Chapter 3
Kafue
The midday air was hot. Not quite as hot as it had been two weeks earlier, when the last vestiges of winter had been burned away by the resurgent vitality of the sun sliding south across the equator. Sometimes the early summer heat is unbearable, so hot the only relief is said to be suicide.
As the sound of the vehicle faded into the bush, Gideon felt his stress and tension dissipating,. It came with a realization of how hungry he was, his thirst exacerbated by the heat. Having left before dawn he hadn’t eaten or drank anything since then.
While packing up the medical box he asked one of the kitchen staff if she could prepare a sandwich and give him something to drink.
Waiting for the fare, he sat under the high thatched roof of the lodge’s large, open-walled lounge area, the chitenge in the local language. Retreating from the sun’s glare on the structures deck cantilevering out over the water, he moved to the head of the polished mahogany dinner table where it was shaded under the roof.
He contemplated the day’s events while sipping a tall glass of soothingly cool orange juice. Fortunately, no guests had been present to witness the morning’s struggle to save Eddie. If the events had left him unsettled, they would certainly have shaken the nerves of foreign visitors. He was glad to have returned in time to help.
Swatting his hat at a bee buzzing the rim of his glass, he looked up to see Precious approaching through the gap in the fence from the kitchen. She held a plain white plate with a neatly section sandwich on it. He looked at her curiously. She hadn’t been the one he had requested the food and drink from.
“Twasanta.” He thanked her and listened to her footsteps fade as he savored the salty grits of biltong jerky in the sandwich.
His mind returned to the morning’s events. ‘Muti. The stock-in-trade of the nganga, the African Witch Doctor. Gideon wondered what sort of muti Precious was referring to. He knew that in rural Africa there is still great respect and even fear of its potions, spells, or curses.. Recently one of his scout trainees, had disappeared for a week. When he finally resurfaced, his explanation was that some romantic rival had paid a nganga to cast a curse to impair his performance. It put him to sleep for a week, he said.
Gideon smiled as he thought how here it was accepted as a plausible explanation. Africa was full of the unusual and unexpected, which was hard to explain to outsiders. If anything, Gideon thought, the unexpected is the usual. The morning’s events certainly served as a confirmation.
A soft polite cough came from behind.
Glancing over his shoulder, there it was: the unexpected. She was in the shadows of the low half wall that leads to the deck. She was sitting on the concrete floor, supporting herself gracefully with an extended arm. The other lay languidly across her lap. Her long legs, tucked sideways, formed a parallel vee. It was the traditional way a woman shows respect. She was patiently requesting an audience as if Gideon were a chief.
Her display of patient supplication, halted Gideons chewing as effectively as a slap in the face.
After how earlier she had held herself aloof, and from the way she came forward in confident self-assurance to help with Eddie that morning, this traditional politeness was not what he expected. He stared wordlessly at her, as once again, she poured the ink of her eyes over him.
“Okay, what in the world is going on? Come over here and explain things.”
“No, Bwana. Not here.”
“Precious,” he reiterated. “What the hell is going on?”
In the darkness of her eyes, he detected the simmering glow of her passion.
“Bwana, I need to talk to you, but not now. Wait for me at your camp. I will be there later when I finish. Here there are too many ears.”
With that, she rose and disappeared through the gap in the fence.
Dumbstruck, Gideon left the other half of his sandwich untouched. This behavior coming from a woman, flipping from obsequiousness to instructing an older man to do something out here in the Bush, an order to an authority figure, was, to put it mildly, unusual given the traditional nature of the culture.
More perplexed than before, Gideon wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and rose to walk the kilometer to his campsite.
From the chitenge, the path leads across a small gully to the chalets, before edging back towards the river, past the open fire pit and on upstream to the campsite.
The firepit is more a platform than a pit. In the evening logs gathered from the bush provide the fuel for the fire. The best, longest burning wood is that which has grown in shallow, austere soils, toughening it. It smolders for hours, long after the guest dinner is served, all night long, until its glow is coaxed back to life, warming the outstretched palms of early risers as the hippos splash back into the river at dawn.
Passing the platform Gideon mentally flipped through events. The note in his pocket, the crocodile attack, the appearance of the old man. Add to that Precious’s strange request. All this potentially smeared with witchcraft.. But was something smoldering beneath the surface? Was some nganga bringing nonsense to ignite old ideas in people’s minds?
He dearly hoped not.
Passing the platform, from a smoldering log a thin whisp of pale smoke twisted upwards, rising high to split and scatter into the hot air.
It seemed a lifetime ago that he heard the shout of “Eeweh!” coming from the portly gate guard.
Instead of heading along the inland track to his camp, Gideon chose to stroll beneath the hanging branches of the big river trees forming a curtain between the open grassy dambo and the river. He had time, no training was scheduled for the day.
His campsite was a kiilometer upstram from the wlodge.
A big canvas tent, stood near a small thatched chitenge, across from a smaller ablution structure had been his home for two years.
Sitting in the evening gloom With a cup of strong coffee held in the wrap of both palms, he could make out the outlines of the leafy acacia and leadwood trees forming part of the riverine tangle stretching downriver.
The view from the campsite was one of his favorites. There was something about its simplicity and lack of clutter that appealed to his sense of aesthetics. On one side, the thick arbor line defined the river’s edge. On the other, the copses of big trees appeared to float on old abandoned ant hills, as if laid out by some master gardener. These thickets spread back from the breadth of the dambo, like freckles merging up into the abundance of a red-head’s hair.
Minimally touched by the hand of man, this vista is unchanged from over a hundred years ago when Orlando Baragwaneth paddled his dugout canoe past here, on his way to discovering the copper of Katanga.
The sun’s rays were stretched obliquely when Gideon noticed her crossing the open ground beyond his tent. The swaying float of her stride had lost its assertiveness. She glanced back over her shoulder a number of times.
He offered her a chair. They sat in silence, looking out at the view before Gideon asked. “So? What is going on?”
She took her time. “It is bad muti, Bwana!”
Extending a long leg, she kicked at a leaf on the floor. “In the village, they say that there is muti put on us. We knew it would happen.”
“Ok.” Gideon responded, “Why are you telling me this?”
“Bwana! You know the ways of Africa. You, from what they say, have always lived with us Africans, and you know these matters, how they affect us.”
Gideon looked carefully at the strangely enigmatic woman. The long braid of her hair which had dangled down her back earlier in the day was now looped around the crown of her head like the coils of a cobra. There was nothing frivolous about her demeanor. He sensed she should be taken seriously.
“So, what is the word?”
“Bwana, they say that the poachers have a powerful nganga on their side. A Nganga who gives them muti, even makes them invisible.”
Unease niggled deep in Gideon’s gut.
“Bwana, this muti, they say it may be able to curse the people here, to harm them. We didn’t know when it would happen, or to whom. Eddie was the unlucky chosen.”
“Can’t you get some other muti against it from another nganga around here?” He asked.
“Bwana, I have done that. But the ngangas we have here are nervous. They are unsure of the new potency.”
“What did you get?”
Delicately, she fingered the snail shells on the leather strand around her neck.
“The nganga gave me these to keep away the bad spirits. He said I was to make loud noises, or to sing loudly to chase the spirits away.”
This explained her ululating, and why she screamed before confronting the old mystery man. “So, Precious, doesn’t that mean everything will now be okay?”
“No Bwana, this new muti. It was brought here by a special nganga from far away. They say he flew here on the back of a hyena.”
“From where? Gideon asked.
“From south of the Zambezi. From the Mlimo.” she said.
“Mlimo?” Gideon queried incredulously. “Are you sure?”
“Yes Bwana. They say it is the same nganga who a long time ago gave the muti to Mushala. I have a relative who saw that nganga flying at night.”
Gideon knew of the fable of Mushala. He detected a tone of reverence in the way she mentioned his name. Again, he could see the black ink in her eyes, and how the sensuous pout of her lips barely moved as she spoke.
“They say that it is very strong muti.”
Gideon was vaguely familiar with the far away cult. But up here? On the other side of the Zambezi? Why would a ngangas stretch a tentacle out this far?
But there was no way that she could have made that up if there wasn’t some fire smoldering, providing the wisps of her story.
He asked softly, almost to himself, “What the heck is going on?”
It had been decades since he visited that eerie, faraway place. It had a sense of the spiritual, with an oracle heart hidden amongst the magnificence of massive Inselberg-bouldered hills. It is where, he was told, occasionally in the moonlight of midwinter, the ghost of Cecil Rhodes rises from his grave to link arms with the moon shadows of the men of the Shangani patrol. The myth has them descending from the fresco of their monument to greet their old rival, Chief Lobengula and his Matabele warriors. Forming a circle, in unison they clap and shout their despair, mourning the Africa they, in disparate and futile ways hoped for, even as it was recklessly pulled from their grasp by successive generations.
Gideon waited for Precious to look up. “Why are you scared to tell me in front of the others?
“Bwana.” Her hands were folded in her lap as she quietly spoke without raising her eyes. “Do you know that Eddie was paying my uncle my lobola, bridal price?” She paused. “He has already paid six cows..”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“Bwana. This is over half the payment. Another year and he will be able to buy the last few cows to give to my uncle.” Seeing the question in his raised eyebrows, she added. “He pays my uncle because my father is dead.
The staff here are from my village. They think I resist the new nganga because he is going after Eddie. But they worry if I resist too much.”
“Why?” he queried.
She crossed and uncrossed the long, lovely length of her legs as she nervously looked around.
“Even the local ngangas will expect me to resist, as long as it isn’t too much. They don’t want me interfering in powerful muti that may go wrong for everyone.”
“But Precious, I still don’t understand why you tell me these things and hide it from the others.
She shook her head, as if weary at having to explain the obvious.
“Bwana, didn’t you see that stranger? Did you not hear him tell you not to meddle?”
The gaunt features of the old camo clad man flicked back into Gideon’s mind.
“Didn’t you recognize the Crocodile? It came back to claim its sacrifice. It was in disguise.
“They say if I interfere too much, like you did, that crocodile will come back to take some other appeasement. That is what they are scared of. They will force me to leave. But I am not ready to go.
“Only you, as a mzungu, can help me. The ngangas haven’t perfected their curses on mzungus” She fingered the little snail shells strung around her neck. “Usually mzungus aren’t involved with witchcraft. But they are not immune to it.
“Oh, come on.” Gideon scoffed. “I’m not a religious or superstitious person. You don’t really expect me to take all this seriously?”
Precious eyed him unblinkingly. “Because you chose to come back and interfere with Eddie, you are now involved in the witchcraft, if you like it, or not.. You will see the truth of what I say. Something will be shown to you that will make you take all this seriously, make you realize that it might involve big issues you care about, not just me.”
Gideon rocked his head and pinched his lips dismissively.
“You must act. That crocodile has been moving for hours. It will be meeting with the hyena when he brings the nganga of darkness. They will be talking about you. They will be discussing what to do about your interference.”
His unease increased. Dealing with poachers was one thing: they could be tracked, hunted and trapped. This he could do. However, tracking and dealing with mystical witchcraft figures was something else.
Precious broke into his thoughts. “If you are clever and careful you will be able to confront the Crocodile.”
Staring at each other, he couldn’t match the unblinking intensity of her gaze. Why did she care so profoundly?
“Go! Go before it is too late,” she ordered. “You need to get close and discover his weaknesses. You must stop them. There may be others.”
With that she stood.
He stared after her as she walked away, her floating swagger rejuvenated.
Leaning back in his camp chair, arms folded across his chest, his legs spread, he half closed his eyes, making it appear as if the embers of the fire were caught between the bookends of his sandals. A mosquito hummed close to his ear. He ignored it. He was too wrapped in his thoughts to slap at it.
Slowly, gingerly, he let his mind drift back, searching for those odd instances where the riffs of witchcraft had rippled the surface of his life. The hushed undertones of his parents discussing the murder of one of the bafana boys he played with, a farm worker’s son. A murder for the harvest of body parts to prepare muti to give gambling luck.
Surely since then modernity had pushed the ugly side of African witchcraft into a closed chapter of its history.
Maybe not.
Straightening in his chair, he took out the handwritten note in his pocket,
“Leave here. Stop your meddling. The spirits do not want you here,” it read.
“You have been warned. If you interfere you will be punished by the spirits.”
It was signed ‘Crocodile’.
Cloaked in the darkness of the night, with a chorus of chirping crickets and peeping fruit bats, Gideon leaned back in his chair. He let gravity pull his head back so that his face pointed up at the sky as he emptied his mind of thought. Then, cupping his meshed hands behind his neck as a brace, he let his soul be filled with wonder at the Milky Way splashed across the night sky. Was all this all about her, or him.
