Child of Africa

by T. M. Clark

  The tracker pulled an old tarpaulin under the carcass. Tichawana stepped up and, using his own curved skinning knife, neatly sliced through the skin and sinew of the giant ball sack to join the cut he’d made earlier. He moved the skin aside, then cut deeper, severing the flesh and muscles. The intestines and stomach tumbled onto the mat as he separated them from the body, careful not to pierce them. He removed the other internal organs and dropped them onto the tarpaulin too, except for the kidneys. Those he took and put in a yellow enamel bowl in the back of the bakkie.

  Once the offal was on the tarp, the tracker and one of the kitchen staff dragged them to the side and Tichawana began to skin the buffalo. He carefully separated the hide from the meat, almost like a doctor performing a skin graft. He sliced with precision, ensuring that there were no puncture holes in the leather. Cutting up to the knee point on the back legs, and then the front, he worked the whole skin off, until it spilled like a pink and white blanket around the buffalo’s head. Finally, he completed the cut behind the neck that his tracker had started, and the skin came free.

  Only then did his shoulders relax. He smiled as he watched the tracker and two other men carry the skin to the bakkie and lay it, hair side down, in the tray. They threw handfuls of salt onto it before carefully folding it into a bundle.

  Tichawana stopped then, cleaned his knives and washed his hands at the outside tap. He sat on his bonnet and watched the cook bring out his own knives and sharpen them before he began to dissect the carcass.

  ‘See you next month,’ Tichawana said as he left the carcass in the capable hands of the cook and climbed into his bakkie.

  ‘There is another hunter in that area. A large leopard, Baas,’ the tracker said.

  ‘Bigger than the one in my lounge area?’

  ‘Yes. Feet almost the size of a trophy lion. He is proud, he walks with purpose, as if he is at the top of the food chain.’

  ‘Do you think he will attack anyone in the training school?’

  ‘You never know with a leopard. He obviously accepts the training school as part of his territory, but if someone comes out of that school, he might keep their silence better than a man.’

  ‘That is good. Perhaps next time someone thinks they can use the bush to hide away from their destiny they will learn an important lesson instead.’

  He dropped the tracker at his hut in the outskirts of Esigodini and watched in his side mirror as the man rolled the skin from the bakkie to land on the ground. The tracker held his bowl of kidneys to him as if it was a precious gift and lifted one hand as Tichawana drove away.

  * * *

  The Shanghai Club was situated in the premises of the golf course in Killarney, once a prestigious suburb of Bulawayo. The club was no longer used by golfers; it was now owned by a Hong Kong Chinese businessman who catered to his elite clientele’s every wish, as long as they paid huge fees for annual memberships, and fees for any event they attended, as well as fees for the time they spent inside the premises. What happened inside the walls of the club was guaranteed to stay there, especially now that the clubhouse had been expanded to include accommodation.

  ‘Ah, my favourite customer,’ Mr Ling greeted Tichawana warmly.

  ‘You say that to all your customers.’

  ‘With you I mean it,’ Mr Ling said with a smile. ‘Your normal suite?’

  Tichawana nodded.

  ‘I’ll send your girls once you have had time to clean up.’

  ‘Give me at least half an hour, and get someone to clean my bakkie, and lock my guns in a safe.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mr Ling said and he smiled again, passing Tichawana an access card and taking the vehicle’s keys.

  Tichawana walked out of the clubhouse and passed rooms screened off with thick thatch. When he saw a small mongoose carving sitting on top of a rock he stepped onto the path that meandered around a huge old jacaranda tree and through some bamboo growing on both sides, effectively creating a corridor. Finally he walked into the suite.

  He opened the door and inhaled. The faint scent of sex always remained in the room, but it was masked expertly with cedar wood and furniture polish. Walking directly to the bathroom, he dropped his clothes on the floor and stepped into the hot shower.

  Lathering his hands with the soap from the dispenser, he scrubbed himself from head to toe using his nails, cleaning every crevice and line. He rubbed the deep scar across his left cheek. It had almost killed him, almost put him in a shallow grave of his own. So many memories flooded into his head, but that day was a turning point in his life, the day he learnt to never trust a man – even when he believed he was defeated, broken, something would always fight for life.

  The scene played like a movie in his head.

  * * *

  The darkness of the night contrasted to the brightness of the burning huts behind the men standing at the edge of the large pit they had dug for themselves. They knew it was their grave, and yet they stood like the proud and stupid Matabele they were. They knew that when the men with the red berets visited, there would be no one left alive, but still they had hope. Defiantly standing tall, knowing that death was around the corner, they believed that by dying they would protect their women and children from the carnage.

  They were so wrong. Steeped in tradition and influenced by the colonials who once ruled them, they had no idea the ethnic cleansing was happening for a good reason: so that the president could control the people. To ensure that those who still opposed him after the long bush war were stamped out and he could run the country any way he liked.

  Tichawana sneered. His father was like these men, living in a bygone era. One day Tichawana would get back to his own village and not only make his father and his brother watch the other pathetic males die, but he would keep them alive to watch as he and his comrades shared the women. Only when he knew they were broken would he run his knife slowly across their throats so that they would suffer. No quick death for Bongani or Tigere.

  He only had to manipulate his lieutenant, Black Mamba, into taking them into his homeland area. He was sure that the bloodlust that his lieutenant seemed to revel in would rule his head. A few more kilometres to the west and they would cross over into the land that he’d own once he had killed the reigning chief. Then he could settle there and be home once more.

  ‘Tich,’ Black Mamba said, interrupting his thoughts.

  He looked over to him.

  Black Mamba gave a grunt and scratched his balls. He took the toothpick from his teeth and spat on the ground. ‘Shoot them, then line up the women.’

  Tichawana jumped to do his lieutenant’s bidding, opening fire with his rifle, watching the men fall in a heap, some clutching their stomachs, others dead right away.

  ‘One body, one bullet,’ the lieutenant shouted. ‘We will run short of ammo and I do not want to go back to base again this month.’

  Tichawana stopped spraying the bullets across the falling line. ‘One body, one bullet?’

  The Black Mamba approached him and punched him in the face. ‘You questioning my authority?’

  Tichawana bent slightly, showing his respect for his lieutenant. ‘No, no, you have it wrong. I am not sure that I can shoot as well as you expect, that is all. I would never question you.’

  ‘You would not? No, because you are an idiot and you do not learn. You do not listen. You want to kill and kill. You need to learn. You take this knife and you finish those men, cut their throats like the cattle they are, and push them in that grave. We have the troublemakers. There are women over there who will keep me warm for the night. You get this over with before you join in the fun.’

  He turned his back to Tichawana, and walked towards the burning huts. The chief’s wife stood taller than the other women. Like her husband, she carried excessive pride. Tichawana smiled. He knew where that pride would be by morning – broken in a heap and in the same grave as her husband.

  He turned back to the men, who, seeing the lieutenant and four other men wa
lking towards their women, began to struggle against their bonds. He looked at the line and knew that he would leave the chief and his teenage son till last – they could watch, and they would always know that they had not done their duty, hadn’t protected their people.

  Grabbing the first man’s hair, he pushed his head forward, and his combat knife slid into the neck like it was butter. The artery sliced, and his warm blood seeped over Tichawana’s hand. He pulled the head backwards, and the blood splashed out. He thought it was what painting a picture would be like, if he knew how to paint. He pushed the man, still twitching, into the grave, and moved on to the next. The teenage boy’s eyes showed white with fear. His body glistened with sweat.

  Tichawana laughed. ‘This one is because you are too much like my half-brother,’ he said, but instead of killing him and pushing him into the pit right away, he pushed him into his father instead. ‘Here is your precious first born, your heir to your everything. Say goodbye, because he will be dead. So will your wife; you can hear her screams already as my lieutenant shows her what a real man can do.’

  The chief defied his years and jumped his feet through his bound arms and then swung his fists at Tichawana’s head. The blow to his ear made his whole head ring and he found himself knocked to the ground. He remained stationary, but saw the chief come at him again, dropping to his knees next to him. Tichawana had lost his knife, so he scavenged by his side. He found his AK-47 and let off a short burst of bullets into the chief’s gut.

  The man folded, the top of his head hitting the dirt first.

  ‘Run,’ the father shouted at the boy, who now attempted to hop away, but was still bound to his father and all the other bodies. He toppled over.

  Too late, Tichawana realised the father had his knife and was cutting his son free.

  ‘Run!’ he screamed, as he lunged again at Tichawana.

  Tichawana’s cheek erupted in fire as the knife slashed his face. The chief knocked him back again, only this time Tichawana didn’t fall. He brought his gun to his hip and emptied the magazine into the chief. ‘Die, you stupid fuck!’ he screamed.

  A second burst of gunfire was heard nearby, and Tichawana saw the boy fall on his face, unmoving.

  ‘One job, Tich. I gave you one job and you screwed it up,’ Black Mamba was shouting at him, his pants still around his ankles, AK-47 at his hip.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Tichawana said. ‘I did not expect that old chief to be so strong.’

  ‘I hope you learnt. Put those two into the grave. I left a few women strong enough to start covering the bodies, then they can follow. Finish up and then see to that cut on your face, or the maggots will eat you alive.’

  Tichawana nodded, bringing his hand to his cheek. The tips of his fingers traced the cut. His cheekbone and teeth could be felt from the outside. His stomach heaved.

  ‘On second thoughts, face first,’ Black Mamba said. ‘Keep your dirty paws out of that. Come to the fires, and get your belt and bite hard, you are going to need it.’

  ‘He was so strong,’ Tichawana said again, still shaking his head.

  ‘The most desperate ones always are,’ Black Mamba said. ‘Earlier you mentioned that there is another village only a day’s walk from this one? Bend down, put your head here.’ He pointed to a small mat on the ground near a fire.

  ‘West. Amaluandi Village, it is within spitting distance,’ Tichawana said as he put his head on the mat. He watched Black Mamba thread some cotton through the eye of a needle, then pass the pointed end through the flames a few times.

  ‘And you think it is a good place for us?’

  Tichawana went to nod, but found he couldn’t as Black Mamba had put his knee on his ear and was holding his head in a vice-like grip. ‘Second best. I hear that Yingwe Village, further south, is better, but it will do.’

  ‘Then there is even more reason to get your cheek healed, so that you can enjoy these spoils with us,’ Black Mamba said, as he took the heated needle and plunged it into Tichawana’s cheek.

  Two days later, he was finally almost home. Almost over the boundary line from the Chizarira and into the old Tribal Trust Lands.

  His father’s kingdom.

  Amaluandi Village was on the edge of the forest. After they had slaughtered those villagers, they would head south, towards Yingwe Village, where his father had moved his main kraal to. Tichawana was so close to victory he could taste it.

  He lifted his fingers to his cheek and winced. The cheek was still sore even now it was stitched, but the burning had almost gone. Getting his unit here had been easy, but making sure that he would be the one to kill his father and his brother, that was going to be a little trickier, and he had not quite figured it out.

  Black Mamba stopped, looking up at the tree in front of him. ‘We can go no further. Look, there is bad muti. We shouldn’t cross into this area. There are powerful N’Gomas that protect this place.’

  Three of Tichawana’s comrades talked in quiet tones.

  ‘Tich, woza,’ Black Mamba called him forward.

  Tichawana ran to his commander.

  The lieutenant pointed to the bags that hung on the tree. They were not subtle at all, not like the other muti he had seen previously. There were five of them, looking like giant drops of dried leaves and twigs, all tied together with bark. ‘You told us of this place, but you did not tell us of this muti.’

  ‘I did not know of it. But the N’Goma here, she is weak. I remember her, she was very young,’ Tichawana said.

  ‘You know this place?’ Black Mamba asked.

  ‘I grew up here,’ Tichawana said, ‘before I came to be with my comrades in Zambia. The chief banished me. Threw me out of my own home.’

  ‘A revenge killing.’ Black Mamba shook his head. ‘Have I taught you nothing in the whole time you have been with us? You cannot go into an area you know; they will recognise you and they will tell the bush drums to watch for you. They will get their N’Gomas to make muti to keep you out permanently.’

  ‘I do not care.’

  ‘You should. The N’Goma has power over you if they know your name, and if they have anything that belongs to you, it is even stronger. If this was your home, the N’Goma will have your things, and the muti will be very strong.’

  ‘I do not believe in N’Gomas or their muti. If you do not believe, it cannot affect you.’

  ‘You are mistaken. The muti from the N’Goma, it works on all men, white, black, yellow, everyone. This muti here, it is made to keep someone out of the border of this land, and if you are from this area, it is probably you.’

  ‘We can enter further south, away from this tree and its muti,’ Tichawana said.

  ‘I have seen this type of muti only once before, in Zambia, years ago. We tried to pass through an area, we never saw muti when we entered the area, but when we began walking, strange things happened.’

  Tichawana raised his eyebrows. ‘Strange?’

  ‘A lion attacked us. He killed a man, and even though we shot it, it did not die. It was as if this lion was possessed, as if it was one of the Shona people’s Nehanda, and the spirit was commanding the lion’s body. We ran away, and the lion chased us, but it stopped at the tree where we had not seen the muti, and it would not pass further. It was as if it was inside the barrier and the muti hanging in that tree was the border.’

  Tichawana said, ‘But that would take a great N’Goma to perform such muti, and I know that the girl in this area was young when her teacher passed over to the other side, and she was left alone to learn her witchcraft.’

  The Black Mamba shook his head. ‘This is powerful muti. You can go over there and see if anything comes out of the bushes for you and die alone. Or you can come back with us, and we avoid this area. I am not ready to die today for revenge on your family. I will not cross this boundary to test the muti’s strength. You must have done some bad shit for them to put such strong muti here to keep you out. We will skirt this border and head southeast, towards Hwange instead.’r />
  Tichawana didn’t want to believe in the power of the muti. He shook his head and ran to the other side of the tree, and then took a few steps further into his father’s lands.

  There was no lion to greet him.

  He turned to his comrades, laughing. ‘Look, it does not work on me, it is not here for me. There is no lion here.’ But as he said the words, he began to feel as if a million bees were stinging inside his stomach. He bent over and vomited. There was a red splash where he had spewed. Blood. His head was pounding as if someone was inside hitting a hammer on his brain, and his eyes streamed water.

  Black Mamba swore. ‘You are a fool.’ He picked Tichawana up and ran back to the other side of the tree, out of the protected territory. ‘Can you not understand that the muti works differently for different N’Gomas? So what if there is no lion in this one? Look at you. She made you sick. Very sick.’

  Tichawana threw up again, only this time there was bile, no blood. The bees were no longer stinging his stomach and the tokoloshe in his head had gone.

  He wiped his mouth.

  ‘It is as I said, you cannot go into this area. Some very powerful people live here, and until they die, you will never get into this place. You can kiss your revenge goodbye.’

  * * *

  Tichawana’s mind switched off the past as he stood under the spray of the shower, the scalding water on his back reminding him of his position today, and how far he had come since 1988, the day the N’Goma stood with his father when he had tried to return home, tried to enter his father’s area, and had suffered his only defeat while taking part in the Gukurahundi, the cleansing of the Matabele people by their Shona president.

  He had been repelled by the ancestors and his father.

  Soon that would change. The old chief was dying, and then he would once again test the strength of the N’Goma’s muti. His time to strike was fast approaching, and this time there would be no stopping him.

  He switched off the shower and wrapped a white towel around himself. Walking into the bedroom, he saw three Korean women already sitting on the bed, naked except for the leather straps around their necks, each one padlocked to the heavy chains that tied them together. They had been expertly trained, and today he was looking forward to their services.