Listening for Lions (14 page)

“Well, let us carry on.” He gave Janaki and me a cunning look. “We don't want to injure your sensibilities, young women, so if there is anything that you find difficult or embarrassing, you will let us know?”

“Yes, Sir,” we said. My face was burning, but Janaki appeared unconcerned.

The last patient on the rounds was a man with jaundice. There could be no question, for he was as yellow as a lemon. The patient's record was passed around among us students. “Well, Osborn”—Dr. Raspton chose a young resident who looked stunned at being singled out—“give us your diagnosis.”

Mr. Osborn studied the patient's record. Stuttering with fear, he replied, “I would say it was the man's liver.”

“Would you indeed?” Dr. Raspton looked at the rest of us. “And is there another opinion?”

From the records I saw the man had chills and fever, headache and nausea. I had seen similar symptoms at Tumaini in patients suffering from the bites of certain kinds of lice. I think I believed I could get back in Dr. Raspton's good graces by answering his question. Of course I should have known better. “Could it be the bite of some insect, Sir?” I asked. “Perhaps a louse?”

Dr. Raspton's hawk's eyes narrowed. He had his prey in sight. “Well, well, Miss Pritchard, you have managed to make your fellow residents look especially foolish this morning. You are correct, though not quite correct. If you were in Africa, you might find these symptoms caused by lice. In England it is caused by ticks. I hope the men in the class will feel free to come to you for help, since by comparison with you, they appear to be quite stupid.”

I felt twenty-eight pairs of furious eyes trained on me. After that, any task that might be considered remotely embarrassing to a young woman was left to me by the male residents. Janaki was sympathetic. “But Rachel,” she said, “you needn't have told everything you knew right at the beginning.”

Not all the doctors were hostile to women. When at the end of the year one of the residents, Edgar Nealthingham,
asked the neurologist if it wasn't true that women's brains were smaller than men's, the doctor said, “Yes, Mr. Nealthingham, it is quite true and certainly a puzzle, since Miss Pritchard and Miss Kumar got first-class honors in their London examinations this year while you barely scraped through.”

The residents would give one another sly looks when I had to complete examinations on male patients, but there was nothing that I had not seen long before at Tumaini. When I had first begun to work in the hospital, my father had said, “God fashioned the human body, Rachel. Every bit of it is God's work, so there is no need for shame.”

Janaki was never bothered by the residents' superior attitude.

“Don't they make you angry?” I asked, for I would cheerfully have choked them all.

“It doesn't matter to me, Rachel. I have been sent here to learn the newest medicines and techniques and to take them back with me to India. A wealthy family in India is paying for my education here, and it is a great expense for them. There is no need for me to waste my time in useless anger. I have only to think of the women in India who need my help. Until there were women doctors, Indian women in purdah—that is, women who were not allowed to go out in public or to have anything to do with a man outside of their family—could not go to a doctor. No matter how ill they were, their sickness could only be
described to another person, who would then describe it to a doctor. The doctor would make a diagnosis, but he would never be allowed to see the patient. Think of a woman dying an agonizing death because no male doctor could touch her. No, let them make fun of us. They are nothing to me.”

Shamed, after that I kept my head down and my mouth shut. By our last year the early antagonisms were forgotten. We were all comrades. We had been through so much together, we were like people in a lifeboat upon a raging sea. All we cared about was our survival. On the day that I qualified as a physician, and my name was written down on the register, I went to the mission board. I was twenty-three and had received my inheritance. I had already sent a check to the board for the supplies I would need in Tumaini. Now I proudly went there to show off my physician's license.

Miss Lothrop, with as many bows and ruffles as ever, congratulated me. There was none of the doubt she had shown before. I don't think she would have chosen a woman doctor for the mission, but now that one was available, I think she was resigned. In an indifferent voice she said, “We are very pleased.” And then she smiled at me and said, “How proud your father would be.”

I
made a last trip to Stagsway. Over the years it had changed. There was less of Grandfather there and more of the Royal Bird Society.

Mr. Duggen complained. “They tramp right through my roses to see the birds what don't get close enough for them. I believe they'd like 'em served up on a silver platter.”

Still, I knew Grandfather would be pleased to see how enthusiastic his visitors were and how, in spite of Mr. Duggen's abused roses, Stagsway kept its charm. Ellie and Arthur had married, and Mr. Pernick shyly confided, “I'm pleased to say I'm engaged, Miss Pritchard, to a charming woman who is particularly knowledgeable about the migrating habits of the
Motacilla trochilus
.”

Though he made no effort to stop me, Mr. Grumbloch was astounded that I wished to go back to Tumaini. “You
are leaving civilization for heat and dust and wild animals. I don't see it.”

Frieda was delighted. She had very odd ideas of what was worn in Africa and took me to Liberty on Regent Street to buy silk frocks, “for garden parties,” and to Brigg in St. James's Street to buy umbrellas and parasols, “to keep the sun from your complexion.”

“I'll never have an occasion for a silk dress,” I pleaded, “and a straw hat will take care of my complexion.”

The Grumblochs saw me off, Mr. Grumbloch furnishing me with money orders and Keating's insect powder and Frieda with Cadbury chocolates and Virginia Woolf's latest novel. Frieda promised to visit me. “I want to see if Tumaini really exists.”

I thought the four-week voyage would never end. So eager was I to reach Africa that at times the ship seemed caught in the water like a leaf endlessly turning around in a pool. I ate my chocolates, read my books, dined, and chatted with the other passengers, but my mind was always sailing ahead of the ship. Would I be able to rebuild Tumaini? Would the lives of the Kikuyu and Masai be safe in my hands? Would the Kikuyu and Masai trust me? One day I answered the questions one way and the next day another way. I was like the leopard at the moment before it springs, tasting only what was to come.

We suffered through a terrible storm with rolling seas. We saw flying fish and dolphins follow the ship like
obedient puppies. We had singsongs after dinner, and there were masquerade balls and tea dances. There were charades and games of bridge and backgammon and shuffleboard tournaments and badminton contests. There were flirtations and quarrels and visits to ports. This time I saw Alexandria, but mostly I was bored and impatient, so that finally, when Mombasa's ancient fort came into view, I wept with relief.

The train from Mombasa to Nairobi chugged along slowly, but now I didn't care, for on either side of the railway were the familiar tall grasses and flat-topped acacia trees, and in the distance my old friend, Mount Kenya. Medicines and surgical equipment were waiting for me in Nairobi, and so was my automobile, a Ford truck that I could use to carry supplies to Tumaini. The gentleman at the garage where I picked up the truck was obviously surprised to see that R. Pritchard was a young woman; however, the car had been paid for and he turned it over to me. He pointed out the superior gear shift, the double-beam headlights, and the hand-operated windshield wipers and then waited for me to drive off.

When I stood there for some minutes, he asked, “Is there some difficulty with the truck, Madam?”

With a scarlet face, I murmured, “I've never driven an automobile.”

“Ah,” he said. “Perhaps I might just demonstrate the basic workings of it for you.” More uncertainly he added,
“And then I could accompany you while you gave the truck a little run about the city.”

So began what must have been the most terrifying moments of the gentleman's life, but after a bit I caught on, and leaving him at the garage, I collected all my equipment and a large cat, for I had not forgotten the rats that had wandered into our house. The cat was the tawny color of a lion, and for a name I gave it the Swahili word for lion, Simba. Full of joy, I drove to Tumaini, stirring up a plume of red dust like the veil of a bride on her way to the happiest day of her life.

Time in Africa is not like time in England, where an ancient ruin stands stone on stone for the centuries. Man is not the master in Africa. As I turned off the main road from Nairobi onto the road that led to Tumaini, a road that I had known well, I hesitated. It was no longer a road, but an overgrown track, a trail that might have been made by animals traveling to and from a waterhole.

Seeing what even a few short years had done, I had my first doubts. With the grasses sweeping the bottom of the truck, I pushed on, afraid that any minute it would plunge into an antbear hole or get stuck in soft sand. When at last I reached Tumaini, just as I feared, Tumaini wasn't there.

The rains had dissolved the mud bricks. The
bati
, the corrugated iron of the roof, had been carried away to become someone else's roof or perhaps to make bracelets. Ants had made a meal of the wooden doors. If someone
dies in a Kikuyu hut, the Kikuyu think it unlucky and burn down the hut. It was like that with Tumaini. There had been deaths, and now everything had moldered away. After my initial shock I scoured the grasses, determined to find some evidence that Tumaini had existed, but the only proof I found were the crosses that marked my parents' graves and the graves of Kanoro's father and the missionary. And Valerie's grave. Someone was tending the small graveyard.

As I stood there telling my parents that I had returned and what I meant to do, I noticed a movement among the bushes. I was ready to run back to the truck when Kanoro stepped out. Or I thought it was Kanoro, the Kanoro whom I recalled from my childhood.

“
Bibi
Rachel?” He backed away from me as if I were a spirit, and no telling whether good or evil.

“Kanoro?”

“
Nina itwa
Ngigi.”

Nina itwa
: “I am called.” The first Swahili words I had heard since leaving Tumaini. Of course, years had passed. It was Kanoro's son, Ngigi, the
mtoto
whose leg I had nursed. I saw that around his neck was a cord and strung onto the cord a small black-and-silver ornament. A part of a stethoscope! That remnant of Tumaini gave me hope. Swahili words came back to me in a rush. “Ngigi, you are a young man.”

“Yes, and I have a wife and a bit of land and soon a child. Are you truly here?”

“Oh, yes. I've come to stay. I mean to open the hospital again. Will you help me, Ngigi? And tell me where your
baba
is and Ita and Wanja and Nduta and everyone from the hospital.”

He seemed surprised that I did not know these things. He explained as if to a small child, “They are all at their
shamba
s except Nduta, who has gone to live with her husband's family. My
baba
is at his
shamba
also, but he shivers and sweats and does not stir about much. If you bring back the hospital, will a doctor come to make him well?”

“Ngigi, I am a doctor now. I'll come and see your
baba
at once.” Ngigi did not seem in the least surprised to find I was a doctor, and I remembered that there were women witch doctors as well as men. At least here I would have no battle to fight.

I took up my medicine bag and followed Ngigi, learning as I hurried along the familiar path that Ngigi came regularly to keep the graveyard from disappearing into the bush. “
Baba
sends me,” Ngigi said. “You gave a promise to him to return, and he would not have you find the graves of your parents gone to nothing. For us a grave means little, but with you it is different.” The Kikuyu carried their dead into the fields, and the insects and the vultures cleaned the bones. It was not unusual to find a bleached bone or even a skull. I thought it would not be a bad thing to end your days scraped clean and resting in the sun.

I all but ran to Kanoro's
shamba
. He had aged. When I threw my arms around him, it was like embracing the small bones of a sparrow.

“Nzuri! Nzuri!”
Kanoro said, and I thought how there is no word in English that means both wonderful and terrible and yet at this moment it was the perfect word, for it was wonderful to be back and to have my arms around Kanoro and it was terrible that Tumaini had disappeared and Kanoro was so ill.

“Now, tell me of your sickness,” I said. When I examined him, I found Kanoro was suffering from a severe bout of malaria. Relieved that it was something I could treat, I gave him medicine and ordered rest.

With all of Kanoro's family about, I was escorted to the one bench in the hut. “Let us hear your story,” Kanoro said. They were amazed at my long journey across the ocean to the land where snow fell. “The house I lived in,” I said, “had enough rooms for a whole Kikuyu village.” They did not quite believe what I told them, but they enjoyed the hearing of it. At last they wanted to know of my plans for the hospital.

“We must find many people to make bricks,” I said, “and we will have to dig a new well, a large one, and we must do it quickly, for the cots have been ordered and the laboratory equipment and a generator as large as your hut. This time the hospital will have all it needs, Kanoro. Now you must get well so that you can help me. I'll be
back tomorrow,” I promised.

Ngigi stood in front of me as I started to leave. “You will need someone at your side,” he said. “Until my
baba
is well, let me be that person.”

I was grateful to Ngigi. Even as a child I had known that though we imagined ourselves in charge, the Kikuyu understood very well that we would perish without them.

Though the evening was cool, I slept in the bed of the truck, Simba curled at my feet. I could smell the smoke from fires set by the Masai to burn off grass for planting. A male and female spotted owl courted one another. A toad shrilled. At last, and from a great distance, I heard the sound for which I had been hungering, the low roar of a lion. When I fell asleep, it was to the sounds that had been my lullaby as a child.

In the morning Ngigi awoke me. He had brought a dozen men. By afternoon I had a mud-walled house with a thatched roof and a line of people, some of them ill and some who merely said that they were ill so that they might see the red-haired witch doctor. Once I had to leave the line of patients to hide in the cab of the truck and cry, for I was where I wanted to be and doing what I had dreamed of doing.

The next day I was up at dawn. I waited impatiently for the men to return so that we could begin work on the foundation of the hospital, but though I waited until noon, no men came and Ngigi would not explain their
absence, though I was sure he understood the reason. Just as I was ready to go to Kanoro's
shamba
and ask his advice, Ngigi came to me with a worried frown puckering his young face. “
Bibi
Rachel, Wangombe comes.”

“Who is Wangombe?” From the fear in Ngigi's voice, I knew it must be someone bringing trouble with him.

“The old chief of your father's time, Mabui, is dead, and Wangombe is chief now. He is a man who is a chief at all times, even when he eats and sleeps.”

Wangombe appeared with a small retinue of followers. He was splendid in strings of shells and beads, a cloak of monkey fur, and a headdress of ostrich plumes. I stood up and greeted him formally, bowing. He did the same, and we faced each other warily, waiting to see who would speak the first word. At last I said, “Wangombe, I am honored to see you here.”

“
Msabu
, you would not come to me, so I have come to you.”

I saw at once what my mistake had been and was furious with myself, for I knew better. I was in Wangombe's territory. Wangombe's men had worked all day for me. All this without my consulting with Wangombe. “Wangombe, I have been away from this land for many years and in the land of another chief.” When I saw his face cloud, I hastened to add, “One not so great as you. Because that other chief was not so great, I had forgotten the power of a chief and his importance. I see my mistake. You were
very generous to allow your men to come here yesterday. I have many, many days' work ahead. I hope you will allow your men to help me.”

“I would be honored to have my men give help, but there is the matter of their crops. The planting must be done and the crops cared for. They cannot be spared.”

It was the women who planted the crops and tended them. The men would have nothing to do with crops. “Wangombe, I know it will be a great sacrifice for the men to give up the tending of the crops. You will tell me what a suitable wage is for such a sacrifice.”

After that there was heavy bargaining, with Ngigi whispering in my ear that Wangombe was asking too much. At last we came to an agreement, and as if by magic the men appeared and cheerfully went to work.

I had been making plans for the hospital for years, but I had been young when the hospital had been there, and I didn't know what its problems had been. Ita and Wanja and Jata were found. We all sat together at Kanoro's
shamba
, and I drew pictures with a sharp stick on the packed dirt floor of Kanoro's hut. Jata was as bossy as ever, but her ideas were useful. “There must be space in the children's room for the mothers to sleep.” And I agreed, for I remembered many a mother who would not leave her child at night and slept under the child's cot.

Ita was a great help, for he had worked in the operating room. “We must have doors that close firmly,
Bibi
Rachel, so that the relatives don't gather to look over our shoulders.”

Kanoro said, “There must be a place without trees or dried grasses for the families to cook their
posho
and roast their goats without setting fires.”

Chief Wangombe came often and had his own suggestions. He had once been to Nairobi and had seen the three-story hotel. “One house sits on another house,” he said, “and on that other house yet one more house. The putting of houses on top of one another would save more land for growing crops or for pasture.”