The Constant Gardener

"Listen, man. We need more airstrips. You put that in your article. More airstrips and closer to the villages. The walk's too long for them, too dangerous. They get raped, they get their throats cut. Their kids get stolen while they're away. And when they get here, they find they've screwed up. It's not the day for their village. So they go home again, and they're confused. A lot of them, they die of the confusion. Their kids too. You gonna write that?"

"I'll try."

"Loki says more airstrips means more monitoring. I say, OK, we have more monitoring. Loki says, where's the money? I say, spend it first, then find it. What the hell?"

A different silence grips the airstrip. It is the silence of apprehension. Are marauders lurking in the woods, waiting to steal God's gift and run? Lorbeer's great hand is again clutching Justin's upper arm.

"We got no guns here, man," he is explaining, in answer to the unspoken question in Justin's mind. "In the villages they've got Armalites and Kalashnikovs. Arthur the Commissioner over there, he buys them with his five percent and gives them to his people. But here in the food station, all we got is a radio and prayer."

The moment of crisis is judged to have passed. The first porters advance shyly onto the strip to stack the bags. Clipboards in hand, Jamie and the other assistants take up their positions among them, one to each heap. Some bags have burst. Women with brushes zealously sweep up the loose grain. Lorbeer clutches Justin's arm while he acquaints him with "the culture of the food bag." After God invented the food drop, he says with a rich laugh, he invented the food bag. Broken or whole, these white synthetic fiber bags stamped with the initials of the World Food Program are as much a staple commodity of South Sudan as the food they bring.

"See that wind sock? — see that fellow's moccasins? — see his head scarf? — I tell you, man, if ever I get married, I'm gonna dress my bride in food bags!"

From his other side Jamie lets out a hoot of laughter, which is quickly shared by those next along from her. The laughter is still running high as three columns of women emerge from different points along the treeline on the other side of the airstrip. They are Dinka tall — six feet is not exceptional. They have the stately African stride that is the impossible dream of every fashionable catwalk. Most are bare-breasted, others are in copper cotton dresses drawn strictly across the bosom. Their impassive gaze is fixed on the stacks of bags ahead of them. Their talk is soft and private to themselves. Each column knows its destination. Each assistant knows her customers. Justin steals a glance at Lorbeer as one by one each woman gives her name, grasps a bag by the throat, chucks it in the air and settles it delicately on her head. And he sees that Lorbeer's eyes are now filled with tragic disbelief, as if he were the author of the women's plight, not of their salvation.

"Is something wrong?" Justin asks.

"The women, they're the only hope of Africa, man," Lorbeer replies, still in a whisper while he continues to stare at them. Does he see Wanza among them? And all the other Wanzas? His small, pale eyes peer so guiltily from the black shadow of his homburg hat. "You write that down, man. We give food only to the women. The men, we don't trust those idiots across a road. No sir. They sell our porridge in the markets. They have their women make strong drink with it. They buy cigarettes, guns, girls. The men are bums. The women make the homes, the men make the wars. The whole of Africa, that's one big gender fight, man. Only the women do God's work around here. You write that down."

Justin obediently writes as he is asked. Needlessly, because he has heard the same message from Tessa every day. The women file silently back into the trees. Guilty dogs lick up the uncollected grains.

* * *

Jamie and the assistants have dispersed. Paddling himself on his tall staff, Lorbeer in his brown homburg has the authority of a spiritual teacher as he leads Justin across the airstrip, away from the hamlet of tukuls toward a blue line of forest. A dozen children vie with one another to stay on his heels. They tweak at the great man's hand. They take a finger each and swing on it, utter loud growls, kick their feet in the air like dancing elves.

"These kids think they're lions," Lorbeer confides to Justin indulgently as they pull and roar at him. "Last Sunday we are having Bible school and the lions gobble up Daniel so fast that God got no chance to save him. I tell the kids: no, no, you gotta let God save Daniel! That's in the Bible! But they say the lions are too damn hungry to wait. Let them eat up Daniel first, and afterward God can do his magic! They say otherwise, those lions die."