The Close Warm Comfort of the Wild

I feed the fire with small dry branches of a dead fever tree. In the darkness a freckled nightjar calls, followed by the distant cackle of spotted hyena. Rising flames cast a glow on my three captors, each nursing his own affliction.

Akani mumbles and shivers in his sleep, cheeks beaded in sweat. Malaria. Vukosi squats nearby, gripping his AK-47 as flanks clench and face contorts in another spasm. Dysentery. He glares. As if I’m the cause of our predicament, not the tarp-wrapped bundle beside Nhelo. Barely a teen, Nhelo suffers only a conscience. When our eyes meet, I offer an excessively friendly smile. He frowns, turns away.

My bad. Ever since my clumsy bookish childhood, I’ve misread social cues and timing. In med school I could have, should have put less into molecular biochemistry and more into human behavior. As an intern such study might have improved my bedside manner ratings. Yesterday it might have prevented my blunder.

After quick, tight breaths I hear, then smell, a spatter of diarrhea. Despite the gun, my captors are too frail to rape me. Besides, they need my medical skills and concern. But it won’t last. Health will erode sympathy. When and if we reach the coast, they won’t release me alive.

I’ve seen too much.

*

Somewhere in the urban ethernet, my LinkedIn profile brags: Dr. Carol Sanborne, physician, internal medicine, clinical ethnobotanist, Sangoma Pharmaceuticals Inc., Boston, MA. For seven years I’ve been shuttling here to eastern Zimbabwe. In the first years I spent countless weeks recording interviews with customary healers, inyanga. Each showed me how to procure and apply traditional medicine, muti, just as their matriarchs taught them. Ground sausage tree seeds boost fertility. Boiled silver cluster leaf roots terminate pregnancy. Inhaled leadwood smoke ease coughing fits. Steamed sickle bush acacia dulls toothaches. Perhaps they do. To separate placebo noise from authentic signal, I document usage, mark exact recipes, timestamp samples, and test efficacy in FDA-controlled clinical trials.

Zimbabwe’s regime cut out these middle women to take its cut in future drug royalties. In exchange, officials granted Sangoma Inc. exclusive bio-prospecting rights. My bosses caved. Western ailments – diabetes, heart disease, hypertension – are too lucrative. To treat these, I found the most promising biochemical compounds derived from mature wild marula trees, the oldest of which grew in the easternmost pocket of Gonarezhou National Park.

For each research excursion I’d drive the jeep until the terrain grew too rough, then trek the last miles on foot. I had to be careful of elephants, which came from miles to devour the ripe marula fruit. I watched them for hours, keeping a safe distance. But one morning, while following my GPS route, I looked up and saw a large female up close. Dead.

At that point I could have, should have backed off. Turned around. Fled to the jeep. Radioed it in. Instead, I went closer, drawn to the carnage. I recorded notes: the cloying smell of blood; dark stains seeping into dust; flies swarming. I felt the wrinkled trunk, the thick, hairy ear. A yellow butterfly alighted on the moist gums where the tusk had been hacked away. I switched my iPhone to camera mode.

At my first clicks men emerged from the mopane trees. Again, I could have, should have waved. Laughed. Shrugged. Sacrificed my iPhone. Anything light. Instead, I yanked out my documents and brandished them in the air. My thinking – if that’s the word – was to reassure, to display neutrality.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m not a ranger, game warden, or police. Just business.” I handed my documents to the youngest, pointing out the official seal on the license. “See? Dr. Sanborne, auspices of ecological research, parks and wildlife.”

Hearing my words, the older men began shouting back and forth in Portuguese. Lord, I realized. They’re Mozambican. Wrong side of border. My blurted emphasis and permission slip only implicated me. Sweating, pointing, the big one reached down, picked up an assault rifle from the tall grass, and casually pointed it at my stomach.

The younger one held up a hand. He turned to me. “You said ‘doctor’?”

“Yes!”

“Espere, espere,” he said to the others. “Ela é uma médico.”

They exchanged glances, without lowering the rifle. The boy gestured me a few dozen yards away, where a fourth man lay. Half his ribs, shoulder, and face had been crushed. He was in shock, gasping. I felt broken, jagged bones. Internal bleeding. A collapsed lung. Racing to save him, and relieve pressure, I punctured his chest with a jackknife. He stopped breathing.

They grabbed my bloody knife and resumed shouting at me. Oof. Another blunder. To escape blame I could have, should have feigned incompetence. The boy rummaged through my pack, held up my medications and First Aid kit to them, then handed it back to me.

“We now go away doctor,” said the boy. “You come.” We left him exposed, face up, eyes open to the sun, and marched nonstop until making this camp.

*

Listening, I learn their names. I sense dissent. The crushed one may have been the ringleader. Once more I hear the nightjar call, the hyena answer.

My updated career profile, diminished, would now read: tend fire, don’t panic, think hard, stay alive.

I stare at the bundle. Judging from their train, each tusk must weigh 30 kilos, and I calculate: $200,000 from black market Swahili traders. Almost my salary, pre-tax. I get why they take the risk.

But the elephant has my sympathy, and gratitude. She improved my odds. Sensing the end she had nothing left to lose. Four city boys come for her teeth, so wild country gal takes one out with her.

Now three remain. That gives me an idea.

I recall what the inyangi taught me. Certain habitats attract attract certain animals. I would gravitate toward the deadliest.

*

I don’t sleep. Before dawn, they use my iPhone GPS to map a fast shortcut across the park’s northern edge. I need to divert, misdirect slow. As they start, I stay put. Vukosi raises the rifle.

“Go you, forward.”

 “Can’t.”

“Why?” asks Nhelo.

“Landmines,” I lie, pointing at the touchscreen to avoid eye contact. “From war. Not yet removed. Here.”

Nhelo conveys this, then translates back. “They want that you lead.”

An hour later, Vukosi must evacuate his bowels. He hands the rifle to Akani. Nhelo sets down the tusks, sees my scowl.

“You don’t like we take them,” he says. “For money.”

I shake my head.

“No,” he says. Then he takes out my papers, hands them back. “Yet also you come. You take. For money.”

I almost gasp. I want to reject it, but he’s right. I too am an upscale poacher.

We hear a shriek and see Vukosi frantic, squatting between a hippo and the river. In a panic it charges, mouth agape. Akani blasts off rounds, killing the hippo. But not before her teeth cut Vukosi in half.

Two down.

*

Seeking higher ground I never miss a chance to march through the wait-a-bit bush. It’s zig-zagged branches filled with paired thorns that hooked both ways, snagging and shredding faces and clothes. Fearing crocodiles, Akani won’t let us cross even shallow rivers. I lead them through a thick marsh, surprising a gang of Cape buffalo and we scurry behind a baobab.

Forced from the river I scour the ground for spoor, signs of the wild. Leopard, perhaps. Scorpions. Nothing. Then at sunset, luck.

Flopping against a termite mound, in the shade of jackalberry, Akani extends his arm and disturbs a cobra. It rears up, spreads its hood and sprays venom into Akani’s face, hitting his left cornea, scarring it.

We make camp early. Night brings hyenas. Three skulk on the outskirts. Later, nine whoop and snicker. I lose count of their huge, bobbing heads.

I failed to gather enough dry branches to get through the night. After several hours the fire subsides. I seek a way out. But Nhelo grips the machete. Akani keeps his rifle close.

Hyena circle, their eerie blank eyes reflecting in the darkness. Akani fires into the cackle. When no bullets remain, the hyenas start to lunge. Looping the strap around his wrist Akani swings at their faces, but with one eye misjudges the distance. A large hyena grabs the butt in its jaws and pulls. Unable to extract his wrist, Akani is dragged into their midst. Three down.

Nhelo and I look at the fire. If it dies, we follow. There’s only one thing left to burn. We unwrap a tusk and splinter it with the machete. I kindle the flame with my documents. Ivory ignites slowly but soon burns bright and hot. By morning the hyena have vanished.

I hold the machete, Nhelo the remaining tusk. We prepare to part in opposite directions.

“I keep,” he says, holding my iPhone. “You will make it?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Easy,” I say. “I’ll look for the vultures. In Africa, they always show the way.”