A house was built in due course, after the paw paw trees were planted into virgin earth. Earth cleared by Dongo hands and made safe by KK’s rifle. Then came the long wait for the trees to bear fruit which they started to do on the third anniversary of planting.
That year was to see the first harvest of papain during which each ripe fruit would be scarified by razor blade attached to a long stick. Juices, the consistency of single cream, oozed out and coagulated on the fruit and were then scraped off with a long wooden spatula and allowed to drop into a canvas trap, the circumference of the average tree’s leaf cover, attached onto the trunk, halfway between crown and ground.
The juice of the pawpaw fruit contained papain which had to be solidified before export to the USA where it was used as a meat tenderizer.
Solidification required a vast kiln into which the gum like extract from the fruit, scraped off the canvas traps onto metal trays, was dried to a near crystalline form and then packed into four gallon tins, the same as the tins in which paraffin was sold.
(As scrap, paraffin tins were in African eyes a most precious commodity and would be begged or borrowed ahead of any other unguarded or unwanted item in the European household. Tins would carry water or cook the meal or roof the hut. They were as precious to Africans as the tripod was to Ancient Greeks.)
The buildings and equipment for the end process of papain production was ready for the harvest to arrive just when the District Officer appeared at the farm to order the evacuation of all its labour; the Government’s responsibility.
And the cause of official concern for the welfare of KK’s labour? The return of sleeping sickness. Endemic in game herds, especially in buffalo, this disease, carried by tsetse fly, was a destroyer of human life. Slower to kill than yellow fever or malaria, borne by the anopheles mosquito which would yield to DDT, the tsetse fly could only be combated by evacuation. And by deforestation. And by devastation of property. Everything that Kokopoulos had built up from scratch at Dongobesh was abandoned to the insidious forces of decay by sun, wind, rain and invertebrate appetite. All went to dust and ruin.
*
Kicheche was not minded to allow Kokopoulos to go to dust and ruin. The dead master was going to be as valuable to him in death as he had been in life. And in life he had been greatly praised. So too must he be in death; Kicheche was set on giving Kokopoulos the benefit of divinity such as held by the Pharoes of whom KK had told him.
So he decided to mummify Kokopoulos. To present him as a divinity to any who should seek further account from him. He would say that he wanted to show the greatest respect possible for the great man; assuring him of immortality by preventing decomposition. Kandowere thought even of forming a cult around the preserved corpse. None could doubt his loyalty as servant to KK; none would doubt his devotion to him in death; in preserved immortality.
In according everlasting life to him, Kandowere was intent on perpetuating the memory of KK through dedicated discipleship; a religion in the making; a timeless and time sanctioned preoccupation amongst tribes and clans from the hills of Galilee to the foothills of Kilimanjaro and the plains beneath Mount Meru.
*
The task of mummifying Kokopoulos was no different to that of preserving the crocodile in the hall. It greeted all guests with a scare. Glass eyes gleaming, red jaws open, teeth whiter than in nature and doubly as fearsome; fourteen feet of body curved ‘S’ shaped, it could have been the real thing.
He had never before taxidermized a human being but Kandowere saw no difference in this regard between animal and human. He just got on with the job of producing from the corpse a good resemblance of the living Kokopoulos.
As a mummified deity his former master had one further use. He would solve the requirement closest to Kandowere’s interests: a failsafe store for the gems.
The sitting Kokopoulos was an ideal safe. His entire thoracic cavity was going to be as empty as a drum and through his open mouth, set in a grimace as he exhaled his last breath in the final moment of life, Kandowere would trickle in the gems which came to him for storage. And he would extract them through the leathery anus which was neatly plugged with a bundle of dried banana leaves in the colour and form of a perfectly shaped turd.
Kandowere had fashioned Kokopoulos as a purse which was to be presented to his fellow workers in the camp as their totem.
In exchange for a vow of secrecy and certain of group loyalty, Kandowere had decided to extend largesse beyond the regular supply of pombe for all in his care. He now promised his people greater material wealth; double the daily wage earned on the farm in exchange for absolute silence about the totemic Kokopoulos who, Kicheche, would assure all and sundry, would wreak death and destruction should the merest whisper of indiscretion come to his ears as Head Mganga, as Kandowere now styled himself.
To ensure total conformity, Kandowere appointed acolytes in each hut to report to him each day on what was being said and what was being thought. This intelligence service was in receipt of a doubling of the double daily pay. He also appointed two deputies, two women of witches fame whom all feared and had feared well before Kokopoulos had been mummified. He assured himself of their loyalty by eliminating the only threat to his authority: the camp Mganga.
Kandowere gave much thought to achieving this end and in the end it was a matter of money. He purchased an albino from the morgue in Arusha and had her delivered to the farm. He then infused her liver with poison before presenting the corpse to the Mganga.
True to practice the old witch doctor consumed the organ in the course of his divinations.
At last, Kandowere was in control of the entire camp. He instilled fear as stick and gave money as carrot.
And here was all the money to come from?
From the mines below the farm which were now producing stones in such quantity as to fill the mummy’s cavity by the end of each season, marked by the arrival of the big rains which caused treacherous flood waters to flow through the rude shafts sank into the ground by peasant farmers turned miners.
One such delivered to Kandowere a stone that was too big for the mummy to swallow; a gemstone over two kilograms in weight, the equivalent of 10,000 carats; a ruby the size of a red grapefruit. This was the stone that was to gain notoriety, being the subject of press coverage across the globe.
It gave Kandowere many sleepless nights which was rare for the camp rooster who nearly always went quickly to sleep with a smile on his face.
He decided never again to accept gems too big for Kokopoulos to swallow, leaving others to dispose of stones of such parameters. He concentrated on the routine and the routine brought him wealth, health and happiness.
End Note
This book is part of a trilogy in honour of Thioneesos (Dionysus) whose feast days in ancient Greece required the staging of two dramatics and a satiric. In my offering these are presented as The Kidron Bible, God of Hunger and Mambo Leo. Together, they constitute The Wanainchi Trilogy.
John Coutouvidis
April 2011
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Copyright 2011 by John Coutouvidis
God of Hunger Page 28