Tizita Read online

  That night I had a dream that I was cradling the pelvic bones of the early hominid Lucy before carefully passing them over to the waiting arms of a woman wearing a shama, as well as a thick, black veil that completely hid her face. I awoke with a sense of profound loss and wondered immediately what Sammie’s analyst might have said about the dream. I knew only that it was haunting, and I found myself fantasizing as I climbed into my hammock the following night that the dream would continue when I fell asleep. But it didn’t.

  On the seventh night, I was already hanging suspended in my cocoon, and Serena had just slid under her own covers when I offered a tentative, “Serena?”

  Her voice was sleepy. Life at Gombe was very physical and though she was a hardy woman, she was quick to point out she was hardly a spring chicken. “Yes, dear?”

  “Well, I was just wondering. How would I go about switching my flight to Addis Ababa?”

  She turned on her little bedside lamp, and I saw her direct a gratified grin up at me.

  It didn’t take Serena long to come up with a plan, though she swore it was Jane’s idea. The two of them had evidently been conspiring by phone. I learned about it when I shuffled out of the bathroom rather late the next morning, having had a nice long soak in the little tub. Serena was on a purple mat doing her morning yoga stretch routine, which she’d informed me had been taught to her by one of Gombe’s previous volunteers, “a blithe spirit named Alison—fantastic energy; I love that girl! She saved me from myself after I fell out of a tree observing Freud and his sister Flirt.”

  It was a little odd watching the not-so-spring-chickeny Serena easily contort herself into a series of complicated yoga positions while she prattled on as if the two of us were chatting on a couch. For the first time since my arrival at Gombe, I found myself missing Siri Sajan, and the only thing that stopped me from getting down on the floor and joining in was that I’d be crowding Serena. As Nana would have put it, her little house wasn’t exactly the Ritz.

  As soon as Serena informed me that Jane Goodall had suggested that their friend Melkamu Berhe would be the perfect guide to get me from Addis Ababa to Tikil Dingay, I flopped onto Serena’s cot and objected that this was asking too much—of Jane and Melkamu.

  Lying on her back with one bent leg and then reaching both arms above her head with fingers outstretched like stars, Serena rejoined, “Don’t even think about it. On Jane’s part, she’s been following your career with great interest ever since the initial brouhaha about your father and his Cacklers. As for Melkamu, Jane was good enough to intervene when the university seemed inclined to refuse him admission because of a—well, a rebellious adolescence.” She paused, both arms midair on their way back to her sides, and looked past me, her expression pensive. “It was his time as a volunteer at Gombe that turned his life around. Like your Amir, he made a connection with one of our chimps. Kanoodle.” Her arms landed and then floated up again for another reach over her head. “Who I’m afraid fell victim to the simian immunodeficiency virus.” She turned her head toward me, and I saw a tear travel across her pale cheek. “I hate to tell you this, Fleur, but the chimps are dying at younger and younger ages, too much of it thanks to that bloody SIV. Which you probably know crossed the species barrier to become HIV thanks in great part to the hunt for bushmeat.”

  I nodded sadly. Now that I’d seen the chimps at Gombe, watched them feed and groom their families and play with their young, eating bushmeat struck me as just this side of cannibalism.

  But Serena was moving on. “In his grief, Melkamu couldn’t bear to attach to another chimp, so he transferred his attentions to the terrible deforestation around the park. The human birth rate in this part of the world is way too high, and Gombe absorbed a tremendous number of refugees from wars in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As soon as he graduated, Melkamu became a part of TACARE, our community-centered conservation program, and now he teaches other young people who are preparing to join us.” She lay with her knees bent and touching at an angle, her hands on her belly. “He’s also on the Board of Roots and Shoots.”

  “Roots and Shoots?”

  “Yes,” Serena effused, rolling to her side to rise gracefully. She sat beside me on the bed, brushing a silver lock back from her eyes. “A part of Jane’s determination to bring crucial environmental, animal, and humanitarian issues into public consciousness. This one’s really wonderful—aimed at engaging young people in activities that are both fun and meaningful.”

  I felt a sharp twinge of regret. “Serena,” I said, gripping her arm urgently, “you’ve got to promise me we’ll figure out some way for me to meet her, either here at Gombe or if she ever comes to SoCal.”

  She smiled slyly. “Hooked, eh? Of course, you will, dear. Though I’d much, much rather you return to us, Jane does come to Los Angeles from time to time.” She rose to extract a pair of colorful shorts and a T-shirt from her little bamboo dresser. “Did you know there’s a Jane Goodall Research Center at USC? Actually, Craig Stanford, the man I mentioned who’s doing that work on chimp predatory ecology, is co-director there.” Seeing the light in my eyes, she added, “Make sure I give you Jane’s personal email address before you leave. That way, you can begin to know her yourself.”

  I could almost hear the wheels whirring in Serena’s brain. I was beginning to learn about the power of politics in scientific endeavors—a case in point, P.D.’s entrapment in the web of Congress’ venality. Though Jane herself was a well-deserved superstar, I had to acknowledge it probably wouldn’t hurt to have the youngest Nobelist ever lend her name to one of her projects.

  Two days later, and thanks to the concerted efforts of Serena and half the volunteers at Gombe, as well as an environmental science colleague at the University of Dar es Salaam who’d generously offered to meet me at Julius Nayerere Airport to make sure I made my final flight to Addis Ababa, I stood on Serena’s porch and said a series of teary goodbyes. Only Lord Hanuman seemed oblivious to my departure. He was circling around one of the porch posts making a series of raspberry sounds until even Amir became annoyed, shouting, “Oh, give it a rest, you noisy barstard!”

  Then turning back to me, and for the fifth time that morning, Amir asked, “You sure you’ve got your passport?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “And my letter to Stanley?”

  “In my backpack. You could have emailed him, you know.”

  “Yeah,” responded Amir dubiously, “but if you hand it to him, you can, you know, smooth his feathers a little. You know how he is with you.”

  But now Desoto Delumbre came up and shyly offered me a photo she’d taken of me with the village schoolchildren. I looked like a white ghost amid the vital and impish dark faces gathered against a backdrop of bottle green trees. I comforted myself that I was at least a happy looking ghost, my sideways grin even more crooked than usual and my long blond hair skewed every which way.

  Nikka was next to step forward and, before I knew it, she’d looped a Masai beaded necklace over my head. I looked down to see its multi-colored beads perched nearly horizontally over my breasts. “Oh, how beautiful!” I exclaimed. She and I exchanged heartfelt kisses on each cheek.

  Fred proceeded to stuff a packed lunch into my backpack, and then Serena grabbed me, looking intensely into my face as if she were going to try very hard to remember it. She let me go only to whisper ticklishly in my ear, “You’re going to have to write me all about it. About her. I’ve got a feeling that everything is going to change for you in Ethiopia.” I felt the hairs on my head and arms rise up like tiny soldiers.

  Serena let me go and stepped back. I saw Audrey give Lilia a dramatic nudge in the ribs with her elbow, and Lilia pressed something into my palm. I opened my hand to see a tiny wood carving of a naked woman emerging backwards from the rear end of a chicken. The two women burst into bawdy giggles, and I couldn’t help laughing myself. Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t even want to think about what that could be a metaphor for.”
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  So it was with laughter, rather than tears, that I left Serena’s little house in Gombe, shrieking pant-hoots and hoarse turaco calls chiming in from every side.

  My friends walked me to the lake without speaking. Like a visiting dignitary, I was allowed to board the boat first. As the other travelers piled in, I kept moving around the crowd to keep my eyes on my friends. Once the boat began pulling away from the shore, I saw Desoto emphatically pointing toward a couple of women just to the right of where she and the others stood. They were washing dishes in the lake.

  As I waved at Desoto and Serena and Amir and all my new friends lined up like schoolchildren at the shore, the dishwashing ladies waved, too, their dresses billowing out like bright yellow and purple and red balloons in the strong breeze.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Fleur

  IF I THOUGHT getting to Gombe was difficult, finding my way from Addis Ababa to the orphanage at Tikil Dingay was like Theseus navigating the labyrinth. Thank goodness I had my own Ariadne, the extraordinarily kind Melkamu Berhe.

  One thing Serena hadn’t told me about Melkamu was that he was in every way a big man. Not fat, but solid, and as tall as a basketball player. His spirit proved to be just as robust as his size, and his good cheer was infectious. Meeting a very relieved me at baggage claim, he shoved into his shirt pocket the hand-lettered piece of paper with the words “The Esteemed Miss Robins” with which he’d sought me out. Adjusting his round wire-rimmed glasses, he scooped up the boxes of gifts for the folks back home that I’d accumulated at my longish layover at Dar es Salaam International Airport, but only after enveloping me in something that gave palpable credence to the expression “bear hug.”

  Both his strength and the hug turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. With its overwhelmingly crowded chaos and spiky (and spooky) modernistic concrete “trees,” Dar es Salaam’s airport had flung me precariously close to the edge of a particularly terrifying void. As soon as I’d spotted its shops, I’d taken refuge in my mother’s favorite form of therapy and had the two bulging boxes to show for it. Stuffed inside were:

  1. A violet-blue tanzanite ring for Mother;

  2. A Batik painting of women carrying baskets of fruits on their heads for Sammie;

  3. Brilliantly colored Masai blankets for Dhani and Ignacio;

  4. Carved wooden bowls and spoons for Gwennie;

  5. A riotously fantastical Tinga Tinga painting for Stanley;

  6. A turquoise and iridescent green men’s bead necklace for Adam that would bring out his beautiful owl eyes;

  7. A red and white flora Kanga cloth for me to wear that was inscribed with a Swahili proverb that, according to a little piece of paper under its plastic cover, translated as, “The intoxication of love is the ultimate disease.”

  Bole Airport was as spiky and modern as Dar es Salaam’s, but much grander, all steel and glass with pyramid-shaped sculptures and a geometrically patterned marble floor. Still, I was only too glad to be led away from the loud and incomprehensible public address announcements and the louder crowds of people to the parking structure, following Melkamu Berhe like a baby duckling.

  I may have mentioned that, at sixty-eight inches, I’m considered rather tall. Melkamu Berhe was at least half a head taller. After easily hefting my two cumbersome boxes onto a cart, Melkamu told me to call him Melky—“All my friends do.”—and led me to a car that was so small I couldn’t imagine how he was going to stow himself inside. But, after he’d methodically shoehorned my boxes and backpack into what he called the boot and ushered me into the passenger seat, he performed the requisite acrobatic maneuver, throwing me a broad grin that showed he knew just what I’d been thinking.

  I couldn’t wait to get out of Addis Ababa, which was as smoggy and exhaust-filled a city as I’d ever seen. We got lost seven times on our long and winding drive to Tikil Dingay, each time reduced to stopping and asking for directions, mostly from people walking in sandal-clad feet alongside the poorly paved roads. Our roadside advisers (male) wore knee-length shirts with white collars or (female) gaily colored loose dresses and shirts. Some of them also wore netelas, and one young woman balanced a cloth-wrapped package on her shawl-covered head. They invariably answered Melky’s requests in Amharic accompanied by lots of broad smiles, expansive gestures, and curious glances at me. Each time, I intentionally grinned what I hoped were friendly but bland grins, determined to show that Americans were a good sort, really, and that I wasn’t being kidnapped by Melkamu. I’d heard that western women could be vulnerable in Ethiopia, since they had a bit of a reputation for promiscuity. (Well, that certainly fitted, but I resisted the voidish urge to go there.)

  As we passed lush fields of maize and wheat, I battled the desire to ask my garrulous host to stop and let me walk out to the grazing sheep, cattle, and goats to make their acquaintance. Melky seemed politely determined to pepper me with questions, insisting I share with him every detail of my trip to Gombe and each step toward the discovery that won me the Nobel Prize. When I described how I’d first met Serena at a Christmas party at the Fiskes’, opening the door to a big-eyed woman who’d said, “How good to see you again, Stanley,” Melky laughed so hard, thumping his thigh with his free hand, that I worried we’d go off the road.

  Instead, we beetled along at a bumpy 50 miles an hour, stopping once at a small town with a dilapidated café that nonetheless served a yummy lentils and yam dish plentifully flavored with ginger. Before leaving, Melky had our waitress fill two silver flasks of his with bunna—“sweetened,” he assured me, “with tinish sickwar, a little sugar”—and we sipped it as we drove under what had to be the biggest sky in the world. White clouds drifted across it in constantly-changing patterns, and I fell into a powerful longing for Grandfather, with whom I’d identified the patterns made by the birds in our favorite sycamore, the one that Father had cut down.

  Despite the caffeine and sugar in our bunna, we fell into a postprandial quiet. The road veered into a landscape of tall teff grasses, crimson-flowered hills, tiny mud-built houses, and lower-slung clouds looming heavily across a particularly sharp-peaked gray mountain. Melky pointed out a small sign covered in the stick-figureish glyphs of Amharic. He ran his hands excitedly over the steering wheel. “Getting close now. We’ve crossed into Tikil Dingay.”

  Two sets of directions and only one wrong turn later, we came upon a paint-peeling building with a tattered old fashioned gold, green, and red flag of Ethiopia, a lion of Judah at its center, suspended from a rusty iron post pointing diagonally toward the sky. The dilapidated gate to what looked to be a rather dusty front yard bore a placard that someone had hung with the hand-printed words As-Salāmu `Alaykum. Peace be upon you.

  “We’ve arrived!” crowed Melky.

  Oh, God, I thought, adjusting my face to give him the grateful grin he deserved. I’d tried rehearsing it a million times, but I had no idea what I was going to say to Makeda Geteye.

  To make it worse, lifting my suitcase from the boot, Melky casually announced, “I hope you don’t mind, Fleur, but I’ll be leaving you here for a few days. I explained to Serena that I’ve got a group of students arriving from England, and it would be rude of me not to greet them. But I promise I’ll be back to fetch you from your friends in good time to make your flight home. And I’ll keep your boxes safely at my place; we can pick them up on the way to Bole.” He set down the suitcase, stuck a hand into his shirt pocket, extracted the little greeting sign he’d made for me and shoved it back again, then fished around in his trousers pocket until he pulled out a computer print-out of my flight itinerary. He had me look it over. I nodded miserably, barely noting what I saw.

  Desperate now, I asked, “Wait, I didn’t .... Isn’t there a hotel?”

  Melky looked a little surprised. “This is hardly Addis. Not exactly a vacation spot.”

  I blushed. “But I can’t just invite myself. What if they have no room for me?”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. This is Ethiopia.
There is always more room.” And then he lifted my suitcase and motioned with his head to follow him into the lion’s den.

  I was happy to let Melky go first. The rusty gate croaked like a corvid, and a gaggle of small children quickly greeted us, jostling to be in front of the haphazard queue and flinging their most winning smiles at what they undoubtedly assumed to be potential adoptive parents.

  A short-statured man sporting a rather wrinkled netela and a slightly bow-legged walk pushed through the children, issuing exasperated directives. “Get back, Lebna. Hagos, Girma—leave Kanchi alone.” Soon enough, I had two rough hands clasping one of my own and a pair of almond-shaped eyes inspecting my face, then Melky’s. I realized he was trying to assess what the relationship between the two of us was. He gave a nod to Melky. “Tena yistilign. Endemin-neh?” And to me: “Father Wendimu, at your service. Nominally executive director, but in truth All Around Dogsbody. We run a professional show, in that we’d give our lives for these beautiful imps, but we all pitch in as needs arise. In this case, we’re a bit short staffed. Our director, and the one who actually makes sure the trains run on time, is on a much-needed run for antiretrovirals.”

  He paused for a moment, pulling his netela more securely around what I now saw was an ugly scar on his neck, then resumed, “Not that all the children are HIV positive; far from it.” He flicked another glance specifically in my direction. Why did I feel like his last words were a test? “But forgive me,” he murmured. “You are?”

  Noting my deer-in-the-headlights expression, Melky took pity on me. “She is Miss Fleur Robins. From California. A friend of Jane Goodall, who is my mentor. She is here to visit one of your staff.”

  I could see Father Wendimu recalibrate. The children had fallen exceptionally quiet, quizzically looking from one to the other of us. It dawned on me that they’d barely understood a word that had been said. I found my voice. “I’m so sorry to disturb you. I’m here to pay a visit to Makeda Geteye, but if she’s not here ....” I bent to reach for my bag.