God of Hunger

by John Coutouvidis

  American missionaries visited the farm once a month and today was their day too. The crowd came away from the scene of slaughter and encircled the black Pontiac whose interior held Jim and Beth, portable organ and reams of literature as give away presents.

  Jambo, Jambo. Habari watu wa Yezu. (Greetings people of Christ.) Bloody hands clasped soft white freckled arms in an exchange of greetings. Soon Jim and Beth stank of dead meat. Their clothes and limbs became stained with blood laden fly prints as they continued with the service. The body taken off the cross lay on the ground that evening, enveloping the communicants with the scent and sight of death; the blood and body of man merged with blood and body of buffalo.

  The missionary’s organ puffed to the rhythm of Beth’s unsteady feet, slippery with gore. ‘Oohhhh wee haaave a friend in Jeeezus’ rose above the sound of yelps, chatter and cackles. Then a prayer. ‘Oh Lord Jeezus, look down on your congregation and give us your blessings.’ The congregation could not have been better blessed. ‘Aalleylooia. Amen.’ To cap it all, out came the pamphlets and picture postcards. Jeezus walking on water, turning water to wine, feeding the five thousand. The Nazarene’s miracles were witnessed by a parade of Dongo revellers and there was great magic performed that evening.

  Kwaheri watu wote.Tu ta onana mwezi ngine. (Goodbye all. See you next month.) And off they went to neighbouring farms. And reported on the exploits of the young Kokopoulos. And that is how it got back to school.

  *

  Upon completion of primary education, European youth, with the exception of the few who left for Europe, went to secondary school at Kongwa; Kongwa European School to give it its full title. It was both a town and a school. Set in the middle of the country where Masailand ended and Gogoland blazed. A most unlikely setting for a school: it all started with the shortage of edible oils in post Second World War Britain. Nuts were decided upon by nuts in Whitehall who proposed that Gogoland should grow groundnuts on a massive scale. Forty eight million pounds were spent levelling the porini with pairs of great caterpillar tractors linked by massive ball and chain. The machinery was bought in and brought from the Philippines where the US military had left them after having used them to level Japanese defences on a progression of pacific islands.

  A railway was built; a fifty mile spur off the central line at Dodoma. An airfield. And the second biggest town in the territory after the capital, Dar-es-Salaam. Roads, hospital, staff club with swimming pool, rugby ground, cricket pitch and a generating station to light up the night between six and six.

  The plantations, laid bare for groundnuts, each thousands of acres in extent were called units. There were twelve of them each with housing for men and women, machines and animals. A veterinary station was set up at Mpwapwa through which the slave route had passed not so long ago; a well beaten track across this half way point between the lakes and the ocean.

  No farmer in the territory believed the project would work. Kokopoulos, advised strongly against it arguing that Gogos grew nuts on specific patches of ground. It was a mistake to expect the same on a scale from horizon to horizon. Especially in times of drought, more frequent even than the floods which washed tilled earth away into dongas.

  Not a nut was ever picked. Instead Kongwa became the site for a secondary school for European children.

  Theo wanted to go to the Prince of Wales in Nairobi, the top public school in East Africa. The fees were prohibitively high and so he went to board at Kongwa. First by bus where he entertained his new found chums by extracting from his trousers the penis of the relief driver who snored throughout, oblivious to the world. He then tied catapult rubber to the arm of his seat and gently placed a noose around the exposed organ which swelled with every sway of the bus. Young boys looked on big eyed in fear at the sheer size of the exposed organ. Prefects on the bus who may otherwise have intervened were party to the scene as Theo’s guests, each given a tin of condensed milk from his haversack topped up in Babati where he got onto the bus. By the time of the overnight stop at the railway hotel in Dodoma all the sweetener had been consumed and Theo, like everyone else, fell prey to prefectorial diktat. But he had made a name for himself and when news of the buffalo had done the rounds that name had a cachet no other junior could match.

  Next day it was onto the train and welcome to school. Juniors were placed in Rutherford under the care of the P.E. and dance teacher who wore no underpants.

  Word got round that he was having an affair with Matron. One morning, just after the other boys cycled off to school (bicycles were a compulsory requirement given the distances between buildings set aside for education in the former town) Theo climbed a tree in sight full outside her flat and witnessed a sight which made him feel peculiar.

  Then he caught sight of a cleft branch in front of him; perfect for a catapult.

  This well fashioned weapon was made of the whittled branch to which two strands of rubber a foot long and half an inch wide were whipped with strings of rubber from the same inner, tyre found by Theo in the Housemaster’s garage, and connected at the other end by a piece of leather, off his belt, into which the carefully selected stone was placed. Pulled like a bow this relatively innocuous looking artefact could at twenty paces propel a stone through a panelled door. He fired and found to his delight that it had found its target as man and woman leapt out of bed, yelling in the shock of the missile penetrating the privacy of the flat.

  *

  His second shot pierced a reptilian skull.

  The occasion was church on Sunday; every Sunday morning. Lines would form up by House (Rutherford, Wilberforce, Nightingale and Livingston), Roll call taken and uniform checked (all-white, in a land of red dust or mud) the lines led off past the art-room, around the rugby pitch, across the donga (a dry river bed), up the hill and into Church. A two mile sweat followed by hymns, prayers, psalms, readings and a sermon; the full C of E breakfast.

  This particular morning, Holy Joe, the vicar, took up the theme of the first lesson which was about the proud Pharisee who thanked God in prayer for not being like other men. For the life of him Theo could not understand the problem presented by the bearded old fool in the white kanzu. What was wrong with being grateful for being special? Theo believed always that he was better than anyone else. It had not crossed his mind to thank God. He just was born a good shot, physically tough as nails, mentally alert and with a temper none could appease; all giving him a sense of omnipotence in any confrontation.

  Then he heard a leathery rustle in the eaves above his head. The glint of an eye. The flicker of a forked tongue. A clawed foot and horny leg. Out it came. All of four feet in length plus the crenulated tail. A giant iguana. It froze on the beam above the priest. A murmuring throughout the congregation was muted by the Vicar’s rising voice about the iniquities of pride.

  From his right hand pocket, Theo took out the catapult and from his left a nyab. He would use his best ammo and a marble was better than a stone; he only wished he had a ball bearing.

  In one swift and smooth movement he pulled, aimed and let go. Above the swish and slap of recoiling rubber there was the unmistakable sound of target found. The creature sprang up and fell straight down onto the lectern and onto the floor where it quivered and froze.

  Girls to the right screamed in fear then wailed in a collective hysteria which soon turned to laughter at the realization of what had happened. The priest had turned as white in the face as his surplice, but stood his ground and with a surprising presence of mind asked Miss Jones on the piano to turn to an unscheduled hymn: ‘Lord dismiss us with Thy blessing’. He announced the number to the congregation who took it up with a fervour known only to boarders. This was their favourite hymn, invariably sung at the end of each term. That and ‘Stand up stand up, for Jeezus, The buggers at the back can’t see’.

  The entire school craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the boy who had plugged the iguana. Outside Theo was mobbed by his mates and new found admirers. Prefects called for o
rder and eventually escorted the boy back down to the dining rooms where staff had assembled for lunch. The teacher on duty was Cheesy Chambers. Cheesy because of the smell of his bare feet through ill-ventilated sandals. Children were known to retch when he stood by them correcting a geometrical problem. He thought that they were just afraid of his predilection for the cane which he used on the hands of girls and bums of boys with gay abandon.

  Theo was led up to the top table where the Captain of School solemnly explained why the school was assembled in the Mess, early for lunch. I will now say Grace, said Cheesy: ‘For what this miserable little Greek boy is about to receive, may the Lord make him truly thankful.” The School Captain handed him the cane kept in the cleaner’s cupboard. ‘Bend over.’ The cane went up as high as the ceiling light which tinkled on contact. And down it swooshed. Again, again, again, again and again. Six of the best. Such as drew blood across Theo’s buttocks.

  He made not a sound. He straightened up and went to his table. The prefect on duty got up and walked round to Theo’s place taking with him the table’s own tomato sauce and tin of butter: two commodities provided only in parcels from home to juniors who gladly gave up their precious gifts in exchange for not having to fag for their seniors at table. This symbolic gesture sealed Theo’s reputation as the school’s tough little shit. From then on the respect proffered made his position in school unassailable. It gave Theo an authority few could question.

  He on the other hand, framed questions of a different sort. What coursed through his mind were the words, ‘miserable little’ Greek. A worm turned in his mind and caused a sensation of resentment he had not felt before. It returned again and again as more such slights reached his attention. Theo witnessed yet another insulting outburst in geography, a class, which he attended because a new teacher called Brownfield liked to show films rather than do the work himself. (The Shell Oil productions were particularly good on the making of desert landscapes; especially the one about locusts which completely besplattered the angular windscreen of the Dragoon Rapide spraying and filming the swarm. This film was invariably trailered by a short from the Moody Institute which used trick photography to make plant life bearably interesting.)

  Brownfield clouted a Greek boy at the start of the class. He had taken three classes that morning, one after the other: Classes three, two and one. He had taken the register and in each had to again ask the name of a boy who spoke very quietly. The name was Vuterakis. In the third class, Theo’s, Brownfield walked up to the boy and said I suppose your name is Buterakis? ‘Yes, Sir,’ came the reply at which Brownfield unleashed a clout across the boys face, uttering: ‘I will not allow snivelling Greeks to make a fool out of me.’ Yet, truth be known, there were three gentle quiet-spoken Buterakis brothers in the school each in a separate class.

  At lunch break, Theo put together the sequence, by talking with the boys involved.

  That night, Friday, Theo loosened the nuts connecting the brake pipes to the brake drums on the wheels of Brownfield’s car. The next day Brownfield drove off to the staff club, at the edge of Kongwa. The car and its occupant overran the corner and hit the baobab tree at the junction between Millionaires Row, where Brownfield lived, and the main road to the club. On Monday Brownfield appeared at breakfast, face blue with bruising. Before taking grace he said that he could have been killed and would the person or persons who had sabotaged his car come forward for pity’s sake. He had to have been joking.

  It was much later on in Theo’s school career that revenge for individual slights took on a political form. It was on the occasion of the visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a man called Ramsay who looked more like a rugby forward than any priest the school had ever seen. This appealed to the boys who met the genial man on his rounds of the classes. Then came the service in church. And not a single Greek girl or boy knelt for prayer; all stood like a sparse copse in a field of ground nuts.

  After the fiasco, the head-teacher went bananas. He had the Greek orthodox nationals assembled before him in the gym. And what is the meaning of this and what is the meaning of that? The reason was staring him in the face. Theo had found in himself a new motive in life other than his love of the chase; the born huntsman had grown into an agent provocateur. And this new found knack for clandestine organization surprised even himself.

  The call for a boycott of the head of the English church at prayer was his.

  He answered the fuming Cyril Francis: ‘In Greek church the congregation does not kneel for prayers. So when you asked the school to do so, we Greeks remained standing.’

  This brought applause from Theo’s congregation which wound up Francis even tighter. ‘I will not allow you to ever again disrupt the life of the school. You are forthwith expelled. Do you understand? Or shall I talk more slowly or more loudly?’ Again the insult. Again not lost on Theo who went home to a hero’s welcome at the Greek Club.

  Feingeld

  It is widely held that the snows of Kilimanjaro were first revealed to European eyes when Rebman looked up from the plains in 1848 to be dazzled by equatorial glacis. But so had an ancient Greek geographer, albeit many centuries earlier. The discovery of equatorial ice was also reported by yet another Hellene. Writing about the sources of the Nile in his Second book, Herodotus, the proto-historian, tells of snowy equatorial peaks he calls Crophi and Mophi. Could his have been the last ear to a chain of voices stretching back to him from Kibo and Mawenzi on Kilimanjaro? The father of history is suspected by some to have also been the first disembeler. He does admit: ‘The Greeks in general have a weakness for inventing stories with no basis of fact.’ Yet surely, such disarming candour is but proof of his effort at objectivity.

  Yes. Kibo first belongs to the Bantu and Nilotic peoples living on its slopes. Then to Greeks. Then to Germans. And only then to any Anglophone: A Johnny come lately as far as Greeks in Arusha were concerned. And when the film, ‘Snows of Kilimanjaro’ was screened at the Paradise cinema, Ernest Hemingway’s son, Patrick, a White Hunter based in Arusha was stopped in the street and told in no uncertain terms that the Greek flag which had been planted on the summit during filming by an ardent patriot should have appeared on screen, thus proving Hellenic provenance.

  The Zambezi was also included in Greek claims to Africa; when Livingston discovered the Victoria Falls he noted in his diary meeting a Greek trader doing business at the very site of the ‘smoke that thunders’.

  ‘What Victoria Falls?’ they would ask at the Greek Club: ‘Papadopoulos’s Cataracts!’ And so it went on in that salon of proud Hellenic discourse, just twenty miles from KK’s coffee farm at Kingore below the slopes of Meru from which the great iced pudding of a mountain could be seen.

  KK had acquired his coffee estate from a German who had decided to return to his semi-detached fatherland.

  There were a considerable number of Germans in the vicinity. All had been under close observation of the British authorities during the run-up to the Second World War as it was well known that the German Consul in Dar-es-Salaam often came to visit, recruiting fifth columnists, for Adolf Hitler. It was even better known that from 1933, when Hitler came to power until 1945 when he committed suicide, all assemblies at the German School would end with hearty Sieg Heils, arms outstretched. Moreover several Nazis came to stay after the war. And, good medics though they were, former Nazi doctors and nurses came to practice far away from bunkers and camps. Fluent in their language, Kokopoulos knew them all. And that is how he had acquired a library of Nazi film and literature.

  His all time favourite film was Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will. He would sit mesmerized by its screening, as did his cronies who demanded of him a translation of the sound track. They particularly liked the sight of the serried ranks of spades and asked him for the words which accompanied that portion of the film:

  “ … My Fuhrer, I announce that 52,000 workmen have answered the call.

  Hitler: Heil Workmen!

  Main Speaker: Heil, my Fuh
rer!

  Shoulder spades! Lower spades!

  Choir: We stand here ready to carry Germany forward into a new age. One people, one Fuhrer, one state, Germany!

  Main speaker: Today ... together at work.

  Choir: On the moorland.

  Speaker: And in the marshes.

  And we in the sand.

  Choir: In the sand.

  Step forward, stalwart German worker.

  Speaker: We are planting trees.

  Choir: Murmuring woods.

  Speaker: We are building roads.

  Choir: From place to place.

  Speaker: We are creating new lands for the farmer.

  Choir: Fields and forests - acres and bread….

  Choir: We are true to our Homeland, to the Earth, felling the forests, ploughing the land and sowing the seeds. We are building our homes on firm ground, forging the old bond in fire - the bond between Man and Earth….”

  These sounds and sights appealed greatly to the farmers around Kokopoulos. At first they laughed at the sight of disciplined spades. Then reflected how much better Tanganyika would be with such a disciplined and well motivated labour force.