Lily blinked at me. Her eyes sparked. “I prefer to think of it as running
to
.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
The waiter brought us our espressos and left a bill. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, a 747 took off out of the smog that surrounded Paris.
“On my way home from Liberia, I flew into LA to visit my old boyfriend, Steve.” I turned from the window to face Lily. “We went to a party.” The freeway had been a mass of cars, honking horns, and stinking exhaust. “All anybody talked about was how much money they made and what kind of car they drove.” I shook my head. “I don’t mind running away from that.”
Lily raised her demitasse. “To Africa.”
We clinked cups and took a sip. The strong coffee soothed the ache in my head. “So,” she said, opening the dog-eared pages of the
I Ching
. “What’s your question?”
I thought for a minute, taking the question absurdly seriously. Sitting in an airport on the edge of a life change was the perfect time to consult an ancient book of wisdom.
I knew I was running from home—from the prejudices of my family and the overwrought materialism of America. I thought I knew what I was running to: Rob, for one, but more important, all that I had left undone in Liberia. What that was exactly, I wasn’t sure.
The question crystallized.
“Will I make a difference?”
Lily’s eyes met mine for a moment, she nodded, then shook the coins in her palm and let them fall. The coins, bronze with holes in their centers, clattered against the tabletop. She studied their markings, wrote numbers on a piece of paper, then paged through the book.
“‘Ting,’” she read, “‘fire over wood; the image of the caldron. The sincere man consolidates his fate by making his position correct. Supreme good fortune. Success.’”
Maybe it was the strong coffee or maybe the idea of supreme good fortune. Colors and lines solidified. The noise of jumbled languages that pulsed from the crowds took on rhythm and became a song of mystery and promise.
I lifted my shoulders. “It’s like they say in Liberia—‘You never try, you never know.’”
Lily and I smiled, allies in our new adventure.
A woman’s voice echoed off the high ceiling. “Air France, Flight 285 to Tunis now boarding at gate three.”
Lily tucked the
I Ching
into her backpack, and we walked the long hallway toward gate three.
“Do you think we’ll come back?” I said.
“Ask me in a year.”
People passed quickly through the open door of gate three. I embraced my strong and beautiful friend. “I’m going to miss you.”
“We’ll see each other soon. You come to Tunisia, and I’ll come to Upper Volta.”
We hugged again; then she disappeared down the tube-like corridor to the plane. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked four gates down to catch my eight-hour flight to Ouagadougou.
Chapter 2
The Sahel
April/Jumada al-Ula
Liquid heat blew through the windows and percolated inside the truck into a hot glue that plastered my T-shirt to my skin, clogged my nose and mouth, and boiled my brain. Smoke from cook-fires clung to my tongue, and dust coated every surface. Outside the window, stretching in all directions, lay the anemic wilderness of the Sahel—the strip of semiarid land between the southern edge of the Sahara Desert and the savannas and coastal rain forests of West Africa.
I lived in a 110-degree desert oven, slowly baking. Since my arrival in Upper Volta the month before, I had gone from well to overdone. On this particular day, I dozed in the backseat, sandwiched between two field agents, Fatima and Nassuru.
Hamidou drove, as always, and Don, the American program director, rode shotgun. We were all staff members of the
Fondation de Developpement Communautaire
(FDC), Save the Children’s official name in Upper Volta. The green Land Cruiser with the FDC logo of a red angular doll painted on each side bounced over ruts of cement-hard mud.
Layer after layer of dirt clung to the windows and cascaded away with each lurch and fall of the truck. Past the play of dust, heat waves slithered above the road, widening into an ocean of molten air that covered a land of browns and beiges. Baobab trees dotted the panorama, their root-like branches twisting upward from broad trunks. Legend had it that one day God became angry with the baobabs. He took them into His mouth and spat them into the ground where they fell on their heads, their roots clinging to the sky. Far out on the horizon, haze erased the line between heaven and earth.
In my semi-sleep, a form took shape on the road ahead, wavering dark and menacing through a veil of heat. A huge rhinoceros charged the truck, spinning into a whirlwind of dirt, sticks, and sand that blasted against the windshield.
“Watch out!” I shielded my face.
Nassuru and Fatima laughed and nudged my shoulder.
Hamidou smiled, shaking his head. “
Suzanne, c’est seulement le vent. Un djinn.
” Just a wind devil.
Djinn
were evil genies who lived beneath the sand, tripping camels and causing mayhem. But it was the heat that caused mayhem with me. I saw all kinds of things in heat waves. On drives to various villages in the smothering air, I imagined a parallel universe where the Sahel still teamed with animals. And when the heat waves were just right, I could see their shadows.
Out on the plain, the baobabs turned into a ghostly herd of elephants, all raising their trunks in salute. I’d never seen a real elephant, not even in a zoo. But I was hearing a lot about them. In African stories, the elephant was not known for being the most sweet-tempered of characters. With their great strength and size, they symbolized pride and stubbornness—two qualities I happened to admire. Without stubbornness, I’d have never made it to Africa. African stories were full of all kinds of animals. And they had all been here—elephants, rhinoceros, giraffes, and lions—when the Sahara had been lush plains leftover from the retreat of a prehistoric inland sea. Now, the desert was a land of ghosts—ghosts of what had been and what could be but for the gift of water.
I closed my eyes and cast my line out over the deep waters of the Blackfoot Reservoir. I had spent my summer there, after my return from Liberia the previous June, fishing with my family and arguing the way we always did. My father had wanted to know why I had to go back to Africa. My mother had kept wondering where my college sweetheart, Steve, was, and why couldn’t I just marry that nice boy? My aunt had summed it up for everybody by asking, “What do you want to go over there and work with all those black people for?”
Someone poked me. I opened one eye. Fatima, young and recently married, asked in French, “What did you see this time, Suzanne?” Humor swung her voice up and down like a song.
I paused. “
Un rhinocéros
.”
Fati released a peal of laughter, and Nassuru turned his smile on me. I swear, I had never met so many people with such perfect teeth, a state I had yet to achieve after years of orthodontia. Nassuru, a strikingly handsome young man with the dark skin of his Nilotic ancestors and the long nose and high cheekbones of the Berbers to the north, was a high-ranking prince in the Fulani tribe. He was also the assistant coordinator for economic development projects. I was the project coordinator in charge of developing income in the villages. I was Nassuru’s boss—me, a potato-peasant from Idaho.
In front, Hamidou laughed softly and shook his head, again. Since my arrival, Hamidou had shaken his head at me more times than I could count. A quiet man who smiled easily, Hamidou drove us to and from the seven villages in the northeastern and poorest region of the country where FDC had projects in health, agriculture, and small business development. He was also a member of the Fulani tribe and a devout Muslim, as were nearly all the
Voltaique
members on staff.
Hamidou was very kind to me, and I understood why he shook his head. A young woman away from home and family was a bizarre thing in a Muslim land. Like my father, Hamidou had trouble understanding why, at age 26, I was not home, getting down to the business of marrying and having babies. His Muslim expectations were the same as my father’s Mormon half of the family’s (my mother’s side was Catholic). I understood that. What I couldn’t figure out was why Hamidou found me so consistently amusing.
That morning, we had driven to Sambonaye, a village of mud huts and thatched roofs at the end of a valley that boasted a stream during rainy season. In Sambonaye, we delivered bales of cotton for a spinning project and held a meeting with the village women. The women of Sambonaye were well organized and wanted FDC to loan them seeds for small gardens in order to grow greens, groundnuts, and black-eyed peas to improve their children’s nutrition. The meeting had gone well, and we would deliver the seeds before planting time when the first rains fell in late May.
Now, late afternoon, we drove west, back to Dori, into a lowering sun. Nassuru hung his arm out the side window. The wind shifted and slapped its hot hand against my face. A scant scent rode on the breeze, a hint of grass and flowers. If the ghosts of seeds slumbered just beneath the baked earth, would the gift of water awaken them? Only one more month, and the rains would come. I refused to consider that they might be late, or not come at all, as I was told sometimes happened in the Sahel.
In Liberia, when the rains came, the sky opened up and dumped heavy curtains of silver water. The way it had the day I met Rob two years before. Soaked and splattered with mud, he had said hello, looking at me with those robin-egg-blue eyes. I had fallen for him hard; taken the line so fast it went taut with a ZING!
I waited for Rob’s letters the same way I waited for the rains. He had written several times since my arrival in Upper Volta, telling me he’d been transferred to Cameroon.
I unscrewed my water bottle and drank. Hot water moistened my throat but did little to quench my thirst. I had been thirsty since the day I arrived in Upper Volta. Water helped, but I was thirsty for love and all the good that came with it.
“I got a letter from home office a few days ago.” Don turned, his bald head glistening with sweat. A short man in his late thirties from Virginia, Don’s grin had been the first thing I’d seen beyond the custom’s door after landing at the Ouaga airport. “You’ve been listed as a reference for some guy who’s applying for my job.” Don, the type of manager home office sent to straighten things up when needed, would be leaving for Somalia in a month or two.
I stopped breathing. “What’s his name?”
Don frowned and thought for a moment. “Rob somebody…Rob Thompson.”
My heartbeat cranked up and I struggled to keep my face neutral. “I knew him in Liberia. He had a reputation as a real competent guy. He’d be a good director.”
Don cocked an eyebrow at me and grinned. “I’ll pass it on to home office.”
“Do you think he has a chance?”
“They seemed pretty interested,” Don said. “Sounds like you are, too.” He turned to face the front and chuckled.
My cheeks grew even warmer. Fati nudged me, and I clasped my hands together, forcing myself to breathe normally. For a year, Rob and I had visited each other as often as possible, a short-distance relationship, me in my up-country village and him in various places around Liberia.
Rob in Upper Volta! I had seen him only once since returning to the States. He had visited me in Vermont while on a short leave from CARE. But now! The right time had finally come! We would work on development projects together in Dori, then in different countries, build our careers, raise a family. Suddenly, everything out the window was brighter, the heat tolerable, my fatigue replaced with a surge of energy.
Hamidou accelerated the truck up the side of a bank toward a baobab tree that towered 30 feet off the plain. Its trunk stretched as wide as the length of the car. Just beyond the tree, an old man sat in the shade of a thorn bush.
Hamidou parked, and we all tumbled out, scurrying into the shade like a bunch of cockroaches. Fumes from the engine mingled with the stench of a goat carcass near the riverbed. Crouching in the shade of the baobab, I pulled my T-shirt away from my back, then breathed into my cupped hands to calm my glee. Hamidou walked over to the old man and folded his lean figure into a squat, sitting on his heels. They shook hands, and Hamidou touched his fingers to his heart in a gesture of respect.
A breeze lifted the old man’s rags. The tails of a turban hung loose over his scrawny neck and shoulders. Hamidou and the old man talked in smooth syllables sprinkled with hard K’s and T’s, the sounds of Fulfuldé, the language of the Fulani. The old man pulled out a length of string from the folds of cloth that wrapped his hips and thighs. As he tied a series of knots, he breathed and whispered words on each one. Hamidou accepted the string, shook the man’s hand, and rose.
The sun was at its zenith, the shadows their smallest. Hamidou, Fatima, and Nassuru took rolled mats from the truck and prepared to pray. I sat against the tree and hugged my knees. Rob in Upper Volta! A month of waiting would be an eternity. I would concentrate on my work, not get my hopes up too high until I heard for sure. With a deep breath, I focused on Fati, Hamidou, and Nassuru.
Fatima unrolled her mat and set aside the humor that made the delicate features of her face so expressive. In her head wrap, puffed sleeve blouse, and ankle-length skirt of batik cloth, Fati was the height of fashion. The best dressed in the town of Dori, the female staff of FDC were among the few women who had paying jobs outside the home or market. Fati stood slightly apart from Hamidou and Nassuru as all three wetted their hands from a plastic bottle and rubbed the dust from their ears, faces, and heads. Cleansed, they turned east toward Mecca and Jerusalem and began their prayers. The words of the first pillar of Islam, “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet,” floated on the air like the buzz of a distant beehive.
Hamidou had told me that Muslims faced Mecca when they prayed because it was the birthplace of Muhammad and Islam. They faced Jerusalem to symbolize Islam’s connection with Judaism and Christianity and because the Angel Gabriel had taken Muhammad there on his Night Journey. It was during this Night Journey that God gave Muhammad
Salat
, the second pillar of Islam.
Salat
required the faithful to pray five times each day: dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, and night. At noon and five every workday, no matter where we were, the prayer mats came out.