Alexandria of Africa (18 page)

Nebala squatted down beside the cow-pie. What in the world was he doing? He was examining the crap! Obviously I wasn’t the only one who was amazed by the size of it.

“That must be from the biggest cow in the entire world,” I said.

“Not cow. Elephant.”

“Elephant … an
elephant
was here?”

He touched his foot against it and a little bit of steam rose into the air. “A minute or two ago.”

Anxiously I looked all around. I couldn’t see an elephant.
I couldn’t even see a place where an elephant might be hiding. Unless it was behind those bushes, or maybe it had circled around the hill, or what about the cornstalks? No, they weren’t as tall as an elephant’s eye. Great, I was looking for an elephant in Kenya and I was quoting lines from last year’s school play,
Oklahoma!

Nebala tilted back his head and inhaled deeply through his nose. What did he hope to smell except the huge pile of elephant dung at his feet? He turned his head all around, looking in all directions, smelling the air. Was he trying to smell the elephant?

He took me by the hand. “Come,” he said quietly.

I wanted to ask him what he saw, or what he smelled, but I didn’t seem to have any words. I let him lead me off the road and into the cornstalks. He put his finger to his lips to indicate silence and we wove slowly between the stalks, trying not to rustle them as we passed. It felt good to be off the road … but what else might be hiding in the cornstalks with us?

Nebala motioned for me to get lower.

“Stay,” he said, and he started to move away before I grabbed him.

“Where are you going?” I hissed.

He motioned with his hand that he was going to circle around.

“Is there an elephant?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “Listen.”

“I don’t hear anything.”

“Not elephant.
Elephants.”

He started to move again and I grabbed him by the arm.

“What do I do if they come when you’re gone?”

“Drop to your knees.”

I nodded my head. “Right, I get it, I should get low so they won’t see me.”

“No, always good to be on your knees when you pray to your God.”

“No, seriously.”

“Seriously. Here.” He took his spear and stuck it in the ground.

“But won’t you need that?”

“Elephants,” was his one-word response, and I understood. What good was a spear against an elephant?

I released his arm and he started off, angling away from the road, moving through the cornstalks. I tried to follow his path, peering through the stalks, catching little glimpses of him until I couldn’t see him any more. I turned back in the other direction and tried to see past the corn to the road. I really couldn’t see anything. I didn’t like that. I needed to see what was happening. I needed to do something instead of just squatting in the cornstalks, quaking and waiting.

Dropping to my knees I crawled along the ground, moving toward the road. If I peeked out I could at least see what was happening. I trusted Nebala, but really, how could a herd of elephants be there without me hearing or seeing them? I was sure they were someplace, maybe a mile away, and he was just trying to be super-careful.

I was almost at the edge of the field. Soon I’d be able to look down the road and—a gigantic leg appeared, followed by another and another and another. I froze in place as a second set of legs, as thick as tree trunks, and almost close enough for me to reach out and touch, glided by me. How could anything that big move that quietly and quickly? I tried to look up, following the legs, but I was blocked by the stalks—thank
goodness
I was blocked.

They’d passed by. They were heading down the road,
away from me. I was safe now. Unbelievable, a herd of elephants had just passed right by me! At least, I’d seen their legs pass by. I hadn’t actually seen all of them. I knew I shouldn’t. I knew it was stupid and probably dangerous, but I couldn’t resist. I had to look.

I crawled, this time even more slowly, until I could look out. There, moving down the road, were four elephant butts—one of them a baby butt. Cute. He couldn’t have been any bigger than a compact car. I wished I’d had a camera with me because nobody was ever going to believe this.

One of the elephants, the last in line, suddenly stopped and spun around. It turned its head slightly to the side as though it was trying to listen, or look. Was it looking at me? And those two big ears started flapping. Was I making any sounds other than my breathing? Could those big ears have picked up the sound of my breath, or my heart, which felt like it was pounding through my chest?

There was a loud scream and I had to fight the urge to jump or scream back. The elephant turned around, away from me. There was something down the road, a flash of red—it was Nebala! He was fifty yards down the road. He was standing in the middle, visible to me and certainly visible to the elephants, waving his arms and hooting so there was no way they could miss him.

The elephants stood still, staring at him. What was he doing? And what were the elephants thinking? Were they as confused as I was? Then, without warning, they charged toward him! A pounding, the thundering of feet throwing up dust! And they trumpeted as they ran! I saw Nebala dodge one way and then the other, scrambling back into another section of the corn that hid me!

I fought the urge to stand and run up the road, away from the elephants and toward the compound, but I couldn’t
do that. I had to wait. I had to go back to the spot where Nebala had left me, the place where he’d be coming back to get me … if he
could
come back. I started to scramble back before I realized that I wasn’t necessarily going in the right direction. All the stalks looked the same, and it wasn’t like they were even planted in rows.

I had to slow down. I took a deep breath. I needed to settle my heart rate. I took another breath. Complete silence. The wind wasn’t even rustling the corn. How could it go from so loud to so quiet? The elephants must have kept running, far away, away from Nebala. Or else they’d squashed him like a bug and were now quietly doubling back to get me.

That was just crazy. Elephants didn’t stalk people … I had to stop thinking about that and start just
thinking
. I
had
to think.

Maybe all the stalks looked the same but not all of them surrounded a Maasai spear stuck in the ground. I just had to find the spear. It would be good to have that spear in my hands. Not that it would stop an elephant, but it could stop other things … other things that might be hiding among the stalks with me. Again, I had to smarten up, stop letting my imagination run away with me. On the other hand, I
was
in Africa—was it really so crazy to worry about a lion or a spitting cobra here? It wasn’t like I was worried about a street gang or getting hit by a truck or—

I heard a rattle, a shifting in the cornstalks. I froze in place. There was no point in running because pretty much anything I was worried about could for sure outrun me. My only hope was to stay perfectly still and hope it wouldn’t see me … or hear me … or smell me. God, how did I stop myself from emitting an odour?

“You moved.”

I practically jumped into the air. It was Nebala. And he was holding his spear.

“I told you not to move.”

“Elephants,” I said. “There were elephants.”

“I told you there were elephants. Did you think I was wrong?”

“Not wrong. I just needed to see for myself.”

He shook his head. “Maasai women and white women all must see for themselves. Just
believe
sometimes.”

“Shouldn’t we be quiet?”

“Elephants are gone.”

“But they were right there.”

He shook his head. “Far away. No danger.”

“I
saw
them. I saw
you.”

He looked surprised.

“I saw what you did. You made them chase you. How did you get away?”

“I ran.”

“You’re faster than an elephant?”

He laughed. “I ran like this,” he said, and he swerved his arm back and forth in a zigzag motion. “Elephants don’t turn well and they don’t chase long. They just wanted me to go away, and I
wanted
to go away, so we both wanted the same thing.”

“I can’t believe it. You were chased by a herd of elephants,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief. “That had to be terrifying.”

“I am
Maasai.”
He fixed me with a fierce look.

“Come on, be honest.”

His fierce face dissolved into a smile. “Maybe a little scared.” Then he laughed, and all the tension I’d been feeling fell away. “But that’s just our secret.”

He gave me the Vulcan salute and I returned it.

I tried to be the first off the truck. I wanted to drop over, poke my head in the door of Standard Eight, and say hello to Ruth. I knew the teacher wouldn’t mind if I just said hello. They probably wouldn’t have had time to start a test this morning, and even if they had, it wasn’t like I was going to disrupt them too much. I wanted to tell Ruth all about the elephants. I needed to tell somebody, and Nebala had made me promise not to tell anybody at the centre. Half of the kids would have been scared, and the other half would probably have wanted to go out looking for them! Telling Ruth would be different. I knew she wouldn’t tell anybody else if I asked her not to. I knew I could trust her.

The door was open and I could hear them. The teacher was saying something and the whole class was reciting back what he had said. I hadn’t seen a lot of their class but this was one of the patterns I’d noticed. Memorizing things was a big part of their day. Memorizing and then repeating and
then writing what they’d memorized and repeated in examinations.

What a strange concept. Having to write a test to see if they’d
let
you go to high school. And then, if you got the marks, hoping that you had enough money to go, and walking miles and miles every day before you went home and did all your chores and tried to grab enough daylight to study some more. I knew some people who wouldn’t go to the end of their driveway without being driven. In fact, I
was
one of those people.

And I thought about how many of my friends cut class or complained about what a waste it was to go to school, or how bad and boring it was, or gave their teachers a hard time. Again, sometimes that was me.

I peeked my head in. They all stopped, looked at me, laughed, and pointed. So much for being unobtrusive.

“I was looking for Ruth … I don’t see her.”

“She is away today,” the teacher said.

“Does anybody know why?” I asked.

One of the girls in the corner raised her hand. I recognized her. She lived in Ruth’s village. She was a cousin.

The teacher motioned for her to speak. “She is home, helping. The baby will come today. She will help.”

That was so exciting! And scary. Ruth could fix meals and gather water, but she couldn’t be expected to deliver a baby, could she? They had to have a doctor or nurses.

“There will be many helpers,” the teacher said. I think he was reading my worried expression. “Women who are
very
experienced. Midwives who deliver babies.” He smiled. “There have been many babies in the village. No need to worry.”

I appreciated him saying all that, but I was still going to worry. Maybe babies happened all the time here, but not
in my life, and when they did happen there were big, sanitary hospitals staffed with doctors and nurses all ready to help with drugs and instruments and delivery rooms and operating rooms and whatever was needed. Here, there was just mud and dust. What if something went wrong? I couldn’t think about that.

I heard the rumble of wheelbarrows being rolled along the rutted ground, the clang of shovels and trowels being thrown down from the truck. My prison work day was starting, and pretty soon I knew I’d hear my own personal warden.

I decided I’d better let the students get on with their studying, For now, I had some work of my own to get to.

I felt dirty and grungy. My hair was disgusting. I was filthy. Covered in dirt, mud, and cement powder, with sprinkles of plaster stuck to my skin. To top it all off, I could feel pain in muscles I hadn’t even known I had. Altogether, though, I didn’t feel terrible. I felt sort of neutral, nothing, almost numb. Maybe the whole working hard thing had put me in a state of shock, and that’s why I wasn’t feeling miserable, the way I should. This was sort of an out-of-body experience. I was suffering a hideous fashion death, and yet I was hovering above, looking down at the corpse, trying to decide if I should go to the light, or return … or have a shower.

My way of dealing with all the worry about Ruth’s mother was to just lose myself in the work. I couldn’t help her or the baby but I could help to build a school that the new little baby would go to some day. A school
that was made of more than mud and barbed wire, a school where the baby could learn, and grow … if there was enough money.

“Is there any hot water left at all?” I asked as Mary Beth came out of the shower.

“Maybe not hot, but at least sort of warm. I tried not to take too much.” She sounded guilty.

“That’s okay,” I said. “I know you weren’t in there very long.”

I closed the door behind me. I laid out my fresh, new clothes on the bench. It would feel good to get into something clean. I stripped out of my clothing. There were bits of mud and plaster ground into every little nook and cranny and crevice of my body. This wasn’t going to be fast. How many people were still in line behind me? Two or three. I didn’t care of it was twenty-two or thirty-three. I needed to get myself clean. I’d need to take a much longer shower than Mary Beth had, but that only made sense—I had five times the hair she had and twenty times the need to look good.

I started the water. It wasn’t hot, but it was warm enough. I let the water work its way through my hair. At first it just seemed to run off, repelled by the cement dust, which had formed a waterproof seal over my hair. I took some shampoo and lathered it up. I could feel the grit against my fingers and scalp. It felt awful. I rinsed it out, trying to get all the last bits of dust and dirt and shampoo out. I’d just do it another time or two and I’d be certain to get it all out.