C4 antho - Chamber Four

Helping Hands
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by David Peak
from PANK
Malmoud, the village leader, grabbed Betsy by the hand,
the loose skin on his thin arm purple beneath the white glare
of the sun. His head was covered in thick shocks of white
hair, his obsidian eyes sunk deep within their sockets.
He’d been hovering around her ever since she’d climbed
down from Brian’s mud-caked Jeep, tilting his head back and
forth as he eyed her blonde ponytail, her neatly-pressed safari
pants.
He jerked Betsy’s arm as he pulled her through the
small, nameless village outside Wau in West Bahr al Ghazal.
These villages were popping up everywhere in South
Sudan, everywhere in Sub-Saharan Africa for that matter, as
quickly and haphazardly as dust settling after a storm.
The landscape of South Sudan is bleak―the land of biblical
cataclysm, of annual droughts giving way to annual
floods. The sky is always full of birds of prey―buzzards, eagles,
kites.
Malmoud kept turning around, kept saying something in
his language―Thuongjang, the Dinka language, the language
of the Nile―but it was incomprehensible to Betsy’s ears, too
rich in vowels, too formless, too breathy. Brian would know
what he’s saying, she thought. Brian speaks six languages.
It’s nearly impossible for an American to visit South
Sudan without a chaperone. Betsy found Brian online. At
27 he was already working on his doctorate in anthropology.
He had a ruddy face and bright eyes. He worked for