Sophie and the Locust Curse Read online

  There was the house! And there was Madame Maasa, sitting outside on a small wooden stool. She was hunched over her frying pan and gazing into it intently, like a fortune-teller over a crystal ball. Sophie elbowed her way through the herd of cows and entered Madame Maasa's yard.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sophie. ‘Did you pass the night in peace?’

  ‘Peace only,’ said Madame Maasa. She did not even look up from her frying pan.

  ‘How much are your maasa?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘Ten francs each.’

  Sophie looked at the pan. Maasa were small African pancakes, blobs of batter fried in vegetable oil. They smelled delicious.

  ‘What if I buy a hundred?’

  Madame Maasa flipped a pancake with her spatula. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘five francs each.’

  ‘What if I buy three thousand?’

  Madame Maasa shrieked with laughter in mid-flip, causing one of her pancakes to sail through the air and flop down in the dust at Sophie’s feet, where a chicken began pecking at it. ‘If you buy three thousand maasa,’ chuckled Madame Maasa, ‘you can have them at three francs each, and I’ll even give you this stool I’m sitting on.’

  ‘Deal,’ said Sophie.

  ‘What?’

  Sophie held out a green bank-note. ‘Here’s five thousand francs. I’ll give you the rest when you’ve finished.’

  Madame Maasa spluttered. ‘But…but…you can’t…I can’t…’

  'I’ll pick up the first thousand tonight,' said Sophie.

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ called Sophie, breaking into a run. ‘Peace be with you!’

  Madame Maasa scowled and hit the chicken on the head with her spatula. Three thousand pancakes! What could this addle-brained white girl want with three thousand pancakes? Still, she thought, it was a good deal. Nine thousand francs could buy a lot in this town.

  Sophie’s next stop was the market place. Today was market day and the town was full of buying, selling, gossiping people. Muusa ag Bistro was pacing the streets selling extra-long turbans. Baa Jibi Norme was shouting for people to come and buy his cheap designer sunglasses. Salif dan Bari was in his usual spot, selling New Salif Extra-Plus Anti-Snake-Bite Pills. And in the middle of it all was Gidaado the Fourth. He was standing – yes, standing – on the snowy hump of his albino camel, and an eager crowd was gazing up at him.

  ‘There are two types of people in this world,’ Gidaado was saying. ‘Firstly, there are those who love General Alai Crêpe-Sombo.’

  ‘THAT’S US!’ shouted a voice in the crowd.

  ‘And secondly—’ Gidaado paused.

  ‘Yes?’ cried the crowd.

  ‘Secondly—’

  ‘YES?’

  ‘Secondly, there are those who ARE General Alai Crêpe-Sombo!!!’

  The crowd fell about laughing.

  ‘The second group has only one member!’ shouted Gidaado and the front row of the audience began to cheer.

  Gidaado must be loving this, thought Sophie to herself. He always did like being the centre of attention.

  Gidaado the Fourth was a griot, which meant that he spent all his time telling stories and singing the praises of Very Important People. These days he was working for General Alai Crêpe-Sombo, helping to drum up support for his election campaign. The election of a new president was only three days away.

  ‘Give me a Crêpe!’ shouted Gidaado.

  ‘CRÊPE!’ yelled the crowd.

  ‘Give me a Sombo!’

  ‘SOMBO!’

  ‘Give me a Bombo-Combo-Wombo-Zombo-Thombo-Crêpity-Sombo!’

  ‘BOMBO-COMBO-WOMBO-ZOMBO-THAhahahahaha…’

  ‘Who do you want for president?’

  ‘CRÊPE-SOMBO!!!’

  ‘Time for a song!’ shouted Gidaado. ‘Somebody please pass me my hoddu.’

  The crowd stamped and cheered. Gidaado reached down to take hold of his three-string guitar, then stood and began to pluck the strings. Sophie grinned and squeezed in amongst the spectators.

  ‘Actually,’ said Gidaado, ‘I don’t think I should. This song might give you nightmares.’

  ‘Sing it!’ cried the crowd.

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘SING IT!’

  ‘All right. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ Gidaado the Fourth, official praise-singer for General Alai Crêpe-Sombo, swelled and began to sing in a high-pitched voice:

  'One night Alai Crêpe-Sombo was a-shepherding his sheep

  Along a moonless footpath in the Scary Fairy Wood.

  Two hundred scary fairies were awoken from their sleep,

  And they sneakily surrounded him as scary fairies do.’

  The crowd had gone from mad excitement to deathly silence. Sophie knew what the Scary Fairies were; they were forest djinns which lived in trees and came out at night to cause trouble. People in Gorom-Gorom were terrified of them.

  ‘“Who’s there?”’ said General Sombo and his voice was loud and deep,

  “Are you friend or are you foe or are you something in-between?”

  “We’re foe,” said Scary Fairy One, “We’re gonna eat your sheep,

  And if you try and stop us we will also eat your spleen.”

  “Eeew,” said General Sombo and he gave a gallant laugh,

  "That sounds to me a thoroughly unappetizing feast,

  Your hunger might just vanish when you’re splatted with my staff,

  You lily-livered fairies do not scare me in the least.”

  What followed was as bloody as the Fall of Timbuktu,

  As heroic as the capture of the Koupiela Keep.

  Crêpe-Sombo gave those wicked djinns a lesson in Kung Fu,

  He de-fairy-fied the forest and defended all his sheep!’

  Gidaado’s audience breathed a sigh of relief and began to clap. The song had pushed all the right buttons - fear of the dark, fear of djinns and love of sheep. Crêpe-Sombo was a hero.

  Sophie joined in the clapping but something seemed not quite right. After all, General Crêpe-Sombo was a soldier, not a shepherd. She nudged the girl next to her.

  ‘What do you think?’ Sophie whispered. ‘Truth or legend?’

  ‘Truth, of course,’ said the girl. ‘You think the General would think twice about beating up a few djinns? Look at him. You can see his muscles rippling even under his uniform.’

  It was true, General Alai Crêpe-Sombo was a fine figure of a man. There he stood, more than six feet tall and built like a comic-book hero. The rows of medals on his barrel-like chest gleamed in the midday sun. As Sophie watched, the General crouched slightly and bunched his fists, then sprang onto the bonnet of his car and up onto the roof rack. The crowd went wild. Ground to roof rack in two leaps: quite a feat.

  A small bearded man wearing a red beret clambered up onto the roof of the Land Rover and stood beside General Crêpe-Sombo. Sophie recognized him as Furki Baa Turki, the loudest town crier in the entire province.

  ‘Hommes de Gorom-Gorom!’ cried Crêpe-Sombo in French, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘Men of Gorom-Gorom, I stand here today and I am filled with compassion. I see you bumbling along, bleating to each other, Which way, which way, which way should we go? Men of Gorom-Gorom, you are sheep without a shepherd!’

  Furki Baa Turki translated the General’s words into Fulfulde. His voice was so loud that Sophie had to put her fingers in her ears.

  ‘He’s so right,’ murmured the girl next to her.

  ‘Men of Gorom-Gorom,’ roared the General, ‘let Crêpe-Sombo be your shepherd!’

  ‘LET CRÊPE-SOMBO BE YOUR SHEPHERD!’

  ‘Let Crêpe-Sombo be your Shepherd!’ shouted Gidaado from atop his camel. The crowd nodded.

  ‘Men of Gorom-Gorom,’ roared the General, ‘follow Crêpe-Sombo!’

  ‘FOLLOW CRÊPE-SOMBO!’ echoed Gidaado in Fulfulde. The crowd beamed.

  ‘Men of Gorom-Gorom,’ roared the General, ‘vote for Crêpe-Sombo!’

  ‘VOTE FOR CRÊ
PE-SOMBO!’ shouted Gidaado and the crowd applauded.

  ‘Women of Gorom-Gorom,’ roared the General, ‘that goes for you too!’

  ‘WOMEN TOO!’ yelled Furki Baa Turki.

  Sophie turned and pushed her way through the crowd. Interesting though it was to watch Gidaado the Fourth and Furki Baa Turki, she had more important things to do. She hurried around the various market stalls, buying batteries for her radio, goat meat for her Dad and cucumbers for her tortoise.

  ‘Did you remember to order the General's pancakes?’

  The voice at Sophie’s shoulder made her jump. It was Gidaado.

  ‘Of course I remembered,’ said Sophie, 'Three thousand pancakes coming right up.'

  'Good.' Gidaado seemed relieved. 'What do you think of the rally?’

  Sophie curled her lip. ‘Women of Gorom-Gorom, that goes for you as well,’ she mimicked. ‘I don’t like your boss’s attitude.’

  ‘You have no taste,’ said Gidaado. ‘Personally, I think he is magnificent.’

  ‘He pays you to think that,’ said Sophie. ‘What was all that “One night Alai Crêpe-Sombo was a-shepherding his sheep” stuff?’

  Gidaado grinned. ‘That was my idea,’ he said. ‘It makes the herders love him. It makes them think he’s one of them.’

  ‘So it’s not true.’

  ‘Not strictly, no. It’s an epic poem. It’s a praise-song. It’s a part of our tradition.’

  ‘It’s a pack of lies,’ said Sophie.

  Gidaado grinned. ‘You know nothing,’ he said. ‘See you later.’

  Chapter 2

  The full moon cast eerie shadows across Gorom-Gorom’s market-place. Usually the market was empty at night, but tonight there was a large crowd, all dressed up in their Friday best. The town criers had done their job well that afternoon, marching up and down the alleyways of the town, banging their tam-tam drums and announcing the Great Pancake Giveaway. They had even announced it on Start the Day with Ali Cisse, the wake-up show on Gorom-Gorom’s new FM radio station.

  Madame Maasa had done her job well, too. She had fried the first batch of one thousand maasa and had heaped them onto four enormous plates. When Sophie came to collect, the pancake woman was all smiles.

  ‘I heard the criers!’ said Madame Maasa. ‘To think that I have fried a thousand maasa for General Crêpe-Sombo, and that tomorrow I get to fry a thousand more. What an honour! Why didn’t you tell me they were for him?’

  Sophie lifted the first plate onto her head and gripped it tightly with both hands. Madame Maasa’s three daughters came and took the other three plates, balancing them lightly on their heads and moving off towards the market-place.

  ‘Straighten your back, Sophie,’ said Ramata, the eldest of the three. ‘Your maasa are going to fall off.’

  ‘Look straight ahead of you,’ said Haibata.

  ‘Don’t bob up and down so much,’ said Amnata.

  ‘Have a good time,’ yelled Madame Maasa. ‘Don’t forget to bring my plates back!’

  The Crêpe-Sombo Campaign Land Rover was parked on the edge of the market-place. It was black and had dark bulletproof windows.

  Sophie knocked on the door with her knee and it slid open. Inside, by the dim orange light of a paraffin lamp, two men were slicing bananas. One of them wore an army uniform and had a long scar running from the corner of his left eye down to his chin. The other was a giant of a man who Sophie recognized as Pougini, General Crêpe-Sombo’s bodyguard.

  ‘Where’s Crêpe-Sombo?’ asked Sophie.

  ‘That’s General Crêpe-Sombo to you,’ said the soldier. ‘You’re late.’

  Sophie and the girls put down their plates and began to fold slices of banana into the pancakes. With all of them working together it did not take long.

  A sudden snort directly behind Sophie made her jump, and she turned round to see a large pair of nostrils flaring in her face. Above them a pair of liquid eyes gleamed in the moonlight. The eyelashes were very long.

  ‘Listen, Chobbal,’ said Sophie. ‘If you think you’re getting any of these pancakes, think again.’

  Chobbal was the Fulfulde word for spicy millet porridge. It was also the name of Gidaado’s albino camel.

  ‘Salam alaykum, Sophie.’ Gidaado was perched on Chobbal’s hump, grinning in the moonlight. ‘Are we ready to go?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sophie, ‘but I want you to know that I’m only doing this because you and me are friends, not because I want Crêpe-Sombo to win.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Gidaado rode off a short distance, stood up in the saddle and began to sing at the top of his voice.

  ‘The delightful General Crêpe-Sombo

  Has a dish of Election Delights,

  There’s a sugary treat for each voter to eat

  Get your crêpe from Crêpe-Sombo tonight!’

  A ripple of excitement ran through the crowd. The moonlight and song and the promise of food were making them giddy with pleasure. On and on Gidaado sang:

  ‘When Crêpe-Sombo comes into power

  He will rename this market Crêpe Plaza;

  The history books will honour the cooks

  Who pan-fried his Victory Maasa.’

  Sophie passed a plate of banana pancakes up to Gidaado and he began to throw them into the crowd. Eager hands reached out to catch the delicious morsels as they rained down.

  ‘Crêpe-Sombo’s a generous giver,

  Crêpe-Sombo’s the lord of largesse,

  Believe all the hype, he’s the head-of-state type,

  Have a pancake on General C.S.’

  The people of Gorom-Gorom laughed and munched and told each other what a good fellow General Crêpe-Sombo was. It took a very big-hearted man to distribute crêpes on such a large scale. He would surely make a fantastic president.

  Gidaado held up the last pancake, swung his arm round and round and then lobbed it high into the air. All eyes were on the pancake as it flipped over and over in the moonlight, and then - BANG!

  A shower of tiny stars filled the sky. For many of the people in the crowd, this was the first time they had seen a firework. Children shrieked. Herders ducked and cowered. Women grabbed hold of each other and hid their faces under their shawls. Young men whipped their staffs off their shoulders and brandished them, alert and battle-ready.

  Another firework fizzed through the air and exploded into a frenzy of coloured sparks. Gorom-Gorom was not under attack. This was all part of the Crêpe-Sombo Spectacle.

  And there he was! The General was standing on the roof of Salif dan Bari’s snake-pill shop, silhouetted against the backdrop of coloured stars. His feet were planted wide apart and he held a writhing snake in each hand. Gidaado was right, thought Sophie – Crêpe-Sombo is magnificent. God-like, even.

  ‘Hommes de Gorom-Gorom,’ thundered Crêpe-Sombo in French. ‘We are at war!’

  Furki Baa Turki translated the General's words into Fulfulde and a gasp of horror rose from the crowd.

  ‘We are at war with the sand!’ cried Crêpe-Sombo. ‘Every year the great Sahara desert moves further and further south. Soon it will sweep over us all!’

  Sophie glanced back over her shoulder, half-expecting to see a wall of sand careering towards her like a tsunami wave.

  ‘Ten years from now,’ said Crêpe-Sombo, ‘your homeland will be a distant memory. Gorom-Gorom, Yengerento, Bidi, Menegu, Giriiji – all these precious villages will be buried underneath the dunes. You do not have much time!’

  Time! Sophie looked at her watch and saw that it was already half past eleven. If she stayed out any longer her father would go mad with worry.

  ‘This is a war you must not lose,’ continued Crêpe-Sombo. ‘You will need a Commander-in-Chief who does not know the MEANING of the word “lose”!’

  Sophie slipped away from the crowd and hurried back to the Land Rover. She would have to pick up Madame Maasa’s empty pancake plates and then run straight home. Dad often worked late, and if she was really lucky, he would not have noticed that she was g
one.

  As Sophie reached out her hand to slide open the back door of the Land Rover, she heard voices inside. She stopped and listened.

  ‘The crowd loves him,’ said the first voice. ‘When he pauses for breath, they go so quiet you could hear a skink sneeze!’

  ‘They’ll vote for him now,’ replied the other, ‘but the question is, will they fight for him when he declares war?’

  When he declares war? Sophie frowned. What on earth are they talking about?

  Sophie opened the door. Pougini and the soldier were sitting inside eating pancakes. They jumped when they saw her.

  ‘What war?’ said Sophie sweetly.

  The men looked at each other. Pougini’s eyes flashed angrily in the lamp light.

  ‘You,’ he said, and he managed to inject that one word with fierce dislike and menace.

  ‘Hello, Pougini,’ said Sophie. ‘I thought bodyguards were supposed to bodyguard?’

  ‘I’m taking a break.’

  ‘You’re eating pancakes.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I heard one of you say something about a war,’ said Sophie. ‘What war might that be?’

  The soldier clicked his tongue angrily. ‘You were obviously not listening to the General’s speech,’ he said. ‘The General is declaring war on sand. The people of the north must fight.’

  ‘They must plant trees,’ said Pougini. ‘Thousands and thousands of trees.’

  ‘Trees are good,’ said the soldier. ‘They act as a barrier against the advance of the sand.’

  The two men nodded at Sophie like oversized monitor lizards, and then suddenly Pougini remembered his anger. ‘What do you want anyway?’ he snapped.

  ‘Madame Maasa’s plates. She needs them for tomorrow’s pancakes.’

  ‘Here.’ The bodyguard thrust the pile of plates roughly into Sophie’s hands. ‘In future, don’t creep up on people.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Sophie.