“The white boy doesn’t like me,” Alasiri says to no one in particular. His fingers tighten on my temples. “Such a shame. Then again, it’s one more reason to move on, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want the little white boy running out and telling anyone about the elephant. But you know better than to do that, don’t you, boy?” He tips my head backward and looks me in the eyes. The other men chuckle darkly.
“Don’t hold his head like that,” says Asu. Then, when he looks at her, she adds, “Please.” Alasiri looks down at me again.
“Ndiyo, Bwana,” I mumble. “I know better.” He releases me and his tent swallows him. I look hollowly across the fire at the rest of my family. Chui has already gotten up to find his bedroll, but Mother and Asu exchange a glance with each other and look at the tent flap, still quivering where Alasiri has disappeared into it. It’s the look that is the end of a long conversation that I didn’t hear. Too tired to piece together what might have been said, I turn away and start to pack my belongings.
“Here,” says Mother, walking over and handing me a rolled bundle of our blankets. “Go ahead and keep this in the back with you. Asu and I will sit up front with him.” Her thin face is serious, and there are dark circles under her eyes. She touches my arm just briefly as she hands the bundle to me. The unexpected touch makes me look at her more closely. She gives me a tight-lipped nod and walks away. I begin to think that this setup is not just because the women want the comfortable seats. I look over and see Asu talking quietly to Chui. She and Mother must have finished their conversation and come to the conclusion, like I have, that Alasiri is no good.
Chui says something to Asu and turns away, scowling. As he walks over, Mother heads around to the front of the Jeep and climbs in. Chui pushes past me and boosts himself into the rear, shoving the pack in ahead of him. He takes a seat high up on the tarps, away from the mess on the floor. I sigh and follow Chui. I wedge myself in uncomfortably between the tusk, our belongings, and Chui.
“One last bag!” says Alasiri, and he shoves a large duffel in at us. I catch it reflexively and set it by my feet. I center it in the pool of blood and watch with a smile as it soaks in. I hope all his clothes are ruined.
Alasiri calls a good-bye to the other men who are staying at the camp and he and Asu head around to the front. Chui is muttering to himself about being stuck in the worst seat, but I’m glad to be far away from that man and his predatory smile, even if it does mean sitting on pieces of a dead animal.
We drive out over the plains through the long dusk. Though the others chat, I keep quiet. Asu and Mother are up with Alasiri and, after he went to sit with Alasiri at dinner, I don’t want to talk to Chui, either. So I fold myself into my long clothes and stare up at the bright stars beginning to dot the Serengeti sky above me and wish away the hours until we can leave this man and his wretched ivory behind.
We drive mostly north, bumping over wild grassland and dried creek beds. As Chui and I shiver in the open Jeep, vast stretches of the Serengeti whip past us. We drive out of our way twice on our trip to Mwanza. The first time, just as it’s darkening into night, we pass a village and Alasiri pulls over to the side of the road and tells us to wait in the car while he goes into a stand of trees. He’s gone for an uncomfortable amount of time, and then returns with four men who tell Chui and me to get out. When we do, they unload the long, curved ivory from the Jeep before letting us climb in again with our bags. As we climb back in I see one man hand Alasiri a thick roll of money. I have no idea how much it is, but Chui whispers to me that it’s in dollars, not Tanzanian shillings. This puts me over the edge.
“It’s always about money with you, isn’t it?” I hiss at him. I cross my arms and glare out of the moving car.
“What?” says Chui, caught off guard.
“You think Alasiri is so great just because he makes all this money. But really, he’s only getting money because he’s breaking the law.”
“What do you know about money?” Chui’s getting angry now, too. “You just sit around at home, relaxing in the shade, playing with the goats. You have no idea how hard Enzi and I work on the coffee plantation. You wouldn’t know anything about money. You’ve never earned a shilling in your whole life.”
I’m furious at him for having a point. He’s right. No one would ever pay me to do anything, so instead of having odd jobs to help with the bills like most boys my age, I’ve had to stay home and do house chores. And only chores in the shade, at that. My guilt makes me even angrier.
“So that makes it all okay, then? It’s okay to kill an elephant and take bits from it and leave all the meat to rot? And now we’re sneaking around in the dark, hiding from the rangers. There’s no way that what he’s doing is legal. He should probably be in jail, and you like him.”
Chui fixes me with a cold look of pure disdain.
“Do you know how much money he just got for a few hours’ worth of work? Do you?” His voice is low and intense. He leans down to put his face closer to mine. “That was enough money to pay off all of our debts. To keep the farm. With two of those tusks I could have fixed the house for Mother, bought a second farm for Enzi to live on with that pretty girlfriend of his that none of you know about, given Asu enough to finish secondary school or get married, and still had enough left over to feed your worthless self. Or”—his eyes are big now, seeing all the things he could have had—“we could have left the farm and moved to Arusha and all lived there comfortably. Instead, here we are, stuffed into someone else’s car, with no home and no money, heading toward the charity of some relative I’ve never met.”
There is a pause where Chui waits to see if I’ll say anything. I don’t. He leans away from me and stretches out on the packs.
“Ndiyo,” he says, “to not be here right now and have all of that, I’m okay with killing one animal. To not be poor . . . yes, I would do what he does.”
We sit there for a while in a prickly silence, each of us on our different sides of the car. Now that the large tusk is gone, there’s much more room and it’s more comfortable. I think about what Chui has said. It is an awful lot of money for just one animal. Would I do this again, if I knew that I would keep the money and it would save my family? I don’t have an answer, and the question leaves a queasy feeling in my stomach. Then I realize something: Chui never said what he would spend the money on for himself.
“Chui?” I ask, staring out over the dark grassland, not looking at him.
“What now, Habo?” He sounds tired, grown-up. The way Enzi usually sounds if you ask him a question after work.
“If you were rich, what would you buy?”
For a moment, Chui considers whether or not to tell me. Finally, he says, “I’d pay the apprentice dues to be a mechanic and work on sports cars.”
“A mechanic? Really?”
“What, you think it’s stupid? Well, you’re stupid!”
“No, no! I don’t think it’s stupid. I just never thought of you as a mechanic before . . .” I trail off. I’ve never really thought about Chui as anything, really, except an annoyance. I try to think of what else Chui would be good at. Finally I find something. “I thought maybe you’d be a footballer. You’re the best goal scorer in the school.”
There’s another pause, but this one is not as tense as the last one.
“Maybe I could work on sports cars during the day and then play football at night. That would be good.”
“That would be good,” I agree.
And when we both fall silent now, the silence is soft.
The second time we stop, the stars stretch bright and brittle over us and it’s full night. We’ve been traveling along the Sirari-Mbeya Road for hours, and the others have started to comment on how close we’re getting to Mwanza. We twist along a dusty path until we are some way from the road and Alasiri has found what he is looking for.
There’s not much here, just a few huts clumpe
d together and a smear of flickering lights that might be a village in the distance. Alasiri gets out of the Jeep and calls, “Hodi hodi!”
An old man emerges from the largest of the mud huts and walks slowly out to where we’re waiting. At first it’s hard to see him in the waving light of the lantern he’s holding up over his head. When he gets close though, I can see what he is. The man is wearing ratty clothes and necklaces made of teeth. His hair floats out around his head, but the wildest thing about him is his eyes. I realize this man must be a mganga, and I slide down as far as I can.
Waganga control great forces of spirits and luck. Luck is very important. Good luck brings you full harvests, strong sons, and a peaceful death. Bad luck gives you sickly animals, needy relatives, and lets everyone treat you badly, even Death. Really bad luck could curse you with a ghost boy. Freakish, weak, useless. Worse than a girl.
When any of us would get sick at home, Mother would take us to the mganga wa tiba asili in the village nearby. He was a not-so-old man, with a certificate from the government on the wall of his hut that allowed him to make home medicines. He would give us powders he made from plants and tell us ways to feel better. We respected him because he would use his power to help people.
But there are other kinds of waganga. There are waganga wa jadi and waganga wa kienyeji. The first are born into the power and the second come into it later, but they both control magic. They use pieces of animals, and sometimes even the hair and nails of people, to make magic spells. They talk to spirits, and they can curse you as easily as cure you. Alasiri’s mganga does not look like a simple village healer, and I’m almost certain he is a mganga wa jadi. At the look in his eyes, I’m afraid. It’s like seeing a huge bull behind a twig fence. It’s terrifying to think of that much power corralled by so little sanity.
The mganga takes the ears, toenails, and teeth that Alasiri took from the elephant. He doesn’t give Alasiri any money, but instead spits on his head and mumbles over him. Then the old man gives Alasiri a small bag. Now it makes sense why Alasiri took the other pieces of the elephant, too, not just the ivory. He wanted luck medicine from the mganga and needed something to trade for it.
Alasiri is turning away when the mganga tips his lantern and looks at us. When he sees me, he lets out a small cry. His hand darts out and grabs Alasiri’s arm. Deep shadows mark where the old man’s thin fingers must be digging into Alasiri’s skin, but Alasiri doesn’t make any complaint. He simply leans his head down and listens as the old man whispers in his ear. Once, just for an instant, his eyes flash up to meet mine. Then he lowers his gaze and nods. The mganga releases him.
Alasiri gets in, and his smile is wider than ever. The spit glistens in his hair, and he holds up the little bag.
“Luck!” he says, and starts the Jeep again. I tell myself it’s the uneven road that is making me feel like vomiting, not the fact that the old man’s eyes follow me, never blinking, until his lantern is only a dot in the distance and the dust clouds from our tires hide him from my sight.
We get onto the road to Mwanza again and continue west. Alasiri sings along loudly with the Bongo Flava playing on the radio and talks to Mother. He asks her about where Auntie lives and what we will do in Mwanza. Mother is polite and answers everything he asks, but her answers are vague and give little information. Asu is also no longer flirting with him, and I’m glad that they’re both acting this way. I don’t want Alasiri to know where we’ll be. I don’t want to ever see him again. I don’t want to help him ever again. And though his Jeep eats the kilometers a hundred times faster than we could walk, I wish we were still on our own and had never met up with this luck hunter.
It’s late when Alasiri pulls over to the side of the Sirari-Mbeya Road in the city. We’re surrounded by dark houses and closed shops. I wish we had gotten here sooner so that I could have seen a bit of what the city looks like, but I’m content to finally have finished the trip with this man.
“So, this is where we part from each other,” he says cheerfully. “All you have to do is keep walking along this road and you’ll be at the center of the city. Then you can head to where your family lives. Come on! Get down.”
We get out of the car and pull out our bundles. Mother and Asu thank him while Chui and I stand at a respectful distance.
Alasiri drives away, taking a hard right at the intersection. Asu helps Mother rearrange our belongings into travel packs we can balance on our heads. I know I should try to be useful, but instead I stare after Alasiri, just like the mganga stared after me. I stare until the red glow of his Jeep’s lights dim away in the distance. I stare until I am certain he isn’t coming back. Then I heft my bundle onto my head and join my family, walking through the dark along the final stretch of the long road to Mwanza.
6.
It’s well past midnight by the time we arrive at Auntie’s house in the Kirumba fishing neighborhood just north of Mwanza’s center. The road is a pale stripe, crowded by the hunched shadows of the fish market. To our left Lake Victoria shines dark and wet like a dog’s eye. We turn away from the water and walk uphill, winding past houses and tall rocks that cut into the sky like broken teeth. Finally we get to a small house near the top of the hill. I can’t see much, only that the walls are some pale color that glows a little in the moonlight. The dark doorway is set into the concrete-block wall.
“Hodi hodi!” Mother calls into the darkness. “Neema! Sister!”
There’s the snap of a switch and I can see the glow of electric light leaking out between the pieces of wood in the door and around the edges of the shutters on the windows. The door is opened a crack and then flung wide. I can see vague shapes behind her that must be my cousins, but they can’t get out because Auntie is so fat, she fills the doorway. I look at her jealously, thinking what it must be like to have that much to eat all the time. Maybe if my father had stayed, my mother and sister would be that fat. Instead, we all look like we have missed meals.
“Raziya!” Auntie gasps when she sees Mother. “Raziya, Raziya! You made it! Come inside.” Mother is hauled forward in her sister’s embrace, and the rest of us shuffle in, too. Auntie is still talking as I shut the door softly behind us. “Oh my goodness, it’s been so long since your phone call, I didn’t know what to think! Karibu! Karibu sana! How was your trip? Are you all right? You’re so skinny! Let me look at you!”
“Here we are, Neema, here we are.” Mother is slightly breathless, caught between her sister’s hug and her questions. “Asante, asante sana. We’ve had quite the journey! I will tell you all about it . . .”
But she doesn’t get the chance to tell Auntie anything, because just then, Auntie sees me. Her eyes lock onto my face. Her mouth drops open.
I can imagine how I must look in the harsh light of the electric bulb hanging by its cord from the ceiling—like a blue goat: all the right shapes in all the wrong colors. I had hoped that meeting family would be less awful than meeting strangers, but I can hear my cousins whispering among themselves, and Auntie’s eyebrows are so far up her forehead, they brush her head wrap.
“Was he born like that?” she asks, pointing straight at me.
Mother sighs deeply. “Ndiyo. I don’t know what made him like that. He’s not like the others.” There is a small pause during which I move the dirt on the floor around in small circles with my big toe. I try to pretend that I can’t feel their eyes on me like physical blows.
“Is he a . . .” Auntie seems to be struggling for words. “Have you really brought a zeruzeru into my house?”
I flush a dark red under my hat. Why does everyone always have to pick on me?
“What are you talking about?” Mother snaps. “Why are you calling him that? He may be unusual, but he is not an animal!”
In the middle of this whole awful evening, it makes me feel good to hear Mother defending me.
“Raziya!” Auntie snaps back. “I’m not insulting him! He is a
zeruzeru, an albino. It’s true that some call people like him demons or ghosts, and some say they’re animals, but zeruzeru is only a term that means a person like him—all white and yellow where he should be dark. How could you not know this? Did that worthless farmer you married take you so far out into the country that you never heard any news at all?”
I see Mother stiffen at this description of Father, but she doesn’t contradict her sister.
There is another pause where I feel the eyes on me again. They burn the edges of my mind, but they are nothing compared to the burn inside me now. Auntie used a word to describe me. Albino. There is a word for people like me. I’m not the only one.
Zeruzeru, the word I always thought referred to a type of animal, really does refer to me. The knowledge swims around and around in my head like a fish trapped in a rock pool. No one in my family has ever known what to call me before. I have never known what to call myself. Albino. I test the word in my head, seeing how it feels. It doesn’t feel comfortable and I decide to think about this more later.
I’m so deeply sunk in my thoughts that for a while I haven’t heard anything said around me in Auntie’s house. But now I look up and find that everyone in the room is shouting at one another at the tops of their voices. No one is pausing to let the other finish, and their voices cross and tangle like a badly woven basket.
Asu is shaking her finger at Auntie, who has turned almost purple with the effort of shouting at Mother. Mother is shouting right back, tears streaming over her cheeks. She gestures at us, at our bags stacked just inside the door.
“How can you ask us to leave?” Mother screams at Auntie. “You, my sister? My only living relative? How can you turn us out to starve on the streets when you have a house and strong sons and a husband? Look at my children! Look at them!” Her voice goes shrill. “They are too young to work anywhere that will pay us enough to live. What am I to do if you turn us away? What?”
Golden Boy Page 5
