students’, and wanted to know if I thought that’s Silowa. It is, isn’t it? You’re friends with Silowa and Matt and Anna, and that’s why you’re in the photo with them. And maybe you’re with them now, but the trouble is we don’t know, we can’t work anything out, not even if Joe was with you at the beginning. He still doesn’t remember anything. And the photo is important, isn’t it? I don’t know why but I just feel that when I look at it. I told the inspector, and asked him what he thought of that bit in your email about elephants.
She read Charly’s email again.
Hi Elly. Here’s More Notes from Chomlaya! Third day, and we’ve started getting visitors! Miss S ‘disapproves’ and instructs us not to‘encourage it’. Haven’t figured out yet what she’s so knotted up about. The visitors are all children, SO curious about what we’re doing here. They wander the plains with goats and cattle, v young, v inquisitive, v lively, v keen to show off their English (lucky for me)! There’s 4 local languages spoken just round here, 300 in the whole country! The national language is Kisewa, but because English is taught in schools, these children are pretty much fluent – and worth a library of information, I could fill notebooks and notebooks with their chatter! Most of them are from nomadic herder families. There’s 3 schools for the whole vast area, and they attend when they’re near, when their parents have scraped fees together, when they can be spared from looking after livestock. So by the time they’re 14 some have 1 or 2 years at school, others manage a year or 2 more. But they natter on IN ENGLISH about schools, exams, hopes, plans, AMBITIONS. Here’s a list: airline pilot, vet, ‘environmental’ scientist, ‘big shot farmer’, teacher, to have an enormous herd and get very rich, doctor, rally driver (they’ve seen the cars going through). They don’t have 2p between them, but they don’t know the meaning of narrow horizons or limited ambition! It’s awful to know the chances of even one of them realisingtheir hopes are so slim as to be almost invisible. They all want pen pals (that’s something I CAN DO with some of the students in the camp, and WILL DO when I return, let’s do it together, Elly – maybe get your school involved?)
Then one small girl told me her school is closed because of elephants, and I thought she was winding me up! Tomis heard, though, and explained that the elephants have shifted their usual migration route, creating havoc in plantations round several villages. Fences, noise, nothing’s turning them away, so they’ve called in an elephant-diversion-specialist to help sort it out.
I showed him that bit, Charly, Ella carried on writing, because I keep wondering if you’ve been hurt by animals. We see the vultures in the sky all over, and the animal bones lying in the grass. And Pirian, the nurse in the hospital, said a boy was crushed by an elephant. I can’t stop thinking things like that. But the inspector said it isn’t likely because we’d find you. Then he got this expression on his face, and looked quickly at Joe too, and sort of hesitated. I think he wished he hadn’t started saying that, he meant we’d find your bodies, or maybe your skeletons, so then I wished I hadn’t asked, and he said there’s no point in wondering about everything that could happen, everyone’s got to keepsearching with the helicopters, and we’ve just got to work out where you’ve gone. That’s why Joe’s coming back to Chomlaya, to try and help him remember. It makes him feel really scared that he can’t, he looks as if he’s hearing things in his head all the time. When we were walking in to the camp I saw he wanted to avoid that teacher – the one you write about. Now I’ve met her, I see what you mean.
She remembered: rows of tents like the grid of some gigantic board game; people arrayed like pieces on the board. A handful out in front; knots of others,
She read Charly’s email again.
Hi Elly. Here’s More Notes from Chomlaya! Third day, and we’ve started getting visitors! Miss S ‘disapproves’ and instructs us not to‘encourage it’. Haven’t figured out yet what she’s so knotted up about. The visitors are all children, SO curious about what we’re doing here. They wander the plains with goats and cattle, v young, v inquisitive, v lively, v keen to show off their English (lucky for me)! There’s 4 local languages spoken just round here, 300 in the whole country! The national language is Kisewa, but because English is taught in schools, these children are pretty much fluent – and worth a library of information, I could fill notebooks and notebooks with their chatter! Most of them are from nomadic herder families. There’s 3 schools for the whole vast area, and they attend when they’re near, when their parents have scraped fees together, when they can be spared from looking after livestock. So by the time they’re 14 some have 1 or 2 years at school, others manage a year or 2 more. But they natter on IN ENGLISH about schools, exams, hopes, plans, AMBITIONS. Here’s a list: airline pilot, vet, ‘environmental’ scientist, ‘big shot farmer’, teacher, to have an enormous herd and get very rich, doctor, rally driver (they’ve seen the cars going through). They don’t have 2p between them, but they don’t know the meaning of narrow horizons or limited ambition! It’s awful to know the chances of even one of them realisingtheir hopes are so slim as to be almost invisible. They all want pen pals (that’s something I CAN DO with some of the students in the camp, and WILL DO when I return, let’s do it together, Elly – maybe get your school involved?)
Then one small girl told me her school is closed because of elephants, and I thought she was winding me up! Tomis heard, though, and explained that the elephants have shifted their usual migration route, creating havoc in plantations round several villages. Fences, noise, nothing’s turning them away, so they’ve called in an elephant-diversion-specialist to help sort it out.
I showed him that bit, Charly, Ella carried on writing, because I keep wondering if you’ve been hurt by animals. We see the vultures in the sky all over, and the animal bones lying in the grass. And Pirian, the nurse in the hospital, said a boy was crushed by an elephant. I can’t stop thinking things like that. But the inspector said it isn’t likely because we’d find you. Then he got this expression on his face, and looked quickly at Joe too, and sort of hesitated. I think he wished he hadn’t started saying that, he meant we’d find your bodies, or maybe your skeletons, so then I wished I hadn’t asked, and he said there’s no point in wondering about everything that could happen, everyone’s got to keepsearching with the helicopters, and we’ve just got to work out where you’ve gone. That’s why Joe’s coming back to Chomlaya, to try and help him remember. It makes him feel really scared that he can’t, he looks as if he’s hearing things in his head all the time. When we were walking in to the camp I saw he wanted to avoid that teacher – the one you write about. Now I’ve met her, I see what you mean.
She remembered: rows of tents like the grid of some gigantic board game; people arrayed like pieces on the board. A handful out in front; knots of others,
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