Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Guba, Ethiopia
Over the course of his years working on the site of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Seifu had seen the project grow from an airstrip next to a river in the middle of the desert to a concrete-and-steel mountain that spanned that same river.
For the first year it seemed that the number of workers on the site doubled every day. In the early days, the site crawled with earthmoving equipment. Bulldozers, dump trucks, backhoes. The ground shook with blasting all through the day and night as the workers scraped away the desert down to bare rock.
They built a concrete plant and all day and night trucks carried wet concrete from the plant to the dam site, where even more workers had put together enormous spiderwebs of steel rebar. They poured the cement into molds, layer by layer replacing the earth they had scraped away.
In its place, they left a stepped mountain of man-made stone across the river. At night, after he was done with his driving for the day, Seifu would go to the highest point above the dam and look out over the upstream valley. Below him, men worked in the glare of lights, building yet another layer of the dam.
He tried to imagine what it would look like when the desert was covered with blue water as far as the eye could see. It was hard to picture, but the engineers said it would happen and he believed them.
When he first started at the work site, Seifu’s plan was to earn enough money to go back to school. He wanted to be an engineer, or maybe an architect.
But that was years ago and he was still just a driver. His job would last as long as there was a single worker on the site. It didn’t matter if his customers were engineers or truck drivers or janitors, they all had one thing in common.
They all had to eat. Seifu drove a food truck.
His menu was simple. In the mornings, he served kinche, a mix of boiled grains seasoned with a spiced butter. In the afternoons, he offered wat, a thick stew, and a side of injera flatbread.
His portions were large, his prices reasonable. Everyone knew Seifu’s battered white Toyota pickup truck with the blue tarp canopy. Twice a day, he was waved through security checkpoints as he made his rounds.
Occasionally, he made some extra money by carrying a package past the guards into the work site. He knew they were probably drugs, but the extra cash was always welcome and he didn’t see any harm in it.
When a man approached him late one afternoon with a request to carry something into the lower dam build site, Seifu didn’t think anything of it. He quoted the man his normal rate.
“My package is large,” the man said.
Seifu didn’t recognize the man. He was tall, at least two meters, with broad shoulders and biceps that strained the elastic of his blue polo shirt. His hard hat was brand new, as was his yellow safety vest. He also had an accent, but that wasn’t unusual. There were thousands of workers from all over Ethiopia and Sudan, and they changed all the time.
“How big?” Seifu asked.
The man spread his arms about a meter apart. He indicated a half meter of height and width.
Seifu shook his head. “Too big. Won’t fit in my truck.”
“I can pay,” the man replied. “Name your price.”
Seifu wasn’t about to fall for that trick. He shook his head and started to get up.
“Wait.” The man clamped his hand on Seifu’s arm. With his free hand, he pulled a wad of cash—American dollars—from his pocket. “I told you I can pay.”
The outer bill was a crisp one-hundred-dollar note.
“Two hundred,” Seifu said. “And fifty.”
The man released his arm and peeled the top one-hundred-dollar bill off. There was another one underneath.
“I’ll meet you here in the morning,” the man said. “You’ll get the rest of the money after I load the crate.”
All through the evening, Seifu’s conscience nagged at him. Smuggling in a small package was one thing, but an entire crate? Yet every time he shifted position, the crisp bill crinkled in his pocket.
The next morning, a dusty black SUV was parked next to Seifu’s food truck. The man he had met the day before got out of the passenger side. He raised the rear hatch. Inside was a black plastic Pelican case, like the kind the surveyors used to store their sensitive equipment.
It was also much bigger than Seifu had expected. Too big to fit into the back of his truck once all the food was loaded.
“I can’t do this,” Seifu said. “It’s too big.”
The driver’s-side door opened and a second man got out. He was even bigger than his partner, dressed in blue jeans and an untucked shirt. “Is there a problem, Rocky?”
“No problem, Kasim,” the first man replied. “We just need to make it fit.”
The driver pointed to the cab of Seifu’s food truck. “Put it up front.”
“What’s in the crate, Seifu?” the guard at the lower dam site asked through the open window. “Dessert?”
Seifu had fended off the question at every checkpoint on his route, so the answer was rote by now. “The engineers asked me to carry it for them.”
“Your problem is that you’re too nice, Seifu,” the guard laughed. “Save some kinche for me, okay?”
Seifu wanted to wave back, but the enormous crate hindered his movement. It had taken all three of them to fit the heavy case into the cab, and it jammed Seifu’s frame up against the driver’s-side door, but it was worth it. Three crisp hundred-dollar bills crinkled in his pocket.
As soon as he parked his truck, he would finally get rid of the thing. All he had to do was call the mobile number the man had given him and someone would come to pick it up. The man had warned him—three times—not to call the number until he reached the lower dam site.
He parked his pickup in the shade of a dump truck. Even at ten in the morning, the sun hammered down on the lower dam site, turning the shallow bowl into an oven.
All over the work area, men were dropping tools and heading his way. Seifu smiled to himself. Today, he’d made a month’s salary before breakfast.
He opened the truck door and slipped his mobile from his pocket. He dialed the number the man had given him.
The phone on the other end rang once.
Behind him, Seifu heard a ringing exactly matched with his mobile.
He twisted around. His mobile rang again and he heard the response.
Seifu placed his ear against the black Pelican case. The ringing was coming from inside the case.
On a hilltop overlooking the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam site, two men sat inside a black SUV. The man in the passenger seat watched the lower dam site through a pair of field glasses.
Far below them, there was a bright flash, a mushroom of dirt and rock. A second later, the sound of the blast reached them, and their vehicle rocked gently.
The driver fist-bumped his passenger, then thumbed his mobile down to a saved number.
“Sir, it’s done.”