted around for meaning, from the silence of mutilated body parts to the awful sounds of those left to grieve, from the rigidity of death to the limp torpor of the living. She searched and searched, but the annihilation of so many made no sense.
Barbara looked at Femi, hoping for some kind of guidance as to how to deal with these images of horror. But he stood as if rooted in the mud, disbelief on his face, terror in his eyes. It had not occurred to her that these sights would be as far from his experience as they were from hers. She wondered what appalling thoughts such grisly scenes produced in him and to what terrible landscape his imagination might lead him.
The foursome at last returned to the jeep in silence, their footsteps squelching in the mud. Even Aminah had nothing to say. She only dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
Had she been alone, Barbara would have simply done things. But now she was trapped in the back seat, next to Femi. Their arms touched and she could feel his limbs trembling, his breathing erratic. She glanced at him. His eyes were glistening with tears, and he appeared to be mouthing words, as if reasoning with himself or urging himself on. She tracked her vision away from this sight.
Femi had been right. She had never been acquainted with even a small death at close quarters, let alone seen death on this scale. She wanted nothing to do with any of it and so coped the only way she knew how: by moving from reflection to action.
“Well.” She flicked open a notebook with the words “Miracles Happen” emblazoned on its cover. “What do we do now?” She sniffled and then clicked open a pink pen.
Her words jolted Femi out of a hypnotic state, and he blinked rapidly to dry his eyes. “Our Mau Mau warrior wants to start her revolution.” Barbara thought she could detect a hint of derision in his tone. “Our colonial master wants to take us to war.” Yes, on closer inspection, his delivery did contain a nuance of sarcasm.
Barbara understood Femi’s contempt. The mayhem of death had an appetite for the spirits of the living. It had not only reduced all mankind to one station, it had also released its wounds to those still animate. She felt this keenly; it found its seat within her.
Too embarrassed to admit to her former designs for heroic carnage, she retired into denial. “I am a pacifist.” She put her hand up in an exonerating stop sign. “Thus, I do not support armed struggle. I follow the path of non-violence.” She looked out the window in contemplation. “I’m sorry. It’s part of my belief system.”
“Is there nothing I can say to persuade you otherwise?” Femi finally asked, wiping away tears as he snickered. “I cannot see how we can work together if our views are so different.”
“I am sorry,” Barbara whispered, clicking her pen closed. “I cannot be persuaded to act against my conscience.”
“That is a great pity. You have taught us so much. Is that not so, Aminah?”
Aminah’s mighty form was positioned in the front seat. She turned around, her headdress deleting all view of the approaching landscape. “True-true, my friend. I have learnt more than I thought necessary in a few days alone.”
“Something you said struck me particularly,” Femi continued. “You taught me that I am you and you are me. Is that not so?”
“Yes. That is so.”
“That is such an interesting idea.” His voice assumed a tone that calmed Barbara’s jangled nerves. “Sometimes I feel that I am one with others. For example, sometimes I feel like I died with my family in the flood and that I do not exist if I am not connected to them. I am dead. In that village, I felt like I had died there, too. But I also felt a deep sadness, like I had survived and was looking for my relatives there. And yet I also felt that I was me, looking at the people looking for their relatives, distant from them. We were all one, no be so?”
“Wise words, wise words.” Barbara nodded, listening to Femi, this philosopher with links to a mystical past. Through him, she would find the strength to cope with images rooted too deeply to extract.
“Could you explain that idea once more to me?” Femi asked, as a boy to a schoolteacher.
It seemed the sage needed her guiding spirit as much as she needed his. Barbara cleared her throat, then looked around like a missionary at her flock. Meanwhile, Aminah flung a mistrustful glance at Femi.
“I am more than my physical body. I am energy. I am, I be, I flow. Thus, I am you and you,” Barbara stressed one last time, “are me.”
“Really?” Aminah barked with disdain. “You don’t look like us at all.”
“So,” Femi intervened, “according to you, if I support violent struggle, because you are me, you can support it too—because I am just a different facet of you, abi?”
Barbara hesitated. “Well, uh, I wouldn’t—”
“We are born, we live and we die,” he continued, looking out his window, as if meditating. “We are like leaves—no more or less important in the great flow of history.” He turned to face Barbara again. “Correct?”
“Yes. You’ve got it.” She flushed with an embarrassed pleasure, patting Femi’s hand.
“So what you think has little importance in the greater scheme, true?”
She realized how difficult missionary work might be. “It’s a bit more complicated than that. I can send you some—”
“I’m glad we’re in agreement. We must fight force with force. So please, take this down.” He snapped his fingers and pointed to Barbara’s notebook.
“But …” Aminah’s brows knitted across a wrinkle-free forehead.
“What other solution is there? This is worse than anything I imagined.”
“Worse,” Aminah agreed. “Much, much worse.” She wiped her eyes with a rough rub of her handkerchief.
Their expressions reminded Barbara of many of the faces she had encountered in Nigeria. She now recognized the grief that lay behind the Nigerians’ rambunctious behaviour, under all the laughter and beneath the banter. She could not understand how she had missed it in the first place.
“Our group will attack infrastructure only.” Femi tapped Barbara’s notepad imperiously. “We’ll need explosives, detonators …”
Satisfied with this approach, Barbara clicked her pen open again. Her head wiggled as she scribbled down his instructions, her writing containing some swirls at the end. Once finished, she surveyed the list. “I’ve got the finances for you to start your activities right now. But Femi—your group,” Barbara struggled to find the most tactful phrasing, “can barely even strike a match, let alone light a stick of dynamite.” She blinked, waiting for Femi’s solution to this dilemma.
Flicking his bottom lip with a forefinger, Femi kept quiet. Finally, his voice rigidly controlled, he replied, “They are in mourning. But this will give purpose to their lives. And we’ll care for the ones who are not able to function.”
“Ah, yes, it takes a village,” Barbara nodded. “The African way. I should have remembered.”
Femi sighed audibly.
And so the trio laid out a plan to sabotage the efforts of Kolo and TransAqua.
EIGHTEEN
Schemata
As April began its final bow, Barbara made her way to the airport a more prepared woman than the naive maiden who had first set foot on the rust-coloured soil of Nigeria. She started for the airport an hour late and on the way shouted in agreement with the taxi driver about the deplorable state of the country.
“Na waa oh,” she yelled. “Who knows when things will improve, sha?”
In the terminal, she fought her way to the front of the queue and bribed the counter staff, flapping money above everyone’s heads. In customs, she again “dashed” an officer with money. He waved her through. On the plane, she unpacked her food and spoke at full volume to her neighbour about the lamentable political environment and the sham election of Kolo. She scratched her crotch when it itched and widened out her personal space as she sat.
When she landed in Washington, DC, her spirits flagged and she began to suffer from a crushing sense of boredom. Shining through this gloom, one face—Astro, eyes radiant, limbs trembling with excitement, face infused with passion. Barbara sped through the crowds towards him, swift and light, and threw herself into his open arms.
After an hour of passionate kissing near Baggage Claims, Barbara delivered the bad news.
“I have to go to Santa Fe next week, sha.” She hitched up her adire wrapper to prevent it from unfurling to the ground and exposing her. “Business before pleasure.”
“But I thought you’d come back for good, Bing-Bong!”
“Soon, my friend.” Her American vowels widened into their Nigerian counterparts. “A cheetah is not a spider.”
“What?”
“A cheetah must sprint to stalk its prey-oh!”
“That’s pretty obvious. You didn’t know that? Are you sure you’re the right person for—”
“It’s metaphorical!” Barbara yelled in her usual East Coast drawl. ’Jeez!”
Mary smoothed her blouse across the angles of her body and played with her cuffs as she waited for the president to come to the phone. In her innocuous passive-aggressive style, she had made him wait for the list of names that threatened his very life, as punishment for an act that could jeopardize her job: his delay in signing a fresh contract.
“President Kolo?”
“To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” Kolo oozed an unconvincing confidence.
She took heart from the fact that his apparent poise would be short-lived. “Glass. Mary Glass, sir. I have some bad news.”
Kolo’s breath grew louder and more erratic.
Suffused with pleasure, Mary recited the news in a neutral monotone. “I’ve got three names for you. The ministers of Information, Women’s Affairs and Justice.”
“These people are planning coups! But this can’t be. These are my closest allies! They are all from my home state, Ms. Glass. The minister of information is my personal confidant!”
Kolo’s voice edged into panic. However, Mary had no interest in soothing his fears. She needed the contract signed. Using another tool from childhood, she paid no attention to the rise in dramatic tension, communicating instead a bland indifference to his fate. “So, where do you wish to meet, sir, to sign the contract?” she asked.
“The contract? Ah, yes. Let’s discuss the terms again. You want political control of this country through its water and energy resources, correct?”
> The thin trickle of blood that coursed through Mary’s tight veins almost ceased its pilgrimage around her body. “Well, Mr. President, I am just eager to get the original contract re-signed.”
Kolo left a silence. A silence that he, without question, expected Mary to fill.
Knowing that rival bids offered the most logical explanation of his conduct, Mary had no choice: she suggested a 40-percent guaranteed return on profits from water rights.
“Interesting,” he replied. The sucking started.
“President Kolo,” Mary finally broke the silence, “what is it you want?”
“Fifty-five-percent return.” He announced this without apology.
“But our initial outlay alone, the cost of the dam …”
“Ah, thank you for reminding me. The World Bank will only lend 60 percent of the financing requested. So, I’m afraid you will have to assume the extra burden.”
“Pardon? But that’s not poss—”
“You don’t know this country,” Kolo sighed. “It’s a mathematician’s paradise. One dollar earned is two dollars bribed. Consider them tariffs. As president, I am expected to offer enticements to my people—well, I suppose the anglo tribe would call it my ethnic group—and my political supporters. I am, if you like, the chief of the village, the head of the family.”
Mary could hardly believe it. In one move, he had managed to transform his government’s position from victim to victor, with a majority share in profits for less outlay. He had used the distorted mindset of the corporation to his full advantage. She studied the contours of this new deal. Finally, desperate to keep her job, Mary agreed.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Glass,” Kolo rasped. “It’s such a joy working with you.”
After she hung up, Mary flopped back in her chair, wondering what else could go wrong with her week. It took only a few days for her to find out.
Astro had specially decorated his apartment for Barbara’s return, dotting small sparkles of twinkling white lights on the living-room ceiling, like stars in the night sky.
After ten days of solo activity, Barbara could hardly wait to substitute the plastic and batteries for flesh and blood.
Doing Dangerously Well Page 19
