The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (12 page)

“My children are waiting,” she cried. “What am I going to do?”

A few other women appeared and tried to console her.

“We know your kids are crying at home,” they said. “Just send your husband next time.”

“Next time?” the young mother replied. “There may not be a next time.”

The mountain was getting higher for everyone.

Inside the maize mill, the owners no longer had any use for a broom. The hungry people kept the floors cleaner than a wet mop. At the beginning of the month, the mill was packed full of those waiting for fallen scraps. The crowd would part long enough to allow women to pass with their pails of grain. As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies. Once the pail was pulled away,
they threw themselves on hands and knees and scooped the floor clean. Afterward, old women would rattle their walking sticks up inside the grinder as if ringing a bell, collecting the loose flour that drifted to the floor.

This activity stopped by mid-December because so few people had any grain to mill anyway. The building remained empty, all except the operator and a few children whose parents had either died or had simply abandoned them to hunger.

N
ORMALLY
, C
HRISTMAS WAS MY
favorite day of the year—but of course, this year was far from normal. In better times, we’d celebrate Christmas Eve by attending the nativity play at the Catholic church down the road, watching Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus try to escape from Herod’s soldiers and their wooden swords and AK-47s (it wasn’t the most accurate version, but it was funny).

After church, we’d feast on delicious flying ants that arrived with each rainy season. The insects would swarm the lights of the trading center at night, then ceremoniously fall to the ground and shed their white wings. But since we kids weren’t allowed out after dark, my sisters would build a large grass fire behind the house, then catch the ants in basins of water as they fell. The drowned ants were then roasted on a flat pan and doused with salt. Roasted ants tasted like chewy dried onions and stuck nicely to a ball of
nsima.
When eaten along with beans and pumpkin leaves, they were truly heavenly.

On Christmas morning, breakfast wouldn’t consist of
phala,
but sliced brown bread, soft and moist. If we had extra money for other luxuries, such as Blue Band margarine, sugar, and powdered milk, I’d press several pieces of bread together into a buttery sandwich, then wash it down with a mug of steaming Chombe tea. Fresh bread and Blue Band, mixed with sweet and milky tea, is one of the best combinations you can ever put into your mouth.

Malawians’ desire for meat is especially strong at Christmas. If you go all year without eating meat, hopefully on Christmas Day you can man
age a little something. So in the early afternoon on Christmas Day, my father would kill one of our chickens. Christmas chicken isn’t served with
nsima
—not today—but with rice. Ask any Malawian to talk about Christmas, and he’ll always mention the rice.

But Christmas of 2001 arrived more like a punishment. First of all, the week before the holidays, most of our chickens got Newcastle disease, which paralyzed them, made them unable to eat, and finally killed them. Only one chicken managed to survive, and I’m telling you she was very lonely. The Catholic church canceled the nativity service, and the Presbyterians didn’t even bother making an announcement. But no one showed up. And with everyone so hungry and getting weaker, my sisters couldn’t even muster the energy to catch flying ants.

On Christmas morning, there was no fresh bread or Blue Band waiting on the table, no tea with milk and sugar, no chicken for supper, and certainly not any rice. There was no breakfast at all. I woke up, washed my mouth, and heard the sounds of “Silent Night” coming from the radio in my sisters’ room. When the song ended, the young DJ came on, sounding very energetic.

“Ehhh,
here’s wishing all of you a
very merry
Christmas,” he said.

“Easy to say when you’re in Blantyre, working for the government,” I said, then grabbed my hoe and headed for the fields, anything to keep from hearing more about Christmas.

Around noon, my mother did manage to serve a Christmas lunch, but it was just our usual blob of
nsima
and a spoonful of pumpkin leaves. She’d probably worked very hard to save that much flour to give us an extra meal, but it was hard to feel festive. I finished my last bite and was still hungry.

I then went to see Geoffrey, which turned out to be even more depressing. I walked into his room and found him sitting on the edge of his bed, looking exhausted. Ever since Geoffrey’s mom had milled their last pail of maize back in November, he had become one of the
waganyu
who wandered the land looking for piecework. He’d been fortunate to find jobs pulling weeds and bunking ridges in a trader’s field near the
dambo.
I could see that his anemia was still bothering him, and he was losing weight.

“Eh,
man,” I said, “I haven’t seen you in days. Your field is full of weeds. They’re taking over.”

“I’m too busy with
ganyu,”
he said. “At first, I went out looking for food for the month, then the week. Now it’s all about tomorrow. How can I tend my fields when I can’t even eat tomorrow?”

I wanted to help him, but what could I do? I hadn’t seen Gilbert in a few days, so I walked down to his house. It was creepy along the trail. Usually on Christmas you’d hear the sounds of music or singing and see families dressed in their best clothes laughing as they made their way to the trading center. But the people who walked past today did so slowly, heads down, not even saying hello.

About fifty people were scattered under the blue gums outside Gilbert’s house when I arrived. The smoke from their cooking fires covered the house in a gray haze. Gilbert was standing in his doorway.

“Merry Christmas,
eh?”
I said.

“Not here,” he answered, shaking his head.

Surely Chief Wimbe will have some delicious chicken and rice,
I thought. But Gilbert said no, the nonstop procession of souls to his door had taken most of their supply.

“It’s only
nsima
and beans here, brother,” he said, looking disappointed.

“How’s your father?” I asked.

“He greets people when he’s feeling well,” he said. “But mostly he sleeps and listens to the radio with his cat.”

My nose then caught the scent of something terrible on the breeze. It made my lips curl.

“What is that?” I said.

“Oh, the people aren’t even bothering with the latrine anymore. Now they’re just defecating in our trees. Be careful where you walk.”

“Yah, for sure.”

With Gilbert busy with the hungry people, and Geoffrey not feeling well and doing
ganyu,
I went to the clubhouse to see what my cousin Charity was doing. I knocked on the clubhouse door, and Charity let me inside.
He had a small fire going in the pot. His roommate Mizeck was nowhere around.

“It’s Christmas,” he said, “and I haven’t eaten a thing.”

“Yah,” I said. “I’m hungry, too.”

The two of us began thinking of ways to get food. The mangoes were all gone, so we couldn’t steal those. The traders in the market wouldn’t dare part with any flour. And we weren’t hungry enough to crawl outside their shops and dig for stray kernels in the dirt—not yet anyway.

“We need meat,” Charity said. “I can’t go to sleep tonight without my Christmas meat.”

There was a guy named James who ran a
mang’ina
stand near the
kanyenya
pit, where meat is fried.
Mang’ina
is the meat from the head and hooves of a cow or goat, basically headcheese. The butcher splits the head into three or four parts, then tosses them into a pot of boiling water, along with the legs and the hooves. You could come by and eat the tender meat from the leg, or have a bit of boiled brain and tongue. The meat from a cow’s cheek was also delicious.

Charity and I started dreaming aloud.

“Perhaps James will be generous on Christmas and let us have some.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Charity. “He’ll never do that.”

He paused for a moment, then said, “But he does throw away the skins.”

“Can you eat that?” I asked, twisting my face.

“I’m thinking why not? What’s the difference? It’s all meat, right?”

“Yah, I guess you’re right,” I said.

The hunger had affected our thinking.

As we walked to James’s stand, we saw that the
kanyenya
boys were doing brisk business as usual. Despite the hunger, the wealthy traders were crowded around their stand chewing on grilled meat, not even swallowing before shoving in a handful of fried chips. A group of villagers were crowded around watching them eat, studying the motions of the traders’ hands as they dipped the greasy bits of meat into the salt before popping them into their mouths. Watching them chew, I could feel the salty burn on my own tongue.

James’s stand was just a bit farther down the road. He was there, as usual, standing above a giant pot boiling on the fire. Getting closer, I could see a delicious goat head and some leg pieces swimming around inside. I wanted to leave immediately.

“Eh,
James,” said Charity. “William and I are making a Christmas drum for the children in the village. Can you part with one of your skins?”

James looked up from his pot. “That’s a good idea,” he said, then turned around and nodded toward a mound of something on the ground. It was heaped atop a black plastic
jumbo
and crawling with flies.

“I have this goat skin,” he said. “I was going to throw it away, but you can take it.”

Charity quickly threw the skin inside the bag and handed it to me. It was still warm.

“Zikomo kwa mbiri,”
Charity said. “The kids will appreciate you.”

“Sure, sure.”

With our warm goat skin in hand, we hurried back down the hill to
mphala.

“How are we going to prepare this?” I asked.

“It’s easy,” he said. “We’ll just do it like a pig.”

Back at the clubhouse, I lit a clump of blue gum bark and got the fire started again, then added a few small sticks, since we’d run out of maize piths long before. When the fire was strong and hot, Charity and I held the corners of the skin and stretched it flat over the flames. Soon the heat was singeing the hair, curling it black. Normally this would make a terrible stench, but now in my hunger, all I smelled was cooking meat. Once the hair charred and curled, we took our knives and scraped it off the hide. We did this again and again until we were sure it was properly cleaned.

We cut the skin into small cubes and threw them into a pot of water. For good measure, Charity even made me sneak into my mother’s kitchen and steal a handful of soda.

“It’s how women make their beans cook faster,” he said. “I’m thinking it works with skin, too.”

We let the skin boil for over two hours, adding more water, salt, and soda. After three hours, a thick white foam had collected on the top. Charity took his knife and fished through the froth, pulling out a piece of steaming hide. It was gray and slimy. Charity blew on it for a few seconds, then shoved it into his mouth. He struggled to chew, his jaws working hard, then finally swallowed.

“How is it?” I said, my mouth watering.

“A bit tough,” he said. “But we’re out of firewood. Let’s eat.”

We fished the pieces out of the pot and grabbed them with our fingers. The skin was slimy and sticky, as if covered in scalding glue. I put the first piece in my mouth and breathed in, feeling the heat of hot food rush into my stomach and lungs. I chewed and chewed. The juice from the skin seeped out of my mouth and caused my lips to stick together. With each chew, my lips sealed shut.

“Merry Christmas,” I said, struggling to speak.

Just then, I heard a clawing sound at the door, then a soft whine. I threw open the door and found Khamba. He must’ve smelled the Christmas meat all the way from my room and came limping over. His bony frame was hunched and tired, but his tail was wagging as fast as ever. I was glad to see him.

“Give some to that dog,” Charity shouted. “It’s dog food we’re eating anyway.”

“For sure,” I answered, then turned to Khamba. “Let’s get you something to eat, chap. I’m sure you’re starving.”

I tossed up a piece of slimy skin, and to my surprise, Khamba leaped onto his hind legs and caught it in the air. Just like old times.

“Good boy!” I shouted.

It took him one second to swallow it whole, then he licked his lips and waited for more. I went back inside and brought out two giant handfuls of hide. After slurping up every piece, the life seemed to return to his body. He blinked his eyes excitedly and flipped his tail. And making an exception on Christmas, Charity even let Khamba come inside the clubhouse.

I lost count of how many pieces I ate myself. But after about half
an hour of chewing, Charity and I gave up. Our jaws were too tired and sore to continue. Several large pieces of skin remained in the pot, and I thought about my sisters and parents who were at home, probably hungry and dreaming of meat on this Christmas Day. But I didn’t dare ask Charity to allow me to share. It was a well-known rule that whatever happened in
mphala
stayed in
mphala.
We’d eat the pieces ourselves the next day.

As the sun went down that afternoon, we sat around a dead and smoldering fire, content with the warm feeling of meat in our stomachs, because that’s what Christmas was all about anyway.

T
HE NEXT WEEK,
I received information better than any Christmas gift. I was sitting at home listening to the radio when I heard a wonderful announcement.

“The National Examinations Board has released the results of this year’s Standard Eight exams,” the announcer said. “If you’d like to check your score, the Board asks you to visit the institution where you sat for your test.”

“My scores,” I said to my mother. “My scores are ready!”

I raced down the trail toward Wimbe Primary, leaping over the puddles and pits in the trail, feeling such confidence that my head began swimming with the great possibilities. Which boarding school would I be going to? Chayamba or Kasungu? Since I’d decided I wanted to become a scientist—not just
any
scientist, but a great one—I knew those two schools had the best teachers, along with libraries and laboratories and everything I needed to achieve that dream. I didn’t care which one I was chosen for. Wherever those chaps needed me, I’d happily go.

The list was posted on the wall outside the administration building. A few other students were also there. I pushed through them, a busy, determined man. The various schools were posted with students’ names listed below. I quickly found Kasungu and scanned the names beneath it. Noth
ing. Moving toward Chayamba, my finger slid over the names Kalambo, Kalimbu…then Makalani.

Wait a minute,
I thought.
There must be some mistake…

I scanned the lists again, but my name wasn’t there.

“Here you are, Kamkwamba,” said the boy behind me. His name was Michael, one of the top students. “You’re going to Kachokolo.”

Sure enough, my name was beneath Kachokolo Secondary School, possibly the worst one in the district. Kachokolo was a community school, or a village school, and not a top priority when the government sent their funding.
How could this be?
I thought.

The exam grades were posted on the next board. Finding my name, I soon discovered why:

MATHEMATICS: C

PRIMARY SCIENCE: C

ENGLISH: C

CHICHEWA: B

SOCIAL STUDIES: D

My heart sank. I imagined walking the long road to Kachokolo, which was about five kilometers away. The school was near one of the big tobacco estates and that road was usually filled with mud and insects. A big dam was nearby, and sometimes Gilbert, Geoffrey, and I went fishing there.

“Congratulations,” said Michael, laughing. “You’ve been chosen to go to the dam school. If anything, you’ll become a great fisherman!”

“In two years I can take my Junior Certificate Exam,” I answered, thinking aloud. “Then I can transfer to a better school. You’ll see me soon in Kasungu. Don’t laugh at me now.”

“Good luck,” he said, laughing anyway.

That’s what I would do, I decided. I’d study and become the best student at this village school, then take my JCE exam and impress them all. At Kasungu and Chayamba, they’d be on their knees begging me. In the meantime, there was one good thing about going to Kachokolo. Gilbert
had also been assigned there (his grades had also stunk). I thought about the two of us walking to school together, and that made me feel more excited. I had two weeks to prepare.

T
HE NEW YEAR ARRIVED
with daily rains that watered our maize seedlings and encouraged them to grow. By now their stalks were deep green and reached my father’s shins. The rains had also allowed us to transport our tobacco plants from the
dambo
to the fields, where the seedlings were now growing strong.

The rains also brought the forests alive, caused the flowers to bloom and the bushes to blossom. Everywhere you went, the land was rich and green, and the air smelled sweet and fragrant. It was a spectacular joke, of course, because nothing was ready to eat.

The rainy season was when the insects bred and hatched their young, when blowflies swarmed the latrines, coming up from the septic hole fat and greenish black. Outside, the flies were so thick you couldn’t escape them. They collected on your legs and feet when you were standing still, and on your face when you were trying to talk. People were swatting flies everywhere they went.

There were also great clouds of mosquitoes, carrying malaria and death between their wings. The roaches were also more abundant and bigger than usual. At night after a heavy rain, the valley was alive with the sound of millions of frogs: some that whooped and gurgled, while the call of others was like giant drops of water falling from heaven:
bloop…bloop…bloop.
The rainy season was for mud and insects, a time when only the geckos and spiders got fat.

For the people, the rains merely brought further misery to those struggling to survive. Even though no one could afford to pay the
waganyu
to work, they continued to walk the roads with their bundles and hoes, stepping through the mud while the rain soaked them from above.

By now, the cost of maize had reached nearly a thousand kwacha a pail, and the
waganyu
and most everyone else had turned to a strict diet of
gaga.
Once the
gaga
began to run low, the traders started mixing it with sawdust. The yellow flakes were somehow concealed in the brown chaff, never revealing themselves until the porridge soured people’s stomachs. Once this was discovered, many gathered around the traders who were still selling it in the market.

“I spent all my money, only to get a bellyful of sawdust!” they shouted.

“My children are home sick!”

“This isn’t human!”

They could complain, but with no other money in their pockets, there was little they could do.

A
T HOME, MY MOTHER
spent hours each day baking her cakes, mixing the batter and placing the drops into a metal pot, which she then buried in the coals. She did this over and over until she had a hundred cakes, which she placed in a large basin covered in cloth. She then filled a pitcher with water and took a few cups, so the starving ones could finish filling their stomachs with liquid after eating the cakes. Each evening when my mother came home, we grabbed the basin from her hands, pretending to help her, only to peek under the cloth to see how much flour she’d managed to earn.

Most of her customers were still farmers who’d either sold their worldly possessions, or else had taken loans from the traders and businessmen, who were now charging 300 percent interest. Those were the terms, and if you didn’t like them, perhaps you could interest them in your dishes or the roof off your house. Most people took the loans, either because they had nothing to sell in the first place or their homes were already empty.

With these conditions, the situation in the trading center became more and more intense. People would gather around the traders like Mister Mangochi and complain. But these complaints rarely came with threats. People had no energy for violence.

“This is our food,” they’d shout. “Why are you starving us with these prices?”

“The farmers in Tanzania are charging us double,” Mister Mangochi would answer, telling the truth. “If I lower my prices, I’ll be finished and you’ll have nothing tomorrow.”

One afternoon my mother arrived at the market as usual, set up her table, and within seconds, a mob descended on her stand, shouting and grabbing at her things.

“I’ll take two!” one woman screamed.

“Give me three!” said a man.

With this sudden rush and chaos, my mother didn’t notice that a few people were snatching cakes from the basin. Others placed an order, but then grabbed what they wanted and fled. One man even sat down next to my mother and said, “I’ll take three.” He grabbed three cakes from the basin and ate them quickly.

“Nine kwacha,” my mother said.

“I don’t have any money,” he answered.

That evening when my mother came home, her hair was wild and her face drawn and tired.

“Mama, you must be exhausted,” I said, grabbing the basin to have a peek. It was nearly empty.

“They took almost everything,” she said. “There won’t be much tonight.”

She was right. That night we had a very small supper.

As the price of maize continued to rise, my parents had to cut back even more on the amount they purchased. This meant that my mother had a smaller number of cakes to sell, which meant our family had less to eat. Our blob of
nsima
began to shrink, to five mouthfuls, then four mouthfuls.

“Every time you put
nsima
into your mouth, add some water,” my mother instructed. “That way you trick your stomach.”

Although most of us kids tried to be conscious of our portions, my sister Rose, who was seven years old, would grab large handfuls of
nsima
and stuff them in her mouth before anyone could stop her.

“Hey, slow down,” shouted Doris, who was two years older. “Mama, she’s taking bigger pieces!”

“Maybe you should eat faster,” snapped Rose.

We were all becoming thin, especially Rose and Mayless, the two youngest above Tiyamike. They unfortunately took after my mother—small and lithe—so the hunger ate at them more and revealed itself more clearly in their sunken faces. Aisha, Doris, and I were taller like my father, so we had a bit more to lose, although by then I’d already fashioned a belt from a long cloth to keep my trousers up. I had to get more creative as the weeks went on.

My parents never scolded Rose for taking more than her share. But Doris soon reached her breaking point. Over the past weeks she’d become paranoid, fearing she wouldn’t get any food at supper and my parents wouldn’t help her. As a result, meals became moments of stress and anxiety.

One evening as we sat around the bowl of
nsima,
Rose reached in and pulled off a large piece as usual. But before she could shove it in her mouth, Doris leaped across the basin and began punching her in the face.

“Mama!” screamed Rose.

“Stop it!” my mother shouted and pulled them apart, a task that seemed to drain the rest of her energy. “Just try to eat and get along. I don’t have the strength to deal with you two.”

That night we went to bed hungry again, the smell of food still strong on our fingers, a smell even water couldn’t wash away.

A
S FOOD RAN OUT
across Malawi, the government remained silent. Every day we’d listen to the radio for news about the hunger, but nothing was ever said. With the silos of Press Agriculture empty and their own workers begging for food, and not a kernel more of maize at ADMARC, there seemed to be no rescue on the way. Hunger began to breed paranoia, and with it, rumors spread.

“They sold all of our maize!” people said. “What else have they sold?”

“Nothing is safe in Malawi!”

“What are they trying to hide from us?!”

Convinced the government was collapsing, farmers across the district rushed to the banks in Kasungu to withdraw the little savings they had left. One morning in a heavy rain, my father caught a pickup with several others and rode into town. When he arrived, the line stretched out the door and down the street. About a hundred men waited all day in the rain with nothing in their stomachs except anger and fear. Once they got inside, the overwhelmed clerks told them to wait even longer. With this, the farmers threatened to riot.

“Give us our money now!” they shouted. “What are you trying to hide from us?”

My father managed to withdraw our family’s entire savings—about a thousand kwacha—and used it to buy another pail of maize, which he milled and sold the next day. We’d eat another week.

D
ESPITE WHAT WAS HAPPENING,
I had something to look forward to in mid-January when I started classes at Kachokolo Secondary School. For weeks I’d focused on this one day, how I’d finally wear my long trousers, and Gilbert and I would walk like big men into our future. Thinking about school had kept my mind from dwelling on the troubles. Somehow, being hungry at school seemed easier than being hungry at home.

The only problem was my uniform. I had a pair of black trousers, but my parents couldn’t afford to buy a proper white shirt from the headmaster. Instead, my mother sent me to the used clothing stalls in the trading center.

“What difference does it make where it comes from,” she’d said, “as long as it’s white?”

Well, I had only two shirts in total, and even before school started, I’d been forced to wear my uniform shirt and had gotten it dirty. Then we ran out of soap. We’d managed to buy one tablet of cheap Maluwa lye soap at the first of the month, but it had already vanished. We could wash our bodies with warm water and
bongowe
bushes, but a white shirt wasn’t so easy.

One morning I pulled out the half tractor tire we used as a washing sta
tion and filled it with hot water, letting the shirt soak until the water was cool. I then scrubbed it with
bongowe,
but it didn’t work. Yellow circles remained around the underarms and my collar was still gray. What could I do?

On the first day of class, I met Gilbert on the road so we could walk together.

“Gilbert, bo?”

“Bo!”

“Sure?”

“Sure!”

“My friend, this is the day we’ve been waiting for!”

“It is indeed!”

“Are you ready for the teasing and bullying?”

“Yah, who do you think will hit us first?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking of a plan. If a Form Three boy approaches us, and he’s not quite muscular, we should deal with him straightaway.”

“Oh, that’s a good plan! That will show everyone we can fight.”

“Exactly.”

“So who will hit him first?”

“I think you should.”

T
HE FORTY-MINUTE WALK TO
Kachokolo took us over hills and across maize fields and past the
dambo
marsh where we once used to hunt. The school sat in a valley surrounded by tobacco estates, where I could see giant diesel tractors tilling the soil and the few lucky men with jobs working in the sun.

Once at school, we gathered in the yard surrounded by blue gums for our first morning assembly. The headmaster, Mister W. M. Phiri (no relation to the legendary magic fighter), stood up and told us how happy he was to see such bright, promising new faces.