The group headed back through the forest, travelling snaky paths through everlasting green foliage, crossing streams and water sources of many sorts. The soldiers saw abnormality in any thing that moved. With vigilant eyes, they kept scanning each movement of trees, of tall bushes, of birds and playing monkeys. It showed how much, even though they had become the owners of this park, they were still afraid of it, afraid of the unexpected visitor it might carry in its hidden corridors. They questioned the reason for each monkey sound, why some monkeys screamed so loudly, why the birds made simultaneous movements, and why a bird sang in a specific way at a particular time.
After a while, there was a halt; Lieutenant Kurega gestured for each person to get down and crawl. There had been a loud noise followed by an immense movement of bushes, which had stopped when Kurega and his crew halted. A certain kind of bird signal could be heard again and again. Lieutenant Kurega looked through his binoculars, irritated as the trees in front of him blocked his vision. He gave instructions, dividing his team into three groups. Three soldiers remained behind watching the young men who carried the luggage. Lieutenant Kurega and two other soldiers took the second front line, while the two Kadogo, Risto and Dumbo, were sent forward.
Risto and Dumbo went on crawling on their stomachs and knees. They pulled themselves along with their elbows, sweating, but ready to destroy whoever might be trapping them. Each boy felt comforted by the presence of the other, but when Risto remembered that Dumbo did not have a gun, just a machete, he realised how risky it was to rely on Dumbo to protect him if attack came from that side.
Suddenly, a crackling was heard behind, coming from the group that had remained behind guarding the luggage. The noise scared a group of baboons ahead of Risto and Dumbo. They made a huge racket and left trees moving and swinging. Kurega hooted like an owl, a signal that things were fine and under control. Then he instructed Risto to move forward. With the departure of the baboons, there were no more strange noises or suspicious movements. Risto stood up; he walked towards where they had been expecting to find enemies, and instead found a stand of tender young bamboo where the baboons had been eating. He imitated an owl song, and the lieutenant and his three soldiers appeared.
Again there was a noise coming from behind. One soldier was shouting ferociously. He came forward pulling one of the carrier-boys while waving his gun. ‘This rat has swallowed one bead of gold!’ the soldier screamed.
‘Where is it? Where did you put that gold?’ another soldier screamed, a knife in his hand.
‘No, no … I don’t have any gold! I didn’t take any gold,’ the boy pleaded with falling tears.
‘He should shit here, we will see it!’ shouted the man, his knife getting closer and closer to the boy’s throat.
‘Where is that gold?’ Lieutenant Kurega asked as he pulled back the soldier with the knife and made a sign to the one with the gun to lower it.
‘Chief, I didn’t have any gold. What I eat usually comes back into my mouth, then I chew it and swallow it again … just like ruminating. That’s what happened.’ The young man was crying.
The lieutenant ordered calm and commanded his group to keep moving. He knew he was the only one with gold; he was keeping it all in his bag, and even though the practice of swallowing gold and diamonds was common among people of this area, he knew the boy had no gold with him.
But on this side of the world, death was the easiest way to punish and control the villagers. The militia wanted to be feared and revered. Killing was the best way to achieve this. Without the intervention of the lieutenant, the boy would have been killed and his body left for scavengers and other wild carnivores.
Late that night, the group of soldiers and boys arrived at the militia headquarters in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. The young boys who carried the luggage were lucky to be released, but the idea was simple: they would be needed to carry the luggage again.
The owner of the plastic shoes wanted them back, but Risto refused. He hadn’t worn shoes for a month; he couldn’t give them back now. On the journey, they had protected him from wild thorns. He would give them back after he got himself his own pair. The other boy began shouting at Risto, but Risto threatened to blast out his brains if he carried on disturbing him. He had a gun, while the owner of the shoes had only a machete. They were people of the jungle, and they applied the law of the jungle. Fight for survival was the motto.
Risto had built his small hut with his cousin Benny and another two Kadogo. It was typical of the militia camps, which had shaky shacks of bamboo and mud. None of the boys could stand up straight in the little hut. Dry grass and straw covered the floor, which was at the same time their beds and seats. They left a small hole in the front wall so they could check who passed by. Risto still had only the blood-spotted shirt and shorts that he had been wearing when he was captured. But he also had a pagne that Néné had secretly given him to use as a blanket.
Two days after the trip to the mines, the General announced that they would attack the villages near the Kahuzi-Biega National Park. He called everyone to the open space in front of the huts and addressed them: ‘For those with firearms, take care of your bullets. One bullet, one enemy, otherwise use knives for any other work.’ He paused, then added, ‘Do not come back if the gun does not come with you.’
It would be a tough and dangerous mission, as it would be far from the forest and near the camps of the Mai-Mai, as well as those of the main rebel movement that controlled the town of Bukavu. But the soldiers were not afraid; they had had better training than the Mai-Mai, and they had fought many times against the main rebel movement that occupied the South Kivu and other regions in the eastern Congo. A lot of Mai-Mai were village boys who had taken guns either because they were forced to, or because they were willing to protect their territory. They did not have much training, but relied on ancestral beliefs and magic.
The main rebel movement, which occupied the town and the surrounding area, was a well-trained army made up of soldiers from neighbouring countries and a few Congolese.
The nearby villages were deserted, and the families that still lived in the area were very poor. They no longer had cattle. No cow, no goat, no sheep, no chickens, no rabbits, and even guinea pigs had become rare, while their fields were empty.
The evening was cold. The moon shone and a gentle breeze blew as they walked to their destination. Risto was in the first line of soldiers. It was his first time on a mission. It was the first time he would turn on his people, traumatise families and break their hearts. He was a real young lion now. The General was fond of him. He had seen Risto volunteering to shoot the poacher, and he had done it so well, using the one bullet, one person method and hitting his target accurately. He had seen Risto getting what many soldiers failed to get right, striking the forehead of a person standing some distance away. Even better, the killing of the poacher had not seemed to bother Risto; he was fine, as calm as if nothing had happened. Those were the kinds of soldiers the General wanted. This was why Risto had been given a firearm and selected to go on the mission.
Benny had been selected too; he would be among the carrier-boys, as he had no gun yet.
There was no sign of life in the first village. The huts were empty; there was a creepy smell in the air; total eeriness reigned. They passed the second village. A small hut fumed a whitish smoke; they moved on. They met a young man with a machete out walking. They questioned him about what he was doing outside at night. He explained that he was searching for a banana tree for his sick father, who craved fried banana. Trembling, he revealed that people didn’t sleep in the village anymore; they slept in the fields far from the main paths, or they left in the evening for other villages. He went on to show them the way to the other villages, and was released as they approached one of the villages he had spoken about.
Risto, with three other soldiers, led the way. They hung around in the cassava fields, watching for any movement from the huts of the village. The order went out among the mi
litia; no one was to be allowed to enter or leave the village. As some of them surrounded the village, others went door to door, knocking them down. A group of soldiers went into the compound. Close by the cattle screamed.
‘Everyone out! Everyone out!’ an authoritarian voice shouted.
Minutes went by as women cried helplessly. Two female voices pierced the sleeping village. A male voice rose up in protest, and another one could be heard shouting, ‘Shut up! I will kill you!’
The first group of soldiers returned with cows and goats and made their way back up towards the forest. Another group took over the watch from Risto and his crew, and they rushed to the nearest compound. Here was a sight that was horrible to see. A girl who looked about thirteen was lying on the ground naked and shivering, swimming in what could only be her own blood. Another older woman, maybe her mother, was still in the hands of two soldiers. At first she tried in vain to release her naked body from one half-naked soldier as the other one watched with two guns in his hands, but now she lay barely moving and sobbing.
Risto’s companions seemed willing to take on the woman once the other two had finished. A man who seemed to be the father of the family was on the ground. His hands and legs were tied, and he lay still in a bath of blood. Risto rushed into the house. He snatched a bag hanging on the wall; there were clothes inside. From underneath the bed he took two pairs of shoes; he needed them badly. On a table stood a small radio and batteries. He picked everything up and left. As he went outside, the little girl was struggling to move; there was blood on her stomach and over her legs.
He left the compound and took a position outside, close to a path that led to the side of the forest. The second group of soldiers passed by with more cattle. Benny was among this group; he looked after the herd of cows and goats. He had a machete in his right hand and a stick in the left. They made their way towards the mountains.
‘Follow me, follow me, Kadogo!’ a soldier shouted at Risto.
‘And my bag?’ Risto asked.
‘Drop your dirty bag and follow me, I say!’ he screamed.
Risto followed him. They crossed three compounds and reached a fourth.
‘These bastards have run away from us, I will show them,’ muttered the angry soldier.
He went inside a big rectangular house, which was surrounded with huts. Then he came out again and went into a hut on the left. Smoke began issuing from the rectangular house and the hut. The soldier came to Risto with a twist of straw on fire.
‘Take it, quickly. Put it on that hut there.’ He gave the burning brand to Risto and pointed to the neighbouring compound. Risto did as he was told. He took the brand and lit the straw roof of the first hut, the second one and the big one in the middle. Then he ran from the compound as the whole place sparked with flames.
A rifle sounded from down near the business centre. Then people shouted. More shots followed. Trouble was in the air. Everyone was alert. The soldiers who were in the compound came running.
The General was already at the scene.
‘Get ready, we have to respond,’ he said. ‘We stay in our positions.’ He knew the enemy was the Mai-Mai.
The soldiers squatted down in the cassava fields close by the village while the General went to speak to another group that had positioned itself on a small hill. The shooting continued. The first bullet in response came from Risto’s neighbour, a soldier with a Kalashnikov who nearly deafened himself. Risto needed the toilet, but remembered he was in the front line of a battle. He felt dizzy. Little fires flared out in the direction the Kalashnikov noise had come from; these were enemy bullets. The moon shone, but he could still see the red tracers of the bullets as each side fired on the other. There were sometimes screams and hurrahs from down in the valley as the enemy fired their weapons.
Risto lay on his stomach, his eyes focused down where the shooting was resounding. A few soldiers came from the hills, crawling down and spreading all over the wide cassava fields. Risto was shivering, but kept his position while his gun watched the movements in the valley. He was thinking about the number of talismans, gri-gri and mystical spirits a single Mai-Mai would have, as well as the dozens of tattoos engraved on his body. He had even heard that some Mai-Mai left their bodies behind while their spirits went to fight. He kept quiet, shaking as he lay in the field.
The fighting intensified. The crackling got closer and closer. As the Mai-Mai fired, they sang and screamed. Risto’s AK-47 was ready, his finger on the trigger. He hadn’t yet fired a bullet. He was sweating. Suddenly, a huge noise erupted down the valley, followed by a lot of smoke. A fire appeared on a small hill. After a few minutes, the noise of bullets came from that direction. There must have been Mai-Mai positioned there. Risto imagined how they would scream ‘Mai’ meaning ‘water’; the place would burn to ashes, but they would walk out alive. They never died. More than thirty minutes had gone by. A group of his soldiers descended quickly, running in the fields, then throwing themselves to the ground. They shot as if it was the end of the world. Risto put his fingers in his ears to soften the noise.
The cassava bushes ahead of Risto were waving. They were fifty metres away from him. He stared, scrutinising each leaf as it moved. He sighted his firearm on the moving leaves. It seemed as though no other military eye saw the movement; the others were focused on what was happening in the valley. The cassava bushes kept waving. At a distance of about thirty metres, a head emerged, like a chameleon in slow motion. It was a man with a gun. Risto couldn’t wait – he pulled the trigger. Four bullets left. A scream. Each soldier’s gun now followed his eye. Risto breathed deeply as sweat dripped from his face. He couldn’t believe his eyes. The wounded man tried to move, and he fired again. This time he struck the man’s head.
Risto remained in his position, unable to move. The soldiers who were close by went towards the still body. One picked up the dead man’s gun and fired down the valley, but there were no answering shots. This caused vivid fear in each soldier’s mind. From their experiences of fighting with the Mai-Mai, they had learned that when a fight stopped abruptly like this, it was the time when the Mai-Mai would find their powers through rituals and sacrifices. The soldiers feared their return.
Risto pulled himself to his feet and went towards the path to regroup with the other soldiers. The chief said that they had to start moving: ‘We have to go back in the forest; their return will be fierce. This is the time of their satanic rituals!’
Three soldiers were losing blood. One from his right shoulder; he had covered the wound with a cloth. Another had a cloth that dripped blood wrapped around his right leg.
‘Look at that rat!’ screamed an angry voice.
Someone was running down the main path towards the valley. He was still within range. His movements seemed familiar to Risto. He moved his head from left to right as he ran, just like Benny did. It was indeed Benny. A soldier cursed and fired several shots at him. Benny fell down.
Risto wanted to run towards Benny, but he knew he would suffer the same fate. But how could he see someone killing his brother without intervening? How could he leave the body of his brother abandoned in a field? He had to do something, but what?
The crackling of guns erupted in the valley once again. Reinforcements had arrived, or maybe the Mai-Mai had reconnected with their world of spirits and power. The General ordered his men to leave some of the cattle to save time, and to return to the forest as fast as possible. Risto held his looted bag on his head while he carried his gun on his shoulder. They ran quickly.
Every step he took, his heart questioned his love for Benny. He had been his best friend. They had enjoyed happiness and pain together. They had thought they would die together. Now he couldn’t even fight to bury him! He couldn’t think of saving him! He thought of how many times he had betrayed his friends, his dearest friends. He remembered Néné, and now Benny, a brother who had showed him the mysteries and pleasures of life. He ran with his heart breaking.
. Chapter 7 .
Risto mourned Benny alone in his small hut. He was alone in a jungle of wild beasts. He imagined how he might take his revenge on the soldier who had killed his cousin. Maybe it would happen when the two of them were sent somewhere. Risto would let the man walk in front of him, then he would kill him the same way he had killed the Mai-Mai soldier; he would pull the trigger, force a few bullets into his head. He thought it would be a good idea to stalk Benny’s killer. To know his roster, which day he was on night watch, at which position, and with whom. Then he could hide and wait until the man started his shift. With his AK-47, he would open fire and blow off the man’s head. He would even shoot whomever the man was on shift with. Of course others would hear the shots, but it would take them time to work out what had happened. They would probably believe that it was the work of a Mai-Mai spy.
Many soldiers disturbed his mourning day with unneeded congratulations for being the hero of the mission; he had killed a Mai-Mai, one of the demons of the forest, as they were called. They praised him, called him a brave lion.
Risto thought about the Mai-Mai he had shot. He wasn’t supposed to die. They couldn’t die. Maybe he woke up after they left? Maybe he had violated the Mai-Mai rules – by robbing someone or eating the food of a woman. Maybe he had slept with a woman or forgotten his talisman, and that was why he died.
In his shack, he kept his fire going, mixing wet and dry wood to produce a smoke that prevented those who came to bother him with endless messages of felicitation from staying longer than a minute. His mouth and nose also became a chimney, but for cannabis smoke. He had not smoked it before, but now as he inhaled, he saw the world floating like a fallen leaf on a dancing river, and it made his pain float away. Soon he was smoking more than a camp of cannabis addicts could finish in a day.
The Great Agony & Pure Laughter of the Gods Page 9
