In the Belly of the Elephant (20 page)

“Handing something out and then asking for it back is a foreign idea,” Luanne said, still doodling her spirals.

“FDC cannot continue to impose new ideas on the villagers and expect them to use them.” Nassuru rubbed his face with both hands. “We ask them what they need, but then we give them the answers. The villagers have their own solutions.”

“Then why don’t they use them?”

Nassuru shrugged. “They don’t want to be rude.”

My scalp shifted and tingled, slapped by such an obvious concept.

When you go to someone’s house and she is squatting, you don’t ask her for a chair.

Djelal nodded. “If we are to develop lasting credit structures within the villages, all levels of the project—ideas like the artisan center, thread and seed purchases, gathering reimbursements—must be done by the villagers themselves.”

“But they’ll still need loans to start,” Adiza said. “Loans we don’t expect them to give back to FDC.”

“So they can develop their own credit pools from the reimbursements.” I was getting excited now.

Jack flicked a finger at the air, as if turning on a light switch. “Startup funds instead of loans.” He had been with me at one of the Ouaga parties where we talked to an American from Partnership for Productivity, an agency that was starting up some credit projects in the south.

“Like the
tontines
!” Fati explained that village women pooled their money into
tontines,
a kind of savings account held by the group in case one of them had a family emergency. Cooperative funds were an accepted and well-used tradition.

Djelal nodded. “Every village has a committee of elders. They will reestablish the village central committees. They will make the decisions for the villages, not FDC.”

A breeze slipped through the window again.

I nodded and a window at the back of my brain opened. “There’s a story about a Peace Corps volunteer who lived in South America!” Every volunteer knew this story.

Djelal pursed his lips. Luanne continued to doodle.

“
Oui, Suzanne?
” Fati was smiling.

“This guy was new to his village, but saw right away that the village needed a clinic. So, he goes to the village elders and tells them he wants to help them build a clinic and could they organize the people? But the elders inform him that what the people want most is a shrine to the Virgin Mary.”

Fati knit her brow and said something in Fulfuldé. Djelal explained that the Virgin Mary was the mother of the prophet, Jesus, and that Christians revered her the way Moslems revered Amina, the mother of Muhammad. Fati nodded and her nod passed from Nouhoun, to Nassuru, to Adiza.

“So, this volunteer argues with the elders. ‘We need a clinic,’ he keeps saying. He tells them a clinic is more important than a shrine. But the elders won’t cooperate. Finally, out of frustration, the volunteer agrees to help the people build a shrine. It takes a while, but all the people participate and they get to know the volunteer and he gets to know them. And in the end, they have a beautiful shrine to the Virgin Mary.

“After the shrine is finished, one of the elders comes up to the volunteer and says they need to have a meeting. ‘Why?’ asks the volunteer. The elder replies, ‘So we can build a clinic.’”

A second or two passed. Then Fati applauded, Nassuru smiled, and Djelal said, “
Précisément.
”

We all agreed that our goal must be to strengthen existing village infrastructures in order to render them independent of outside assistance. We had to slow down enough to start over. The meeting ended at 7 pm in a flurry of excited chatter.

Early the next morning, Hamidou drove us to Sambonaye. The women’s gardens sprouted rows of young beans, groundnuts, cotton, and okra. The fields grew green with new millet. It was one of those blue days of clear skies and high clouds when the horizon looked as though God had taken a knife and sliced a clean line between heaven and earth.

The women chatted with Adiza and Fati, their voices like songbirds as they poured eight-ounce cans of water at the base of each plant. Wet dirt gave off the tangy smell of minerals. Fati, now big with child, led a meeting with Emma and several other women who had once been members of the village central committee. The women liked the idea of using the local tradition of
tontine
to create a revolving loan fund out of whatever seed reimbursements could be had from this year’s gardens
.

After the meeting, we made our way back to the truck where Hamidou tinkered with the engine in the shade of the town tree. At the base of the hill, halfway between the gardens and the millet fields, Jack stood talking to a burly white man I had never seen before. Next to them stood a woman, holding a baby.

Curious, I walked down the sloped road. As I approached, the man turned with a smile that made me want to get up and dance.

“Susan!” Jack came forward. “This is Guy. He’s a hydraulic man and will be digging wells here, in Selbo, Toukka, and the oasis.”

I exchanged
les bises
with Guy, the French custom of touching cheeks while kissing the air. It was like rubbing cheeks with sandpaper.
He introduced his wife, Monique, a pretty dark-haired woman. She held a cherubic little fellow who looked like he’d flown down from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Monique and I greeted each other, one cheek then the other.

“And this is Luc.” Guy held out his hands and the baby raised his arms. “They came to see the villages.”

Luc, a tiny carbon copy of Guy, watched us with big black eyes, his little mouth puckered into an O.

“How old is he?” I asked.

“He’ll be twelve months old next week.” Guy smiled with such pride, we couldn’t help but smile with him.

Monique told us they had just arrived in Dori the day before and were settling into a house on the southern edge of town. They were French Canadian and would be staying in Dori for a year. “You must come see us,” she said in perfect English.

Jack and I promised to visit, then climbed the hill back to the truck. At the top, I turned and took in the scene. Out beyond the green fields, herds of cattle grazed on rain-fed grasses. Behind me, among the huts that clustered at the top of the hill, smoke rose into the sky from the chimneys of several mud stoves. In a nearby compound, two masons spread wet mud over the VW-sized shell of a new grain store. Young trees surrounded by thorn-bush fences took root and grew in the town center.

Despite so many project setbacks, Sambonaye was prospering, and we drove back to Dori in high spirits. I thought of Lily and our last question to the
I Ching
of whether we could make a difference. She was there, her fairy-sized spirit perched next to my ear where the sun warmed my shoulder through the window.

*

That evening, as shadows bundled into corners in the last light of day, I strolled the empty streets toward Jack’s house. Rocky trotted at my heels. The night turned cool, a gift from the rains to the east. The burnt odor of dust still clung to the air, and a gentle quiet enfolded the houses and courtyards along the way.

After the busy week, it was good to be alone. Strange how I had fought loneliness for so long, yet cherished being alone. The two were not the same. One was a parasite, the other a privilege.

I needed the quiet to gather my thoughts. That cool evening in late May, the light fading, on my way to have dinner with Jack, I let anticipation replace thoughts of staff and projects. The wind kissed my hair, and contentedness caressed my cheek. For that moment, I was the only human walking that small patch of paradise on earth. It all blended into a yearning for the moment to stretch eternal.

I stopped in the street. Rocky sat at my feet and cocked her head. Her swollen abdomen hung to just above the ground. Rocky had joined the office crowd. My dog had turned out to be a she. When her maturation time had come, she’d jumped the fence, and the inevitable had occurred.

To the shame of my Idaho friends (had they known), I had never checked Rocky’s underside to see whether she had a little hose in the middle or a well at the base. At the time, I guess I had needed a male friend and so had assumed she was a he. I had always had men friends, Bill in high school, Dave and Steve in College—the kind-natured guys I was smart enough to be friends with but too stupid to be attracted to. After several years of friendship, our senior year in college, Steve and I had finally become sweethearts. But I had left him, twice. He was just too, well,
nice
. It was a problem I had with men—I left the good ones, was attracted to the jerks. Dave had once said to me, “I love you Corbett, but where is your horse?”

Now I knew. Good friends made the best boyfriends. It was the gentle horse that gave the safest ride. Certain kinds of chemistry just had slower ignition rates than others. Since meeting Jack, my brain had not melted nor had my hormones raged as they had with Drabo at first, and with Rob all along. Able to be myself around Jack, we had become good friends.

I reached the end of the street and unlatched the gate to Jack’s compound. Past the side path, light glowed from around the corner of the house. The path led to a patio with a tin roof. Candles cast pale light onto a small table covered with a cloth. Napkins, knives, forks, plates, and clear glasses composed a perfect setting for two. A bottle of wine stood in the center. Music drifted from somewhere inside the house—a country western love song.

Something was afoot.

Light poured from the kitchen, splashing a bright yellow rectangle onto the path that led to the patio. A silhouette leaped across as Moses, Jack’s cook, stepped through the kitchen door. He paused.

“
Bonsoir
, Moses,” I said with a nod.

“
Bonsoir, Mademoiselle
.” He carried a casserole dish to the table.

I smelled meatballs and brown gravy.

Jack walked out onto the patio in a pair of worn Levis and cowboy boots.

Moses added another bowl of mashed potatoes and peas. I applauded. Moses smiled, a crack in a usually somber face. He turned and walked back to the kitchen.

Jack pulled the cork from the bottle of wine with a
pop
and poured ruby liquid into both glasses. “Moses says you’re too thin. He made me ask you to dinner.” He smiled with the same charm that sent Fati and Adiza into shoulder-hanging giggles.

The light in the kitchen dimmed. Moses came down the steps and over to the table. “
Bonne nuit
,
I will go home now.”

“
Bonne nuit
, Moses.”

“
Merci
for the wonderful dinner,” I said.

We shook hands and Moses disappeared around the side of the house. The gate’s metal latch clicked as he left. Jack brought out the tape player and slipped in a cassette. A female voice sang something about knowing a heartache when she saw one. Jack scooped potatoes onto both plates, pushed craters into the middle, and filled them with gravy. We sat and ate.

Laya always cooked rice or couscous and soup, which was delicious. But Jack had nabbed Moses from an American family in Ouaga who had taught him to cook dishes like meatballs, mashed potatoes, and gravy.

A slow song slithered out of the cassette player, an octave-hopping lament about a lover being held by somebody else’s arms. Country-western songs were so sappy. A little nervous, I kept the conversation on projects and people we knew.

“What do you think of Luanne being pregnant?”

“More important. What will Home Office think?” Jack sipped his wine.

I laughed. “She doesn’t care what Home Office thinks. She got pregnant on purpose.”

Luanne had let it be known early on she wasn’t interested in marriage. She didn’t trust men, especially white men. But she wanted a child. Not one to let details get in the way of what she wanted, she got pregnant. Luanne had fulfilled my father’s greatest fear. It was impressive in a scary, thrilling kind of way. Unlike Anna Karenina, Luanne would never throw herself in front of a train over a man. I liked her for that.

“Well, nobody around here seems too shocked about it.” Jack cut into a meatball.

“Except maybe Djelal. He always goes into his office and shuts the door whenever she comes in.”

“Adiza’s pregnant and she isn’t married. Djelal hasn’t seemed to make a big deal about that.”

“Yes, but she’s engaged,” I said. “That’s different. There’s an old Fulani tradition of getting pregnant before you marry to prove you’re fertile.”

Luanne wasn’t proving anything, except maybe that she was going to do whatever she damn well pleased. Aside from Djelal, Muslim and non-Muslin alike had withheld judgment of Luanne and offered her support. And so far, Home Office had avoided any comment. Unlike some. We knew an American woman in Ouaga who had worked for a Christian charity. When their home office had discovered she had an African boyfriend, they had refused to renew her contract.

“She’s just lucky she’s working for a secular organization,” Jack said.

“She’s Catholic, you know.” Twirling the wine in my glass, I recalled the many sermons about lust and the seven deadly sins. “Did you hear the Pope’s latest announcement?”

Jack shook his head.

“Divorced Catholics who remarry are only allowed to take communion as long as they abstain from sex.” I rolled my eyes. “Can you imagine how he’d react to Luanne?”

Jack smiled at me over his mashed potatoes. “Better not tell him.”

I sipped my wine and wondered what Mary Magdalene would have said about all this.

Jack stood and walked around the table. “Want to dance?”

A forkful of mashed potatoes in my mouth, I chewed slowly, thinking it might not be such a good idea given the epidemic of pregnancies.

He held out his hand. “Come on.”

I swallowed. What the hell, it was just a dance. I let him pull me to my feet. He put an arm around my waist and began to dance a two-step. We twirled around the patio. I closed my eyes to the warmth of his chest, the roughness of his cheek. He smelled delicious, like warm wine. The song ended and another took its place, the same one-two rhythm. A voice crooned would she ever know how true love felt?