In the Belly of the Elephant

by Susan Corbett

  “But while your country helps with one hand,” the skinny solder said, “the other supports apartheid in South Africa and builds military bases in Kenya and Somalia!”

  Everyone at the table nodded, murmuring agreement. My shoulders had slumped to a point where my chin almost rested on the table. Nobody said anything for about a minute.

  “There was once a tortoise.” One side of Drabo’s mouth lifted, and a gleam like a lighted match flared in his eyes. “This tortoise discovered that all the birds had been invited to a feast in the sky.”

  I sat up.

  “Each time one of the birds came to earth, the wily tortoise praised their beautiful plumage and begged them to gift him just one of their feathers. From these many feathers, he made a set of magnificent wings. On the night of the great feast, the tortoise disguised himself as a bird and, donning his wings, flew to the feast. Once there, he went to each bird and tricked them into giving him a large portion of their food. When the birds discovered the tortoise’s lies, each one took back their feather from his wings. No longer able to fly, the tortoise was forced to fall from the sky in order to return to earth. His shell broke into pieces and his wife had to put him back together. That is why the tortoise’s shell is ridged and bumpy.” Drabo picked up his glass and finished off his beer.

  “And the moral of this story?” I asked.

  He put down his empty glass and looked at me. “A man who makes trouble for others is also making trouble for himself.”

  The younger soldiers nodded and laughed, applauding their new captain. The two Dutch volunteers joined them. Luanne laughed too, and Gray smiled. I caught Kate’s eye and she shrugged. Drabo gave the group a wide smile that smoothed the furrow in his brow and lit up his face.

  John ordered another round of beers, and we spent the next hour trading jokes and parables. Kate told the story of the emperor with no clothes. While her small hands drew pictures in our heads, I wondered at the embroidered image I clung to of America as the promoter of justice and democracy in the world. Was I really just walking around naked?

  Drabo and the soldiers were particularly delighted with Kate’s story.

  “We may not like your government,” the older soldier said, looking at Kate, Gray, me, and even Luanne. “But we like you.” He raised his glass. The other soldiers joined him, even the skinny one.

  I raised my glass.

  Across the table, Drabo rested his eyes on me for several heartbeats. Then he smiled.

  Lo and behold! I found myself smiling back.

  Chapter 7

  A Bloodless Coup

  November/Muharran

  Children ran in and out the gate of the neighbor who lived kitty-corner to my house. It was Monday morning and, once again, the Mossi women of Dori were gathered to make peanut oil. When I had first met my neighbor, she had told me she was from the Central Plateau where the Mossi people cultivated peanuts and the women had made peanut oil for generations.

  I stood just inside the courtyard as one of the women scooped raw peanuts out of a burlap bag onto a mat where several children shelled the nuts with swift fingers.

  The previous month, while on a short visit to Ouaga, I had heard rumors of a prototype oil press that needed testing. When I volunteered, a local appropriate technology group had transported the press to Dori. I had purchased 30 kilos of peanuts that my neighbor had agreed to divide up. One part would be made into oil using the traditional Mossi method. The second, smaller portion of nuts would go into the oil press. One of the Dutch volunteers, Sven, a man good with a camera, had agreed to take pictures.

  A large cook-fire burned in the center of the courtyard where my neighbor grilled nuts in a metal pot. Flames flickered bright orange, popping sparks into the gray light of 5:30 am. The morning air, crisp and scented with smoke and roasting nuts, was cold against my cheeks. I sat on a low stool, observing and warming myself before the fire.

  Over the past few weeks, cold season had arrived, driving away the heat and reminding me of fall in Idaho. The nights dropped to below fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and I snuggled under a down sleeping bag.

  The other events of November had not been so pleasant. The businesses and teachers of Upper Volta had continued to strike intermittently and, as military troops increased, general unease pervaded the country.

  Most disappointing of all, I hadn’t saved enough money to visit Lily in Tunisia. Ouagadougou to Tunis required flying nine hours from Ouaga to Paris and eight hours from Paris to Tunis, with the accompanying price tag. Turned out Africa was one of those places where you couldn’t get there from here. To top it off, a small population of amoebas had taken up residence in my intestines, wreaking gastrointestinal havoc. Now, the flagyl I was taking to kill the amoebas was making me sicker than the little nasties themselves.

  Feeling like my gut was a tightly twisted rag, I took notes as my neighbor scooped the cooked nuts out of the pot onto a mat. A third woman removed their papery skins by pressing them in a rolling motion with a flat wooden block. Sven wandered about the courtyard accompanied by the click click of his camera lens.

  If the oil press turned out to be useful, it might help us with our new project idea. We had approached the nuns with the proposal to work with us to introduce peanut oil production methods to the local Rimaybé women who had a tradition in the trades. In the meantime, the idea was to slowly cut down on the distribution of oil cadeaus.

  The sun slowly rose, rinsing the morning in pink light.

  For the oil press experiment, we saved two kilos of cooked nuts, which one of the women pounded into small pieces in a wooden mortar. The rest of the nuts were placed in buckets. Four of the children trundled the nuts off to the local mill to be ground into paste for 850 CFA, a little over one and a half U.S. dollars. My neighbor filled the pot with water to bring to a boil, and we sat to wait for the children’s return.

  As I breathed in the morning, dawn’s pink gave way to clean blue light. A truck passed outside the gate and I smiled. Since meeting Drabo several weeks before, he had become ubiquitous. It seemed that every time I arrived at the office gate, turned a corner, or walked the streets, he was there, driving by in a military truck or walking with a group of soldiers. He always greeted me with a smile and a tip of the beret. It had become a game with me—a treasure hunt for Drabo.

  “What have you got to smile about at six in the morning?” Sven crouched on his haunches nearby. He had groaned when I had told him what time I needed him to take pictures.

  “I’m not smiling. I’m grimacing.” I rubbed my stomach. “Amoebas.”

  He grimaced back and moved on with his camera. The children’s chatter preceded them from around the corner. Soon, they appeared, carrying three large head pans of tiguidégué, the local name for peanut paste. My neighbor poured the tiguidégué into a mortar and mixed it with boiling water—the fifth step of the traditional method. While she stirred the paste and water mixture, two other women poured the pounded nuts into the cylinder of the oil press.

  It was a gangly looking machine. A metal frame that balanced on a capital “I” shaped base held a long hollow cylinder. At the top of the cylinder was a round disk attached to a large “T” shaped turnstile. We filled the cylinder with the pounded nuts, and the women began cranking the turnstile, which pushed the metal plate down the tube to press the nuts. The base of the cylinder sat in a metal bowl where, as the women turned the handle every few minutes, oil began to gather and trickle out a spout into a headpan.

  Meanwhile, my neighbor continued to stir her traditional paste/water mixture. Oil began to separate, leaving a lumpy glob that looked like oatmeal. Using a gourd ladle, my neighbor removed the oil and boiled it to evaporate any remaining water. Once it cooled, she poured the oil into liter bottles.

  The other women continued to turn the oil press. I thought of the legend of Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Back in the time when legends were formed, a small man in a plaid coat with a new high-tech chain saw had challeng
ed Paul Bunyan and his ax to a contest. The goal was to see who could cut down the most trees in a fixed period of time. Though much smaller in stature, the man with the chain saw won the match. The moral of the story being, I supposed, that machines were better than men. Which would win in this contest? The age-old traditional method or the oil press, the intermediate-technology version of the chain saw?

  But, we were not finished yet. After the oil was extracted, the women took the oatmeal-like leftovers and pinched the “dough” into little three-corner hat shapes. My neighbor then dropped the shapes into a large pot of hot oil. The other two women working with the oil press turned the wheel in the opposite direction to lift it off what remained of the groundnuts—a dry, flat cake. This, the appropriate technology people had said, could be used to thicken soups or as supplementary feed for the cattle.

  My neighbor scooped the little hats out of the oil. They were peanut cookies or kuli kuli. The children ran from every corner of the courtyard to toss the cookies from hand to hand until they were cool enough to eat. The kuli kuli, I discovered, would be taken to the market and sold at five franks apiece. Kuli kuli had lots of protein. Kids ate kuli kuli.

  Using the traditional method, two kilos of peanuts made a half liter of oil sold in the market for 500 CFA and about 70 cookies which sold for 350 CFA, for a total of about a dollar and a half. Using the oil press, two kilos of peanuts produced 1/2 liter of oil sold in the market for one dollar (the byproduct of the oil press, the dry peanut cake, was new and not yet a market product).

  The oil press did a good job of extracting oil with less labor (though not less time), but took away one of the more profitable market enterprises of the women. If the oil press were set up as a local business, the women would also have to pay the owner of the press to use it. The press saved labor but ended up losing money and a valuable protein snack for the household. The new technology solved one problem, only to introduce several others. Paul Bunyan had won.

  A mechanical screech came from the other side of town. Everyone in the courtyard lifted their eyes to look for the sound. The screech rounded into a loud voice. As it drew nearer, it became clear that the voice was coming from a loud speaker. Sven came up to me, and we listened together. First Fulfuldé, followed by French. Soon, the voice was in the street outside the courtyard. Through the open gate, a military truck with a large bullhorn on top drove slowly past.

  “The military of Upper Volta has overthrown former President Lamizana in a bloodless coup d’état,” the speaker said. “It has been a peaceful transition as is the tradition of the people of Upper Volta.” Sven turned to me with big eyes. “As of this morning, there will be a seven pm to five am curfew for the protection of the people.”

  Laya arrived at the gate, balancing an empty headpan. We had arranged to walk together to the market and office. I thanked the ladies of my neighborhood for their help in testing the oil press, and Sven for taking three roles of pictures. As the ladies loaded their head pans with bottles of oil and piles of kuli kuli, Laya and I waved our goodbyes. We set off up the street. Laya wasn’t smiling. Laya always smiled unless she disapproved of something. Maybe she was afraid. Maybe fear was the second thing that stole her smile.

  People crowded the streets, talking loudly. Women and children threaded their way to the market, and groups of military men patrolled the town. A few soldiers carried rifles slung over their backs, but they were grown men, not the children soldiers I had seen in Liberia.

  Caught up in the excitement, Laya and I made our way up the street among the crowds. Up ahead, green trucks drove in and out of a large courtyard that housed the military barracks. Near the wide gate, Drabo stood with a group of officers. As we passed, he excused himself from the group and came over to us.

  A tip of the beret to Laya, “Bonjour, Madame.” Then to me, “Mademoiselle.”

  “Bonjour, Capitaine,” I said. “Can you tell us what’s happened?”

  “Zerbo has overthrown Lamizana.”

  “Is this good?”

  “The military is behind Zerbo,” Drabo said. “The teachers and Parti Syndicat are happy. Businesses will reopen. The people have won.” A momentary smile passed over his lips. “But, for security reasons, all roads are blocked across the country. You won’t be able to go to the villages today.”

  “How long will there be roadblocks?”

  “Two, three days. There is a curfew from seven in the evening until five in the morning.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard.”

  He briefly placed the fingers of one hand on my outer arm just above my elbow. “Please be careful to observe it. It was a peaceful coup, but some of the soldiers are young and nervous. They will be out patrolling the streets. You will be safe in your courtyards.”

  I nodded. He gave me and Laya a short bow of his head, and we continued up the street. I was thankful Gray and Kate had made so many friends for us in the military—Roger, Achinga, Adamma, Lawrence, and Drabo. For the first time, the idea of a soldier patrolling the streets was comforting rather than frightening. The soldier had Drabo’s face.

  The place where he had touched my arm was still warm.

  Chapter 8

  Vanity

  December/Safar

  “Drabo dropped by yesterday,” I said to Gray. “He’s going to Ouaga until after the New Year.”

  Gray grinned at me, moving her eyebrows up and down. “Well, I’m sad to say, I’m on my way,” she sang out loud.

  “Won’t be back for many a day.” I joined in, harmonizing. “Well, my heart is down, my head is turnin’ around. I had to leave a little boy in Dori town.”

  The windows down, the wind blowing our hair, we sang at the top of our lungs and laughed out loud. Gray hit a deep pothole and I bounced six inches off the seat.

  “Sorry.” Gray sneezed then wiped her nose on the back of her hand. Harmatton winds coated the inside of the truck with a powdery dust. Gray sneezed again.

  The land flowed flat in all directions as far as the eye could see. Nothing but stone, sand, air, and the distant fire of a winter solstice sun. Even the baobabs didn’t venture this far north. I could never have imagined a place so empty. This must have been where the Fulani god, Doondari, had lived before creation.

  At the beginning of things there was nothing. But God was, and he was called Doondari. Doondari created heaven and earth, the sun, moon, and stars. Then he blew onto the earth, and animals and plants were created.

  “Did you know that when god created the world, he appointed the Elephant mistress of all things because of her wisdom?” Two others had also been appointed: the leopard because he had power and cunning, and the monkey because of his malice and suppleness.

  Gray shook her head. “You and your elephants.”

  It was the day before Christmas, and Gray and I were heading north for the holiday. The roadblocks had been lifted a few days after the coup, and the curfew relaxed for the holidays. Things remained calm throughout the country. Don had left for the Somalia office, and a blue sense of loss had followed me around the office since his departure. Dejlal had gotten his wish for the time being and was in charge of the Dori office until a new director arrived in Ouaga. I still hadn’t responded to home office’s offer to stay on another year.

  Gray and I drove the rusty pickup toward the town of Gorom Gorom to spend Christmas with a group of British nurses. We followed a thirty-mile section of a three-hundred-year-old gold and slave caravan route that ran in a direct line from the Gulf of Benin to the Mediterranean Sea. If you started in the Gold Coast town of Accra, Ghana’s capital, and rode a camel due north along Lake Volta, past the towns of Bimbila, Tenkodogo, and Bongande, you came into desert country and to Dori. Past Dori, to Gorom Gorom, and on to Gao on the Niger River, you eventually came to the desert town of Tessalit, gateway to the route that crossed the Great Sahara to the coastal cities of Morocco and Algiers.

  Instead of gold and slaves, the back of our pickup was loaded with boxes of
groceries, Christmas presents, bottles of French champagne, a jerry-can of gasoline, a five-gallon plastic container of water, sleeping bags and pillows in plastic garbage bags, and a change of clothes.

  Gray slowed to a stop. Outside the pickup’s windshield, the path forked into two different directions. Gray blew out of her bottom lip, ruffling the fringe of short brown hair that feathered across her forehead. “Uh-oh. Nobody said anything about a fork in the road.”

  I got out and stretched. The air was warm with a sharp scent of iron. The sun was high but far enough south that the one-eyed king didn’t bake the brain into oblivion. The weather was actually pleasant, which did wonders for my sense of well-being. Here we were, two young women in a pickup truck with no map, following an ancient road on the edge of the Sahara desert. We looked at each other, and with smiles on our faces, screamed. I looked right, Gray looked left.

  “Well,” I said, noting the western direction of the afternoon sun, “we’ve been driving north for the past thirty minutes. This one to the right looks to be going northeast, and that one,” I pointed to the road that forked left, “northwest.”

  We looked at each other again, nodded, and got back in the truck. This time, I drove, taking the left fork heading west. “Onward!”

  Adventure! It ran in my blood. Didn’t my own great-grandmother cross the American plains pushing a wooden handcart? If that’s not adventure, what is? She had sought freedom from persecution, to practice her religion by following Brigham Young. I was seeking freedom from just about everything by following my heart, and, on that particular day, by following my nose.

  As we drove farther northwest, the land began to change. Intermittent rows of sand dunes crisscrossed the flat plain like windblown drifts of golden snow. A line of donkeys snaked around the base of a dune. Bella women dressed in bright blue robes straddled the donkeys, spurring the animals forward with short sticks. At the next turn, Gorom Gorom came into view along the horizon. Squat mud squares against a backdrop of hills conjured a biblical image of Bethlehem. A camel with a rider crested the dune. The rider was robed from head to foot in blue, his face swathed in a black turban but for his eyes. He was a Tuareg, a “Blue Man” of the desert.