God of Hunger

by John Coutouvidis

  “What do you mean?”

  ‘Just what it says. Before the defeat we had jobs by right. The railways employed any white who could find no other living. You had to be thicker than a bobeejan not to succeed on the trains. It is the same in South Africa. The railways there are the employer of last resort for the thick kabooroos (Boers) and they maintain a stranglehold on the jobs for fear of destitution. So when the whenwees arrived.’

  “What do you mean by whenwees?”

  “Oh, sorry. The Rhodies who fled south found it bloody hard to make a go of things and would remember better lives here. Because they would begin reminiscing by saying “When we were in Rhodesia … they came to be known as when wees. Do you get it?”

  “Yes of course. So how did these people survive?”

  “With difficulty. Most live the lives of the growing class of white poor in South Africa, people who depend on soup kitchens. The lucky few, like the driver who had military experience, joined the boom trade in providing security. I heard that Jiji,’ ….

  ‘Jiji?’ Strange name.’

  ‘Nick name. … We all had one. That was his. I don’t know what it meant. He once told me that the Swahili word for village was kijiji. And that his wish in life was to live in a village in Tanganyika. A village man at heart. A jiji.

  Anyway, he took the law into his own hands once too often when he tracked down a burglar right in the heart of one of the shanty towns in the plains below Capetown. He found him and shot him dead. I mean that is unheard of. Those places are absolutely no go areas for whites. But not for him. In consequence, however, he was promoted to guarding the main doors to his head office. That apparently did his head in. No job for a man like him. So one day he drove home, no longer himself because of the inevitable divorce, locked himself in the garage with his car running and was found dead by dustmen doing the rounds an hour or so later; curious at the smoke pouring out of the garage, they eventually found him. At his funeral several of his military mates came out of the woodwork and did the honours before he too went up in smoke. Sad.”

  Marisha finished her drink and said to her companion at the bar, “Joe, do you want to come upstairs with me?”

  His seed was not cast upon the ground but neither did it abhor her virgin womb.

  *

  From Salisbury or rather, Harare, as it was then being called, Marisha flew north to the University College in Dar-es-Salaam where she was invited to speak to the History Faculty.

  On this visit she was guest of the Polish Embassy which had relayed a request to London from the University in Dar-es-Salaam for assistance in organizing historical archives. Marisha had long had contacts with higher education institutions in Africa; she had, after all, started her work in international politics by her involvement with the Poland-Africa Association from which she progressed through the Polish diplomatic service to end her career as a roving ambassador for her country.

  Her lecture in Dar-es-Salaam marked yet another shift in her political views over a long and distinguished career made up of executing sharp turns in successfully navigating the Cold War’s political minefields. She now signalled that times they were again a changing; Warsaw wanted the Kremlin to know that it would not forget traumas that had yet to be accounted for.

  *

  Times were about to change in Tanzania. Nyerere had died a week prior to Marish’s visit to the capital.

  She began her lecture with a nod to the Teacher:

  “ … With a clear conscience, Julius Nyerere, this very moral and devout man, ordered his country’s forces to hunt down evil in Uganda. The invasion by infantry and armour succeed beyond all expectations. It was a triumph for African arms. Well planned and executed by an impressive general staff whose soldiers entered the maze of terror and frightened away its most fearful beast, its man-devouring monitaur; the buffalo of myth made flesh: Idi Amin.

  Mission accomplished, Nyerere returned Uganda to Milton Obote and took nothing in return.

  Not all lived up to the Great Teacher’s expectations. Just like the Red Army in its attack on Poland in September 1939 the liberators of Kampala were mazed by baubles across the border; they simply could not resist wrist watches which they took from shops and passers by and spread them up each arm from wrist to elbow.’

  It was this point of comparison, as seen in photographs taken at the moment of liberation in Lwow and Kampala, with whose display Marisha began her lecture to the History Department at the University in Dar-es-Salaam.

  A voice called out from the audience: “We also took transistor radios!”

  Embarrassed silence from the rest.

  To lighten the moment she thanked the caller and added that:

  “There were no portable radios to be had in 1939 and much of what was not portable, watches apart, found itself onto trains taking all loot to the east. ….. Interesting, is it not, how time pieces are such universal objects of desire? I would say that in the west most advertisements in Sunday journals feature them. Many are diamond encrusted. But I would not (holding up her left arm to display her wrist watch) exchange my trusted Moskva for such baubles. I take it that I am in good company?”

  “Yes”, said the caller. “I too have a Moskva!”

  And with that the auditorium exploded with laughter.

  Now at ease with her audience, Marisha continued with, ‘Stalin's Russia, The Making of a Super Power.’

  ‘ … Stalin's slogan was one which Julius Nyerere favoured: "Socialism in One Country" which gave the rationale for the social and economic transformation of the USSR through a series of five year plans.

  She repeated with emphasis the distance Poland wished to put between herself and the Kremlin.

  There was no audible response from the audience. But she could see frantic note taking in the front row reserved for members of the diplomatic corps, the most prominent groups being the Chinese and Russians.

  She continued with her lecture, making points that would not pass unrecorded and unreported by the scribes; messages, sanctioned by Warsaw, of great consequence to Moscow and of considerable interest to Beijing. And to Dar-es-Salaam; all had sooner or later to confront the human costs of Stalinist endeavour; each had sacrificed a generation to a God of Hunger.

  *

  Marisha had said her piece. And she looked up from the lectern at the amphitheatre of faces. Lips bore a wary smile while hands gave mild applause. And no questions were asked. Marisha was far from disappointed. The agitation on the faces in the front row, especially amongst the Chinese diplomats, standard bearers of Mao’s Stalinism, was her reward. As for the muted response of the Tanzanians? That she well understood.

  She had visited Dar-es-Salaam on many occasions, before and after Jozef’s death, and had come to recognise the reluctance, amongst her otherwise friendly hosts, to give vent to their thoughts and opinions.

  But there was one exception to that rule; the young man who later introduced himself as Daudi Kandowere and who from that moment produced in her a feeling of desire Marisha had never experienced before.

  He was the colour of a Makonde carving, before black or dark brown boot polish is applied to make loliondo or acacia look like mahogany, and he had the regal bearing of the sculpted figure she had bought that morning; a Phidean African come to life. His gaze was direct and the look of fearlessness was also scribed in his mouth, but when he smiled or spoke a kindly charm replaced the persona of severity and transformed an inscrutable emperor into a captivating prince.

  “Madam, I listened with great care to what you had to say and what you did not say. The memory of our leader, Mwalimu, has yet to find its solid form in the mould of our national consciousness. Your Stalin and, now, our Nyerere are men of history. Great men. Men who transformed their respective nations to give them an identity, a strength of national character which will define them for all time; Russians are Stalin’s children as we are Nyerere’s. You did not dwell on Stalin’s terror. Are we to forgive the cost of our Father�
�s socialism? Both sacrificed the welfare of a generation. Yes, we were not cast into camps or liquidated for speaking our minds, but the new villages were miniature camps and any dissent made pariahs of dissenters. We all had to speak the same political language. And there was hunger in the land. You did not call Stalin a God of Hunger as the people in the market say of the Teacher. What would you say of him?”

  Marisha replied: “It would be impertinent ... disrespectful. … Presumptuous of me to express a defining view. It is for you. Your generation. It’s budding historians whom I addressed this evening; it is for them to decide. It is Africans who must write the definitive histories of African people.”

  “Thank you madam. It has been an honour and a pleasure ….”

  *

  Marisha could not sleep that night for fear of losing thought of Daudi Kandowere.

  In the morning she discretely asked about him and found out a great deal about the young man of her dreams and of her desires from Choco whom she met in the Agip hotel; the only place in town still able to provide a semblance of European expectations of hotel service.

  Not that Choco was entirely European; he was half Greek half Swahili; half caste. Hence Choco. Would Daudi be called the same were he to live amongst white boys as Choco had done in London?

  *

  “Marisha! How good to see you. You have the audacity to come into my office, take down your knickers and say how about it!”

  For reasons unbeknown to Marisha, Choco had adopted much of the language of the sound track to the porn films he showed at his club. He would amuse himself by coming out with snippets of speech from scenes etched on his mind, trying it on with any woman within earshot; just in case …

  “Oh, Choco. You naughty man! Certainly not. Not here. Not now! ….” How nice to see you again. Howww are you? Business okay?”

  Over lunch which he proposed they have together, she asked him about Daudi Kandowere.

  “Yes. I know him. He is one of us. A chocolate man. An interesting story whose people you know. Remember Kostas Kokopoulos. And the Armenian?

  “Yes of course. We were all together at your fantastic party.”

  “Well up in Arusha there are a number of chocolate people created by Greeks with Africans. And I know most of them because we were all together at the Greek school there. Daudi is much younger than me. But I knew his cousin who told me about the goings on.

  There was a circle of men, including Drakos, Savas, and Kostas …”

  “Kokopoulos?”

  ‘No he never partook. Too German in his views about sex between the races. Anathema. No. It was another one. I forget now his surname. Zee … something. Anyway they all had steady friend girls with whom they had children who, as sokolates (chocolates) were brought up under the supervision of Father Gabriel who would not only condemn illicit liaisons in public, often clouting any offending father he came across in the street, but would insist on the proper care of the little bastardthakia one of whom was Daudi Kandowere.’

  All others had Greek names. But not Daudi. He was the Armenian’s son by a Meru woman who worked at his castle. The Armenian denied the parentage of the boy and sent him away.’

  “Where?”

  ‘Oh. Not far. He went to see Kokopoulos and together they arranged that the boy should be brought up in the care of Kandowere and his many wives. Kandowere’s reputation was such that he was a credible father to the boy as it had been rumoured that he had had an affair with an Afrikaans girl who lived at the sawmill at Tengeru on mad Tsiknos’s estate.’

  “Why mad?”

  “Ah. Nuts. He got drunk regularly and would force his wife to dance the Sirtaki in front of him and his guests after poker. She was an elderly cushion of a woman whom he called arkoutha (bear) and this poor bear would shuffle through the jumpiest of dance rythmns and would be shot at by her husband should she stop moving before the end of the record.’

  “Shot at!’

  ‘Yeah. Not at as into her body. But at her feet. Into the floor boards which had often to be replaced because of perforation from his .45 pistol. !”

  “My God.”

  ‘Yes. Quite mad.’

  “So Daudi was raised on the Kokopoulos estate. By this man Kandu …”

  ‘Kicheche Kandowere; Kicheche the skunk. Call him skunk. That was his nickname. Skunk by nature and by scent.’

  “So who paid for Daudi to go through school and now university?”

  ‘School money came from the Armenian until he died. When his Meru woman took over the estate, as arranged by her clan whose elders threatened Armenis with execution were he to refuse, she stopped making the transfers to Daudi. Under pressure from Father Gabriel, Kokopoulos took over the obligation until he died. And now Kandowere does it all. He has become a rich man. Through the gem trade.’

  “The gem trade?”

  ‘Yes. But that is as much as I am willing to say. Except to say: “You have the audacity to come into my office, pull down your knickers and say, ‘How about it? ’

  Marisha took her leave of the lecherous Choco as a wave of disgust went through her body. The next day she flew out of Dar-es-Salaam for the last time. Daudi Kandowere sat beside her gazing back through the window at the receding curve of Kilindini harbour and out over the ocean; the ocean which bore to the coast wave after wave of new blood some of which flowed in Daudi’s veins.

  He looked at Marisha and she at him. There was a closeness between them which had yet to find expression.

  The formal relationship between them arose through a bursary provided through Marisha to Daudi by the Polish Government.

  It would fund a place on a London University postgraduate course. Daudi was set on becoming a historian.*

  When Mwalimu died, KK decided that memory of his greatness should be perpetuated in an annual lecture which he funded.

  Speakers were chosen from around the world.

  The first came from St. John’s College, Cambridge.

  No more followed.

  The visiting lecturer’s theme was poverty. ‘Poverty in Africa.’ And he began by quoting from the Teacher’s obituary in The Times:

  ‘Members of the United Nations stood for a minute’s silence at their headquarters in New York as a mark of respect for an iconic African leader, whose humility and honesty remain a guiding light for contemporary leaders on a continent still blighted by the tribalism and internecine strife that he stood against. Tributes from past and present African leaders and from heads of state from all over the world poured into Tanzanian embassies after the death of the man known at home simply as Mwalimu. (Teacher).’

  He paused. Looked up at his audience and said words about the saintly man that were unheard of amongst the country’s elite; far from the unlit nights of most lives in his benighted country.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen for those of us who have closely followed African affairs I may shock you by saying that such adulation tells only a part of the Tanzanian epic. Going amongst the people, as a guest to many in towns and villages around the country, I heard it said, in Swahili, the language of the country that, ‘Yes he was our Mwalimu but also, said in quite tones and in private, he is more often called Mungu wa Nja. The God of Hunger. Indeed, the son of Nyerere Butiko, the chief of the small Zanaki tribe settled around the eastern shore of Lake Victoria carried with him a family name which related to a plague of army-worms which was abroad at the time of his father’s birth in 1860. Julius Kambarage Nyerere was born in March 1922 at Butiama. His mother, who could not recall the day, named him after a rain spirit because it was raining after a year of terrible drought. To this day his place of birth remains a place of spirits and of witches and of witch killings in times of hardship; only this year an Albino was ritually killed there.

  Witchcraft is not my subject. Nor did the Teacher practice the dark arts. But where does he rank in the pantheon of grim reapers? Lenin. Stalin. Hitler. Franco. Kruschev. Mao. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Milton Obote. Emperor Bokasa. Sekou Toure. C
omrade Bob. Kim Il Sung. Suharto. Where should we place his bust? Here are the famously infamous Great Leaders of our cruel century; men who sacrificed an entire generation in the name of their revolution. In the name of progress.

 

  When speaking to my students of, say, Stalin I ask them to do a simple cost benefit analysis: Great power status: tens of millions dead. Was it worth it? Most say no. Some say yes. I have yet to put the same question to them concerning Nyerere. I am still working on a history of Tanzania.

  I start, of course, with Tanganyika which changed its name soon after independence in 1961 to Tanzania, after union with Zanzibar, following a mass slaughter of Arabs by descendents of their former slaves.

  And what do I find? I find that by every economic measure life for the majority was better then than it is now. In global terms, GDP today is well below that statistic for any year between 1939-1960. It is a fact that at the time of independence Tanganyika was in the lead of the food exporting Black African nations; today Tanzania can no longer feed its people; ninety per cent of whom work and live on the land; the majority of whom were forced into collectivised villages. Opponents of Ujamaa socialism launched in Arusha so many years ago, have been jailed, without trial, in their thousands.