The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2 page)

Grandpa displaying his handmade bow and arrow, once used to kill lions and wildebeest. People say Grandpa was the greatest hunter in the district.
Photographs courtesy of Bryan Mealer

The wizard crouched on the dead man’s chest and drank a cup of magic porridge, which flowed through his feet and into the lifeless body. The dead man’s fingers began to move, then his hands.

“Let me up,” he said, then stood and faced the army of serpents.

Together, they checked the fangs of every cobra in attendance, searching for the one that had killed the man. Usually, the wizard would quickly cut off the head of the guilty snake, but this time, the dead man took pity and allowed the cobra to live. For his services, the wizard was paid three British pounds. My grandpa saw this with his own eyes.

When my father was a young man, he often went hunting with his father. Even then, the forest was so dangerous that hunters observed a sacred ritual before their outings. Hunts were usually initiated by one man, the
mwini chisokole,
or owner of the hunt, who called together all the willing men from the surrounding villages. The owner decided where and when the hunt would take place, and in the event of a kill, he’d receive the choicest portion of the meat, usually the hindquarter. Grandpa was often this person.

On the night before the hunt, the leader wasn’t allowed to sleep with his wife, not even in the same room. The purpose was to keep the man’s focus and attention as sharp as possible, and to guarantee a solid night’s rest. Losing focus made you careless in the forest, and worst of all, left you open to bewitching. That night, sleeping alone at a neighbor’s house, or in a separate hut with his sons, the leader would boil a pot of red maize
mixed with certain roots and medicines, which he’d distribute the following morning to each hunter in the party. This was part of the magic, because everyone believed this protected them from danger.

Before setting out, the hunters also instructed their wives to stay indoors until the hunt was over, preferably lying in bed and sleeping. They thought this would cause the animals to sleep as well, allowing the hunters to sneak up on them with ease.

W
ALKING THROUGH THE FOREST
as a boy, I didn’t worry so much about cobras or lions, since most of them had vanished. But other dangers were waiting in the forests that remained, and along the quiet, empty fields where the ghosts of trees seemed to whisper their sadness. Walking there alone, one of my greatest fears was the Gule Wamkulu.

The Gule Wamkulu were a secret gang of dancers. They performed at the chief’s request at funerals and initiation ceremonies, when many Chewa boys become men. The Gule Wamkulu were said to be the spirits of our dead ancestors, resurrected from the afterworld and sent to roam the earth. No longer human, they shared the skin of animals, and their faces resembled the beasts of hell—twisted devil birds and demons howling in fright.

When the Gule Wamkulu performed, you dared to watch only from a distance. Often they appeared from the bush walking on stilts, towering above the crowd and screaming in different tongues. Once, I even saw one of them climb a blue gum pole while upside down, like a spider. And when they danced, one thousand men seemed to inhabit their bodies, each moving in the opposite direction.

When the Gule Wamkulu weren’t performing, they traveled the forests and marshes looking for young boys to take back to the graveyards. What happened to you there, I never wanted to know. It was bad luck to even speak about the Gule Wamkulu. And God help you if you were ever caught doubting them, saying, “Look at their hands, they have five fingers like me. These guys are not real.” Doing this would surely get you be
witched, and since the Gule Wamkulu answered only to the chief, there’d be no one to defend you. When they appeared in the village, every woman and child dropped what they were doing and ran.

Once when I was very young, a magic dancer appeared in our courtyard, strutting like a cock and hissing like a snake. His head was wrapped in a flour sack with a black hole for a mouth and a long trunk for a nose. My mother and father were in the fields, so my sisters and I ran for the trees, only to watch this passing ghost steal one of our chickens.

(Donkeys are the only creatures not afraid of Gule Wamkulu. If the donkey sees one of these dancers, it will chase them into the bush and kick them with its mighty legs. Don’t ask me why, but the donkey is very brave.)

I tried to be courageous like my friend the donkey whenever I walked through the forest. But witches and wizards never reveal their identity, so you never know where their traps lie waiting. In these places where they practice, their potent magic takes on many shapes. Men with bald heads, twenty feet tall, are said to appear on the roads outside of Ntchisi, a few at first, then dozens all around. Ghost trucks drive the same roads at night, coming on fast with their bright lights flashing and engines revving loud. But as the lights pass by, no truck is attached. No tire marks are left on the road, and if you’re driving a car, your engine will die until morning.

Magic hyenas wander the villages at night, snatching several goats at once in their razor jaws and delivering them to the doorsteps of wizards. Magic lions are sent to kill delinquent debtors, and snakes the size of tractors can lie in wait for you in your fields.

But the dangers for children are even greater. As I mentioned, these wizards command great armies of children to do their witchcraft, and each night they prowl the villages for fresh recruits. They tempt them with delicious meats, saying it’s the only way to heaven. Once the children devour the tasty morsels, it’s revealed as human flesh. By then it’s too late, for once the wizard’s evil is inside your body, it controls you forever.

In addition to casting spells for curses and revenge, the witches often battle one another. This leads to great confusion in the kingdom of the
devil, and this strife leaves many dead and injured, which is why children make the perfect soldiers.

The children pile aboard witch planes that prowl the skies at night, capable of traveling to Zambia and London in a single minute. Witch planes can be anything: a wooden basin, a clay pot, a simple hat. Flying about on magic duty, the children are sent to homes of rival wizards to test their powers. If the child is killed in the process, the wizard can determine the weapon of his enemy and develop something stronger. Other nights, the children visit camps of other witches for competition. Here, mystical soccer matches are played on mysterious fields in places I’ve never heard of, where the cursed children use human heads as balls and compete for great cups of flesh.

A
FTER ESCAPING THE BUBBLEGUM
vendor, I became terribly afraid of being captured, and I tried to think of ways to protect myself. I knew witches and wizards were allergic to money because the presence of cash is like a rival evil. Any contact with money will snap their spell and revert them back to human form—usually naked. For this reason, people often plaster their walls and bed mats with kwacha notes to protect themselves during the night. If they’re suddenly awoken by a naked man trying to escape, their suspicions are correct.

Another way of protecting yourself is to pray your soul clean each night at the foot of your bed, and I’d done that, too. Homes of the prayerful are concealed from witch planes that fly overhead. It’s like passing through a cloud.

“Papa, please, some kwacha notes for my walls,” I begged my father one afternoon. “I can’t sleep at night.”

My father knew a lot about witchcraft, but he had no place for magic in his own life. To me, this made him seem even stronger. My parents had raised us to be churchgoing Presbyterians who believed God was the best protection. Once you opened your heart to magic, we were taught, you never knew what else you might let inside. We respected the power of juju, even feared it, but my family always trusted our faith would prevail.

My father was mending a fence around the garden and stopped what he was doing. “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “In 1979 when I was trading, I was riding in the back of a pickup going to Lilongwe to sell dried fish in the market. Several others were with me. The truck suddenly lost control, pitching us all into the air. When we landed, we saw it rolling straight for us. I said at that moment, ‘I’m dying now. This is my time.’ But just before the truck rolled over my body and crushed me like an ant, it skidded to a stop. I could reach out and touch it. Several people were dead in the grass, but I didn’t have a scratch.”

He turned to face me, making his point.

“After that happened, how can I believe in wizards and charms? A magic man would have tried these things and died. I was saved by the power of God. Respect the wizards, my son, but always remember, with God on your side, they have no power.”

I trusted my father, but wondered how his explanation accounted for Rambo and Chuck Norris, who came to the trading center that summer and created a lot of controversy. These men were appearing in films shown in the local theater, which was really just a thatch hut with wooden benches, a small television, and a VCR. For this reason, everyone called it the video show. At night, wonderful and mysterious things began happening in this place, but since I was forbidden to be out after dark, I missed them all. Instead, I relied on the stories I heard from my mates who lived close by and whose parents weren’t so strict. These boys, such as Peter Ka-manga, would find me the next day when I arrived.

“Last night I watched the best of all movies,” Peter said. “Rambo jumped from the top of the mountain and was still firing his gun when he landed. Everyone in front of him died and the entire mountain exploded.” He clutched a phantom machine gun and sent a burst of deadly rounds into the maize mill.

“Oh,” I said, “when will they ever show these films during the day? I never see anything.”

The exploits of Rambo and Delta Force became confusing to some, who’d never imagined men escaping entire armies, while still managing
to kill so many people. The night
Terminator
came to the video show was simply shocking. When Peter found me the next morning, he was still in a state.

“William, last night I watched a movie that I still don’t understand,” he said. “This man was shot left, right, and center, yet he still managed to live. His enemies blew off his arms and legs, even his head, yet his eyes were still alive. I’m telling you, this man must be the greatest wizard who ever lived.”

It sounded fantastic. “Do you think these
azungu
from America have such magic?” I asked. “I don’t believe it.”

“This is what I saw. I’m telling you it’s true.”

Although it would be several years before I finally saw one of these films in the video show, they started to influence many of the games we played back home. One of them was played with toy guns we made from a
mpoloni
bush.

It was called USA versus Vietnam.

To make these guns, we removed the core from the
mpoloni
’s stem, much like disassembling a ballpoint pen, and used it as both a ramrod and trigger. After removing the core, we chewed up bits of maize pith and shoved them down the barrel, followed by paper spitballs to create a seal. When the ramrod was forced down behind, it created enough pressure to spray an opponent with a shower of slimy gunk.

I was captain of one team, while my cousin Geoffrey was captain of the other. Along with some other cousins and neighbors, we split into teams of five, then hunted one another in the maize rows and across the dirt courtyard that separated our house from Geoffrey’s.

“You go left, I’ll go right!” I instructed my comrades one such afternoon, then scrambled on knees and elbows through the red dirt. We were never clean.

I spotted a bit of Geoffrey’s trouser from around the corner of the house, so I snuck around the opposite way without spooking the chickens. Once I was clear, I bolted around the corner. It was an easy ambush.

“Tonga!”

I jammed the ramrod down the barrel and released a shower of white saliva and mush, spraying my cousin square in the face.

He fell to the ground, holding his heart.

“Eh, mayo ine!
I’m dead.”

Usually, whichever team won first got to be America the following round, since America always defeated Vietnam in the video show.

W
E WERE A SOLID
gang of three: myself, Geoffrey, and our friend Gilbert, whose father was the chief of our whole Wimbe district. Everyone called Gilbert’s father Chief Wimbe, even though his real name was Albert Mofat.

When we got bored with playing USA versus Vietnam, Geoffrey and I went to find Gilbert. Going over to Gilbert’s house always guaranteed a show, as the chief’s work was never done. As usual, we found a line of truck drivers, market women, farmers, and traders waiting outside under the blue gum trees to share their concerns and grievances. Each held a chicken under one arm, or a small bit of cash in hand as a gift for their great leader. During these personal encounters with the chief, people addressed him as
“Charo,”
the ruler of all the land.