Behind The Stranger

SIGNIS-CEPACS Award Winning Story 2003

Best African Creative Writer

Behind The Stranger

By Mazuba Mwiinga

It was just after midday. The day was sunny and hot. Cicadas were screaming in dry bushes. One wouldn’t be told what kind of weather this was. Especially if one was from the savannah. But even aliens too. They have heard of it before. Experiencing it was another baby to nurse though.

In rural areas, such times called for silence in homes. Even dogs wouldn’t dare to howl. Thieves used such times to pinch chickens. At this lonely hour, some man dared westwards following a beaten path. Had he met people on the way they would have wondered. He took after a jungle man. He was hideously fearful. The face was scratched so much that someone’s quest of his having been battling with a leopard wouldn’t have been argued much. The head wore deep cuts, which exposed thick tissues of red flesh.

Staggering he walked on all alone in an area that seemed not to have harboured man for a long time. Rats ran away in amazement. Surely, it was a wonder for them. For some time now, they lived along this path undisturbed. They might have asked, “Where is this creature going?” They wouldn’t get a reply of-course; they too seemed not to know.

By his looks, he was deeply absorbed in confused thoughts. The sun was now bending towards the western dome, but he hadn’t come across any village or home. The area was high, bushed and stony. May be he couldn’t just see the villages. Can a man so badly in a state of mind be able to recognize a stranger’s home? He was thirsty and hungry, but where was he to find water and food.

As the sun shone its last streaks of light, he came to a wide opening. His heart missed two beats. He was terrified. His eyes could see the end of the world as it met with the falling sky at a distance. He stood irresolutely and examined the new azure. He then saw a flicker of light at a distance. A ghost? At twenty-five he was a man or two. ‘Where there is fire there is life’, he thought. It took him an hour or so. As he walked on, the distant horizon ran away from him too. So were flames of fire. ‘Loss of hope is for women’ he thought. Hadn’t after all the adage: MULOMBWANA MUNYATI – ‘a man is a buffalo, meant for him? But he never threw up the sponge on his attempted hopes.

As night covered the Plain, waking up nocturnal creatures to life, he came to the source of fire. It was actually a home. Three huts built abreast each other. The big one presumably for elders stood in the far north. A small one, maybe for children or visitors was in the far south. The one with poles as a wall completed the file in the middle. It served as a cooking place. A pot was boiling over fire when the visitor arrived. A tall slender woman squat on a mat beside the heath. He sighed deeply and announced his presence with “HODI”.

The woman peered outside. Having not recognized the visitor, she came out. All the same, the visitor turned out to be a stranger. She went back in the hut to return with a stool. She handed it to the visitor and squatting before him, she greeted in Tonga:

“KWASIYA”

“KWASIYA”, he replied.

“KWASIYA BUTI”, she rejoinder

“KABOTU”. Then a silence of assessment swept across.

“TUMUGWASYE – what can I do for you?” she asked at last.

“Eh – I am going to the river in the far west. I’ve been caught up by night. I am asking for lodging. Just for a night”. She looked at him. A cutting fever ran through her. She shivered uncontrollably. “Um, it isn’t safe to keep a stranger here. Try further in the west”, she refused.

“Please I am tired. Just for a night”, he pleaded. But the woman stood her grounds. The conversation was still on and Stubborn Kusunda the husband arrived. He greeted the visitor and the wife revealed the visitor’s request. Stubborn Kusunda couldn’t stomach such unfathomable requests as he looked at the visitor quizzically. He couldn’t understand why all those scratches. May be he was a victim of the situation. But the answer still remained NO. The visitor on the other hand could not leave a home he had already grasped for a rest. And really victory comes to those who persist in the struggle.

After a prolonged debate, the visitor said: “OK then; let me lie on the ground and you tie my both hands and legs. Thereafter you put me in the hut to secure your life”. Stubborn Kusunda thought it the only way out.

“But who are you? You seem to be a stubborn young man”.

“I am Kujolomana from the hills”. Stubborn Kusunda was by then on his way to bring a sisal rope. He tied the visitor up, as he lay prostrate on the ground. With his wife holding the legs, him the hands, they carried the visitor to a small hut in the southern end. Once inside, a sack was spread on the floor on which they laid him. The wife then covered him with a torn old bed sheet. Stubborn Kusunda closed the door and locked it with a padlock. To leave no room for doubts, he tied the door locks with a barbed wire. They thereafter left for an evening meal.

*

Giant Kujolomana was from a village called Namausha at Insult Matusi’s home in Nadongo. His mother bina Chivwele, the second wife to Insult Matusi was an inherited wife. Her late husband Tall Kujolomana, was the eldest child in Insult Matusi’s family line. When he died, their only child, a son, Giant was three years old. As per Tonga tradition, Matusi was put to be in charge of his late brother’s home. This meant marrying the wife and taking the late’s children as his. Insult Matusi and Giant’s mother, produced three children. Chivwele, Muzambali and Maulu.

At first life was so sweet to Giant’s mother that she forgot the miseries she went through as a widow. But as Muzambali the second child to Matusi was born, all hell was let loose. There was no day Giant’s mother would proclaim as safe and merry. Even when she conceived and later gave birth to Maulu, she was so sad that she did not find any bit of joy in having celebrated her fourth child. This sadness went to extents where Giant himself was found into the cross fire too. Has after all the Tonga not said that ‘Katanga lulu kakaluzya Matanganyina’ – meaning a bitter pumpkin spoils others too? Giant eventually grew up into an isolated young man totally out of place.

Then one day, Giant thought of leaving the place to stay with his uncle he only knew as Kusunda near the river in the far west. Unfortunately at the very time he was at the peak of his preparations his mother who had been in and out of bed, got critically ill and then died. A few minutes before she died, she left a verbal Will to those who were at her bedside. “All – all – all my belongings together with all my cattle, give them to my first child”. And then she breathed her last. When the day came for sharing Giant’s mother’s belongings, Giant was about to be given all the things according to her mother’s will. But Chivwele, the first-born child to Giant’s mother and Insult Matusi refused, saying he was the first born the late mother meant. Giant tried to put his argument straight, but Chivwele, Muzambali and Maulu blushed him out. The further the argument went, the more furious the three blood brothers became, and eventually went on Giant. They beat him savagely with sticks, stones, blows and any other hard implement they could lay hands on. Smelling death, Giant left the place going west where he met a beaten path and forged ahead, leaving the Matusi family celebrating.

*

“Kkokkoliikko!!” the early morning crow crowed. “Vwau-vwau-vwau-vwau” from the other end of the home, a small bony dog barked as well. This was at Stubborn Kusunda’s home. His dog Twakalizyi, continued to yap as it trotted round the ambience. Kusunda tried by all means to ignore it as he pretended to enjoy his sleep. But the more the dog went ahead barking, the more curious he become. It had never occurred to this dog before to do this. He then sprang from the bed, waking her wife up in the process. He went outside and tried to silence the dog in a hush voice. He went round his hut, stretched himself as he yawed, watching the sun shooting its bloody rays up the eastern horizon. He spat out a black ball of mucus mixed with saliva and immediately came to senses that last night he received a visitor. As this thought crossed his mind, his wife who was by then standing behind him, asked him in a worried tone; “is the visitor already up?” Kusunda sharply looked behind his shoulder and replied: “If you have untied him yes”.

As he turned to walk towards the southern end of his home, he saw three men approaching his place. He stopped and looked at them questionably. “What the hell is going on?” he thoughtfully asked himself. As they came near, one of the faces became very familiar, though he could not remember where he had last seen it. By the moment they announced their presence with HODI, Stubborn was quick to welcome them with MPAKATI. His wife rushed to the cooking hut and brought three stools, which she handed to them immediately for she presumed they were tired. As soon as they breathed out deep air of relief, Stubborn Kusunda greeted them and asked them their business.

“UUTASWAIGWI MUKANDU – he who fears visitors is a coward. Who are you and what can we do for you?”

“Oh yes. We can see that you are very anxious to hear our mission” one of them said. “I am Kagondo, he is Kujolomana and he is Matusi”.

“Did you say Kujolomana? And you Kagondo?” Stubborn Kusunda asked.

“Yes. But whose home is this? Is it not Stubborn Kusunda’s?”

“What do you want?” Stubborn Kusunda asked.

“I am Kagondo Kusunda, the young brother to Stubborn Kusunda. We are looking for one Giant Kujolomana, the only son to late Tall Kujolomana and Mutinta Kusunda Kujolomana.”

“What!” Kusunda sprang from his stool and headed for the small hut he had offered the visitor to use the previous night. What he found took him speechless. The door was as intact as he had left it the previous night. The sisal rope he had tied him with, was on the floor. But the man was gone!

Kusunda immediately called the visitors to help him find the stranger. They invaded the bush, walking up and down the hills, searching in rocks and caves, in thick bushes and thorny thickets, in trees and moles, in people’s houses and tall grass, but the stranger was nowhere to be found.

Had the Holy Book after all not said, “remember to welcome strangers in your homes, there are some who did that and welcomed angels without knowing?”

As the sun shone towards midday, the searchers just returned home with nothing encouraging to report. But those who know will tell you that, behind the stranger, there is more than can see the eye.