Heart of Africa (18 page)

I shuddered at his unique manner of speaking.

“Worse yet, it was determined that he had died just around the time Loben visited him. When Loben finally returned home from his wanderings, he was arrested by the police. But he had an alibi. He had left Sipho in good condition, he said. The old man must have slipped and fallen, hitting his head against the hearth stones. It was true that there was blood on the bricks.”

“You think he was guilty?”

“None of us will ever know. After Sipho’s death, Loben said that God had come to him in a vision during his days in the bush, and ordered that all outsiders must be either driven away or killed. If not, God would smite them down, just like Sipho. Soon, there were attacks upon the nearest white tobacco farm, and one of our neighbor’s daughters was killed by cattle stampeded by the intruders. Loben was clearly the leader, stating the whites had robbed, raped, and stolen from his people and didn’t deserve to live in Zimbabwe anymore. Anyone who disagreed with him was branded a traitor, and Loben suggested that all who weren’t “true Zimbabweans” should leave. My family knew it was just a matter of time, so we sold out and moved to Zambia. Later, I started university in South Africa to study the care and maintenance of game parks. I’ve never gone home. To this day, Zimbabwe is full of voices just like Loben’s.”

“I’m sorry,” I said and squeezed his hand, saddened his handsome face had turned so bleak.

“You rested now?”

“Enough. Lead the way, sir.”

We both felt fairly strong and adopted a brisk pace
through the scrub forest. Only twice did we spot game. Once, while crossing the sandstone hills and mopane treed plains, I glimpsed a small herd of impala, the dominant male lifting his head inquiringly before allowing his herd of does to continue browsing. The second buck species, as we headed gradually southwest, was angling down toward the Mazanje waterhole, and bounded parallel to us for a full minute before crashing into the bush. Its large, veined ears, white underbelly, and short spike-like horns were unfamiliar.

“The steenbok,” announced Peter as if reading my mind. “They’re generally active only in the morning and evening, and are very territorial. The interesting thing about this species is it buries its urine and feces. Pretty thing, hey?”

“Yes, very.”

We walked for nearly an hour. More observant now, I asked Peter readily about various plants, insects, and birds. I noted not only dove feathers, but speckled white-and-black ones which Peter identified as the Guinea fowl. When a
kek-kek
sound emitted from a thorny tree, I glimpsed a small white-and-black bird exhibiting boundless energy.

“It’s the white-winged tern; it’s found throughout this region.”

And everywhere, anywhere, swarmed the endlessly busy ants. From small black troopers to enormous brown warriors, they scurried under our feet, up tree trunks, or clung to swaying spears of grass. Wasps and dragonflies flitted about and a butterfly, shot through with white and scarlet, alighted upon early blue flowers. Once Peter stopped to point out a lone suricate that barked out a swift warning as we neared.

“That’s the sentinel. The mammals are quite social and many are around, but they’re in hiding.” Peter suddenly halted, turning around to smile at me from where we stood on the low crest of a sandstone hill. The trees seemed greener here and huge pod mahoganies grew thickly.

“We are not much more than two hours or so from the waterhole. We’ll be home soon, Mandy, for many tourists drive there to watch the animals drink.”

A thrill of excitement coursed through my veins; my return to civilization was only a couple hours away! We were carefully ascending the rather steep incline when a strange sound followed by a trumpeting roar and the heavy crash of brush filled the air. High-pitched screams eerily surrounded us. Peter tensed, his sandy head jerking back and forth as he tried to determine the origin of the sound.

“What is it?” I screeched, my hand grabbing the dirty sleeve of his khaki shirt.

“It sounds like a woman and…” He took off at a dead run.

I had no choice but to follow, my slippery trainers a poor substitute for his boots in this rough terrain.

We plunged down the rest of the incline before jerking up short at the most horrible sight I’ve ever seen. The prostrate woman was already dead, but for some reason the elephant didn’t seem to believe that fact and continued trampling her limp form. I leaped forward to help, but Peter grabbed my arm, jerking me back.

“There’s nothing we can do. She got between the matriarch and her baby. It’s the elephant’s revenge.”

The pachyderm finally turned, lowering its long trunk to touch the woman roughly. The bloody woman didn’t move so finally, her blood lust satisfied, the agitated elephant backed off. The matriarch paused, fanning her ears and roaring. A small herd of elephants emerged from the trees. Four stood full-grown, but three were babies. The murderess lifted her trunk and bellowed again, and this time the elephants shuffled off. The smallest, standing not much higher than four feet, seemed reluctant to leave and the impatient matriarch batted him on the rear with her trunk, forcing him to obediently move along. We waited for what seemed an eternity until only the faint sound of their steady retreat and the clicking noises of insects filled the air.

“We can go down now,” whispered Peter and I followed him to where the prostrate victim, covered in sand and blood, lay motionless. My heart lurched, for it had not been just a lone woman. Strapped to her back, under a soiled red blanket, lay the humped form of a baby. Only the blanket was not naturally red—it had originally been colored a light beige and blue. I turned my head away in agony.

“This is sad. Sad indeed,” grieved Peter. We drooped there in the churned-up sand and gazed helplessly at the lifeless pair.

“Who is she?” I asked, barely able to keep back my tears.

“In this area, many refugees from Mozambique cross. It is likely her husband preceded her to South Africa and sent a message for her to join him.”

“But why was she here alone; alone with her baby?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter heavily. “But one thing is for certain: if we leave her, the vultures and hyenas will arrive in a matter of minutes.”

He was not far wrong. Already, dark specks in the brilliant blue dome of the sky circled and dipped ever lower.

“What shall we do?” I asked. I now cried silently. What a cruel, horrible fate!

Peter dropped to his knees and turned the woman over. Her body may have been brutalized and broken, but amazingly enough, her smooth, brown face remained unscathed. She appeared no older than sixteen. Peter untied the blanket knotted just above her breast and gingerly lifted out the baby. I suspected it was a little boy, not more than six months old, but it was so bloody and smashed it was difficult to discern its features.

“Help me dig a grave,” Peter ordered. “While only a short-term solution, it will allow us time to get away from here before the dangerous scavengers arrive.”

Peter chose a shady spot under one of the mahogany trees and we both knelt and dug with our hands in the soft sand. It did not take long for the two of us to scoop out a narrow trough wide enough to roll the bodies into. The Zimbabwean arranged the still corpse of the young girl with the baby held in her arms. Though bloody, they both appeared asleep.

“We need logs and rocks to place on top so the animals can’t dig them up so quickly,” Peter said. “Could you go try and find some?”

A decent-sized log lay not twenty feet away and I hurried over to it. As I tugged and pulled, I harbored a strange feeling that if I just kept busy, the horror of what had happened to the young girl and her baby would somehow disappear. A soft tenor voice lifted in song, forcing me to glance up from my sweat-popping task. Having scraped sand over the bodies of the woman and her baby, Peter now stood, his arms held stiffly to his sides, and softly serenaded the pair in a language I did not understand. The beautiful dedication to her and the nameless baby enveloped me in sadness. I don’t know if he sang to God or to the powers of nature, but profound grief resonated from his reverent voice.

I whispered a silent, hurried prayer as well, one filled with questions and accusations. Why had this young woman, scarcely out of girlhood, died so horribly? Why are some allowed to live while others have their fragile lives literally torn from them?

The gentle serenade ceased and Peter strode forward to help me drag the heavy log over the makeshift grave.

“
Zorora nerunyararo,
”
[2]
he uttered huskily.

In less than fifteen minutes, a dozen logs and stones lay stacked upon the girl’s and her infant’s still bodies.

“We didn’t even know her name,” I mourned sadly as I fruitlessly rubbed my dirty hands upon my streaked jeans.

“Would you feel better if you knew?” asked Peter. Telltale trails made narrow paths through the dirt lining his tired and filthy face.

“Somehow I think so. Yes. I would have liked to know their names.”

“Then name them,” he ordered softly.

The chatter of what sounded like magpies and the buzzing of persistent insects were the only noises as I pondered what to call this nameless woman and her poor, dead child. Finally I said, “I will call her Esther, and for the child, a name I’ve discovered many workers in South Africa have: Precious.”

Peter flashed a pained smile. “Then their names shall be Esther and Precious. Hurry, Mandy. As you can see, it is not safe to walk the wild ways. We must get to the waterhole before dusk.”

Numbly I marched away from the burial site, mind whirling as I tried to make sense of it all. Who, besides us, would ever know that this ragged woman, so desperate to join her husband and family that she risked death, lay buried under log and rock? Would anyone besides the grimly silent Peter and me ever know she’d been trampled to death by an irate elephant? Where was the justice of it all? What had made her approach that dry riverbed at precisely at that instant, forcing her to come between the elephant and its calf?

I have always been a staunch believer that a benevolent God watches over us and when something bad happens, the Lord enables something good to come from it. As my tired feet tramped through the dust, I could not fathom any good resulting from that poor woman’s death.

Perhaps if I embraced a religion such as Hinduism I’d have felt more settled. If one believes in reincarnation, there must be some satisfaction that when this life ends, you simply begin another. Christians aren’t so fortunate, believing you’re only given one shot and when your allotted time is up you proceed either to heaven or hell. But that tiny baby—what happened to him? Had he already sinned so much he deserved to die? I’d read somewhere about how souls are recycled. Had baby Precious already arrived back at the soul factory, ready to be inserted into another body that would hopefully have a better run of it next time?

I fretted inside as I trudged through the bush behind Peter and swatted at the blue dragonflies attracted to my sweaty face. God has a plan—He must have! And if He had a grand design, what was his plan for Esther and baby Precious? What benefit had their little lives brought? Worse yet, what was
my
purpose? I battled myself the whole rest of that horrible march until Peter finally took pity upon me.

“Stop,” he ordered abruptly. He crouched, his arms resting upon his legs, staring at the ground.

I lifted myself from my misery, my damp eyes finally focusing on what he examined. The spoors were fresh and clear, only slightly smeared by the damp soil. We had come across a seep hole where algae-scummed water, dotted by small tufts of grass, made a shallow muddy place where swallows whirled above and plovers shrieked warning. The imprint Peter examined reminded me of a flower with five blunt petals, the topmost being broadest. The six sets of tracks abruptly ended at the perimeter of the seep hole.

“Can you figure out what this track is, ma’am?” Peter asked, peering up at me. I crouched beside him, grateful for the rest. Our sorrow had propelled us at a killer pace.

“A lion?” I suggested. To me, any large track must belong to that merciless killer.

“Not even close, my lady,” he returned, grinning.

Peter grabbed a dry stick and poked at the half-dry mud. “The lion’s paw has a flat rear knuckle-like area with four toes at the top.” He drew it carefully in the gooey earth.

“This is an important track to recognize since it can mean the difference between life and death. Another dangerous one is this.”

He traced two curved beans roughly one-and-a-half inches long, facing each other.

“I know that one!” I said excitedly. “It’s the Cape buffalo.”

“Very good, Mandy. They rarely travel alone, as we’ve noted. And this dainty little one is the impala. But this spoor is deep and reveals the animal’s massive weight. You see, the track is quite broad and indicates that heavy legs must support its incredible size.”