Moments from the book
Eight moments
Short scenes from chapters 1, 2 and 10, to read in half a minute or pass on. Each one stops before anything is settled.
The bracket
On the second day of building, a steel bracket snaps clean in two. The steel is certified for twice the load, and a replacement is at least a week away. Malik, the village blacksmith, picks up both halves without a word and mends them in his forge fire. The engineer in charge looks at the result, tells the contractor to log the delay and waits for the certified part. Malik says one sentence to his apprentice, loud enough for everyone to hear.
“A thing you are not allowed to mend is not yours.” p. 16
The goat
For the third time since the rains failed, a neighbour’s goat has been in Maimuna’s okra. Tie it, says Maimuna. It was tied. Then tie it better. The neighbour tells her to do it herself: Maimuna has had the practice, having tied her husband to her for thirty years, and he still gets out. Samba, on his way to the meeting tree, is called on to judge. He looks at the okra, at the goat, and for a long time at the sky. Neither woman likes his ruling, and both say so.
A yes with its sandals on
Kadiatou has been asked for her counsel on the strangers and their machine that draws water out of the air. Show us what it does now, she says. Fatou, who has known her forty years, walks her home and tells her that is a yes with its sandals still on. Kadiatou laughs. Then she asks what Fatou makes of the man with the money. He does not want to be liked, Fatou says, and she has never met a rich man who didn’t. That is either very good or very bad, she says.
“That’s yes with its sandals still on.” p. 92
The notebook
Years ago, in a ditch beside the Bakoro road, Talib found a radio diagram that had fallen from an aid convoy: soaked, muddy, one corner torn away. He dried it on a rock and spent a whole dry season working out what its lines and symbols meant. Nobody lost patience with him. Now he takes his sister’s letter from his pocket and traces her name with one finger. Her exam fee has to be paid before the day, or she loses the year.
Who is paying for the house?
A man from the Fund tells the elders of Nafawol that the plan for everything, water first and then soil, power, roads and training, is called the Senebia Blueprint. Fatou has hired other men’s lorries for thirty years. She says a blueprint is a plan for a house, and asks who is paying for the house. The answer is the Fund itself, many purses in one, which has committed a hundred million dollars over ten years to the region. Fatou unfolds her arms.
A well has no gate
Walking home, Kadiatou tells Fatou what worries her about the machine. Anyone with a rope may draw from a well, she says. A machine like that is kept behind a fence, and somebody holds the key. Fatou has hired other men’s lorries for thirty years. The man who owns the only lorry on the road, she says, is kind all through the planting and names his price at harvest.
Kadiatou’s morning
For sixty years Kadiatou has begun her day at the well in Nafawol. This morning the bucket comes up with a few litres of cloudy brown water, and the jar beside her is still not half full. Across the square her granddaughter walks slowly, a fever only just broken. The whole compound cooks with what Kadiatou draws, because there is no other water. She has a name for what that makes her, and she tells no one.
Would you take it?
A company offers a fortune to twelve villages. In return it asks for the first right to buy everything they grow. Some of the people deciding know what money like that could do for their families. Others want to know who would hold the key. Would you take it?
