Page 14 - WTP VOl.VII#5

The Toyota cab was a smoother ride than the cov- ered flatbed, a softer seat and more air circula- tion. Chieck wanted it. He stood close by, examining his camera lenses, feigning deafness. Behind his sunglasses, the same smirk as the day we left Mali’s capital, Bamako, the one of silent accusation: rich toubab—me, the non-African. Nothing was ever said – to me, anyway, by Chieck or anyone else—but Chieck kept score among us: who got what—both tangible and intangible—down to the last drop of sardine oil on our morning baguettes. Maybe it came from having so little to begin with.
So when Moussa offered, I said, “No thanks,” and instead suggested Chieck, “notre photographe extraor- dinaire,” our fine photographer, might want to sit up front.
The road out of Tonka may once have been partially paved, though irregular large asphalt strips had been peeled away to expose underlying gravel which flew off the road under our tires, further degrading the surface into potholes and sinking, sandy mush. The asphalt might have been poorly laid in the first place, or its destruction the result of hard beating rain, or, perhaps, as happens when something of value ap- pears to belong to no one in particular, sheets of it might have been cut and carried off for use as some- thing else, somewhere else.
Barou pushed the Toyota hard. Road signs didn’t ex- ist, and landmarks were impossible. The sun didn’t move from the top of the sky. One dune appeared like the next. No vegetation or shadow. No Niger River by which to gage upstream or downstream.
Chieck yelled. Barou erupted in frustration and spun the wheels deeper into the dune. Yaya sat across from me, shaking his head. Moussa, next to me, reached his arm out the window and hammered his fist against the canopy, a signal for the driver to stop. Now.
We’d sunk deep into the sand as fine as powdered sugar, so fine there wasn’t even the soft crunch of crystals abrading one another. We lodged between two sandbanks whose distance and height looked deceptively easy to surmount. But we couldn’t.
Bleached white skulls, ribs, and pelvises of all sizes from animals who had stopped walking, fallen over, and died where they fell, lay in random array around us. I nudged with my toe at a bone large enough to be a human femur, sufficiently lightweight in its desicca- tion to be from a bird.
The zipper-pull thermometer on my day pack regis- tered 114o Fahrenheit. We had maybe two liters of water left. It wasn’t the first time I thought I might die in Africa.
Chieck said, “Copacetic?” His only English word.
Fuck you. I didn’t even look at him. The sweat from my scalp ran into my eyes and burned with salt. My skin scorching, my body evaporating, my head ach- ing, my tongue thickening, my patience and humor completely gone. Should I write a letter for some archaeologist to decipher after the next ice age? One life, my life, may not matter in the larger scheme; one ant can’t break a colony. Yet, the butterfly that flaps its wings... What was my life worth? I had thought my life would be worth what humanity could gain from my living it. I wanted my chance to contribute.
I was on the edge of panic and the only thing that kept me from hysterics was the silence of the others. We were all caked in soft sand. I pulled the inside of my shirt up to wipe my face, but it simply smeared the whole mess further. I closed my eyes, saw bright light through my lids, and waited for tears, if mois- ture enough was left, to clear the burn.
When I blinked and squinted, I saw two faces hover- ing at the top of the taller sand dune. Two boys waved, and then they were gone.
“Ils étaient là!” They were there. Two boys! None of the others saw them, yet Chieck tried to chase down what he must have thought was a mirage.
“Regardez!” I shrieked. Look!
The two boys appeared again, then slid toward us. Five men followed and all came hopping down in ragged cotton shirts and trousers, grinning as if this were Club Med and they were late with the Mai Tais.
Yaya snapped-to and stood straight and tried to dust himself off before greeting them, all smiles and gra- ciousness, even when half dead. How are you? And your family? Your parents? Your children? Your wife’s family? Your garden? Your camels?
Had we dug ourselves-in two ridges over, we would have become bones in sand. But the wind was blow- ing in the direction of the tiny village of Mbuna. The
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Mbuna Dunes
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