The Gunny Sack (33 page)

The bus stop was outside a local hotel. The padre waited for my trunk to be lowered from the roof and took me to the desk. He asked for separate rooms, and as we parted outside our doors, told me, “Lock your door. A National Service vehicle comes to pick up provisions every morning at the market. They’ll take you to camp.”

How to explain the numbness, the loneliness, the total paralysis of memory, the glazing over of reality, at finding myself in the interior of Africa not knowing a soul, not knowing what to expect … as I sat on the springy bed with clean if stale-smelling linen, the locked door in front of me, the only furniture a locally made chair and dresser, on the wall a black-and-white calendar from the local cooperative with a photograph of men lugging sacks … at such moments you wonder if someone is
watching you all the while, from a hole somewhere perhaps, and if that someone came in and cut your throat in the night whether you would ever be found by those who cared …

 … Strange black men chasing me through a thick, palpable darkness, carrying raised flaming torches and uttering strange oaths … I ran through thick bushes, stumbled over protruding roots and fallen stems, slipped on fallen wet leaves and bark, brushed against thorny branches that cut the skin and drew blood in thin streams … All the while the sounds drew closer, from all directions, the strange oaths, incessant drumming, branches crackling, feet thudding. Tall trees stood silently on either side, like hooded men, menacingly watching my progress into the jungle. I was on a beaten path, and this path was like a tunnel cut into the forest, and at the end of it was a light, the red flickering light of flaming torches against a pitch-black background, and the sounds of strange oaths, of drumming, of branches crackling, feet thumping the ground. As I hurtled towards it, it felt warm, this red flickering light of many torches, and it began to turn yellow and feel hot, and was blinding me as it streaked in through the window in radiant sunbeams, roasting me where I lay perspiring …

Downstairs the town was awake, the market bustling, the bus stop busy …

“I bring you a guest,” said the driver of the vehicle to the sentry at the guard house. From behind the open Land Rover, among sacks of rice, maize flour and red beans, I surveyed the scenery around me. We had driven up a red dirt road through the forest, crossed a stream and climbed up the side of a shallow valley. On the other side some huts were visible. The camp, on this side, consisted of a few large khaki tents and some whitewashed buildings.

My iron trunk was in front of me, painted black, my name prominent in white letters, secured with a heavy padlock.

The sentry, a thin bony-faced Mangati youth, came to take a peck at me and grinned. Here was a man from the interior. I looked back at a set of wild-looking front teeth, the deep forehead, a scar at the side of the head. He was deep, properly black: what we call mweusi. I grinned back.

He let out a shriek, almost doubling up in a show of anger and hurt.

“Shuka-shuka-shuka—get out! Who do you think you are? Are you a minister? Do you think you are an ambassador, a balozi? The Queen of England …”

Calmly and sure of myself I pushed my trunk behind me, jumped down and dragged it after me. Then I placed it on a shoulder, supported by one hand, the other at my side, as if to say: “All ready for service! Uhuru na kazi!”

The Land Rover drove off kicking up a trail of dust and gravel, leaving me to my fate.

The sentry looked at me with bloodshot eyes. His khaki stood up with starch and his boots shone. But his face somehow gave the impression of having just woken up.

“I,” he pointed to his chest, coming close, “am an NSP: National Service Police—understand? Repeat after me: National Service Police.”

“National Service Police.”

“If you misbehave, you are brought to me for punishment. Now, did you understand?”

I stood dumbfounded.

“Say yes, you!” He screamed, stamping a foot.

“Yes.”

“ ‘Yes, Afande’ you head-full-of-water!”

“Yes, Afande!”

“Now. When you come here, your books and your learning you leave outside at the gate.” Stiffly and with ceremony he walked up to the gate and stooped to beat a post with his stick. “Here. Mother and father and uncles and aunts you leave here. Brothers you leave here. Sisters—” He paused to reflect on the
lewd thought. “What do you have in the trunk? Dal? Chevdo? Biriyani?”

The trunk now stood stiffly near me like a companion.

“No. No, Afande!”

“Pick it up and run. Come on, run. Run-run-run.”

“With the trunk?” I cried out in disbelief.

“Bagalas maguy! You talk too much. Put the trunk on your head. Now run.”

Up and down the hill I ran like an unstable donkey, a pregnant camel, my eyes on my feet lest I tripped or stumbled, the trunk bearing down on me, and unknown to me a spectacle for the rest of the camp. Twice it came down, this big black trunk, came crashing down at my feet, each time I picked it up, put it on my head, then on my shoulders and then back when my skull threatened to open up under the weight. And at my side the berserk NSP, goading me with “Reft-light, reft-light, heet-ha, heet-ha,” beating the ground at my feet with his stick, letting out an agonized shriek every time I took a wrong turn, as if I had seriously wounded his feelings. Oh how I cursed you Nathoo and Bandali and Alu Poni, you who had advised me to take the trunk when all I needed was a small rucksack!

Finally, as I was later told, one of the regular afandes showed mercy on me and sent word to the NSP to stop my ordeal. I was brought to a halt before Afande Ali, who then instructed someone to lend me his mess tin. It was there that I saw her again, Amina, under a tree with other fresh recruits from the schools.

“If there is a hell on earth,” somewhat emotionally I wrote to Alu Poni that night under the light of a kerosene lamp, “this is it.”

A few weeks later, with new insight gained, with the help of a metaphor: “We Indians have barged into Africa with our big black trunk, and every time it comes in our way. Do we need it? I should have come with a small bag, a rucksack. Instead I came with ladoos, jelebis, chevdo. Toilet paper. A
woollen suit. And I carried them on my head like a fool.”

To which Alu Poni, Mr. Swahili himself, the superpatriot, replied: “What happened to your hell on earth? You are getting brainwashed, my friend. We should be allowed our ladoos and jelebis. What’s wrong with them? If you were made to look like a fool, don’t blame yourself … Go to town on Sundays. Just walk into any Asian store and tell them you’re from the National Service. They’ll feed you.”

Thus began a parting of ways.

The songs of the National Service. When those months became a faded memory, when the names of favourite afandes were forgotten … when the names of the guns had slipped the mind … and a quarter-mile jog left them once more helpless … the songs remained, clear, every nuance in place, all improvisations at instant recall … on picnics, on Sunday afternoon family gatherings, there would be someone who would recall the song to the kinate. Kinate? Kinanguruma, it roars! Kinate kinanguruma! Ho-ye ho-ye, kinate kinanguruma! Tunakwenda! Kinate kinanguruma! Kula wali … Kinate kinanguruma! We go to eat rice in our mess tins, and the kinate roars. We put Blue Band margarine on our breads … the kinate roars! oh how it roars! Even when political or economic pressures had driven these former recruits across the seas, the kinate never ceased to roar. In a living room or kitchen in London or New York, in an office in Mysore or Karachi those songs were hummed. An ode to the President or the Land Rover, or even those inane lines taught by some cynical British or Israeli officer to his trainee afandes: How many days in a week? All together now: Seven days, seven days, seven days!

Early in the morning we trotted to the main road wishing death on the enemies. Chaka-mchaka? Chinja! Kill! The Portuguese? Chinja! Salazar? Chinja! The South Africans? Chinja! And Ian Smith? Chinja! And Verwoerd? Chinja! And Kambona? Chinja! The straws? Cut! The pipes, all? Cut! As
the Mwalimu had taught, the capitalists had long straws with which they sucked. And the bigger capitalists, the man in the street added, used pipes. Africa is ripe for revolution, Chou En-lai had said, and the National Service was in the forefront. Who is building our nation, eh mama? Not the Americans, mama, no, not the Americans!

A quarter-mile down the valley from where the Mangati kept watch at the gate, the tiny Umoja River gurgled through on its way to Lake Victoria. Here after work we washed in its icy clutches and waited around on its banks like lizards on stones, while our clothes dried. From upstream came the tantalizing sounds of the girls doing the same. But the Umoja had a bend where we dipped our bodies and you had to wade a good distance upstream among stones and through a curtain of brambles and branches to catch sight of the frolicking nymphs. Further downstream the villagers from across the river washed. At the narrowest the river was a few stepping stones wide. To go to town you had to cross it, they said. An Arab called Bakari ran a transportation four miles further up from Denge, the village across. You had to find Bakari, they said.

Denge was eight huts, three on either side of the path and two flung away in the jungle, each with a plot of garden, a goat or two and some children. Corn, banana and pineapple grew in profusion. We’ll take you to Bakari, said the children, and they ran in front of and behind me. Occasionally they disappeared behind a hut or a large bush and watched my progress, peering out and laughing. We’re taking you to Bakari, they assured me. The road was deserted save for a couple of women on their way back from the store with kerosene, and a steady female chatter in school Swahili that stayed unembodied and behind me all the way, making wisecracks about the Asian David Livingstone.

We came to a largish village. Some of the houses were layered with cement. A large tree stood almost in our way in the centre of the village, giving shade to a large area. Here my
little band of escorts turned left and stopped at a whitewashed house. A Coca Cola sign hanging out from the door said, “Prop. Abu Bakar Muhammed.” The door was closed, on it the ubiquitous Raleigh ad, man fleeing lion on the bike, and Stanley Matthews dribbling for Sloan’s liniment. A blue Volkswagen van was parked outside.

Covered in sweat and dust, I banged impatiently on the door. A black woman answered.

“Is Bakari there, mama? I want to go to town.”

She went inside, leaving the door ajar. To my right, at a little window, came sounds of girls chatting excitedly, and I saw that I was being watched, the subject of amused curiosity. Meanwhile the three girls from the camp caught up and stood behind me, leaning against the van, all in pretty, light frocks and looking as fresh as ever. The one in the middle was Amina.

Bakari came to the door, from a very private moment, it seemed, in a white T-shirt and a green loincloth.

“Jambo, Bwana Bakari,” I said.

“Jambo, jambo. Yes? You come from the camp, do you?”

“Yes. I want to go to town. Can you take me?”

“I am closed today. Come tomorrow.”

“What now? Do you think they’ll let us out tomorrow? Eti, this man thinks we are on holiday here!”

“Come on, take us to town, Bwana Bakari. And this Indian hasn’t seen his fellows in two weeks. Have pity on him!”

A lewd grin came upon the Arab’s face. His hand brushed lightly across his crotch. “You girls want to make some money while you’re here?”

“Shut up, Arab, let’s go.”

Abu Bakar Muhammed actually did not run a regular bus service but used the van to transport goods and took an occasional passenger. With me he made an exception. The Africans and this Arab, seeing this sole, lost Indian in their midst, felt obligated to put him in touch with his kind. He looked at me as if he had no choice: “Let’s go.”

“And we,” said the girls. “We’re coming too.”

“Please let me screw you,” begged Bakari, making his lewd gesture again, and all the way to Kaboya he tried to convince them of the benefits they would obtain by satisfying this, his one wish.

He dropped us at the market and promised to be back at six.

I looked around me at downtown Kaboya and wondered in which direction to start walking. There was a smell of ripe pineapples and bananas, lake fish were on display, a bus was being loaded.

“Hey, Indian,” she called out after me, and all three came up. “Be sure you’re here at six. We don’t want to go with that Arab alone.”

We were Indian, Arab, African. What were names for? They meant nothing to us, part of privacies we did not let each other into, had no desire to intrude into …

“All right.”

The town of Kaboya was built around the market. Streets went around it in squares, and other streets cut across them, so that the whole effect was that of a maze. The streets closest to the centre were paved. One street withered into a path that ended at the lake. Across from me was the hotel, the place where I had spent my first night in these parts. It now greeted me like an old friend, a familiar neighbourhood place. I went in and ordered tea. And I did what my ancestor Dhanji Govindji had once done at Matamu, I enquired about the local mukhi.

I walked on the sidewalk, to the inner side of a dry, littered gutter, and looked for a decent-looking Indian face inside a shop. A man stood haggling with a fish vendor on the steps of the third store I passed and I walked up to him. “God bless, Uncle. I am from the National Service. Can you tell me where the mukhi’s shop is?”

The man eyed me, scratching a beard that was beginning to turn white. He was in white pyjamas with a large shirt hanging
out. “The mukhi, henh? Haya basi,” he said to the vendor, concluding the deal, “take them upstairs. Saidi!” this to the servant, “stand here and keep watch!” Without another word to me, as if it was quite normal for a strange boy to ask for the mukhi, he hurried inside, where a door led into a courtyard.

The store was filled to capacity, not a shelf in any birij empty, every wall covered, the customary President’s photo prominently displayed, a calendar with English, Arabic and Hindu dates, with Hanuman, Ganesh or Rama covered over with a photo of the Kaaba, and two fundis sewing outside, facing each other from opposite sides of the doorway, the customary guardian angels. Arich store … not a customer in sight, but obviously they came in season, handling wads of crisp new “masais” with the facility of bankers … A boy ran in from the courtyard then back out as if he had taken the wrong way. Two girls peeped in, and then giggled. One was about my age, the other younger. And I thought, How sweet the sight! One takes the sweetness of Indian girls for granted—the playful, even mocking, innocence that evokes tender feelings inside you and you forget how possessive you feel towards them—only when you’ve not seen one for some time do you realize that … It seemed ages since I had left home, it was two weeks. I stood there waiting, reflecting on the sweet innocence of Indian girls among other things, a spectacle for those inside and outside. People gawked from the sidewalk, shamelessly retracing steps to take a second look. The informality that comes from familiarity. They too felt possessive.