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."
They are approaching a line of rectangular sheds at the far end of the airstrip. To each shed a rudimentary enclosure like a paddock. To each enclosure a miniature Hades of the desperately sick, the parched, crippled and dehydrated. Stooped women hunching stoically upon themselves in silent torment. Fly-laden babies too sick to cry. Old men comatose with vomiting and diarrhea. Battle-weary paramedics and doctors doing their best to cajole and gentle them into a crude assembly line. Nervous girls standing in a long queue, whispering and giggling to each other. Teenaged boys locked in frenzied combat while an elder whacks at them with a stick.
* * *
Followed at a distance by Arthur and his court, Lorbeer and Justin have reached a thatched dispensary like a country Cricket pavilion. Tenderly pushing his way through clamorous patients, Lorbeer leads Justin to a steel screen guarded by two stalwart African men in Medecins Sans Frontieres T-shirts. The screen is pulled open, Lorbeer darts inside, removes his homburg hat and hauls Justin after him. A white paramedic and three helpers are mixing and measuring behind a wooden counter. The atmosphere is of controlled but constant emergency. Seeing Lorbeer enter, the paramedic looks up quickly and grins.
"Hi, Brandt. Who's your handsome friend?" she asks, in a brisk Scots accent.
"Helen, meet Peter. He's a journalist and he's going to tell the world you're a lot of lazy layabouts."
"Hi, Peter."
"Hi."
"Helen's a nurse from Glasgow."
On the shelves, many-colored cartons and glass jars are packed roof high. Justin scans them, affecting a general curiosity, hunting for the familiar red and black box with its happy logo of three gold bees, not finding one. Lorbeer has placed himself before the display, assuming once more the role of lecturer. The paramedic and her assistants exchange raw smiles. Here we go again. Lorbeer is holding up an industrial jar of green pills.
"Peter," he intones gravely. "Now I show you the other lifeline of Africa."
Does he say this every day? To every visitor? Is this his daily act of contrition? Did he say it to Tessa too?
"Africa has eighty percent of the world's AIDS sufferers, Peter. That's a conservative estimate. Three-quarters of them receive no medication. For this we must thank the pharmaceutical companies and their servants, the U.S. State Department, who threaten with sanctions any country that dares produce its own cheap version of American-patented medicines. OK? Have you written that down?"
Justin gives Lorbeer a reassuring nod. "Keep going."
"The pills in this jar cost twenty U.S. dollars apiece in Nairobi, six in New York, eighteen in Manila. Any day now, India's going to manufacture the generic version and the same pill will cost sixty cents. Don't talk to me about the research and development costs. The pharmaceutical boys wrote them off ten years ago and a lot of their money comes from governments in the first place, so they're talking crap. What we got here is an amoral monopoly that costs human lives every day. OK?"
Lorbeer knows his exhibits so well he doesn't need to search for them. He replaces the jar in the shelves and grabs a large black and white box.
"These bastards have been peddling this same compound for thirty years already. What's it for? Malaria. Know why it's thirty years old, Peter? Maybe a few people in New York should get malaria one day, then you see if they don't find a cure pretty damn quick!" He selects another box. His hands, like his voice, are trembling with honest indignation. "This generous and philanthropic pharma in New Jersey made a donation of its product to the poor starving nations of the world, OK? The pharmas, they need to be loved. If they're not loved, they get scared and miserable."
And dangerous, Justin thinks, but not aloud.
"Why did the pharma donate this drug? I'll tell you. Because they have produced a better one. The old one is superfluous to stock. So they give Africa the old one with six months of life left in it, and they get a few million dollars' tax break for their generosity. Plus they are saving themselves a few more millions of warehousing costs and the costs of destroying old drugs they can't sell. Plus everybody says, look at them, what nice guys they are. Even the shareholders are saying it." He turns the box over and scowls contemptuously at its base. "This consignment sat in a customs house in Nairobi for three months while the customs guys waited for somebody to bribe them. A couple of years back the same pharma sent Africa hair restorer, smoking cures and cures for obesity, and collected a multimillion-dollar tax break for their philanthropy. Those bastards got no feeling for anything but the fat god Profit, and that's the truth."