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Doctors Without Boundaries

By: cowboy109



Jarrik's last memories of Boston were neatness and politeness. The stainless steel tweezers to turn the needle for the suture were sparkling. The boundaries of the surgery site were formed by straight lines of medical tape. Skin was inside the rectangle. Outside the rectangle was a blue sheet with the fold marks from storage. The anesthetist was sitting on a swiveling chair amid monitors and electronically controlled injection tubes. The anesthetist gave him the thumbs up that he let the patient come out of general anesthesia. The nurse to Jarrik's side held the straw of an organic apple juice with re-balanced electrolytes in front of his face mask. She politely moved the straw under his mask for rehydration.

The first impression on the African airplane was the bright sunlight inside of the cabin. The airplane was a standard Boeing. Yet, the sunlight closer to the equator was a lot stronger, twice or thrice by his estimation. The more jarring impression was that things were basic, maybe shoddy. The wax coated paper cup in his hand was plain white. The seams were clearly evident and peeling. The paper cup contained water. Cola was reserved for first class. The flight attendant that explained it to him was wearing a boxy stiff uniform. Her uniform was a solid blue with a few pieces of solid white. A white plane, white stripes on her shoulder, and a white mini apron identified her.

People on the plane seemed taller, scrawnier, and less confident. For example, the pilot stepping out of the cockpit was rather tall. His uniform sleeves were too short. The pant ended way above the ankles. The jacket cuffs were somewhere around the middle of his forearms. He lacked the dignity, weight, and slowness of an American pilot. He looked like a shifty corner vendor stuffed into a children's pilot costume. He was fumbling with a rubber band to tie the cockpit door open. His feet were closed. His butt stuck out more than it needed to do. His elbows looked boxy. His fumbling seemed aimless.

The traveler next to Jarrik was managing director of a dairy plant in the capital. He was attempting to solve a Sudoku puzzle in the back of the flight magazine. Jarrik glanced at the paper. The man had only two numbers filled out. A quarter hour later, the man had only progressed to fill in one more number. Jarrik picked an easy square that had all numbers, except for one filled in. Jarrik offered the other traveler the solution. He happily accepted with a cheer and head bobbing. On a second look, Jarrik noticed that one of the earlier numbers was evidently wrong. The managing director had written a nine right next to another nine. Jarrik seized up the man with his thick plastic glasses and the white tape to hold them together.

Jarrik glanced out into the cabin at the arms, wrists, and scalps that lurked over the seats in front of him. Another hard bump of a turbulence shook the overhead compartments. The pilot came running from the back of the plane. The rubber band had snapped. The cockpit door was swinging closed. The door engaged the terrorist safety lock automatically upon closing. The pilot stood in front of the blue painted door with the bare metal frame. The little black pinhole starred back at the pilot. The pilot rattled the door with the weak click-click of the door handle. An African woman on the other side of the plane screamed hysterically.

A tall African passenger stood up in the front row. He helped the pilot ram the door with their shoulders. An Englishman asked the flight attendant with British accent: "Should I start worrying now?" The flight attendant ensured the passenger: "Oh, the pilot is dumb in head. He always make nonsense." The pilot attempted to balance now on one leg. His black sneakers, white soaks, brown skin, and high running pants gave him only a shaky support. His other leg was raised hip high into the air with a bent knee. He kicked the door with tremendous effect to his balance, yet none to the door.

Most passengers were now looking at the pilot as he was retreating from the door. Jarrik had a joke flashing across his mind. In the joke, a pilot ran to the back of the plane with a parachute. He told the passengers not to worry, because he was going to come back with help. The pilot on this plane found a fire axe in the emergency overhead bin. He chopped into the door only making dents. The pilot's face was torn with anxiety as he ran to the back of the plane. There he started screaming hoo-hoo-hoo and ran forward with the fire axe over his right shoulder. It eluded the pilot that the long distance rather tired him out then allowed him to gain more speed. The fire axe bit into the door. A clear line of white sun light broke through the door from inside the cockpit.

A few more of those long range attacks and the pilot made it back into the cockpit. The applause of the passengers had him smile smittenly. The plane landed in the capital. The airport was as to be expected. It was bare concrete. A few soldiers with skinny machine guns stood around. Crowds of people in multi-colored clothes with the weirdest old luggage and plastic bags shuffled in long lines. Jarrik mistook the hand pressed against his chest as that of a pickpocket and grabbed it firmly. The hand contained a pack of Marlboro. The man was apparently a petty thief selling duty free cigarettes. Jarrik let go of him to find a taxi.

The taxi was a white diesel Mercedes from three decades ago. The backseat was worn thin making Jarrik sit lower and appreciate the added head room. The diesel engine vibrated the whole car. Every few seconds, the engine would rattle up higher and make the whole car jump twice before settling down again. The black driver wore a simple dress shirt and brown pants. The driver adjusted the beautiful, dried flowers on the dashboard, while asking Jarrik for the destination. Jarrik told him to go to the Doctors Without Borders hospital. The driver high-fived another cabbie through the open window, as the car slowly pulled out of the line up of waiting cars at the terminal.

The drive had all the sights that Jarrik had been looking for, while he completed his tropical medicine course to qualify for the mission. There were the palm trees with their skinny logs and bushy top. They stood on dried out dirt patches in the center median of the road. Perhaps, it was intended as a presidential road at some point in the past. There were the white washed square houses with stairs on the outside. People had their bedrooms on top of the house to enjoy the cool night temperatures as a respite from the daytime heat. Poor, suffering people were in throngs along the road. He looked forward to alleviating their suffering by offering his medical services for free.

At the MSF (Medecins Sans Frontieres -- French for Doctors without Borders) building, Jarrik meet a short, stout, slightly overweight blond man. The man wore beige shorts and a white short sleeve shirt. Hiking sandals covered his feet. His face was round and filled with a big smile: "My name's Kyden, mate." Kyden lead Jarrik to the back of the building. A small concrete court yard with a few cracks was there. The place looked like it had been a very small motel before. All the signs were gone, yet the architecture of many small rooms was evident. Kyden turned the round golden door knob to the first door. It was a door with many small glass windows: "Here's your little cubby house."

Jarrik left his luggage in the room and followed Kyden back to the court yard. The next door had Kyden's room. Kyden plopped down into a low camping chair. The plastic bands of his seat stretched almost down to the tiles on the floor. Next to him was a plastic ice chest. Kyden got a beer out of it and handed it to Jarrik: "Those planes are as dry as a nun's nasty." Jarrik sat down on another camping chair. He sipped on the beer. The room was bare: One ice chest, two camping chairs, one cupboard broken into its individual wood boards, another cupboard probably contained Kyden's clothes. The bed was large and puffy. It promised to be overly soft and sagging. The walls were white washed, clean, and simple.

"You are not the one for ear bashing."

"Oh, I am sorry. The long travel must have dulled my mind."

"No drama, mate. I have to close down the clinic for the day anyway."

Kyden slapped Jarrik on the thigh and left. Jarrik went back to his own room to get darker sun glasses, a hat, and sun screen. Curious to see the African continent, he stepped out into the street. The street was quieter, because they were in a suburb. A resemblance of a sidewalk was hard to make out. Yet, there were only very few cars going by. A black woman with a pink fabric wrapped around her hair was selling fruits on the other side of the street. Jarrik crossed the street to take a look through the glass window into the cart.

The tall woman with slender hands pointed out the fresh pawpaw fruit that she had gotten. They looked yellow and similar to a papaya. Next to it were a few tangerines threaded on a string and tied in a circle. The peeled mango on a wooden stick seemed most appealing to Jarrik. The woman noticed Jarrik's attention to the mangos.

"Half price for doctor!"

"How did you know that I was a doctor?"

"You walked out of the clinic and are a white man. My name is Namazzi. It means water."

"Hi, my name is Jarrik. I have no clue, what it means."

Jarrik felt Namazzi's hand. The touch was soft as a woman. Her fingers and skin was a bit hard. He looked into her eyes and saw her warmly looking back at him. After the long raucous journey, he felt her female energy. It made him feel at home. Her breasts were on the small side for her tall size. Yet, he looked at them anyway. He held her hand a moment to long. She broke into a giggle as she pulled her hand back.

"My brother better not see white man flirting with me. Here is your mango. It is a gift for a kind man."

Jarrik walked back to his room. The shower stall was simply a shower head. There was no basin for the water. Next to the Western toilet was a drain in the bathroom. The wood board under the mirror over the sink was too narrow for more than a tooth paste. Jarrik had to put his toiletries on the water tank of the toilet. The mango stone was lying on the floor near the entrance inside a napkin. There was no trash can to be found. Ants were already on the Mango, when he finished his shower. The ants were laying down scent to build a solid ant street. Jarrik politely placed the Mango leftover in front of his door into the court yard and went to sleep.

Kyden woke Jarrik up with a "G'day." Kyden rattled the spoon inside of a plastic glass. He placed the plastic glass, a box of cereal, and rice milk next to the bed. Jarrik hat a good feeling about the day. There was something more solid about this place than Boston. Boston was such a rush and full of nervous people. This place had a solid feel. Perhaps, the simple nature of the place let the mind settle. Or, the backward nature of things gave the mind a little rest from catching up on the latest innovation.

"Bog in. We don't have real milk only long shelf life rice milk. As you noticed, there is no trash can in any rooms, because they ants come in through the holes. All the trash has to go into the dumpster. The dumpster lid is open, so that you can throw the trash from your door step."

Kyden pushed open the door to the clinic. Jarrik's room was a square white room. The exam table was a stainless steel metal table taken from a restaurant. Kyden showed, how to spray down the table and wipe it after each patient. A swivel chair with a round seat cushion and no backrest was his new office chair. Previous doctor volunteers had covered the once green seat cushion with stickers: a little heart, a skull of a metal band, a skate boarding logo, a BMW log, a snappy sticker saying 'mean people.' The supplies were still in ten by ten by ten inch white boxes. Some boxes were already opened. Others were still closed. Some boxes had complete manifests of the content. Others were missing the manifest and someone had scribbled with a sharpie gauzes, blades, antibiotics, pox immunization and so on. An oversized box of torn Nitrile gloves lay in the corner.

The tour continued into the waiting room. Grass mats around the edge of the room allowed people to sit or lie, while waiting. A few people were already sitting there, swatting flies off their faces and bobbing little once on their knees. "The morning brings a lot of ankle biters. They burn themselves on the night stoves," said Kyden. Kyden smiled at a little three year old boy, who was holding his hold weight on Kyden's two fingers. The boy's face was gruffy and a large pink sore covered the entire shin on the black body. He wore only a white fabric wrapped around his hips.

The mother and boy followed Jarrik into his office. Jarrik washed his hands in the sink in the corner with industrial bar of soap. He snapped on his gloves. He swiveled his sticker chair to take a look at his first patient, who sat observantly on the restaurant table holding his leg up. The job was straight forward: Wash the debris out. Pick the fabric and other embedded material with tweezers. Cover with a burn lotion. Wrap with sterile gauze. Teach the mother to use a handful of single use burn lotion packets. The challenge was finding all the little things in the boxes. He started to move the boxes from stacks against the wall into a field of boxes spread out on the ground. He started grouping them by adding an inch space between the boundaries of different types of boxes.

By mid morning, he paid less attention to things and could blindly reach for the most common boxes, while still looking at the patient. The beginning of routine gave Jarrik the chance to look outside the window. Namazzi had returned with her fruit stand. She had waved him a warm hello. Jarrik had smiled back feeling happy to already recognize someone familiar in his new environment. The dark brown skin of Namazzi had a nice shine in the sunlight. Jarrik was curious to touch it and feel, if there were any difference to his white skin. The brightly colored fabric looked good against her dark skin. The hands and feet of Namazzi had a strange fascination, because they were light colored. All black people are like that, yet it made the soles of the hand and feet stand out so much more. He wondered, what it would feel like to hold these feet that seemed more like a tool for long walking then the fetish model like feet of his fellow Bostonites in luxury shoes.

The almost last patient of the morning shift was a thirteen year old boy with thick Shea nut paste rubbed on his chest. He had curly short hair. The peculiar boy had a deep cut. Kyden quickly pushed the boy into Kyden's office.

"You don't treat any diggers of the Lord's Resistance Army. That shea butter is their mystical bullet proof vest. They have a kangaroo loose in the top paddock."

So, Jarrik took an early lunch break. He walked over to Namazzi. She smiled at him with a sparkle in her eyes. Her nose seemed extra clean today. Jarrik did not understand how that nose-clean effect exactly happened. Today, he was curious to try to the Jackfruit and insisted on paying. She asked him about his hobbies. He said that he was an avid hiker. She told him that not having a bicycle, she had to walk a lot. Yet, there was this beautiful road up a mountain near the capital. The view from the other side of the mountain would show a vast plain. There the high grass and waterholes nurtured a rich animal life. In the far distance was her home village, where her father still lived.

He asked her, if she would take him. She burst for a second with excitement before she could her composure again. During that second, she kicked up the sandal behind her and raised her flat hand into the air, while her large, even white ivory teeth chirped 'ke-ke-ke.' Kyden yelled at them to come for lunch. Jarrik invited Namazzi. Namazzi followed pulling her fruit stand behind her.

A white pickup truck was parked on the other side. The driver was wearing a turban and looked shifty, while revving the engine every once in a while. Jarrik was unsure, if the driver was preventing an impending engine stall or rushing the man on the truck bed. The men on the truck bed gave Kyden two stuffed paper bags in exchange for colorful paper money. Kyden took the paper bags into the courtyard. Next to the dumpster was the single tree of the court yard. The white canopy stretched out thickly providing comfortable shade. A few large bricks were placed in a circle. Kyden shifted the bricks onto their narrow sides to have taller bricks to sit on.

The bags contained McDonald's burgers, fries, cola, and chicken McNuggets. To celebrate Jarrik's first day, he had sent a driver across town to the only McDonald's of the country. He figured a little familiar from back home would be welcome. Jarrik was not sure, if he should give into the good feeling of comfort food or insist on getting the most exotic experience out of his trip.

Jarrik thought the better of complaining to his host. Instead, he complimented Namazzi on her delicate and price tattoo. Namazzi had rolled up her sleeves all the way over her shoulder in the heat. The middle of her shoulder had a tree and a moon shining over it. She explained that it was a mystical power symbol of her village. Her father still was the leader of the village. He had twin daughters and no boys. So, he marked one daughter as the queen of the day and the other as the queen of the night. The tree symbolized the gathering place, where he ruled. The night symbolized that she would have the power to rule the village at night. Been queen of the night was mostly pointless, because the villagers followed the rhythm of the sun and slept at night. However, the celebrations were held at night. So, she would lead the ceremonies, when she went back home.

As Namazzi was talking, she grabbed Jarrik's forearm to make a point of how beautiful her ceremonial dress was. Jarrik felt goose bumps spreading over his body. As he became more aware of his body, he noticed that Namazzi's sandal food was resting on his shoes. He quietly enjoyed the feeling of body contact and secretly inhaled with each breath the energy of Namazzi. Namazzi's face glowed as she described her struggle leading an antelope bull in front of a procession. Jarrik was entranced looking at her face, waiting for the occasional touch from her. The touch would set off a sparkle of sensation waving through his body. He soaked up every facial expression and gesturing tick that she had.

Kyden seemed to have a sneerful attitude. Every time Kyden glanced at the tattoo on Namazzi's shoulder, a bitter twitch ran across the corners of his lips. The expressive Namazzi eventually realized the heavy tension between Kyden seizing her up and Jarrik eying Kyden for not being friendlier to the guest. She excused herself that her customers would soon finish lunch and were looking for a fruit dessert. Leaned forward and kissed Jarrik on the cheek. He felt her moist lips, moist enough to feel wet. The sensation stayed with him the whole afternoon like a tattoo. During the humdrum of bandaging and vaccinating, he played the memory of that kiss over and over. He wondered what her lips would taste like, those red lips behind the dark brown face. He wanted to lick her teeth and gum to taste her.

As the room got darker from the setting sun, Kyden knocked on the door of Jarrik's office:

"Mate, I am sorry about lunch today. I know you like the girl. Let me make it up to you. Why don't you chuck a sickie tomorrow and go with her on that guy up the mountain. I already paid her boss twenty bucks to make up for the lost revenue of her taking off tomorrow."

"Kyden, wow, I really appreciate your care. I hope that I can re-pay it some day. Though, is it okay to take a sick day on my second day already?"


Doctors Without Boundaries



"Jarrik, we all need a bit time to adjust to the jetlag. A bloke once spent the whole first week sleeping like a rat in cockayne."

The next morning, Jarrik stood at the entrance of the hospital at attention. He had his sneakers on. He wore a clean t-shirt and shorts. The backpack had three plastic bottles of water and two military MRE packs. The pickup truck from yesterday was idling again. Kyden gave the driver instructions. Namazzi was already sitting high on the truck bed. Her hair was braided back in little strings today. She wore jeans shorts that fully showed her long legs. Her top was an oversized t-shirt. In the back of it was a knot that took up excess fabric. Because the t-shirt was so large, the neck opening kept sliding over her shoulder to lazily hang there. Her brown feet were rapidly and alternating tapping on the truck bed to show her excitement.

Jarrik jumped on the truck bed next to Namazzi. He put the back pack down in front of him. The driver let the clutch drop in two hard. Namazzi brushed her hand on his thigh to steady herself. She turned over to yell into his ear, "Please, hold me. I am afraid to fall out." As she yelled into his ear, the jerky truck made her lips touch his ear once. He put her arm around her. He could feel her side touching his. He felt her height and strength. She was unlike the short girls back home, whom he had to bend down to. With Namazzi, he could be the tall man he is and stand up. The hand of the arm behind her back was touching her tummy through the t-shirt.

Occasionally, she would turn to Jarrik's direction to look at something that they passed. She'd comment that they had passed the fruit market or that a large civil war battle had happened there. Sometimes, when she turned, the side of her boob would touch Jarrik's chest. The firm, malleable pouch aroused him. The erection in his pants grew. At first, it was awkward. The penis had faced down the leg and was now evidently poking a tent. During another jerk of the truck, he pulled his pant. The penis snapped up. Now the erection was behind the zipper of the fly, much less visible. From then, Jarrik enjoyed the arm sexual erection in his pants. He soaked up Namazzi's energy. She was a bit tart with her tallness and hard rough fingers and feet. Yet, she was very beautiful as well with her laughter. Her small boobs and little female curves made her a bit asexual. Yet, behind her façade, it seemed that she was a raw sexual being. She promised to enjoy raw sex. Jarrik imagined her sex too large to be sexy, yet so ravenous to swallow his penis that he wanted to get in there.

The white truck dropped them off at the dead end of a dirt road. There were a few dry bushes and plenty pale footsteps in the dark hard-packed soil. The driver cautioned them to be back before sunset. Namazzi jumped off the truck. She half danced and half trotted the first steps. Her lanky calves were flying side ways as she tried to run a bit. Soon, they fell into a comfortable pace following the use trail up the mountain. Occasionally, a dry tree gave them extra respite from the hot sun.

Namazzi wanted to know about America. She wanted to learn more English words. They babbled back and force. Namazzi was leading the way. Whenever Jarrik looked in front of him, he saw Namazzi. He could not help but look at her ass in the cutoff jeans. The butt waddled left and right with her steps. The jeans were cut off rather high. Jarrik wondered, if he would be able to see part of her sex lurking through it. Every time that Namazzi made a large step over a boulder, he would involuntarily duck a little bit down to get a better view. Based on his medical knowledge, the labia must be close, yet he did not identify anything popping out.

"Penis," said Namazzi, "You have penis." She smiled like she had said something illegally. Jarrik snapped back from visualizing his penis, while looking at her ass. He realized that she was trying to show off that she had learned a bad slang word. She was teasing him by saying something naughty. He rolled with it and answered, "You have pussy." She repeated him with a bad accent. He smiled.

Around noon, they reached a rocky high ground. A slow mountain wind made them comfortable. The capital was behind them. It was not really that large of a city. The high urban buildings in the center quickly gave way to large plots of parking lots, fields, and abandoned lots. The famous Sheraton hotel was visible. A couple old European churches stood out. The other side of the view showed the vast plain. A few rivers cut through the plain. They were little strings of blue surrounded by wide bands of green. The rest of the land was yellow dried grass. In the distance was one of the tallest mountains of Africa. They had white peaks on this summer day.

They stood there tracing the elements of the view for a while. Namazzi grabbed his hand. He felt her hand cooled by the mountain wind. Her hand was mostly hard, yet her finger pads were these little spots of soft on it. She said coyly that she liked him. He confirmed that he liked her as well. She added to her admission that she liked him a lot. He half turned and leaned forward to kiss her. She welcomed his lips. He tasted her tongue. Her teeth were taller than other women's whom he had kissed. He hugged her body close. He could feel her boobs against his chest. He let his pelvis come forward, so that she cut feel his erection as a confirmation of his love for her.

His heart started palpating. A strong burning sensation on his chest reminded him how long it has been since the last kiss. All that physical anguish, he channeled by tasting her mouth even more, licking her tongue and her lips. He was eager to taste the flavor of her saliva. And, he liked it. When they broke the kiss, Namazzi sheepishly said, "You are my boyfriend now. If I find you with another woman, I will cut off your penis."

She walked away to sit down on a rock. They had the military MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) for lunch. It may have been a plain meal back in America. Here in Africa, anything American was exotic and special. That's probably how she viewed him as well. He quizzed her about her favorite movies, food, color, and so on. She was equally patient and coquet about answering his questions. He painted out in his head, how he would cherish and romance her.

At the end of lunch, he asked if he could have another kiss. She affirmed his request. As he started kissing her mouth, she drew him on top of him and lay down on the ground. His whole body was resting on top of her as she devoured her mouth. His penis was pressing against her pubic bone. Her mouth was more passive this time. Her hands were fingering their way under his shirt and into the back of his pants. She struggled a little at the intersection between getting her hands on top or under his underwear. She found her way under. She squeezed the bare skin of his ass. It made him more conscious of his hips. He felt the pressure of his body weight on her hard pubic bone sexually stimulating him. Her fingers at his butt cheeks felt so fresh. For one, she was new to that region on his body. For the other, it was a long time since he was touched there. So, his mind followed every motion of hers and made him feel delicious.

He smelled the skin on her neck to imprint the memory of recognizing her again. He got up and helped her stand. She looked at him with a luscious loving face. They walked back down the use trail. Walking down was like descending into the bottom of a soup bowl. The city was the soup and the bowl the surrounding mountains. The return seemed faster. Of course downhill travel is faster than uphill. Also, the mind is more tired and takes less in. The driver was waiting next to the truck. He had been smoking cigarettes as evident by the cigarette butts lying on the ground next to him. The cigarette butts had been neatly smoked down the last millimeters.

During the drive back to the clinic, Namazzi out of nowhere reached up both arms into the air and stood with her legs white screaming: "I have a white boyfriend." Jarrik was equally happy about having snatched an African queen, yet he felt rather uncomfortable about pronouncing such luck and racial context so loudly. He put his hand on her hip half to assure her and half to get her to come down. They arrived at darkness. He had expected more, yet she gave him only a peck on the lips before she hurried away.

The second clinic day started the next morning. Kyden had kept the illegal abortion accidents hidden from Jarrik the first day. Most women in the country bore about eight children. Rape in the rural areas by rebels was common. Business men would learn basic field techniques to induce abortions and often budge the procedure. Two women arrived febrile and bleeding at the clinic. Jarrik and Kyden had to work together. Kyden worked fast and adept at field medicine. He did not use general anesthesia unless absolutely required. They neither had the monitors or breathing machines to properly support the patients. The Africans seemed to care little about it. They were glad enough to get some help.

After the rush, the burn wounds and immunizations offered happy boredom. It was amazing, how many children, or ankle biters in Kyden's Australian slang, got burned every night by open heating or cooking fires in the house. The boredom offered him a chance to check out Namazzi. Her cart was on the other side of the street straight in view of his window. She was wearing a long purplish dress today. She waved him a cheery good morning. A little later after carefully looking left and right, she squeezed her boobies together in her dress. She expectantly looked at Jarrik's reaction. He laughed with his eyes to not alert the young patient and his mother.

When the patient had left, he walked up to the window and raised his t-shirt to show his man boobs. Sure, there was a bit fat, yet they had a manly shape and a fluff of manly hair in the middle. Namazzi bent her body back laughing and her hand slapping the surface of the cart. Satisfied with himself, Jarrik waddled to the door to get the next patient. The elder man had been laughing liquid all night. Jarrik had started to think in Kyden's Aussie speak. Laughing liquid meant to vomit. It was a simple food poisoning. He assured the man that it would be over in 24 hours. If not, he should return.

While Jarrik finished talking, Namazzi got antsy on the other side of the street. She was bending down and toiling around with something behind her cart. It made Jarrik stop in odd places of his sentences. She made Mickey Mouse ears with her hands. Her hands were against her head with the fingers splayed in all directions. She wanted is attention. As Jarrik looked over the patient, she stepped on something high behind her cart. She leaned forward, so that her back was horizontal. Then, she pulled down the top of her dress, so that Jarrik could look down deep into the middle of her breast. She did not pull it down far enough to reveal the whole boob or the areolas, yet he got a good look.

The elder food poisoning patient was quickly whisked out. Jarrik pulled the swivel chair with the stickers near the window. He kicked off his shoes and stood on the swivel chair. His hands reached for the ceiling to steady the swiveling motion of the chair. With a swift motion, he pulled down his shorts and mooned Namazzi with his naked butt. His hands still near his ankles, the door opened.

"Aw, you dropkick, you can't be a drongo already on the third day! I know the country drives people batty."

Jarrik came down the swivel chair and shuffled his feet into his sandals: "I am not even going to try to explain this one."

"Mate, we have to make a trip to a rural outpost soon. I believe your girl has already shown you the general area yesterday. Before we can go, the local rebel leader mister Kon has to give us permission. We will meet him at a bar tonight. So, don't make any plans with your girl or leave. The place is very dangerous."

Kyden left the room. Jarrik caught his run away emotions of physical teasing with a girl and being chastised. Then, he wrote on a paper pad "can't play anymore." He held the sign to the open window. Namazzi read the sign and mockingly rubbed her eyes to suggest that she was crying. They both laughed and went back to their occupations.

Not being able to play, Jarrik got absorbed in his patients. A young painter had fallen off a roof and broken his leg. A police man had failed to stop a tuck-tuck two stroke bike. He had large bruises on his chest. A waiter had a strained wrist, because he protected his head from the swinging chair of an angry customer. Mostly Jarrik was focused organizing the white boxes of medical supply better. He seemed woefully short of anything. Yet over time, he ran into about anything tucked into the corner of an unrelated box. He was squatting over his white boxes on the floor, when a knock on the window stirred him.

Namazzi was looking in. Her lips were painted starkly red. Her cheeks had circular red rouge applied. Jarrik was at first shock to notice what he had missed at the distance. Yet, he felt charmed that she would try to woe him so obviously. It was a bit of a turn on to be coveted in such a savage way. Namazzis finger were moving between her cupped hand and her mouth to signal 'eating.' She was asking him out to lunch.

Jarrik meet Namazzi upfront. They invited Kyden to come along. They found a café a block down the street. A few ramshakled plastic chairs with broken pieces served as the sole restaurant furniture. People were sitting on the chairs. They were holding the food in one hand and the fork in the other hand. The white paper plates had two piles of food. The yellow paste was matooke, steamed plantains. The other pile was familiar millet. Some people also held piece of bread with the thumb on top of the plate. The cook, a fat woman, was standing in the corner of the lot. She was stirring two large pots over makeshift fires of discarded wood, plastic, and paper. Every once in a while, she'd kick a can of leftover something into the fire. Sometimes, the flame hissed a little higher. Sometimes, the liquid simply ran on the ground without catching fire. Other times, the liquid created a blue, red, or green flame. The patrons cheered, when that happened.

Kyden told us about his recent trip to the Impenetrable Forest National Park. He insisted that the name was indeed the official name. He told us about mountain gorilla tracking. Apparently, the gorillas can eat seventy pounds of foot a day. So, they leave plenty of broken branches and feces behind. Their gorilla tracker had driven them to the last known location in a Jeep. From there, they followed the tracker signs to the current location of the gorillas. Kyden stressed what a sight it was to see one of them life in front of you. Because they are mostly vegetarian, except for a few insects, they are pretty safe to get close to. Kyden offered Jarrik that they might be able to make an excursion there.

During the stroll back to the clinic, Namazzi gave Jarrik a bracelet. It was made from a simple, rough cord. There were two wooden pearls tied into it. A few special knots in the middle gave it an interesting texture. Jarrik happily accepted it. Namazzi tied it to his wrist. She kissed both Kyden and Jarrik on the cheek and crossed the street to her fruit stand.

That evening, Kyden was dressed rather dapper. He had a luxurious green shirt. It was cut to fall wide and make him seem a bigger man. He had a real jungle hat. It was white with a band running over it. His pants were pin stripped. His leather shoes were shining. He had a large ring on his finger. Jarrik had to go back and change to match the style.

The driver of the pickup truck drove them into another suburb. The otherwise sullen neighborhood with low dilapidated houses had one impressively large multi-level house at the street corner. Two guards were left and right of the entrance door. The guards were holding metal pipes with both hands. They had an eager expression on their face to use them. Perhaps, if a pedestrian did not cross the streets, but pass in front of them, they may have hit him for no reason. The entrance led a few steps up to a door. The strong wooden door with iron bracing was half ajar. A smart looking man with glasses was holding a book in his hand. It was a photo album with photos of people.

When the maitre recognized Kyden, he opened the door a little bit more. He took a photo of Jarrik with a Polaroid. He put the Polaroid in his photo book. The two walked up the steep, wooden stairs. The second floor was made with heavy exposed wood beams. A warm cantina was to Jarrik's right side. Beyond the cantina was a European looking bar with drinks. To Jarrik's left side was a balcony. Driven by curiosity, he stepped forward to look down.

The courtyard held another level of the establishment. The furniture was simpler and older. Kyden explained that the lower level was for the regulars. The upper level was for the elite and Westerners. The clientele was louder and more rowdy. A woman was cowering on the floor. She was wearing a dirty tank top. Jarrik doubted himself for thinking that she was wearing nothing else. Yet, it seemed like she was naked around the bottom. He looked closer and followed her movements. She lurched forward at a dog. The dog had been looking bewildered all around him. The dog was now running away from her. She went after the dog on her knees. Her feet would completely stretch out as she would push herself forward. She went under a table. He thought that he saw her bare bottom before she disappeared under the next table.

The crowd was roaring. They had tied the skirt of the woman to the dog's tail. The woman was desperately trying to regain her modesty. The dog simply ran confused in a circle, because everyone was cheering and shooing the dog. The African woman being so debased in front of the men was disgusting to Jarrik. Yet, the naked bum turned him on a bit, especially when the pink soles of her feet were squatting right next to it. A couple times, he glimpsed one of her boobs as her tank top disheveled. It was sexy to catch that moment. It was abhorrent to see another human being so demeaned.

Kyden warned him to not frown on the show, but like it. He should cheer along lest he get in trouble. Kyden screamed, "She is so hot, fucking assholes." Kyden pointed Jarrik to look at a table that was shielded and a quiet oasis from the tumult. There were two soldiers in fatigue standing around a man with his pants at his ankles. The man was sitting. They were showing him a magazine. With each flip of the page, they would touch an electrical contact to a car battery. The man with the pants down would cringe. The cables were attached to him. Kyden finished, "Yep, homosexuality is illegal here. In their savage ways, they teach him to dislike the naked men in the gay porn mag. Never appear gay to these animals."

We left the balcony to sit down in the cantina. On the way, we passed tall African women. They were dressed especially luxurious. Yet, the clothes did not fit. Neither did their demeanor and behavior measure up to the elegance of the clothes. They were unsure and childish. The luxurious clothes looked like bad costumes of a high school theatre play on them. They had their little purses. Perhaps, that's where they put the money from doing their tricks. They sure had the look of a hooker. They had the highest high heels that Jarrik had seen since leaving Boston. Their tall legs wobbled unsure like bambi as they attempted to strut.

One of them lost her balance. The towering ebony beauty came down while giving gravity a good fight. She landed straight on Jarrik. Her face dug into his groin. Her fingers grabbed his butt cheeks like the handles of a rickety public bus bouncing threw potholes. Someone flashed a photograph. Jarrik politely helped her up. She strutted on.




Doctors Without Boundaries



They made it to an empty table safe enough from then on. The waiter brought them real imported Corona beer with a lemon. A real plate made of pottery followed. Rice, beans, and a steak were on top of it. A little salad with lettuce and tomatoes was put at the side. The food tasted good. Kyden wanted to know about the state of affairs. Kyden equally warned Jarrik about the wickedness of the local rebels.

The rebels believed that god asked them to abduct people, mostly children. They quote the part in the bible, where Jesus told his followers to stop catching fish and start catching people. Somehow, the rebels take it very literally. Luckily, the rebels odd beliefs have them fighting in completely ineffective ways. For example, they attack in cross formations for no good military reason. They do not take cover, because their prophet forbade them. They have a preference to use holy water over guns to attack. Unfortunately, the senior commanders are increasingly successfully convincing their prophet leader to adopt more traditional military tactics.

After the plates were emptied, Kyden excused himself. He needed to negotiate safe passage into the rural village. They would deliver medical aid there. The backroom was only accessible to officers of the rebel army and special guests. Kyden needed to go by himself. Kyden disappeared behind a door covered by a pearl curtain. A rough looking guy in black patted him down.

Jarrik sampled the beer menu and got an imported German pilz beer. He looked through the lilquor bottles behind the bartender. The place was amazingly well stocked with foreign imports. The bartender was actually smartly dressed. That stood out to Jarrik among the other Africans, who were seemingly wearing Goodwill's leftover.

The clumsy woman from earlier strutted out of the backroom. Her gait was still like that of a young deer. With every step, here ankles would tilt left and right. She stopped at Jarrik's desk. Her dress had a deep cut in the front that showed the inside edges of her scrawny breasts. She held a pile of money to Jarrik: "Please, count." Jarrik assumed that the woman was indeed a prostitute. She was so uneducated that she could not even verify the payment of the John's. She was thus in danger to get in trouble with her pimp. Jarrik liked helping out. He took the stack of money from her hand and started counting. There was again that odd flash of someone taking a photo.

The African money was so colorful and came in such different sizes. Despite it looking like real loot, it only added up to fourteen bucks or so. He told her the number and gave her the money back. She hugged him lightly on the shoulder and kissed his cheek. He did not know if he should feel dirty about that. He wondered where her lips had been before. Oddly, another camera flashed.

Jarrik gladly returned into his own thought world nursing his German Pilz. His fingers played with the wrist pendant from Namazzi. He thought about his love. He wondered what the customs of endearment were in Africa. He wondered if she expected him to marry her. "Mate, already a new girl friend," Kyden rose Jarrik out of his thoughts. Kyden pointed to the lip stick smudge on his cheek. Apparently, the prostitutes here had only cheap lipstick that marked.

Kyden was happy. His hair was a bit tussled. The left side of his shirt was buttoned a little higher than the right side leaving him uneven. Kyden blabbered that the negotiations went very well. The rebel leaders wanted to meet Jarrik as well. He promised Jarrik that the backroom was the best bar in the entire country. Kyden gushed about a Scottish Scotch distillery that had gone out of business fifty years ago. They still had a bottle of that stuff in the back. Mister Kon's private collection would be a dream making all the labor in Africa worth it.

The bouncer to the backroom separated the wood pearl strings of the curtain for the two doctors to step through. The bouncer was very accurate. He carefully felt the armpits. He had Jarrik take of his shoes. He felt the spaces between his toes. When he checked the groin, he actually separated Jarrik's two testicles. To signal the end of the body check, the bouncer slapped his large hand on the side of Jarrik's shoulder. The pat was so hard that Jarrik's shoulder joint and clavicle clicked against each other.

The backroom was very dark. Some of the walls may have been walls or simply darkness. The only light came from the table in booths. There a string of Christmas lights would lie in a rough circle. A slight red or green glow would come from the lights. Apparently, there were semi-translucent curtains to provide further invisibility in some directions. Jarrik figured that somewhere an overseer had to sit in the perfect spot to oversee the whole action. Maybe, he had been to one to many Las Vegas casinos.

The eyes slowly adjusted to the light. Apparently, there were many soldier boots, guns, and hookers. Kyden grabbed a young, short, a bit chubby looking woman. She was wearing the same ultra high heels, panty hoses up to her thighs, and garters above. Her body was covered by an Olympic bathing suit. Those Africans had no taste for continuity. "The red neck collard means that she is a house slave -- free to use by any customer," Kayden explained. He shoved the prostitute under the table of an empty booth. He sternly told her, "no blowie, blowie! Only massage the feet. Massage feet."

We sat down. A waiter brought the venerable bottle of Scotch with two shot glasses. He left the filled shot glasses at the table and took the bottle away. The Nubian woman under the table started taking my shoes off. The massage felt good to Jarrik. She was kneading his soles with her knuckles. Then, she rubbed his ankle. She plugged the individual toes. Jarrik stole a glance at her. She was sitting on her heels hunched over his feet. She had pulled her bathing suit down to her hip, so that her chubby boobs were dangling over his feet. She smiled big at Jarrik. She stuck her tongue out provocatively.

An officer approached the table. The officer had an oversize uniform. His boots were tied high with the pants stuffed on the inside.

"So, this is your doctor friend."

"Jarrik is a very capable internist. He will help many people in the village."

"Kyden, you know, we don't really care for those people. You also know that he has to sleep with one of our ladies, so that we can trust him."

"Officer Pen, I assure you that Jarrik is very loyal. However, he is also married."

"We all are married and use the women here. Kayden, is he gay?"

"Take a look under the table."

The officer started laughing as he saw the prostitute with her bare boobs working Jarrik's feet. He pushed one foot between her thighs and rubbed it against her vagina: "This boot is better getting wet from your wet pussy." The cubby prostitute started licking Jarrik's feet. She would rub her chubby boobs around his feet. Jarrik did not want to disappoint his girl friend back at the clinic, yet he was also afraid of that car battery in the court yard of the bar. He quietly slouched back on the bench. The buzz of the alcohol set in. The mellow daze of getting a massage came over him. He only half listened to the conversation about routes to the village, checkpoints, and passphrases.

An hour had easily passed by the time that Kyden pulled Jarrik out of the booth. The chubby prostitute eagerly followed them. Jarrik pulled a five dollar bill out and stuffed it behind the spandex covering her twat. He made her bend over and slapped her cubby butt. The fat of the butt wobbled beautifully. Another soldier quickly came to pull her away. Having been with a white man made her more valuable.

They walked out of the bar to the waiting white pickup truck. The streets were empty, except for a passing rebel truck with armed soldiers in the back. The clinic was quiet only a stray dog snooped around trash in the street. A huddled figure was in front of Jarrik's room's door. It was Namazzi. She had been sleeping there. Her face was wet from tears. She had found a thin wool blanket to wrap around her.

"What is the matter?"

"You betrayed me! You already betrayed me. You were out with another woman, were you not?"

"No, Namazzi, we had business to do."

"Do you always do business at a bar while drinking? You took away my dignity and rolled it in the dirt. You are a player and cheater!"

"Namazzi, we had a business meeting with the rebels to procure safe passage."

"I know those rebels with their booze and whores. How many of them did you sleep with?"

Namazzi went running into the streets. Jarrik went after her to placate her. Namazzi only threw her shoes at him continuing barefoot. She made the point that she did no longer have to suffer wearing those shoes to attract him. He picked up the shoes and followed her constantly talking to the quiet figure in front of him. Her room was only two blocks away in the back of a grocery store. After first closing the door in his face, she relented and let him enter. She told him to sleep with her, hold her, and spoon her. They both kept their clothes on. She drifted off to sleep quickly.

He woke up middle in the night. He softly kissed the skin on her neck. He smelled her hair. He looked at the side of her face in the moonlight. She was cradled in soft white bedding. Her breaths were equal. He looked around the small mostly empty room. Two brown cardboard boxes contained most of her clothes. A bowl and carafe in the corner seemed to act as a sink and tap. The images of the perverted rebel bar raced through his mind. The imagination of forced abuse and beatings behind closed doors sickened him. Her middle class worry about infidelity was a nice sanctuary for his thoughts. She was his anchor point in this swash buckling adventure.

His next thought was noticing that the morning sunlight was shining into the room. He rapidly excused himself. She roused in panic to get to her fruit stand as well. Kyden waited smiling for him at the office: "Take it easy tiger or you work yourself out." The rest of the week went by easy. Jarrik held his head down working long hours. Namazzi walked with him hand in hand. They had food dates together. They visited a lake near the center of the capital. He showered her with kisses and little gifts. She told him about her family.

Friday was a sad day. An aging Jeep Wrangler was parked in front of the little white washed clinic. Jarrik was holding white medical supply boxes for Kyden. Kyden stood in the Wrangler and was piling as many items in it as he could. Kyden was clearly excited about visiting the rural village. Namazzi was stealing the tears out of her eyes, when Jarrik did not look. Jarrik hadn't even seen Namazzi naked yet. However, she reminded him to not even look at another woman, especially during those gyno exams. She yelled at him to dispel her anxious energy. She even slapped his face once. He gracefully like a gentleman received the blow. He understood that she was helpless to express how sad she felt about missing her love.

The Jeep rumbled swiftly through the streets. Kyden, a bit recklessly, loved dodging people, cars, and debris, as he weaved through the streets. He liked to call it his car racing game, since he had to leave his Xbox at home. When the city dirt streets gave way to rugged country streets, Jarrik quickly learned that to avoid hitting his head against the roll cage of the Jeep, he had to lean inside the car. So, both Kyden and Jarrik were leaning over the center console of the car. Kyden was in his element. He tried to race the car fast enough to make the CD player skip playing the Disturbed CD. The Distubed singer bellowed to heavy metal music: "Indestructible, determination that is incorruptible, from the other side a terror to behold, annihilation will be unavoidable."

Jarrik wasn't sure, if Kyden had turned into a rebel. The high quality Jeep CD player for rugged conditions rarely skipped. The under armor plates of the Jeep more frequently cracked loudly on rocks and ditches. The piled luggage in the back of the car came frequently flying up into the air, as the soft suspension of the Wrangler were fully unloaded at the crest of a bump, before they fully compressed at the bottom of the following ditch.

The speed of forty miles did not even seem that insane to Jarrik. Yet, the Jeep kept sliding gently sideways on the sandy patches of the street. Kyden more fool heartedly than experienced slipped the car through the soft turns and twists counter steering to keep the Jeep from spinning out. Kyden stopped to step next to the car. Still being door width away from the door, he stood with the feet wide apart and gushed the urine at the dried plant life.

Upon zipping up his pants, he told Jarrik to give it a try. Jarrik was at first relieved to have gotten rid of the insane driver. Upon being taught, how to change the gears and all the different four wheel modes, he wondered, if his inexperience may be more dangerous than a dare devil. Kyden told him that first, he did not need four-wheel-drive. There was no need for extra traction on the flat, dry road. Second, he could start as slow as he wanted to get comfortable with the truck like behavior of the car. 

So, Jarrik let go of the break and stepped on the gas. It was the first time driving a car that he felt literally hundreds of horses were lurching forward. The engine roared with strength making him truly believe in its power. Making turns had the suspensions on the outside of the turn bow the car in that direction. The first time that happened, Jarrik immediately stopped turning completely. The suspensions bouncing the car back up on that side, had it bounce down on the other side. Upon realizing that Jarrik really needed to turn, he would turn again. Only this time, in addition to the force of the turn, the prior bounce returned to push down the outside suspensions. Jarrik's reactions to the bounce only made the car start bouncing left right even more. The Jeep came to a stop. Kyden laughed hard: "It's been thirty years, since I was in a bouncy castle!"

Soon, Jarrik got the feel for the drift of the car. He especially loved the oversteer of the truck. In some sandy turns, the backside of the Jeep tried to break out. He first felt it in his bum. It felt a bit like someone pulling the chair out from under him. He'd counter steer and step on the gas to pull the rig straight. There was a subtle stimulation of the brain to control the soft sideways motion. Sometimes even on wide straightway, he would swerve to create little oversteers.

A gaggle of scrawny goats on the street got Jarrik to stop. Jarrik smilingly looked at the first sign of third world road obstacles. Kyden yelled at Jarrik, "get down, get down," until Jarrik's head disappeared behind the console. Boots rustled closer. Kyden yelled their identification at them. A teenager yelled something back in an African language. Kyden tapped Jarrik to get out of the car with him. They both had their arms raised. They looked at nine or ten boys in village garb with military hats. The boys were holding one hand high in the air behind them. Hanging from the hand was a string with a sling of water. "Holy water," Kyden mumbled to Jarrik whispering.

Kyden pointed out boxes on the back of the Jeep. The leader of the ragtag army team would take the box and hand it the second in command. The second in command was a bit unsure, what to do with his holy water sling. Afraid to make the leader wait, he let the sling drop to the ground and water run into the dry ground. They piled half of the load next to the road. Then, they send the youngest, a thirteen year old boy, to move the goats. He went running with his arms waving wildly charging at the goats. The goats darted in all directions away from his battle cries. The little boy seemed to have a lot of fun.

Kyden mumbled to Jarrik that the soldiers would better safe keep the most valuable medicine. Kyden took the wheel, so that they could be off faster. Jarrik was the DJ sifting the CD collection. He played Nirvana's "rape me" song, which had an odd taste in this country of rapes, mutilations, and genocide.

The village turned out to be a picture book African village. It was situated next to a river. It had lush green grass on the main place. The people lived in grass and stick huts. Trees, animals, and gardens provided rich nourishment despite the poverty in world goods. Little kids welcomed the Jeep huddling around it, as Kyden let the Jeep idle towards the village. Old man sitting outside the huts had only one or two teeth left, yet seemed like wise knowledgeable sages about the land and folklore. Some of the women wore no top covering. Their tube shaped hanging boobs were free under the sun. They often had a baby stripped to their back or chest with a shoulder sling.

The village elders had dinner prepared for them on a wooden porch. They all sat together. After the initial formal welcome chatter, Jarrik was immersed in shaping the porridge pile on his plate and pressing the byte sized local vegetables into the pile. It suddenly puzzled him, how the little child soldiers would get those boxes here. So, he asked Kyden. Kyden got immediately upset. He asked the elders to excuse him. He walked Jarrik to the Jeep.

"You realize that prostitution in a host country leads you to be banned from any humanitarian mission in any organization. Further, prostitution in this country is illegal and dealt with the death penalty. Think about your girl, if she finds out."

"Now, I hate to do this to you. However, it is either Mister Kon's henchmen that will also break your knees or me. Take a look at these."

Kyden held a vanilla envelope to Jarrik. Inside of it were two photos. One was the prostitute at the bar falling into his crotch. It looked like she was giving him a blow job. The other photo was him handing her the money back that he counted. It looked like he was paying her for the blow job.

"Jarrik, now don't get upset. The only way to get help to these people is with Mister Kon's permission. He only deals with people, whom he controls through black mail. And, he wants his cut. I know, it is asking a lot. However, this is the only way to get help to these people. Tomorrow, you will see how much good that heavy price does to the world."

That night, Jarrik was very exhausted and depressed about the reality of his mission. The view from the floor of a rural hut without doors and windows did not console him. The primitive leaving that would connect him to the roots of nature did not console him. His fingers held the coarse string around his wrist from Namazzi. He thought back to the moments, when his mind had formed the idea to go to Africa on a humanitarian mission. Somehow, he had believed to be in a safe bubble near, yet not in contact, with the rebels, corruption, and maltreatment. As a newcomer, he was now feeling crushed under the heel of it.

A young girl roused him in the morning. She was eighteen years old. She called herself Mangeni. She offered him an earthen cup of liquid with both hands. Petals of a flower floated at the top of the liquid. He received the cup and recognized that it was hot. He slurped a little of the liquid. It was a hot tea full of fruity flavor. The happy girl grabbed him by the hand and pulled him outside. Next to the entrance, she had left a lei of flowers. She put the band of flower band over his head. It was a white flower with pink veins and tips. She led him back to the porch.

Kyden was already sitting on the porch and cheerfully chewing on his breakfast. He was leaning over his breakfast plate, while a local beauty was massaging his neck. Kyden looked up at Jarrik, "no hard feelings, I hope." Jarrik's face grew dark, as it dawned on him that perhaps Mangeni was yet another manipulation. Kyden recognized Jarrik's thoughts: "Don't be a fruit loop, Jarrik. Mangeni, go get your aunt!"




Doctors Without Boundaries



Except for Jarrik's grumpy mood, his surroundings were picturesque. The porch had been built with local wood. The texture itself was unique. The wood color had an orange tinge to it. Tribal carvings embellished the edges of the porch. A beautifully lush grass lawn lay at the feet of the porch. The lawn was framed by bushes and small trees that each deserved individual inspection. Birds with vivid color highlights fluttered and chirped around them. Evidently, the birds were fed by nasty flying insects that were landing on Jarrik's skin.

Their breakfast company was consisted of the most select members of the tribe. The dress was mostly simple and exposed plenty skin for ventilation in the heat. Yet, their faces painted the intelligence, experience, and determination of the individuals. Older man with short, gray, curly hair and sometimes beards looked venerable for their wisdom. Middle aged men with tough bodies and demeanor that promised instant action were probably leaders in their own respect for agriculture, construction, or some other business.

Steps and sounds came from the direction that Mangeni had left to. A small group of four huddled people came closer. Mangeni lead them chabbering about a great doctor and only a little farther. Two men were half carrying and half assisting to walk an elder, not too old, woman. She was almost like a round ball because of all the fabric draped around her. The blanket had red, green, and black stripes running around it with white frizz at the edge. Red flip flops covered her feet. There was a little break in the blanket wrapped around her near the bottom of her ribs on the right side. There was a white bandage with blood.

Jarrik jumped up and ran towards Mangeni's aunt. He asked the two men to lower her to the ground onto the soft green grass. The aunt struggled, because lying flat caused her unbearable pain. Jarrik palpated the aunt's abdomen. It was hard like rock. The wound had introduced an infection that had spread across the whole abdominal cavity. She was in very critical condition. The wound itself had re-torn itself from walking and was freshly bleeding. Jarrik removed the bandages to get a look. A seven inch gauche exposed the large intestines and a shimmer of the kidney. A few drops of bright red blood fell on the loose grass.

Mangeni explained that the village had been raided three days ago by rebels. Her aunt had been running for the fields. A rebel had hit her with a machete from the car. As she fell, the rebel had assumed her dead and speed back to the village. The wound had been getting worse and worse despite smearing dirt into it and herbal remedies. Mangeni looked at Jarrik with large puppy eyes. Her cute young body was shivering slightly. She was sitting on her knees. She leaned forward on her hands. Jarrik told her to get the aunt to a hut for treatment. He'd meet her with medical supplies from the Jeep.

A hut next to the porch was prepared. It was an empty room. It had a door frame and two openings for windows. There was neither a door nor a window pane. A hand-woven rug served as the surgery table. Jarrik had supplies spread out next to the aunt. The aunt was silently weeping with the back of one hand over her eyes. Mangeni stayed close to help. Jarrik had her wear Nitrile gloves and a face mask as well. She looked kind of sexy with her exposed brown skin of her hot weather clothes and the sterile medical accessory.

The first order of business was to open the wound properly to suture the cuts to the large intestines. They were still bleeding. Luckily, the kidney was only nicked and already healing. The hygienic conditions for this kind of surgery were horrible. Jarrik did the best he could. This was field surgery. Mangeni did the best she could catching any flies that entered the hut to avoid their dirty feet to infect the wound further. Jarrik sent Mangeni to get hot water, plenty of it. Mangeni went running out of the room. Her young legs were flying high behind her with the soles of her cute soles showing. Jarrik was still attracted to the pink edge that black people's feet have, as the foot curves to the sole. Her black hair was flying as she jumped from the cabin floor down to the grass outside.

The entire abdominal cavity had become infected. Jarrik used a tube to fill the cavity with a very strong antibiotic solution. He taped the wound temporarily shut. His fingers kneaded the whole stomach to move the solution around. Mangeni arrived with a large pot of hot water from the fire. Jarrik dropped a couple iodine pills in it to be safe. Mangeni helped kneed her aunt's stomach. The Nitrile gloves were way too large for her small hand. They made her look goofy. She almost played with the stomach. Jarrik showed her how to work more systematically. Her young playful young face had a serious look.

The hot water had cooled enough to flush the antibiotic solution out. Mangeni kneeled high to create enough gravity pressure for the tube to in her aunt's stomach. Jarrik guided the tube deep under the abdominal skin to flush everything out. He also looked at Mangeni. Her skin was so tender and soft. Her boob size was average. Yet, they were so unperturbed by the drag of gravity that they marveled him. All of her movements were so light, like her body moved instantaneously as thoughts crossed her mind. Old people move slowly as to overcome a reluctance to move. All of Mangeni's movements were so easy without hesitation.

With the emergent problems addressed, Jarrik could focus on the urgent issue of repairing the tissue damage. Being in the field, he lacked the specialized instruments of a Western surgery room. His main tools were a ten blade scalpel, tweezers, and a suture needle. The rest he had to improvise with gauss pads and his own fingers. His gloves were covered in red blood of all shades. The tips were liquid bright red. From there out multiple rings of dried blood covered his hands as a reminder, of when he had been deep inside the body cavity and how deep.

Mangeni stayed steadfast at his side. Around lunch time, she left for a moment and returned with a mushy, yellow papaya half without the black round seeds. The papaya flesh had been cut into cubes inside the skin. She feed him one cube at a time by reaching her hand to his lips. At first, he gingerly picked the piece with his lips and sucked it in. After the first slippery piece almost dropped to the ground, he would take the whole piece in his mouth by touching her fingers a little bit. Her fingers had become all oozy with papaya juice and sticky flesh. Once a soft papaya piece had split in two. She rubbed her young fingers against his teeth.

A little later, she had to wait for a moment with a papaya piece raised in her hand for him to finish a tricky procedure. The juice ran down her finger and over her hand. She licked her brown hand clean following the juice drop in reverse up to the fruit piece. Jarrik opened his mouth. She put the piece in. He closed his mouth around her and licked her index and middle finger as she pulled it out. For the strangest reason, Jarrik was thinking about Mageni's freckle and licking it. Jarrik had started thinking in Kyden's Australian accent. A freckle in Australian is the anus. He imagined the tight sphincter in the middle of the butt cheek bulges with her smooth tender skin.

Jarrik wiped the thoughts off his mind and continued the surgery. By late afternoon, he worked his way backwards out of the abdominal cavity. He sutured each layer of muscle and finally the skin. The aunt had fallen asleep from exhaustion and the mild sedatives. Mangeni was sleeping as well with her face resting on her aunt's thigh. The last part was re-inserting the lost blood into the aunt's body. A sterile stainless steel kidney bowl had collected half a quart of blood. The faint blood pressure indicated that she could need everything she could get.

Following field procedure of the Army manual, he strained the blood through gauss from one kidney bowl to the next four times. Then, he injected the blood into a plastic pouch. The pouch was connected to a drip into the aunt's arm vein. Jarrik waited for the blood to go in, while he took her complete vitals again. Then, he sat there waiting for the blood to drip. At last, he was able to do something good. At last, his mind was taken away from his struggles with the experience. At last, he was able to do something neat and meticulously according to the available conditions.

The next day had minor orthopedic injuries and suture jobs. The recent rebel attack had broken some bones and cut some skin. For the most part, the rebels were mild this time. Disfigured people from previous attacks were among the people. The starkest example was a boy with lips, nose, ears, fingers, and toes cut off. It required good bed site manners to keep a calm constitution next to him. Fortunately, he was fine and never required the services of Jarrik or Kyden. Seeing him in at the group gatherings was enough of a challenge.

After lunch Mangeni grabbed Jarrik's hand to lead him across the grassy lawn. She told him to not go back to get his sandals. The lush grass felt wonderful under Jarrik's feet. She led him into the bushes beyond the grass. She raised her arms as if she were playing to be a plane. The underside of her arm grazed the top of the bushes left and right of her. Jarrik felt the bush brushing against his side. The leaves were soft and the branches a bit scratchy.

Mangeni stopped in front of a smaller bush with purple flowers. The flowers had a waxy sheen that made them appear like plastic. They were about half inch wide and an inch and a half deep. Mangeni twisted one flower off. She tilted her had back and placed the flower against the tip of her small pink lips. She sucked the nectar out and motioned Jarrik to do the same. There was virtually no nectar to be sucked out, a small drop perhaps. However, the small drop was extremely sweet like a mouth full of a chocolate croissant. She laughed at him straining to get nectar out and his clumsy hands crashing the delicate flowers. Her face shimmered the white of her eyes and teeth with her childish smile.

She turned on her heels and jumped sideways to a bush not too far away. Her youthful jumping and movement made him feel large, lumbering, and old. Feeling that way only made him want to be with Mangeni more. She stopped in front of a perfectly round bush with many dark green leaves the size of four quarters. The leaves were concave and had many little hairs on their surface. Mangeni picked a few. She brushed them against her face. The expression of coziness on her face equaled that of a model's for a toilet paper commercial, where the model rubbed a rabbit against her face to illustrate the softness.

"This is lover's bush. The leaves are so soft, the tree may become your lover," said Mangeni. She threw a delighted smile about her tease. She held a leave out to Jarrik and her other arm next to it: "Compare the touch and tell me, who is softer." The lover's bush leaf was sure extremely soft with the fuzzy tiny hairs. However, Jarrik enjoyed feeling Mangeni's skin more. It was soft, moist, and otherworldly smooth.

Jarrik walked his index and middle finger up her arm to her shoulder and said, "a little man walked up the stairs." Mangeni wiggled her body with excitement. He knocked his knuckles softly against her forehead, and said, "He knocked." She looked up at his hand cross eyed. He inched her nose shut with his fingers and gently wiggled the nose left and right, while saying "And, he rang the bell." Mangeni's head ducked down as she could not breathe for a moment. Then, she burst into laughing, jumped up into the air, and hit Jarrik with both hands on his chest: "You are funny, mister." She ran off.

The next morning brought sadness. The village leaders expressed their gratitude. Mangeni's aunt was stable. Yet, she could not stand up yet to say good bye. Mangeni in her place wished Jarrik good bye. In place of the aunt she, placed a fat and wet kiss with a lot of suction on his cheek. Jarrik was sad to leave the clean, lush, and vibrant rural village for the dilapidated and primitive capital.

Before Kyden could step on the gas, Jarrik put his hand on Kyden's arm to interrupt him: "Kyden, I may have been an ass. The way this place works may be a huge culture shock for me. However, I appreciate that you look out for me."

"Mate, no drama. You are here for the medicine and beautiful land. I will make sure that you get that. And, the rebel dealings, I try to keep out of your eye sight. If you knew it all, you would leave this place the same day. So, trust me, when I don't tell you something. This place can get immensely ugly. Think about your girl Namazzi or your new friend Mangeni."

The drive back to the capital was immensely fun. Without fragile medical supplies in the Jeep, they could play around. Once, they drove the Jeep with one side up on a dirt mound to see, how far to the side they could tilt the Jeep before it would fall over. Jarrik slowly steered it into a steeper side angle. Kyden stood on the ill side. After every foot forward, he pushed against the roll bar of the Jeep to test, if he could push the Jeep over. When the point was reached, where the Jeep precariously balanced on two tires, Jarrik reached his hand out of the open window and could touch the pale hard soil. He climbed out of the car through the roof. They laughed and high fived each other.

A couple hours after sundown, they arrived at the white washed MSF clinic. Because a Jeep is an open car, they had to unload everything into the clinic. It was a hardship, because their brain was fried from the constant attention an unmaintained dirt road required. Constantly, a deep pot hole could come up. Some potholes were deep enough to break an axle. When Jarrik finally retired to his room, he again found a huddled person waiting at his door step. It was Namazzi.

Namazzi pushed off the blanket that covered her. Her tall figure emerged in the nightlight. She was wearing dress with shoulder straps that went down to the mid thigh. The small dress only made her lanky body seem larger. She was enraged. She grabbed Jarrik by the ear and turned him in a half circle: "Have you been sleeping with another woman?" Jarrik wined at the pain and denounced the question.

She pushed him into the room. He sat down at the foot of the bed as a helpless heap. She insisted on her question with a shrill voice: "Swear to it!" He swore by his Eagle Scout honor and raised two fingers straight into the air. He silently wondered, if it was time to break the relationship off. She insisted even more vehemently: "Proof it!" She pulled on his pants. He struggled to remain on the bed. All grace had left her in the fight to see his penis. He ceded and undid his pants.

Her hands lifted his penis up to her face. She turned it around looking for some kind of signs. She pulled his foreskin back. She softly pressed the head of his penis to make the urethra open. Evidently, she was not sure, what kind of sign to look for infidelity on his penis. However, she checked every inch. Jarrik enjoyed watching her so eagerly handle his penis. It was close to a blow job in his mind. She sniffed his penis: "Does it always smell like this or is this another woman?" He laughed: "Why don't you lick it!" She dipped her sharpened tongue tip on his penis, considered it, and said, "It doesn't taste like much."

Namazzi got a can of Sprite from the cooler. It was probably lukewarm, because the ice had not been replaced in their absence. The can opened with the familiar ping of carbon sparkling with little pops into the air. She led him into the bathroom. Over the sink, she poured the Sprite over his growing penis. Her fingers distributed the Sprite over the skin of his penis. She made sure to get it under the foreskin. Half the can was left over on the thin wooden ledge under the mirror.

"An old house technique is to put Sprite on the cheating husband's penis. If the Sprite dries and it changes color, the husband has cheated. It turns orange for one time cheating, red for cheating twice, and blue for cheating more frequently."

His pants were still at his ankles. She was kneeling in front of him blowing on his penis to dry it faster. Little water drops rolled away from her mouth. She chased those water drops across his penis with her lips almost touching his penis. So much teasing made his penis completely erect.

Of course, the Sprite became only sticky and did not change colors. There was awkward silence after Namazzi conceded that he probably had not cheated on her. His penis was hard, yet Namazzi made clear that he had earned the right to have sex wit her yet. Out of fairness, Jarrik asked, how he was to know that she had not slept with another man. Namazzi immediately placed her face on the ground and begged him not to hit her, because she had been completely faithful. Jarrik was dazed by the intense reaction. Namazzi took the silence to intensify her pledge. She kissed his feet and offered to do anything to proof her chastity. Jarrik wondered what being in the power seat could get him.

She hopped to the bed and threw herself on it. She lifted her dress and pulled down her panties. "Please, check for yourself. No penis has touched me." He grasped the opportunity. He made her move higher on the bed, so that he could comfortably lie down on his chest. Her vagina was longer than that of most women's to match her tall size. The end of her vaginal lips was almost completely dark. The inside of her was bright pink. He folded labia and vulva over. He checked under her hood. He smelled her. He of course copiously tasted her. The vagina was very well lubricated. The whole panic deal must turn Namazzi on.

He insisted on verifying that her boobs had only been touched by her. She quickly pulled down the top of her dress, which was no scrunched together to form a ring around her midriffs. The breasts were a bit flat, because the fat of the breast had to spread over such a tall chest. The nipples were somewhat erect. The little dots that formed a circle around her nipples were more stiffened for the size. He licked her nipples. She let her handle her boobs, while attentively paying attention to the feeling.

After Namazzi had decided that his inspection should have been convincing, she dressed herself properly again. Reluctantly, Jarrik packed his erection back into his pants to mirror her. A little platonic talk about his trip quickly signaled Jarrik that his chances for sex were near zero. He also felt extremely tired and asked Namazzi to leave. She gave him a peck on the lips. He slapped her butt friendly as she walked through the door.

The next day brought a long line of patients to the clinic. The line extended outside the little clinic's doors into the sidewalk. The UN had a Typhoid immunization drive and was sending throngs of people to the clinic and other centers all over Africa. Kyden and Jarrik became assembly line workers. Their office doors remained open to let the next person already stand in the door for swift handling: Ask for allergies, swipe the shoulder with an alcohol towel, and inject the vaccine. Jarrik remembered his times at McDonald's. McDonald's had clocked all customer interactions to the second. The boss would yell at them for being seconds slow. Jarrik tried to turn patients over in under sixty seconds. Kyden would occasionally take notice of Jarrik's speed and yell from his room: "You mad man!"

The busy clinic was good for Jarrik's mind. The relationship with Namazzi was on the downswing. Like sharks, relationships that don't move forward die. Over beer, sitting in the foldout chairs around the cooler in Kyden's room, Kyden had sympathized with Jarrik's plight of being stringed: "Even you are the opposite of a wombat, you still want to root at some point." That was another Australian expression that stumped Jarrik.




Doctors Without Boundaries



"First, to root means to put your donger in her cunt. Second a wombat is a critter and also a cozy name for chap. A human wombat roots, shoots cum, and leaves. That's a selfish fella in other words. It is supposed to be funny, because a real wombat eats roots, shoots, and leaves. Ay, mate, what am I going to do with you?"

The evening was the first quiet evening. Drinking beer with another English man let Jarrik's mind escape for a while. He pretended to be back in America. The distance let him reflect and process the events of his time in Africa. The cheap foldout chairs with the plastic bands for a seat cushion stretching almost to the hard floor became oddly familiar. Kyden's laughing ruddy face with the curly blond hair stayed in Jarrik's memory.

The morning brought a headache and an empty clinic. Not a single person was in the waiting room. Jarrik scratched his head. In his room, he found Kyden sitting on his exam table merrily swinging his sandal clad feet back and force: "Brother, we are going on a trip to track gorillas. It is time for our excursion. A buddy offered me his prop plane for a couple days. Get packing!"

The pickup truck drove them to a field strip at the edge of the capital. There was a shed with rusty red roof. It was made from corrugated steel. A meshed fence surrounded the air field. The fence was bent almost to the floor in many places. That's why someone had laid coiled of barbed wired behind it. The weeds rose higher than the barbed wire coils. There were only about five Cessna planes next to the air field. A grease faced chubby man stood next to a plane. He was holding the kerosene pump from a kerosene truck. His blue overall was rolled down to his hip. It equally showed his gut hanging out and the streams of sweat running down his bare torso.

Sitting in the cockpit with the propeller spinning in front of them, Jarrik yelled to Kyden: "I did not know that you are a pilot."

"I am not a pilot. It is easy like driving a car. See pulling on this knob controls the acceleration. The steering wheel is self explanatory. Left is left. Right is right. Forward is down. Backward is up. That's it in a nutshell."

"What!"

"Don't be a wuss!"

Kyden slightly pulled on the gas knob. The propellers roared higher and the plane tugged a little forward. "Oh, and the foot pedals are left and right as well!" The plane rolled into the center of the landing strip. The landing strip was bare and slightly cracked dirt. A few lights lined it. "Isn't there a need to radio?"

"This is Africa ain't nobody care." Kyden pulled the gas knob all the way out. The plane started accelerating slowly forward. For Jarrik's taste, the plane gained speed uncomfortably slow. Kyden kept looking at the palm of his hand. There were a few numbers written. Half way down the field, Kyden yelled to Jarrik: "That's my cheat sheet! At 70 knots, we need to pull off the ground."

As the speedometer reached 70 knots, Kyden pulled back on the steering gently. Jarrik's stomach dropped down both from the sudden lift and the realization that he was in the air. Kyden laughed loud: "Getting to this point in Australia would have been $2,000 already." The plane steadily climbed. The buildings got smaller. The suburbs were indeed mostly rubble and waste land torched pale by a harsh sun. The wind stiffly blew through a two inch hole in the side window, their only ventilation.

At 2,000 feet altitude, Kyden was still cheering to himself for flying a plane. Perhaps, it was the first time that he flew a plane. He waved his palm with the cheat notes to Jarrik. He pointed at his second note: 127.2. Then, he dialed the number into a little box that was labeled Nav1. A little white line started moving around on a horizontal scale. Kyden circled the plane, until the white line was captured in the middle of the scale. "That's the radio beacon for our destination."

The noise of the propeller and wind drag made it hard to talk. Jarrik was anyway mesmerized by the landscape: dirt patches, lush green forests, dirt roads, rolling hills, primitive villages. Once he spotted an elephant. The sky was bright blue with a few white clouds at the horizon. The plane shifted sideways and vertically randomly leaving Jarrik the choice of either becoming tense and nauseated or relaxed and dreamy. He went for letting himself go and enjoying the excursion.

"I lied to you, mate."

"Oh, good, you are a trained pilot."

"No, we are not going to track gorillas. We are going to the Impenetrable National Forest. However, we are dispatched there to meet Mister Kon. His son is sick. He offered to leave me head on my shoulders in exchange for our services. We can't let anybody know about this business. He is a wanted man. He outlived many special ops teams sent to kill him by his secrecy."

"What the fuck!"

"Relax, mate. Everything will be fine."

Jarrik wanted to get out of the little Cessna. However, he realized that he was stuck here 3,000 feet over the ground. He would be stuck there hours away from civilization. Kyden noticed Jarrik's anxiety crawling on his face like ants. Kyden quickly pushed the steering forward and back. The dip had everything in the plane flying up and falling down. Jarrik jolted out of his worry thoughts. "Jarrik, go fly for a while." Kyden let go of the steering. Jarrik held the steering in place with the utmost precision and whole body tension.

A seeming eternity later, Kyden suggested Jarrik to go a little left and right. Jarrik turned the steering a little. He was shocked with the responsiveness of the plane. What had seemed to him the tiniest amount left actually moved the plane quite a bit. He tried a bit the other direction. He smiled for a moment, before he let the plane turn far enough to be five dashes away from the center of the horizontal navigation scale.

A little portable radio blared the song "Bad Things" from Jace Everett. Kyden dialed the sound up to the maximum. That gave the radio a fighting chance against the noise in the cockpit, yet distorted the tune as well. However, Jarrik attempted to fly the plane to the music. As the singer sang "When you came in the air went out," the plane pulled up and right. As the singer deeply threatened "I wanna do bad things with you," Jarrik steered the plane down and tried to make it twist left and right to the rhythm as it gained speed. The propeller wine raised in pitch.

Kyden took over the steering. He pulled the plane higher. Kyden seemed like a buzz kill until the plane had climbed 6,000 feet. Kyden turned the steering all the way right. The plane started turning itself over. Jarrik panicked at first. When he found himself upside down hanging from the lap belt with all the little crap of the plane lying on the roof under his head, he started laughing. Kyden kept the steering on right. The plane rolled sideways over and over. With each roll the aim of the plane's nose changed its angle. After a few rolls, they had a hard time figuring out, if the plane pointed up or down. They let the plane go its merry way for a moment, until their sense of balance was restored. The plane was heading down. The pulled the nose up and pointed it again towards the direction of the radio beacon.

Jarrik looked out of the window and observed the slow progression from plain flora to forest. The forest became thicker, greener, and taller. Kyden was reading a ring boned manual for the plane. He occasionally flicked switches and turned knobs that he read about in the manual. "We have to find something called flap." Kyden pointed at the third note scribbled on his palm: "Flap." There were a lot of dials and switches in the Cessna. Near the center bottom was a lever called flap. "Okay, before landing, we have to push that down to make the landing easier."

The destination was still hours away. A little red cooler with a white lid had sandwiches and beverages. Jarrik snoozed for a while lulled by the vibrations and steady humming. A mountain in the way required them to climb in circles before crossing the mountain. A large lake tempted Kyden to fly low in the hopes of scurrying a flock of flamingoes into the air. There were no flamingoes flying up. A large black bird almost hitting the plane made them think twice about chasing birds again.

Finally, a clearing in the forest contained the airstrip. There were no man made improvements to the patch of dirt. A truck contained rebel militia waiting for them. A fly-by of the airstrip discovered no particularly deep holes or rocks in the way. A deep crack in the center seemed a bit sketchy. They made a mental mark to stay left of it, because there was more space.

Turning around to approach the air field, Kyden bit his lip as he aligned the flight path of the plane with the air field. Then, he pushed the speed stick a little in. He waited for the speed to lower. He pressed the flaps down. Something moved on the wings of the plane. He checked the palm of his hand again to read 50 knots. He carefully pushed the speed stick in further until the speed was close to 50 knots. As the plane nose pointed down to get nearer the ground, the speed ticked up. Kyden pushed the speed stick further in. As the plane descent equaled, the speed ticked down. Kyden swiftly pulled the speed stuck to prevent a stall. He seemed quite tense about the adjustment.

Jarrik's pulse started beating in his throat like a river during a flash flood. The beginning of the landing strip was tacitly close. The dirt blurring by suddenly indicted the speed that they were going by. Close to the ground, Kyden violently pulled back on the steering. The plane stalled and fell the last three feet out of the sky. The dinky shifted and bounced a little bit as it got used to racing on the dirt. Kyden pushed the speed stick all the way in. He searched for the brake. He couldn't find it in time before he had to steer the plane left of the sketchy center crack. Passing the crack, the plane was still going pretty fast. The tall trees at the end of the air field came rushing closer. Jarrik was the hapless victim of his own collision. Kyden found the button to engage the breaks. The engine immediately dropped its pitch to a bass mumbling sound. The plane stopped.

The door was quickly clipped open. Jarrik fumbled his way through the narrow door onto the wing. He jumped down and his sleepy legs almost let him fall face down. A few feet away from the plane and its moving part, he declared "I am feeling good right here." He looked at the rebel militia truck rumbling closer to them. A cloud of brown dust was following the truck. Kyden piled medical bags onto the wing of the plane. The rebel soldiers arrived. These soldiers were smarter. Instead of holy water, they carried old style Soviet Union guns. The leader had an automatic rifle and red cap.

The ride on the truck bed was eerie silent. The falling darkness of dusk painted the large trees even more in the light of a horror movie. The first black body hanging from a tree startled Jarrik. Perhaps, the missing limbs and object like setup most horrified Jarrik. Kyden offered Jarrik oral diazepam to calm down and warned him to neither judge the rebels in their presence nor display gay seeming behavior. The next shocking site was a pile of limbs next to the road. Apparently, villagers had been literally chopped into pieces.

Half the rebel soldiers in the open air truck were kids. They obviously lacked mothers to tell them, to pick clothes that fit them and wash themselves. Apparently, they were poorly trained. They seemed awkward holding the weapons. No attention was paid to pointing the gun at safe places. A little boy near the back of the truck was resting his cheek bone on the barrel of the gun with the finger on the trigger. Large pieces of dirt were lying on the floor of the truck. They did not maintain their equipment either.

The truck stopped middle in the road. A soldier was sent into the thick of the forest. A pee break seemed unlikely, because everyone was starring in his directions. At least Westerners did not like attention while urinating. The soldier, or digger as Kayden calls all soldiers, returned with a new group of soldiers. The new soldiers were larger fully grown males. They wore proper uniform and had camouflage colored knee and elbow pads. They moved swiftly and with focus.

The new group of soldiers took the medical supply bags and distributed them among themselves. They told us to follow them into the thick of the forest. The going was slow as they had to walk around trees and other obstacles. Jarrik feared panthers and poisonous animals. Considering the company of trained and armed militia rebels, he was probably safe from wildlife. An hour in, lights of an encampment appeared. Under the trees and out of the sight of Western spy satellites was the master rebel camp. Kayden left Jarrik. Kayden would talk to Mister Kon. Jarrik would immediately attend Mister Kon's son.

The tent was a dark green military tent. Supplies were stacked high near the entrance. Mister Kon's son was a nineteen year old tall, skinny lad. The son lay on a low wooden frame with stretched fabric as a mattress. His forehead was sweaty. His face was tense with pain. The vitals were normal. So, there was no immediately life threatening situation. The abdominal exam showed hardness. The son had not eaten in two days and not eliminated in a week. All signs pointed to a regular constipation.

Upon the diagnosis, the son demanded immediately laxatives. Jarrik had to educate the son first. His feces had been dried and compacted into very hard pellets. If the intestinal muscles would be induced into contractions with medication, there would be a lot of damage. He had to drink a lot of oil, any kind, for lubrication. He had to eat fiber food like leaves to provide matter to push out the pellets. Jarrik guided the son through the forced dietary regiment and gave him a stool softener pill. An hour or two was mostly spent calming the anxious young man down and have patience to let the process work.

Kyden arrived for the glorious moment, when Jarrik allowed the son to take the laxative pills. The son over eagerly grabbed them. Suddenly, the abdominal pain that had near immobilized him was gone until he swallowed the pills and waited for them to work. Jarrik turned to the silently observing Kyden: "Most common cause for expeditions to evacuate, a simply constipation." Both waited for the son to feel better and eliminated for the first time. They were sitting on the bare ground and leaned against the stack of supplies.

The son eliminated. He finally went for a restful sleep. Apparently, the wise doctors were expected to stay in the son's tent for the night. Kyden rolled himself on the ground using his bicep as a pillow. Jarrik struggled and remained. His eyes fell shut. He fell asleep. His body was sore, when the morning light woke him. The cheery young man called on them. He promised them that he would build them an African Disney Land to express his gratitude. He added that he would complete the glorious task by afternoon. The son left the tent. Kyden hissed only for Jarrik to hear: "The fucker is keeping us longer."

The day was extremely trying. Mister Kon had cheap plastic chairs lined in a triangle. His commanders and consultants were sitting with him. Kyden and Jarrik were the honorary guests. That did not imply that they were expected to talk. Mister Kon mostly talked about his vision that it were natural for all children to carry guns and fight as soldiers. He threatened the president for committing war crimes in his name. He insisted that he never used child soldiers. The biblical diatribes were equally nonsensical. The two men sitting next to the doctors insisted that Mister Kon could see the future and was immortal even when directly hit by a hail of bullets.

Lunch consisted of two MRE's from our medical bags, because Kyden didn't trust the food to be clean enough for Westerners. Luckily, Mister Kon's son came running after lunch. He announced that the first African Disney World had been built. He welcomed us as the honorary guests for the premier. Mister Kon was very proud of his son and rose up. The whole congregation followed the son's proud steps. A strict order was observed: Mister Kon followed by the doctors. The advisors followed in the order of their rank.

"Indiana Jones ride," announced the son standing next to a World War II Range Rover with the top completely taken off including the wind shield. It looked a bit like a large bathtub on wheels. A driver took the wheel. Mister Kon sat shotgun. The doctors were seated in the back next to the son. The driver took off at a comfortable twenty miles an hour. The car quickly came onto potholes that were rhythmically offset left and right to rattle the car from side to side. A log on the right side lifted the right tires higher and higher, until the Range Rover was driving on the left two tires. The driver showed a bit off before he let the car fall back on all four tires.

The driver was infected by madness and floored the gas. At the end of the road, two people jumped out of the forest and pushed a man-high ball made of branches in front of them. The son screamed: "Oh my god, the rock is going to crush us." The game of chicken seemed rather unfair to Jarrik. The heavy Range Rover would bolt through the branches with mere scratches, perhaps a passenger or two would get impaled, and the two pushers were gone for sure. The last moment, the driver pulled sharply left into the forest.

We quickly encountered a steep slope. A shaky driveway had been built with thick branches and thin logs. There were two poles for the tires to fit on. The driver had to place the tires exactly. The Range Rover drove high over them. They creaked and swayed under the heavy car. The driver muttered: "I hope the logs don't crack again." The son ignored him and bellowed: "Look the holy grail is ahead." A soccer tournament cup was standing at the end of the wooden driveway.

The son climbed out of the car and down the scaffolding. Everyone followed. Jarrik wondered, if it were safer to risk the car falling on top of them or remaining in the car precariously up in the air. The driver silently cursed for having to back up over the thing logs. Mister Kon was very proud of his son's Western education and creativity. Kyden was tickled by the ridiculous display and pastime of one of the world's most hated war crime criminal.

An abandoned cabin patiently waited for the group. A throng of local tribal women stood next to door. They wore skirts with their brown tops exposed. Their breasts hung down like the invention of the bra was desperately necessary. Their faces looked a bit distraught. Apparently, they were freshly collected from a nearby village. The son proudly announced: "The Haunted House"

The first two women got on their hands and knees. They moved side to side facing towards the cabin. Mister Kon straddled their backs. The son explained to press the right button to go and the left button to stop. Evidently, he was referring to the breasts of the women. Mister Kon squeezed the right breast of the right women. The women started crawling forward with Mister Kon on their back. It was a bit uneven as they stepped forward at different times. The son punctuated "fully electronic button." Mister Kon disappeared in the dark cabin.

Kyden followed next. He had a bit of fun with the whole thing. He straddled the two women and yelled like a cowboy while wielding his fist in the hand. Then, he slapped one of the women on the ass. The son politely reminded Kyden to push the button. The two women shuffled off with Kyden into the cabin.

Jarrik was okay with sitting down on the women, because it reminded him of playing horse as a kid with his parents. Yet, touching the boobs of the woman felt a little weird. He leaned forward and reached under the torso. The tribal boob was a rather flabby mass. Out of curiosity, he checked the nipple. It felt large and soft. He wondered how the other woman's boob felt. As he touched it, the women stopped. The left woman's boob was plenty of skin and little fat. Her nipple was rather large though. He squeezed the right boob again to continue. He looked down at the naked women's back beneath him. The right one was a bit darker. The left one had more defined muscles.