Gordon watched as the old man moved slowly toward the door, and as he did, the old man turned and looked back at Gordon. For the first time, Gordon saw his face clearly. He had dark, sullen eyes which were sunken in his head. They appeared as black canker sores from beneath snow-white brows.

It dawned on Gordon that the old man’s presence coincided with the deaths of many of his patients. In the past week alone there was the old woman on Tuesday, the little girl with dysentery, and the man who had lost his arm to a machete. Each time the old man had been sitting there, like he was now, a buzzard waiting for the carrion.

As the tent flap closed behind him, Gordon looked over at Kairubu. “Is that your Dark Africa?”

Kairubu did not answer.

Gordon slowly lifted the gauze from the boy’s chest. The wound had stabilized. The blood had begun to coagulate. Gordon sighed.

It dawned on Gordon that the old man’s presence coincided with the deaths of many of his patients…. Each time the old man had been sitting there, like he was now, a buzzard waiting for the carrion.

“We’re getting it, Kairubu,” he said. He dabbed the wound with the gaze. “Yeah, that’s the way it should look.”

Kairubu broke a little smile.

“You are going to be fine,” Gordon said, wiping the young man’s forehead with his free hand.

The wound was deep, down to the sternum, and the tissue surrounding the lesion was blue and swollen. But it was a clean cut, as if it had been done with a surgical knife, which would make it easier to close. He took a nylon string from the tray, threaded it through a needle, and began to suture the wound. It is time to make your magic, Gordon thought, to use your hands to repair what man has done.

“He does not come for everyone,” Kairubu said, returning to the old medicine man, “only for special people, those with a pure heart. A heart must be pure.”

“Yes?” Gordon replied, sarcastically. “It must be real special to be dead with a pure heart.”

“It is African custom,” Kairubu assured. “It is part of life.”

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

“He takes them to Peponi,” Kairubu said, “a place way up in the mountain. It is a beautiful place, most beautiful place in all of Africa. You can see far out across the Savannah, and all the animal life is one and the same, and all the places you wish you could be are there, all in one. It is like your heaven, the dwelling place of God.”

Gordon looked skeptical. Being a man of medicine, trained in science, he had always been cynical about such things. He was not one to believe in something that was not supported by science, but he did not want to offend his young friend. “Is it like Arusha?” he asked.

“Is Arusha a place of peace and beauty for you?”

“Yes. It is my favorite spot in Africa.”

“Then it is like Arusha. It is beauty in its purest form; beauty of the natures, and beauty of the souls.”

Gordon smiled. He knew of this place; a place high in the mountains where his mind could go to rest; to find asylum from the horrors of this world. It was a place he wished he could be now. And now, as he sutured up the wound, he recalled a time he was in Arusha, especially beautiful after the long rains of March and April, although it was September now and the rains had not come yet. The rains are good, he thought. They wash away all the blood and horror of war; they cleanse what man has done and bring back to Africa what it has always been, a beautiful place of natural bounty.