The Great Agony & Pure Laughter of the Gods

by Jamala Safari

  The Great Agony and Pure Laughter of the Gods

  RISTO’S JOURNEY

  The Great Agony and Pure Laughter of the Gods

  JAMALA SAFARI

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

  Tam Tam Sings (Poetry, 2008)

  Published in 2012 by Umuzi

  an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1966/003153/07

  First Floor, Wembley Square, Solan Road, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  umuzi@randomstruik.co.za

  www.randomstruik.co.za

  © 2012 Jamala Safari

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2012

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0176-3 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0478-8 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4152-0479-5 (PDF)

  Cover design by publicide

  Text design by Chérie Collins

  Maps by Rudi de Lange

  Set in 11.5 on 15 pt Granjon

  To Willy Mwana-wa-Bene Kagayo and all child soldiers in the world

  KAHUZI-BIEGA NATIONAL PARK AND SURROUNDING AREAS

  . Contents .

  Foreword

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Acknowledgements

  . Foreword .

  Thousands or more? No one knows how many exactly. Among them, Sudanese, Colombian, Rwandan, Burmese, Sri Lankan, Congolese … The list includes at least thirty countries. At times willingly, but most of the time abducted or forcibly recruited, child combatants are fighting for government armies, opposition forces, militias and paramilitaries in their countries or neighbouring ones.

  The story of Risto is emblematic of many other abruptly interrupted childhoods. It embodies one story in particular, one that has left a scar on Jamala Safari’s life. Jamala (originally from the town of Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and his family still await the return of their cousin. Theirs is a constant vigil, mourning with no closure. They have lived in hope and desperation, with unspoken dreams and terrors, ever since that day in 1996 when Safari’s cousin, William Mwana-wa-Bene Kagayo (literally ‘William Child of Others’ in Mashi dialect), disappeared.

  Almost fulfilling the prophecy of his name, the boy refused to leave town when the warning came to evacuate. Soon afterwards he became one of the first child soldiers (known as ‘kadogo’ in the DRC) to join the rebel movement of Laurent Desiré Kabila, which later took over the country. Further than that, nothing is known of his fate.

  Recounting the intricate psychology of a child combatant, torn between innocence and damnation, the loneliness among others in the same hell, the survival mechanisms, the challenges of rehabilitation and reintegration, Safari takes us into the land of desolation that is the lot of child soldiers.

  Never found. Never buried. This book honours their memory, and especially William Mwana-wa-Bene Kagayo, whether he is walking somewhere in the lush forests of the Kivu, or whether the red earth of the region has already claimed back the blood of its child.

  Elizabeth Mary Lanzi Mazzachini

  Refugee rights activist, researcher and humanitarian worker in refugee operations.

  April 2012

  . Prologue .

  Sometimes Risto’s father would say that man is the forger of his own history. In his hands lies the power to challenge and to change, in his feet, the conquering force, and in his mind, the driving compass. Therein is the essence of miracle and mystery. Good or bad, it will be the legacy left behind when he no longer has a voice to speak or strength to stand.

  Many times Risto wished not to walk, not to touch; to stand still or find a cave to hide in. Then no footstep would be seen and his hands would leave no mark behind. If only that cave could be found, he would be in there right now; he would get in, close his eyes, clog up his ears, and ask rat and mouse to fill up the hole with soil. Then he would leave this earth, and sleep and sleep forever … and peace would come to his spirit and soul. Sometimes he wanted touching, walking, but was afraid to put his foot down in the flooding river, in the stormy fire, in the ghostly mouth of the world.

  In the end, he found himself on a fragile island: north, east, west, south, no path. All around him, children like him, raped and killed, many with hacked-off hands and legs, the young mutilated. And the war continued. Each day, moaning came from nearby.

  Sometimes three or four would die in his street alone. He would hear people yelling, screaming at the announcement of death. Always the same, the story the same:

  They entered our house, we wanted to give them money, but they said they didn’t need le francs Congolais. Finally they locked us in a room. They took Mama and our sister in one room and Papa in another one. We heard Mama and our sister yelling and yelling, like birds whose feathers are being pulled out while alive. Later, it was cold silence. We heard a few shots. There was no sound in the house after the door was slammed. Half an hour later, when the neighbours came and opened the door for us, we were already orphans and without a sister. Papa was shot in his forehead. The neighbours didn’t want us to glance at Mama and our sister. Their bodies were naked, blood spots were coming up north from their navels. Both of them dead.

  Children went on playing. They were told never to go far from home because anything could happen, and their family might need to flee the town. They might hear something like a thunderclap, then a heavy hail-fall on the roofs. Then a big cloud of smoke in the sky, meaning a bomb had fallen on nearby houses. People would moan, weep, but no mercy would come their way. Guns and death had become part of their daily lives. That was how they lived.

  This was Risto’s hometown, Bukavu, where he lived, tried to dream, then refused to, as he knew there was no place his foot could walk to write his own history. Risto Mahuno, fifteen years old, with eyes older than his age. He had seen more than he deserved.

  One could say that soccer brought healing to Risto. This was the only time his mind forgot his wish of finding a little cave where he could sleep forever in peace. Meeting his friends every day to play football, he felt the need to live again. No one remembered anxiety or felt fear when they played. They forgot their pain and time went on quietly. They played the way they used to play when Bukavu was still peaceful, with its green trees, children running up and down its streets like lost baby goats, and the taxi drivers driving twenty-four hours a day … in those days, one would have thought that if the world was Paradise, Bukavu would be its capital city. That was just a few years ago, just yesterday.

  It was a beautiful day in Bukavu. Soccer fever had infected the boys and they played the game under a hot sun. The sweat dripped off their faces into the dust. Then a frizzing silence consumed time, seconds became hours.

  Something has happened, thought Risto, lying on the ground.

  A great noise came from all directions. He heard women screaming and yelling,
calling and searching. He was lost, confused between his memory and the reality he saw around him. Then he felt a little clearer, and he looked all around the open field where they had been playing. There was no goalkeeper, nor defender, nor striker; none of them were playing anymore.

  Where he lay, Risto’s ears heard a lingering noise like bee songs. He could see the goal posts. The goal stood empty. Ombeni the goalkeeper wasn’t the real Ombeni who had been there a few minutes ago. He was in pieces. The scene was a butchery. Head and chest were apart, a hand here, a leg there, this here, that there. Risto’s nostrils were too small for his breath. His body shook.

  Their goalposts were covered in thick smoke, a house was burning, the nearby kitchen was on fire. There was no sign of Frank, Ombeni’s older brother, only a hole two metres from the goal. It was the size of a palm tree.

  ‘Come, come, come Risto,’ a woman’s voice called. It was his mother. ‘Are you okay? Are you all right?’ she kept asking. She shook too, but her voice was soothing.

  ‘I am fine, Mama.’ His body had no wound.

  ‘Are you okay, my son?’ she persisted, lifting him up onto her back like a precious golden basket. Risto did not like to be held like a baby on his mother’s back, but there was no choice. A fifteen-year-old boy had become a little child. He wanted to walk, but his entire body trembled like a rootless tree hit by a rhino.

  More and more people came to pick up their children, the wounded and the dead, to extinguish the fire; more noise followed. Some cried for the dead; others, especially children, were seized by fear, others were calling their relatives’ names. It was chaotic, like being in an open-air market consumed by fire. The running, shouting, screaming …

  The night passed. The story had grown, moving from the eyes of children on a playground to TV screens around the world. The news became a song. On the streets, it was a greeting for men, women, old and young people. At local radio stations, the news was repeated like a refrain, coming and going every thirty minutes.

  ‘… Yesterday at about 2:30pm, a bomb that appears to have come from over the Ruzizi River on the Rwandan side exploded on a football field in Bukavu. Two young boys were killed and three are seriously injured …’

  The story hung in the air, coming back like a hiccup.

  The sun rose with disregarding eyes, ignoring the bleeding canvas below. It didn’t wink or cough at the sorrow of the people, it shone as if nothing had happened, and Risto didn’t like it. Something had happened in his life that had changed the rhythm of his street’s heartbeat forever. The sun had risen from the side of the front door of Mama Ombeni’s house, where many people sat on chairs and mats, women weeping and singing while the men talked to one another.

  Curiosity brought Risto to the scene. He felt it was his right to say his last words to his late friends Frank and Ombeni. He wanted to glance at their bodies to confirm what his eyes had seen the day before. He was quickly turned away with the excuse of his age. Too young to attend a mourning ceremony. Young children had to stay away while corpses were still in the house; that was what an old woman, one of Mama Ombeni’s neighbours, told him. She wouldn’t even allow him to go beyond her house, as it stood at the entrance to the place of the mourning ceremony. He wanted to insist, but the grey-haired lady with no teeth and a face tattooed with age hardened the banning order, her eyes fierce.

  Mama Ombeni was Risto’s neighbour; the house he lived in was about a 100 metres uphill from hers. Bukavu is a hill-town, and Risto was able to see some of the things happening that morning at her house. He sat astride a tree trunk at the edge of his mother’s garden, watching, his feet floating as the tree was very tall. Sadness wasn’t enough to describe his pain; it was beyond what a man could take. These two friends had been brothers to him. There was a taint of fresh blood in the air. He smelled it, and it made tomorrow unclear, cloudy. The faces of Ombeni and Frank kept coming back to Risto’s eyes; the goalkeeper and the defender, the two brothers, his friends. Memories struck: his last trip with his late friends, a holiday to his grandmother’s village, a trip that he would always remember.

  . Chapter 1 .

  Risto’s maternal grandparents lived in a village called Bugobe. It was so peaceful that many called it the Kivu’s little Eden. There were fruit trees all over, and rivers that whispered at the foot of mountains covered with the greenery of ever-blooming trees. Ombeni, at twelve, was the youngest of the trio of brotherhood, while Risto and Frank were thirteen. Mama Ombeni considered Risto’s mother as her older sister, so she was quite content when her sons told her that they wanted to accompany Risto on holiday.

  His grandparents stayed in a big compound surrounded by fragrant indigenous trees. Inside the compound were three houses and two huts. One house was where Risto’s grandparents slept, one was for their two children and relatives, and one had been built by their sons, Risto’s uncles, as their lodge when visiting the village. Risto’s grandparents had a special hut, a smaller one with a room where the fire never died; it was where the evening fire was usually set up. As special guests and spoiled grandchildren, they were offered the fire hut. The fire that never died was hidden beneath the ashes of a triangular stone fireplace.

  In Bukavu, there were some fruit trees around the compounds, but here in Bugobe the boys couldn’t even count the number of fruit trees. Banana, avocado, mango, sugar-cane and many more, there were all the things children dreamed of having in their yards. They were on the trees like birds, eating as much fruit as their stomachs could bear. Each one, after cutting down his own sugar-cane with a machete, brought them to the compound and washed them. Then the grown-up girls, their older sisters as they had been told to call them, would divide the cane into four pieces for each of them. Then it was time to chew the sugar-cane and suck the juice. No one would talk, silence would reign, disturbed only by the noise of chewing.

  Their holiday was about mid-June, right after the final exams. Almost every tree had ripe fruit between its green-yellowish leaves, and all the trees were theirs.

  ‘Climb on all of them,’ said their grandfather, ‘except for the papaya trees. They are too thin and weak.’

  He warned them about the avocado trees; their branches were bigger, but easier to break. ‘Just be careful,’ was his refrain, spoken in a deep voice, his bald head reflecting sunrays like a mirror.

  It surprised the three town boys to discover that everything that their grandfather told them seemed to be known by other children from the village. Many times when they saw something unusual or when they had questions without answers, the ones from the village had answers and explanations. They would be walking in a deserted place, to be surprised by Benny’s insightful analysis of sounds and smells.

  ‘Can you hear?’

  His friends would pay attention in vain.

  ‘People are talking. Listen.’

  They never knew if it was murmuring human voices they heard, or the wind.

  There was no need for the village children to wear a watch to know the time. They spoke to the sun and it told them the time.

  ‘You have to stand in the sun, then look at your shadow; if you stand at the head of your shadow, then it means that the sun has reached the zenith,’ said Benny when Frank was asking passersby for the time.

  Benny went on to warn that midday was never a good time to go to the river or to be in the bush. It was the time that ghosts and evil spirits went to the river to swim and drink. Others went to the bush and the forest to hold their meetings. Being in these places could be dangerous for the living. They might carry bad luck or even death back to their families.

  Soon the trio from town realised that the village children knew more than they did, and they learned to trust them. The village carried its secrets in the depths of its lulling nights and warm days, things that made it a mystery to the outsiders. For the three who slept under thatch on hanging beds above a fire that never died, these mysteries unfolded with the wise voice of the forest they navigated.

  B
enny became their best friend in the village. He was kind and intelligent, and he had the compass for the villages and forest. He knew many secrets, not just of the bush, but of the village too. He was a little bit slimmer and shorter than Risto, precisely three months younger than him. When they stood up to measure their height, the top of Benny’s head reached the lower edge of Risto’s ear if Benny stood on his toes. When they argued, though, Benny always said he reached the top of Risto’s ears. Their grandfather told Risto that Benny was his cousin; he wasn’t sure, there were many cousins in the village.

  Benny soon left his family house and joined Risto and his friends in the hut. Whenever they sat around the fire at night, he told them stories and sang too. Each story had its own songs, and each song had its meaning. There were songs to sing only at night, and songs that couldn’t be sung around noon or midnight. There was a song to be sung if one lost something that one wanted to recover, a song to sing when one knew that one’s parents were angry and planning to punish one.

  Benny’s eyes lit up as he started a tale. ‘Listen … you were sent for, and didn’t come on time … you know a punishment is waiting for you. If you have been absent from home the whole day, take the kashisha flower, pull out a few eyelashes, and mix them together. When you arrive in front of the house, at the door, before you speak to any of your parents, you throw the mixture at the door. There won’t be any punishment anymore! Your parents will just warn you, and sometimes they might even forget.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Risto.

  ‘Go and try it, you will tell me.’

  The three boys were astonished by Benny’s stories. He knew the answers to enigmas for which the boys had no answers. ‘But who taught him all these things?’ was the question that they couldn’t help asking, when he correctly predicted rain on a certain afternoon in the dry season, or when he sang a song to call crickets in the bush, and the crickets came.