God of Hunger Read online

  The weight of that responsibility he felt with pride as he mustered his men on the next stage of their journey south. They had reached the top of the escarpment covered in dust and perspiration only to find him beckoning them on. He was determined to show them his staying power; his iron will.

  He allowed a break for the mules to water at a nearby pool. The men drank from their water bottles. He refused to drink when offered his bottle by Martin.

  “Let’s move. Come on. There’s still half a day’s to march before camp.”

  The sun drilled directly into the tops of skulls. Men muttered. Mules brayed. But they followed their indefatigable leader.

  Kokopoulos was hoping to reach the point on his route where there was a junction between the track he was following and that to Ngorongoro. There, at Makuyuni, he planned a break, intending to rest his column while he went to look at evidence of an early settlement, called Engaruka, at the base of the rift wall.

  *

  Kokopoulos knew that early Iron age cultures had appeared in East Africa within a few centuries of their spread south along the valleys of the Blue and white Nile and down along the Great Rift Wall and into its volcanic heartlands and hinterlands where the settled tribes in the fertile foothills of the range of the Aberdares, Mount Kenya, the Ruwenzori Mountains and Mounts Mbulu, Meru and Kilimanjaro flourished to his day. Of all the many mountain tribes Kokopoulos came to most highly rate were the Dongo.

  He had often to call on their metallurgical skills when setting up his farm at Dongobesh. Once out on a hunt in his first petrol driven vehicle, a Model T pick-up truck he drove into a gully and smashed the front suspension. It was welded back in place in sufficient strength for him to return to Arusha for new parts to be fitted. No one at the garage believed him when he recounted how a Dongo blacksmith had taken the metal tube of the valve out of the spare tyre, melted the metal in a crucible made from a spanner head over a charcoal fire kept glowing by the use of bellows made from the skin of an impala and had joined the broken suspension back together in a weld that held as good as new.

  Kokopoulos had also seen Masai at Maserani forge their simiis (spears) in a similar manner, starting from the remnants of a railway line cut away during the construction of the section across the Temi River, not far from the terminus at Arusha.

  He asked what if they had not found the piece of line?

  ‘Then we would have looked for ironstone as we were taught by our fathers and forefathers who brought this knowledge with them from afar.’ ‘Where?’ ‘The grasslands along the great river.’ And that is why Kokopoulos believed Masai hailed from the Nile Valley, from below the fourth cataract where, according to Greeks, ee Mavree Afreekee (Black Africa) departed from the continent’s Mediterranean littoral. And in terms of a different civilization, distinct to that at Memphis and Alexandria, African culture flowed south from Meroe. There he had seen carved images of dark skinned men; Nilotics, like the Masai, as noble in stature and profile as Alexander’s Macedonians.

  Kokopoulos, as a boy on Hios, would have shepherded his family’s small flock of sheep and goats which were kept at night in the summer in exactly the same type of enclosure as the thorn bomas of the Masai, Warusha and Meru, tribes around the beautiful mountain on whose slopes, years later, he had his coffee estate. In the evenings there he would look at the purpling mountain called Meru and link it in his mind to the civilization at Meroe from whence he believed his Nilotic neighbours hailed.

  It was the bomas that further drew his mind to his Greek homeland where from the time of Mycenae permanent enclosures for man, beast and plantation were made of stone. And here they were at Engaruka; Mycenean structures he recognised immediately as terraces and shelters for the protection of domesticated plants and animals. And why there, at Engaruka? Because the place was littered in stone. Just as in the area around the Great Zimbabwe of which he knew. Though more magnificent, the ancient citadel in Rhodesia resembled Engaruka which resembled the walls around Meroe. Stone was the key; the availability of stone was the common denominator of these ancient edifices which, in stone, were given permanence in time; Mycenaen time.

  *

  Kokopoulos took Kandowere with him on his visit to Engaruka, leaving the others to rest awaiting their return.

  They left their main camp at Makuyuni at daybreak and trekked along a small but distinct track towards the rift wall on the horizon. Their objective was a small stream, a thread of permanently flowing water called Mto wa Mbu; the river of gnats. And it was as its name suggested. Only worse because amongst the myriads of gnats clouding its surface by day were countless mosquitoes patrolling its banks by night.

  It was at this campsite that Kicheche Kandowere proved his worth to Kokopoulos. Undeterred himself by the insect life on the banks of the Mto wa Mbu he built a cylinder of smoke around his master who slept virtually unmolested while his servant stayed up all night feeding the smoking fires with green and dry branches.

  Kokopoulos had had his breakfast before he realized the configuration of the night. He said nothing to Kandowere but remembered two things from the experience. The first was Kandowere’s utility as a servant. And secondly proof of everything he had heard about Africans having a higher tolerance of pain and discomfort than Europeans.

  No alternative interpretation crossed his mind.

  “Fungal safari. Kandowere. Twende.” (Let’s get moving.)

  “Ndio Bwana.’ (Yes, Sir.)

  So on they went taking the right fork along the stream rather than heading up the escarpment to Ngorongoro.

  In two hours they came to the ruined city. Starting from the track Kandowere slashed through the porini with his panga revealing to Kokopoulos terrace after terrace and the unmistakable structures in stone of huts and houses. Up and up to the base of the escarpment where a natural boundary stopped further construction. It was at this terminus that Kokopoulos turned to survey the ancient petropolis, the African Mycenae and as he turned, a lioness charged. It seemed as though she had been perching on the ruins of the terminal terrace. As she leapt he fired his Mauser from the hip and shot her in mid flight, dropping dead at his feet. Kokopoulos showed no outward emotion. And Kandowere merely said, ‘Asante Bwana.’ But he knew then that this mzungu (white man; European) was quite without fear and admired him for life for his inner strength. And spread the word to all around that Kokopoulos was a dume, the highest accolade to manhood; a warrior, a true man. Kokopoulos placed a boot into the open jaws of death he had just conquered, lit up a Nyota and thought back to how it must have been in northern Greece. He had experienced in life a scene he had as a boy seen depicted in mosaics at Pela, Philip’s capital. As he stood over the lioness the thread of time swept through his soul and, at that very moment, he understood his place in history.

  *

  ‘Aya basi. Twende.’ (Okay. Let’s go.)

  His vocabulary in Swahili over the time of the safari from Arusha sufficed for his commands and by the end of the journey to Dongobesh, Kokopoulos was able to understand what was being said about him by the men to whom he was a hero. Harsh, but heroic. His bidding was to be done without question; the prerogative of a dume. (Alpha male.)

  From Makuyuni, where the two explorers rejoined the main safari, there was left a journey of some hundred miles south to Dongobesh.

  The track first went through grassland full of plain’s game with zebra, wildebeest, various gazelles, Thomson’s and Grant’s predominating. Then towards evening the landscape changed to thorn scrub and date palm which coincided with the appearance of three hills shaped and sized like the Giza pyramids. These were to the left of the track. And to the right the ever present rift wall.

  Kokopoulos ordered a halt and told the men to pitch camp in a grove of palms while he and Kandowere went to bag a meal.

  Camp and meat came together in an hour. A young hartebeest was served up under fronds through which the Milky Way shimmered as lions coughed and boomed and hyenas cackled until the break of dawn
.

  Kokopoulos had lain awake all that night. Thinking of the Jordan and the Nile. And of ancient towns. And of the ancients’ constant appeasement of the Gods of Hunger as depicted in their art and religious customs. And in the long distances in time and place where there was no sight of life; no sign of history; just of ereemeeia; emptiness.

  The thought filled him with fear. And doubt in his ability to make a success of what lay ahead. He knelt to pray just as the sun flashed an emerald light across the far eastern horizon.

  *

  The next camp was at a place called Magugu where there was a junction in the track, north to Babati and right to Magara right at the foot of the rift escarpment at the head of Lake Manyara.

  Land at Magugu and Magara had been offered to Kokopoulos as alternatives to Dongobesh but he declined because the best land was already taken by compatriots called Manoli and Mantheaki he had yet to meet but of whom he knew, through contacts in Arusha, as pranksters and comics. Kokopoulos sought solitude. He had no taste for fun and games and Dongobesh was virgin land untouched as yet by white hand.

  Nevertheless he called a halt on Manolis’s farm which was right beside the track, just behind a duka, a small shop, ran by an Indian family. The farm labourers who sat around the front of the shop playing what appeared to be a chequer-like game, shifting pebbles around hemispheres carved out in regular pattern in a log halved along its main axis. Others just sat and smoked while one of there number plucked at a comb of metal strips attached to a sound box the size of a hand.

  Bwana Manoli was away in Babati visiting Bwana Zavakos but they were welcome to camp here for the night and of course the Bwana was welcome to use the house where the Mpishi (cook) would be called to prepare a meal.

  The house was a hovel distinct only from a native hut by its corrugated iron roof. It did however house a toilet. The pedestal was cracked and the fissures were filled with mastiha the chewing gum from Hios. Manolis was also a Hiot. This much Kokopoulos knew. He knew too the faint but unmistakable scent of mastiha packets of which were piled on the window ledge behind him as he sat to relieve himself laughing out loud at the resourcefulness of his absent host. Kokopoulos left a note of appreciation and helped himself to chewing gum which lasted all the way to his land.

  On the third day of travel, the safari made further progress, past Kibauni towards Babati, thence to his virgin farmland.

  Theophilos

  The land meant everything to KK, and over a lifetime of toil he became one of the most successful farmers in the Territory. It was in the capacity of an expert agronomist that he wrote to Julius Nyerere, who had on the eve of Tanganyika’s independence, invited KK to join his administration.

  He sat back from his desk greatly relieved for having completed the letter and report. He swivelled around on his chair and looked along the long verandah to see the mountain glowing in the evening sun, its summit high above the trees. Below them row upon row of coffee bushes. He could see by the colour of the berries on the end of the plantation closest to the house that he would have to set the camp to start the harvest by the end of the week. He opened a new pack of Nyota and by the time he lit this, the strongest and most pungent of all cigarettes, birds had stopped singing and the generator had started its night long puffing, muffling the sound of dogs in the camp. The night had begun its normal rhythm. In an hour Martini would serve supper, after which they would gather for poker and play until the break of dawn when the raucous shouts and laughter and the festival of frog and insect choirs calmed to a murmur. When for a brief moment all was perfectly still and silent. But only for a moment. The moment it took the gods to harness their horses to the chariot of the new day which broke along a vast horizon of fire to the song of garden birds, punctuated by more distant crowing, barking, and cawing. By the time the hondo-hondos had flown crankily into the tall trees around the mill, the daylight poured white hot out of the celestial blast furnace into the liquid blue heaven and bathed everything below in a transparent shimmer of energy.

  Kokopoulos thrived on it. Still only in his sixties, K.K. drew it into his tough body and worked hard each day after a short sleep between dawn and breakfast at ten thirty. Sustained thereafter only by black coffee and Nyota he touched no food until the evening. He waited for it hungrily in the hour he gave over to musing about the day.

  The hour gave him time to replay the day in solitude. Each memorable exchange with the world a montage in the mind to be seen again from the stalls rather than the stage.

  That day, as for the past ten, he had worked on a letter to the young man he so admired and by whom he was soon to be appointed as a political adviser to the government- in- waiting.

  After a lengthy disquisition on past political, social and economic trends KK concluded:

  “I cannot but state that from our vantage point in mid-twentieth century, the history of the last hundred and fifty years has been a contest between liberal democracy on the one hand, and popular democracy on the other.

  While both schools affirm the supreme value of isonomy - equality before the law - the difference between the two is in their different attitudes to politics. The liberal approach assumes politics to be a matter of trial and error. The democracy of a People’s Republic on the other hand, is based upon confidence in political prescription; ab initio it admits to political totality. A predominant collective purpose; all social acts are measured against an all-embracing and coherent ideology and politics is defined as the art of applying this philosophy to the organization of society.

  Distilling the lessons of history we would be wise to be aware of the un-anticipated outcomes of any revolution. Uhuru, our cry for freedom, may well lead to something unforeseen if we adopt liberal democracy. We cannot afford the luxury of political ends arrived at by trial and error. We have no option but to lead our people to nationhood with the least offering of choice. Aware of the past, let us steer a steady course to nationhood.

 

  What kind of Nationhood?

  Of the disciplined kind. Not the Western European kind based on liberal or social democracy. In forging our national politics let us instead emulate the discipline of the Bolsheviks and speak of and create a nation in which party, state and people are one and the same thing.

  In matters economic let us keep in mind the resolve of the Meijis; Japan’s rulers who demonstrated an unwavering sense of purpose. Their example is perhaps too elitist, but worth bearing in mind. At present, we must emulate the Bolshevik experiment: concentrate our energy to transform our fundamental element: the peasant. Let us, like the Soviet Union, resolve to better ourselves as a nation of peasants.

  How? By admitting to the abiding character of all peasants throughout the world: their innate conservatism. And by destroying it.

  We shall not progress as a nation unless we transform our peasant society.

  How? Get rid of the tribal system and its customs. Go for a top down transformation. Destroy the power of the Chiefs. Instead of the party, it is they who still wield influence at village level. Get rid of them and the glue of tradition begins to weaken. Replace them with party loyalists answerable only to the centre.

  Next, dissolve the tribes. Each with its customs and loyalties, each is an obstacle to national unity. That requires a new dispensation: a mixing of the people. Let us move them out of their tribal areas and into new surroundings. It happens in towns. It must also happen in the country. How?

  Create new villages and populate them with peasants from different regions and tribes. Let us organize new villages requiring them to adopt uniform structures, processes and promises. Yes to civil rights and yes to trade unions run by our cadres and therefore answerable only to us; that way the Party remains in charge.

  What other reforms? First, Education. Our peasants are in the majority, illiterate. Let us give them Schools; the ability to read the Party literature and a tractor manual. Nothing more.

  Second, we must provide modern means of agriculture.
We must equip our peasants to follow instructions towards agrarian reform. Clearing the ground. Mentally and mechanically.

  Each village to be given a tractor, plough and trailer. Water to be laid on. Fertilizer and seed made available. The price to the village? Loyalty to the centre. The cost to the exchequer? None. We will tap the goodwill of the world. India. China. America. And above all Western Europe, especially Scandinavia. These nations have a rigid social conscience which will provide all our meagre requirements. But let us not allow the outside world entry into our country. Everything must be under our own control. No need for a myriad of foreign influences. Too many voices. Too much choice. Let us keep it simple. Let us translate all manuals into Swahili. Indeed, let us translate all foreign influence into the national. And all national life into the parochial. Meaning? The new village will have new means of production and a new sense of purpose. That is sufficient. As participants in the new dispensation the people in the countryside must feel partners in the new state of affairs. In that sense the state withers away as all participate in its work. The prescription must be activity and reward at the local level; work and you will eat; shirk and you will starve.