A Girl Named Disaster

31

I can’t stay,” said Nhamo, looking out over the endless lake beyond the mukwa log. She didn’t know who she was talking to. The island, perhaps. “If I stay, I’ll go mad. Or the leopard will get me.” She felt it was only a matter of time. The great cat had marked Rumpy as his prey long ago. Grandmother said that if a lion or a leopard tasted someone’s tears, it would never be satisfied until it got the whole person.

She considered dragging the log to the water in its present state. She could sit in the hollow and float along—but it would probably flip over with her inside. Anyhow, she couldn’t even budge it. Nhamo contemplated Crocodile Guts’s boat. “He said the njuzu taught him everything he knew about water. I wish they would do something for me.”

Or had they?

Who taught her to swim? And who found her the island with the Portuguese grave? Who told her to hollow out the log with coals? And who slithered up and down the tree fitting pieces of wood into the holes?

“I have been such a fool,” whispered Nhamo. After many years even a good boat gets cracks, Crocodile Guts had said the first time she met his spirit. I used to plug them with sap from the mutowa tree.

She turned Crocodile Guts’s boat over and studied the bottom. The gap was as wide as her little finger on the inside, but it narrowed to a hairline outside. She could whittle a slice of wood to fit it—and pack it securely with mutowa sap and wild cotton fiber. It should last long enough to reach shore.

Nhamo worked feverishly all day. She mended every defect she could find, both inside and out. She poked sticky cotton into tiny gaps with a sliver of dassie bone. She held a glowing branch next to the wood to dry the seals. She harvested all her plants from the little island—leaves, seeds, and roots—leaving nothing to replant in the rainy season. Everything depended on this last attempt. She would succeed, or she would join the njuzu in their watery kingdom.

The next morning she said good-bye to the baboon troop. Tag scampered after a butterfly he hadn’t a hope of catching, and Donkeyberry groomed Fat Cheeks by the dry stream before everyone set out on the daily search for food. There was no sign that any of them missed Rumpy.

Nhamo dragged the boat to the reeds and packed it with her stores. She had one fish trap still full of kudu meat, and a few yams and tomatoes. She was encouraged to see that the interior of the boat stayed dry as she paddled along, but to be absolutely sure, she rowed to the far end of the island and spent the night there.

As the sun rose, she set out again, keeping it at her back. The island fell behind her. It was still visible at sundown, and during the night the current drifted her partway back. The second day she forged on, and by nightfall she saw land again.

The forest went on and on, with here and there an inlet. After following the coast for several hours, Nhamo believed that she had reached the true shore and not another island. The dry-season current was so sluggish she was able to move much more swiftly than she had months before.

She saw plumes of smoke. People were living in the forest, but she never saw them. A natural caution kept her from looking for them. They might be cannibals. Nhamo had been away from humans so long, she felt like a wild animal who might be hunted instead of welcomed.

The days passed as she doggedly paddled along the shore. The air grew heavy with unshed rain, although the clouds still hid in Mwari’s country. Sometimes she blundered into a side channel and wasted hours working her way back out. Sometimes she was so frustrated, she sat in the boat and cried. But always, eventually, her spirit rebounded.

Whenever she saw a mutowa tree, she went ashore to gather more sap and more wild cotton. She pulled the craft onto sandbanks and poked as much caulking as she could into the cracks. The inside of the boat became unpleasantly sticky. Dirt glued itself to her legs. Now and then thunder rolled from somewhere beyond the horizon. She saw lightning far off in the middle of the night, but no clouds.

At last Nhamo spotted a cluster of huts set back from the water. She studied them anxiously. The heat dried her eyes so much she could hardly make anything out. As she got closer, she observed women squatting on the shore, beating clothes on rocks. A girl with a switch sat guard over a cluster of babies. They were exactly like her own villagers! Nhamo’s spirit leaped.

The women shouted and pointed at her. Nhamo struggled to control her fear. What was wrong with her? These were people. She had braved the lake to find them.

The women stared with frank amazement as she paddled toward the land. Nhamo realized she must present a strange sight. Her hair hadn’t been combed since the day before she was to marry Zororo. She wore a girdle of smelly rabbit skins. She had a spear tied to her back and a panga stuck into a makeshift belt. The villagers moved away warily as she came ashore.

“Masikati. Greetings,” said Nhamo, clapping her hands politely. “Have you spent the day well?”

“We have done so if you have done so,” said one of the women. “What—who—are you?”

“I’m Nhamo Jongwe. I’m looking for my father.”

“He isn’t here,” said the woman.

“Is this Zimbabwe?”

“It’s that way.” The woman gestured to the west. Her expression said, I wish you were there rather than here.

“Is it far?”

An old woman who had been sitting in the shade of a tree spoke up. “You weren’t thinking of going in that boat, were you?”

“I was, ambuya,” Nhamo said courteously.

“Let her go, Mother. It’s none of our business,” said the young woman.

“She’s only a waif from the forest, Oppah,” snapped the old woman. She turned to Nhamo. “You wouldn’t get far, child. The border patrol watches that part of the river like vultures. Anyhow, the Zambezi speeds up where the Luangwa joins the main channel. If the soldiers didn’t shoot you, the current would send you straight to the bottom.”

Nhamo sat down in dismay. What soldiers? Why would anyone shoot her?

“You could take the road,” the old woman continued, “but the border patrol would ask you for identity papers. Do you have any?”

“No.”

The old woman nodded. “Then they’d send you straight back.”

“Why?” cried Nhamo. “I only want to see my father. What difference does it make to them?”

“They just will. Ask anyone if you don’t believe me.”

“You’re making her cry,” said Oppah.

Nhamo couldn’t help it. She had battled so long to get to Zimbabwe, one more obstacle was more than she could take. She began to sob. She curled up into a ball on the ground with grief.

“Don’t do that!” exclaimed Oppah. “There’s more than one path in the forest. Goodness, we sneak into Zimbabwe all the time. We’ll tell you which way to go. Now tell me, how long has it been since you ate? You’re all skin and bones!”

So the women helped Nhamo sit up, and the girl who had been watching the babies ran off to fetch food. Soon Nhamo was sitting under the tree with a bowl of cold sadza and tomato relish. It reminded her of her own village, and she burst into fresh tears. Little by little, the women wormed her story out of her—or as much of it as Nhamo dared to tell. She left out the part about the ngozi. She didn’t want people to think she was cursed.

“Imagine! Living with baboons for months! It’s no wonder you look—ah, you look—” Oppah stopped in confusion.

“Oh, I wasn’t alone,” Nhamo said cheerfully. “I had Mother and Crocodile Guts and the njuzu, except I never got used to them—” She halted. Everyone was staring at her again.

“Please excuse me, but didn’t you say your mother was dead?” inquired Oppah.

Nhamo realized she had made a serious mistake. “I dreamed of her,” she explained. It was all right to dream of spirits. It was how the ancestors preferred to communicate.

“And the njuzu?” The friendliness in the gathering had suddenly evaporated.

“I, uh, dreamed of them, too.” But Nhamo knew the answer was bad. Normal people didn’t talk to water spirits, only ngangas did—or witches. The villagers were already suspicious of her weird appearance.

“Well, I think we should help this one on her way,” Oppah said briskly. The others agreed, even Oppah’s old mother. Nhamo’s spirit sank. She had looked forward to a night surrounded by people, but now they wanted to get rid of her. The women gave her a small amount of mealie meal and took her to a road running along the far side of the village.

Nhamo was sorry to lose the boat, but it had begun to leak badly again. If the mouth of the Luangwa River was as bad as everyone said, it wouldn’t have survived anyhow. Maybe it will sink out there in the lake and go to the country of the njuzu, she thought. They can tell Crocodile Guts where it is.

“Remember: Walk as far as the three baobab trees on the other side of the hill shaped like a waterbuck’s ear. Turn right on the path and follow it until you see bright lights. Don’t take any other path! The soldiers put land mines along the border during the war, and most of them are still there.” With that, Oppah firmly sent Nhamo on her way.

What was a border? Nhamo wondered as she trudged along. She had the grain bag packed with mealie meal, yams, and dried kudu meat, plus a few tightly stoppered calabashes of water. She had the precious dress-cloth, Uncle Kufa’s knife, six matches, two clay cooking pots, her weapons, and the bag of gold nuggets around her neck.

Big clouds were piling up in the east. She heard a distant grumble of thunder. Grandmother said if you heard thunder without seeing lightning, it was the voices of the njuzu celebrating the approach of rain.

What was the border patrol guarding that was so valuable? They had guns and land mines just to keep children from looking for their fathers. It didn’t make sense. Nhamo passed the hill shaped like a waterbuck’s ear and found the three baobabs. Beyond them was the path, clearly marked.

The sun was just past noon as she sat by the road to take a drink of water. A strange noise came from the west. It grew louder and louder. It wasn’t like the tractor she had seen at the trading post or the airplanes she had occasionally glimpsed, although it came from the sky. Nhamo’s nervousness increased as it approached: Whap! Whap! Whap!

It was louder than anything she had ever encountered. She dived into the bushes as a large object swooped down the road. She had a glimpse of a whirling tail and a bulbous body full of soldiers. They had guns! They were looking for her!

Nhamo plunged into the forest. She felt thorns tear at the grain bag. Her spear caught between two trees and brought her to a jolting halt before she wrenched it free and kept running. Whap! Whap! Whap! The thing curved around and came back. It flew in low over the trees where Nhamo lay spread-eagled in terror. It didn’t see her. It went back the way it had come, and soon its noise faded into the normal sounds of the bush.

Hezvo! Nhamo never wanted to meet another one of those! She had to rest before she gained the courage to go on. When she sat up, she realized she wasn’t on the path anymore. She was in the middle of the forest and she had no idea where the path was.

She couldn’t see the hill shaped like a waterbuck’s ear. The trees were too dense, and anyhow it might look like something completely different from this side. The only thing Nhamo was sure of was the direction of Zimbabwe. It lay toward the setting sun.

Sighing, she took stock of her belongings. The thorns had torn a large hole in the grain bag. She rearranged the articles inside to allow for it. The thorns had torn a sizable rip in her, too. A seam of blood ran from her shoulder to her elbow. She hoped it wouldn’t become infected.

Nhamo hefted the grain bag to her shoulder and set off again. There was nothing else to do. She would tackle the problem of land mines when she actually reached the border.

The clouds were building rapidly. The thunder was closer, and now she actually saw streaks of lightning. The birds swooped and twittered. Leaves stirred on the trees. Termites boiled out of their nests, and Nhamo paused briefly to have a snack.

Soon she encountered a trail. She didn’t know whether it was the correct one, or if it was made by people or animals, but it went in the right direction. She made much better time now.

The clouds gathered overhead. Their bottoms were dark and lumpy, and Nhamo knew a violent storm was imminent.

“I wish I could have stayed in that village,” she mourned. Lightning crackled down. “Oh! That was close!” She smelled rain, a cool dusty odor that sent ripples of excitement through her body—but she wished she could find shelter!

Crash! Nhamo flinched. A rushing sound rapidly approached through the trees. The wind suddenly whipped the forest into a frenzy. Beyond the tossing branches she spied a hut, and farther on a wide, open space. It was a dried-up marsh pocked by the footprints of animals. In the eerie green light she saw the trails of buffalo, antelope, and elephant. Crash!

The hut was abandoned. Its door was gone and the grass roof looked unreliable, but Nhamo had no choice. The first drops of rain were pattering down. She quickly poked around the dark floor of the hut with a long stick. There didn’t seem to be any snakes. She sat against the clay wall as far from the entrance as she could manage and watched the dense sheets of water sweep past.

Maiwee! The wind threatened to tear off the roof. Leaks appeared in several places, but Nhamo’s spot stayed dry. She hugged herself against the sudden chill and watched the marsh thirstily drink up the first water of the season.

Crash! A tongue of lightning came down so close it blinded her. The bushes nearby exploded with startled buffalo, who had apparently been sheltering under the wrong tree. One of them bellowed loudly and charged across the marsh with its tail tucked between its legs. It got halfway and then, horrifyingly, the ground heaved up with a tremendous roar, louder than the thunder itself. Nhamo thought for an instant the creature had been struck by another bolt of lightning.

Clods of dirt flew in all directions, some of them raining on the hut. The buffalo was flung into the air. It fell back with its stomach torn in two and one leg completely severed. It flailed briefly and died with its tongue protruding from its mouth.

Grandmother had described land mines, but they were far, far worse than Nhamo had imagined. She had never dreamed such destruction was possible! Now she noticed a collapsed fence running along the edge of the marsh. The wire looped under and over termite-eaten posts on the ground.

“I g-g-guess I f-found the b-border,” said Nhamo between clenched teeth.

She watched water pool around the ruined body of the buffalo. She realized she had made her own puddle on the floor of the hut when the land mine went off.

After the fierce front of the storm had passed, the rain lessened in intensity. Then it stopped entirely, and the sun came out. The ground steamed as the marsh dried. It would take several more storms for the ground to soften.

Nhamo broke open a rotted log with the panga and used the soft, dry wood inside to start a fire. She boiled the mealie meal. The food made her feel more courageous. “I can’t go back. I don’t know the way,” she said as she shoveled the hot sadza into her mouth with her fingers. “I can’t stay here, either.” She rested against the side of the hut and studied the marsh.

Some animals had certainly crossed the border. She could see their tracks. “I could walk on the prints of an antelope,” she said. Except that she didn’t know how big land mines were. They might be as small as peanuts, in which case she could easily tread on one that an antelope hoof had missed.

But wait: Four or five elephants had been through when the soil was soft enough to take deep imprints. The brief rain hadn’t eroded these. Her foot could easily fit inside one of them. “If an elephant isn’t heavy enough to set off a land mine, I certainly won’t do it,” Nhamo declared.

It was one thing to figure out a solution, though, and another to enter a place where she had just seen a buffalo torn apart. Nhamo packed and repacked her goods. She experimented with different methods of carrying the grain bag. Finally, as the sun approached the line of trees in the west, she couldn’t think of any more excuses.

Nhamo found the elephant trail in the forest and hopped from print to print until she reached the marsh. She took a deep breath and retied the bag to her back. “Well, here goes,” she whispered. She began the trek across the wasteland. It was easy enough to jump, but impossible to rest. Once or twice she teetered on a print and almost fell over. She passed close to the buffalo. Vultures had found it, and a few silver-back jackals nipped at the birds and wriggled through the massed feathers.

She was halfway across. The sun was very low now. Blue shadows streamed across the marsh. Soon the ground would be completely dark except for the glow from the sunset. Nhamo kept hopping. The spear came loose and clattered to the ground. She picked it up gingerly and went on. Closer and closer came the line of trees, and darker and darker grew the wasteland. The sun had set. The silvery light was confusing.

At last she came to the opposite side, and to be extra careful she followed the elephant footprints under the trees until she couldn’t make them out anymore. Nhamo sat down to rest. She wasn’t safe yet, not one bit, but she was surrounded by familiar dangers. After all her time in the bush, she found them far less unnerving than the land mines. She thought about climbing a tree to wait for dawn, but something caught her eye in the darkness.

It was a light, a brilliant light. It was brighter than a hundred cook-fires. It came from the first house beyond the border of Zimbabwe.