As I drove back to Susuwe, I passed a woman on the side of the road asking for a ride. When I realized it was Nandi, I slowed to a stop. I almost didn’t recognize her dressed in a smart, brightly colored Western-style dress. “Good morning, Nandi. Where are you heading?”
Nandi clapped one hand over the other and crouched. “Good morning. I’m asking for a lift to Liadura.” She held her hand up to block the late morning sun while trying to get a closer look at me. “Oh, Miss Catherine. It is you.”
“How are you doing?” I leaned over to open the passenger-side door.
“Okay.” Nandi started to get in. “I am going to visit my father. Are you going Liadura side?”
“How far is that from Kongola?”
“About twenty minutes further south.”
“Sure, I’ll take you there.”
When she got in, Nandi started clucking her tongue.
“What’s wrong?”
Nandi pointed to a line of men carrying a coffin past a nearby kraal. “This matter of AIDS is very much troubling us.”
“It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
Nandi nodded. “One funeral a week now. This morning, my father was preparing for another. No one wants to list HIV or AIDS as a cause of death, as no one would get life insurance, so the number of HIV deaths is much bigger than the authorities in Windhoek know.”
I shook my head as we watched a line of villagers amassed to follow the procession. A group of schoolchildren in the back of the line sang a quiet plaintive song that sent a shiver down my spine as we drove away.
“The priest at the Catholic mission mentioned some education programs?”
“There are some, but they can’t reach everyone. And our culture makes it very, very difficult.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I helped out on a community survey recently.” Nandi started to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” I looked at her, confused. “Who was doing the survey?”
“I think it was USAID.” She giggled. “You see, there was a question on the survey directed at the men.” Nandi laughed some more.
“Wait, why are you laughing?”
Nandi held a hand over her mouth to try to contain herself. “I know I shouldn’t laugh. I know that this issue of HIV is very, very serious, but, Catherine, sometimes I think it’s hopeless. And then maybe it’s the laughter that saves us.”
“But what was the question on the survey?”
“The question asked how many women a man might have had sexual relations with.”
“Okay, so why is that funny?”
“You see, Catherine, there was an old man in the room and he himself burst out laughing as he tried to think of the number in English.”
“What number was that?”
Nandi looked at me, her eyes bursting. “Thousands, he said, thousands.”
“What?”
“He said that if you were to ask for the names of those women he would never be able to remember. And from too many countries.” Nandi turned to me with a somber face. “You see, Catherine, this is what we’re up against.”
“I see what you mean.”
Nandi signaled for me to turn down a dirt track that led to a series of cornfields. Each small holding had a modest open-walled hut in the corner with women sitting underneath. As we passed I could see them either weaving baskets or scaring birds away by shaking a frayed rope that had shiny ribbons of material attached to it sporadically.
We drove west for about a kilometer until we came to an area with many clusters of the clay-and-stick compounds called kraals, some with reed doors, the more wealthy having metal doors with padlocks.
“Okay, we stop here.” Nandi pointed to a kraal on the side of the road. “This is my home.”
I pulled up to the door of Nandi’s compound. “Is that the induna’s kraal over there?”
Nandi nodded and smiled. “Please come inside.”
“Okay.”
Nandi led me into her kraal, where the induna’s wife and sister were busy weaving baskets and talking inside the courtyard. They stopped short at the sight of me.
Nandi rattled off in Yeye and the women seemed to relax. She turned to me. “Would you like some watermelon?”
“Sure. Thanks. That would be nice.”
“Have a seat.” She waved her hand toward an empty reed mat on the ground.
The women stared at me as I sat down.
I smiled at the women. “Musuhili.”
“Musuhili.” The women nodded cautiously and returned to their weaving. They started whispering something, and Nandi snapped at them. They stopped and continued weaving.
Nandi ducked her head into a dark hut and returned with a large bowl of white melon. She waved the flies away and placed the bowl in front of me.
I gingerly picked up a piece of melon and took a small bite, trying not to think about the flies. The soft white flesh was cool and surprisingly sweet. “Wow, this is really good.”
“Yes, the elephants like it, too,” Nandi deadpanned.
I waited to see if she was giving me a hard time.
She smiled and burst out laughing. “You are looking very serious,” she said as she laughed.
I exhaled in relief. “I’m glad I don’t carry the sins of the animal I’m trying to save.”
“The elephant savior.” Nandi took a bite of melon. “Why are they so important to you?”
I hesitated. How could she possibly understand my perspective, given all of her bad experiences with elephants? “I’d like to think that humans are smart enough to want to keep nature intact.”
“Aren’t we a part of nature?”
“Yes, but we are better competitors than our elephant neighbors.”
“I don’t know if many farmers would agree with you.”
“We clear forests, elephants prune them.”
Nandi laughed. “That is a funny image.” She ate more melon and spit out a pit. “And I have heard that that might be true in the desert, but around here, elephants do not prune, they knock over.” She looked at me thoughtfully. “But you must have a special bond with the elephant?”
“I recently saw two older females kneel down and pull a baby out of the river with their trunks. Something about the coordination of their effort really struck me. Their bonds seem just as deep as ours. They are very similar to us in many ways.”
“I have noticed that they like corn even more than we do,” Nandi teased.
I laughed and took another tiny bite of melon. “I’ll give you another example. In Kruger, I often followed a young male elephant and his very old companion that was either on the last of his last set of molars or didn’t have any teeth left, as he wasn’t able to chew very well. The young male would chew up branches and place the mash in the elder elephant’s mouth. The old bull wouldn’t have been able to survive without his little friend.” Deep in thought, I sucked on my rind. “I’ll never forget that.”
“You have a very different experience with these elephants. I would like to have that experience one day.” She placed her hand on my knee. “I would like to help you save your elephants.”
I smiled. “Have you had the chance to speak to the induna?”
Nandi nodded. “He says it is fine for you to talk with him next week.” She leaned over and whispered to me, “We can visit my brother in prison tomorrow. He is getting scared. I’m scared. Maybe he will tell you something about the people who buried the tusks in his yard.”
“Why would someone do that to him?”
“Maybe they want to scare him.”
“So, they’re afraid of what he knows?”
She nodded as melon juice dripped down her hands.
“Thanks, Nandi. That would be great.”
“I must go to my field now.” Nandi got up. “There is someone I need to talk to about the witch doctor.”
I got up as well. “Okay, I can drive you there.”
Nandi shook her head. “No, it is just across the way. I can walk.”
“What’s going on with the witch doctor?”
Nandi shook her head. “Someone is trying to take over his position. It’s a very bad situation.”
“Anything you can tell me?” When I saw the witch doctor lying on the ground with a bullet in his head, I hadn’t thought of the possibility that Ernest might be capable of making things escalate in his absence.
She shook her head and whispered as she saw me out. “We now have a worse problem on our hands. It is all very confusing. And very, very dangerous.”
I nodded good-bye to the women, who nodded in return as we walked out.
I followed Nandi through the courtyard and noticed a line of skulls propped against the wall of one of the small buildings—two elephant and three buffalo. “Are these natural mortalities?”
Nandi shook her head. “Trophies.”
“Whose trophies?”
“Those hunters that come in from the outside. They pay many, many dollars to shoot an elephant.”
“Who gets the money?”
“It comes in through our conservancy.”
“How many elephants?”
“Eight this year.”
“Eight?” I was expecting her to say two or three. “That seems like a lot for one conservancy.”
“There are many more elephants here now and this conservancy got very, very rich. But not anymore.”
“What happened?”
Nandi nodded and led me out of the courtyard. As she walked me to my car, she whispered, “It is a very sad story. We saved a million Namibian dollars to build a school. The Minister of Education came up for a celebration to accept the money last month but the chairman of the conservancy had taken it all.”
“Oh no! What happened to him?”
“My father thinks he may have gone to Botswana. There are many rumors. He may be involved with some of these ivory dealings.”
“Do you think your father would be willing to give me more information about the chairman?”
“I think so. But he doesn’t want the government to know what happened yet. He took his place as chairman and is trying to repair the damage. It isn’t fair when there are so many good people doing good things with the money we had saved in the past. My father is hoping to get the money back, but he is stalling for time.” She shook her head. “The chairman’s name is Mr. Mazinga. He is a very, very bad man.”
“Mr. Mazinga?” I suddenly remembered the old man wearing a suit and carrying his shoes that Nigel had dropped off here when we were supposed to meet with the induna. “I think I saw him here recently.”
Nandi looked at me in disbelief. “Mr. Mazinga? Here?”
“I think so. Nigel had given him a lift. I believe that’s who Nigel said he was.” I thought back to our conversation, remembering that Nigel seemed positive about him. He must not have heard yet what had happened.
Nandi clucked her tongue and shook her head. “There is very much going on here that is not good. You must not tell anyone about this.”
I opened my car door, got in, and rolled down the window. Nandi leaned over and whispered again, “And you cannot tell a single person that we will go to the prison. Especially anyone in the ministry. My father doesn’t trust anyone.”
I could tell from Nandi’s expression that I was about to walk into something even more serious than I had thus far. “Of course, Nandi, I won’t tell anyone.” I waved good-bye as I pulled away and headed back to Susuwe.