From Africa: New Francophone Stories

The Ballad of a Shipwreck

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [85], (3) Lines: 19 to 4 ——— 14.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page * PgEnds: Eject [85], (3) michèle rakotoson The Ballad of a Shipwreck That rooster. . . . If he could catch it, he would turn it into soup, eviscerate it, slit its throat . . . It seems that sleep is the poor man’s only good fortune. And now, thanks to that rooster . . . But there were also the ducks, the chickens, the geese, the . . . . . . OK, fine, they weren’t going to leave them behind, but that was still no reason to bother everyone. They could have perhaps left them outside. But when he had proposed that, they answered in a sour tone: “And the thieves.” Oh yes, and then there were also the thieves. He had almost forgotten about them. In Ambohitrimanjaka, the inhabitants had refused to join the refugee camps. They had stayed on the dam. They had far too many farm animals , it seems. Since then the journalists, followed by the photographers, had come to talk about them. It seems that if the dam gave way under the weight of the water . . . 85 rakotoson 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [86], (4) Lines: 43 ——— 0.0pt P ——— Normal P PgEnds: T [86], (4) But others said they should open the dams, that the floods had been caused by the failure to let out enough water. Well, in any case, his own house was certainly standing in the water . . . . Yesterday Razafy, his wife, had returned from there in tears. “Visitors” had been there; they had looted everything and vandalized the rest. Why was she crying? They had to expect that. The house, or what that was left of it, had been empty for a month, and they had left the furniture inside. But where could they have put it? Rakoto turned over and over again in his bed, or rather what served as a bed. He felt tired, numb all over. He had slept miserably once again. How can four hundred people sleep in a church? . . . Oh, how exasperating that child could be when it cried like that! It had cried all night. Another one who was perhaps about to die. That would make the third one in a week. The children couldn’t stand sleeping directly on the ground, even with the tile floor. If only they had found some mattresses; the mats they had were far too thin. They must have caught cold, started coughing, coughing, then they grew thinner, spit up blood and. . . . But this time it was different. They had all had a fever, were burning up, coughing, then they had diarrhea, a very black diarrhea, and in a day or two . . . Four hundred people in this church hall. . . . For a month. . . . The doctors had come by and given out aspirin and quinine. In the dispensary they also distributed aspirin. They say that in the pharmacies there was no medicine left and what they did have was terribly expensive. . . . Other children were surely going to cry like this one did. But the children don’t even have room to play, that’s another reason that . . . . . . One month they had been there, one month of putting up with 86 The Ballad of a Shipwreck 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [87], (5) Lines: 78 to 1 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [87], (5) each other, the screams, the children crying, the promiscuity, the illnesses . How do you tell about life in a refugee camp? . . . They had thought they would only have to leave their homes for ten days, but the rain hadn’t stopped, and the water hadn’t subsided. . . . One month. . . . Razafy told him the thieves had taken away the sheet metal from the roof and the doors. Where would he find any now? On the black market, a piece of sheet metal sold for 10,000 francs before the flood, so now. . . . Rakoto sighed. These days the fatigue never left him. Why had he been dealt this nasty blow...