I was dismayed to hear this. Had I not said, only that morning, that Chitambo would not permit the Doctor’s burial on his land? And now here he was, about to agree! But I need not have worried. The men had made up their minds, and though Chitambo tried to persuade them, they were firm in their resolve.
That being so, he led the men to higher ground where they could prepare Bwana Daudi’s body. Chitambo then went back to his village but said he would soon be back with all of his people. They needed to prepare themselves for the mourning rites.
Misozi was now all smiles. “There is nothing to fear,” she said, “you see how he is.” And to hear her talk, it was as though it was she and she alone who had secured for us all Chitambo’s grace and favor. But I will say that it was certainly much easier to work without fearing what the Chief might get to know and hear. We could be ourselves again, and talk as we worked and let the children run where they would.
In this spirit of freedom, it did not take long for the pagazi to build a new hut on the place Chitambo had suggested. I will say this for my man Amoda, he is not afraid of hard work. There are caravan leaders like Munyasere and Chowpereh who simply stand and give orders, but Amoda is in there with the men, doing and commanding at the same time. Under his direction, the men made a good job of the hut, though it was less a hut than it was a pen. It was open at the top to allow in the sun and air, but closed off and protected at the sides so that no wild animal could get in.
Later that morning, Susi, with Toufiki Ali, Adhiamberi, Wadi Saféné, and a few other pagazi, paid a visit to Chitambo to ask to cut trees. When they came back, it was to tell us that Chitambo had decreed that the rest of that day should be set aside for all his people to mourn Bwana Daudi. There would be no planting that day and no other work. Instead, as he had promised, all his people were to come back for the official mourning. They arrived soon after that. Chitambo was no Liwali but was very grand looking, I will give him that. He wore a large cloth of red that covered him from shoulder to ankle and flowed in his wake as his people walked behind him.
And his men! They looked like they were going to war, with their bows, arrows, and spears. They had fearsome white markings on their faces and chests. Their women sent out loud piercing sounds that were between keening and ululating. They made my blood run cold, that they did. Then came the drummers, beating away, while the women keened, then the whole group broke out in wailing lamentation.
Not to be outdone, our askari fired their guns into the air. They would have fired more rounds but for the raised arm of Amoda; they were having such a time of it that without his warning, they may have fired all their powder.
After the guns were fired, the people sat down. From among the crowd rose a man who wore a skirt of skins and feathers, and anklets of rattles all down his legs. He was the official mourner. Turning to Susi, he asked where Bwana Daudi had been born, how many planting seasons Bwana Daudi had lived, how many were the children he had left, and what were the names of his ancestors. Susi answered how he could.
The man then kicked his legs about, gave a loud ululation as he turned on the spot, kicked his legs about again, and sang something that sounded like: “Lélo kwa Engérésé, muana sisi oa konda. Tu tamb’ tamb’ Engérésé, muana sisi oa konda.”
Our children were simply entranced. Susi said to our party that this meant, “Today the Englishman is dead. He had different hair from ours. Come and mourn the Englishman. He had different hair from ours.”
The mourner danced a bit more, shook his rattles, repeated his chant, and asked for payment. Chuma gave him two strings of beads.
Well, really. Two strings, just for that! I have never seen the likes of it. And why was he asking about birthplaces and planting years and ancestors and children and such and such if all he could find to talk about was his hair! The Liwali had poets that could have done more than this. If that is how they mourn people in these swamps, I said to Misozi and Ntaoéka, then we can’t leave them soon enough, I can tell you that for nothing.
The only good thing that came out of the proceedings is that it gave the children a new game. “Tamb’ tamb’ Engérésé,” they sang out the rest of the day. “Muana sisi oa konda,” they chanted as they shook imaginary rattles on their legs.
Jacob Wainwright said Bwana Daudi would not have liked being called an English because he was a Scottish, but I don’t know what he meant by that because the two bwana, Stanley and Bwana Daudi, spoke this same English tongue. I said as much to him, but he said well, the other bwana was Americano and not English.
I was about to say that I knew he was Americano, like the cloth, and to ask what he meant by Scottish when Ntaoéka said, “But how do we get out of the swamps then? Because what Misozi said is right. It will be hard to travel with a dead body. People will think we are witches who eat the dead. They will say we are witches. Imagine that, they will say we are witches.”
Her breath was shallow and her voice high. As I shook my head at her manner, I noticed that Jacob Wainwright was looking at her as though he was in great pain.
Susi said, “That is just what some of the men are saying, that it will not do to be seen to be carrying a body through strange villages.”
Forgetting for a minute how Jacob Wainwright was looking at another man’s woman, I said, “There is nothing for it but to disguise his body. Consider how best to make him up like a package for travel.”
Susi looked up and down at me and said, “With that head of yours it is a pity you are a slave and a woman.”
I smiled, but wiped the smile off when I saw Ntaoéka giving me a knowing look. I wanted to tell Susi that I would be a slave for not much time longer, with my master dead and no inheritor to claim me, but I held my tongue. For I knew not what he might, in an unguarded moment, say to Amoda.
13
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The nightly custom of gathering around the camp fire, and entertaining one another with stories, began . . . after Sabadu, a page of King Mtesa, had astonished his hearers with the legend of the “Blameless Priest.” Our circle was free to all, and was frequently well attended; for when it was seen that the more accomplished narrators were suitably rewarded, and that there was a great deal of amusement to be derived, few could resist the temptation to approach and listen, unless fatigue or illness prevented them.
Henry Morton Stanley, My Dark Companions and Their Strange Stories
And, if you will believe it, even after all that, they still would not listen. I told them, didn’t I, that we were all best off just opening him up and letting the sun get on with it, but no, the men had to talk and argue and talk and argue. First, they said they had to soak him in the brandy left for him by Bwana Stanley. Brandy will treat and pickle him, Farjallah Christie said, and they were all set to do that until Susi said, no, they should not use too much of the good brandy because it might be needed later for medicine.
Medicine, what medicine. Don’t make me laugh. If you ask me, he had his eye on it himself. Susi likes his pombe, that he does, it was the only thing that ever came between him and the Bwana, got him into more than one spot of bother, that it did.
“A Kristuman would not behave in that way,” Bwana Daudi said, to which Susi said, “It is just as well then, because I am no Kristuman so there is no call for me to behave like one.”
That upset the Bwana no end. They had words in Unyanyembe, after which Susi took off, to be followed by Chuma.
Bwana worried himself sick. When they returned after four days, Bwana Daudi forgave them. And it was not all heart either, I will tell you that for nothing. He had to, didn’t he, because if he had not, a miserable party we would have been otherwise with just Amoda, Chirango, Mabruki, the seven other pagazi left by Bwana Stanley, Misozi, and me.
This was around the time that he had said Ntaoéka was to choose one of the men. Just as she was working up to choosing Chuma, off he went with Susi, leaving her to choose Mabruki. Very foolish she felt, when Chuma came back to find her with Mabruki. Wept b
uckets, Ntaoéka did, but if you ask me, that was not heartache, that was just temper. And now it is either Carus Farrar or Jacob Wainwright that she has her eye on, or maybe even both. I have seen the way both men look at her, like a hungry man salivating over a roasting piece of meat.
He got his way, didn’t he, Susi, in the end. After splashing a few drops over the poor Bwana’s corpse, he announced that there was not enough brandy to do the work, the crafty dog. Then Farjallah Christie remembered that Wadi Saféné had got some salt when we passed through Kalunganjovu’s land, and the men were all for salting him. Drove a hard bargain for his salt too, Wadi Saféné did, sixteen strings of beads he wanted, and two bolts of cloth, Americano and calico, the greedy such and such. All for a jar of salt the size of my Losi’s head. It would not have been enough to pickle seven large fish, that it would not.
Brandy and salt indeed. I told them and told them. All they needed to do was to open him up and put him high above the ground and let the sun do the rest. After they finally agreed that was the only thing to be done, they had to talk on and on, this time about his inside parts, his viscera and whatnot, as Farjallah Christie called his heart, lungs, and kidneys and things.
It was some hours before they finally agreed to cut them out and bury them there. I would like to see anyone try to dry out lungs and hearts and livers, that I would. It is why whenever an animal was slaughtered at the Liwali’s, the offal, as we called it, was the first thing we cooked. Made all sorts of delicacies and sweetbreads, that it did.
After all the talking, finally, on the afternoon of Chitambo’s mourning day, the men built the new hut in the place Chitambo had indicated, in which they made a small platform and laid the Bwana down so that his body was level with their chests.
They asked me for cloths to cover him, and I gave them some, making sure they used an old Americano piece because, for sure, he was our Bwana, but master or no master, it was no reason to waste good cloth.
Inside the hut, Farjallah Christie and Carus Farrar prepared to open up his body. They were extremely learned in the bodies of both man and beast, for they had both been servants to doctors: Farjallah Christie in Zanzibar, and Carus Farrar in Bombay.
Bwana Daudi’s frame was little more than skin and bone. It was not the work of a moment to make an incision that went up from his navel. From that opening, Carus Farrar reached into the body and drew out the viscera. His insides came tumbling out all at once, and oh, the smell. I had to back away for fear that I would retch all over myself, and Jacob Wainwright, who was reading holy words from his big black book, had to stop to step away for air. As for Asmani, he dropped the cloth he held and turned and ran, and we had to get two more men to hold up the cloth.
I was desperate to leave and I told the men that I would go to the main camp to fetch a container for Bwana Daudi’s insides. The camp had been set up on the driest land we found in these swamps. There had been space to build only five simple but large huts that were shared by the women, the six children, the Nassickers and a separate, smaller hut for Bwana Daudi. The rest of the men took it in turn to sleep out in the open and keep watch over the camp.
Now, I do not know what mischief maker told the children he was to be opened up that day but as I walked behind the fleeing Asmani, I saw them heading in a gaggle to the hut, all agog to see Bwana Daudi’s insides, the horrible creatures. I marshaled them back to the main camp, and on the way, I had to break a few quarrels between the children as they argued over whether his insides were as white as his outside self.
Sufficiently recovered, I returned with an old tin of flour that I thought would be big enough for the purpose. Carus Farrar and Farjallah Christie placed the heart in the tin box together with the other inside parts. As flies hovered over the dark mess of flesh, Carus Farrar pointed us to a clot of blood, as large as Amoda’s angry fist, that lay on the side of his right lung. He had clearly been very sick, Carus Farrar said, for his lungs were withered and covered with black and white patches.
While they had been opening him up, some of the pagazi were digging a grave for his insides. There was an argument about whether to bury as well the knife that had opened him up. I would wash the knife as long as it took, I said, for it was by far the best we had. The men looked horrified and agreed to bury it.
Majwara then sounded the drum to call the party. Jacob read the burial service, and in the presence of all, we laid his heart to rest. On the mpundu tree above the grave of his heart, Jacob Wainwright carved Bwana Daudi’s name and the date of his death.
After that, there was nothing to do but to leave his body exposed to the sun. The men kept watch over him day and night to see that no harm came to him. Even as the smell that wafted from him overpowered them, and the flies hovered, still they kept watch, standing vigil over his flesh and bones in groups of four or five. Twice a day, they changed the position of his body, so that all of him could receive the sun in equal measure.
The men took time to talk over the parts of him that hung outside, with no bone to attach them to him. They did not think I heard them, but oh, the trouble they took to decide what to do with those, the frowning consultations, the whispering back and forth. You would think that was the most important part of a man, to hear them talk. And, of course, they did not want the women to know what they were talking about.
I soon cut through the agonized whispering.
“Whether you cut those parts off now, or wait for them to dry and fall off or shrink into him, they have to come off him, as sure is sure,” I said. “It is going to happen, any which way you look at it. You may as well slice them off now, bury them with the rest, and have done with it.”
They looked at me with barely disguised horror.
“If you give me Farjallah’s knife,” I said, “I will slice them off myself, yes I will. I have dismembered a goat or two in my time, yes, I have, and quickly too. There was a he-goat once at the Liwali’s—”
“Halima,” Amoda said.
I took one look at his face and hurried. I spent the rest of that afternoon working with the women far from the men. So, I do not know what they decided to do with those parts, but what I do know is that there was some more digging around the mvula tree, and this time at night. The women and I laughed like anything, to think of the men gathering solemnly in the night to bury the things that made Bwana Daudi a man. But we took trouble to ensure that the men did not know why we laughed.
14
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Now that I am on the point of starting on another trip into Africa I feel quite exhilarated: when one travels with the specific object in view of ameliorating the condition of the natives every act becomes ennobled. . . .
The mere animal pleasure of travelling in a wild unexplored country is very great. When on lands of a couple of thousand feet elevation, brisk exercise imparts elasticity to the muscles, fresh and healthy blood circulates through the brain, the mind works well, the eye is clear, the step is firm, and a day’s exertion always makes the evening’s repose thoroughly enjoyable.
David Livingstone, The Last Journals of David Livingstone
I had put it in my mind that the drying would take no more than two weeks, and I was right. Whenever the men slaughtered goats, it took about ten days for them to dry, faster even, if we turned the meat into strips. We could not strip Bwana Daudi, poor thing, and though I had compared him to one, he was certainly no goat, that much is true, but still, all the fleshy parts of him had sunk in and he was just skin and bone, he was, so we knew that it would not take long.
It was not just waiting around for nothing for those two weeks; we traded as much as we could with Chitambo’s people and prepared provisions for the road ahead. The days were filled with the bustle of trade, skinning goats for meat, pounding flour for bread, sorting the Bwana’s Doctor’s things and deciding what could be traded.
Chirango surprised me, I must say. This same Chirango who had been so lazy that he had bought two bondschildren to carry his things now would
not let anyone come close to his load. Whenever the children played near to his load, he shouted for them to go away.
It was after he yelled at Losi that I told him that I had seen him talking to the medicine man in Chitambo’s village. His face transformed at once. “Well, Halima,” he said, “it is not for Chirango to say you have not seen what you have seen or you have seen what you think you saw, for Chirango has no knowledge as to how well you can see at a distance, but all Chirango will say is that if indeed you saw what you think you saw, Chirango can only say he seeks aid from all who can help him to see whether his fortunes will recover.”
Losi was now pulling on my hand, while Chirango went on and on about his claims to this and his claims to that. Once he starts going on about his claims, there is no stopping him. I moved away in the direction Losi was pulling me, leaving him to talk to the air.
For the next few nights, while we waited for Bwana Daudi’s body to dry, and after the work was done, we gathered in the usual way we had done before he fell sick. While Bwana Daudi had been so ill, and in the two days after his death, we had none of us sat in the usual way. But now, with the days of rest before us, we resumed our old ways.
We gathered around the fire to tell stories. Those of us who remembered told stories about where we came from and stories we had heard as children in our own lands. There was a thrill in hearing these stories, in feeling the same shivering anticipation as the Veiled Lady beckoned an elegant and seductive finger, and in gasping when her ghastly nature was revealed. Many of us chose to sacrifice sleep just for this. Misozi liked the most frightening of those stories, all about shetani ghosts and spirits that lived on sea and land. But when we went away to sleep alone, it was to go with a little fear. The heart would beat a little faster, and we lingered by the fire a little longer, but somehow, we managed to convince ourselves that these were mere stories that, even if they were true, had happened to people in places far from where we were, and there was nothing at all to fear.
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 8