In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  We drove over a small rise and the first huts of Sambonaye came into view. Entering the eastern edge of town, we passed a few houses and stopped at the top of a hill.

  Sambonaye clustered at the edge of the plain and spilled down a gentle hillside. A dirt road divided the town into two even sides. The hill ended in a valley where fields of millet fanned out to one side. On the other, cattle grazed on new grass. The millet looked like corn, but was planted randomly rather than in rows. Here, as at home, knee high by the fourth of July was a good sign.

  Fati, Adiza, and I exited the truck and walked down the hill to a patch quilt of small gardens where women hand watered leafy rows of beans, groundnuts, and lettuce from tin buckets. As the women dipped and poured, the sharp/sweet scent of plant and soil reminded me of irrigation sprinklers spewing hundreds of gallons of water over summer fields of corn, wheat, and alfalfa. Here, each portion of precious water was carefully trickled onto the base of each plant. Part of me wished they were trees. But people can’t eat trees; they can only burn them.

  FDC had loaned seeds to the women in early June. The young plants were a wonderful sight—tangible evidence that our project was making a difference. Hopefully, the women would grow enough food to supplement their families’ diets, keep enough seed for next years’ gardens, and reimburse FDC the original seed loans.

  Adiza and I followed Fati back into the village until we came to an open area where several women waited in the shade of a large neem tree. One woman went off to spread word of our arrival. After about fifteen minutes, a large group of women had gathered, everyone chattering. Some held babies, others arrived with small children in tow. They were as noisy as a cottonwood tree full of ricebirds. A very old woman with black braids curling along both sides of her long face shook our hands. Her name was Emma. Adiza spread a large reed mat in the shade and we sat facing the women.

  Emma welcomed us in Fulfuldé, the group quieted, and Fati began the meeting. The women sat like folded Popsicle sticks, their legs straight out, their toes pointing upward. The soles of their feet, beige against their black skin, were thick, cracked, and callused. Thick brass bracelets encircled their upper arms that were smooth and muscular from hours of lifting and thrusting the heavy wooden pestles used to pound millet every day. They wore pagnes, some bright with color, others faded to the same beige as the houses. Babies suckled breasts while the older children listened, moving their eyes from one speaker to the next. One older woman spoke to Fati, slapping one palm with the other and ending with her palm outstretched.

  Fati sighed and turned to Adiza and me. “She wants to know if we brought the cadeaus.”

  “It’s the nuns,” Adiza said. “Since the drought, they’ve been distributing gifts of oil and milk powder to the women in the villages. Now, the women don’t want to come to a meeting unless we bring them their cadeaus.” The French word for “gift,” cadeau had come to mean handouts.

  “But now that they’re growing peanuts,” I said, “can’t they make their own oil?”

  “The Fulani have only recently started to use oil.” Fati explained that traditionally, the Fulani made butter from the milk of their cows. But since the drought, milk production had been too insufficient to make butter. “Now, they get their oil from relief agencies or go to the market in Dori to buy it.”

  “Why not learn to make their own?” I asked.

  Fati and Adiza exchanged a glance and Fati translated my question.

  Several older women shook their heads.

  “They say oil production is done by the lower classes, the Rimaybé and the Mossi.” Adiza lifted her shoulders as if to say, “How can we change their culture?”

  Fati talked in Fulfuldé for several minutes, explaining that now that the Great Drought was over, FDC wanted to work with the women so that they would not have to rely on relief agencies for their food. She cited the seed loans and the new gardens as an example.

  Several of the older women clicked their tongues and sucked air through their teeth to show disappointment. Amidst the buzz of voices, a few got up and left. The younger women stayed.

  Fati spoke again, her sentence ending with an upward lift of her voice. She asked the question we were asking in all the villages. What, then, was their greatest need?

  All the women began talking at once, their hands and faces an explosion of movement like a cloud of birds suddenly lifting off a branch and quickly resettling among the leaves.

  Adiza translated, “They’re complaining of having to walk miles out into the bush to find enough wood for their cook-fires.”

  Fati asked if they would be willing to try a new kind of smokeless mud stove that would burn fuel more efficiently than the traditional three-rock method. Using less wood would mean fewer trips on foot in search of wood and cow dung, and in the long run, less deforestation.

  Emma spoke to the women and an excited discussion ensued. I couldn’t understand, but the rapid, clipped sounds brought the language to life the way staccatos and a fast tempo enlivened a Mozart sonata. The discussion went on for a while and I entered my zone, a kind of daydream to pass the time. The memory in my fingertips touched the cool ivory of piano keys, and a Mozart sonata sang in my head—the one for four hands I had played with Aunt Florence.

  Emma raised her finger for silence, and I saw Aunt Ethel rounding us all up from her back yard to come in for supper. Emma had the same weathered skin of Ethel and Florence, yet, like them, seemed ageless. The spark of humor that gave Aunt Ethel an air of perpetual youth also gleamed in the black irises of Emma’s eyes. My aunts’ familiar expressions suddenly appeared here and there on the animated faces of the village women. Their melodious blend of chatter and laughter transported me to the table beneath Aunt Nonnie’s kitchen window, the crabapple tree outside green and bushy from the long days of summer. My aunts all sat in a circle, shelling garden peas, talking about their children and their lives. I smelled freshly perked coffee and just-out-of-the-oven cinnamon rolls. I wished I could be there with them, just for a moment.

  What would they think of these Fulani women? My aunts had grown up in a church that claimed all black people were descendants of Cain. If they were actually here among them, would they believe these women so cursed? I wanted my aunts to be there, to see into the hearts of these women of the Sahel, their sisters.

  But an image came—my father shaking his head at all this wasted time among people who weren’t my own kind. The air pocket that buffeted my heart deflated. It was a place full of black people. My aunts would never come here. They lived in their Idaho valley, insulated from the rest of the world by miles of farmland and volumes of the Book of Mormon. The Sahel wasn’t the only place that had lost its goddess.

  Sleep came to Wagadu for the first time through vanity, for the second time through falsehood, for the third time through greed, and for the fourth time through dissension.

  Noon approached, the temperature rose, and the shadow of the neem tree shrank away to the tight space directly below the branches. The women agreed to make the required amount of mud bricks and find two village masons who would learn to build the stoves. On our next trip, we would train the masons, build several prototype stoves, and demonstrate how to use them.

  Because it was Ramadan, we skipped our usual village lunch of macaroni and canned fish and headed back to Dori.

  “What can we do about this cadeau problem?” I asked.

  “It’s the reason the women haven’t reimbursed us in the past,” Adiza said.

  “That, and the fact that their husbands want them to sell the extra seed, then won’t let them keep any of the money.” Fati leaned across Nassuru and spit out the window.

  “Why won’t they let them keep the money?”

  “There are six things a Fulani does not trust,” Nassuru said. “One of them is a woman.”

  Hamidou, Nassuru, and Djelal all laughed. Fati and Adiza both sucked air through their teeth and looked out the windows.

  Hamidou slowed as we
approached a wash filled to its brim with water. He stopped the truck. Water surged over the cement culvert we normally used as a bridge.

  “Another is a river,” Nassuru said and bent to untie his shoes.

  Never mind he was a prince, it fell to Nassuru, being the youngest male in the truck, to take off his shoes, roll up his pants, and get out. Stepping carefully, he poked a long stick into the water in front of him to find the edge of the culvert. Following slowly behind, Hamidou steered the truck across. Water swished around us, seeping through the bottom cracks of the doors. We reached the other side, and Nassuru got back into the car.

  Fati was still frowning.

  “So,” I kept my eye on Fati, “a woman and a river. What else?”

  “A knife, a string, and darkness.” Nassuru put his shoes on. “We name a snake ‘string’ so as not to call him to us.”

  “A prince cannot be trusted,” Fati said, “like all men in power, like husbands.”

  “A knife can cut leather, but can also cut the skin.” Hamidou directed his explanation at the windshield. “Darkness comes swiftly and plays tricks on the eyes, a river floods, and women…”

  Even Don laughed this time, the traitor.

  “Why not women?” I said. “Even Muhammad asked his wives for advice.”

  “Women are like a river and darkness,” Fati said. “Men are afraid of them.” Fati and Adiza both spit out the window.

  Two stops to dig the wheels out of the mud and three hours later, we drove into Dori very hungry and very cranky.

  That evening, I walked toward the central square to join Luanne and Don at the Militaire Bar. The sun straddled the western hills, and a half-moon looked down from high in the sky. The market was alive with the hum of preparations. Soon, when the sun set, the daily fast would end and everyone would eat.

  Kerosene lamps and open fires dotted the central square. Off-duty soldiers stationed in Dori’s small military outpost strolled toward the Militaire Bar. Shopkeepers and civilian men in long robes conducted their evening business, talking in groups and walking arm in arm. Bands of small boys ran about, pushing long sticks connected to toy cars of wire with rubber wheels that wobbled over the sand. The sky turned from orange to indigo.

  Laughter spilled from inside the Militaire Bar, a small building on the eastern edge of the square. Nearby, a large beehive-shaped oven and two open fire pits steamed with the aromas of fresh bread and roasted meat. My mouth watered.

  I stopped in front of a fire pit where a boy plucked pieces of sizzling meat off the grill and wrapped them in a cone of newspaper. I dropped seventy CFA into his palm. CFA, the currency of West Africa, was backed by the Bank of France. The paper bills were multicolored with pictures of West African heads of state. The coins were small, light, and the color of gold. Five hundred CFA equaled one U.S. dollar.

  A few steps beyond the fire pit, a big man, sleeves rolled to his elbows, pulled loaves of bread from inside the oven. I picked three hot baguettes from a basket and handed the man thirty CFA. Dinner for three came to about one-fifth of a U.S. dollar.

  Inside the bar, a bare electric bulb hung from the ceiling. Looking like a shorter version of John Wayne, Don leaned against the cement counter at the far wall, buying liter bottles of Sovobra. I followed him through a side door into an open courtyard where the hum of an electric generator competed with loud conversation. Metal tables and chairs rested on legs pushed unevenly into the sand. A string of lightbulbs crossed from one end of the patio to the other just above eye level. Luanne waved to us from a table in the corner.

  At three other tables, about twenty Voltaique soldiers sat drinking and eating. They slowed their conversation to watch us pass. It was strange, being one of two women in a bar crowded with men. This far north, African women did not go to bars as they did in the cities of the south. Because Luanne and I were foreigners we were tolerated. But I missed being able to walk into a bar where both women and men socialized, and a woman could sit and have a beer without feeling like a saloon girl. I sat next to Luanne.

  The Fulani staff never accompanied us to the Militaire Bar. Being Muslims, they did not drink alcohol; “O ye true believers, come not to prayer when ye are drunken.” Aid workers and soldiers from the non-Muslim south were the only patrons.

  Luanne passed around the glasses, Don poured the beer, and I opened the newspaper cone of meat, unfolding it in the center of the table.

  I rubbed my hands together. “I could eat a horse!”

  The beer was cold and washed all the day’s dust from my throat. The bread tasted heavenly and the roasted goat was spicy and hot. Don and Luanne devoured their food with the same gusto, and I sighed inwardly at our compatible silence. It had been a good day.

  “Hey! What’s today?” I said.

  “The fourteenth.”

  “People! It’s my birthday!”

  “Well, happy birthday!” Don said. “Being a gentleman, I won’t ask how old you are.”

  “Good, because I can’t remember.”

  “Ha!” Luanne barked, and we clinked our glasses and drank.

  She looked past me toward the entrance. “Oh, oh, here comes the epitome of Western Man to spoil the party.”

  A tall Brit had entered the courtyard and was walking over to our table. His name was Philip and he worked for the British Save the Children in Gorom Gorom, a speck of a town farther north.

  “I resent that,” Don said, but he was smiling.

  “You’re a rare exception.” Luanne made a face as Philip reached our table.

  I had met Philip in the Ouaga office when I first arrived. He was tall and dark-haired. We’d drunk our fair share of beer together.

  “Well, who have we here?” Philip gave us his patronizing smile. “Some exiled Yanks, mind if I join you?” he said, sitting down. He raised a finger to a young man who worked in the bar and mouthed, “Sovobra.”

  Philip turned to me. “You spent some time in Liberia, right?”

  I nodded, preparing myself for some kind of veiled insult.

  “Well, you’ll be interested to know they’ve just had a coup, a bloody one.”

  The meat I was chewing lodged in my throat.

  “They’ve shot President what’s-his-name, Tolbert is it?” he continued. “Taken all the cabinet ministers, tied them to stakes on the beach, and shot them. Some Sergeant Doe has taken over.”

  I managed to swallow, but couldn’t fill my lungs with enough air. Francis, James, the mothers and their babies, all the students I had taught: all peaceful people.

  “When?”

  “The army stormed the president’s mansion the middle of last night.”

  Whenever there had been a strike in Monrovia, the people had rioted and looted the stores. But there had never been an armed uprising against the government.

  “Liberia?” Luanne said.

  “You know, south of Sierra Leone, the place you Yanks exiled a bunch of your slaves about a hundred years ago.” Philip said as if speaking to a child.

  “I know where Liberia is,” Luanne retorted. “It must have been the CIA, it always is.” She frowned. “But why would they bother with Liberia? No diamonds, no oil.”

  Several soldiers quieted and looked our way. Very few Voltaiques spoke English, but CIA were three letters familiar to many people regardless of what language they spoke. Luanne shrugged.

  “It was internal,” Philip said. “Tribal members of the military against the ruling elite.” He looked in the direction of the waiter with an annoyed expression.

  I shook my head, still unable to believe it. “Why the CIA?”

  “Why not? Iran, Chilé, Zaire.” Luanne grimaced. “They’re always overthrowing people who get in the way of American companies.”

  The noise level at the other tables increased as more soldiers entered the bar. One of the lightbulbs flickered and went out.

  “There are four hundred Peace Corps volunteers there.” My stomach twisted again.

  “With that many vo
lunteers, who needs the CIA?” Philip sneered.

  “Shut up, Philip.” I was on the verge of tears. I wasn’t about to tell him how a village in northern Liberia had accused several volunteers of being CIA and put them on trial. “Volunteers get enough crap thanks to the CIA, I don’t need to take it from you.”

  Don patted me on the back. “Leave her alone, Philip. Your Majesty’s Secret Service has the same mottled history as the CIA.”

  The bartender arrived with Philip’s beer and set it in front of him. The bottle had been opened and I noticed the bottle cap had not been left on, as was the custom. I kept quiet, watching Philip pour the beer into his glass. Maybe somebody put in just enough poison to make him writhe around on the floor for a few minutes.

  “Well, at least we meddle in other people’s affairs with more style.” Philip picked up his beer and took a long swig.

  “There are six things a Fulani doesn’t trust: a river, a prince, a string, a knife, darkness, and a woman.”

  They all turned to me with blank faces.

  Philip barked a laugh. “Well, I can certainly understand the woman part.”

  “Guns, machetes, and bloody coups.”

  “Get this woman another beer,” Philip said. “Her brain is dehydrated.”

  And darkness, I thought, the dark of the rain forest, the violence. There will be darkness in Liberia.

  The table was silent for a moment, surrounded by a sea of soldiers.

  Philip made some joke and everybody laughed but me. I was too hollow to laugh.

  Philip nudged me. “Come on, don’t be so bloody serious.”

  “Don’t be such an ass, Philip,” I said. “I have friends in Liberia.” I had to get out of there. I stood to leave.

  “Want me to take you home?” Don asked.

  “No, thanks.” A hundred eyes burned the back of my neck as I left.

  I threaded my way through the maze of sand streets; a right past the big neem tree, a left in the direction of the North Star. As the engine noise of the bar’s generator muted, thoughts of Liberia replaced it. Farther from the electric lights, kerosene lamps, and open fires, darkness overcame the thinning glow. A high ceiling of haze blotted out the stars. Visions took form on the black screen of sky: slumped bodies tied to stakes, blood running into the sand. Death and darkness.