Free In the Belly of the Elephant by Susan Corbett Page A

wooden legs that would protect the harvested grain from insects and rodents.
    Fati, Adiza, and I found Emma, who took us to see several of the new mud stoves the village masons had constructed in different courtyards. The women liked the chimneys that carried away the smoke, but the mud plaster around the cook holes was cracking. One woman wasn’t using her stove, preferring the familiarity of her three-rock fire. She promised to test it before our next visit.
    Our next stop was Toukka, then on to Selbo. Visiting three villages in one day was unusual and didn’t allow for a lot of time in any one place. But we wanted to evaluate as many of the new stove models as possible, and Nassuru needed to begin planning for grain store construction.
    We left Selbo late in the afternoon. Tired from the heat, I rested my head against the window frame until the pot holes made it too uncomfortable. We had looked at so many stoves the whole day was a blur. Lily would have shaken her head at me, saying I was definitely not being mindful of unextraordinary times.
    Out on the plain, a mud hut with remnants of a thatched roof stood abandoned, surrounded by a broken fence of thorny branches. Dried up millet stalks stuck up out of a field like broken scarecrows. And I was back in Idaho, Tricia steering the truck instead of Hamidou.
    An old cabin with a caved-in roof appeared between the trunks of an aspen grove as we sped by. Over a hundred years ago, about the time my great-great-grandparents were following Brigham Young across the plains, a pioneer had quit the hardships of the Oregon Trail to build that cabin on the banks of Willow Creek. To build his own place.
    The memory of my voice echoed inside my head. “I just want to go someplace where I can live my own life.”
    Tricia slowed to ease the Jeep across the steel poles of a cattle grate. “That’s what worries him.”
    “What?”
    “He’s afraid you’ll marry an African, or worse, get pregnant.”
    I pounded my fist against the side of the car and Tricia jumped. “God, I can’t wait to get out of here.”
    We skirted the banks of the creek and rounded a bend in strained silence. The valley opened up before us and fields fanned out on all sides. Wheat flowed like liquid gold over the slopes and around the base of the hills. A balloon expanded inside my chest until I felt it would break. This was the land my great-grandfather had homesteaded, the wide open spaces that had forged the diamond in my soul.
    I had wondered then. What do you do when your spirit lives in the land but your heart can’t stay anymore?
    “We will only stay a few minutes.” Hamidou was talking to me.
    I looked around. Where we normally turned left toward Dori, Hamidou took a hard right. Something squawked. I twisted around to see a chicken lying in the back with its legs bound. We drove until we found the baobab where the marabou, the old man who had given Hamidou the string back in March, sat in the shade of the same thorn bush. Two vultures raised their wrinkled heads from the remnants of the goat carcass. Disturbed by our arrival, they flew up into the branches of the baobab. Taking the chicken and a burlap sack tied with rope, Hamidou shook the old man’s hand, and, while talking, handed him the sack and chicken.
    “It’s a gift,” I said.
    Fati nodded.
    “What’s in the sack?”
    “Millet,” Adiza said. “Hamidou is thanking the old man for the health of his nephew.”
    A sack of millet during hungry season was a truly valuable gift. Who knew if the little boy had survived because of the tetanus vaccine or the marabou’s medicine? Probably both.
    As we drove away, the vultures settled back onto the ground, their sharp beaks picking at leather and bones.
    Around five, Dori’s tin and thatch roofs came into view. Entering town on the south road, we drove toward the office in silence, everyone half-dozing. Hamidou slowed. Nassuru took in a quick breath of air and I snapped awake.
    The market