I Am Not Your Slave

by Tupa Tjipombo

  But the woman shook her head sadly and said, “These men . . .” Her voice trailed off, leaving only a look of helplessness and pity. “God be with you, my child,” she offered under her breath.

  This time, the men tied my legs and arms with bits of cord before throwing me in the back of the truck. As they drove off, the assembled crowd stared after me with mouths agape. Everyone, that is, except the Bushman, who remained squatting in the deep sand, seemingly at peace as he contemplated me with his amused, worldly wise eyes. It was as if he alone understood the full extent of my despair—but judged it unworthy.

  Once again, we made our way through the endless scrubland, only coming to a stop when the moon hovered listlessly in the evening sky. The men untied me and allowed me out of the truck. My back and legs were stiff and aching, and my face and arms were burned from the sun. The cuts on my arms and legs were inflamed and ugly. I surveyed my surroundings: We were in a small clearing in the bush that held two meager-looking mud huts. It resembled a temporary camp or kraal that herders used during the dry season. Someone had stacked thorn bushes in between the natural vegetation to create a fenced enclosure similar to something we might build to keep out lions and other predators. Yet there were no obvious indications that the place had ever been used for livestock.

  The driver positioned the truck to block the entrance of the compound, while the second man pushed me toward one of the huts. He pointed inside and barked, “Here!” Then he entered the second hut without another word. Ducking inside, I immediately stepped on another girl, who shrieked, covered her head with her arms, and instinctively curled up into a defensive ball. I stepped back and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I was able to make out five bodies sprawled across the dirt floor. I started to back out when one girl sat up and asked in Afrikaans, “Can you understand me?” Squinting toward the shadowy figure, I responded that I could.

  “Come in and sleep beside me,” she said. “But do not go outside or they will beat you.”

  I stepped carefully around several prone bodies and sat down beside the girl. “Where am I?” I whispered. “Who are these men?”

  The girl—whose name was Sarah—did not know the two men outside, claiming only to be familiar with a man who had dropped her here the day before. But he was gone now. She said she had been working at various shebeens in South Africa and Botswana over the past six months and was brought here from Maun, a town in northwestern Botswana near the border with Namibia. She added that the man who brought her here owned the shebeens and that he moved girls from place to place all the time. She saw him only when she was being transported from one place to another or when he passed through town and stopped to have a beer. She indicated that he was a powerful man who was widely feared and respected. In Maun, it was rumored that he used witchcraft of a very strange kind to kill or curse people, so most people steered clear of him. Beyond that, he was something of a mystery and nobody even knew where he came from; some said Zimbabwe while others said farther north, maybe even Congo.

  I pressed Sarah for more information. Reluctantly, she told me about a time when the man had gotten drunk and showed her his tattoos. They were very strange, she said, unlike anything she had ever seen before, and they covered his entire body. He told Sarah that they meant he was a leader in the “28.” Later, she asked others about the 28 and, together with her own experience, gradually pieced together the inner workings of the world she had become a part of.

  The 28 operated a vast prostitution ring across southern Africa, made up of different locales referred to as “kraals”—a direct reference to the enclosure used for livestock. Each kraal had a specific purpose. For example, some kraals were specifically used as “capture points,” where girls were either directly abducted or coerced into the network by various means of indebtedness or duplicity. Other kraals served as “initiation centers” or simply “way stations” that moved “cows”—girls—from one shebeen to another. Shebeens were the backbone of the network since they more or less doubled as brothels. Some shebeens looked and operated more like neighborhood drinking establishments than brothels, serving a modest clientele of “bulls”—johns—from the surrounding area. These places were referred to as “training kraals” or “primary school kraals,” where girls were trained in sex work under the tutelage of a “mama.” From here, girls were then moved to shebeens that had a more explicit and hard-core brothel component, which were known as “secondary school kraals.” Eventually, girls ended up being moved to the most hard-core locations in cities or along the major highways of southern Africa, especially to anyplace truck drivers and other travelers were frequently delayed: makeshift settlements that sprang up at international border crossings, well-known truck stops, and other checkpoints, including the inspection points located at every gate crossing along the veterinary cordon fence that stretched across Namibia and Botswana.

  Sarah explained that most girls who entered into the 28’s network of kraals came from southern Africa. But some girls came from other parts of Africa and even overseas, entering into the network from Zimbabwe and moving south toward cities in South Africa, such as Johannesburg and Cape Town. The majority of girls were very young, probably younger than eighteen. Sarah speculated that this was due to fears of HIV and AIDS and the popular belief that the younger the girl, the less likely that she was infected. The 28 also chose younger girls because they were thought to be more impressionable and compliant, making it easier to indoctrinate them into the world of prostitution, a gradual process of moving them farther and farther from their home areas while coercing them into financial indebtedness.

  When I asked Sarah for more details about the 28 themselves, she looked around nervously, as if we were venturing into territory too dangerous to even speak about. She said only that the numbers were more like a brotherhood than a criminal gang, which was how many people mistakenly described them. She told me that when the 28 man was drunk and showing her his tattoos, he had bragged that the only way to become a 28 was to kill someone while in prison, where the 28 and other “numbers gangs” like the 26 and 27 were based. He told Sarah that the prisons were their headquarters and that they controlled virtually every one in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. They even had powerful branches operating as far north as Zambia and Zimbabwe.

  I wanted to ask more questions, but Sarah warned me about doing so, suggesting that it would only invite more trouble. “You should sleep,” she said, before lying back down. “I only know that this is not our final destination.”

  But I lay awake for a long time. It was strange to think that a number—28—could suddenly become so frightening. When sleep finally did come, I had terrible nightmares about the mysterious 28 man.

  * * *

  I awoke early the next morning to the sounds of a truck pulling into the compound. I watched as two men got out and began talking with the others. Suddenly, Sarah grabbed my arm and whispered, “That is the 28 man.”

  It was Bernardo. Or at least it was the man I knew as Bernardo; Sarah had never known him to go by that name. I stared in shock at the man I had already come to fear. Now, that fear was joined by a growing sense of despair as I realized just how serious my situation was. His distinctive scarring was evident from across the compound, as were his tattoos now that he was wearing a tank top. There was a series of raised bars running up his left arm, almost like small sticks had been inserted just below his skin. They gave it a rough, bumpy appearance that merged with his burn scars. I wondered if they were meant to count or keep track of something because they were grouped in what appeared to be distinct batches. Meanwhile, his right arm was covered with an illustration of a strange traditional-looking mask, which was itself enmeshed in an intricate tangle of thorn bush branches that ran from his wrist all the way up to his neck. None of these things had been visible before because he had always worn a long-sleeved business shirt. Now they accentuated the grim intensity of the man and added a frightening element to what was already his
obvious authority. The other men jumped at his commands, which he delivered in his characteristically offhand manner while speaking or texting on his cell phone.

  It was not long before the men herded us out of our hut and told us to get into the back of the newly arrived truck. It was not a pickup like before but a longer truck with an enclosed container, like the ones I sometimes saw delivering mattresses or refrigerators around Opuwo. A place had been cleared for us between boxes of electronic goods, which were stacked floor to ceiling and took up at least two-thirds of the space. To our collective dismay, we saw that we would be sharing the remaining space with about a dozen goats. The animals were hobbled and tied together to keep them from moving about, but they struggled and bucked as we climbed in. As we shoved the bleating animals out of the way to make room for ourselves, the door was lowered. “Sit down!” one man barked as it came crashing down. “We drive today!” I quickly squeezed myself in among the tangled mass of goats and humans as the world went dark.

  Over the course of the day, the truck became a suffocating hothouse as it was baked by the Angolan sun and made miserable by the body heat of so many creatures crammed together. The sweat streamed down my body and drenched my clothes. Eventually, the floor became a puddle of sweat, goat piss, and vomit. It was unclear who vomited first, but it instigated a chain reaction until vomiting became just another bodily function like breathing or coughing. I vomited several times, until there was nothing left inside me, and then I just gagged and heaved as I gulped for air. Some girls started crying and praying. Another girl apologized because she had to urinate.

  By the time we stopped, it was well into the night. The new location was slightly larger than the one from the night before. There were also many more trees, all of which looked strange and exotic to me; they had large overhanging canopies with leafy vines that hung to the ground like strands of hair. Gone were the hard, stunted shapes of the mopani trees that were so familiar to me. Nothing looked or even smelled the same here.

  On the far side of the enclosure, under one of the largest trees, stood a small cement-brick house. To the right of that were several mud huts similar to the ones we had slept in the previous night. As we were led to the huts, we passed a huge firepit made from enormous rocks. Just behind the pit was a blackened tree stump with a large hole through the base and two giant limbs that stretched upward, giving it an almost humanlike appearance. It was covered with strange carvings and had bones and little bags of animal hide tied to it that dangled from cords of sinew or string. A brownish liquid dripped from some bags, and a rotten smell came from either the tree or the firepit—it was hard to say which—but it had the distinctive odor of decaying flesh. We filed past this bizarre scene without a word.

  I was put in a hut with Sarah and a girl with a heavily bruised face who, up to that point, had not said a word. We were all so exhausted that we simply collapsed onto several ragged mats strewn on the dirt floor. I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  It was still dark when I awoke to find my sleeping companions quarreling in fervent, muted whispers. Sarah was trying to grab the other girl’s arm, but she kept pulling it away and glancing out the doorway. They were both speaking Afrikaans.

  “They will catch you,” Sarah was saying. “Did you not see that tree there?” She pointed toward the firepit and the strange blackened tree stump. “They have powerful witchcraft here. They can find you no matter where you go. It is an easy thing for them.”

  But the girl slipped off her sandals and clutched them in her hands. “I would rather die than remain here,” she said. “I will pray to God to guide me.” She crouched by the doorway and peered out, poised to make a break for it. Sarah settled back with a sigh.

  “Wait,” I said, sitting up. The girl turned and gave me a sharp look. “If you come to the police or a headman, or even a pastor . . . tell them what has happened to us.” It was all I could think to say. But the girl did not even reply. She turned back to the entrance, hesitated for a few seconds, and was gone in an instant.

  The following morning, the truck was gone. In its place were three new men, who chatted as they sat around a cooking fire. Around noon, they came for us and marched us to a small earthen dam so we could wash ourselves. They did not seem to care or even notice that they were one girl short. I mentioned this to Sarah, who replied that she had been thinking the same thing. “A man knows when he is missing a cow from one day to the next,” she said. “We are no different. There is something happening that we cannot see. Perhaps they are looking for her now. Her fate is in God’s hands.”

  * * *

  It was a very hot day, and I slept through most of it, trying to ignore the stabbing pains of hunger in my belly. Like all the girls, I was thankful for the chance to wash myself, but for some reason it made me notice how hungry I was. So I slept to get through the day.

  Once the sun dipped below the trees, casting long, stringy shadows across the compound, the three guards began to move about. They dragged several large pieces of tarp over to our huts and secured them to the doorways so we could not see out. They went about their work carefully, double-checking that there were no gaps or holes to peek out of. They even placed rocks on the bottom of the tarps to prevent us from lifting them and peering out from underneath. Beyond a few shards of evening light that sliced through the interior of the hut from gaps in the roof, we were left in almost complete darkness.

  After a short while, the sound of vehicles broke the silence, followed by a sudden burst of activity as a large group of people moved about and called to one another across the compound. Sarah commented that most activity seemed to be taking place around the large witching tree. She turned out to be right; soon after, we heard the distinctive crackles and pops of a large fire coming to life.

  Footsteps approached our hut, and there was a brief conversation just outside the doorway before the tarp was pulled aside. Two men entered, one holding a kerosene lamp. I squinted against the light, taking a moment to adjust my eyes. The man holding the lamp was neatly dressed in business slacks and a tan dashiki-style shirt. He smiled at us with an open, friendly face. I allowed myself a little comfort in the man’s demeanor and neat, almost professional appearance, which made him look like a government worker.

  “Hello, my dears. How are you?” he said in English tinged with an accent similar to that of a white man. “How is your English?” We indicated that we were able to speak English, though it was quickly determined that my language skills were much better than Sarah’s. The government man—which is how I thought of him now—worked efficiently as he learned which languages we spoke. I was reminded of meetings in Opuwo, where it was common practice to determine translation needs beforehand.

  While the second man remained silent during this process, his presence was palpable. He was albino, for one, a common sight where I came from but something that always provoked a great deal of speculation and gossip on everything from sexuality to good luck to witchcraft. Albinos invoked fear in some and indifference in others; it depended on whom you talked to. Whatever the emotion, there was always a sense of the unknown about them.

  After determining our language abilities, the government man produced some pens and bits of paper from his pocket. He turned to us and said, “Perhaps you could write down the names and phone numbers of your closest kin or friends. It will help us contact them and send you home.” We exchanged glances. I smiled and eagerly reached out for the pen and paper, but Sarah hesitated. Seeing her reluctance, the government man explained that “God had blessed us” and we were being sent home. He told us that we were out of cell phone range at the moment but that he would be leaving for the nearest town in the morning and would call our families to assure them we were all right, perhaps even arrange for them to send money for a bus ride home. However, no one could leave Angola without proper identification, he explained, and none of us had any to speak of. He displayed his own official-looking identification and said he worked for an organization that
could assist us with this process. He explained that he would fax ahead the names and numbers of family members to border officials in Namibia and, in the case of Sarah, South Africa. They would then work with family members to secure the proper documentation and proof needed to return home. He said it was a complicated process but everything would be taken care of. A truck would arrive shortly to take us to town and drop us at the bus station. Everything would be ready in three or four days.

  That was all it took to convince me. I wrote down the names and cell phone numbers of my uncle, mother, and older brother. I also wrote down my father’s name even though he did not have a phone. Sarah, still looking suspicious, wrote down several names and numbers.

  As they left the hut, the men pulled the tarp back into place. From the darkness, Sarah speculated, “Maybe the girl who escaped last night reached the police and this is why this is happening.” But she did not sound confident. I did not care what the reason was and prayed only that the government man was telling us the truth.