An Inconvenient Elephant Read Free Page B

waiting for me. Oh, there was my family, of course, and my best friend, Alana, who was a therapist, though she had moved out of New York. “There’s a lot more mental agita in Florida,” she had explained. I knew she’d want to hear from me. And I still had my little house. But they all had been waiting a whole year; another few days wouldn’t matter. Even another few weeks.
    â€œI suppose I’m not in any rush to go home,” I admitted. Diamond sat down next to me and stretched her legs over her rucksack.
    â€œWherever you’re going, it will be there when you arrive,” she replied.
    Â 
    The bus filled within the hour. With what seemed like a hundred people, along with baskets of fruits and vegetables, a few woven chairs, a goat, a dozen crying babies, and too many makeshift containers filled with live chickens. I found a narrow metal bench against a wall and sat next to an unfriendly rooster, who managed to slip his beak through the slats of his crate and nip me whenever my arm came withinan inch of him. Diamond wisely found a spot on the other side of the bus. Another twenty or so people pushed on, and we were finally on our way.
    We hurtled along at 120 kilometers an hour, swaying and dipping across the rough dirt roads with such force, I feared the bus would break apart and scatter us all across the countryside like litter. There were a few particularly jarring bounces that seemed to launch us completely off our wheels.
    Though the horn blasted incessantly at apathetic pedestrians and indifferent cows that shared the road with us, I leaned my head back against a metal bar and tried to doze. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the falls. I could still hear them, even a hundred miles away. If I had any misgivings about taking time to return home, they were washed away in the great roar of white steaming mist.
    It was unbearably hot. Vendors poked corn through the open windows anytime we stopped, radios played African pop music, and almost all the chickens managed to get loose. We bought a few hard-boiled eggs from a vendor, and I hungrily peeled one, only to reveal a reeking dark green interior. I tried not to gag and fed it to the rooster, who snatched it up without so much as a second’s worth of ethical consideration and then ungratefully nipped me again.
    We stopped three more times, once for a herd of gazelle that decided to spring across the road in airy leaps, seemingly impervious to the heat and traffic, and once for a herd of buffalo that wandered aimlessly in front of us, not caring in the least that the bus was physically nudging some of them along.
    Our last stop was at a checkpoint set up by the Department of Veterinary Services, so that we—bus, passengers,and chickens—could be sprayed with insecticide to repel tsetse flies. A man walked around carrying a black hose and a huge vacuum cleaner canister slung over his shoulder, sending an acrid yellow mist everywhere.
    â€œThis is horrible,” I complained as the fumes poured through the flapping windows, stinging my eyes and throat.
    Diamond coughed. “Sleeping sickness is worse,” she rasped. “If you want to go to Charara, you have to get sprayed.”
    I opened my mouth to remind her that I hadn’t wanted to go to Charara at all, but another burning whiff had me gagging uncontrollably. We were finally released to continue our journey and arrived late in the afternoon, smelling like a lab experiment.
    Â 
    â€œNo alcohol in camp,” the driver warned us as he drove over the pitted, dusty road that led into the park. “No guns. And no citrus. No citrus. The elephants, they smell the citrus and come to your hut. Make much trouble.” The sign on the park gates pretty much repeated the driver’s warnings, in addition to mentioning no loud music after nine o’clock and no fireworks.
    We promised him we hadn’t brought citrus. In fact, we hadn’t brought anything