I had prayed on the matter and I knew in my heart that the Lord had sanctioned our union, that He would sanction our marriage, for as soon as we reached Zanzibar and were able to marry, we would marry in a Christian Church. Until then, it behooved me to be self-denying, to be self-sacrificing. Until we married, I would sacrifice the bliss of her arms. In any event, it would be difficult to find ways and means and places to meet without all the others’ knowing.
It was with this in mind that I accosted her as she walked to the stream. I took up her pail as though to assist her. In my ecstasy I shared with her all that I saw. She would be my Helpmeet, my fellow laborer. We would marry in Zanzibar, then I would be ordained in England. After that, we would return to Africa to labor in Christ’s vineyard. She would be more than my wife, she would be a missionary’s wife, an instrument of God, and Salvation.
Then we espied a hidden copse and lay behind it for a blissful while. What a glory is woman. Afterward, I took up the thread I had started to unwind. “It would be a life of great hardship and sacrifice,” I cautioned, “but what is that when we are doing the work of Christ?”
“I am not Christian,” Ntaoéka said.
“I will make you a Christian,” I said. “And together, we will convert all of God’s children who live here in Africa, who live in darkness, without the light of His Grace.”
“Do you not plan to go to England then?” she said. “Halima said you were to go to England, then live there or in Zanzibar.”
“I will go to England,” I said, “but only to be ordained so that I may return here, where God is calling me. With you by my side I know I will succeed.”
In my fervor, I grabbed her hand and put it against my heart. As I did so, I heard a rustling in the grass behind us. With a beating heart, I turned to see who approached.
“Accept my pardons, please, I had not seen you there.”
The voice belonged to Chirango, who had appeared from behind a tree without either of us seeing him. Ntaoéka’s hand was suddenly hot in mine. I dropped it at once. He smiled and bowed and licked his lips. Without a word to either of us, Ntaoéka went back in the direction of the town.
I thought Chirango gave a knowing smile as she left but I am certain that he will not betray me. I have not had the courage to ask him where he was the night she first came to my sleeping mat, and where he has been the nights since then. I consoled myself that this unseemly subterfuge can only be for the few weeks and days that are now left of our march. At the end will come lightness, of that I am certain.
As it happens, I did not need to broach the matter, for he immediately said, “You are the only friend I have on this journey, a friend from the first. Be assured all your secrets are stored safely in my heart.”
“There is no secret,” I said at once.
“No indeed,” he said, “but there are things that are not to be revealed to all, or all at once.”
“It is a matter, you understand,” I said, “not of my own skin.”
“I quite understand,” he said. “It is about a certain Person, whom we can call the Person in Question.”
As he spoke, he leered at me. This was the very last thing I would have called her, for his innuendos and leering made the matter seem much more seedy than it was.
“It is a matter of honor, because we would not want any unpleasant rumors to get back to Mabruki.”
“We would not indeed,” he agreed. “We would not want any rumors spreading about the Person in Question.”
I was finding it harder and harder to look him in the eye.
“Or indeed,” I said, “to any of the others.”
“Indeed not.
“I will also,” he said, “talk to the Person in Question and assure her that the secret is safe. That is, of course, if that will please you.”
What could I say? To make a conspiracy between the three of us in this manner was, of all things, the very last thing I wanted, but what could I do? The conversation had not gone in the direction I would have wanted, but certain I had his confidence, I let him go on his smiling, bowing way.
It’s not my protection I seek, but hers. It filled me with distaste to keep such a matter a secret, but I was not one to question God’s plan when it was clear before me. This was what He had willed, and if there must be some duplicity, it was of the kind practiced by my namesake Jacob when he covered his arms and face in goatskin, and appeared in the guise of his brother Esau to his father, Isaac, weak in sight and old in age, and from him got his brother’s blessing.
See what good came out of that deception, for Jacob was the father of the Twelve Tribes, and who better to have such a blessing than one who gave birth to the nation of Judah, from which sprang King David, and through his line, Our Lord Jesus.
And if it is a sin for a man to lie with a woman to whom he is betrothed and whom he will marry in a matter of weeks, then I comfort myself with the certainty that it is perhaps as well that I know what it is to sin, for I have, until this moment, been completely without blemish. It is surely right that one who is to be a clergyman should know, firsthand, what it means to be a sinner.
14
24 August 1873
Fourteenth Entry from the Journal of Jacob Wainwright, entered at Kumbakumba; in which Wainwright suffers a Great Shock as the Party receives Succor through an Unlikely Alliance.
We have now entered the town of Kumbakumba, where we are encamped in uneasy comfort. My Readers will forgive me if my thoughts run on and my words are incoherent, for I have suffered a great shock. I am finding it impossible to match what the Doctor writes in his journal with the intelligence I have lately received concerning his conduct.
“The strangest disease I have seen in this country seems really to be broken-heartedness, and it attacks free men who have been captured and made slaves.” Thus enters the Doctor in his Journal of the twentieth day of December 1870, in the Year of Our Lord.
In this entry, he narrates the story of a man he calls Syed bin Habib, whose elder brother was killed in Rua from a spear that was pitched through his tent into his side. This Syed then vowed vengeance for the blood of his brother and assaulted all he could find, killing all the elders of the village from which the fateful spear had come and making the young men captives.
As the Doctor tells it, Syed secured a large number of captives, who endured well enough in their chains until they saw the broad river Lualaba roll between them and their free homes. A third of them died just three days after crossing, having ascribed their only pain to the heart and placed the hand correctly on the spot. One boy of about twelve years was carried, and when about to expire, was laid down on the side of the path, and a hole was dug to deposit the body in. He too said he had nothing the matter with him, except a pain in his heart.
The Doctor says this broken heart syndrome attacks only the free who are captured and never those who are born in captivity. “The sights I have seen,” he writes, in another entry, “though common incidents of the traffic, are so nauseous that I always strive to drive them from memory.”
It is when I compare the Doctor’s words with his conduct that I find myself in shock. For all the Doctor’s moving protestations against this most noxious of trades, I have confirmed with my own ears that the things that were said around the fire at Chitambo, the things I ascribed to drink and pombe and false memory, are all too true. I have confirmed beyond all questioning, and beyond all proof, that the Doctor received sustenance and aid from Slave Traders.
I have been looking to his own Journal to see if I could find any words to vindicate him from this grave charge. I have found entries that speak of a heart made sore by the sights that he saw. And yet the man who wrote these words received the assistance of Slavers.
In another place, shortly, uncharacteristically so, given that he was not ill, he writes only, “Went two and a half hours west to village of Ponda, where a head Arab, called by the natives Tippoo Tipo, lives; his name is Hamid bin Mohamed bin Juma Borajib.”
* * *
Chawende gave us much-needed rest. Those who had been ill were recovering, even Halima, who was chastened by grief. It was with great reluctance that we left the stockaded town, but we were now well supplied for the rest of the journey. It cannot be another month before we are in Tabora, then it will be a few more weeks to Bagamoio.
Over the next few days, we camped wherever a resting place could be found. There were more stops than movement on this section of the journey, and where there was movement it was more in fits and starts than steady marching. I am pleased to report that thus far, I am the only one to hold out against a most dismaying fashion. The Nassickers have taken to wearing their nightshirts in the day. It is cooler to be dressed this way, they argue, but I have been insistent that dignity matters more than comfort.
I have had but few opportunities of any kind to speak with Ntaoéka, though Chirango has been most helpful in procuring these few opportunities for me. What a friend he has been to me. He has come on in a way that is delightful to see.
We passed one more night in the plain before reaching a tributary of the Lopupussi River called the M’pamba. It was a considerable stream that took an average man up to the chest in crossing. The five children were carried over, just as they had been carried through the swamps of Bangweulu. I could not help thinking of poor Losi, who had been the sixth child, but who now lay under the soil at Chawende’s.
We drew near to Chiwaye’s town, which was very much like Chawende’s in appearance: a strong and fortified town stockaded by a ditch. As we approached this place, we were stopped most rudely by six men who tried to pick a quarrel with us for carrying flags. Fortunately, a man of some importance, who seemed related to their Chief, came up and stopped the discussion. There may well have been some mischief done, for our askari were in no temper to lower their flags or guns, knowing their own strength well by this time.
We did not stop in the town itself, but camped in a clearing just outside it. Up to this point, our course had been easterly, but now we turned our backs to the Lake, which we had been holding on the right hand since crossing the Luapula, and struck north.
At last, we were on the familiar track to Kapesha’s town. Amoda, Susi, and Chuma had stopped here with the Bwana. Our feet were light as we now could see where we were going. Those of us who had not been here before were willing to put our trust in those who knew the path.
I had further reason to be thankful. Now that we were among men who had known the Doctor as a living man we could put behind us the distasteful pretense of sorcery that we had been forced to adopt at Chawende’s. We could walk in the Light and say we carried the corpse of the man they had met only last year.
I had not been with the Doctor as he traveled through these lands. So I looked back to the Doctor’s notes to see that indeed, Kapesha had been civil and generous to the Doctor, and had given him men to guide his party to his elder brother Chungu. When we met Kapesha, that good man was most sorrowed to learn of the Doctor’s death. He insisted that the Doctor’s body be placed on an elevated platform so that his people could file past it to pay their respects.
He was most gratifyingly moved to share his remembrances of the Doctor, even to the point of producing for our perusal a small bottle of powder that the Doctor had given him. From Kapesha, we went through the lands of Chama and Kasongo, finding everywhere great fear and desolation prevailing in the neighborhood from the constant raids made by Kumbakumba’s men.
At last Kumbakumba’s town came in sight. We had no choice but to pass through his land. I say his land but the truth is that he has no land; he simply holds the neighboring lands in his control through fear of being raided. Though his given name is Mohamad bin Mousad, according to the Arab style of naming, he is more commonly called Kumbakumba because that word means “the Gatherer of People.” To avoid being raided, Kapesha, Chungu, Chama, Kasongo, and the other chieftains within his sphere are compelled to pay to him tribute in the form of ivory tusks.
Amoda thought it wise to send two men ahead to inform him of our presence. He came himself to meet us, attended by a great retinue. Though filled with the strongest repugnance, I was immensely curious about this man. I had expected a man of great stature and fearsome size, so I was not prepared for the small round man who approached, his dark face beaming with cordiality.
He spoke with great affection of the Doctor, whom he called Daudi Taabibu; indeed, he spoke of him as a friend. He ordered that guns should be fired in his honor. Afterward he ordered a great feast for us. As we ate, he narrated to us all his recent doings. He was full of power and boasts, for, as we had learned in the abandoned village some months before, he had killed Casembe, possibly the only other man, other than Kumbakumba, whose mere name inspired fear in his neighbors. He told us in gruesome detail how Casembe had perished, and rejoiced in a most bloodthirsty manner as he narrated his final sufferings.
It was not necessary for any of our party to look at each other to know that we shared a single resolve: that we be quit of this odious man’s company as soon as it was at all possible. And yet he had a civility I hardly expected. He showed us every kind attention during our five days’ rest.
He was particularly curious about me and the other Nassickers. Unlike the other Nassickers, I was dressed as normal, in my suit and waistcoat, for I wanted Kumbakumba to be in doubt about the kind of man I was.
“A black English,” he said as he peered at my face. “Or are you just a Shensi dressed like an English?” The word he used for me, Shensi, is an offensive term in his Arabic language for persons of the Black Race, for it means “savage.” This is how they separate themselves; the Shensi are not human, but merely savages, to be tamed and sold as cargo. He then looked at me as though I were under inspection and declared, to my great astonishment, that I must be a Yao.
He clearly did not expect me to answer, for he turned away after this declaration and made a guess about where the others came from. He had theories about all the unfortunates. “The Wanyamwezi make good porters, the Manyuema compliant house slaves; the Wagogo are difficult to tame, just like you Yao.”
“I was in bondage as a child,” I said at last. “But I am a free man.”
He was delighted with our presence, for it supplied him with a new audience for his stories. He took particular delight in narrating how he and his brother Tippoo Tip had started as traders. “We hired a hundred Wasaramo men to come as porters but made the mistake of giving them a quarter of their ten dollars’ salary. We should have known that when the Shensi get a little money, you never see them again.
“They took off, and there we were with cloth to take to the interior and ivory to bring back but no porters to carry it all. So Tippoo Tip and I took two men with fifteen guns and we overpowered the Wasaramo. Took two hundred men captive and bound them, in specially made irons. They carried our packages to the interior, and back again, and we have never had to pay a porter since then.”
Then, in a characteristic we learned was typically his, he moved to another topic and began long and sentimental reminiscences of the Doctor. “I shall send word to my brother Tippoo Tip to say Daudi Taabibu has died; he will be plunged into severe mourning.”
He narrated long stories of how the Doctor had been saved from starvation, and indeed, had been lost looking for Lake Meroe until Tippoo Tip came to his rescue. The Doctor had then traveled with Tippoo Tip and his slaves until he had reached where he wished to go. From there, the Doctor had passed into the care of Mohammad bin Saleh, another Slave Trader.
I felt it necessary to defend the Doctor.
“He had integrity,” I said.
“Integrity.
” Kumbakumba laughed as though he was mocking me. “There is certainly some integrity in saving your own skin.”
That night, I looked again through the Doctor’s notes. In one entry, he says, “To-day we came upon a man dead from starvation, as he was very thin. One of our men wandered and found a number of slaves with slave sticks on, abandoned by their master from want of food; they were too weak to be able to speak or say where they had come from; some were quite young.”
In yet another he writes: “Slavery is a great evil wherever I have seen it. A poor old woman and child are among the captives, the boy about three years old seems a mother’s pet. His feet are sore from walking in the sun. He was offered for two fathoms, and his mother for one fathom; he understood it all, and cried bitterly, clinging to his mother. She had, of course, no power to help him; they were separated at Karungu afterward.”
As we left Kumbakumba, we saw sobering proof that this land was indeed in thrall to him. We saw five gangs of slaves bound neck to neck by chains. Here and there were groups of corpses and heaps of skeletons. A flare of anger filled me when I thought that the Doctor had sought the assistance of such a man. He had eaten with this man, had laughed with him. He had eaten food bought with the tears of slaves.
We left as quickly as we could, for none of us wished to stay a minute longer than necessary in his noxious company. But there was other news that hurried us on. From Kumbakumba had come news of the most interesting kind. A party of Englishmen, headed by Doctor Livingstone’s son, was on its way to relieve his father, and in fact had left Zanzibar some months previously, and were reported to be approaching Bagamoio.
15
2 September 1873
Out of Darkness, Shining Light Page 18
