Mission

by Philip Spires

  So you can buy tea for all your friends, all these bleating sheep that follow you without question?

  The woman quickly grows nervous. Her young friends begin to giggle with embarrassment. Since she cannot understand him. One of the boys offers to translate and he leans across to whisper his words. She listens intently, but still does not seem to understand.

  Look around you. Look! This is your flock. These people have been obedient. They have followed your path blindly, led by the empty promises you have made. Now prove to them that you truly want to share the riches you speak of. You have shared your ideas, now share your money! Say yes, it is a word that can do no harm.

  The translation provokes her to act. She calls to the owner of the restaurant, a man she knows well by name, and asks that the old man should have a cup of tea. Wails of laughter rise in the room as a waiter theatrically holds out a cup of tea for Munyasya, who shows no interest in the offer, until he turns slightly to the side and spits. More laughter, and this continues until new convulsions in the old frame indicate that he is ready to speak again.

  You must use more than one finger to kill fleas in a bed! Buy everyone tea. Buy everyone food. We have heard how rich you people are. Prove that you are willing to share those riches with us as reward for having listened to your teaching. This time the woman clearly dismisses the translation her friend offers. She begins to think that she should leave, but outside the market place is completely awash and the rain is still torrential.

  Tell him I have no money.

  Before the boy speaks, Munyasya has silently translated for Nzoka.

  But you come here ready to travel! How can anyone be ready to travel, be waiting for a bus without money? It is said that you must pay money on the bus. Ah, I see! A beautiful girl never pays her bus fare - especially a white one!

  Everyone in the restaurant bursts into laughter at this. A few people even applaud his cheek. No one, except the white woman, appears to be taking him seriously. They are all lucky because he is not accosting them. This old man can obviously do no one any harm. He is too old and too weak to be of any danger, but still people fear him like they fear the night. He is unpredictable, a quantity as unknown as darkness. Janet soon begins to react as Nzoka had hoped. She begins to dismiss him impatiently, becomes scornful of the words. He spits more words at her.

  Ah! So now we see the truth behind your ideas. No riches until we are rewarded by your God after death. Stay blind in life so you might see in death? That is what you say in your church?

  He looks for a reaction from Janet and the boy who is translating for her. One of the other boys at the table is suddenly afraid that he himself is going to be confronted; the direction of the old man’s gaze is ambiguous. In a flash his laughter has gone and he is rushing through the mass of people towards the door. He does not stop until he is outside in the rain. Now the old man joins in with his audience’s laughter.

  Tell the man he is stupid and a fool!

  Janet still does not yet realise how well he understands English. He reacts again, before the translation comes. The boy, anyway, dare not do as he is asked.

  Is it not true? Am I stupid if I speak the truth? While your Church becomes richer here and now, you tell your sheep to forget wealth - that it will be theirs when they die - as long as they heed your commands! And then the wealthy ignore the poor.

  He now moves closer to the woman to emphasise what he says to her. His intention is to intimidate and he succeeds immediately. She seems reluctant to look his way. When she does not offer an answer immediately, he prods her with his stick. She pushes him away. His expression hardens.

  Don’t play with me! You are too young to play with me! So, I am stupid because I can see how you teach these children to dismiss the truth I speak. What a boy learns the man remembers.

  He moves closer to her again. All the time, with almost mechanical repetition, he is stretching and flicking loose the string tied to his thumb.

  I am Nzoka, the snake. I am older, wiser than you.

  The string, which is always tied to his thumb, becomes the snake. He pulls it out to its full length and then lets it go, so that it coils and loops as it falls.

  I am Nzoka. How dare you push me? Children today must be taught what is right and I will teach you.

  He approaches her, now getting uncomfortably close to her, and stretches the string, his signature, out to its full length just in front of her face. He bends low over her and tries to place his hands, still holding the string upon her shoulders. His intentions might be kind. He is playing the role of the father admonishing a wayward daughter.

  I am Nzoka. You are my child. I must teach you. I am Nzoka.

  He moves too close, much too close. Suddenly her terror that until this moment had rooted her to the spot, now forces her to act. With one heave she throws him to the side. He staggers and then, dropping his stick and therefore unable to correct his balance, he falls. She is gone out into the rain before he can stand. The old man is mumbling again. He is too weak to stand, too weak to lift the body that a moment before had seemed stiff with power. No one helps him, however. No one wants to risk becoming the object of his attention.

  Oh my leg... Munyasya, it worked! My head, it hurts... Listen, my son. Listen! What do you want, Nzoka? Why did you make me do that to her? She was frightened. And look what she did to me... She could have killed me. I wish she had, Munyasya. Oh my head... But don’t you see? It’s true. Everything I have said to you. It’s all true. Why do I always have to do your dirty work? You speak and I get punched. Why must it always be me who suffers? Why do you do it to me? Stop whimpering at me, Munyasya, and listen. Didn’t you see her reaction? Didn’t you hear what she said? Didn’t you hear how she set you up as an example to those children? She was telling them that you were stupid, obviously wrong. She was telling them not to grow up like you. I didn’t hear anything. You are inventing the things you want to hear, Nzoka. No, Munyasya, it proves what I was saying to you earlier. These white people have used you - and they are still doing so - to benefit themselves. You have been and still are their slave. Am I alone? Am I the only person who has followed their ways, who has worked for them, learned their language? Of course you aren’t. That’s why we have to act, to make people see. But Nzoka, they were good to me. They educated me, paid me to provide for my needs, fed me. And yet, Munyasya, they always used you to accomplish their own ends. How do you explain the fact that you spent your life fighting for them, risking your life on their behalf? You were so much in their power that for a time you even fought your own people so that they could achieve their own ends. Don’t you see? So what do we do? I suppose you have some ideas already, or do we sit around for another few years until you have made your plan? No, Munyasya. At last I know what it is that we should do. We must make an example of these people. Just one of these people... but who? Who, Nzoka? I am still not sure yet, Munyasya. We have to choose our victim with care so that people will see what it is that we are trying to tell them. Come on, Nzoka, whom do you suggest? The great idea is yours. Tell me. I’ve said I don’t know yet. I need more time to think and you’re disturbing me. The best plan is the one that needs the least effort. I must have more time to think. More time? Nzoka, you’ve already had years and years! How much more time do you want? My son, you are the impatient one. When we act we must act with care. We must not waste this knowledge we have discovered. We must wait so that we can pick our moment and make it tell.

  ***

  A campaign starting in Sudan and then moving into Abyssinia during World War Two left Munyasya with enduring memories of adventure, camaraderie and pride. These places were not home, but relating their differences to the cultural landscapes he knew was not difficult, the contradictions thus providing him with experience, knowledge and expanded wisdom. The active service in Malaya almost a decade later, however, left him stunned, insecure, certainly changed and not a little
paranoid, haunted by an expected encounter with a nearby but never seen stalking enemy. First impressions had shocked him with false familiarity. He came from Africa an askari and found himself called the same by these people. He was around fifty years old, the same hamsini here and there. His beloved fried fish – an enduring favourite of Major Cunningham’s, which he had learned to prepare for his employer – remained samaki. He could not understand, but when people spoke, he could hear pinpricks of familiarity, known word-islands in an unfamiliar sea of sound. But the occasional word did not begin to bridge the chasm of alienation he felt with every minute in this place.

  The forest, above all else, was a foreign place. His short training had helped, but East Africa’s fundamental dryness was no preparation for this humid, sweating density of life. In Kenya a thorn bush could be bypassed, skirted without contact, but here hanging rotans often barred the path and their fierce spikes had to be pushed aside, often only to spring back with a parting stab once released.

  Though most of their work was just guarding facilities, occasionally he was called upon to join a deployment charged with locating an insurgent group, or known individual enemy. But how could you see in this country, where it was always easier to hide? And how could you identify an enemy who might be leading a buffalo one minute and levelling a rifle against you the next? To patrol like this, through the dense thicket between the giant trees, unable to use whatever paths might exist for fear of booby traps and ambushes, was to experience fear. Not the sudden onrush of shock borne of an unexpected event, but a constant aching pressure which rendered the prosaic a potential nightmare.

  If only you could trust something here! But the forest never revealed itself, always returning the same vista with each step: more forest, more undergrowth, near darkness under the canopy of the cauliflower-topped trees two hundred feet above. Sometimes there was quiet, sometimes deafening noise from insects and who knows what which were never seen and – contrary to what he though on arrival – he never saw an animal, not even an insect of any size. Always sure that whatever was there could see him, he found it deeply unsettling that he never saw a sign of life, not even a bird. Surely this enemy who knew this place also knew its ways and could see without ever being seen.

  The first time he shared the success of one such patrol, he knew that he was changed forever. On intelligence they had parked their vehicle only a mile or so from the village, though the single building in a small forest clearing to which they eventually laid siege would not have qualified for such an exalted title in Kenya. It was, however, a large house, all of wood, raised on stilts with a thatched palm leaf roof, and had a large open veranda along the long side of its rectangle. Inside, they were told, was the man they wanted. Munyasya and the other King’s African Rifles were surely there just as support staff. They were carriers and path clearers for the specially trained combat personnel who were in command of the group. And so they had picked their quiet way through the growth, off-path, carefully avoiding the stumble that might announce their approach, but consequently taking hours to cover a distance they could walk in ten minutes across flat ground. And when the clearing revealed itself, with its single house and apparent lack of activity, they spent another hour, whispering and puppeting sign language to decide what to do next. The marksmen, however, were on station, concentrating their gaze on the raised open terrace of the house. When, after what seemed like an age, the hunted quarry revealed himself, nonchalantly emerging bare-chested from within, still half asleep from his afternoon nap and sauntered to the wooden railing for a breath of air and a smoke, the marksmen of the special forces did their job and holed his body. As expected, others rushed to seek their weapons, but Munyasya and his men did their covering job and shot at anything that did not immediately lie down and surrender.

  They killed six in all, mostly men and left no wounded. Another five cowered in fear, apparently clinging to the floor and had to be pushed with rifle butts to raise their hands. They were no threat, these survivors, at least today, and, to ensure they remained so, they were handcuffed and marched back to camp, to be later transported to a more secure place. As for the dead, the safe and easy option was to cremate. The clearing would ensure that the fire did not spread. Munyasya, along with all the others who were alien in this place, had quickly learned that forest fires rarely burnt themselves. Mere embers or ash would not kindle the damp vegetation of a rain forest, so the fire from burning this house would not cause wider consequences and would never be traced, since the growth would show again after a couple of weeks. But they had to prove their mission, to verify success and achievement of task. The experience-hardened members of the patrol went straight to their job as Munyasya and his men kept the prisoners from possible mischief. Six left ears were thus quickly and neatly removed from the dead with bush knives that later might be used to hang toast over a fire. Duly stored in their belt pouches, these proofs of accomplishment and achievement were all that was needed and torches were set against the timbers. This was what Munyasya learned, skills he would later transfer to his own people in his homeland.

  The opportunity to do so soon arose when, for the first time as a soldier. He was posted to an assignment in his home district of Kitui. The long-serving and trusted chief of the northern region had been attacked in his house by bandits and his colonial paymasters, who knew the value of the stability that Mulonzya Mwendwa’s steady administration had produced, insisted that he accept the military protection he had neither requested nor wanted. And so, in command, Major Edward Munyasya and his dozen comrades took up their station in a speedily-erected brick and corrugated iron building resplendently titled Mwingi Military Base, adjoining the euphorbia-hedged District Officer’s compound, with its private house, office block and vehicle servicing sheds, all single storey concrete with grey rendered walls, contrasting starkly with the deep red earth brick of the rest of the town.

  From day one of the assignment, Mulonzya Mwendwa treated his askaris almost like members of the family. This meant that he rigorously required observance of his seniority and status in all dealings with them, kept the soldiers in their place, demanded their total devotion to him alongside dedication to his interests and expected to hear not a single word of criticism. In return he ensured they were always well fed and kept comfortable. At the start of the soldiers’ deployment, he had still been recovering from the vicious attack, which had left him with two messy pink stumps where once the beautiful smooth black skin of his wrists used to glisten in the sunlight. Let us say that he had not quite been himself, uncharacteristically sluggish and often sleepy as a result of his reaction to the various drugs he took to prevent infection and pain. At the time he was also of necessity unusually lacking in industry, spending several hours a day away from his tasks to have the wounds cleaned and dressed. But he was healing quickly and Major Munyasya was more impressed each day by the grit and resilience demonstrated by this old man, who spoke English with an accent as perfect as his own, as taught by his beloved Major Cunningham.

  Perhaps because of the soldiers’ presence in the town, perhaps not, there was no hint of any further action by Mulonzya Mwendwa’s attackers. It may have been a case of mission accomplished and therefore no need to return, or it may have been because the presence of a dozen King’s African Rifles under the command of an officer with experience in three campaigns genuinely deterred future assailants. Rumour admitted an alternative to the accepted view of events, that these men had never been anything to do with the Land Army or the struggle for uhuru, that they had been paid by Mulonzya Mwendwa’s political opponents to render him powerless. But then why did they not kill him? Why just relieve him of his hands? Rumour explained this by the need to hide the identity of the perpetrators, so the attack had used the stock-in-trade anti-collaborator punishment to make it look like something bigger than a local skirmish. But it was also probably true that Mulonzya Mwendwa did not have opponents powerful enough to have done this, so complete
had been his domination of local affairs. Certainly Mwendwa’s son, James, on his regular visits from his base in Nairobi, never countenanced the idea that the attack had local origins. All this Major Edward Munyasya learned within days of his new posting as commanding officer in the new Mwingi Military Base.

  Only a few weeks after the attack, Mulonzya Mwendwa was effectively restored to his old self, his old self minus his hands, of course. He had never entrusted his officially employed secretarial assistants with any task relating to his ‘personal’ interests, a division of labour which had served him dependably over the years, allowing him to maintain an apparently clear distinction between official business and personal gain. But without hands, he found himself newly and unaccustomedly powerless. Administration progressed without a hitch via dictation to his trusted staff, but when that particular matter of ‘personal’ import had to be dealt with in timely fashion, how could he now manage? James was often there to help, but he could not stay in Mwingi all of the time. He had his own interests to organise and administer and the journey from Nairobi along the potholed and stone-spotted dusty track they called a main road took several hours. Two days a week was all he could manage, travelling out one day and back the next to manage, therefore, just a few hours of useful work on either side of his overnight stay with his wife and child. And so, Mulonzya Mwendwa turned to Major Edward to carry out occasional ‘personal’ tasks. The soldier’s English was good, he was used to administration and management and he was – it went without saying – utterly dependable, perhaps a little too much so, as things turned out. It only happened once. Such things could only happen once with Mulonzya Mwendwa, whose hawk like perception never missed a detail and whose requirement of total loyalty extended as far as a ban on any form of initiative.