by Bessie Head
He lay quite still as the door of his hut was carefully and quietly pushed open by the child and equally quietly and carefully closed behind her. She dropped lightly down on her knees and moved her hands over the covers until they reached his face.
“What do you want?” he asked.
The hands darted back and there was a brief silence; then she said, “You know.”
“I don’t,” he said.
She kept quiet as though puzzling this out. At last she said, “My grandmother won’t mind as long as you pay me.”
“Go away,” he said, abashed, humiliated. “You’re just a child.”
But she just sat there and would not move. He really could not stand it. He raised himself and struck a match and took out a ten-shilling note and handed it to her.
“Here’s the money,” he said fiercely. “Now go away.”
Her eyes were wide and uncomprehending in the brief glare of the match, but she grasped the note and fled. From the hut next door he heard the brief plaintive explanation of the child and the loud surprised chatter of the old woman.
“You mean he gave you the money for nothing?” she said, beside herself with excitement. “This is a miracle! I have not yet known a man who did not regard a woman as a gift from God! He must be mad! I know it all along in my heart that he was mad! Let us lock the door to protect ourselves from the madman!”
What a loathsome woman, he thought, and yet how naive she was in her evil. He had known many such evils in his lifetime. He thought they were created by poverty and oppression, and he had spent the last two years in jail in the belief that, in some way, a protest would help to set the world right. It was the mentality of the old hag that ruined a whole continent – some sort of clinging, ancestral, tribal belief that a man was nothing more than a grovelling sex organ, that there was no such thing as privacy of soul and body, and that no ordinary man would hesitate to jump on a mere child.
He had sisters at home, one almost the same age as the child and some a few years older. But he was the eldest in the family, and according to custom he had to be addressed as ‘Buti’, which means ‘Elder Brother’, and treated with exaggerated respect. As soon as his father died he made many changes in the home, foremost of which was that his sisters should address him by his first name and associate with him as equals and friends. When his mother had protested he had merely said, “Why should men be brought up with a false sense of superiority over women? People can respect me if they wish, but only if I earn it.”
For all his strange new ideas, the family had not wanted to part with him. In fact he had left his mother in a state of complete collapse, and though at the time he had pretended to be unmoved by all the tears and sighs, it was all this that had made him drink brandy throughout the afternoon. His reasons for leaving were simple: he could not marry and have children in a country where black men were called ‘boy’ and ‘dog’ and ‘kaffir’. The continent of Africa was vast without end and he simply felt like moving out of a part of it that was mentally and spirtually dead through the constant perpetuation of false beliefs.
I might like it here, was his last thought before falling into a deep, exhausted sleep.
It was not yet dawn when he arose and left. In the faint early light he saw a little footpath leading away from the huts, and because it wound its way northward and away from the border, he decided to follow it in the hope that it would lead him somewhere.
At first not a thing stirred around him. It was just his own self, his footsteps and the winding footpath. Even the sunrise took him by surprise. Somehow he had always imagined the sun above hills, shining down into valleys and waking them up. But here the land was quite flat, and the sunshine crept along the ground in long shafts of gold light. It kept on pushing back the darkness that clung around the trees. Suddenly, the sun sprang clear of all entanglements, a single white pulsating ball, dashing out with one blow the last traces of the night. So sudden and abrupt was the sunrise that the birds had to pretend they had been awake all the time. They set up a shrill piercing clamour all at once, thousands and thousands of them. For all their clamour they turned out to be small dun-coloured creatures with speckled dun-coloured breasts, and their flight into the deep blue sky was just like so many tiny insects. More secretive types of birds lived in the depth of the bush, and these were very beautiful, ranging in colour from a shimmering midnight blue to bright scarlet and molten gold. Unlike the chattering little dun-coloured fellows, they called to each other in soft low tones and, being curious about his footsteps, frequently flashed briefly on to the footpath ahead of him.
I wonder what the birds live on, he thought. The land on either side of the footpath was loose windblown sand and thornbush. Often the thornbush emerged as tall, straight-trunked trees, topped by an umbrella of black, exquisitely shaped branches, but more often it grew in short low tufts like rough wild grass. Long white thorns grew on the branches, at the base of which were tightly packed clusters of pale olive-green leaves. And that was all. As far as the eye could see it was only a vast expanse of sand and scrub but somehow bewitchingly beautiful. Perhaps he confused it with his own loneliness. Perhaps it was those crazy little birds. Perhaps it was the way the earth had adorned herself for a transient moment in a brief splurge of gold. Or perhaps he simply wanted a country to love and chose the first thing at hand. But whatever it was, he simply and silently decided that all this dryness and bleakness amounted to home and that somehow he had come to the end of a journey.
The little footpath spilled out suddenly on to a wide dirt road, and he had not walked far before a truck came lumbering up behind him. Like the gaudy-hued birds, the truck driver was curious about such an early traveller. He stopped the truck and called out, “Are you going to the station?”
“Yes,” Makhaya said.
“It’s always best to start early in the morning because the journey is long,” the man said. “But you are lucky this time, I can give you a lift.”
Later, he blessed the man silently. By truck it was a two-hour journey with not a hut or a living being in sight. On foot it might well have taken the whole day. The only discomfort about the journey was that he had to invent lie after lie. The truck driver was talkative and kept on prying into his personal affairs.
“You’ve been to see relatives at the meraka?” the truck driver asked.
The word meraka was unknown to Makhaya, and it was only later that he was to learn that it was a cattle post. But he said, “Yes.”
“And are they well?”
“No,” he lied. “My mother is ill.”
“Jo! And why doesn’t she go into hospital?”
“She’s a very stubborn old woman.”
This seemed to be a huge joke to the truck driver. He laughed loudly. Then he said, “I see. You look like a teacher to me.”
“I am,” Makhaya lied again.
“In what village do you teach?”
“I’m not teaching at present. I’ve resigned to start a business.”
The truck driver looked at him with interest. He half-averted his head, ill at ease. Should he tell the man he was a refugee? His experiences of the previous night had made him distrustful.
“I say,” his questioner went on, “what’s your tribe?”
He hesitated, trying to think of the nearest relationship to Zulus in the northern tribes. “Ndebele,” he said.
“Don’t be ashamed to mention it,” the truck driver said sympathetically. “Foreigners are always welcome in our country.”
And so it went on and on until Makyaha was exhausted from having to invent so many lies. He almost cried with relief when the truck-driver dropped him off at a railway crossing and continued on his journey to some unknown destination. Makhaya stood for a moment at the crossing to get his bearings. A sprawling village of mud huts was on one side of him and the railway station on the other. Clustered near the station were whatever brick buildings there were. It was a dismal-looking place and the brown dust of the dirt
roads and footpaths was on everything. He was very hungry and stopped a passer-by and asked where he might buy some food. The man pointed to a filthy-looking restaurant which sold porridge and a plate of boiled meat for a shilling. A sign painted outside the dreadful eating house amused him. It said: HOTELA.
Because he had entered the country illegally he had to report to the police, register himself as a refugee, and apply for political asylum. Again, a passer-by pointed out the police station among the cluster of brick buildings. A British flag still flew above the small whitewashed building. The country was going through a year of self-government prior to complete independence. He stepped into a small office above which was written: STATION COMMANDER.
A British colonial police officer sat behind a desk on which was piled a jumble of papers. A notice on the wall above his head proclaimed: WORK FASCINATES ME. I CAN SIT AND WATCH IT FOR HOURS. He had quite a pleasant, good-looking face with arched eyebrows and green eyes. As commander of the station with no superior to jump to attention for, he exuded a great air of self-importance. He stared impassively at Makhaya for some time, then he said, “So you have come?”
Makhaya could make nothing of this remark and kept quiet.
“It’s past eleven o’clock and I’ve delayed my tea watting for you,” he said. “In fact, I was just about to come and pick you up. Sit down, Mr Makhaya Maseko.”
“How do you know my name?” Makhaya asked, startled.
“I know everything,” he said coolly. “I also want to impress you, so that you don’t start any of your funny tricks around here. You may think this country is a backwater, but we have the most efficient intelligence service in southern Africa. We also read the newspapers.”
He bent down and picked up a newspaper that had been carelessly flung on the floor. Makhaya’s picture was on the front page under a headline: DANGEROUS SABOTEUR FLEES BANNING ORDER. “I’m not dangerous and I’m not a saboteur,” he said, annoyed. “I know,” the officer said. “You just dream about it. You just walk about with little pieces of paper describing how you’re going to blow everything up.”
He assumed a businesslike air searching among the jumble on his desk for a paper and pencil.
“You will have to answer a few routine questions,” he said. He paused, then said, “Do you like Kwame Nkrumah?”
The complete unexpectedness of the question took Makhaya off guard and an automatic ‘No’ slipped out before he had collected his wits. The officer grinned and relaxed into his casual manner.
“That’s all,” he said. “Fill in this form and you can go.”
Makhaya sauntered out, uncertain of what to do next. Quite near the railway station was a post office. Around the post office was a fence, and an old man sat outside the fence, squatting very low on his haunches. He sat quite still, staring ahead with calm, empty eyes, and he looked so lordly for all his tattered coat and rough cowhide shoes that Makhaya smiled and walked up to him and greeted him. The old man withdrew his abstracted gaze and turned a pair of keen friendly eyes on Makhaya.
“You are a sociable man,” he said, smiling. “Are you a stranger here?”
“Yes,” Makhaya said and hesitated, not knowing what to say next.
The old man nodded his head as though he understood everything.
“Perhaps you are stranded?” he queried.
“Yes,” Makhaya said again.
“But you look and sound like a well-educated man,” he said in surprise.
Makhaya laughed. “Well-educated men often come to the crossroads of life,” he said. “One road might lead to fame and importance, and another might lead to peace of mind. It’s the road of peace of mind that I’m seeking.”
The old man kept silent but he was thinking rapidly. The young man was very attractive, and he had a difficult daughter whom he wanted married before he died. The man’s speech and ideas also appealed to him.
He said very carefully, “Most of the time we Batswana live in the wilderness and loneliness. We are used to it but I don’t think you can stand it. Where do you come from?”
“South Africa,” Makhaya said.
The old man shook his head. “That terrible place,” he said. “The good God don’t like it. This is God’s country.”
“God’s country,” Makhaya echoed, surprised.
“Didn’t you know?” the old man said with a twinkle in his eye. “God is everywhere about here, and it’s no secret. People can’t steal a thing from you, not even a sixpence. People can’t fight, not even to kill an enemy.”
Makhaya kept quiet, absorbing this strange philosophy. Everything about the old man pleased him, and noting this the old man said slyly, “Why not come and stay with me for a while, son.”
“But I am almost penniless,” Makhaya said.
“A poor person like me can still be hospitable,” the old man said. “Besides, a lot is happening in my village and a well-educated man like you can bring a little light.”
Two
The old man was not exaggerating when he said that a lot was happening in his village. Many factors had combined to make the village of Golema Mmidi a unique place. It was not a village in the usual meaning of being composed of large tribal or family groupings. Golema Mmidi consisted of individuals who had fled there to escape the tragedies of life. Its name too marked it out from the other villages, which were named after important chiefs or important events. Golema Mmidi acquired its name from the occupation the villagers followed, which was crop growing. It was one of the very few areas in the country where people were permanently settled on the land.
Normally, in other parts of the country, whole families would migrate in November to their lands on the outskirts of the villages to help with the ploughing and planting, returning to their villages in late January and leaving the June harvest to the women and children. Although people on the whole had to live off crops, they paid little attention to the land. The pivot of their lives was the villages. Not so with the people of Golema Mmidi. Necessity, even in some cases, rejection and dispossession in previous circumstances, had forced them to make the land the central part of their existence. Unlike the migratory villagers who set up crude, ramshackle buildings on the edge of their lands, they built the large, wide, neatly thatched huts of permanent residence. They also had the best cultivated land and kept a constant watch on the thornbushes which sprang up in every conceivable place like weeds. True enough, the villagers did not differ so greatly from everyone else in their way of life. The men attended to the cattle business and helped with the ploughing, while the women were the agriculturists or tillers of the earth. Like everyone else, they fenced their land with the thornbushes and supplemented their incomes with wood carving and basketmaking. A few like Makhaya’s new-found companion, the old man, Dinorego, were skilled in the di-phate trade – that is, the making of mats and blankets from the skins of wild animals.
Over a period of fourteen years Golema Mmidi had acquired a population of four hundred people, and their permanent settlement there gave rise to small administrative problems. Due to this, a paramount chief named Sekoto had recognized it as a ward of his territory and for administrator had appointed his troublesome and unpopular younger brother, Matenge, as subchief of the village. The appointment took place in the sixth year of settlement, and although the residents politely addressed their subchief as ‘Chief’, what had made Matenge unpopular in his brother’s household – an overwhelming avariciousness and unpleasant personality – soon made him intensely disliked by the villagers, who were, after all, a wayward lot of misfits. Thus, appeal cases from Golema Mmidi were forever appearing on the court roll of the paramount chief – appeals against banishment, appeals against sentences for using threatening and insulting language to a sub-chief, and appeals against appropriation of property by the subchief. Knowing his brother well enough, the least the paramount chief could do was always to side with the appellants; and after a threat or two, the devil that drove Matenge would quickly subside, only to awa
ken its clamouring and howling a few months later.
One day, a strange, massively built, blue-eyed young man walked into the paramount chief’s office. He introduced himself as Gilbert Balfour and explained that he was but recently from England and had visited the country three years previously on a student’s travel grant, and that to this visit he owed his choice of career – to assist in agricultural development and improved techniques of food production. The country presented overwhelming challenges, he said, not only because the rainfall was poor but because the majority of the people engaged in subsistence farming were using primitive techniques that ruined the land. All this had excited his interest. He had returned to England, taken a diploma in agriculture, and now had returned to Botswana to place his knowledge at the service of the country.
Then, for almost an hour he eagerly outlined a number of grand schemes, foremost of which was the role co-operatives could play in improving production and raising the standard of living. The paramount chief listened to it all with concealed alarm, though throughout the interview a smile of pleasant interest was on his face. Of course, he was widely known as a good chief, which is the way people usually refer to paramount chiefs. He attended all the funerals of the poor in the village, even accepted responsibility to bury those who were too poor to bury themselves, and had built a school here and a reservoir there. But because he was a chief he lived off the slave labour of the poor. His lands were ploughed free of charge by the poor, and he was washed, bathed, and fed by the poor, in return for which he handed out old clothes and maize rations. And to a man like this Gilbert Balfour came along and spent an hour outlining plans to uplift the poor! Most alarming of all, the Englishman had behind him the backing of a number of voluntary organizations who were prepared to finance his schemes at no cost to the country.
At first the young man’s ideas caused the chief acute discomfort, especially his habit of referring to the poor as though they were his blood brothers, and the chief was a shrewd enough judge of human nature to see that the young man was in deadly earnest. But halfway through the interview, a beaming smile lit up the chief’s face. He would put this disturbing young man in Golema Mmidi, and if he could survive a year or more in the bedlam his brother Matenge would raise, that would be more than proof of his sincerity. One thing he was sure of – either the young man would be completely destroyed, or he could completely destroy his brother, and he wanted his brother destroyed for all the family feuds and intrigues he had instigated. Towards the end of the interview, he allocated a 250-acre plot for an experimental farm and a 7,000-acre plot for a cattle ranch.
