G. Pascal Zachary

from THE ELEPHANT MAN
a series of linked stories set in Cameroon



The small boys are teasing him again. Two of them paw at the dirt with their bare feet, dust rising from the ground as they chatter, their words sounding bold and clear against the silence of the dry Sahel. They stand shirtless, under a lonely tree, their shadows cast across the sun-baked dirt road. In rough voices, the boys boast about the elephants they have seen. Now that the white visitors are gone, they feel free to speak, even boast, about their achievements. And they feel free to inform an old man, the oldest elephant tracker in these parts, about his recent failures and the specter that his legendary skills have deserted him.
In between sips of water, the boys say harsh words in their Fulani language.
Yaya ignores the boys. He instead looks at a tree far off in the distance. As the boys taunt him, he becomes one with this distant tree, imagining he can fly across the Sahel and alight upon the top of this tree and thus escape the unkind words being spoken to him by these small boys.
The tree in the distance is one of Yaya’s favorite trees. Trees are his friends, and he has climbed this particular tree many times. From the top of this tree, he can see across the tall withered grasses for many miles. From atop this tree, he has spied giraffes and antelopes, rhinos and hyenas.
He also has spied herds of elephant.
Not today. He saw no elephants today.
Looking at the distant tree in the dying light, he is certain that he climbed this very tree earlier in the day. The limbs rise up and extend like the outstretched arms of a Fulani man. The hands almost come together at their peak as if the tree were praying, in the manner of his people, to the spirit of the sky.
Yaya remembers climbing to the top of this tree earlier today before the sun rose high in the sky and before he ate his lunch of roasted yam and ground nuts.
He remembers searching for the savannah for elephants from atop this favorite tree and then not seeing any. He remembers the joy he felt standing tall in this tree and how his joy co-existed with the disappointment of failing to see any elephants.
Standing tall atop one of the tree’s large limbs, even not seeing the elephants, even disappointed by the rising impatience of his tourists, who were visiting only today, and thus had only one chance to view the elephants, he still felt like some ancient king of the universe, his eyes feasting on the wilted savannah grasses before him -- tall parched grasses plainly visible to him. He could even see many creatures, large and small, moving through gently swaying grasses.
Earlier in the day, Yaya climbed this very tree and saw no elephants. He searched every direction, he peered with all his might, and he saw no elephants. Then the sun was barely half-way high in the sky. He had not yet eaten lunch, though he had begun to feel hunger. Then he was still full of hope that he would locate a herd of elephants and track them for the tourists.
His eyes were still sharp, he believed, despite his age, and today he could see clearly for miles. The sun was bright and the sky was cloudless. Yet when he climbed a second tree and then a third, and still he saw no elephants, he grew convinced that there were no elephants to be found today.
He would not blame the trees for his misfortune. He could not blame the heat of the day or the dust or the height of the withered grasses. He could not blame the two white women -- his customers – for how they drove their truck jerkily across the tall grasses. He could not blame himself, either.
At one point, long after he stopped climbing trees to search for elephants, he saw elephant tracks in the moist dirt along side the favorite watering hole in the Parc National du Waza. He began to think he was near elephants. He could smell them. There were even babies in this herd, perhaps two, because babies smell differently and he smelled the aromatic scent of baby elephants.
The tourists grew excited then, drawing optimism from Yaya’s urgent movements. He followed the tracks into the tall grasses and then, suddenly, the tracks vanished and his pursuit ended. He adjusted his white cotton skull cap and stood motionless, his long dark overcoat nearly reaching his knees.
He stuck his hands in his coat pockets and wondered where the elephants had gone. He wore a coat and a sweater underneath and a red scarf around his neck because the mornings were cold. Even as mid-day approached, and the heat rose, he kept on his heavy clothes. The heaviness of his clothes protected him for the Equatorial sun and somehow made him cooler, though when the tourists asked him why he wore these clothes, he would say nothing because he felt they deserved explanation.
He knew why he wore these clothes and that was enough.
The whites only cared to view the elephants, anyway, and the less he said to them, the better.
He usually said nothing and today was a usual day. He said nothing.
When he returned to camp at the end of day, after eight hours of failing to find elephants, his visitors were sad and gloomy – and that was before they learned from the small boys that the elephants were out there, somewhere in the Parc National du Waza. The small boys had seen a large herd. Their visitors had seen them too.
Yaya doubted the boys and he questioned them in the Fulani language that the whites did not understand. Wide-open smiles exploded on the faces of the boys, proof of the veracity of their claims. Yaya’s tourists believed the boys and now they left Yaya without saying goodbye, suddenly jealous of the more fortunate visitors who drawn the small boys as their guides.


When the visitors are gone, the small boys feel tease Yaya. And though he ignores them, they chatter like parrots. Yaya escapes into the distant tree. His eyes are vacant. He says nothing. He barely breathes. Yet the boys keep taunting him.
Yaya still says nothing. Then one of the small boys moves close to him and shouts, “Twenty!” into his ear. Yaya turns and glares. The small boy steps back, laughing. Then the second boy shouts, “Twenty,” even louder than the first boy did.
Yaya stiffens, offended at last by the insolence of the boys.
He of course knows what the number means. He has gone 20 days without seeing any elephants in the Parc National du Waza. In all his years of tracking, he has never gone so long without seeing elephants. Even before he worked as an official guide at the park, he never went so long without seeing elephants.
Even as a child, tending cattle on the grassy plains, he never went so long without an elephant sighting.
Yaya wonders how the small boys know the precise number of days because he thought only he counted and now he realizes the boys count the days too and he feels shame.
Yaya, after all, is the finest elephant tracker in far north of Cameroon. His people respect him for his talents. His people praise him for his excellence.
The boys should respect him too, if only because he is twice their age, or even older. But then Yaya calls them “small boys,” when they are actually grown men in their thirties with wives and children and accomplishments of their own. Perhaps that is why these two guides, who have worked along side Yaya for many years, count the days that Yaya has gone without seeing any elephants and sneer at him now. Perhaps they want to remind Yaya that they are men; they are his equals.
Or maybe the small boys are even more than Yaya now.


The other day, Yaya’s third wife – as old as the small boys and more respectful towards him – told him so. She told him he should no longer track elephants. He should instead farm corn, peanuts and cotton.
After Yaya hit her, he sent her away to her parents. He also sent away her two children. When he told his first wife what he had done, she praised Yaya, telling him he could no longer afford a third wife anyway. He was right to send her away, his first wife said, but wrong to beat her.
Yaya said nothing, though he knew his first wife was right.
He can no longer afford three wives. When he failed to find elephants for the foreign visitors, he did not receive extra money. On only his government salary of 15,000 francs, he can not afford three wives.
Without his elephant money, he cannot afford two wives. He can barely afford one.
Grief suddenly overcame him. He imagines he will be sad on the day he returns Mariam, his second wife, to her parents.
Yaya is old now and Mariam reminds him of his youth. She is also beautiful and loving and fair. He will not want to live for very long after she leaves him.
Without the elephants -- without the money that finding elephant brings -- Yaya fears he will lose Mariam and he will feel his age for the first time and move close to death.
The specter roused him and that night he went to Mariam’s hut. He found her awake, braiding her hair into five long braids, the traditional way the mature women of his people braid their hair.
Yaya sat down beside Mariam. She said nothing. Neither did he. She held her arms above her head, her chest bare, the curves of her neck open to his gaze. Watching her hands work her hair, he grew calm. He stretched out on a mat that Mariam had woven. Yaya closed his eyes and listened to Mariam breathing. He thought about the smoothness of her skin, the sweetness of her voice, the sureness of her grip.
He fell asleep. When she finished braiding, Mariam drew another mat close to Yaya and lay still beside him. Through the dust covering his skin, she kissed him – first his face and then his chest. When her kisses did rouse him, she lay her head on the mat and slept until morning.


During the first five days of Yaya’s drought, the small boys had not seen any elephants either and they agreed with Yaya that the elephant herds were gone from the park, on some sojourn of their own design. Then on the eighth day, the small boys saw elephants at one of the watering places and their visitors watched the elephants for a long time and they were happy.
The same day Yaya did not see elephants in the park.
Three days later, the boys again saw elephants and Yaya did not.
Eleven days, and no elephants.
On the eleventh day without sighting elephants, Yaya did not visit either of his wives. He lay awake in his male hut, unable to sleep. He wondered who had cursed him. Whom had he offended? What wrong had he committed?
Without finding elephants, there was no money from the foreigners and he could not buy enough food for his wives and children.
On the fifteenth day, when the small boys again found elephants and Yaya did not, the thought occurred to Yaya that he might no longer be himself. Someone had placed a powerful curse on him and turned him into someone else.
He was no longer him.
The next evening, after he again saw no elephants at the park and his guests actually abandoned him in the bush and joined the group with small boys, he returned to his compound silent and gloomy. After the evening meal, he beat his first wife, smacking her repeatedly across her face with his open hand. When she cried and begged him to stop, he beat her harder. He only stopped when she apologized for failing to give him any sons.
When he left his first wife, he visited Mariam’s hut. She was gone. He waited outside her hut for a long time and when she finally arrived, carrying a pile of firewood on her head, he wanted to beat her too. He waited for her to set down the firewood in neat piles. While she had done so, she asked his forgiveness for bearing him daughters.
He stood motionless.
“Life has been unfair to you, Yaya,” she continued. “This is too much to bear. Beat me if you wish.”
Yaya did not. Instead he ate the goat and maize Mariam had prepared for him.
“You are wise to understand my frustration,” he said after eating. “You do not deserve to be beaten.”
Then he beat Mariam anyway, but gently, playfully and carefully. He removed her clothes and then whacked her across the buttocks with a big stick several times.
Later, he stood outside Mariam’s hut, surrounded by a collection of small straw-roofed huts made of mud and water and baked by the heat into structures of some strange permanence. Looking at the night sky, the stars scattered everywhere, he wondered whether he should take another wife, and try for a son.
Then he remembered the elephants. He could not afford another wife, not unless he started finding the elephants again.
Or might he take a new wife anyway? A new wife might give him a son and his son could learn how to track elephants and help him at the park and someday take over his position and then help him in his old age.
He went inside of Mariam’s hut and told her he might take a third wife and asked her to look for one for him. “I want a wife who can give me a son,” he said.
Mariam took a piece of straw in her hand and continued to weave a mat. Without looking up from her stitching, she promised to give Yaya a son.
“Let me try,” she said.
“You have given me three daughters,” Yaya said. “The next child will also be a girl.”
Mariam explained that the healer in the village was providing her with treatments.
“Why have you not told me this?” Yaya asked.
“I want to surprise you with a son,” she said.
Yaya said nothing and lay down next her. He touched her flesh and she began to sing softly.
Yaya fell asleep thinking of his daughters. Five of them are gone, married to men in other villages. Four remain in his compound. One of them, the oldest, wants to help him track elephants. Her name is Rashida. She is lean and fast and climbs trees easily. Yaya fears bringing her to the park. One of the small boys will want her as a wife. Yaya thinks he might agree because, having failed to find elephants for so long, he needs to lessen his load. He knows that, if one of the small boys asks for Rashida, he will her to him.
During the night, Yaya dreams that he brings his daughter to the park and she joins him in the search for elephants. They do not find any, and the tourists are disappointed, though less so than usual because Rashida has answered their questions, which Yaya would never do. Rashida told them about the grasses and the land and the animals and stories about him, about how today is not a good day but that her father is a great and wise elephant tracker and that even to spend a day with her father, and not find elephants, remains a kind of celebration.
The tourists compliment Rashida and, later, the small boys chat with her and she asks Yaya to bring her back the next day.
Yaya awakes, his dream ended, before he decides whether to let her return.


The small boys shout out the number 20 in unison now as if they are singing a folk song of their people.
Yaya silences them by asking whether Rashida should join him in the search for elephants.
“She is the beautiful one?” one boys asks.
Yaya nods, and they smile. They know her. She is lean and strong and lovely. She is old enough for marriage too, and they both know she would make a good wife.
One of the small boys comes close to Yaya and gives him a plastic satchel of water.
“You will find elephants tomorrow,” the boy says.
Yaya drinks, letting the water run over his dry lips. He asks the boy for the precise location of the elephant herd that he found today and the boy tells him
“When visitors come tomorrow, why don’t you come with us?” the boy asks. “Bring Rashida. We will all find the elephants together.”
The two small boys always work together. Yaya always works alone. He does not wish the small boys to learn his special ways of tracking. He will return tomorrow without Rashida and make his spirit one with the elephants, and he will find a herd on his own.
He says nothing to the boy, keeping his thoughts to himself, and after some time, the boy walks away.
Yaya walks in another direction, towards his village and his own compound. When he arrives, he finds his first wife waiting for him at the entrance. One look at her husband and she knows: another day without elephants.
She takes his hand and leads him to his hut. He says nothing while she washes his feet. She speaks to him in a low voice and Rashida enters.
Her skin glistens. She is Mariam’s oldest daughter.
“I’ve been climbing trees father,” she says. “I am ready.”
“Do not speak,” Yaya’s first wife says. “Be quiet. Listen.”
She turns to Yaya and says, “Mariam’s daughters are so noisy. She has spoiled them.”
Or maybe they are intelligent, Yaya thinks. Perhaps Mariam is the equal of a boy except for her sex. Or she might be like one of the white women who visit Waza; these foreign women come from faraway to see the animals; they sometimes drive their own vehicles and dress the same as men. These women are like men in female form. Perhaps Rashida is a one of these male-women. She is obedient and hard working like a woman, but brave and sometimes risk-taking like a man. He remembers how she once killed a poisonous snake with her own hands. And she climbs trees as well as any boy. Once she fell from a tall tree and got to her, uninjured, and never once complained about the gash in her thigh.
“You are a fast climber,” he tells. His face is impassive, betraying nothing.
She nods and her body goes limp. She is so quiet that even in his small hut her breathing cannot be heard.
Yaya declares that he will find elephants tomorrow and that if he does, he will have no need for her to join him.
Rashida bows solemnly and falls at his feet.
Her lips are nearly kissing the dirt floor, yet Rashida manages to ask Yaya what he will do it he doesn’t find elephants tomorrow.
He wants to tell her that he will find elephants, if not tomorrow, then soon, but before he can answer, his first wife shouts at the girl, abusing her for insulting her father with a stupid question. “Get out,” she says.
Rashida scrambles to her feet and leaves the hut. Yaya’s first wife follows her out.
Alone in his hut, Yaya grows confident of his powers. He stretches out on a mat, closes his eyes and tries to sleep. He cannot. He is eager to search for elephants again. He opens his eyes, rises to his feet and lights a small candle. He surveys the inside of the hut, examining his possessions: his panga and the hoe; the small spear and the shield made of animal skin; the whip and the leash for cattle; and then there is the yellowing newspaper clipping, nailed onto the mud wall, about his prowess as an elephant tracker. He thinks of the boldness of his daughter Rashida, suggesting that she of all people can help him. Can you anyone remember a girl ever tracking elephants in Parc National du Waza? Rather than fury, he feels a mixture of pride and amusement. In a world where daughters tracked elephants instead of old men like him, he would truly no longer be himself.
Yaya lies down again and closes his eyes. He wonders whether he is still himself or is now someone else. Was he wrong to say nothing when the girl presented her foolish dreams? He knows that the real Yaya, the legendary elephant tracker, would have rebuked her.
He could not bring himself to do so. Lying in darkness, eager for morning to come, he does not know why he spared Rashida the full weight of his wrath. He can only believe that tommorrow he will find elephants and become himself again.
In the final moments of thought before he sleeps, he no longer doubts that he is Yaya, and because he is Yaya he can be generous to the youth.



**** (written 2008)

from GOOD DEEDS DO NOT TRAVEL FAR
an abandoned novel, set in Accra, Ghana, in the late 1990s


(1)

Kwesi Ebu looked up from his desk at the clerk standing before him.
“Another nurse?” Kwesi said.
The clerk nodded and handed Kwesi a paper. It was a resignation form. Kwesi had seen so many that he could visualize the form in his mind, from top to bottom. This week, ninetyeight nurses had resigned. Last week eightysix left and the week before sixtyone.
Kwesi tallied the numbers. “Two hundred fortyfive nurses in three weeks,” he said. “Who’s left?”
It was a joke but the clerk pretended not to hear. He walked away. Kwesi granned the form and scrawled his name at the bottom, giving the nurse official permission to return to her job in the future if she wished. Then he left the form on his desk and picked up a large roasted plantain and took a bite out of it. The clerk returned, picked up the form and left.
When the door closed, Kwesi stood up from his desk, pausing for a moment before two framed diplomas on his office wall: his medical degree from the University of Legon, class of ’75, and a certificate of merit from Hampton Hospital in London, where he trained in surgery. For a moment he thought of his brother, also a doctor, who lived in a London suburb. He wondered why, of the 27 doctors produced by Ghana in 1977, only he remained in his country.
Kwesi finished off the plantain, walked the five paces to his office door and clicked the lock shut. He pulled a small key from the chain in his pocket and unlocked a file cabinet. He knelt down to the bottom drawer and pulled out a thick file and dropped it on his desk. He opened the file and slid out a frontpage article from yesterday’s Accra Mail which carried the headline: “Mysterious deaths of women: Who Orders the Killings?”
Kwesi returned to his desk and began reading. “Juju men, soothsayers and spiritualists have been called upon to provide their services to society in solving the murders of women that have gripped the nation’s capital for the past two years. The resort to the unorthodox may sound ridiculous and preposterous but what else is to be done when the police can’t find the killers. Consulting spiritualists is a practice done steathily and many public officials in the country and other African countries indulge in it when they encounter problems.”
Kwesi picked up today’s edition of the Chronicle, whose front page screamed about the death of another woman. “The murder of another woman has once again raised questions about the police inability to track down the murderers, further heightening fears about the safety of Ghanaian women.” Along with the story, the paper ran a photograph of Millicent Adjahu. Her body lay sprawled out on the ground, breasts pressed to the earth. Her head was twisted to one side, revealing the slash across her throat. Her naked behind was large and her hips wide. The Chronicle said she sold toothpaste and hairbrushes in Accra’s central Makola market. Her name was that Millicent. She was 28 years old. A police doctor told the newspaper that the woman had “characteristic marks found on previous victims.” Each of the victims, all women, were raped, murdered and left on the streets, mostly in the Dansoman area of western Accra. The newspaper didn’t say, but Kwesi knew well, that half of the murdered women were nurses.
The failure of the police to catch the killer or killers had created an uproar among nurses. Many were quiting because they no longer wished to risk leaving the hospital at night, and the government couldn’t afford – or was too inept to organized a service to escort them home. The anger felt by nurses melted into a sea of female anger. The women of Accra were screaming: in the streets, on radio talk shows, even on television. Over and over, they asked for an end to the killings. The government said only it was trying its best to halt them, but that it had no suspects, no leads, no chance to catch the killer or killers. These disclosures were all the more amazing because the government of J.J. Rawlings, the country’s dictator-turned-elected president, was standing for election in a few weeks. And still the police, who worked for Rawlings, said they could nothing. The chief of police, Peter Nanfuri, even said that his officers hardly investigated the murders because of the poor pay and training they received.
Kwesi pondered over the gall of Nanfuri, absolving himself of responsibility and essentially blaming others for the failure to solve the crimes. How did Nanfuri survive, he wondered. Taking a scissors from his desk drawer, he cut out the story from the Chronicle and slipped it into the file, returned the file to the cabinet and locked it. Then he unlocked his door.
Were it not for his nurses, and their depleted ranks, Kwesi would barely attend to the problems of the police and female hysteria in Accra. He had no daughters and his wife of 20 years was safely in Edinburgh, studying for a master’s degree in public health. Kwesi was a good Christian, a regular Sunday church-goer, and the only women in his life were the 10,000 female nurses employed by Ghana’s national health service. Most worked in Accra, the country’s capital, a city of 2 million that sat on the historic “Gold Coast” of West Africa. Kwesi’s nurses worked odd hours, and many traveled home late at night. Some even walked. Now they were afraid to leave the hospital and in their fear they were quitting. Kwesi had no budget to ferry them home, and the nurses earned so little, the equivalent of $60 a month, or two dollars a day, that they could find other work at that wage. So the exodus of nurses made the serial murders Kwesi’s problem, since, as deputy minister of health, he was responsible for keeping nurses on the job. And to keep more of the nurses on the job, the murders had to stop.
Kwesi picked up another plantain and ate it in three big bites. He picked up the phone and called for his driver. It was time to meet Nanfuri, the police chief.


Nanfuri kept him waiting a half hour. Kwesi made phone calls on his mobile. When the chief arrived, he gave Kwesi a traditional Ghanaian greeting, a handshake ending in a snapping of fingers. Then he said nothing.
Kwesi thought about leaving but remembered that the minister of health, his boss, had personally asked him to do this. And the minister implied – no he had told him – that Jerry “J.J.” Rawlings, the country’s head of state, had personally asked that Kwesi handle this. So Kwesi could not walk out on the chief even though he wanted to.
“Why did you disband the task force?” Kwesi asked.
“Who told you that?” the chief said.
Kwesi had heard it from a detective in the department, the brother of his wife, but to say this would only anger the chief, so he said, “Everybody knows this.”
“You really want to take over this investigation?” the chief asked.
Kwesi wondered himself whether even with the backing of his minister it was wise to take this on.
“I want all the files, on every murder, and I want four detectives, fulltime, including Sam Gyang.”
“You mean the brother of your wife.”
“Its true,” Kwesi said and stood up to leave.
“You’re forgetting something,” Nanfuri said.
Kwesi had not forgotten, but the idea of paying the chief to hand over a murder investigation upset him. Even in Ghana, even under the government of Rawlings, this was too much and Kwesi could not keep quiet.
“Are you saying you want a bribe for the privilege of giving someone else the chance to do your job?” he asked.
“Just leave the money on my desk and get out,” the chief said.
Kwesi considered walking out without paying. He felt hungry again and wished he had brought along his last roasted plantain. The woman who cooked them in the ministry’s compound knew how to prepare plantains. Not as good as his mother, who would season them with a special sauce, but these plantains were good enough for him to eat three or four a day.
Kwesi thought about the fleshy fruit in his mouth, about how he preferred roasted to fried plantains and about how when Rawlings finally left power after 20 years as a virtual dictator people like the police chief might not have it so good. The possibility made him smile. He reached inside his pocket and pulled out eight $100 bills and lay them on Nanfuri’s desk. He looked at the face of Benjamin Franklin on the top of one bill, stood up and moved quickly to the door. Behind him he heard the chief snapping the bills, eyeing them one by one, making sure they were real.


(2)

Kwesi veered off Ring Road and into a dirt parking lot, pulling his 30-year old Land Rover into the area reserved for taxis. A group of hawkers chased after him. A young girl offered donuts, another toilet paper and another plastic bags of purified drinking water. A man peddled CDs, another sold pliers, a third battery-operated fans. Kwesi chased them away, then motioned to a newspaper hawker and bought the Daily Graphic for 1,500 cedis, or twenty cents. On the front page there was a picture of the president of the national nurses association and the caption: “Nurses blast police for failure to catch killer, consider strike.”
For the second day in a row, Kwesi was at police headquarters; yesterday as a supplicant, today as a man with a mission. The headquarters was a tall, crumbling building constructed in the late 1950s, right after independence, when concrete was in fashion. The guard at the door was expecting Kwesi and sent him to the sixth floor. The elevator was out of service, so he took the stairs. His Safari suit was drenched with perspiration when he found room 620.
The lights were off in corridor and behind the door he could hear music. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a handkerchief and stuck into his briefcase. He was wearing his dark Safari suit, the one made in Italy, the one he wore when he wanted to convey the greatest sense of conviction about his work. When he wanted to embody professionalism, he donned his Safari suit. Even today, when the heat raged in the morning and his Safari stuck to his skin, he would not change into loose clothing. He was not a loose man.
He pushed through the door, switched on the light and found four detectives swaying to a sweet, high-pitched male voice singing in Twi, the local language. Three of the men were strangers. The fourth was his sister’s husband, Sammy Danquah.
Each of the detectives had a female partner, young pretty women wearing skimpy dresses, spike-heel shoes, wigs and skin-lightening makeup. One of the women was on her knees, her mouth wrapped around a detective’s privates. The man sat on top of one of the two desks in the room, his eyes closed, smoking a joint, a smile on his face. The girl had her hands around his bare hips as she sucked him.
“This Kojo Antwi?” Kwesi asked Sammy, referring to the music. Kojo was Ghana’s most popular singer.
“Yes, it’s a new tape, a remix of his hits,” he said.
Kwesi went over to the small tape player and punched it off. Sammy let go of his girl and she pulled the one on her knees upright. The detective who got sucked looked at Kwesi and zipped up his fly. The four girls rattled off words in Twi, then huddled together underneath a wall of photographs of the murdered women. There were dozens of pictures taken from different angles but they were a jumble. No names or dates. Only a map of Accra with stars on the place each one died.
“It’s 10:30 in the morning,” Kwesi said. “We have a meeting scheduled. You are to brief me on the case.”
“Practice,” Sammy said. “We are practicing the briefing on these girls.”
Kwesi set his briefcase on the desk that had not been a stage for oral sex and took out a roasted plaintain. This morning his mother had made two of them for him. His mother lived with him, and she took care of his boys during his wife’s absence. He took a bite out of one of the plaintains and wondered why his sister had married Sammy Danquah. Sammy was from a famous Asante family (his great uncle was a celebrated Accra lawyer and a leader in the independence campaign). Sammy was handsome and loyal, but he moved with other women and Kwesi could not believe that his sister was unaware of this. In Ghana, men were free to have more than one wife. While few men in Accra were publicly polygamous, many kept mistresses or married secretly, even men like Sammy who earned modest salaries. Probably Sammy had many women to choose from. His work would give him that. He was a chief detective and a good one but in Accra that didn’t mean much.
“Send the girls away,” Kwesi said.
Sammy said something in Twi and the girls grabbed their bags and left with one of the other detectives. The scent of the women remained and the marajuana too.
“All the club girls are terrified of the serial killer,” Sammy said. “These four are sassy. They seem to think they can just move all night through the city. We showed them what can happen if they are not careful. Kofi here brought them back early this morning and when I arrived I found them.”
So this was the task force. No wonder the police had not found the serial killer.
“Show me the files,” Kwesi said.
Sammy pointed two stacks of boxes on the floor, ten in all.
“Send the others away and let’s get to work.”



Sammy waited until Kwesi had seen all the other boxes before opening the one marked, “Juju.” He knew Kwesi would not like to see this one, and he was right. He did not. Kwesi glanced at the box and exploded in laughter.
“We had to rule out Juju,” Sammy said. “And brother, I’m not sure that we have.”
“Drinking blood. Ritual sacrifice. Are you saying that’s what these murders are about.”
“Kwesi don’t get so high and mighty on me. You may be London educated and a devout Christian but don’t pretend that Ghanaians are somehow immune to Juju. We aren’t. So read the report.”
He pulled a few handwritten pages from the top of the file box. The sheets were stapled together. They were penned by a Juju priest in Tema. He’d analyzed the murders for the police and concluded that the blood of dead women would be highly prized for the power in casting spells and warding off evil spirits.
Kwesi read through the report and tossed it down. “This shows nothing,” he said.
“Its true, its true,” Sammy answered. “But blood was drained from most of the corpses, we’re pretty sure of that.”
“Maybe it ran into the ground. Did anyone think of that?”
“Don’t sneer, brother. There is more than the mere suspicion of Juju.”
He told Kwesi about Amoah, Rawlings’ chief intelligence. About how two months ago, a woman turned and swore a complaint against a man for attempted rape. She was a nurse a Korle Bu and she took a ride late at night with a man in a black Mercedes. She admitted that she freely accepted his invitation to go to bed with him, but then he tried to drug her and rape and she fought back. She was a big woman and she demonstrated how she had smashed the man’s head against a door and fled. She said she recalled the man’s house and wanted to lead the police there.
Sammy had taken down the woman’s statement and drove her to the man’s house. “When we knocked on the door, Amoah himself answered and the woman began screaming. Amoah said he’d never seen her before. I accepted this and drove back here. That’s when I learned about the secret investigation group.”
The chief had created a second team to investigate the killings, and this team consisted of members of Rawlings’ personal staff. “We called them the Juju group because we understood they were pursuing the possibility that one or more people were killing the women for juju,” Sammy said. But there was also another possibility: that the second group was part of a coverup because the government wished to hide the fact that friends of Rawlings or even Rawlings himself were behind the killings.
“Either way, if you think you bought the real investigation you are mistaken.”


While Sammy closed up the boxes, Kwesi ate another roasted plaintain, this one in six small bites.
“Why hasn’t any followed this up?” he asked. He held up a foresnic report, compiled by the FBI.
In all the talk of Juju, a second investigative team and a coverup, Kwesi had not suspended his faculties of reason, and he believed that, if the Lord had brought him into this mess, it was because he could bring clear thinking to a muddled situation. The forensic report, based on science and not superstition, was his starting point.
“Sammy, the FBI found traces of white skin under their fingernails of four victims. On seven others there was white skin and black skin.”
“So what, does this make every white man in Ghana a suspect?”
“The report says there were bits of Caucasian hair on four other other women. Minute traces on their clothes. That links a white person to nearly half of the 35 murders.”
Do you mean for us to interview all the whites in Ghana, Kwesi. All 25,000 of them. Kwesi you are new to this. These forensic reports are nothing. We are not Scotland Yard. We are not in London. We don’t do DNA tests. We need a witness, and we don’t have one. Until we have a witness, we should assume the killer is Ghanaian or at least African, maybe a Liberian or a Nigerian. We certainly have plenty of them running around Accra.”
“But a white?” Sammy shook his head and said, “Ehh,” in a long, slow groan, which in Ghanain patois meant that no discussion was needed because the reality was clear.
Not to Kwesi. “No one has survived an attack?” he asked.
“No one.”
“What about Amoah?”
“He doesn’t count.”


(3)

Kwesi opened his pharmacy after church. Friends and neighbors came to his house when they needed Ibuprofen or anti-malarials or even penicillin. He kept the medicines in his refrigerator or in a cabinet in his kitchen. In Ghana, people could buy all sorts of drugs without a prescription, so they often wanted to talk about what they were buying. Kwesi enjoyed chatting, since he only opened the pharmacy once a week, after church on Sunday, and then for two or three hours.
He did this for the money. In Ghana, anyone who earned a salary needed more money and most government employees had a second job or ran a business or helped their mate run a business. In a country where the minimum daily wage was about a dollar a day and twice that was considered decent pay, the search for more money preoccupied everyone. Even Kwesi. Were it not for the pharmacy and his brother in Britain, the other doctor in his family, Kwesi surely would have quit the government by now and perhaps even left Ghana. Kwesi’s brother sent him money regularly, and also in emergencies. He never asked for anything in return and never seemed to need anything because he had left Ghana long ago and rarely returned to visit. Maybe he considered the payments to Kwesi as just since Kwesi took care of their elderly mother. Or maybe his brother felt guilty that his brother worked so hard for so little cash. Or maybe his brother wanted to show off and remind him of the absurdity of his decision to remain in Ghana when every other physician in his graduating class had left. Kwesi spent no time thinking about why because no matter why his brother gave him money he would take it because without this money he could not live. And with this money he could remain decent in Ghana, perhaps not incorruptible – was anyone beyond sin in his society? – but at least he could weigh good against evil and, with the Lord’s help, make the right choice.
His oldest son interrupted his thoughts. He was a tall, thin boy who looked like his mother. He had Kwesi’s calm exterior, however, and wished to be a doctor like his father. Kwesi hoped the boy had the grades to make it. He would be proud for him to attend medical school at Legon, as he had, though he could not imagine his son remaining in Ghana after graduation.
“Papa, the minister is here.”
“What minister, son.”
“The minister of health.”
Kwesi’s boss. Strange for him to visit on a Sunday but Kwesi was learning that his life had become strange since he had accepted the new assignment.
“Yes, Kofi, come on in,” Kwesi called out. “I’m here.”
The minister wore a dark business suit. He had come from church.
“What brings you here on a Sunday, Kofi.”
“My wife has a headache and my daughter has a fever. I need aspirin and the advice of a pharmacist.”
“Will 50 tablets do?”
“Give me a hundred.”
Kwesi called for his son and told him what he needed. He offered Kofi a bottle of water while he waited.
“May I ease myself,” Kofi asked. “Where’s your bathroom?”
Kwesi pointed the way. When Kofi returned, the aspirins were ready. He took them and handed Kwesi a black plastic bag with 100 5,000-cedi notes and 100 2,000-cedi notes.
“Better spend it fast,” the minister said. “The way the cedi is falling against the dollar it will be worth less with each day.”
“Why more money?”
“You probably gave the chief everything, and now you need a budget for your investigation. This is the start. For the rest, try the Lebanese. Try Zakkour. He likes to help people. No need to tell me how you get it or spend it. I understand you are taking over a mess and that you do not like messes. This is my contribution to helping you clean it up. You’ll need more and how you get is your own affair.”
Kwesi had never met Zakkour and wondered if the minister had. He wanted to ask him whether he knew about the Juju team. He decided not to and changed the subject.
“Do you think your daughter has malaria, Kofi. Should we give her a course of Artesunate.” This was a Chinese herb that defeated many types of malaria.
“Why not. She had malaria three months ago. She missed a week of school, so yes we should give the Artesunate. She is a frail girl.”
The minister, a doctor himself, seemed worried. Kwesi asked his son, who had never left the room, to get two packets of the herb. Alone with the minister now, he spoke about the Juju team only to hear the minister laugh as soon as Kwesi uttered this four letter word.
“Who told you this, your sister’s husband? Ignore the Juju talk. We are men of science. Superstitions die hard. Their death rattle is heard for a long time, but they die still. What is that old Kipling poem we learned at school? About how when everyone else is losing their head and how important it is to keep yours. It is true. Don’t lose your head in the Juju talk.”


Kwesi packed his mother and his two sons into his Landrover and drove to his sister’s house. Esi lived in Labone Estate, east of Accra’s center and one of Accra’s tonier neighborhoods. The homes were large, set back from the street and surrounded by eight-foot high walls. The beach was only minutes away. The house was a testimony to Esi’s knack for business. She owned a restaurant, a clothing store and a car rental company. Her great passion, traditional African art, also brought her money. She exported rare traditional art pieces from throughout west Africa to rich clients in Europe and the U.S. In search of these pieces, she traveled as far south as the Cameron and into Cote d’Ivoire and Mali, two French-speaking countries with brilliant traditions of scuplture. Kwesi wondered what new mask or statue might be hanging in her home this week.
To get from his own house in Adelempke, in the north of Accra, he drove south on Alajo Road, which turns into Nkrumah Avenue. Then he snaked across the center of the city on Castle Road and took a slight detour, stopping at Independence Square, on the outskirts of Osu. Kwesi asked his children to walk with him, buying his mother a coconut to drink before leaving her in the car. The coconut seller wielded a machete, slicing the greenish hard exterior of the fruit and carving out a small opening into which he stuck a straw. The task was completed in less than a minute.
“Who needs Coke when we have our own delicious cocunuts to drink,” he told his sons. He paid 800 cedis for his mother and then older son asked for a coconut to drink and then his younger son asked for the same and then Kwesi decided to drink one too. The coconut seller was happy and the three of them walked into the wide expanse of the square. It was nearly 6 pm but the heat of the day still hung heavy and the air was still. Across the square stood a long row of scaffolding on which the election results would be reported, district by district.
Kwesi drew his boys close to him, and the three of them looked out across the square and beyond, to the Atlantic Ocean stretching before them.
“Sons, in six days we will have the first truly free election in this country. Because Nkrumah freed us from the British in 1957 he never faced an electoral challenge, and before a legal opposition to his rule could stiffen the military deposed him. You know this from school, of course, but it is worth repeating because the books are filled with lies. Out of this coup came another coup led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings. Yes, before you were born our so-called elected president seized power by force, murdered some political opponents and jailed others. Once a dictator, always a dictator. They may tell you at school that when he stood for election eight years ago, and again four years ago, that these were free elections, but they were not. Our colonial master could not give us our independence and then choose to stand for election as our country’s president. So neither can a military dictator surrender his powers in name and then expect legitimacy by holding a popularity poll. Only when Rawlings leaves office peacefully will he no longer be a dictator. And let us hope and pray he will do so.”
“Are you preaching to these boys again, Kwesi. Let’s go, Let’s go. Esi is waiting and the boys are hungry.”
And no doubt Kwesi’s mother was hungry too. She had grown impatient in the car and found them.

Dinner was ready when Kwesi arrived with his sons and mother at the house of his sister. Esi greeted the group at the door and took them into the dining. She was ten years younger than Kwesi, in her mid-30s and took her Fanti first name from the day she was born, Sunday, and her surname from her husband, Danquah. Esi was attractive enough to catch a man’s eye yet mature, even matronly. She had the broad bottom and wide hips so prized by African men, yet her body was toned from three days a week in a gym and she could claim to be childless without provoking an argument. She had a broad nose, a wide mouth and deep-set eyes. In a country where women wore revealing, even provocative clothing, Esi hid more than she showed. Today she wore a two piece Kente-cloth suit, her corn-rolled hair wrapped in a matching head scarf. Around her wrists were antique bangles made of Asante gold.
“We won’t wait for Sammy,” Esi said. “He’s out on a case, so please sit down and eat.”
The table was loaded with Ghanaian delicacies. Three big pots of fufu in a goat soup. A pile of Banku. A dozen roasted plantains. A bowl of Red red. A big plate of joloff rice and two roasted chickens. A whole fish garnished in palaver sauce.
“What a feast,” said Bismark, Esi’s six-year old son.
Kwesi’s mother grabbed the boy and kissed him. “So fine that you can tear yourself away from Game Boy and join us,” she said.
Esi sat Bismark at the head of the table, and Kwesi at the other end. When dinner was over, her mother told her that she spoiled the boy. “How will he ever fit into our society if you treat him so,” she said.
“Maybe he won’t have to,” Esi said.
“Ehh, raising him for export,” Kwesi said.
Esi sent Bismark outside with Kwesi’s two sons. As usual, her brother’s teasing hit the mark. Yes, she was raising her son for export. And why not? Was she a responsible parent if the only chances in life she gave her son were to succeed in Ghana? Of course, he could live here if he wished but he needed to learn that the standard of success was defined by Britain and the United States, so that keeping pace with boys he would never know – living thousands of miles away – must be her son’s ultimate goal. Or at least, this was Esi’s goal for him. She did not wish her son to be stranded in Ghana. She had too much talent wasted here, too many dreams extinguished. Her son must learn how to live in two worlds so that he could move between both.
Esi could not do this herself. Her marriage to Sammy made this impossible, and besides she ran three businesses in Accra and each required her fulltime attentions. She designed traditional African clothing, jobbing out the manufacture to local seamstresses, and ran a small shop in the Art center, where most local crafts were sold. She had a car leasing company, her newest and smallest venture. And she was the leading dealer in traditional, or tribal, African art in Accra. So she was too busy to leave Ghana. Besides, she’d only lived outside of Ghana for two years. In the early 90s, she studied art history at Oxford for two years during which time she had a secret love affair with a well-known English art historian who discarded when she decided to return home. She left Britain convinced that her life would be all the richer if she never stepped foot in the country again. The U.S. was a different matter. Esi’s biggest art clients lived in the U.S. and Nordstrom, the retailer, carried her Fantiwear clothing line.
By Ghanaian standards, Esi was rich. Her house would seem large in California, not just in Accra, where half of the homes and apartments lacked both kitchens and plumbing. Esi could afford her relative luxury because she earned dollars from her export business, which meant that she was less hurt by the decline in value of the cedi than many other people. Were Esi in America or even Britain, she might trumpet her success, but in Accra she cultivated modesty. Partly this was out of deference to her husband, who never could afford their home and lifestyle on his own salary. Her posture also reflected the basic conservatism of her society. Women did not make waves. If they wielded power, they did so quietly, out of view. To anyone who knew Esi, there was no question that she was her own woman. In public, in private and most definitely in the bedroom. She insisted on practicing birth control and would have only one child with her husband, despite his desire to have more. If she tolerated his womanizing, he could tolerate having only one child.


Kwesi was finishing his third glass of pineapple juice when Sammy arrived. It was past 10 pm. Sammy apologized to his wife for being so late and asked whether there was any Fufu left.
“I saved you a pot,” Esi said. “And some Banku too. If you like, I can roast plantains for you.”
Before Sammy could answer, Kwesi said, “Can you make me some.”
“You men. Sometimes I think you like plantains better than sex.”
Sammy did not laugh. He got himself a large Star from the kitchen and asked Kwesi if he wanted a beer or maybe a tall gin.
“You know I don’t drink and if I did, never on Sunday.”
“We found another girl.”
“Where?”
“Near Circle, in an alley behind a club called Containers.”
“How?”
“The usual.”
“Our guy?”
Sammy got up for another large Star. He drank half of it on his feet. He sat down next to Kwesi at the table and spoke softly into his ear.
“Her blood was drained away. The Juju team is there.”
“Let’s go. I want to meet them.”
“No you don’t.”
Kwesi reached into his pocket and pulled out the envelope of dollars that the minister had left him. He opened the envelope and let the money spill on the table. There were fifteen $100 bills.
“A little of this will buy us a conversation,” Sammy said.
Sammy called into the kitchen. “Esi, honey, Kwesi and I are moving. Take your mother and his children home and don’t wait for me.” To Kwesi he said, “Let’s move in your Landrover.”
Kwesi gathered the money, rose from the table and reached into his pocket for his keys. Then he froze.
“Hold on. Where are the plantains.”
“You need plantains. We’re investigating a murder.”
Kwesi raised his eyebrows, saying nothing. Sammy went into the kitchen and a few minutes later returned with six plantains in a plastic bag. Kwesi took the bag and they left.

(4)

Rap music boomed through large, outdoor loudspeakers. A dozen young men danced alone, in the dark, on an uncovered concrete floor. On the perimeter, there were covered stalls with picnic tables, and young girls sat in a few stalls wearing sleeveless dresses or bikini tops and cut-off shorts. A bar off to the side offered locally-brewed Guiness for 4,500 cedis and large Stars for less. The girls were for sale, and some of the boys would buy them, though it was too early for them to do so.
The place was called Containers, near Circle, a stroll from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation tower. All faces in the in the club were black. Containers was a local version of the Wakiki, across the street, and a reminder that purchasing women was a democratic activity in Ghana, and even the poor working man, or the youth with a short stack of 5,000-cedi notes, could buy a girl as easily as a bottle of Star.
It was nearly midnight, about the time Containers started to fill up. Admission was 2,000 cedis, or about a quarter. The deejay sat in a shed to the rear of the concrete dance floor. He had a large collection of vinyl records and tapes. Hip-hop and rap were his preffered sounds tonight, but for a little dash he would slap on a tape from Nigeria or some Congolese soukos.
Sammy found the Juju team behind the DJ’s shed. Three of them tonight. Two were members of Internal Security, and the third was an adviser to President Rawlings. Sammy didn’t know his name. The dead girl was there too, sprawled face down, half of her upper-body on concrete and the rest in the dirt.
“This is Kwesi, the one I told you about,” Sammy said to the Rawlings adviser.
He shook Kwesi’s hand. “Vincent Jones.”
“Good evening and thank you for calling us out,” Kwesi said.
It was hard for Kwesi to hear himself over the rap music and hard to believe that on the other side of the deejay’s shed dozens of people were dancing, unaware of how close they were to a very dead body.
“I’m a medical doctor, with the Ministry of Health, and I’ve been asked to assist with the investigation into these killings.”
“Dr. Ebu, I know what you’ve been asked to do.”
“Good. You work for -- ”
“I’m an aide to JJ,” he said, using the president’s nickname.
“And your interest in this is -- ”
“The same as yours. To stop the killings.”
Kwesi was thinking what to say next when something in the dirt caught his eye. He knelt down beside the dead woman, so close he could smell her sweat. There it was, pushed into the ground near the women’s knee, as if someone had ground his foot into it. Kwesi ran his hand along the dirt and shimmied it out. He brushed it off and got a good look.
It was an Ashanti comb, carved of wood and ornamented with figures. The comb was traditionally used by women in the Kumasi region, the stronghold of the Asanti. This was no ordinary comb, though. Kwesi had seen dozens of these antique combs over the years at his sister’s house. His sister Esi once made a personal hobby of collecting small, obscure Ashanti objects, hair combs and weaving pulleys in particular. This was before she moved into more lucrative art from Mali, Ivory Coast and northern Cameroon, where traditional tribes, such as the Dan, Baule, Dogon and Bambara, had enormous stature in the elite world of primitive art conniseurs. Kwesi knew instantly that the haircomb in his hand was no cheap imitation. The weight was too substantial and the carving too well-rendered. This was a collector’s item, perhaps 50 years old. It was the sort of comb that his sister might sell to a European collector for $250.
“What is this doing here?”
Vincent Jones took the comb from Kwesi and placed it into a large zip-lock bag. “We missed it. Thank you.”
Kwesi laughed. “Please, I’m sorry. I want the comb back. My sister is an expert in traditional African art. I’d like her to look at the comb. Maybe the girl bought it or had a lover who bought it for her. My sister might even have sold the piece.”
“I’m keeping it,” Vincent said.
Kwesi reached into his pocket and took out a stack of cedi notes. “This is to go see your office,” he said, handing a second bill to Vincent. “Let’s see your records on this case. Pool our resources.”
“Ah-hah-ah, you want to work together?”
“Why not?” Kwesi said. “We won’t duplicate each other’s work. I have no interest in Juju or supernatural explanations for these killings. I am a scientist and if science cannot stop killing, then I do not know what will.”
“Yes, we can be a team. Yes, please. Let’s go.”
Kwesi reached into his pocket and took out another hundred. He held it in his hand so Vincent could see it. Vincent took the bill and gave Kwesi the haircomb. Kwesi was pleased.
“This comb is foreign to this crime scene,” he said. “You brought it here, Vincent, or one of your men, and you forgot to retrieve it. Yes?”
“You’re guessing.”
“I am not. This comb is an antique. It carries the emblem of the Ashentene, which means it was used in ritual prayers by Ashanti royality. There is no reason for this comb to be here unless you put it here. The question is why did you.”
Kwesi looked straight into Vincent’s eyes. Kwesi was shorter than Vincent, heavier, and he had a moon-shaped face that made him seem avuncular. Vincent pulled a mobil phone from his pocket and made a call.
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Vincent said into the phone. “With the doctor…. Its true, its true. In twenty minutes. You have enough time. Ask the medicine man to wait. Don’t let him leave.”


Kwesi wheeled his Landrover through Accra’s darkened streets. When he reached the Ridge roundabout near the National Theater, Vincent told him to take the first right and then another right, and then Kwesi realized where he was going. He made a third right and drove past the house of President Jerry John Rawlings, known as “JJ” for short. The two compounds sat side by side, separated by a high stucco wall. Vincent had sent his associates away, and Sammy too, so Kwesi was alone with Vincent in the car.
Kwesi felt a chill when he turned into the walled compound that housed the President’s office. At the gate, there were four soldiers with automatic weapons, and inside there was an unarmed escort. Rawlings might be in his office or might make turn up. He was famously unpredictable, so Kwesi worried that he might say if he were to meet Rawlings. The President could charm. He was intelligent and disciplined. Yet he used people and threw them away, sometimes without their even knowing it. Kwesi wondered how Rawlings was using him now and what would happen to him.
He and Vincent went around to the rear of the three-story office, which was a converted mansion. They climbed a short set of steps and stepped into a vacant waiting room. They climbed two flights of stairs and walked a long corridor that ended with a door marked “JJ.”
Vincent used a key to unlock the door, which opened to a windowless room. On the floor sat an old man, singing incantations in Twi. He was a diviner, a medicine man who uses fetishes, or magic, to either cast spells against far-off victims or to protect himself and others from spells cast against them. The diviner was surrounded by dozens of carved fetish figures, fish bones, eagle claws, antelope horns, leopard’s teeth, various colored chalks, odd-shaped roots, carved wooden masks, walking sticks, pipes, ceremonial knives and, yes, haircombs.
“You’re a doctor,” Kwesi said. “I’m also a doctor.”
The old man kept on singing. His voice was nasal, and the words poured from him. He jerked his head back and forth and said the same phrase over and over, “The women of Ghana are screaming, catch our killers.” Kwesi listened to the incantation until the old man passed out.
“Is he your juju doctor,” Kwesi said when it became clear the medicine man wasn’t regaining consciousness.
“Ehhhh.”
“Are you a believer?” Kwesi asked.
“My beliefs are irrelevant,” Vincent said. “We’ve brought the medicine man to six corpses. Him and all his objects. He slaughtered a goat over one of the women. He trimmed another one’s pubic hair. He cut the toe nails of a third. He tore the clothing off a fourth and nailed strips to his fetish figures. He cut the tongue out of the fifth. You can’t imagine how unusual that is at a crime scene. Tonight he put many combs in the dead woman’s hair, one after another, chanting something different each time. Then he set one of the combs on fire.”
“Is this supposed to help you catch the killer?” Kwesi asked.
Vincent waved one hand. “The logic is simple: the juju gains control of the killer’s mind and makes him confess. The killer, in short, gives himself up.”


**** (written 2001)