How Beautiful We Were(11)

At the end of that first dry season, a pipeline burst and oil flooded the farm of the mother of one of my friends—her family barely had any harvest that year; some days, I had to share my food with her during recess. Weeks later, a new spill turned into a fire that ravaged the farms of six families, forcing mothers to go searching for new land deep in the forest, a trek that left many with little strength for toiling. In the midst of all this, the gas flares got worse, the smoke blacker. For reasons we couldn’t understand, the smoke always blew in our direction, never in the direction of Gardens and the hilltop mansion of the American overseer. With every new oil spill or day of gas flares so savage our skin shriveled and we needed to shout to hear each other over the screaming flames, Woja Beki sent someone to Gardens to talk to the supervisors, who, in turn, sent laborers to inspect the damage, patch up what they could of the old, rusty pipelines, and assure us that the spills were of no harm, the air was fine, Pexton was abiding by the law.



Not long before I turned eight, two children died in one month, both of them having suffered high fevers but otherwise different symptoms.

Papa and the other men of Kosawa made the coffins and dug the graves, and Mama and the women cooked for the bereaved families and wept alongside the brokenhearted mothers. We children did what we could to make the brothers and sisters of the departed feel less alone—we sat next to them in silence when they needed to cry, and let them decide what games we should play when they needed a break from their sadness. Nobody thought much about the fact that two children had died in one month—in a village of dozens of children, it was not uncommon for such a thing to happen. Only after my classmate Wambi began coughing while the rest of us laughed, and then began vomiting blood; only after we’d buried Wambi and coughs like his began echoing across the school compound and bouncing from hut to hut, some children urinating blood, others burning with fevers no amount of cold baths could bring down, several dying; only a few months before my brother, Juba, died and came back to life in Papa’s arms, did parents start wondering if it was possible their children were dying from the same cause.

We did not initially suspect the oil field—it had been there for decades and, despite our hatred of it, we’d never before looked at one of our departed and linked their death to Pexton. We’d long ago convinced ourselves that our bodies had evolved to weather the poisons we daily breathed and that, by the mercy of the Spirit, the poisons by themselves were not enough to inflict us with diseases that herbs and potions couldn’t cure.



Many parents thought it might be a curse, a jealous relative from another village targeting their children—a relative whose wrath was directed at a particular Kosawa family, but who was nonetheless going after all the children in the village to create the sense of a random act, render it untraceable. Or perhaps Kosawa had wronged the Spirit? Perhaps our parents needed to atone for one thing or another so their children might be spared? Our medium, Jakani, spoke to the ancestors and assured our parents that there was no need for atonement—the children’s suffering was of this world, not from the spirit world; it was from something poisonous in our village which was entering their stomachs. But the dead children had eaten different meals, some of the ingredients bought from the big market in Lokunja now that few families could wholly depend on their farms for sustenance. The dead children had slept in different huts—what could they all have touched in common except for the ground upon which they walked, the fruits they ate from the same trees, or the water they drank from the village’s well?

Papa’s best friend, Bissau, was the first to suggest to Papa and our cousin Sonni that he believed it was the water. Before long, the theory began spreading through the village, parents wondering what was in the water their children were drinking—how could poison have found its way into a covered well? Woja Beki called for a meeting and invited the top supervisors at Gardens. Our parents begged the supervisors to take some water from the well, examine it, and tell them if it was the cause of the deaths. The supervisors, offering few words, took the water with them. When they returned, weeks later—the water had to be sent to Bézam for testing—they told our parents that the water was fine, but for the sake of caution it would be best if they boiled it for thirty minutes before giving it to their children. Mama boiled water for two hours every night so that Juba and I would be spared sickness and death. Her efforts were not enough.



* * *



—



Anyone could tell Juba’s illness was no ordinary illness, this disease which started with him moaning from body aches before progressing to a fever so high his body gyrated like a fish on dry land. Sakani came over in the morning and gave him a potion to drink, but by nightfall his body had only grown hotter, no amount of wiping with a cold cloth sufficient to cool him down. When he began convulsing in Papa’s arms, Mama and Yaya pinned his limbs to his body. I turned my face away, looking again only at the moment when his body turned motionless and Mama and Yaya began screeching, beseeching him: Wake up, Juba, please, open your eyes. Papa slapped Juba’s cheeks and ordered him to open his eyes. Open your eyes right now, he cried. Open them. I’m commanding you.

Papa was still slapping Juba’s cheeks when Bongo ran in with Jakani, both of them panting from the sprint they’d made from the twins’ hut at the far end of the village. Without a word, Jakani took a package of grains from his raffia bag and threw them into his mouth, smacking his lips as he pulled out a knife and started making cuts on the soles of Juba’s feet. He spat out the chewed grains all over Juba, roaring, barking, and hissing in one breath, and in the next, with his eyes closed, he began gesturing with force as he shouted at Juba, ordering him to start running back home immediately, return home before it was too late: Turn right, go over the bridge, take another right, watch out for the animal trap, jump over that puddle, don’t worry about the wild pigs, keep running, take a left, keep going straight, run faster, Juba needed to run faster than that, good job, home was right around the corner, Juba shouldn’t worry about his bleeding feet, once he got home Mama would take care of him, for now he had to hurry, the lion and the dog and the python were getting closer, they would get Juba if Juba did not run fast enough, stop looking behind, just keep running, ignore the mangoes, yes, the mangoes looked juicy, if he were Juba he’d want to taste them too, but as soon as Juba got home Mama would have better mangoes for him, the juiciest ever, so Juba needed to drop the mango in his hand and keep running, get out of the forest before the river rose too high, if that happened, Juba would no longer be able to cross it and return home, if the river got too high Juba would have to spend the rest of his life in that forest, alone, for eternity, he’d never see Mama and Papa again, was that what he wanted, good boy, now Juba was at the river, he didn’t need to swim across, he only needed to take a big jump and he’d be home, yes, jump, of course he could do it, he had to do it now, the lion and the dog and the python were getting closer, they’d get him if he didn’t jump, he had to jump now, jump…And Mama and Papa and Bongo and Yaya and I were all crying now, begging Juba to jump across the river, jump, please Juba, jump, please come back home, you can do it Juba, you have to jump right now, if you don’t jump…Juba’s eyes opened.