In the Company of Men

by Véronique Tadjo

  * * *

  —

  I am Baobab. The first tree, the everlasting tree, the totem tree. My crown touches the heavens and offers the world below refreshing shade. I yearn toward soft, life-sustaining light, that it may brighten humanity, illuminate darkness, and soothe fear.

  Now I am old. The natural death of trees is a renewal. One day, I witnessed the noble death of a thousand-year-old tree. The entire forest went down on its knees, time stood still, and lightning fell from the sky.

  I’m ready. When my hour comes, I will stretch out on the ground, offering my trunk to the gnawing insects and the lichens that feed on my flesh. I’m ready. Death does not frighten me, it is bound up with life.

  But when men murder us, they must know that they are breaking the chains of existence. Animals can no longer find food. Bats can no longer find food, can no longer find the wild fruit they like so much. Then they migrate to the villages, where there are mango, guava, papaya, and avocado trees, with their soft, sweet fruits. The bats seek the company of Men.

  I know that not all humans are alike. Not all of them go looking for rare, exotic species of timber to sell to unscrupulous merchants at exorbitant rates, nor do they all set fire to the bush to make ends meet. Only some of them run industrial-scale palm oil, rubber, cocoa, coffee, and eucalyptus plantations for financial gain; only a few buy up entire harvests, loading them onto enormous container barges that sail across the seas and unload their cargoes somewhere in the West after the London, Paris, and New York stock exchanges have decided on the world market prices.

  No, there are also the poor, the refugees, the shoeless, who crowd into camps to flee a fratricidal war or escape a drought and the famine that follows it. They go into the forest and clear it to plant cassava, yams, and maize. They hunt game, the large cane rat, and—if they can catch it—the striped ground squirrel, as well as the shy, dainty antelopes or the laughing monkeys that colonize the same trees as the bats. When such animals are trapped by members of the clan, they can stave off hunger for a while. But then disaster strikes. They start dying from a mysterious disease, all alone in the forest, with no one to help them. Sometimes, the authorities of the country learn of the outbreak and decree a quarantine. Those who are meant to die, die, and those meant to live, live. The city-dwellers in the capital know nothing about this. The towns know nothing about it. Nobody speaks of it, because it simply does not matter. Because it is far away. The victims are the left-behind, the forgotten ones.

  Things were not always like this. There was a time when men used to talk to us, the trees. We shared the same gods, the same spirits. If one of us had to be cut down, our pardon would be begged first. Libations would be poured on the ground, accompanied by a whispered prayer: “Beautiful tree, soul of our life, cool shade of our dreams, root of our future, friend in all seasons, we implore your forgiveness. From the bottom of our hearts, we give thanks for your generosity. Your presence in our lives will forever be remembered.”

  * * *

  —

  Those were the old days, in times long past, when the ancestors who founded the village would plant me right in the center of their lives. As the centuries went by, I grew into a symbol for the close link between Nature and Man. I was the Tree of Wisdom, the one to which people would turn when they wished to find an answer to the troubles of human existence. Birds perched on my branches, conversing freely. During celebrations, balafons and koras would beat the rhythm of our masked dances. The dancers’ feet shook the ground, while their heads marked the passing of time, the perpetual flow of death and rebirth, death and rebirth. I used to laugh with them then. When sorrow descended upon the village, I used to weep with them. And when a revered old man departed for the realm of his ancestors, I offered the hollow of my colossal trunk to entomb him for all eternity.

  * * *

  —

  Everything is different today. Nobody wants to speak of death. People say about their dead, “They are no longer here,” or “They have passed away,” but no one thinks of asking where they may have gone. To the graveyard? To heaven? Underground? They prefer to deny death, because they no longer have the time to think about it. Death is a failing because it disrupts their frenetic lives.

  It never used to be like that in my village, where death was always welcomed. Everyone accepted it, in the same way they knew that the earth must rest before it can bring forth a new harvest. To leave a deceased person alone, all by himself, was unthinkable. To keep him company was a sacred duty, and an opportunity for the villagers to come together to eat and drink, sing, weep, and dance around him. They would talk to him, reassuring him about the grave that awaited him. The words they would murmur to him came straight from the heart. They would ask the deceased to counsel them one last time. They would touch him, adjusting his ceremonial garments so that he would always look beautiful. They would celebrate his passage on earth. Death was a part of daily life; everyone addressed it in informal terms. It was familiar to them.

  For as long as life was in full swing, I was their confidant. I was the one they would talk to about their joys and sorrows. About the difficulties of life. They would lay offerings at my feet and hold gatherings under my lush foliage. I was the Palaver Tree. Long, complex discussions, strictly adhering to rules of precedence and procedure, would take place around me. Someone would ask for permission to speak, stand up, and express his opinion. When he sat down again, another would get up and continue his train of thought. In this way, important decisions were taken collectively. If a conflict was brewing, any attempts to settle it took place in my presence, including the chiefs’ consultations among themselves. My cool shade was the only place where lengthy deliberations could be brought to a successful conclusion; I would encourage calm. The villagers took time to listen to one another, trying to resolve the quarrels that threatened to divide them. Quite often, having considered a problem, they would decide to forgo punishment and seek instead to repair bonds that had been abruptly broken. Life decisions were taken in the cocoon of my embrace, where all topics were discussed: marriages, births, funerals, good harvests and bad, droughts, the laudable or reprehensible conduct of a young man or a young girl, divine protection, protection against sorcery, and alliances with neighboring villages. Everything revolved around my goodwill.

  * * *

  —

  A great sorcerer often came and asked my advice before creating his powerful gris-gris. All the villagers would wear the amulets, around their necks, around their waists or chests, on their wrists or on their ankles. Babies were decked out with them to avert bad luck. Young girls sought them out, for they brought love and fertility. Hunters acquired them as safeguards against the dangers of the forest. “Beyond the visible world, there is a hidden, subterranean parallel universe where our life force takes the form of scattered energies,” the wizard declared. He alone knew how to control those energies and ensure that they would be beneficial for the village.

  But if circumstances demanded it, he also had the power to invoke the destructive forces of nature, which made life difficult and unpredictable.

  That is what life was like with the people of my village. I listened to them, they listened to the rustling of my leaves. Each in his place but all together…

  * * *

  —

  I am Baobab, who keeps the memory of centuries gone by, whether bruised or blessed by the gods.

  I have loved human beings, and I love them still. But, with the passing of time, I have lost my illusions. My leaves are tarnished, my bark has lost its shine. When gold was discovered in our region, my village changed from one day to the next. It became warped, disfigured, because raw gold was up for grabs. Everything was ransacked so people could get their hands on the wretched metal as fast as possible. All they could think of was splashing, milling about in the river to churn up gold deposits that would make them rich overnight. At the time, one ounce of gold was worth
almost two thousand dollars. Impossible to resist! To excavate large basins in which to sift through the pebbles, they set to work cutting down every single tree in sight. Now there was mud everywhere, nothing but mud; and in their minds, madness. The women even stopped making pottery and joined in, recruiting their own children to help. On their delicate little heads they were carrying buckets full of soil. The mercury discharged into the rivers to make gold particles easier to spot killed the fish, the small shellfish, the plankton and dark-green algae. So the water became acid. Toxic. Life became poisonous. Prostitution. Bars. Arms trafficking. Drugs.

  The villagers turned into driver ants, formidable predators determined to annihilate everything in their path. The past had to be wiped out as well. From one day to the next, they abandoned their fields, their legends, their customs, their beliefs. The trees that crashed to the ground took climbing animals and crawling animals with them. I was deeply saddened by this, for I knew that our equilibrium had been lost, and that many animals were being forced to flee deep into the forest for safety. It was incomprehensible to me how things could have deteriorated so much so rapidly, so abruptly. I would have liked to put a stop to all this lunacy, but I was powerless. After generations of mutual respect, the village had turned its back on me for good.

  It didn’t take long before people started to fall ill. At first they thought it was malaria. They complained of fevers, shivering, stomach pains. They suffered from body aches and extreme fatigue. So they went in search of neem leaves, leaves from the Tree of a Thousand Virtues, the generous tree that cures malaria and repels mosquitoes. A proud and resilient tree that doesn’t ask for much, a tree that adapts to even the poorest kind of soil, sandy or full of rocks or almost completely barren. But then the people remembered how, in their mad rage, they had cut down hundreds of neem trees. So they had no choice but to forge a path leading them ever deeper into the forest. Weak and exhausted, they marched on, until finally they found the beneficent tree. They stripped off most of its leaves and fruit, packed them into bags, and carried them home. As soon as they got back, the women prepared herbal infusions that the patients were given to drink several times a day. They crushed the neem seeds to extract the oil, which they rubbed on the patients’ skin. A handful of the sick recovered their health within a few days. But for the others, the majority, the fever never came down. Their strength was gone. They started spitting blood, then vomiting blood, then excreting blood; blood broke through all the barriers of their flesh.

  Until the very last moment, some miners refused to let go of their coveted gold nuggets, clutching them in the palms of their hands. The worksite became a battlefield, a scene of sheer devastation. The gold had sown death and disaster. I watched helplessly as the disease spread like wildfire. Nothing, it seemed, would be able to stop it.

  Where are true human riches to be found? In the riches of the heart, or in the riches of wealth? My village was rich, its riches were beautiful. But when the villagers wished to possess wealth, the village disappeared.

  For a long time, I was a tree in despair. I missed the children’s tinkling laughter, the rough hands of the old men stroking my trunk, the beauty of the women who used to fall asleep in my shade, the men whose bodies were sculpted by labor on the land. I wanted to become a tree without roots so that I could leave this arid place and migrate to happier surroundings. My life had become useless, trickling away slowly, reduced to nothing but memories.

  What was destined to happen happened against my will and out of my reach.

  All of a sudden, an Ebola epidemic broke out and spread through the region, becoming the most devastating outbreak ever recorded in the history of the virus. And for the first time ever, the virus even traveled all the way to the capital.

  It takes between five and twenty-one days for the fever to appear in its acute and life-threatening form. First there are stabbing pains in the temples, intensely aching muscles, and a blinding headache, followed by vomiting and diarrhea, skin eruptions, a sore throat that burns like fire. In the end, the last spark of life is snuffed out as the patient gradually bleeds to death.

  Simply touching another person is enough for someone to become infected. This plague is worse than war. A mother, a father, a son can become a mortal enemy. Pity is a death sentence.

  I saw the devastation the epidemic wreaked upon this country, while the rest of the world did its best to stay away. Africa became the cradle of untold suffering, the place where the future of all mankind was at stake. Should the virus jump on a bus, a train, an airplane, it threatened human extinction. It could cross borders, travel on boats. It might hide in the tears of a child, in a lover’s kiss, or in a mother’s embrace. It reduced human beings to nothing but flesh and viscosity. The very pavement was strewn with anonymous, ravaged corpses, the bodies of men and women who simply collapsed, as though violently struck down, on one of the capital’s crowded streets. How can one ever forget that raging fury, spreading at unimaginable speed and wiping out everything in its path?

  But I saw courage too. There were men, women, and young people caught up in this human tragedy, determined to fight for their own survival and that of others. I myself saw people who did not think twice about offering help. I saw people arriving from all over the world, volunteers working for free to combat the disease.

  In spite of the chaos, dawn continued to break, and sunset still heralded the onset of night. I saw the morning come, quivering with impatience. Once bitterness and sorrow had passed, kindness returned. Gradually, I started listening again to what humans had to say. I listened to all of them. My branches spread out and took on tremendous magnitude.

  Nothing that makes human beings what they are escaped me. I want to tell their stories, to lend a voice to all those who managed to rise above fear: ordinary men and women doing extraordinary things. No matter where they are, I want to honor their bravery. The life of humans is a story we haven’t yet finished telling, a story of shipwrecked sailors washed up on an island in the middle of a sea.

  * * *

  —

  I am Baobab, the first tree, the everlasting tree, the totem tree. My roots reach deep into the belly of the earth. My crown pierces the sky. I seek the light that brightens the universe, illuminates darkness, and soothes hearts.

  IV

  The earth is sometimes farther from Man than the moon.

  A doctor in a spacesuit discovers a new universe.

  The first time I entered the vestibule of the high-risk area, a patient appeared out of the corridor and collapsed right in front of me. He was dripping with blood and other bodily secretions. There must have been millions of Ebola particles all over him. Inside my bulky suit, my heart was beating like a drum. The patient had to be taken back to his bed, so a male nurse and I picked him up by his arms. He was in a state of extreme agitation, shaking uncontrollably. His eyes expressed unfathomable fear. We had to sedate him. His struggling gradually stopped, and only then were we able to leave him and tend to the other patients.

  At night, I have nightmares. I dream I’m still among the sick. The tent’s a furnace. It’s the middle of the day, the sun’s beating down on the canvas. I gasp for breath, my head buzzes, I don’t have my protective suit on—I’m naked, in fact, and the virus has infected me. My gums are bleeding, my soul leaving my body. I can feel it slipping away through my navel…I wake up with a start.

  My room, bathed in twilight. I can make out the outline of the window against the wall and hear the whirring of the fan. The stirred air is hot; sweat drenches me. My eyelids close heavily.

  But now it’s morning, peeking through the curtains. Another day has begun. I get up, head to the bathroom, splash cool water on my face for a long time, and look at myself in the mirror. I’m alive. It was nothing—just a bad dream. I must ignore it, I must return to the sick. That’s where I need to be, in that makeshift health center; there’s no more desperate struggle taking pla
ce anywhere on earth.

  Early in the morning, I pass through the entrance reserved for the staff. Most of the others arrive by minibus. They have to get up at the crack of dawn and leave the house while their children are still asleep. My colleagues include the nurses, who are so dedicated, and the psychologists, whose task is not an easy one, and the members of the various teams responsible for water, sanitation, and the burial of the dead. The cooks arrive as well, and the laundry workers, whose jobs are menial but essential. And finally, the administrators and the logisticians, in a hurry to get to their offices at the other end of the center. The volunteers, both local and foreign, feel united in their collective desire to eradicate Ebola. Then there are also the other doctors, of course, my closest colleagues.

  I go inside the tent to attend the morning meeting with the staff members who were on duty during the night. The team leader delivers his report, which includes the number of deaths as well as the number of new admissions. The influx is growing all the time. The head of the ambulance drivers explains that several patients are waiting to be admitted to the center, although there are no available beds. The testing of suspected cases needs to be sped up. The nurse points out that patients who test negative are nevertheless kept at the center so they can get treated for other problems. Would it not be better to transfer them to the Main Hospital? Someone interjects that the Main Hospital has been closed since six members of their medical staff succumbed to the virus.