No Hurry in Africa (10 page)

‘Malaria swells all your internal organs, it feels about four times as bad as flu, and leaves you bedridden for over a week at least,’ was how Mutinda put it.

It fell within the realm of his medical expertise.

‘It has to be treated early, and can be fatal if left untreated. The problem is, the initial symptoms are tiredness, a cough, and just about the exact same run of the mill symptoms as the common cold, the flu and a lot of other ailments.’

When I was in Kenya, one of Arsenal’s players contracted malaria while on international duty in Africa. It was reported that all the other Arsenal players carefully avoided him on his return. That malaria is contagious is a common misconception; it is spread only by mosquitoes biting.

One night before the rains stopped, I was in the car with Sr. MM when we came upon two lorries that had toppled on their sides off the dirt roads in the rain and lightning, just outside Kitui village. For once, I was breathless with anxiety, fearing the curious crowds that had assembled in the darkness and the possibility of bandits among them, maybe intent on opportunistically looting the contents of the lorries—or passing vehicles.

We were on our way to visit the mission house of two convivial Irish Kiltegan priests, Fr. Frank and Fr. Liam. Fr. Frank and Fr. Liam were in their sixties, typical of the age profile of the Irish missionaries in Africa. We spent a long time that night on the verandah admiring the squadrons of glowing fireflies dancing in the rain. We were exchanging stories.

‘There was uproar the other day when everyone in Kwa Vonza village refused to be confirmed,’ Fr. Frank told us, in between puffs on his trademark pipe. ‘They had heard about the Holy Spirit coming down upon them; they thought it meant evil spirits would possess them. It was time for a bit of basic theology.’

As the topic of conversation turned to witchcraft, the electricity suddenly went off in the mission house. We lit candles and pondered, as we always did, whether the electricity going off was caused by the rain, or if gangsters had cut the electricity supply for the village in order to raid a house. No one ever said aloud what he was thinking. Would we get a knock on the window?

Sr. MM had told me that, earlier in 2005, a gang of armed men called to the mission house one night when Fr. Frank was alone. All the missionaries have a watchman outside their homes during the night, but Fr. Frank’s had a habit of falling asleep on the job. The gang was surprised when Fr. Frank opened the door to them, smiled and simply said ‘
Karibu
’ (you’re welcome in). They had a good search round, and were disappointed to find nothing. Fr. Frank owns only a couple of changes of clothes, some books, his characteristic cap to protect his bald head, and an old ink-ribbon typewriter that he lets some of the villagers use. He gives everything else away.

If Sr. MM was like my aunt, then these two were to become like uncles to me. Yet they were so different in personality. Fr. Frank was a calm, contented, jovial and robust hardworking man from the Dublin Mountains. Whereas Fr. Liam, from Tipperary, was eager, energised and animated behind his big glasses; his generosity and conscientiousness were testaments to his character. Both had a sharp wit and could tell a good story. Fr. Frank was, on occasions, to be seen clad in a big heavy jacket in the afternoon heat, alighting from his battered old motorbike after doing his priestly rounds. Fr. Liam preferred the bright safari suits his parishioners had sewed for him while he attended to his duties.

Fr. Frank was known to one and all as
Mnambo,
the Kikamba word for lion. He either did not know why or was too modest to say—although I heard a rumour that he had started it himself decades previously. As he and I were driving to Mass, very early the next morning after the rains, to an out-station near Nyumbani, his small jeep became stuck in the mud of the dirt track, half way up a slope. Not a man to give up lightly, Fr. Frank revved and revved, then finally yelped,

‘Uh oh!’

Gently, almost in slow motion, the jeep toppled over side-ways—with us inside. We abandoned it and trudged through the muck to reach the out-station, carrying all the paraphernalia for the Mass in our hands.

All the Africans we encountered along the track were delighted with the recent rain, telling us about the amount they had captured in barrels and buckets. They did not seem to mind the effort involved in hauling the oxen and carts through the deep mud. We greeted all the barefoot schoolchildren we met along the way. They were carrying copybooks and pencils, as well as some sticks for a fire in school—they found it cold after the rain. I was sweltering still. I took some photographs that the kids were thrilled to view when I showed them back on the digital camera.

Before the November rains, I had been cycling to the mission house one day after leaving Sr. MM’s home. I had to pass over an ancient concrete bridge that was cracked and broken, and about to collapse. I decided to crawl down onto the riverbed (as it was dry at the time) and cross that way for fear of falling through the gaps in the bridge. Just then, forty or so children were walking home from school, coming in the other direction. As they were walking over the bridge, they spotted me below. Not one of them would get off it until I took a group photo of them on the rickety bridge. Quite concerned, I gestured to them to keep moving, but they insisted on a photo. I was terrified it would collapse as I took the shot. I could just picture how that would go down with everyone in Kitui—and in Ireland! The bridge got washed away completely the week after, and that photo is a piece of local history now, I suppose.

Often when I was taking a photo of Akambas, they would tell me to wait, then disappear into their homes, and come back twenty minutes later dressed in their Sunday best. Fr. Liam, a trained photographer, possessed a collection of more than 40,000 photographs he had taken of the people of Kitui—a priceless archive dating back to the 1960s when things were even more primitive.

‘Back then,’ he recalled, ‘most Akamba didn’t wear the conventional clothes they do now.’

Whenever I travelled around before, I always regarded the camera as a necessary nuisance. I preferred to enjoy the moment instead of capturing it for posterity. I still do, but I became a bit more snap-happy in Africa. But for all the photos I took, some of the most vivid images in my memory are photos that got away. Perhaps it was inappropriate to take a picture, it was too dangerous, the moment passed too quickly, people noticed and ruined the spontaneity, people refused to be in the photo, the camera was broken, the camera was forgotten, the batteries did not work, there was no memory space or film left, or else I thought I would see the same scene again and of course I never did. In any case, a camera can never capture the kaleidoscopic colours of a 360-de-gree African panorama, full of exotic sounds and smells.

A truly bizarre experience, which I failed to capture on camera, occurred shortly after the rains abated. Kimanze had taken a break from work and was resting on the ground near the river. I was a distance away, on higher ground, when I heard a commotion. He had suddenly jumped up, screaming urgently. People were rushing over towards him amid a hullabaloo of shouts. He had nearly been completely wrapped up by a giant twenty-foot black-green python that had slithered up behind, unnoticed. The others nearby were desperately throwing stones at it. After a short frantic time, they were able to beat it off with their farming implements. Had there been no one around, it is possible Kimanze could conceivably have been killed. I had often wandered down to that exact spot on my own, not even aware of the python’s existence up to that point.

The really odd thing, however, was the almighty rumpus that ensued immediately afterwards. Nearly everyone was gesticulating vigorously and shaking their heads, or had angry expressions on their faces as they made their point in Kikamba. Kimanze would not speak about it to me afterwards; he never did in fact, not about any of it. It took me two days to get it out of Mwangangi what it was all about. It was like a confession, the way he explained the incident in a slightly bashful tone.

‘Brendan, not everyone believes; it is just some people. That particular python lives under a
mikuyu
tree on the riverbank right next to where Kimanze was sitting. It is a species of tree associated with evil or magic.’

In my head, I was comparing it to the fairy trees in Ireland.

‘A few days before that,’ he continued, ‘some people here sacrificed a goat to this python. They placed a circle of blood around the tree and left the goat for the snake to eat.’

There was obviously more to this than I had ever imagined.

‘It is forbidden to break the bones of the goat being sacrificed. During that ceremony they asked the snake for more rain,’ he explained. ‘The workers of Nyumbani told Kiragu that they would not dig wells near this python—unless a sacrifice of a goat was made first.’

Could this be the oddest reason I would ever hear for a workers’ strike, I wondered.

Nyumbani is a Catholic charity, so the nearby Catholic out-station sold one of its goats to Nyumbani, which in turn donated it to be sacrificed to the giant python in return for the rains— and few people seemed to see any irony in this whole set up!

‘The loud row occurred because some people thought the snake should not have been attacked and chased away,’ Mwangangi went on. ‘It goes against their witchcraft beliefs. They predict the snake will punish us by withholding the rains.’

As we sauntered past the same spot late that afternoon on our way to Mutinda’s home, Mwangangi relayed more evidence of the prevalence of witchcraft among the people.

‘Yesterday, another goat was sacrificed to appease that python after two men came to fisticuffs within sight of its den in the
mikuyu
tree. Akamba custom forbids fighting within sight of the python’s lair.’

The strength of the people’s belief in witchcraft was brought home to me much later, in July 2006. The papers reported that in Kisii District near Lake Victoria, several families were burned out of their homes, and some people were burned alive by lynch mobs who accused them of being witches or witchdoctors. After some days, the witch-hunt evolved into being used as an excuse to settle old scores. It was effectively Salem, Massachusetts, transported to Kenya 2006.

We met Kimanze just past the
mikuyu
tree, where he was fixing pipes for the water system long after others had stopped work. He was unusually conscientious for an Akamba.

‘Come on Kimanze; it’s time you finished!’ I urged him.

He looked up at the sun and realised the time of day. It was quite an accurate method, because being on the equator, the sun maintains a constant pattern throughout the year. I told him we were off to visit Mutinda, so he decided to join us. Kimanze grabbed my hand a few seconds after we set-off, as if we were a couple on a stroll. This was one Kenyan custom, just like the witchcraft, that I still found different at this stage. Men held hands with each other even though they were not that way inclined. However, one never saw a man and a woman holding hands or hugging in public, or indeed ever saw a man dancing with his wife even though one might see him dancing with every other woman around the place. At the beginning, I did not know what to think each time a man took my hand when I was walking in Kitui, until Mwangangi told me it meant you are just good platonic friends. If you would not hold hands, it was a very negative signal that you did not want his friendship.

We were sharing all sorts of stories on that walk to Mutinda’s home. The one taboo subject of course was Kimanze’s close encounter with the python, now that he had joined us. I told them about a recent scary experience of my own. Cycling back from Kwa Vonza, I had passed a skull by the roadside with money inside it. I did not delay long enough to confirm if it was the skull of a baboon or a human. After all the witchcraft I had heard about, I fairly kept on cycling, not entirely sure what it was I was frightened of.

‘It was a human skull, Brendan.’ Kimanze put me in the picture. ‘But two brothers from Kwa Vonza came and stole that money. They bought beer with it.’

He did not elaborate any further as to what happened to the thieves.

But it reminded me of another tale. Fr. Liam told me that he had his bible stolen once. Some Catholics would hope to retrieve it by praying to Saint Anthony. The witchcraft way of getting it back is to place the tail of a goat on the spot where it was stolen, and put a curse on whoever stole it. The Akamba are so scared of such a curse, once they hear it has been performed, the stolen object always mysteriously reappears. Fr. Liam recalled with amusement how he got his bible back.

‘I placed a goat’s tail on the spot my bible was stolen from. I omitted to perform the curse, of course, but word must have got around, because my bible reappeared within hours.’

An outsider such as myself has to ask whether witchcraft really does work, or instead works because the people believe it works, with a faith as strong as any belief in supernatural powers. I have an open mind tinged with scepticism on such matters. I could not be persuaded, for example, that a python could bring rain upon Kitui—no matter how many goats you fed it. However, there was plenty of evidence of the efficacy of witchcraft practices. For example, I saw shops with the doors left open at night in Kwa Vonza village, through which no human or even a dog would pass through, or indeed
could
pass through if the witchcraft was working. There was also an African priest I was friendly with, who told me that whenever he passed through Kwa Vonza village on his motorbike, a dog would chase after it and try to bite him. The priest complained to the owner. The dog never even looked at the passing motorbike again, let alone chase after it. I could think of several rational explanations for that one, but they would not count for much. The owner was widely known to be practicing witchcraft, and that was enough.

However, there were some black-magic-related beliefs that seemed downright incredible to me. I reminded Kimanze of the man we had seen in Mombasa who was chopping down a tree laden with bananas.