Jeremiah Kenzi

Fragment. Chapter 1: “Old places and Old friends”

This is the second part of a series. It starts here.

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Jan 16th 2000, 2:30pm

The heat was unbearable, and the still dry air did nothing to cool things down. When the air moved, it did so in violent, dusty and hot dust-storms that stung the eyes and parched the throat.

It was the peak of the dry season. There hadn’t been a single drop of rain for months, and the dry cracked earth looked skywards in agony. The trees were devoid of leaves, the ones that had any were dry and brown. The dry thin grass occasionally sparked in the heat, starting off bushfires that ravaged the landscape, leaving charred  remains of animals and humans alike.

In fact, just infront of the clearing, a huge black spot gave clear warning of how important it was to stop the fire in time.

The clearing was roughly circular, with scattered paths leading from multiple points along the perimeter.

Right in the center was a shallow pit, with burnt logs jutting out at odd angles. The pit was filled with small twigs and ash from a thousand bonfires.

The bonfire was the night-time communal point of the Acholi homestead. Children and adults alike would sit around the blazing fire, first for a family meal, followed by a riotous time of joke-, riddle-, and story-telling, before the children slowly drifted off to sleep and the adults sat around to discuss more significant matters.

This particular bonfire hadn’t been lit in  months, for obvious reasons; no one lit bonfires anymore around these parts, and anyone foolish enough to light one…

Four huts were scattered almost symetrically around the clearing. The largest belonged to the head of the home, typically the eldest man, who lived there with his family, two others belonged to the younger siblings, one for the girls and another for the boys. The second largest belonged to the mother of the home and it also served as the kitchen. Sometimes the littlest children, her grand-children, would share this hut with her. Between the largest hut and the kitchen was an open bathroom, closed off with bamboo, papyrus and dry banana leaves.

Off to the far left, just outside the clearing and underneath a huge mango tree, were three grain granaries, built on treated stilts to protect them from vermin and ants.

Huge black flies buzzed around the dusty compound, settling occasionally on piles of dry crusted human and animal feaces.

Further down, just infront of the kitchen, there was a much larger swarm of flies, buzzing furiously around a dead body.

And next to the body was a little boy, naked, sitting in gooey mixture of dust, blood and spewed guts. He was rail thin, his eyes were literally bulging out of their sockets and his stomach was massively distended. He looked like he had been there for days, crying. His face and belly were covered with snot, saliva and tear-stains.

He couldn’t have been more than three years old.

He reached out, trembling, sniffing, and pulled the dismembered hand towards him. It was cold and clammy, starting to swell with rotting flesh.

The hand belonged to his mother, whose lifeless body he sat by. Her head was a few meters away, the eyes had been gouged out by some creature during the night while he tried to sleep. The mouth hung open, in one last desperate attempt to scream for mercy. Even the flies buzzing in and out showed no mercy. He wanted to go to her, but the pain, hunger and fatigue would not let him, so he just sat there, clasping the hand as the mucus rolled down his lips.

He was too young to remember the events of the past few days, but he knew Amma was not coming back again.

He heard the shouts and running footsteps behind him and turned around. Four raggedly dressed, half-naked kids were coming towards him. They were were in their early teens, tall, gangly and severely underfed. They shouted and laughed while pointing excitedly at him.

A fifth boy, who looked older than the rest of them stood a little back, casually leaning against a pawpaw tree. He looked like he was in his late teens, with a deep piercing gaze under thick eyebrows. A very long scar ran across his right cheek, skipped his eye and continued just past his eyebrow.

The sun glistened of the sweat on his bare chest, muscles rippling, a testament of a life of long hard labour and frantic running. His stomach had three long welts that disappeared into his black cargo pants, which in turn were tucked into calf-length leather boots.

He munched on a long grass stalk which must have been bitter, because he kept spitting through his teeth.

He watched the little boys as they advanced towards the sniffling child. They were playing roughly with each other kicking and punching themselves as any normal pubescent boy would.

When they reached the child, they stopped, surrounding him, unbothered by the stench, or the flies or the disembodied corpse that was infront of them.

They were silent for a while, just staring at him, real quiet. Then one spoke, barking  in Acholi, followed rapidly by another. The elder boy by the pawpaw couldn’t hear what was being said. Soon, the words turned to shouts and they started pushing and kicking each other.

The little boy on the ground continued staring at them, head turning from one to the other, trying to follow an argument he could barely understand. Soon, the shouts were too loud for him and he started crying. The louder they shouted, the more he screamed until they all began yelling at him to shut up. This only made him wail even more.

The shouting got louder, the kicking got more violent, the child’s wails reached an impossible crescendo.

Snot, blood, drooling saliva, yelling, shouting, kicks and buzzing flies in dead gaping mouths all evaporated into a misty red haze when one of the kids pulled out a pistol and shot the child point blank in the head.

***

6 hours later.

The group had settled on the outskirts of the clearing, several feet away from the huts, hidden within some bushes.

They’d spent the better part of the day discarding the bodies from the clearing, dragging and dumping them much further down the village path.

One, it kept the wild animals busy, away from them, and two it served as a warning to anyone who might still be stupid enough to pass through. They were here for a while, and they didn’t want the hassle of killing animals or people just yet.

The four smaller boys were huddled around a very small bon-fire, tearing ferociously at large chunks of roast meat which they kept thrusting back into the small flame whenever it tasted a little too raw for their liking.

Their shoving and shouting never stopped, even when eating. They would ocassionally burst into racous laughter at the memory of some joke that only they remembered, or understood. Once in a while, a sharp commanding voice would bark at them from across the bushes and they’d fall quiet, their jests reduced to furtive whispers.

The air around them was still. The night sky was cloudless and the stars shone magically and brilliantly. The moon stood smack in the center of the sky, majestic, oblivious and unconcerned by the human insects below.

The night was beatiful, dark and eeriely beautiful.

Something rustled in the grass and they froze.

The dry hot night air carried sound for miles and even the slightest movement could easily give them away.

Barely breathing, hearts thumping, they peered into the darkness, sharp falcon-like eyes looking for what didn’t belong. One of them slowly grabbed a handful of soil and put out the fire, leaving one solitary wisp of smoke floating upwards into the night.

Minutes passed, not a single movement, not a single sound.

As one, they turned their attention to the bushes opposite them, where they knew their leader was. In the black gloom, they could barely see him, and they suddenly felt very alone and very scared.

He had crouched down, perfectly blending his dark skin and black pants into the stillness of the night. A very subtle glint near his boots gave away the dagger he was carrying, but he knew only the four boys could see it.

A few more minutes passed in tense silence. The wild Acholi bushes would not be rushed. In a land where death was seconds away, silent, breathless, heart-thumping patience in the midst of the tall elephant grass was an art that had been deeply ingrained into all but the most foolhardy.

And then, just as quickly as it had begun, the time for silence and hiding was over.

The boy dashed out from his bush. He ran low, fast and hard, boots hitting the ground hard with each calculated step. He was building up momentum and power for what lay ahead.

His eyes were focused on a dark shape a few meters away. It had been huddled just like him, unmoving, watching, and right now, despite his sudden run, it still wasn’t moving.

This worried him, but it was already too late. He knew something was wrong, he had made a mistake, but then again…

He took one last step and with a bloodcurling scream, leapt into the air, knife glinting menacingly, making an arc of death towards the shape.

In that split second, the shape looked up, and their eyes met, and then it smiled.

Suddenly, the shape moved. With an un-nerving speed, it rose from its crouch and lashed a hand out and hit him hard in the belly, mid-air, while the other hand reached for the hand hold the knife and with a blow to the wrist, the dagger fell uselessly to the ground.

The boy hit his back hard on the ground, and the pain shot up his spine and exploded in his brain, clouding his vision for a second. Shaking his head, he forced himself to ignore the pain. He quickly jumped up from the ground, took a few steps back and turned to face the shape.

It was a man, heavy-set, with the build of a heavy labourer. His long arms hung loosely by his side, in an almost casual unconcerned manner. He stood in one spot, the arrogant stance of someone who been in more fights than he can care to count. And won.

The man smiled again, a lopsided grin that curled his upper lip menacingly, and started moving towards the boy. With another scream, the boy dashed towards him, bracing himself for the onslaught.

“Okera!”

The voice was loud and deep. It boomed, silencing the night. And it stopped both of them in their tracks.

They both turned towards the voice. A tall thin man, dressed in a trench-coat was walking towards them, taking slow measured steps, his long dark silhouette standing out strikingly against the night sky.

He stopped where the two stood, looking at them in turn.

“Wu tii ka lweny ping’oo?”

“[Why are you fighting?]”

Quiet, yet demanding.

Okera, the heavy-set man laughed loudly and, with his lopsided grin, spoke;

“No amiru neno ka Joseph opwonyo gyemi weng ma apwoonye.”

“[Just checking to see if Joseph here has learnt everything I taught him.]”

The boy, Joseph, now very confused, peered into the darkness at the heavy-set man, and recognition slammed into him like a fist.

“[Okera!! My goodness! I haven’t seen you in years! I almost killed you!]”

“[You? Joseph? Kill me? Ha. You’re still a young boy, Joe, still weak, and very very slow.]”

Joseph laughed hard and punched his old combat teacher on the arm. He knew he was one of Okera’s star students, and the jest was more than welcome.

The tall thin man had been watching this exchange with an amusement. He knew Okera’s penchant for less talk and more action, and this was one of his action-oriented tests.

He looked back and whistled, and the bushes came alive. One by one, men rose from the bushes, dressed in all manner of clothing, from a tattered suit barely hanging onto the skinny frame of its wearer, to a scruffy looking pair of shorts that was so small it looked almost like underwear, worn by another beefy man.

He turned to Joseph, who was now staring wide-eyed, bewildered. How could he have not noticed the presence of such a huge number of people? There was definitely going to be a lot of noise about this.

“[Joseph. Relax. These are some of our best men. I’d be very worried if you’d managed to detect our presence earlier than you had.]”

Joseph breathed a small sigh of relief.

“[Where’s your squad?]”

Joseph led them back towards the now-dead bon-fire, where the boys had crawled into some bushes and were lying on their bellies, scared shitless.

“[Squad, get your stupid butts up!]”

The boys got up, trembling, the smallest was actually whimpering. They were too scared to look up. They hadn’t seen the commanders in more than a year, and they had gotten cocky and arrogant knowing the only authority they had to report to was their squad leader.

Okera sniffed the air and bellowed;

“[What the fuck is that smell?]”

And the smallest boy began crying.

At the peak of his fear, he had shit himself.

***

After the group of men had settled into their new make-shift camp, the tall thin man took Joseph and Okera aside, away from everyone else. While Okera kept watch, he and Joseph talked deep into the night.

Okera looked up into the sky, and felt a chill down his spine. The clear skies had gradually darkened, and the moon was shrouded in a wreath of grey-black clouds and scattered lightning.

A storm was coming.

“[There's a lot of talk going around, Joseph. I’m sure you’ve heard some of it.]”

“Yes sir, I have.”

“What have you heard, Joseph?”

Joseph picked his words carefully. Many years of experience had taught him that as much as death was just a bullet or machete away, it was also a few careless words away.

“I have heard that there is unrest in the ranks, sir. That some people are tired of all the fighting, and the killing, and that they want to go home.”

“And…”

“And that even some of the top commanders are getting restless of our leader’s relentless struggle against oppression.”

Silence.

“You are bold Joseph, and smart. But what do you think?”

Silence while Joseph mulled this over.

“Joseph…”

“Yes, sir?”

“What do you think?”

The wind howled around them, and the tall thin man pulled his trench-coat closer to his chest. Joseph was too deep in thought to notice. The man waited patiently.

A loud clap of thunder brought Joseph back.

“I think there’s going to be a rank fight. But our leader will prevail, and a lot of top people will die.

“With enough momentum, they might succeed, but there are far more who believe in our leader than those who don’t, and without that momentum, they are doomed.”

“And people wonder why our leader likes you so much Joseph. Not only are you loyal, but your wisdom belies your tender years. I hope, for all our sakes, that you’re right, young man.”

“Sir… I can feel it in my bones.”

The tall thin man smiled, and patted Joseph on the back. Motioning to Okera, he walked back to the camp, his long frame dissappearing into the silhouettes of the huts and tents.

Joseph sat where he was for a long time,looking into the distance, but at nothing in particular, lost in thought.

Finally, he took a deep, long breath and stood up, brushing the dust off his cargo pants. With one last look back at the distant horizon, he sighed, and turned towards the camp.

The barren sky finally broke its waters, and the first few drops of rain hit the earth.