In the Belly of the Elephant (16 page)

“So, still no luck getting pregnant?”

Tricia kept her eyes on the boys in the water. “Still no luck. We’ve tried a bunch of stuff, but it’s just not happening.”

The bull had stopped at the end of the street and was rubbing its horns on the trunk of a tree.

“Have you figured out why?”

“We’re doing more tests. The endometriosis has gotten worse.” The crease between her eyes deepened into what had become a permanent frown. “I don’t know what I’ll do if we can’t have kids. I’m not sure if Bob alone is enough.”

“You’d leave Bob?”

She shrugged.

I shook my head. “Tricia, Tricia. He’s the only sane man you’ve ever been with.”

She sighed. “Don’t worry. I just need some time to myself. Bob knows that.”

I stood, pulled her up, and we resumed walking. A woman carrying a baby in a sling passed us with a smile. Three children skipped up to Tricia and touched her hands, then ran to catch up with the woman. We turned a corner and passed a group of donkeys tethered to a fence.

“I hate to bring this up, but,”—Tricia cleared her throat—“I talked to Shelley before I left. She told me Rob got married a few months ago.”

A train of emotion hit me head-on; a physical blow that nearly knocked me down.

Tricia touched my arm. “I didn’t want to be the one to tell you, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“Shit.” Since Drabo’s departure, Rob had returned to haunt my dreams. “Damn.”

“Sorry, Susan.”

“I hate this.” I bent over with my hands on my knees, trying to get my wind. “I hate that I still react like this, over a goddamned jerk.”

“Well, if he was such a jerk, why’d you fall in love with him in the first place?”

I straightened and took a deep breath. “Thanks for being so understanding and supportive.”

“Well for crying out loud, Susan, you’re so naïve when it comes to men.”

“Hey, at least he wasn’t like that what’s-his-name maniac boyfriend of yours who got into arguments with people at bars and then went outside and peed on their cars!”

“And I had the sense to leave him because of it.”

“The only guys you ever went out with before Bob were a bunch of psychos, like that guy who had you convinced you’d been through a bunch of different lives together. You a Southern Belle and him a Yankee Captain.” I rolled my eyes.

“Oh, shut up about that.”

“YOU shut up.”

She punched me in the arm. I gave her a full-body nudge. The bull was right behind us. We split to opposite sides of the street. The bull walked between us and ambled up the road. Tricia grinned at me and we started laughing. It helped, but I still had a rock the size of a tractor in the pit of my stomach from the news about Rob. I closed my eyes and imagined him in a canoe. It went down a swift river and over a waterfall.

I threw my arm around Tricia’s shoulder and we turned the corner onto Laya’s street. The leaves of the Eucalyptus trees fluttered in the heat. At the end of the road, I knocked on Laya’s gate.

“I want you to meet Laya. She shops and cooks the noon meal. She’s kind of adopted me into her family.”

Little Issa opened the gate and led us toward Laya’s hut in her section of the courtyard. Laya stirred soup in a pot set over one of two plate-sized holes. Beneath the pot, a fire burned inside a hollow rectangular stove made of mud bricks. The surface of the stove was glazed with a clay/mud mixture. We had built a practice prototype stove near Laya’s hut. Smoke snaked out of a three-foot-high chimney built against the courtyard wall.

“It’s working well!” I said.

“Yes, the food heats faster.” Laya pushed another stick into the square opening in front.

“And we don’t have to worry about Ousmann tumbling into the fire.” I inspected a large crack that had opened up along the edge—a problem with all the stove models. “We’ll have to get another layer of clay on this.”

Laya touched me on the shoulder and nodded toward Tricia.

“Oh!
Je m’excuse!
Laya, this is my sister, Tricia.”

Laya smiled into Tricia’s face, shook her hand, and called her children over. Aissatou approached with Ousmann on her hip, and Issa came forward, pulling Hama by the hand. Smiling shyly, each one shook Tricia’s hand, touching their left fingers to their forearms to show respect.

We stayed only briefly, as the sun was near setting and Laya had much to do to get her husband and children fed and to sleep.

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” I called in Fulfuldé as we left the courtyard. The children waved from the open gate.

Tricia watched them for a moment. “Do they all sleep in that one little room?”

“Laya, the baby, and Aissatou. I think the boys sleep in different places around the courtyard.”

The shadows stretched as the sun lowered. We walked to the end of the street and turned toward the central square. A camel tethered to a wall watched us pass with an annoyed expression.

“Careful,” I warned. “He’ll spit at us if we get too close.”

Tricia gave the camel a wide berth. “She doesn’t have much, does she?”

“Not many people live much better. She’s one of the few women in town with her own income, though I’m pretty sure most of it goes to her husband. But, she never complains.”

“We have so much,” Tricia said.

“Way more than we need.”

Shadows threw clean lines of dark and light across the street.

“It makes me think of Grandma Annie.” Tricia rotated her head as a woman walked by with a baby tied to her back and a head-pan of wrung-out clothes balanced on her head. “Remember Aunt Ethel’s stories about Grandma Annie living in a two-room log house and clearing the land with a team of horses, a hand plow, and an ax?”

“Grandma Annie.” I nodded. “Fired by life until she was tough and useful, like the women here.”

The woman hurried down the street and was met at a gate by several children who pulled at her skirt and hands.

I spread my fingers and turned my palms upward. “We’ve never had to work like that, Trish. We’ve never been tested that way.”

Tricia stopped and looked at me with her “are you crazy?” expression. “We’re lucky we
don’t
have to work like that. Get bent and worn out before our time. Why do you think Grandma Annie died so young?” She shook her head. “Never been tested? I’ve been afraid my whole life because of my rape. And now, I can’t get pregnant. Five years, and I can’t get pregnant. I’ve been through plenty of fire and I’m plenty damn useful.”

“Well, the useful part might be a matter of opinion.” I tried to grin.

“And
you
. You’ve been dumped by the man you love. You’re living 6,000 miles away from your family on the edge of the Sahara with no electricity and no running water, working in a hundred degree heat, and being called an Ugly American for your efforts. And one of your best friends just died. You think you’ve never been tested?”

My throat tightened into a knot. The harder I tried to keep my bottom lip from trembling, the faster my eyes filled up.

The sun settled onto the horizon and grew into a huge orange ball. Waves of heat rippled across its face.

I wiped a tear off my cheek. “But I think I’m failing.”

She put her arm around my shoulder. “Look, you’re giving it your best. That’s as good as clearing the land with a hand plow and an ax.”

I was five years old again, my big sister carrying me home after getting my foot caught in the bicycle spokes.

Along the sides of the road, men rolled out prayer mats, knelt, and touched their heads to the ground. In the west, the desert slowly swallowed the sun. The clouds mellowed from orange to pink. As the chanting of the evening prayer quieted, the sky faded to the color of the sea.

Chapter 14

Champagne and Sand

April/Jumada-al-Ula

Over the four weeks of March, work continued. Tricia accompanied me, Hamidou, Nassuru, Fati, and Adiza to Sambonaye and the other villages to train masons, build and demonstrate smokeless mud stoves, and plant trees. (“Build a stove, plant a tree, you heard it first at FDC.”) Jack’s new project was to train the masons to build grain stores. Egg-shaped, mud brick bins the size of VW bugs set up on wooden frames would keep next season’s harvested grain from being eaten by rodents and insects. Weavers sat at their wooden looms, weaving long multicolored strips to be sewn together into blankets. Women gathered on mats to spin cotton into thread. Though the women had not saved seeds from last year’s gardens, they requested more to plant in late May when,
Ensha’allah
, the rains would come.

As the weeks passed, Tricia relaxed into the day-to-day life of Dori while Rocky grew into a medium-sized yellow dog—universal mutt and woman’s best friend. We ate our noon meals with Laya and the children and passed the evenings eating supper and playing Scrabble with Gray, Jack, and Kate when she was in town. The African staff accepted Tricia as part of the team the same easy way that Laya welcomed her into the family. The full days ate away at Tricia’s depression until the crease between her eyes disappeared.

Mine, on the other hand, deepened. I had worked nonstop for a year, and for the past month had juggled taking care of Tricia with the busiest time of the project year. Like a match, I had burned myself down to a nub. At Tricia’s urging, I put in a request for vacation time. The new director sent an immediate approval from Ouaga, and Gray agreed to take care of Rocky while I was gone. I would accompany Tricia as far as Senegal on her return trip home.

The evening before our departure, Tricia, Gray, and I perched along the crest of the twenty-foot dune that sloped down to the outskirts of Dori. The office pickup sat at the base like a bug out of water. Dunes stretched out on both sides—mounds of orange-red sand sloping away to the plains. The desert sky spread before us with flaming streaks of salmon-colored clouds, brilliant against iridescent blue. Evening light tinted the hills, savanna, and sand with a soft blush. A small group of houses nested a stone’s throw from the base of the dune, where smoke from evening cook-fires rose into the sky like pillars in the desert.

Gray reached into a basket and brought out a bottle of French champagne and three paper cups. “
Voila
!” She hoisted the bottle. “
Bon voyage
!” She popped the cork and filled the cups.

“To my wonderful time here.” Tricia raised her cup, spilling some over the lip and into the sand. “Rats.”

“To your safe return home,” Gray said.

“To a break.” The bubbles rising from the bottom of the cup to the surface of the liquid were hypnotizing. I was so fried I was numb.

We drank the champagne and watched the sun’s light work its way across the face of the clouds. We toasted sunsets that lasted an hour when the days and nights were of equal length. We toasted journeys, good friends, and everything else we could think of until the bottle was empty.

Gray smacked her lips and said to Trish, “We have a tradition here. When people leave, they take a champagne bottle filled with Sahara sand home with them.” She handed Tricia the empty bottle.

We scooped up sand with the paper cups and funneled it through the narrow top.

“When you’re back home,” I said. “When things get too normal, open the cork and pour some sand into your palm.”

Tricia scooped up a handful. The grains sparkled, promising camel caravans, markets filled with spices, and night skies so ablaze the stars and planets conquered the darkness.

I looked up, found the first star, and pointed. “There, Trish. Make your wish.”

Tricia raised her face and closed her eyes. I closed mine and wished a child for my sister. Then I wished for myself. Of all the things I yearned for—the love of a good man, to find where I belonged, and to make a difference in the world—I wished for love. Champagne will do that.

Opening my eyes, the star blinked and twinkled. So far away—as far away as the love of a good man. Seemed we sent to the stars the wishes that were light years beyond our reach.

Gray and I took giant steps down the side of the dune toward the truck. Tricia followed, cradling the corked bottle filled with the memory of the desert. Luckily, there were no stoplights or traffic cops the few kilometers between the dune and Dori, only a big empty desert to drive home on.

Chapter15

Up the Gambia River

April/Jumada-al-Ula

Three dolphins gamboled in the waters of the Gambia River Delta, their fins slicing the gold-leafed surface. A wave hit the bow, and the arthritic boards of the ferry creaked and moaned like old bones. On the south bank of the river, morning sun reflected off the tin roofs of Banjul, stinging my eyes.

A six-hour late-night ride in a bush taxi had taken us from Dakar to the Senegalese border town of Karang. Just before dawn, we crossed the border into The Gambia on foot and took another bush taxi to Barra, a ferry stop on the north bank of the Gambia River. There, we caught the 7 am ferry across the mouth of the river to the capital city of Banjul.

Numb with fatigue and smelling of sweat and stale breath, I crossed the narrow plank from the ferry onto a wooden dock. Tricia, equally ripe, followed so closely behind she bumped into me each time I paused to shift my backpack. Caught in a stream of debarking passengers, we flowed from the dock onto the Banjul Quay and into a sea of humanity.

The quay teemed with the people and bright colors of the West African coast. Tall, thin women of the Wolof tribe hawked fruit from overloaded head-pans. Mandinka men in long robes and skull caps talked in groups, while women and children with bundles tied up in cloth waited to board the ferry. Everywhere was the salt-saturated smell of the sea.

We threaded and bumped our way through the crowds and paused near a shack of wood planks with a bar and a bench. On a strip of wall above the bar, someone had painted a proverb in neat black script.
When a snake is in the house, one need not discuss the matter at length.

Tricia frowned. “I hate snakes.”

“Taxi?” A tall, wire-thin man approached us, eager to take us, Allah willing, wherever we wished. He led us to a rusted yellow taxi with a bent front fender. Tricia got in the backseat, and I threw our backpacks into the trunk.