There are more huts, closer together, and gardens containing crops. Children in rags scatter and cluck like chickens, waving at the car or running from it.
‘So many children,’ Melinda says. She has statistics for this too. Seventy-five percent of the population is under fourteen.
A boy runs right at the car, banging it with his hand. I feel my stomach lurch. Is that what it sounds like — a child hitting a car? The sharp, sudden thud, the quick release of the sound?
The car, so large, absorbs the impact and continues on, effortlessly. I turn to look over my shoulder at the little boy. He’s chasing after the car, laughing, and then he vanishes in the dust. Eclipsed, as if he was never there at all.
Then I correct myself: the sound I’m trying to place isn’t a child hitting a car. But a car hitting a child. Hitting children. Smashing into them. Children who didn’t run away, laughing. They broke open. They stained the asphalt.
‘These children,’ Jackson says. ‘They are very bad.’ These children, these children. I move my head on its axis, casually, slowly toward Jackson. I appear completely normal.
‘What kind of a future are they gonna have?’ Bob shakes his head sadly, angrily. ‘No land, no jobs. No Serengeti, that’s for damn sure.’
‘Are we any better off?’ Melinda valiantly battles her nausea to score a point. ‘Texas has the highest rate of child poverty in America. And some of the richest people.’
Bob scowls, ‘You read too much.’
How does she stand him?
Jackson doesn’t participate in these conversations. Either he genuinely has nothing to say about the current state and future of his country, any other country, the entire world; or he doesn’t want to express his opinions. I get the feeling Jackson is like a train on a single track — one of those airport monorails. He goes around and around, the doors opening and closing, people he doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know getting in and getting out. He drives the same routes, Manyara, Ngorongoro, Serengeti, stays at the same hotels, answers the same questions, points out the same lions, turns around, drives back, gives the same smile whatever the tip.
Now he grips the wheel, as usual driving too fast, hunched forward. Is he even looking at the road? Or at the end of it? To the bustling capital of Arusha where he lives: the bar, the girlfriend, the blessed silence or the loud music — anything but the ceaseless chatter from the back seat, what’s that, what’s this, does an elephant, does a giraffe, where is, how is, when is, what, what, where, how, I specifically asked for the vegetarian lunchbox.
‘Oh, God,’ says Melinda, and this time she just pukes out the window.
Bob says, ‘This is no joke, sweetie. We should be going to a real hospital. Not some quack shack in the middle of Tanzania.’
A grand roundabout heralds a town. A town of sorts. The cement structure at the juncture of two dirt roads comprises a series of flying arcs. But I’m unable to interpret the artist’s vision as a large section has crumbled, revealing a rusting rebar skeleton. Perhaps there was supposed to be a fountain, but the cement floor has cracked wide open. Instead of sparkling, glittering water, the roundabout holds all manner of trash, which is picked over by chickens and children.
‘Where are we?’
Jackson slows momentarily to avoid a goat. ‘Magulu.’
‘Magulu, Christ.’ Bob peers out the window. ‘It’s goddamn Splinterville.’
‘What comes after Magulu?’ I ask Jackson.
‘Nothing.’
‘It’s a dead end?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It is a fully dead end.’
‘For God’s sake, sweetie.’ With his bandana, Bob pats away the spittle on Melinda’s face, ‘We have good insurance, we’re fully covered for evacuation.’
Low-slung breeze-block buildings extend beyond the roundabout. Small side streets drift off between these buildings to mud-and-wattle shacks. But beyond them, Magulu loses interest in itself. The thick, knobby bush resumes, relentless, interminable, muttering on until the sky. The rolling geography of the land means the horizon could be anywhere. Am I seeing a hundred miles or twenty?
There’s a bar with four breeze-block walls and blue UN tarpaulin for a roof. Inside I can just make out a pool table, red plastic chairs, men peering at us. Outside, a duck with a broken wing pecks at an old corn cob.
Jackson stops in front of what must be the clinic. The whitewash is fresh, the door marked with a painted pale blue cross. Perhaps this is a good sign: someone, after all, cares.
Three women and their babies sit on a wooden bench under the overhang of the tin roof.
Bob swats at a fly. ‘We should just turn around and go back to the hotel. Get the flying ambulance like the manager said.’
‘We’ve come all this way,’ says Melinda. ‘At least let’s see if this doctor can help.’
When Jackson is out of the car, walking up the steps, Bob says, ‘You know Africa is where all the pharmaceutical companies dump their out-of-date stock and all the crap they can’t get past the FDA.’
‘For goodness sake, Bob, dear, let’s just see.’
Jackson comes out of the clinic with a small, odd woman. She wears a beige polyester trouser suit, high heels and a badly fitting wig. The wig is cut in a pageboy style, black with garish blonde highlights. It’s the kind of wig a prostitute might choose. Yet, she is wearing a white lab coat. The overall effect is confusing, and I wonder for a brief moment if she’s a tiny transvestite. I’m certain she’s a woman, but that’s the feeling: of disparity, of pieces that don’t quite fit. She is oddly and overly dressed, yet her features are neat, naked of makeup, and her dark brown eyes are quick and clever.
‘Hello.’ Her gaze moves from one to the other of us in the car. She smiles. ‘I am Doctor Dorothea. I am here to help you.’ She speaks with the faintest of lisps.
‘It’s Mrs Phillips,’ Jackson gestures to Melinda. ‘She’s very sick.’
Doctor Dorothea’s eyes widen and she follows Jackson’s look to focus on Melinda. ‘Oh, I am so sorry. Mrs Phillips, please. Let us go inside.’
Melinda gets out. She wobbles slightly and Jackson catches her arm. ‘I’m all right,’ she snaps.
‘No, you’re not,’ Bob says, taking her other arm. ‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Of course,’ replies Doctor Dorothea. ‘We must all come.’
Jackson now looks at me. ‘You come, also. You cannot wait here at the car.’ He then waves an arm in a general way. ‘These people are not good.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Dorothea says. ‘There is room inside.’
A small crowd has gathered to watch us.
Dorothea turns and stage-whispers, ‘These people are all thieves. They stole my stethoscope. Can you imagine? For what? What are they going to do with a stethoscope? It’s just to steal, that’s all.’ She shakes her head and makes a little snort.
We reach the door and she pushes it open. The coolness inside is a dark, calm well in the heat. But the room is too small and there aren’t enough chairs. I tell them I’ll wait outside. Melinda looks as if she’s about to be sick again. Bob turns to me, ‘Yes, you wait outside.’
There is space on the edge of the bench, next to the women with the babies. I sit and shut my eyes against the sun. I can feel it through the red tissue of my eyelids. The sun holds me, I hover in the heat. I am encased by warmth. Still. I can allow myself this, can’t I? Not peace, merely stillness.