I ducked into the door of the Militaire Bar and found Gray and Kate drinking beer at a table in the courtyard. After dinner, Gray reminded us it was Halloween. We bought a few extra bottles of Sovobra, handfuls of Chicklets and hard candy, and set out to visit Guy, Monique, and Luc.
Following the tubes of yellow light from our flashlights, we wound our way through the streets, chatting quietly. I had grown used to walking the streets at night once again without worry. Despite strikes, attempted coups, and intermittent curfews, Dori was the safest town I had ever lived in. Kate was from upstate New York, and Gray from Detroit. We had all found a quiet liberation in the streets of Dori. Every city and town in the U.S.—a Christian dominated country—had far higher crime rates than anywhere in Upper Volta.
“It makes me nervous when I think of returning to the States.” I pointed my flashlight at the ground, politely avoiding the eyes of an oncoming passerby. “My contract runs out in seven months and I’m already having anxiety dreams. Last night, I was trying to catch a plane but I didn’t have a ticket and I couldn’t find my luggage. I didn’t even know where I was going.”
“I’ve had that dream before,” Gray said. “Only on top of no ticket and no luggage, I don’t have any clothes on.”
We laughed.
“I don’t want to go back,” I sighed. “But I’m tired.”
“Tired?” Gray flicked her flashlight on and off. “How about depressed over good old Jack dumping you while his girlfriend’s in town? The man’s a devil!”
“Inhuman,” Kate said. “What we all need is a vacation. How about we all go to Mali over Christmas? There’s supposed to be a great trip up the Niger River.”
“Can’t do it,” Gray said. “I’m going home for Christmas.”
Which meant it would be just me and Jack in Dori over the holidays. I was damned if I’d be doing anything with Jack, even though Lori would be gone by then. Remembering the Lady Chilel, the idea of a river trip sounded good. Actually, it sounded fantastic. I suddenly felt lighter than I had in weeks.
“Let’s do it!” I laughed a little. “The way I’ve been acting around the office, I’m sure they won’t mind if I take some time off.”
“That’ll give you something to look forward to.” Gray put an arm around my shoulder. “Help you stop moping around over Mr. Shit-Head.”
We rounded the corner and came to Guy and Monique’s compound.
Gray cupped her hands around her mouth. “Trick or Treat!”
“Bonsoir!” Guy called from the porch.
“Happy Halloween!” I held up a bottle of Sovobra.
“Ah!” Guy guffawed as he opened the gate. “Monique!” he called over his shoulder, “trois sorcières commes visiteuses!”
The three of us whooped and cackled, three Wicked Witches from the West.
“Entrez!” Guy swept his arm toward the house, and we caroused our way to the patio in our long dresses with our baskets of treats.
Monique held Luc. He clapped his hands at so much happy noise. We each approached and kissed first Luc, then Monique on both cheeks.
Guy poured a round of beer and we all sucked on hard candies. Gray made clown faces and I tickled Luc’s toes.
“This little piggy went to market…”
“Does France celebrate Halloween?” Gray asked.
“This little piggy stayed home…”
“Oui,” Monique said. “Veille de la Toussaint.” All Saints’ Day.
“This little piggy had roast beef…”
“It’s more like the night of the devil for us,” Kate said. “We creep around graveyards and toilet-paper people’s houses.”
“This little piggy had none…”
Guy laughed and shook his head.
“This little piggy went, ‘Wee, wee, wee,’ all the way home!”
Luc squealed and shook his feet for again.
“This little piggy…” I jiggled the big toe of his other foot.
Gray described various Halloween episodes from her years as a juvenile delinquent in Detroit. Kate had a few of her own. Guy poured another round of beers. Luc was passed from lap to lap until he fell asleep on his mama’s shoulder. Cricket song rang in broken rhythm. A breeze rustled the eucalyptus trees, and the night steeped into deeper darkness.
“Speaking of devils.” I looked at each face in the halo of the kerosene lamp. “Once upon a time, a young Peace Corps volunteer lived in a deep, dark rain forest. We’ll call her Beth.”
Gray snorted and sat forward with her elbows on her knees.
“One night, Beth woke up in the darkness of her bedroom, in a little house, on the edge of the village. The sweet scent of a million trees blew through the window, lifting her curtains like the waving hands of all the ancestors who lived there.”
Kate smiled.
“Far off, in the dense hanging vines and thick bush, came a long, low ‘OOOO, OOOOO, OOEEEEE.’ After several minutes, the night songs of a billion insects resumed. In the pale moon light that seeped through her window, Beth thought back to her Peace Corps training, the first session her group attended after their arrival in Liberia. She remembered the sho sho sho of a ceiling fan, pushing currents of heat around the classroom as Professor Kapella lectured.”
I dropped my voice into a deep base. “‘All major tribes in Liberia, with the exception of the Mandinka, practice rites of passage. The adolescent boy or girl is kidnapped from the hut by a bush guard and taken into the forest. It is during these initiations that the bush devil can be heard and will often make surprise visits to the village.’
“Watching the curtains move in the night air, Beth also recalled the rumors about the volunteer who had peeked through his shutters and looked upon a bush devil. The story went that his nose had grown so long, the whole village knew what he had done, and he was dead by nightfall.”
Monique pressed her hand to her mouth.
“Professor Kapella said, ‘Never forget that you are outsiders and guests in these villages.’
“Beth knew the bush devil was a man from the village who dressed up in rags and a mask. She probably passed him every day, the town chief, or the butcher, or the man who drove the money bus. She turned over and went back to sleep to the lullaby of mosquitoes buzzing outside her mosquito net.”
Gray wiggled in her chair. “I love scary stories.”
“The next morning,” I continued, “Beth went off to the clinic where she worked with a physician’s assistant named Francis, and a translator/sometimes janitor named James.
“‘So, Francis,’ Beth said, ‘I’ve been hearing singing in the village lately, is that society business or can I go and watch?’
“Francis smiled, ‘Oh yes, no problem there.’ Being a doctor, Francis didn’t give a lot of credence to local devil business.
“James, on the other hand, frowned. ‘Be careful,’ he warned. ‘Be sure it is dancing and not the bush devil.’”
Monique laid a finger on my arm and stood to put Luc to bed. Gray leaned toward Guy and whispered, “Beth is her middle name.”
Guy nodded and we nibbled on green olives until Monique returned and settled back into her chair.
“That night, Beth and her housemate, Vicki, another volunteer who taught school, listened to their favorite BBC program. In the kerosene light, Beth wrote a letter. Vicki grunted at a pile of essays and began reading. The evening wore on quietly with an occasional small boy giggling through the screened windows and passing on.
“Then it began.” I lowered my voice to a whisper, and they all leaned forward. “A distant chanting and drumming started in the forest and grew closer until it came from the center of the village.
“Beth jumped up. ‘There it is. Let’s go!’ She ran out the front door, ignoring Vicki’s protests that something was weird, it was too dark.
“Beth was out the door and nearly to the dirt road before it registered. Normally, the road outside their house was lighted by kerosene lamps where women sold fruit, plantain, and bean fritters at a night
market. But that night, it was pitch-black.”
The flame inside the glass chimney spluttered. Kate, Gray, and Monique rounded their eyes until the whites showed.
“Beth’s feet were ahead of her brain and carried her around the corner of the house. Out of the darkness, directly ahead of her, came a howl so loud and so chilling, it knocked her backward. In that same instant, someone took hold of both arms and whispered, ‘Quick! Into the house!’
“Beth had no memory of the steps between the moment of being grabbed and being shoved through her front door. She stood, trembling, as each outside shutter was slammed shut.
“Vicki faced her, pale and furious. They stared at each other as a long, guttural, ‘OOOO, OOOO,’ passed just outside each window. At each corner of the house, the bush devil emitted a high-pitched ‘AIEEEE!’ that froze the blood in their veins. Then the sound moved on, out of the village and into the forest.”
After a moment of silence, Kate said, “That’s all?”
I nodded.
“Nothing else happened?”
“That was it.”
“You didn’t get in trouble?”
“Nope.”
Gray leaned toward me. “But it does explain your nose.”
I punched her in the arm and everyone laughed. My nose wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the petit little beak both Gray and Kate had been gifted at birth.
Monique asked about bush devils and rights of passage. I explained that in Liberia, kidnapping the adolescent was cutting the strings of the child-mother relationship. The initiation in the bush was a youth’s passage into adulthood. We talked ourselves through two more liter bottles of Sovobra as the town went to sleep around us.
Gray, Kate, and I said our goodbyes and parted at the corner a few streets down. I continued alone the last few blocks toward my house, lost in my memories of the bush devil. A new moon covered its face, and a darkness deeper than velvet lined the sky. The damp smell of amphibians and moss blew by on the breeze, raising goose bumps along the flesh of my arms. I looked around and in a moment of confusion couldn’t recognize where I was in the darkness. Above me, haze muted the stars, erasing Orion’s shoulders and belt. The back of my neck tingled.
The morning after I had almost met the bush devil, I had gone to the clinic as usual. Francis had smiled at my story, but James had given me a somber look that had sent a chill down my spine. He had been there. He had either been the one who had pushed me through my front door, or he had been the bush devil himself. Either way, he had protected me.
Witches and devils were not evil, we were just human. The bush devil always brought the children back to their village. The only true evil I had ever known was the Devil who stole a child and never returned.
Behind me, a line of eucalyptus waved their tattered sleeves in the wind. I had wandered a block past my compound. Retracing my steps, I wished that the Devil of Death could be as human as James.
Chapter 23
The Strong Brown God
December/Safar
At 3:30 pm, Kate and I, an elderly man, and two matronly women all veiled our heads with cloth against the heat of the sun. We sat on the side of a narrow road in the southwest region of Upper Volta. High trees lined the road on both sides. Our taxi perched at the edge of the road with its back end jacked up like an old yellow dog lifting its leg to pee.
Kate passed me a small flask of whiskey. The back tire had gone flat the first hour out of Bobo, and our taxi driver had hitched a ride back to repair it. Though cool season had arrived, the humidity of the south heated up the afternoons. The heat and the whiskey lulled me into a half-doze. Sweat and dust gathered into mud puddles in the folds of my neck, elbows, and knees.
At 7 am that morning, the same taxi driver had lured us into a five-seat sedan, its paint eaten by rust, and promised we would leave for Mopti as soon as the car filled. The definition of “a full taxi” depended on the size of the people who showed up and the amount of luggage they brought with them. For our particular taxi, “full” meant five hours later, with me and Kate riding shotgun, three large adults and two children in the back, and a bulging trunk tied closed with a piece of rope. No one had thought to ask if we had a spare tire.
Another taxi came by. We stood and pumped our arms up and down, palms down like waving flags. The taxi sped by with more pairs of eyes than our own, choking us with another layer of dust. Why was I doing all of this crazy travel Peace Corps style business again?
Peace Corps volunteers, by necessity, lived in similar houses as the villagers and took local modes of transportation. We prided ourselves in our minimalist living and quietly held other aid workers in contempt (especially government workers like U.S.AID) for their luxurious houses and their private cars. A tough and proud breed, Peace Corps volunteers were the Marines of the humanitarian aid crowd.
I, however, had graduated to a higher rung on the aid ladder and was ready to be demoted in the eyes of the local PCVs.
“Tell me,” I turned to Kate, “why we’re not traveling in some cushy U.S.AID truck.”
“Nobody was going up that way.”
I took another sip of whiskey. It burned going down. Kate took the flask, and we once again sat on the dirt bank, convinced we’d be sleeping on the side of the road come nightfall.
Two days before, Jack had left on the plane for six weeks in the States to spend Christmas with Lori. Lucky for me I already had plans. Kate and I were on our way to Mopti to catch the riverboat the following afternoon, which was proving to be no easy task.
The two children in our taxi family took advantage of the rest stop to chase each other with sticks. The man and two women chatted pleasantly in the flowing tongue of the Bobo people, eventually dozing in the shade. Any seasoned traveler knew that being stranded on the side of the road for several hours was an integral part of every taxi ride. It gave one more time to relax, talk of the world, and see the sights.
Yesterday’s train from Ouaga to Bobo-Dioulasso had deposited us in the Bobo train station at 1:30 that morning. After a few hours sleep at a hostel, we found the taxi station and our cheerful taxi driver with a front tooth missing who promised a quick drive to Mopti. Now, eight and a half hours later, less than a quarter of the way there, tired, sticky, and covered in red dust, we faced another sleepless night. Ah, vacation.
Kate balanced a dog-eared copy of The Strong Brown God on her lap. Though the author meant it as an insult, Sanche de Gramont defined travel in its purest sense. “Travel, after all, requires no special experience—all one has to do is place one foot in front of the other.” We were mentally preparing for our adventure up the Niger River.
“Until the middle of the nineteenth century,” Kate read between sips, “this part of Africa was known as ‘The White Man’s Grave.’”
Even as far north as the Niger, the African interior was a breeding ground for insect carriers of malaria, yellow fever, bilharzia, and sleeping sickness. For two years in Liberia, I had taken chloroquin, the newest form of malaria preventative. It was nasty stuff that, if taken in large doses, could cause psychosis. The several times I had gone to bed with malaria and taken the curative dose, my dreams had been like the psychedelic movies we had seen in junior high that promised we’d jump out of windows if we took LSD. Since arriving in Upper Volta, I had stopped taking chloroquin. The mosquitos in Dori were so few, it wasn’t worth the brain damage.
Into the third chapter and Kate’s recital of the English sailor song, “Beware and take care of the Bight of Benin/for one that comes out there are forty goes in,” our gap-toothed taxi man finally returned. He changed the tire and we were off, north, into the wilds between the sluggish waters of the Black Volta and the marshes of the Upper Niger.
Several hours later, we crossed the frontier into Mali. At Yorossa, the first town over the border, Kate and I each dined on a banana and stretched our legs. As the Malian customs agents went through the luggage, we all pooled our change to give the obligatory dash. Back into the t
axi and up the road, I dozed and the miles passed.
I awoke around 11:00 pm. Cold air blew through the window. Kate and I wrapped ourselves in the sleeping bag we had borrowed from Jack. Soft snoring came from the backseat. Heads lolled and the children lay sprawled across the ample laps of the adults. The dark interior of the taxi was snug and quiet except for the gravelly hum of the engine.
Warm and happy to be moving, I rested my forehead against the side window. Beyond the black lace silhouette of the trees, the Big Dipper winked at me above the horizon, bigger than I had ever seen it. At 3 am we stopped in Tené to stretch our cramped legs. At a wooden kiosk near the taxi lot, we drank glasses of steaming white coffee, sweet and hot on the tongue. In the cold air, cottonwood trees towered against a black-blue sky full of brilliant stars.
Driving on through the night, a slice of waning moon rose in the east at 4 am, and by 5:30, the squat buildings of Mopti materialized in the gray light. It had taken seventeen hours of driving and ten stops at customs checks and police blockades to go the 210 miles from Bobo to Mopti.
Our hair, skin, and clothes dyed a dark shade of dirt, Kate and I sat outside on the breakfast porch of a campement. With four hours of sleep in the last forty-eight, and little to eat except strong cups of Nescafé, everything held a surreal quality—a shimmering clarity of light and color.
Waiting for a room, we drank coffee under a sky streaked with orange whips of cloud. The sun rose from behind a line of distant mountains, its light so clear and bright I sneezed. Hundreds of egrets lifted off the waters of a nearby marsh, snow-white waves against a cobalt sky. Behind the egrets, their wings wide and gleaming in the sun, stood a mosque, its walls and spires reminiscent of a gothic cathedral.
The sunrise alone was worth the all-night drive.
Kate, in the best tradition of Tricia, read a section from The Strong Brown God. “Did you know the Niger River was once two separate rivers?”
I had to admit that no, I didn’t.
“‘Between 4000 and 400 BC, when wildlife teemed across the fertile land of the Sahara and tribes of Neolithic man populated its shores, the upper Niger was the Joliba River. Originating in the hills of the Futa Jalon watershed near the Atlantic, the Joliba flowed north into the interior, 450 miles past Timbuktu. The lower Niger, then the Quorra River, began in the Saharan mountains of Ahaggar and flowed south into the Bight of Benin.’”
In the Belly of the Elephant Page 19
