In my anger I spoke unwisely. For it was then that I spoke of Bwana Daudi’s association with the slave raiders Tippoo Tip and Kumbakumba, and the ready assistance that they had rendered him in his time of need. The Society openly turned against me then. Not only was I boastful, arrogant, and disrespectful of authority, they said, I was also an ingrate who rained calumny on the Doctor’s name.
That ended my speaking tour. From London I was taken to a great house called Newstead Abbey, a most magnificent place owned by a friend of Bwana Daudi’s called Mr. Webb. Here I met the Bwana’s children, his son Oswell and daughter Agnes. But they were less concerned about my role in his salvation than in deciphering his writing and maps. In this I was of no help to them, for I could not explain those aspects of the Doctor’s journal that remained obscure: I had not been there.
It was then that it was decided to send for Susi and Chuma. When the Doctor’s last journals were finally published, they included a narration by Susi and Chuma, and not by me. In that narration, they contradicted everything that I had said about what happened on that journey. But perhaps theirs was the route of wise counsel, for who would believe we had endured all that we had suffered?
Then there was Susi, who had taken the life of Chirango. True, Chirango had killed Amoda, John Wainwright, Misozi, Kaniki, Losi, and the others, killed them too without mercy; but what did we know of white men’s justice? No, it was better that they believed we were faithful attendants who had met much suffering on a journey to bring to the coast the body of our master.
A journey of two hundred and seventy-nine days can be told in few words. And that is the story that Chuma and Susi told. There was marching and sickness. There was strife, there was hunger, and there was death. Amoda and John Wainwright did not meet their deaths at Chirango’s hand, but in the battle at Chawende’s, along with Nchise and Ntaru. Losi died from a snake attack. In his malarial delirium, Dr. Dillon shot himself with his own gun. And Chirango himself was among the first to die, along with Misozi, and with his woman Kaniki, for all three had died early in our journey before he could wreak his terrible vengeance.
Then we came to the sea and all was well, and we came to the church and that was our journey’s end. That is how we brought Bwana Daudi from Chitambo to Bagamoio. And that is the story that has been told to the world.
* * *
And so my journey to England, a sojourn that began with such triumph and such high hopes, ended in a most ignominious manner. My diary remains unpublished. And I remain unordained. And so it is that I find myself here in Buganda, a priest without a collar, a servant of God without a church, all my hopes and ambitions dashed.
My only usefulness is to the Kabaka, though how long that will last, only Him Above can know. The news from Bagamoio is troubling, for it is said that the German nation is on the verge of invading Zanzibar and the whole east coast of Africa, if they can overcome the resistance of the Sultan.
The Kabaka Mwanga fears that the invading party will reach all the way to his kingdom, and that the white missionaries petitioning to build churches in his kingdom have been sent as forerunners to invasion. The news has reached the Court of a new party of English missionaries that is on the way to Buganda. They are led by Bishop Hannington. The news has convinced the Kabaka that these white men are the advance guard for the English, who have the kinds of designs on his land that the Germans have on Zanzibar.
Those of his advisers who have been particularly keen to rid the kingdom of all Christians are urging on him the bloodiest course possible.
This was confirmed to me by four of the Kabaka’s pages. They are Kizito, Kagwa, Luanga, and Yusufu. They arrived at my house this morning with news of a most urgent nature. The Kabaka’s counselors have brought before the Court an emandwa, an oracle, who has prophesied that the ultimate conqueror of the Buganda Kingdom would come from the east. As Bishop Hannington’s expedition has been sighted in Busoga, which is to the east of Buganda, the Kabaka Mwanga has been thrown into a most frightful panic.
He has given the order that Bishop Hannington is to be executed as soon as he sets foot in the Kabaka’s kingdom. He has also ordered that all Christians are to be arrested and brought to him. In addition, the Kabaka’s advisers are calling for all foreigners to leave on pain of death.
Though I have not been specifically mentioned, there is grave danger to me, Kizito says. They could turn against me at any minute. Kagwa, Luanga, and Yusufu have been ordered by Mkasa Balikudembe to help me to find a path by which I could get out of the Kingdom. I am to leave at once.
Kizito also brought with him a letter that was sent to me care of the Kabaka’s Court. I blessed his good heart and placed on his head a benediction, asking that the Lord guide and protect him all the days of his life.
I packed up my few things. In the end, it was not hard to choose what to leave behind. I took only a few of the native clothes, my Bible, and the notebooks in which I did my great work, the translation of the Book of Books into Suaheli. The rest, though I regarded it with some longing, I did not regret leaving behind.
My packing was a matter of moments. All I had to do then was to await the return of the others. And to read my letter while I waited. It was from Carus Farrar. It brought news both bitter and balming. A stab hit my heart when he mentioned his wife. Maria, he said, whom you knew as Ntaoéka. And so she had still not told. The page misted before me. The Lord had blessed them with two children, he said. They had lived for some time in the Cape, where he had worked after he completed his training as a surgeon in Bombay.
They had then left the Cape, and had landed in Zanzibar on their way to Bombay. I must say that I felt some bitterness when I learned of his mission. He was to lead the relocation of the entire Nassick school from India, and oversee its establishment in a place they were calling Frere Town in Mombasa, on the east coast of Africa.
He had given the letter in hand to a Nassicker we had both known called William Jones, who was to travel with the incoming mission of Bishop Hannington to Buganda. By a stratagem that I may never discover, it had reached the Kabaka’s Court and the Kabaka’s majordomo, Mkasa Balikudembe, had intercepted it before the Kabaka could see it, and given it to Kizito to give to me.
I read on. He had news of even greater import. Abdullah Susi, he said, had died at peace in Halima’s house in Bagamoio. Before the illness that finally took him, Carus Farrar said, Abdullah Susi had asked to be baptized. When I heard the name that he had chosen in Christ, I found myself weeping out loud in thanksgiving. I raised my face to the heavens and roared out an acclamation. From the rising of the sun, unto the going down of the same, the Lord’s Name is to be praised. Praise ye the Lord! Praise Him, all ye Servants of the Lord. Praise the Name of the Lord. Blessed be the Name of the Lord, from this time Forth and for Evermore!
Kizito and his companions arrived at that moment. Finding me weeping, they rushed to me, their faces anxiously concerned. In that moment, all I could do, under their astonished gaze, was to sink to my knees in grateful supplication. The joy in my heart overflowed as I prayed that just as He had placed in the bosom of Abraham the soul of His faithful servant David Livingstone, the Lord, in His merciful goodness, would likewise receive the soul of His newest servant, David Susi.
EPILOGUE
Brought by faithful hands over land and sea here rests David Livingstone, missionary traveller, philanthropist, born March 19, 1813, at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, died May 1, 1873, at Chitambo’s Village, Ulala.
Plaque on the grave of Livingstone’s bones, Westminster Abbey, England
After 100 years, David Livingstone’s spirit and the love of God so animated his friends of all races that they gathered here in thanksgiving on 1 May 1973, led by Dr Kenneth Kaunda, President of the Republic of Zambia.
Plaque on the grave of Livingstone’s heart, Chitambo, Zambia
We came to a grave in the forest . . . This is the sort of grave I should prefer: to lie in the still, still forest, and no hand ever distur
b my bones.
David Livingstone, The Last Journals of David Livingstone
END
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am notorious for my lengthy acknowledgments. As this book has been almost twenty years in the making, these acknowledgments could end up being longer than the novel itself. So I will only say a grateful thank-you to every single person whose ear I bent over the years and whom I bored incessantly about David Livingstone and his companions, all so very dear to me.
I am grateful to my agents, Eric Simonoff and Tracy Fisher, and to my publishers Nan Graham and Stephen Page for their confidence in me, and in this book. I am simply thrilled to have worked on this book with three redoubtable editors: Kathy Belden at Scribner, and Lee Brackstone and Ella Griffiths at Faber. I am also deeply grateful to Helen Moffet, my official first reader, and dear friend, for her patient generosity, and to Aja Pollock for her incredible copyediting and meticulous fact-checking. Thank you all for taming my excesses and disciplining my imagination.
This novel would not have been written without the generous support in 2017 of the Berliner Künstlerprogramm of the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, the DAAD. Their wonderful residency in Berlin proved to be the “gift of time” that I needed to reflect, write, and bring together my many years of research on this book. Ich bedanke mich ganz herzlich.
I conducted more than ten years of historical research to produce this novel, but I am under no illusion that this work is in any way historically accurate. While rooted in historical fact, this novel is above all imaginative fiction.
I am nonetheless deeply indebted to the work of the historians Roy Bridges, Tim Jeal, Hubert Gerbeau, and above all Thomas Pakenham, whose first chapter of The Scramble for Africa sparked the idea for this book as long ago as 1999, and who was both generous and kind when I consulted him on this project.
In writing this novel, I had the privilege of consulting original letters, photographs, and other documents related to David Livingstone that are collected in the following institutions: the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh; the Peace Memorial Museum, Zanzibar; the David Livingstone Centre in Blantyre, Scotland; and the National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare. Thank you to all the Livingstone enthusiasts I met all over the world, from Blantyre in Scotland, where Livingstone was born, to Bagamoyo in Tanzania, where he spent his last night on African soil, and all the way to Zanzibar and Zimbabwe. I especially want to mention the youngest Livingstone enthusiast of them all, dear Tayani Mhizha, who wrote a brilliant International Baccalaureate analytical essay on him at the age of seventeen.
I also consulted letters and documents that are collected in different institutions around the world. That I did not have to visit every single place in which his letters are stored is due to the wonderful Livingstone Online, a project initiated by all the institutions that are the repositories for documents related to his life and travels. They have collaborated in placing online documents that are freely available to readers and researchers. Unfortunately, by the time they published extracts from the diary of the real Jacob Wainwright, I had already finished this book.
The following is a list of the main primary and secondary sources I consulted. I am grateful to all who continue to illumine the lives of David Livingstone and of his companions, and all the institutions and governments that keep their memories alive. The historians gave me facts, and my imagination supplied the rest. Thank you.
GLOSSARY OF ARABIC, SWAHILI, AND OTHER TERMS AND PHRASES
The Arabic words used in this text are filtered through the medium of Swahili by the narrator Halima, an uneducated and illiterate woman, and thus may occasionally represent her imperfect understanding.
The Swahili terms used by Jacob Wainwright are in keeping with conventions of written Swahili in the eighteenth century, where it was commonly written as “Suaheli.” While Halima uses the spellings as they sound to the ear—for instance, “Bagamoyo,” “Swahili,” “Zambezi,” “shenzi,” etc.—Jacob uses the words as they were spelled at that time, that is, “Bagamoio,” “Suaheli,” “Zambesi,” “shensi,” etc.
Alḥamdulillāh
Arabic for “All praise to God” or “Thank God.”
Allāhu akbar
The Islamic Takbir, a chant that translates as “Allah is great.”
askari
A soldier, part of the informal army of an expedition (plural askari).
baga
Onomatopoeic word indicating falling or breaking.
bahari
A large body of water that can be a sea, the ocean, or a large lake.
baraza
A long, low stone bench outside most Zanzibari houses. The word also means a public meeting place.
bibi
Mistress.
bwana
Master.
Chemchemi ya Herodotus
“The fountains of Herodotus.”
chunusi
A sea ghost.
dhow
A long, low wooden boat with a lateen sail, common to the Indian Ocean countries. See also “jahazi.”
djinn
From the Arabic word “jinn,” this is a term for a supernatural creature, both malign and benign, in early pre-Islamic Arabian and later Islamic mythology and theology. It is also called a genie in Western culture.
dragoman
Combination of an interpreter, translator, and guide who worked mainly in the countries and polities of the Middle East. A dragoman usually had knowledge of Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and European languages, and sometimes conducted mediation and other diplomatic duties.
emandwa
Luganda word for “oracle.”
hadimu
A freed slave, plural wahadimu.
hadīth
Teachings or actions of the Prophet Muhammad that are not officially recorded in the Quran but were passed down through oral history.
Hamamni
Public baths in Zanzibar constructed on the Persian model between 1876 and 1888 by order of Sultan Said Bhargash bin Said (from the Arabic “hammam”).
haram
An Arabic term meaning anything that is forbidden under Islam. This can be anything that is sacred and to which access by certain people is forbidden, or an evil or sinful action that is forbidden.
Hindoo
Hindu.
hongoro
An intoxicating beverage. See also “pombe.”
horme
A wife of equal birth or an official wife.
imam
The leader of worship in a mosque.
jahazi
The Swahili word for “dhow,” i.e., the long wooden boat with a lateen sail that is common to the Indian Ocean African countries.
Kabaka
The title given to the king of the Baganda, monarch of the kingdom of Buganda.
kirangozi
The standard-bearer in a traveling party.
Liwali
Title given to the representative in Zanzibar of the Sultan of Oman and Zanzibar during the period when the capital of the sultanate was in Muscat, and before the sultanate was split into two.
madrassa
Islamic school.
makesi
River oysters from the Lualaba River. (This is a Manyuema, not a Swahili, word.)
matoke
Bananas. (This is a Luganda word.)
maẓālim
Islamic judicial courts that were presided over by the qadi.
mganga
Traditional healer, the closest approximation at this time to a medical doctor.
miraa
A chewable leaf of the genus Catha edulis that has stimulating effects for the chewer. Similar to betel nut in use and effect. Also called quat, now known more commonly under the spelling “khat.”
mjakazi
One of many terms for a female slave.
Mohammedan
Muslim.
moyo
Heart.
mpambe
A
captured or enslaved person, and therefore one of many terms for “slave.” (Plural wapambe.)
mpundu
A southern African tree of the genus Parinari curatellifolia; also known as the myomba tree and mobola plum tree.
mtoto
A child (plural watoto).
muezzin
The man who calls Muslims to prayer, usually from a minaret.
muzungu
White person (plural wazungu).
mvula
See “mpundu” above.
Mwili wa Daudi
“The body of David.”
njari
An idiophonic musical instrument made from a wooden board to which resonating metal keys are attached. Originally from the area now called Mozambique, it is related to the mbira of Zimbabwe or kalimba of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
pagazi
Porters or load bearers in an expedition.
pombe
A thick, traditional beer brewed from millet.
qadi
Judicial officer presiding over the maẓālim (see above).
quat
See “miraa.”
safire
The flag bearer marching at the head of an expedition.
salat
Muslim prayer, one of the five pillars of Islam, along with shahada, faith; zakāt, charity; sawm, fasting; and the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca.
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