Mists of the Serengeti(21)
His words came as a jarring shock. I knew albinos were in danger, but I had assumed it was because they were picked on, bullied, ostracized, or physically assaulted. I had not conceived of anything as brutal as their cold-blooded murder for profit and greed and superstition.
Some things are better left in the dark, where they belong. Jack’s words came back to me.
It was what he had tried to shield me from. I had thought I could handle whatever it was. I was a big girl. I lived in a big world. But in that moment, in the barren compound of Baraka, in the blazing heat of the afternoon sun, I felt small and dizzy—sick at the thought of a hacked up little boy, betrayed by his own parents. I turned away from the car and stumbled to the nearest hut, thankful for the darkness of its shadow, which shielded me from the villagers.
They all knew.
The villagers. Jack. Goma. Bahati. Scholastica.
Mo had known too.
It‘s much easier when people think they’re seeing a mzungu mother and a mzungu child.
Once a month, Mo ensured safe passage for one of the kids that Gabriel had tracked down.
The words were making more sense now. Mo had taken on a dangerous mission, but she had known.
Had she retched into the ochre soil like I was doing? Had she gone limp against the wall and slumped to the ground when she’d first heard about it?
No. Mo was strong. She always kept her guard up and her knees strong. She didn’t dwell on things that broke her heart. Like boyfriends who cheated on her, or people that disappointed her, or events that shattered her illusions. She accepted, assimilated, and moved on.
The world will screw you over. It’s a given. Once you accept that, it gets easier, she’d said after a particularly rough breakup.
What happens when you want to breakup with the world, Mo? When it throws something at you that’s so unforgivable you curl up in the shadow of a mud hut and never want to see its face again?
There was no answer, just the idling of Jack’s car as he drove up to me and waited. I stared at the wheels, caked with mud and grime from our trek. I had brought extra bottles of water, a hat, sunscreen, and snacks for Juma. We’d be taking them back unused.
“How old do you think he was?” I asked, still sitting on the ground. He could have been two, or five, or ten, or twelve.
“We’ll never know,” he replied, weary and spent.
“Can’t we go to the authorities? Have them do something about it?”
“If the police could do anything about it, this wouldn’t be happening. You can’t fight an army of nameless, faceless ghosts. Even if you catch up to them, they’re just the middlemen, working for witchdoctors, who are in turn funded by rich, powerful patrons. It’s not a person you’re dealing with, Rodel, or a group of people—it’s a way of thinking, a mindset. And that is the most dangerous enemy of all.”
“So we do nothing? Just accept it and move along? Because it’s not personal? Because it doesn’t affect us?”
“Yes! Yes, you accept it! Just like I’ve had to accept it.” Jack’s eyes raked over me with scalding bitterness. “There is nothing more personal than losing a daughter. You think I haven’t wanted to punish the people responsible for killing Lily? You think I haven’t tried to picture their faces? I lie awake every night, grasping at smoke and ashes, breathing the stench of my own helplessness. So don’t preach to me about being unaffected. And if you can’t handle it, you might as well pack your bags and go home, Rodel, because this is not a fucking tea party in the cradle of Africa.”
I kept my chin up even though it trembled. He wasn’t the only one who had lost someone. I had lost my sister. And by some crazy twist of fate, our paths had crossed—two people with fresh, tender grief, thrown into a hopeless situation, trying to save a bunch of kids when we could barely keep our own heads together.
I laughed at the irony of it. And then I laughed again because I was beginning to understand the hollow, mirthless ways that Jack laughed. But my laughter turned into soft, silent sobs. It was the stoicism that got to me, the acceptance of tragedy—self-inflicted or perpetrated. I had seen it in Jack’s eyes, and then again in the hut, in Juma’s mother’s eyes. Perhaps when you’ve watched the lion bring down the gazelle, time and time again, when you’ve felt the earth tremble with the migration of millions of wildebeest, it comes naturally. You make friends with impermanence and transience and insignificance. Whereas I had never entertained tragedy or failure or disappointment. I resisted it. I forged ahead with the deep conviction that happiness was the natural state of things. I believed it. I wanted to hold on to it, but it was slowly being wrangled away from me.
Jack let me cry. He didn’t try to coax me or comfort me. There was no rushing me, or telling me to stop crying. When I finally got into the car, he gave me a curt nod, the kind I suspect one soldier would give another—an acknowledgment of respect, of kinship, of having survived something big and ugly.
As we drove into the shimmering blue of the hazy horizon, I caught a glimpse of his soul. So many pieces of him had been fed to the lions. And as dark and bitter as it had turned him, he was a gladiator for standing where I would have surely fallen.
BEYOND THE ISLANDS of flat acacia trees, wisps of crimson and violet seeped into a waning sky. Even as night fell upon the vast plains, the light was dazzling and clear. This was the Serengeti, a region of Africa extending from northern Tanzania to southwestern Kenya. Renowned for its magnificent lions and herds of migrating animals, the Serengeti encompassed a number of game reserves and conservation areas.