The Tanzania Conspiracy

by Mario Bolduc

  She was a woman in her forties, an albino, something the ophthalmologist had failed to mention.

  Max apologized for dropping in unannounced. He was investigating Valéria and her daughter’s deaths. He gave her the same story as he’d given Scofield.

  She waved a hand toward a chair, apologizing for the half-light. “I’m very sensitive to the sun.”

  The room was cooler because of it. Max wasn’t about to complain.

  “And what do you want to know exactly, Mr. Cheskin?”

  “Valéria came to see you a few days before she died. During that trip she bought a small toy truck she wanted to give to a child named Daniel.”

  “Daniel?”

  The woman seemed surprised. In the dim light, Max couldn’t tell whether she was play-acting or sincere. In any case, the tone of her voice made it sound as if she was truly surprised.

  “I haven’t seen Valéria in months. Last year, actually.”

  “She didn’t visit to check on how the work on the school was going?”

  “No.”

  “Perhaps she visited without you learning about it.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “Without casting doubts on your honesty, the foundation has put a lot of money into your establishment. Perhaps Valéria wanted to discreetly make sure the funds were being well spent.”

  The principal was quiet. Max regretted having spoken so crudely. He was half expecting her to kick him out of his office and be done with him. Instead, she asked, “What do you know of Valéria Michieka, Mr. Cheskin?”

  Max wondered what she meant.

  “You weren’t sent by Dr. Scofield,” she added.

  He had no intention of telling her the truth, but clearly his earlier lie wasn’t getting him anywhere. He told her he was investigating the killings of Valéria and her daughter as a private matter, since he wasn’t much impressed by the competence of the police, who he thought were dragging their feet. He wanted to find the guilty parties and bring them to justice.

  A small, sad smile appeared on the principal’s face. “Justice? What a strange idea.”

  “The person or persons who did this must be punished.”

  “In that case, it has nothing to do with justice, not in this country at least.”

  “Why?”

  “I have never believed in it.”

  “In justice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Unlike Valéria. It’s why the death penalty was reinstated in Tanzania.”

  “But the trafficking in albinos hasn’t stopped.”

  “Valéria would have agreed with you.”

  Mulunga looked away.

  “And you, what do you think about it?” Max asked.

  The principal avoided the question by talking about Valéria and her lost causes, how the lawyer put her energy only into projects that were bound to fail, as if she feared people would think her lazy if she aimed for something that was actually possible.

  “Well, she had a lost cause with albinos, all right,” Max said.

  The principal nodded, adding, “Do you know what motivated her in her heart of hearts?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  The woman seemed surprised. “So you knew her well?”

  “Well enough for her to tell me her story.”

  “So she spoke of me.”

  Max shook his head. “No, sorry.”

  “Yes, yes, I’m sure she did.” The principal suddenly got up, and Max realized that her right leg stopped below the knee. Cut off.

  He reeled for a moment, gathered himself, and looked at the woman again.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  A large, floppy hat on her head, Mulunga, leaning on her crutches, walked almost unimpeded by her handicap. She told Max she’d never been able to get used to the artificial limb the foundation offered young crippled children. When Valéria found her, years after she was mutilated, Mulunga had already learned to move around on her homemade crutches. After what she’d been through, each step she took, no matter how uncomfortable or difficult, reminded her she was still alive.

  Valéria and her father had abandoned her in the forest to bleed to death. Villagers, worried by her absence, quickly found her and carried her to a nearby clinic. Thanks to the doctor’s quick work, Mulunga was saved.

  “How did you get in touch with Valéria?”

  “She got in touch with me, actually. Years later in the village. I didn’t even recognize her. She was a city woman, now, a lawyer from what she told me. She was surprised to see me alive. She’d learned of my existence and came to see me right away.”

  “You must have been so angry, so —”

  “No. But I understood that she felt guilty. That she wanted to atone for her mistake. Or at least unburden herself.”

  Valéria had offered her money, a house, anything. She was ready to give every penny she had to ease her conscience.

  “I didn’t know what to say. She reappeared in my life so suddenly, and her simply being there brought back so many dark memories.”

  Valéria insisted, and so Mulunga had blurted out, “I want to learn to read and write.”

  To combat illiteracy, the Nyerere government had ordered that at least one child, any child, from every household would be forced to go to school. It was always a boy, of course. Mulunga hadn’t had the opportunity to see the inside of a classroom.

  Valéria found her a teacher, a young man from the area who came several times a week to teach her the basics. Later, Mulunga was able to enter a boarding school for young girls in Dar es Salaam, paid for by Valéria. The albino was far older than the other children, but her determination was clear. After a few years, supported by Valéria, she accomplished her goal.

  “My amputation opened the doors of knowledge,” she said with a laugh.

  After finishing her studies, she naturally transitioned into a role working with Valéria. That was how she’d come to run the school on Ukerewe, though it was only the latest stop in a series of responsibilities for The Colour of Respect Foundation.

  Max wondered why Valéria had never mentioned Mulunga, despite having told him of the crime she’d committed with her father. And why had she made up this false visit to Ukerewe?

  “I have no idea. We weren’t very close, despite the unique circumstance that bound us. I was part of this small part of her life, one she locked in some corner of her mind …”

  “So she visited the school last year?”

  “Or the year before. I can check if you want.”

  “And she brought back this little gift.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Who could have hated her so much to the point of torturing both her and her daughter and killing them both? Do you have any idea?”

  “Valéria had enough enemies for ten lifetimes, but she was never directly threatened. At least not to my knowledge. Even when we began recruitment in clinics.”

  “Recruitment?”

  Traffickers tended to buy children straight from their parents and hand them over to healers. Over the years, Valéria realized that maternity wards were hot spots for this sort of traffic. A large number of albinos disappeared straight out of the nursery.

  Valéria had built a network of informants who warned the foundation when new albino babies were born, as well as putting them in touch with families and inviting them to move to Ukerewe or give away their children for adoption.

  “How did she choose these informants?” Max asked.

  “Nurses and clinic workers first and foremost, who cared about putting an end to the trafficking.”

  A thought tugged at Max. And suddenly, disparate information became clear: Samuel Musindo, Clara Lugembe’s killer, had been a nurse in a village near Dodoma. Chagula, the lawyer, had pointed him out in a picture, one that showed Valéria and Musindo in front of the clinic where the young man worked.

  “Samuel Musindo was one of those contacts, wasn’t he?” Max asked.

  The woman
hesitated for a moment, confirming his intuition. “At first, yes.”

  “And that’s why Valéria attempted to purge any record of her association with him. She wanted to avoid being compromised during his trial.” Max told her about the pictures.

  “Musindo used the foundation,” Mulunga told him. “He led us to believe that he cared about our project by giving us information about newborns and putting us in touch with their families. However, half the time he handed the babies over to the witch doctor Zuberi. Valéria discovered it all when he was arrested for Clara Lugembe’s murder. She hadn’t a clue before then.”

  “Strange that he never mentioned his contact with Valéria during his trial.”

  “That wouldn’t have had an impact. What the foundation was doing in maternity wards across the country was well known by then.”

  Valéria might have wanted Musindo to incriminate Zuberi, which could have helped his case. But the nurse had refused, for a reason the principal didn’t know. Even after being sentenced to death, waiting for his execution, he hadn’t said a word.

  “And who photographed Musindo with Valéria?” Max asked.

  “I have no idea. Minister Lugembe knew about the foundation’s work and tolerated it. He might have destroyed the pictures so as not to compromise the case against his daughter’s murderer.”

  Perhaps. Max was getting a clearer picture of Valéria’s anger, and her desire for revenge against Musindo. She had trusted the nurse, who ended up betraying them. Yes, traffickers were responsible for the worst atrocities, but Musindo was a reminder that the problem was deeper than that. The poison had spread to the roots of society, including hospitals and clinics where albinos should have been able to find respite and protection. Worst still, Musindo had chosen to carry his truth to the grave, a truth that would have put an end to Zuberi’s dirty business — the man Valéria had been gunning for from the start.

  A bell rang, shaking them out of their recollections, and a troop of children went scampering out of classrooms into the schoolyard. Max and the principal were soon surrounded by overexcited children, shouting, roughhousing, full of energy. It was easy to identify the albinos, their heads covered, dark shades over their eyes, long sleeves down to their hands. A few of them already showed signs of skin cancer. Others had an arm amputated, or a hand. Here was where the pictures had been taken for The Colour of Respect Foundation’s pamphlet that Max had seen at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto when he’d met Valéria.

  It seemed clear that Mulunga had brought him to this place to see the end of classes and look upon this group of children who only moments earlier had been listening to their teachers with a mixture of respect and fear.

  Every time Max was in contact with African schoolchildren, he’d always been struck by their concentration and solemnity. As if school, even the most modest school, was a gift they were grateful for. Children aware that they alone among their cousins, brothers, sisters, and friends could gain knowledge. They knew how lucky they were.

  The principal turned to Max. “Valéria worked her whole life to repair the harm she did, even though she wasn’t as guilty of it as she herself thought. We both came from an old world, one that clings to modern­ity’s underbelly. We were both victims of ignorance and superstition. Valéria’s initiatives weren’t always well understood and she sometimes made mistakes. But she always aimed to help the poorest, the least privileged, those who had no one else to turn to.”

  Max, lost in thought, watched the children play their games with boundless enthusiasm.

  She added, “Mr. Cheskin, nothing, no one, will bring Valéria and Sophie back to us. Let them rest in peace, please.”

  “You don’t want the killers to be arrested and punished?”

  “I told you — the legal system isn’t the right tool for the job. You’ll never get what you want.”

  “You have a better solution?”

  “Too many have died already. Too much pain. Aren’t you sick of it?” She gestured toward the children. In a solemn voice, she added, “We need to live now. To enjoy the light. Not the one that burns the skin, no, of course, but the light that guides us.”

  19

  Back in Bukoba, Max couldn’t stop thinking about his conversation with Naomi Mulunga. Jason Chagula, the lawyer, had counselled him to look into Clara Lugembe’s case, and now Sandy Hill’s principal was inviting him to do the same, though only implicitly. Her speech on how he must abandon his quest to preserve the memory of the two women hadn’t convinced him. What was more, Max had no idea why the woman would have said such a thing. For him, the only way to free yourself from the past was to confront it, not sweep it under the rug, deny it, or attempt to minimize it.

  Max had hoped the small toy truck and Daniel’s name would hold the key to Valéria’s secrets. So far his search hadn’t given him any answers. The mystery had only deepened. He felt farther from the truth than when he’d landed in Bukoba, despite the fact that Samuel Musindo’s name was back in the conversation.

  The next day, without taking time to have breakfast, Max returned to Valéria’s house. He found Teresa Mwandenga there, putting some semblance of order into the foundation’s papers. Piles and piles of paperwork were laid out in front of her on the large desk: documents, letters and dossiers, all tied to Valéria’s work as a lawyer.

  “You’re trying to figure out her papers?” Max asked.

  “For what it’s worth.”

  “Can I take a look?”

  “Of course.”

  The accountant had been clear: Valéria worked for the foundation, but only once she’d finished her day job. In the evenings, she’d write an article for a magazine, reply to a blog, or simply correspond with sponsors and fundraisers in London or elsewhere. Hence her numerous exchanges with Scofield.

  Albino hunting, a horror economy, found its sources in the dark side of African beliefs, a sort of perverted animism that most people thought long dead and buried but which was never far beneath the polished surface of the new man that Nyerere, Komba, Lugembe, and other Tanzanian leaders were trying to bring into existence.

  Examining Valéria’s papers, Max once again took stock of the sheer scale of her involvement. She lived for the cause, putting aside all her desires, as if wishing for a happy, uncomplicated life would have been a betrayal of the mission she’d taken on years earlier after the crime she committed with her father. Max had thought she felt for him close to what he felt for her, that he’d finally found someone with whom he could share a life of passion and love, someone to give meaning to his existence. He was wrong. Their separation had been painful, but more for himself than for Valéria. He was beginning to see that clearly now.

  While the accountant was making coffee, Max rifled through a large metal file cabinet. Nothing of interest there. He then made his way to Sophie’s room, which he hadn’t searched the last time he’d been there. Contrary to the disorder of the rest of Valéria’s house, this room was impeccable. Clearly, of the two women, she was the organized one.

  Another desk, between the bed and a chest of drawers. More papers, files. One file contained old press clippings taken from Tanzanian papers — all about the Musindo trial. Sophie seemed to have collected everything ever said and written about the murder, the trial, and its aftermath, including the reinstatement of capital punishment. Valéria had always refused to explain the contradiction of her support for the death penalty, and this file might help Max understand. In it statistics indicated a net decrease of the traffic of albinos since capital punishment had been reinstated. Max didn’t think the decrease was significant enough to justify its use. Valéria had told him as much the night she’d brought him to see Zuberi’s home.

  “What do you know about the relationship between Valéria and Minister Lugembe?” Max asked Mwandenga when she brought the coffee over.

  She looked up at him, surprised.

  “I heard they were very close,” Max added.

  “He protected her. Discreetly. Espe
cially during the Musindo trial. And even before that.”

  When Valéria began her crusade to convince Minister Lugembe, the foundation’s situation had be­­come more complicated, Mwandenga explained. Valéria soon received warnings from funders and other NGOs uncomfortable with her fight for the reinstatement of the death penalty. In their eyes, you had to be virtuous through and through if you were to lead a battle against injustice. Valéria rejected this notion. The organizations that supported her mission were willing to demand more severe sentences for traffickers but not to the extent of demanding capital punishment.

  During Samuel Musindo’s trial, Mwandenga recalled, battle lines were drawn between Valéria and her traditional allies. Amnesty International and others accused her of eating out of Lugembe’s hand, using the tragic death of his daughter to reach her goals. Valéria did nothing to calm the storm, nor justify the position she’d taken, believing she’d made her point of view clear more than once over the past months. The fact Lugembe’s daughter was involved this time made no difference to her at all. She was only glad he’d finally seen the light.

  Valéria made her way past the cameras and into the Dodoma courthouse every day to attend the nurse’s trial. According to witnesses, Musindo was a drug addict, taking large doses of ephedra, a drug also known as herbal ecstasy. A banned substance in Tanzania. His motivation for the crime? Money, plain and simple. He made a profit every time he stole an albino child from the maternity ward. But not enough, never enough. According to his statement to the police, which he’d given freely before Chagula’s arrival, he’d met his victim at the clinic where he worked. Clara Lugembe wanted to flee the region, fearing for her life, despite the bodyguards and the militia that protected her. Musindo claimed he could help, though he had other plans: to hand her over to the witch doctor Zuberi, who’d promised him a high price — that much was impossible to prove, however. And that fact alone explained why Zuberi spent so little time in detention, once Musindo refused to incriminate him.

  When the young woman figured out the nurse’s true intentions, she tried to get away from him. Musindo gave her a slap to get her to obey. Slapped her a bit too hard. She fell, smashed her head on the floor. “I don’t know what came over me,” the nurse said during the trial. Zuberi refused the body once he learned the identity of the victim. So Musindo tried to dispose of it in Dodoma’s industrial dump. An anonymous phone call warned the authorities of his plan — the call had likely come from Zuberi himself, trying to demonstrate his innocence.