The Eye of the Elephant Page 13

  "KLOCK, KLOCK," the stones crack loudly against one another as we drop them onto the pile. One by one, we collect thousands of them—from the rock bars and the hillsides—to build our camp. For over a year we have lived in our small puptent, now tattered by the wind, and we long to unpack our trunks, put our books on a shelf, and not have to crawl out of bed every morning like caterpillars. We make bricks from sand and sun on the beach of our little river, and lay the foundations. Slowly, bit by bit, stone by stone, the cottages rise from the ground.

  We level the last of the termite mounds from the airstrip and a charming representative of the Division of Civil Aviation, Arthur Makawa, travels from Lusaka to certify it. Once he has done this, he makes a mount for our wind sock and even helps collect stones for our camp. Finally the stone walls are complete, ready for the thatch roofs.

  A week after our trip to Mukungule, Simbeye, Mark, and I drive back up the scarp, pulling the trailer to collect the thatching grass. Mukungule consists of widely scattered family bomas, surrounded by their fields. One cluster of mud huts is perched on a hilltop, another is nestled in a banana grove near the stream, and in the distance another is situated in a grassy field. In the center is a mud-brick, one-room courthouse and a three-room schoolhouse. We park next to a large family boma where five mud huts surround a cooking fire. Several small piles of grass bundles are stacked along the road. We call a greeting to two women, sitting at a fire, who wander over and speak to Simbeye in Chibemba.

  "This is all they have collected," he tells us. "There were many problems. Some of the women snitched the cut grass from their neighbors and added it to their own piles. Then some villagers stole the grass for their own houses. The women became discouraged and quit working."

  Even the bundles stacked by the road are less than half of the size agreed upon.

  I look around. Villagers are standing by their huts and watching us. A few women have their heads together, giggling. What am I doing here, standing in this field of weeds talking about grass? I'm supposed to be studying lions, thinking about kin selection, calculating degrees of variance. How could I ever explain to our colleagues, who are waiting patiently for our scientific papers on brown hyena social behavior, that I am negotiating—unsuccessfully—the cutting of grass! I hug my arms to my chest and look to the sky.

  "I miss Africa so much, and I am standing right in the middle of it."

  "Let's get out of here," Mark says. "We'll try another village."

  Tucked among the green folds of the escarpment hills, deep in the miombo woodlands, lies the small village of Chishala. It is closer to the national park boundary than any other village, and notorious for its poaching. We have been told that almost every adult male in the area has an illegal gun and hunts in North Luangwa. The pole bridge that once linked Chishala to the outside world was swept away by a nameless storm some years ago, so that now the road is only a footpath winding through the forest.

  On a Tuesday morning we ease the Land Cruiser down the path, ford the river, and drive into the center of the village. In a shady spot near a crumbling mud hut, a couple of dozen men are sitting on the ground around a central pot frothing with homemade beer. Immediately, the men stop talking and stare at us. We have not been to this village before, but since there are no other white people in the area, they must know who we are. It is obvious from their cold glares and silence that we are not welcome.

  I am tempted to turn around and leave, but Mark steps out of the truck, so I follow. Two of the men get up and walk quickly into the forest. The others continue to stare. One says something in Chibemba and they all laugh. When we are twenty yards from them, Mark calls a friendly greeting. No one responds. Suddenly an old woman rushes toward us, mumbling excitedly, and reaches out for Mark's arm. In the tense atmosphere her movement startles me, and I whirl around. She shrinks back, bowing and clapping in submission. Her sagging face, neck, and breasts are etched with a thousand fine wrinkles. Her deepset eyes are watery, and the hand that she still reaches out to us is knobbed and gnarled from the toil of primitive life. Pleading with us in Chibemba, she points to a cluster of banana trees where a young woman sits, holding a small, limp child.

  Mark motions to me to get the first-aid box from the truck, then we both bow to the young woman and kneel beside her. The little girl in her arms appears to be two or three years old and is slumped against her mother's chest. Her thin arms and legs dangle from the soiled rags wrapped around her body. Her eyes are closed, but her tongue works constantly against her dry, cracked lips. When Mark carefully moves her head, it drops heavily to one side.

  "Diarrhea?" he asks the mother. She nods and whispers in English, "Bad diarrhea, four days."

  Mark asks the old woman to wash out an enamel cup, while I dash back to the truck to get clean drinking water. Mark stirs a rehydration mixture from a packet into the clean water and hands it to the mother. "She must drink this slowly." Holding the child's head up, the mother touches the cup to the girl's mouth and encourages her to sip the liquid. The tiny lips move and after a few swallows, large brown eyes open wide and stare into ours. Grasping the cup with both hands, the girl tries to drink faster, and Mark motions to the mother to go gently. I steal a glance at the beer circle. The men are watching us closely.

  Rehydration, although not a cure for diarrhea, can produce a miraculous recovery from the symptoms. By the time she has drained the cup, the little girl is holding her head up and looking around at the strange white people and their big truck.

  "Feeling better?" Mark asks. She buries her head in her mother's neck for a moment, then turns again to look at us. Her grandmother grins, claps, and bows to us, and the mother smiles shyly. The men in the beer circle are talking quietly to one another. One of them—the father—stands and walks over to the banana trees, squatting next to the mother and child.

  Speaking in slow, short phrases, Mark explains to the parents that their daughter is still very sick and should be taken to the hospital. But the mother says she has no way of getting to the nearest clinic, which is in Mpika, sixty miles away. If we do not treat the girl ourselves, she could die in a few days. Mark takes some Bactrim from the first-aid box, cuts the tablets into quarters, and explains the dosage to the parents. We also give them more rehydration mixture. The mother bows her head and whispers, "Natotela—thank you." The father lowers his head and nods.

  We gather our gear and walk boldly to the beer circle, greeting the men in Chibemba. Most of them smile and nod. Speaking through a translator, Mark and I tell them about our project and how we want to help them find other jobs so that they will not be dependent on poaching. The men laugh wildly at this. We tell them we have not come to arrest anyone. No matter how much poaching they have done in the past, it will be forgotten if they lay down their weapons and take up a new job.

  "How soon?" one of them asks.

  "Right now, if you want," Mark says.

  Within thirty minutes, everything is arranged. The women will cut thatching grass and carry it on their heads to the grooming station. The young men and children will groom the grass on large combs, which they will build with lumber and nails that we will provide. Apparently the adult men will supervise. One old man, who calls himself Jealous Mvula, volunteers for the job of night watchman. We agree on a bundle size and a price, and when they calculate how much money they can make, a ripple of excitement passes around their faces. Telling them that we will be back in two weeks, we climb into the truck and drive away. I see the little girl, still in her mother's arms, waving good-bye to us.

  Upon our return in two weeks we discover a veritable grass factory. Swaying dramatically to balance the large bundles on their heads, women file through the fields toward the grooming station. Ten large combs have been constructed; young men and older children pull grass through the teeth to separate the leaves from the stems. Huge piles of grass, the size of haystacks, surround the decaying huts. Young men sing as they bundle the groomed thatch and throw it onto the heaps. T
he adult men are still sitting around the beer pot, but now and then they call orders to the others.

  As we step out of the truck, the child we had treated runs up to us, smiling. Her mother, laboring under a large grass bundle, waves from a distance. Greeting everyone in Chibemba, we tell them how pleased we are with their work. Jealous has kept a detailed record of how many bundles each villager has collected or combed, and we calculate how much money we owe each of them. As we pass out the kwacha notes, people nod to us solemnly. Jealous tells us the village has made more money in two weeks than in two years of poaching.

  While Mark and the men begin the scratchy, cumbersome task of tying hundreds of bundles onto the trailer, I sit on the bare earth in the shade of the banana trees and call to the children to gather around me. Holding up International Wildlife and Ranger Rick magazines, I begin to explain the pictures. But I do not realize that these children have never seen a color photograph. As I hold up a glossy centerfold showing an elephant family grazing on a savanna, the children "oooh" and "aaaah," clasping their small hands over their open mouths. Squeezed tightly together in a semicircle, they lean forward, taking in every detail of the photo. One young boy reaches out a finger to touch the shiny page, as though he expects the elephants to be there. I feel a tightness in my throat and a tear in my eye.

  They do not seem to know that real elephants move silently through the forest just beyond the scarp mountains, and that their own fathers have slaughtered them for years. When I ask how many of them have seen an elephant, they all shake their heads. They are five miles from North Luangwa National Park and have never seen a live elephant!

  Finally the truck and trailer are loaded with grass. The head lights look like eyes peering out from under a floppy straw hat. Brushing grass seeds and stems from his shirt, Mark joins me briefly, then we gently extricate ourselves from the circle of children, promising to return with more pictures. We have so few magazines that we will have to take them with us to the next village. One little girl helps me pick up the magazines from the ground, holding them with both hands as though they are the most precious things she has ever touched.

  As we turn to go, the men in the beer circle call to Mark to join them; he walks to the edge of the gathering and greets them in Chibemba. Some are sitting on stools handmade from stumps, others sit cross-legged on the ground around the large clay pot full of home-brewed beer. A single drinking straw made from a reed stands up in the thick brew. The men take turns bending over the straw and drinking. With a sweep of his hands, one man invites Mark to share the drink. Diseases—dysentery, AIDS, cholera, tuberculosis—are common in these remote villages, as in most areas of Zambia. Yet Mark hesitates only briefly before bowing his thanks and kneeling beside the pot. Smiling at the men, he quickly pulls out the straw and turns it upside down. The men are silent for a moment, and I fear he has insulted them, but then they break into applause. Mark takes a long pull on the straw and exclaims, "Cawama sana—very good beer!" One of the older men walks to the pot and, with a great flourish, pulls the straw out, flips it over, and has his turn. The men rock back and forth, laughing.

  As Mark thanks them and walks away, the men leave the beer circle and gather around us. Many are young—twenty-five to thirty-five years old—articulate, strong, and intelligent. For the first time, they admit openly that they are poachers but explain that they have no other jobs. "We want to conserve," says one man named Edmond Sichanga, who is dressed in clean, Western clothes, "but there is no job in conserving." I am surprised to hear him use the word "conserve," and even more surprised to hear him sum up in so few words one of the most critical environmental problems.

  "That is often true in the short term," I say. "But in the long term, there will be more jobs if we can conserve North Luangwa."

  "We can hire fifteen of you right now to work on the road between here and Mukungule," Mark tells them. "Then you will have jobs and a new road to your village. There will be more jobs later."

  "That will be very good. Also we have another problem," Sichanga says, but now his eyes are twinkling with mischief.

  "What is that?" Mark asks.

  "We do not have a soccer ball. You can see over there, we have made a football field, but we have no ball."

  "Okay," Mark says, "you stop poaching and we'll bring you a soccer ball. Is that a deal?"

  The men raise their arms in salute. They shake our hands over and over in the Bemba fashion. Is it really going to be this easy to stop poaching in North Luangwa? We give out a few jobs and soccer balls and save the elephants?

  The entire village stands along the road, waving and cheering as we drive away in our hay wagon. We creep along at a sluggish pace, and I lean backward out of the window to be sure the load isn't shifting too badly.

  We have gone only a few miles when an African man dressed in a tattered coat steps in front of the truck and hails us. It is Jealous, the night watchman. On our first visit to Chishala Mark told him that we would pay for information about the poachers. He stops the truck. Jealous rushes toward us, his coat fluttering behind him, and hops onto the running board. Sticking his head through the window, he says: "These men of Chishala, they are not the big hunters. They kill a few elephants, but the men who kill many, the big poachers, they stay in Mwamfushi Village."

  "How do you know this?" Mark asks.

  "I have two wives. One lives in Chishala, the other in Mwamfushi."

  "Who are the big poachers? Do you know their names?" We have heard of Mwamfushi Village; the game guards were chased away by men armed with semiautomatic weapons.

  "The big hunters are Simu Chimba, Chanda Seven, Bernard Mutondo, and Mpundu Katongo. But Chikilinti is the worst—he is the godfather of them all." Jealous jumps from the running board and disappears into the forest. I quickly write down the names, underlining Chikilinti twice.

  Fording transparent rushing rivers, building rickety pole bridges, clearing overgrown tracks, and slogging through the mud, we visit the remote villages along the western border of North Luangwa, each one more difficult to reach than the last. At every village we meet first with the headmen and elders, and talk to them about what jobs and food are available, what skills the villagers have, what materials they need to start small industries. We promise to help each village set up at least one cottage industry such as a carpentry shop, a sewing club, a fish farm. We talk with the headmaster of each school and organize a conservation program that includes a wildlife club for the children. Hauling around a generator to provide electricity, we set up our projector and show slides of wildlife to the children and adults. Each school has a counterpart in the United States, which will later send art supplies and letters to the Zambians. Smoke Rise Primary School in Atlanta, for example, is paired with the primary schools in Mpika and Nabwalya.

  Not always welcome, we are sometimes warned and threatened. Over and over we hear that the worst village for poaching is Mwamfushi, and that it is not safe for us to go there. We keep visiting new villages and returning to old ones, slowly recognizing faces and making friends. Mr. Chisombe at Katibunga wants to build a fish farm. Syriah of Chibansa, only thirteen, wants to raise rabbits and ducks. The people of Fulaza, who for years have traded poached meat from North Luangwa for ground maize, need a grinding mill.

  Determined not to make the mistake of creating welfare villages (as aid organizations unfortunately have done for years), we give nothing away. Anyone we agree to help must promise to stop poaching. And once their businesses are going, they must repay the original loans to our project. Before we hand out any money, they must contribute as much as they are able to their new enterprise. If they want a grinding mill, they must build the mill house with mud and grass before we will buy the mill. Then we know that they are committed to the enterprise.

  Mukungule, where the women failed to cut the grass, is in the center of the region. During the months of 1988, as we go from one village to another, we often pass by the chiefs n'saka with its airplane seat. The word
has spread that Katibunga has a fish farm and that Chishala made fifteen thousand kwachas from cutting grass. One day I am driving alone from Katibunga while Mark is flying antipoaching patrols in the valley. Mrs. Yambala, a teacher in Mukungule, stands in the road and waves for me to stop. She invites me to sit under the trees with her and tells me that the women of Mukungule want to start a sewing club. They can sell ladies' blouses, baby clothes, and tablecloths to the wives of the game guards, who have cash, she says. I tell her that we will buy the materials and once they are able to sell their products, they can pay us back. Her husband, headmaster of the school, asks me to start a wildlife club for the children, as we have done elsewhere. I shake hands and tell them that we are happy to work at last with the people of Mukungule.

  "Okay, everybody," I call out, standing near the banana trees of Chishala, where the villagers cut our grass. "Let's all go to the soccer field. We have a surprise for you." Jealous and the schoolteachers help me pass the message, sending runners to the distant fields and huts. I watch stooped and elderly villagers, vibrant young men, colorfully dressed mothers and children, move across the hills and through the meadow toward us. Soon an excited crowd has gathered at the field. I stand on the back of the truck, listening.

  "Here he comes!" I shout. "See, the ndeke comes!" I point north to where our plane glides into view over the forested hills. The villagers wave and shout. Mark swoops in low, as though he is going to land on the field, and at the last second flings a soccer ball from the plane door. It falls among the young men and children, and a game begins on the spot. Everyone in the crowd, even an old man with a cane, takes a turn kicking the ball. After a while Sichanga, one of the men from the beer circle, picks it up, walks over, and thanks me. I can see that Mark has drawn an elephant on the ball and written, "Play Soccer, Don't Poach Elephants!" I point this out to Sichanga and his friends, who are now employed by our project to hand-grade the road from Chishala to Mukungule.