GABRIELE WANTS SOME soft-light shots, and we motor slowly through the mist of daybreak.
“Oh, look—under the tree!” She points to a large humpy white bird on stilt legs about three feet tall with a brilliant crimson face. Its yellow beak is nearly as long as its body. We approach it with some delicacy, expecting it to take flight, but it merely cocks its red head and looks inquisitively at us with a large dark eye.
“Yellow-billed stork, David tells me.”
“You wonder how it can get itself off the ground.”
“They do. Look up there.” Hundreds of the ungainly birds float effortlessly a thousand feet above us, riding thermals in slow lazy circles.
“I wish I didn’t have to leave.” She brushes loose strands of hair away from her face and looks up at me expectantly as if for guidance.
We glide quietly through the pallid morning light, savoring a sort of youthful swoon; it is as if we had been adulterous and are hesitant to walk out of the afterglow. We do not speak. Even the engine seems muted. Our moment of languorous contentment that we are about to acknowledge is brought up short by the sound of an approaching aircraft.
“The damn thing is too early!” She pouts. “We must go back.”
When we return from the shoot, the plane is on the runway, waiting. She doesn’t even have time for a cup of coffee. While I slept she had packed her gear and stashed it in a corner. She tosses her kit on her back, gathers up her equipment, and in silence we walk toward the plane—a distance far too short to sort out the confused mess of exhilaration, sadness, and guilt.
“Call me when you get to Nairobi?”
“Where can I reach you?”
“I left my number in your tent.”
“Good.”
She turns, kisses me on each cheek, then with a lingering look: “Call me.”
“I will.”
She walks toward the plane and calls over her shoulder, “Promise?”
“Yes.”
At the steps she yells over the sound of the engine, “Four times promise!”
“Yes. Four times!”
The plane turns, points down the runway, and begins to roll. I wave, not knowing which side she is on.
Yusuf joins me on the airstrip. In a tone respectful of my private thoughts, he asks me if I would mind taking him downriver. I welcome the diversion. I wince when he says he wants to go to some village just upstream from Hum Hum.
“Yusuf, that’s pretty close to the Green Line. If we couldn’t get there from Kismayo, how can we get there from here?”
“We will stay in our territory. Very safe.”
“But across the river is enemy country.”
“We don’t go so far. We will take extra guard.”
The boat is less loaded than usual. We carry just a token of what we eventually will deliver if Yusuf can get this run organized. But we do have aboard three young militiamen and a village official with a very pronounced singda, the darker callused spot on his forehead from years of prayer five times daily; the thickness of the singda, it is said, usually reflects the depth of devotion. Since he couldn’t cross the Green Line from Kismayo, he was flown here to be ferried twenty miles back down the river, a long, circuitous route to his village, only about ten miles up the road from the port city. It is to be a two-hour trip each way, a real outing, so I load up with drinking water, HDRs, a Snickers bar, extra fuel, and a little anxiety. Yusuf and the official strap on life jackets. Unlocking the locker in the forepeak, I pull out the flak jackets and combat helmets and pile them at my feet by the steering wheel: I know about Hum Hum.
Because of the receding flood level, this passage to Marerey where the canal joins the river is more of a challenge. Out in the middle of the flooded field, we pass Robbie and his guards standing waist-deep, struggling to push his boat off some unseen underwater obstacle. While considering offering Robbie a hand, we run aground on a submerged hillock and momentarily hang suspended. The propeller spins uselessly. The current takes control and pushes us off the rise and backward into the fast waters of the canal. Throwing the boat into gear, we shoot forward and continue on our way.
The entrance of the Jubba is marked by a copse of handsome mango trees. It is not hard to imagine how beautiful and peaceful the area must have been before the floods, before the war, the kind of scene that evokes Huck Finn sitting in the shade of a tree with a fishing pole. We bottom out again under the fruit-heavy limbs of a mango tree. The guards jump out and begin to fend off.
“Stop! Wait! Mia! Mia!” No, no, I shout.
Standing on my seat, I reach for a low-hanging branch and pluck half a dozen juicy mangoes. I have wanted a mango since I arrived. Keeping one for myself, I give the others to my passengers. “Okay, sasa sasa.” It is, apparently, a very good year for mangoes.
Our passenger points toward the water as the last guard begins to mount the swim ladder. A mamba, three feet long, iridescent green, narrow head weaving just above the surface, slithers through the bottom rung just as the man lifts his foot. It is one of Africa’s most venomous snakes.
There was a time when the rising river poured through these broken dikes and spilled onto the surrounding countryside. Now the water from the thousands of square miles of flooded plains has begun to return to the river through the narrow slots in the dikes, and with an alarming force. Funneling into the holes in the wall, the water rides up against both sides of the gaps and explodes skyward in a haystack. I choose one such opening for our entrance and slam the throttle forward. “Hold on!” White water lifts us and hurls us through the gap like a pinched watermelon seed. I throttle back and relax, satisfied.
One sunken village after another speeds by, villages that I never knew existed. The sound of the engine precedes us by miles, and above each village, straggly groups of distressed homeless stand on remnants of broken dike, waving flags of rags, beckoning. I wonder why we haven’t been serving these villages and why we are going so far downriver to feed another.
It is possible to follow the general course of the Jubba but impossible to determine which is the river itself. Were it not for the flood, the Jubba would not be very wide or for that matter very fast. It is said that during the dry season, it is a peaceful and placid stream and even shrivels to a trickle during the frequent droughts in the area.
If I remember from the air, it is near here that it doubles back like a winding mountain stream, but there are no indications of sharp turns or switchbacks. I take a wrong turn. Rather, not seeing any turn to take, we continue downstream until we start bumping over the ground, kicking up mud. Yusuf confers with one of the gunmen, then points to a line of trees ahead that once delineated the riverbank.
“Look. Careful!” Yusuf’s attention is fixed on some disturbed water, an odd crosscurrent that churns up darker bottom mud near an uprooted mango tree about twenty yards off to the left.
We go closer.
“No!” Yusuf puts a restraining hand on my arm.
A low wide wall of water pushed by some large creature rolls ominously toward us. Flared orange nostrils and two heavily lidded eyes pop above the surface; their size belies the mass of the creature hidden beneath. It must be big. We are starting to rock from the wake of the water it displaces.
The hippo lifts its head above the surface and with movement slow and menacing opens its huge mouth as if measuring whether it is wide enough to chop us in half. This cavernous yawn is a warning.
Yusuf answers an unasked question: “We are safe. Because we can see it. But go now!” We turn down the river and leave its territory.
He impatiently motions more speed, and loaded with less than usual, we skim over the surface and rise to a plane. High ground ahead forms a spit out into the river where the Jubba doubles back. Tall acacia and large ancient mango trees drape themselves over the river and cast their darkness onto the other side. It is a gloomy junglelike section, palliate and secret, that hides the unknown, the unexplored, and a hint of evil. It is not much different from the wooded area around Hum Hum where someone used us for aerial target practice. I don’t worry much at this speed—combined with the fast current, we are hitting about fifty knots. They would have to be pretty fair shots and use something far more accurate than a Kalashnikov. We each nurse our own private thoughts, fears, nervousness. I feel Yusuf’s tension; I am sure he feels mine. Within a few minutes, however, we round the point and come out from under the shadows into the sunshine. We do not say anything about that stretch and it seems foolish to do so, but each of us is well aware that against the current we will have to return this way at a considerably slower clip.
A haphazard collection of tumbledown shacks on a high embankment lies directly ahead. The river disappears in a sharp turn to the north. From here the settlement looks like it is sitting at the end of a blind alley.
Yusuf indicates by a nod that this is our destination. A crowd awaits us at river’s edge. He puffs up a little, pulls down his long sleeves, and appears to primp. He seems pleased, possibly relieved that we made it.
“You have been here before?” I ask.
“Oh, many times—but not since the flood.”
Each temporary shelter on a dike, settlement, or village possesses its own aura, a special feeling, and through my antics I am usually able to get a sense of its spirit, to gauge its level of hope or despair. However, this place—I do not even know its name—projects an atmosphere tense and saturnine. The people on shore don’t welcome us, they just glower. The assault rifles are many and the men wear them slung on their shoulders like they do in Kismayo. It feels like an armed camp. And where are the children, the excited little urchins who run down to the water so happily curious to see the strangers and the strange boat? There are no children here, at least none so young that they cannot carry a gun. The crowd parts as if on some silent order, and a tall older man of some evident authority—long white beard, bright clean white robe, and Moslem cap—greets Yusuf and our passenger, who quickly vanishes beyond the villagers. The elder points to one then another of the sour-faced men with his walking cane, and with grudging compliance, they rest their guns against the stump of a dead tree to help off-load the sacks of supplies.
A murmured discussion, words barely audible, develops between one of our militiamen and one of the villagers waiting below for a fifty-kilo bag of Unimix. Initially, it appears this is a meeting of old friends, but they do not look at each other. The voices grow louder, the tone turns ugly. It is clear there is a personal problem. Our guard lifts a bag onto the edge of the gunnels, and when the villager steps forward to take it, our man pushes it off and drops it on him, sending him reeling backward into the mud. The villager shouts at our guard, turns toward the embankment, and slips and scrabbles on hands and knees up to his rifle. The women scream and scatter. The village men cock their guns and aim them at our own idiot hothead, who stands defiantly next to me as if my presence is going to stop him from taking a bullet. Yusuf waves his arms furiously and barks in short guttural expletives at the gunman in our boat. The old man swings his cane through the air and shouts at the offended villager. Our guard, outgunned or persuaded by Yusuf’s demands—I will never know—places his rifle gently against the side of the boat without moving his eyes from the armed men on shore. It is still cocked and ready to explode.
Within minutes the unloading begins anew. Yet the incident is not forgotten. I am beginning to think Yusuf may have miscalculated or misread his maps. I think he is lost.
Yusuf wisely stays close to the boat, holds a brief discussion with the village chief, and on parting shakes hands in the Islamic tradition of respect: an extra little bow and a self-effacing tap to his chest. Then he wades back and climbs onto the boat with our guards. “Sasa, sasa,” he says tightly through his teeth, but he is smiling and waving at our host. The villagers respond with a glare that is sullen and challenging. As we ease away, our gunman shouts a parting Somali obscenity. I throw the throttle forward and roar out, kicking a plume of white water.
Yusuf regards our young guard who precipitated the violence not with accusation but with regret. He joins me behind the steering wheel.
“It was my fault,” Yusuf says. “We are from the same clan but there are problems—this man here, his father’s father was killed by the family of that man.”
“These people don’t forgive or forget, do they? But for Christ’s sakes, Yusuf, didn’t you know that before we took him along?”
“It was . . . a miscalculation. I needed him. He knows the area better than anybody.”
“Bad call, Yusuf.”
“Yes. But my job is to help everyone in this area.” He pauses. “I am told they now may be with General Morgan.”
“General Morgan! You mean we are on the other side of the Green Line?”
“Perhaps. Today it is here. Yesterday it was not here. We must hurry.”
“No shit! Here, better take this.” I reach down and hand him a heavy flak jacket, but he shakes his head. He would rather wear his life vest. He takes a helmet that is several sizes too big, and were this not so serious, it would be comical. Yusuf’s long thin face is swallowed up by the big blue helmet, his eyes peek out from below the brow.
“Which side of the river is the problem side?” I shout.
He shrugs, points to the line of trees ahead to the right. “Maybe there. Maybe some problem.”
We are approaching the densely forested high ground at the river’s edge that in our imaginations had been cloaked with threat. We hug the opposite shore of open fields, scrub, and remaining pools of floodwater and mud; it is unlikely anyone could find much cover there. The three guards face the starboard with guns pointing into the wood. The overhanging trees close over our heads like the vault of a tomb.
We are halfway down the line before the shooting starts. It is not how I would think an ambush is made, no sudden withering barrage of bullets as we cross some invisible line but rather an undisciplined scattering of automatic fire as we speed past. Our guards return fire and shoot into the line of trees. We are on the far side of the river but well within range. Deafened by our own shooting, I can’t hear the incoming. I don’t have to hear the gunfire to be scared, but then, I don’t have much time to be. I drop to my knees and drive, peering through the steering wheel, trying to keep as close to the bank as possible without running aground. At the same time I’m hoping to avoid broken trees that lean crookedly out over the bank. Worse, at this speed if we run over a fallen tree that lies below the surface, we’ve had it. Kneeling on the flak jackets, I slap a helmet onto my head and crouch even lower, seeking protection from the remaining bags of maize meal. We speed out of the shadows and out of range into blazing sunshine. The floodplain extends benignly in all directions.
I feel shaken, exhilarated, thrilled, and rewarded by a vague sensation of heroism, a touch of invincibility. It is childish and arrogant and dangerous. And fraudulent: I did nothing. I should feel something else, but like at the airport on the first day when the lone shooter was firing at us, this also seems too remote and unreal and impersonal. This is what it feels like—immediately.
My reaction is tempered by Yusuf’s cool, almost nonchalant reaction. He does not seem to be too affected by the incident, but our guards jabber excitedly among themselves.
It is becoming easier to understand these Somali gunmen. They have grown up with the gun as the Almighty. They know the dangers and accept the risks, and the risks of death have become part of their psychological makeup. It is their way of life. From here on the ground, so far away from the corridors of power and influence, it is presumptuous to think that any foreign power would feel the need to step in to end the fighting and disarm them, to force upon them a form of democracy. (The Norwegians submitted a proposal before the UN Security Council for a nation-building program in Somalia, which would gradually disarm militias and train a national police. The United States opposed the resolution on the ground that it was premature. I would add futile.)
The Somalis have never known democracy. They know democracy only as a fanciful concept represented by such things as a calendar in Harun’s home. Democracy is nowhere in their history; the concept of one man, one vote here is a cultural absurdity. Too factionalized to accept Western democracy, they would rather be governed by an iron fist. T. E. Lawrence wrote that Arab populations could only be ruled by autocrats, tribal chiefs, and strongmen; they cannot manage freedom as we define it in the West. Yusuf agrees and wonders aloud whether his people were not better off under the rule of Siad Barre. Then there was a form of law and order (at least for the indigenous Somalis), even with an unrepresentative government. Moreover, there had been electricity, food, water, schools, telephones, and commerce. When the infrastructure that held the country together collapsed, social services in all but a few pockets in the capital ceased to exist. Indeed, today nine out of ten children have no access to basic education. Under the heel of a dictator, there was some stability. Remove a dictator and watch chaos grow.
On the return to the base, we stop in Marerey town to pick up some elders.
The villagers crowd the boat; there is no sign of my little Bantu friend. The children chant, “John-John,” and it is reassuring. The next time children are not at waterside, I will just turn around.
While I wait in the boat for Yusuf, one of the older boys yells something in Somali. “John-John,” and the rest is gibberish.
A helpful voice from the crowd translates: “He ask about girl. Girl sister?”
It takes a moment to realize they are talking about Gabriele. Could that have been only yesterday?
“Mia, mia. No. No sister.” With our similar beaky features and blondish hair I suppose it is not inconceivable to be considered siblings.
Another question from somewhere in the crowd. “Wife?”
“Mia, mia.”
A small voice from within the crowd yells something. The villagers laugh. I shrug. I don’t understand.
Another ragged boy reams his forefinger into a curled fist.
I think I know what he means. I grab onto an imaginary ass in front of me and pump obscenely. I don’t know what is happening to me. I would never do such a thing—but I am alive. The crowd’s laughter at my lewd gyrations is spontaneous and loud. The older villagers, usually reserved, laugh heartily, and the women turn to each other and giggle.
“Whus, whus,” some of the children shout.
“Whus?” I grab and bump-grind.
“Ha ha! Ha ha!” Yes, yes.
So whus means fucking. Joking about fucking to a stranger in public doesn’t seem to be in bad taste.
“Mia whus. No fucking! Mia whus!” I shout. Some in the crowd are laughing so hard they are dancing, stamping their feet in the mud.
It is almost too much. One minute scared to death, minutes later loving these violent unpredictable people whom I make laugh. Could a person’s emotions go through such a ride without some damage? I feel like a runaway engine with no governor, screaming to its maximum until it breaks. Or explodes. I need this. I need more.
Bouncing over the flooded field back to the base, I wonder if making these people laugh isn’t something of a higher calling. The bureaucrats chalk up the tonnage of relief supplies delivered. Fighter aces chalk up the kills on the fuselage of their planes, the militiamen with notches on their guns. I should paint on the hull of my boat a long-tongue Rolling Stones smile for each villager I get to laugh.
“Yusuf,” I shout over the outboard. “What about the little boy? The one I gave the biscuit to?”
Yusuf hears me but looks straight ahead, abstracted.
“Yusuf? The kid, I didn’t see him today. Or yesterday.”
Yusuf turns slowly.
“Yusuf?”
“He is dead.”
“What! How the hell could he be dead?”
“I do not know. He is dead. They told me today. It is not important.”
* * *
Back at camp, David lies back against a pile of blankets, his baseball cap over his eyes, a paperback autobiography of Winston Churchill folded open on his lap.
“You awake?” He probably is not but I must talk.
“Yes.”
“The boy died.”
“Oh. And?”
“And shit! The boy is dead!”
“Yes. What can you do about it? You think it was your fault?”
“Of course it was. If I hadn’t given him the fucking fig bar he would still be alive. The villagers didn’t show any signs—like it didn’t matter. I mean, we could have done something. If it was that serious we could have sent him to the MSF hospital in Kismayo. David, I killed that little boy.”
“That is a little extreme. I wouldn’t spend too much time on it. They say life is cheap here.”
“Yeah, I saw how cheap. Measured in a number of camels. Maybe you have been on this godforsaken continent too long to know the value of life.”
He lifts his cap off his eyes and looks up. His stubbled face darkens, creases with insult and threat. I do not want to alienate this good man. “Sorry, David, I am a bit strung out.”
“Life in Africa is not measured by you and me. It is measured by them, Africans. We are here to save lives. We do what we can. But if we didn’t, life would continue; people live, people die. You are a European—an American—with entirely different values. Maybe I am too African, but that is the way it is. In this business you see these things.”
“But I caused it.”
“Indirectly. But you did not kill him. They killed him. Africans killed him. It will do you no good if you dwell on it. It will tear you up. Someone once said: Keep your sense of humor in the face of the absurd. Wise counsel, I should think.”
“Humor is not the word that comes to mind. Sanity is more like it.”
The child’s startled look as I gave him the fig bar will stick with me forever. It was not of gratitude. It was of horror.
“Are you going to see Gabriele again?”
It is an unusual sort of question, probably a diversion. I have never heard him ask about anyone’s private affairs.
“Shit, I don’t know. Yes. No. I told her I would.”
“Quite a woman.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never found out anything about her. We never talked about our personal lives. I don’t know if she is married or spoken for, and she never asked me”—David begins to interrupt—“but I think it is better that I do not know. No, I probably won’t see her again.”
I reach into my pocket for Jacqueline’s photo, ever close at hand. She has become less of a person to me than something to hold on to. I am re-creating her in my mind, recalling and placing events—the good times—out of proportion. The happiness, the comfort of those times, have become far more solid than they really were. She has become an anchor, and the holding ground is poor, and I use her to keep from smashing into the rocks.
I feel I am being watched. Perhaps it is because of my loud American voice, the tone of my distress. Across the other side of the campsite, the eyes of the figure in the chador who sits immobile like a block of granite are on me. I might have thought, might have wished for her accusation, her condemnation, but from this distance her eyes are without expression. Yusuf’s young assistant brings her a bowl of ugali. Without taking her eyes off mine, she accepts it.
The afternoon quiet is broken by the sudden roar of a ground-skimming flyby. The Twin Otter, a high-wing two-engine turboprop, zooms just above the top of our tarp city, gains altitude, banks to the right, and circles back for a landing.
I have no interest in the flight. I just hope there is no VIP who wants us to tell him what we are doing out here. The plane is on the ground for only about five minutes, then roars off into the afternoon sun, leaving us all in relative quiet. David hasn’t moved and I begin to doze off.
An awful ear-grating scraping—as piercing as fingernails down a blackboard—and tiny swear words like the angry chirping of a little bird rustle me out of a fitful slumber. I had been thinking or had been dreaming about the little boy. I raise my cap to watch a small figure silhouetted by the late sun—female, apparently—back down the runway, pulling a heavy lock trunk.
She turns and, seeing me observe her, straightens, puts hands on her hips, thrusts out her chin, and demands:
“This is Marerey Base, is it not?”
“Yeah.”
“Very good.” She stands with passive expectancy on the side of the strip and waits. She is clad in an outfit better suited to the city than the Somali heartland: designer jeans, khaki shirt, new unscratched hiking boots. She has a round, little girl’s face with big innocent eyes. By her posture, it is evident she is used to getting her way.
I get slowly to my feet and take one end of her trunk. “What brings you here?”
“I am an aid worker.”
“Oh.”
“I am here to drive boats. My boat should be here in a day or two.”
“Really!” I look at this childlike apparition with some amusement. A boat driver?
“No. Yes, well, that is what I am—a boat driver. You may call me Amelia.” She takes my hand stiffly and pumps.
“I may? If I didn’t call you Amelia, what would I call you?”
“No, really, please just call me Amelia.” She offers a shy smile, then looks away as if embarrassed.
“Okay, Amelia it is.” I do not feel very charitable. Minutes ago I was trying to make sense of the day and now comes this, this little girl with a squeaky voice who, despite her peremptory manner, looks very worried.
“You bring a tent?”
“I wasn’t told to.”
“Net?”
“Oh, yes! I brought that—I’ll just get it.” She starts to fuss with the locks on her trunk. “It’s in here someplace.”
“You don’t need it right now, Amelia. I’m trying to get you set up for the night. You can sleep here with me.”
“Oh, no! I couldn’t do that.”
I just stare. This is not happening. I want the luxury to revel in kinder thoughts. “Not with me, of course—I just don’t know you well enough, do I?”
She looks at me blankly. “Amelia, you sleep alone under your net under the tarp there.” She frowns. “A photographer—a woman—slept there last night. It’s perfectly safe.” She is still frowning. “Well, where else would you like to sleep? In my tent?”
“Silly!”
“Well, there are no hotels, I’m afraid. As it is, your shelter is three-star. David! Wake up. We have been sent a boat driver.”
“So I see,” he says. With his forefinger he lifts his cap just off his wrinkled eyes and gazes critically at the new arrival. “Invite her over for a cup of tea when she gets settled.”
She stands above me in silence, her hand on her hip, watching as I help make a spot for her under the tarp.
David concocts a vegetable curry for the occasion. Robbie, who had spent the afternoon in Gadudey, drinks whiskey with David, Amelia drinks tea, and I have a beer. Amelia admits to Robbie’s prodding that she is from one of the wealthier families in Nairobi, a third-generation Kenyan.
“Then why are you out here?” Robbie asks suddenly. “Not for the money, certainly.”
“Why, the same reason as we are all here. I just want to help people.”
“David! I do believe we have a true altruist at our humble base. I never thought we’d find a real one. You?”
Amelia reddens, embarrassed that her motives are questioned or, worse—in our eyes, she suspects—wrong. However, no one laughs or teases; it’s her business, but none of us believes it is as simple as that.
“I know of your family,” David says quietly. “From Karen?”
“Oh, yes! You know my parents?”
“Never met them.”
I seem to be more surprised than Robbie and David that Amelia has joined us, that she has become a relief worker, that she will be handling these difficult deliveries. A member of a well-known family of white Kenyans, she lives in a wealthy Nairobi suburb (named after Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa), and when asked teasingly by Robbie about her handicap, tells us of golf with her older brothers on Sundays at the country club after brunch, a family tradition of generations. It will be interesting, if not amusing, to see if she will be any more able to survive in the bush than someone ripped out of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Something in her nature, however, tells me that she is going to turn out to be a very tough little girl.
Yusuf joins us from out of the shadows and casts a curious look in my direction. He brings his own cha, asks Robbie for some sugar.
“You know,” Amelia addresses the quiet Somali, “I was taught that too much sugar in one’s tea will rot your teeth out. They will actually fall out. Did you know that?”
I am amazed. So are the others.
Yusuf keeps his eyes on his cup and smiles diplomatically. “Well, you see that is not such a big problem in Somalia. We don’t have much sugar here.” Looking up at us, he adds, “The water goes quickly.”
He addresses our greatest concern. It won’t be long before we will find ourselves high and dry, unable to get our boats away from the strip, much less deliver aid to any of the villages. We should shift camp to a spot closer to the river, perhaps above the irrigation canal.
“Yes, that would be a good idea. The helicopter can land on the dike,” he says, but it is evident this is not his main concern. “But the dike is also a road, and when the water goes down then I think there will be some trouble.”
“Do tell,” Robbie says.
“As I say before, I am hearing the militia will attack and steal the supplies. When there is no more flood, they will come across the land. I do not have enough men with guns to protect you.”
“Perhaps this nostrum of international goodwill will be declared over by that time.”
“I just got here!” Amelia blurts.
I walk out into the night, down the runway toward unidentifiable animal noises. I won’t go beyond the loom of camp lights but I am tempted. I need some clarification. The sound of this girl’s voice remains in my ears.
This night is like last night but different; nevertheless, the pleasant memory fills me with some comfort, a positive reinforcement. Gabriele has given me a sense of hope, some reassurance that apparently still holds, tenably, despite the events of the day. I detect a noiseless movement behind me and I turn with a start. It is our new boat driver.
“Did I scare you?”
“No, I was just listening to the lions. I thought maybe you were one of them.” I think this will frighten her and she will scurry back to the shelter.
“Oh, yes, I’ve heard them. Not too close.”
“You know about lions, Amelia?”
“Yes, my family and I go on safari every year. But it’s not like this. This is quite different.”
“What is the difference?”
“Oh, you know, we bring the servants, of course. And we have big tents, and chairs and tables and wines—my brothers, they like champagne, so my parents bring champagne for them, but I drink juice only—I don’t like alcoholic beverages—and we have a wonderful good time, really. Now, my oldest—”
“Do you do the cooking when you go on safari?” I need to put an end to this febrile chatter.
“Cooking? I can’t imagine, really. That’s not for us to do.”
Later as we prepare to bed down, I ask Amelia how she got the UN job. She says she had friends who helped. Qualifications? “Well, I do drive our ski boat during the holidays.” Then she confides from under her mosquito net: “This is my first real job.”
“In your life?”
“Yes. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
“How old are you, Amelia?”
“Thirty-one. You will help me out there, won’t you, John?”
In excited whispered tones she begins to relate endless rambling tales about her brothers, her father, her favorite servants. One cannot be critical; she has held steady at sixteen, has never been permitted to mature. She is a woman and I wonder, with her protected background, whether she has any experience. “Well, of course, I do know what it is all about, Robbie,” she snapped back earlier when he began to pry into her love life. “I have gone out with boys, you know.”
I find it difficult to work up any interest in her tales of her personal life. I am no family member, no father confessor, no hand-holder, no babysitter. I do not want to adopt a little girl. She is talking to the wrong guy. It is a pity that I am all there is.
The falling water level has taken away those riotous good-humored noises, the magic night sounds. It is a sad thought. That mysterious idiotic laughter was nothing less than a lullaby.
So now I have Amelia. As I am drifting off to sleep, a small voice breaks the silence: “John, tell me, what is it like out there—out on the river, in the villages?”