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Then there is nothing left inside me, I gag dryly, my bowels clutch and spasm but all that comes out of me is thin yellow liquid. Vanessa wipes my mouth and bum with a fistful of leaves and grass. She bathes me, running water over my burning skin from a bucket, and then wraps me in a towel. She carries me to the tent, which is rank with the smell of my soiled clothes. Dad throws them into a pit fire at the back of the camp where we burn garbage—old baked-bean tins, cigarette packets, empty cereal boxes, and used teabags. Vanessa props me up and tries to feed me some hot tea. I am so thirsty my throat seems stuck together, my tongue feels swollen and cracked. As soon as the liquid hits my belly, I vomit again.

My bum and mouth are raw and both begin to bleed.

Dad says, “We should have packed some Cokes.”

“And loo paper,” says Vanessa. She licks her finger and wipes the edges of my mouth with her moist fingertip. I loll back against her arm. She says, “Hold on, Chookies.” She strokes sweat-wet hair off my forehead and rocks me. “Hold on,” she tells me.

We have a radio in the Land Rover. Dad drives up to the top of a small rise overlooking the river and calls headquarters. The radio hisses and cackles.

“Devuli HQ, Devuli HQ, this is Devuli mobile. Do you read? Over.”

The radio squeaks, swoops, “Wee-arrr-ooo.”

Dad calls again, but there is no answer.

Dad comes back to camp. “We’ll have to try again at seven, when they’re waiting for us.” We have been checking in every evening at seven to see if Mum has had the baby.

He says, “I’ll mix up some rehydration salts.” He stirs two level teaspoons of sugar and half a teaspoon of salt into a liter of boiled water. Vanessa holds up my head, and Dad feeds teaspoons of the liquid into my mouth. I start to retch; bile dribbles, bitter and stinging, down my chin.

At seven, Dad drives the Land Rover back up to the rise and radios again. “Bobo’s sick; vomiting and diarrhea. She’s too sick to move. If we try and move her . . . she won’t make it back. Any advice? Over.”

The ranch manager’s wife comes onto the radio. “Have her sip some salt, sugar, and water. You know the amounts? Over.”

“Affirmative. We’ve tried that. No go. Over.”

The manager’s wife is quiet. At last she replies, “Don’t know what to say, Tim.”

Dad slumps over the radio.

The next day Dad stays in camp with me instead of going out to herd wild cattle. I am feeling light-headed, losing the feeling of my body. When Dad pinches the skin on my arm, it stays puckered up in a tiny tent of skin. My feet are starting to swell. He tells Vanessa to keep on trying to feed me the rehydration salts. I keep vomiting. By late the next afternoon, I am too tired to keep my eyes open. Vanessa goes into the old ammunition box and finds a wrinkled orange, the last saved piece of fresh food in our store. She slices it open and comes back into the tent. “Here”—she presses a quarter of orange between my teeth—“suck on this.”

Dad says, “I don’t think she should eat fruit.”

Vanessa looks at him.

Dad hunches miserably. He lights a cigarette. “You’re right,” he says. “Might as well, hey. Try it.”

The orange juice trickles down my throat and falls into my empty, air-blown belly. It stays.

That night Dad feeds me a bowl of soft, watery sadza. He says, “Eat this. If this doesn’t plug you up, I don’t know what will.”

The mealie porridge sticks against my teeth and slides into my belly.

“One more bite.”

I swallow and take one more bite, then I say “Enough” and lie back on my cot and shut my eyes.

I can hear the men around the campfire singing softly, taking it in turns to pick up a tune, the rhythm as strong as blood in a body. The firelight flickers off the blue and orange tent in pale, dancing shapes and there is the sweet smell of the African bush, wood smoke, dust, sweat. My bones are so sharp and thin against the sleeping bag that they hurt me and I must cover my hip bones with my hands.

I make a vow never to leave Africa.

Meat

RANCH WORK

We’re running out of water again: