Child of Africa

by T. M. Clark

  ‘One day, I’ll get to go to a proper school, perhaps in a city.’

  Joss nodded. ‘How old are you now?’

  ‘Fourteen. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-four, but some days I feel like I could be one hundred and four.’

  Lwazi nodded. ‘Would you like me to bring in all that stuff from your bakkie?’

  ‘Thanks, that would be nice. We’ll get it done faster if we both do it,’ Joss said. ‘Then after lunch I can do my exercises, or I’m going to be walking like an old woman tomorrow.’

  * * *

  There was a welcome coolness to the afternoon when the sun began its descent into the west. Joss sat on the steps. He looked south, towards the road that led to the safari lodge, and noticed a crowd was forming, people walking down the road to his house. Many were women and children, a few youngsters, but the men were at least as old as Bongani. They walked with dignity and determination and waited at the lodge gate.

  Bongani had warned him this might happen. During Joss’s time away, things had begun to change. The arid area was being forced to accommodate more and more people as the government’s land appropriation program was undertaken, leaving farm workers homeless. Many of them had asked to settle within Chief Tigere’s land. Zimbabweans had been holding out hope for many years for a change to improve the chaos they called home, but as yet, it had not come. Instead they were plagued by instability caused by a one-party state. It was a country where everything had been taken to extremes, and never for the better. Somehow a happy medium needed to be found, but to date it had proven elusive to the people.

  Bongani had expressed his dismay at the influx of displaced black workers who’d been tossed out of their homes along with the white farmers when they’d begun to assemble in Binga. Chief Tigere had invited them to build their own ikhayas and kraals, and together they had all started to make a new life and eke out an existence from the hard land.

  Soon more homeless people had come looking to make a home. Lately they had been greeted by the chief-in-waiting when they had arrived. The new settlers had been prepared to put in the hours to manage the land. Together they had built the fences to keep their cattle and the wild animals out of the fields that they helped cultivate. The windmills that Joss’s father, Stephen, had built so many years before pumped constantly so that the sweet, fresh water from deep in the earth filled the cattle and goats’ drinking troughs and the reservoirs. They had lands for food that didn’t rely on the unseasonal and unreliable rains. Gradually the area was creating micro-markets and Bongani had told Joss they were seeing a difference in all of their lives. The new settlers had been able to make a home, creating a village.

  As chief-in-waiting of the area by birthright, they listened to Bongani, but it was still Chief Tigere’s word that was law. As the years passed, the people had come to understand that it was Bongani who was really making the decisions and guiding them, before his rightful time. It was a fragile arrangement, one that he controlled only because of the help that he’d given the newcomers.

  Bongani had warned Joss that some of the settlers wanted more say, wanted to rule alongside him, and have his chieftain rights in the area removed now that they lived there. They wanted a more democratic approach and they wanted it to be more like the very thing they had tried to run from.

  Bongani appeared in the garden below the steps.

  ‘Might as well get this over with,’ Joss said.

  It had been a few years since a white man had been a baas in this area, and many probably didn’t know that Joss still owned most of the lodge.

  An old woman stepped forward. He recognised her from his childhood; she’d been married to one of the skippers of the houseboats. Their staff house had been on the far side of the safari lodge, and he’d eaten sadza and nyama at her fire many times when he was growing up. She’d worked with his mother too, before he went away to be a marine.

  ‘Hello, Mary,’ he said, and he nodded his head in respect to her. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  ‘Inkosi Joss. It is good to see you again,’ Mary said, and she nodded to him. The sign of respect in his name and her manner didn’t go unnoticed.

  He looked at the crowd. They were not pushing forward, they were not threatening; they waited quietly, wanting to know what was going on.

  Bongani stepped forward to address the small crowd. ‘Each and every person here knew that Joss Brennan, Yingwe River Lodge owner, was coming home. It is good that you have come to meet him if you do not already know him. I know that Joss is also looking forward to getting to know each of you too.’

  Joss nodded. Many of the people in the crowd were nodding too.

  Mary looked around. ‘Thank you, Bongani. It is good to see you home, Inkosi Joss, but it is my worry that you being here could bring trouble to our settlement, living here as a white man in our community, as an owner, not as a tourist in the safari lodge. For some years now we have been a black-only settlement.’

  ‘I’m a Zimbabwean like you, Mary,’ Joss said. ‘I was born right here, in Chizarira, and my mother and father built Yingwe River Lodge, with permission from Chief Tigere and the land commission.’

  ‘I remember that day, Joss, when your parents came here, and you were a umfama. It was a happy time. But things are different now; we do not need a white baas. The white owners are being attacked and thrown out of their lodges, like they did to the farmers. You will bring big trouble. The war vets will come.’

  ‘I’m not your baas, Mary, unless you are working inside the safari lodge. But then you would be in the safari lodge staff quarters, not in this village. It’s as Bongani said, I’ve come home to heal.’ He pulled the bottom of his tracksuit pants up and showed them his artificial legs. The black plastic gleamed and the silver rivets shone in the sunshine.

  A gasp went up. Voices joined together in the expression of shock: ‘Mywee …’

  He lifted his T-shirt and showed them the scars on his stomach and his back where shrapnel had peppered his body as if it were jelly, and the still fading scars where the surgeons had taken the skin to graft onto his legs; once they were dark purple, but now they were simply maroon squares. He turned his arm outwards, showing them the keloid scar tissue from where the emergency orthopaedic doctors on the front line had managed to pin his broken arm and save it.

  ‘I deserve to be able to come home, like every other Zimbabwean. Find peace. I came home to my country to heal.’

  ‘You can go anywhere, settle in any town,’ Mary said.

  ‘My parents built and lived in Yingwe River Lodge before they crossed over, God rest their souls. I’m the second generation to live here, near Chief Tigere’s land. I won’t take my lodge away from here and remove the money flowing into this community, not if I can help it. For many years you have been supported by the lodge’s profits. My family’s lodge. Just because I wasn’t here to run it, didn’t mean I had abandoned it. Bongani’s a good manager. The overseas clients continue to visit, and this very community benefits from them. Many of your parents and grandparents came to this area when they built the dam. Before that, you were in the Zambezi Valley. Some of you came here from other places across Zimbabwe where you have been removed from your land. But as Zimbabweans, we have much in common, and one of those things is that we now live in this same area.’

  ‘Except that you are white,’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes, I am. But I have not come back here to tell you what to do. Perhaps in time I can help you all to make this area provide better, so that you are not standing in a queue for food, but are one of the areas in Zimbabwe that can support itself.’ He looked around the group. They were silent, listening to what he was saying.

  ‘Bongani has already told me that the people he allowed to settle here are hard workers. That you are not squatters. That you have formed a community and you work together. I’m no squatter either. This lodge has been paying into this very community, providing for this area for more years than many of you have even been
here, even before Mary’s family came to work in the lodge. This is my home too.’

  There was silence.

  ‘What will you do if King Gogo wa de Patswa comes? What will you do then?’ Mary asked.

  ‘The King of Thieves? The man who hides from his own name?’

  ‘All this time, we are the only area not attacked.’ Mary shook her head. ‘There are no mass graves here because he did not come here before. We have had no reason to attract him since your parents were killed, and there have only been tourists. With you here, who is to say that King Gogo wa de Patswa will keep away?’

  ‘I have no control over what the thief Gogo wa de Patswa does or doesn’t do, Mary, but I do know that this is my home. Yingwe Lodge is where I belong, and I plan on staying.’

  ‘Do not say that you have not been warned that your return brings a bad shadow,’ Mary said.

  ‘Thank you for the warning, Mary.’

  Bongani looked at Mary. ‘You are the mother of our people. It is good that you have spoken now, cleared the air, and put your position forward. But have you also considered that perhaps my half-brother, Tichawana, who we all know is Gogo wa de Patswa, is cautious of the curse that the N’Gomas and Chief Tigere put on the boundary so that he could never come near us? All this time, it has been them who kept that cheelo away. If Tichawana visits here, it will be because somehow he learns how to outwit our N’Gomas’ muti and protection, not because a white man has come home to his lodge. My father’s time to join his ancestors grows closer each day. Joss coming home does not affect whether my father lives one more day or one more year. And his coming home won’t influence that thief either way.’

  Mary looked Bongani in the eye. ‘I am still worried.’

  ‘We are all worried about the future. It is never stable, but you have to believe me when I tell you that Joss coming home is not going to influence Gogo wa de Patswa.’

  Mary nodded. ‘I am glad that Joss is home.’

  Bongani smiled, although it was a little forced. ‘This is a good settlement, a family settlement, and one that is beginning to prosper because everyone works hard. You are welcome here in your home, Joss.’

  Agreement could be heard from most people in the group as they started to dance, shuffling their feet back and forth, and clapping their hands as they encircled him.

  Joss noted that Mary stayed quiet, although she did clap.

  ‘Thank you, everyone, for the warm welcome home,’ he said.

  The crowd began to disperse, touching Joss on the shoulder or shaking his hand as they turned away from the lodge and went to their own homes. Soon only the two of them stood at the gates.

  Bongani said, ‘Let us get you up into the house, so you can rest. I can talk of the changes that have happened. Some you will need to see to believe.’

  ‘I bet,’ Joss said.

  CHAPTER

  8

  White Crosses

  Peta looked at the view from Tashinga Rest Camp in Chizarira National Park and inhaled deeply. The smell of dry dirt, wild animals and burnt bush filled her lungs. Although Matusadona was her baby, this park held her heart. But it was also breaking it.

  The burning of the park was out of hand; the thunderstorms the week before didn’t mean that the rains were here. Until the good rains came, the burning would continue, and she didn’t know how she was ever going to stop it. She suspected the criminal behind it was a newish local resident in the communal lands – the butchery at the market in the small town of Chizarira was never short of bush meat. She supposed the fire was his workers driving the animals further southwest and into the hunting concessions, where they were being shot. All the park rangers and the consultants knew it was the butcher too. But she couldn’t do anything about it without substantial proof, and that was something she didn’t have.

  Chizarira was a park she loved to spend time in, sitting around the fire at night, while the anti-poaching guards and her veterinary team told stories of days gone by, of traditions long past, with gusto. Their legends almost made her yearn to have been born a man earlier in the century, so that she could have experienced them first hand – none of their stories ever had a white female adventurer in them.

  The park held secrets only a few knew of, and she yearned to learn more. The old men had told her of days when they had seen jumbos with tusks so large their tips would touch the dirt when they walked, as the weight of each caused the elephants to hang their heads and rest in the hot sun. They told of bushmen’s paintings hidden in crevices, and underground water found deep in caves, in pools the colour of blue skies, even during drought. There were always the stories of the magnificent fish that swam in the river and the giant crocodiles.

  There was also the allure of veins of gold found within the park, which had been kept quiet. The location of where the people of the Zambezi Valley’s ancestors had once mined was never revealed, and outsiders had never managed to find them. They were said to be protected by the ancient spirits, so they remained undisturbed.

  The history of the land was full of stories of adventurers and explorers who had died in the area. They were buried where they had fallen, many of the graves marked by white crosses scattered throughout the park. If they had ever borne the names and dates of those buried there, they had long since faded in the harsh African weather. She’d asked her team to report the location of the crosses whenever one was found. The wall map in her office at home showed sixteen crosses already, and she knew in her heart there were more. Some would never be found. Unmarked and unremembered graves from years of war, simple stacks of stones piled on top of the bodies to keep the hyenas from eating them.

  The ones she was interested in were the older ones from the pioneering days, when wagon wheels cut deep furrows into the wet earth as the rains stopped their journey north, or the sheer splendour of the countryside made a family attempt to settle and build a future. This was a land where only the strong survived.

  She fiddled with the ring on her finger. Her last gift from her mother, who had died in Peta’s first year of university. She no longer thought that her mother was too weak to survive, because she’d found out from her father that Christmas that her mum was as strong as any Ndebele warrior of old. Her mother’s soul had been the strongest; it was her body that had let her down in the end.

  So much had changed after her mum had gone. Her father, not knowing what to do with Peta and Courtney, hadn’t wanted to move away from their home, where he had known such happiness, so they had stayed in the Matusadona, where all the memories were.

  At eighteen, she’d gone to university in Pretoria and graduated seven years later. The same year Courtney had graduated from high school.

  Despite her time spent at university in South Africa, she and Courtney had a special friendship. Peta never took their mother’s place in Courtney’s life, but she did become one of the closest friends Courtney had. They became a dynamic duo, ganging up together to make their dad do what they wanted.

  Memories of a younger Joss flooded in, and she smiled, remembering how close Courtney and he once were. How things had changed since they’d all grown up.

  Joss had gone off to war and Courtney had left for university in South Africa.

  Then Courtney had got sick, and come home.

  After Courtney lost her fragile hold on life, Peta had buried her ashes under the trees in the small cemetery in the Matusadona, next to their mother.

  Still Joss had stayed away, causing the anger towards him to fester deep inside her. Now that she knew why he hadn’t returned she felt guilty for having directed her anger at him for so long. It was better that Courtney would never know how broken Joss had become, that when she died she still held him on a pedestal, outshining all the other men in her life.

  Peta tipped her head back. A large column of vultures soared in circles in the sky. ‘Shit,’ she said as she got back into her 4x4 and reached for the radio. ‘Chifumba, come in.’

  ‘Chifumba here, hello, Miss Peta
.’

  ‘Any reports of a kill this morning? I’m looking at vultures circling on thermals.’ She waited while he spoke to the people in the office.

  ‘Pepe.’

  ‘No? You sure? I’ll go check it out before I come in to the office.’

  ‘Miss Peta?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Amos with you?’

  ‘He is. We’re at Tashinga Rest Camp already.’

  ‘Good, just making sure.’

  Neither of them wanted to mention that if it was poachers, she would need the extra firepower that Amos would provide.

  She’d met Amos the week she’d come back from university to work for her dad, when he’d been a new recruit to the game reserve. As the new kids on the block, they had formed an instant bond, fitting into their junior park ranger and veterinary roles in the black rhino breeding program under Jeff, the same vet who had been there since she was a child.

  She’d come to understand Amos’s initial motives for sticking close to her. He’d been a worker on a farm in Nyamandhlovu when it had been taken over by the war vets, and his white employers had been killed. Many of the workers that day had also been beaten, some even burnt with petrol, their legs broken to stop them running away from the fires. Amos blamed himself for not protecting them better, for not standing up to the war vets who took the farm by force and later abandoned it. When he had seen her, he had taken it on himself to be her shadow. He was convinced he would not lose another madam, another friend.

  The Chizarira Game reserve had its share of poachers, and then some to spare. Especially lately. One of the jobs she had taken on from her father was the monitoring and reporting of the anti-poaching units they employed. She feared that the reserve was worse off than it ever had been.

  Peta tossed her radio on the seat and stalked back into the main area where the guards were having morning tea. ‘Come on, Amos. We’re going to check out some vultures. I haven’t seen the lions in this area for a while; it might be a chance to see if they have new cubs. If it’s an animal hurt by poachers we still might have time to save it or put it out of its misery.’