CHAPTER FOUR
The drive into the village left me shaky with fatigue.
We bumped and jostled along the makeshift road and my arms ached from grasping the “oh crap” handles in the Land Rover.
Sweat ran down my sides, in between my breasts, and across my brow, but I didn’t mind.
The beauty of the scene distracted me from the more miserable aspects of acclimating to the bumpy terrain.
Giant pine trees towered high above us interspersed with palms, banana trees, mangroves, ferns, and colorful orchids, growing wild against velvet-soft moss.
Trees heavy with large orbs of orange-colored fruit, ripened in the sun.
Thickness coated the air with emerald wetness that sparkled with life.
I imagined I could hear the plants breathing in their food from the sun.
After breaking through a clearing the jostling was much gentler.
Small huts came into view and we began to attract little black bodies, with wide, white-toothed smiles and whooping laughs.
Semi-naked bodies, lean and beautiful, ran along the side of the vehicle, reaching in the window to touch me in welcome.
It was one of the things I loved most about the people I met on our travels.
Their reckless abandon of relational inhibitions used to make me feel uncomfortable.
But the more I traveled to these countries where their greatest treasures were the relationships they had with one another, the more I allowed myself to be the recipient of so much undeserved love and acceptance.
Before I realized it, the walls of protection I’d built around myself while traveling were crumbling with each smile, each touch of their grimy little hands.
Greg pulled the Rover next to a large hut covered in a thatch roof. The mob of children continued to surround us, inciting more and more curious onlookers looking up from their fires or coming to the doors of their huts—all smiles.
Three Americans came out of the big canopy where we’d parked the Rover.
“Welcome in,” an older gentleman with white hair and a sunburned nose waved the children away with a phrase I didn’t understand.
“Hey, Tom. It’s good to see you.”
“We were afraid you’d never make it.” Rachel, the linguistics specialist, and Tom had lived with the Makian’s for the last year learning the language, and building relationships. “I had to tell them to hold off the pig for another two days after your call. They are eager to celebrate.”
“Oh? What is the occasion?”
“Your arrival,” Greg said with a grin, but it slowly faded as he looked at my face. “Let’s go get that cut checked out.”
“What happened? You get in a fight with a tree kanga?” I shot an irritated look in the direction of the other man in the group—Dameon—the tech and equipment guru.
“Nope, just a boat,” I said.
Greg led me through a large hut, my eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dimness.
Thick air filled the small space. There were only two small window openings on either side, but the ceiling was surprisingly high, at least twelve feet with two large poles supporting the rafters which held the thatch roof in place.
The room separated into three different stations. The first area held the equipment that used a generator: a desk with a computer, the satellite phone connection, and a small coffee pot. The second area held a foldable table with chairs tucked around it—the mission boardroom.
The last room toward the back of the hut acted as the medical station, where a few cots stacked against the wall. A row of plastic drawers, holding dwindling supplies, sat next to a padded examination table. Greg patted it for me to hop up and then rummaged through the bins for what he needed.
I sat—the days of travel catching up with me, pulling me into a haze of brain fog, and the gash made my head throb. He brought over the antiseptic and started cleaning the dried blood.
“Ouch!” I sucked in a breath, pulling away.
“What’s that you always say about nurses making the worst patients?”
“Same thing you always say about doctors with lousy bedside manner.” He cradled the back of my head with his large hand, his face serious with concentration. “Hold still. Should only need a couple sutures so it won’t scar.”
I let him work in silence for a minute, knowing a storm brewed beneath his thinly veiled composure.
“Did someone die?” I asked finally.
His eyes flashed to mine and he let out an audible breath. “Am I that easy to read?”
“Always have been. Remember, it’s right here,” I reached a finger, gently touching the wrinkled space between his eyebrows.
A brief silence followed, “Three someones actually…” he sighed, threading the suture needle before making the first stitch, “…in the past three days.”
I winced as he closed the gash. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten.”
He was silent as he finished his work, enclosing the sutures with a small bandage. He placed his forehead against mine, our noses almost touching.
“I don’t think any of us realized until a few weeks ago,” he pulled away, studying my face with a distracted look.
“We’ve only had two clinic days because we keep getting pulled out toward the conflict.
I suppose we’ll keep the field hospital set up for now, if you can call it that, but there are still a ton of needs, especially with the festivities tonight and the funeral ceremonies in the next few days.
There’ll be a slew of Makians coming out of the woodwork, and I’m sure they’ll take advantage of the medical aid. ”
“So, in other words, time to get to work?” I could see the gears turning in his mind, spinning any number of scenarios in the span of a few seconds.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Hopefully things will quiet down. I’m not sure when or how many more lives the Hundi need to take until they feel vindicated for what happened. But hopefully, we’ll be able to focus on the more minor issues.
“As for you, you need sleep!”
I slept hard for a few hours, despite the warmth of the small room I shared with Rachel. The room was sparse, just two cots covered in mosquito netting that hung from the ceiling and a low table that separated them.
I woke, feeling more rested and clear-headed than I had in the past three days. After I splashed bottled water on my face, and changed clothes, hushed giggling from the window drew me to investigate.
“Gotcha!” I reached out, grabbing at the little dark heads that ducked underneath, inciting roiling shrieks from my new admirers before they ran off.
Smiling, I ducked out of the hut into the slowly falling dusk. Small fires dotted the fronts of each hut that lined the central part of the tribe. The smell of roasting meat drifted through the air and led me down the hill where a small crowd of women gathered around a large mound of smoking dirt.
The women, sitting in a primal squat, used shovels to move the dirt, revealing a material like plastic and blue cloth.
After peeling it away more smoke continued to rise from the ground, revealing wilted banana leaves.
Large serving trays and bowls soon overflowed with roasted greens, carrots, cabbage, and sweet potatoes, all decadently roasted from the hot coals and rocks buried underneath the earth. My mouth watered.
“Welkam!”
“Yu stap gut?”
“Kai Kai,” the chorus of voices rang out as they saw me, and then thrust a tray of vegetables in my hands, motioning for me to follow them down into a clearing where a hundred or so Makians had gathered around a bonfire.
Torches set ablaze lined the area with a warm glow, the smoke keeping the bugs away.
I noticed a whole roasting pig on a large spit at the end of an enormously long, flattened log which was perched on blocks of wood where the women were depositing their trays of food.
Plantains, rice, and a large pot of steaming soup added to the roasted veggies, creating a spread that could’ve served an army. And an army they were—the Makians.
The men mingling around the clearing were festooned in fancy tribal headdresses of colorful feathers, tropical flowers, furs and grasses, their faces painted with bright yellow and red paint.
Their bare chests fully decorated with necklaces of shell and rope, pieces of leather, and beautifully colored beads.
Some of the children wore full body paint, their thongs and grass skirts just barely covering their nakedness.
I couldn’t help but feel the levity at the surrounding celebration.
“There you are,” Greg said, behind me. “I went to wake you, but you’d gone. Feeling better?”
“Much,” I smiled up at him, seeing the necklaces that adorned his neck. “Joining in the rituals, are we?” I said, fingering the shells and leather.
“Gifts from my many admirers. Just wait. You’ll have your fair share soon.”
We gathered around the table, lines on each side, filling large banana leaves with mouth-watering food that we took back to small mats on the ground.
I saw the other team members split between a few small groups of Makians—their Wasfamili—or host family, all sitting on mats on the ground, as was the custom for meals.
The hum of conversation and the crackle of the large bonfire warmed me from the inside out.
This was the slow down I needed and one of the things I looked forward to when I traveled with Greg.
The different cultures we were exposed to over the years left us both with a yearning to live life differently than the rest of our colleagues, but we never seemed to make it happen once we were thrust back into the real world of work, bills, and the pace that kept our lives going.
We sat on a woven floor mat with our host family, and ate. The children placed necklaces around my neck throughout the meal.
The food was just about as fresh and organic as you could get, most of the vegetables probably picked just that morning. It tasted earthy and visceral, like exactly what a body wanted to eat, and my stomach settled with a deep warmth that spread throughout my entire body.