It was no secret that Chunu told wild stories. If you heard it from Chunu you’d better consider it a fable. So, when the rumors started no one took notice. We all shrugged and said Chunu is on her old tricks again. But when the third child disappeared, we stopped to think that maybe this time she was telling the truth.

Rumour went, the forest near Jokwe Road connecting our village to the township has grown an appetite for neighbourhood kids. God forbid such a thing be true! Ogres and beasts are folklore creatures, they need not manifest in our realm. Yet it was said two boys from KwaManxuluma, a neighbouring village, have been swallowed by the forest on their way to the township to buy snuff for their grandma. We said it cannot be. Kids do not disappear into thin air. The old woman must enlighten us as to where she had hidden the boys. Then Njongo, the seer, spoke to rebuke us,“You people of Ndonga quick to speak. Talk less and listen more. Consult with your elders for guidance.”
We said, “Consult?” But we were obliged to listen. For through him our fathers spoke.

We bowed our heads and listened as Njongo threw his bones, whistling the language of messengers to the thick cloud of sage that whistled back, as it thinned to merely a curtain of smoke Njongo had transformed and, in the voice of our fathers, confirmed that, yes, the boys were no longer with us. However, they have not fully crossed over to the land of higher knowledge. They remained in between worlds, shadows of an evil man from our village. He used the forest as hunting ground.

It gave the KwaManxuluma people a finger to point at and say, bring out your evil one so we can burn him or we burn the village to ashes. We knotted our brows in anger and laughed at the absurd accusation. These KwaManxuluma people mean to start a war, insinuating we harbor a warlock. Do we look like witches that we can bewitch them? What is it that they have worth bewitching for? Don’t they think if we had a warlock we would know and deal with him accordingly? Such evil cannot exist in our midst. Lies we told ourselves. Some said, let us see the bodies and we will believe. Little did they know the forest was listening.

The following month Thando’s mutilated body was left for all to see, her sweet face no longer beautiful it made the white police woman hurl. Our own women wasted like a pitch of water smashed onto the ground. They whimpered, they groaned, they threw their voices bitterly cursing the God they loved for giving them fruitful wombs only to pluck the fruit before it is ripe. What was the point of giving them children they cannot raise? Were they to mother endless graves? Men stood with hands in their pockets, behind their backs, stretching their heads, locked in a handshake, searching finding grasping a weapon; doing everything but comforting the women. They did not know what to say. They did not know what to do. They did not know how to close the growing chasm between them and the women. They stood exposed. They were no heroes. They could not protect the children and the women. They were as good as women, only short of skirts. The women certainly thought so. You heard it in their grieving cries. We have no husbands, the howling said, our children have no fathers.

You’d think the KwaManxuluma people would show us some compassion but no, they held their chins up and said it true the foolhardy learns by the flow of blood. For it is only when Thando disappeared that we sat up and paid attention. We remembered their words and were afraid. It was no lie; the forest was hunting our children. If you stood on one end, you could feel its cunning eyes on you. It made hair shrivel up on your head. No longer could we trust the ground to carry our feet, nor could we trust the trees towering over us, nor the shrubs stretching at our shins as if to mark us.

The forest must be cut down. That much was clear. Arm yourselves you useless men and cut it down to its knees. Better yet, uproot it from its sordid roots before it does away with our family trees. What are you standing around for? Don’t you see the forest hunting our children? Are you women that you should fold at the knees and cry? Move, fetch your axes. Move right this instant. Take your weapons and strike down the forest.

At night the dreams of men went searching in the forest. There they found the women’s voices sprouting into children at play. With their eyes gorged out, their ears sliced thin, they laughed with careless abandon running around the trees, singing an old play tune.

sizofuna umuntu wethu, (we seek our own)
umuntu wethu, umuntu wethu (our own, our own)
sizofuna umuntu wethu namhlanje (we seek our own today)

hamba kahle pretty girl,(farewell pretty girl)
pretty girl pretty girl (pretty girl, pretty girl)
hamba kahle pretty girl namhlanje (farewell pretty girl today)

Men woke up screaming, shaking; snapping like leaves in autumn’s dry wind, tormented by women’s voices that penetrated their dreams. They woke up disoriented. It made them mad. They thirsted for vengeance to redeem themselves. This time should the devil come, they would be ready. They said grabbing their axes, sharpening their shambas, and loading their guns.

Pitso did not eat. Even as the women brought him all sorts of foods and begged him to eat. He paid them no attention. He sat on his veranda muttering to himself until the darkness crawled up his feet, to his head, and the cold ate at his bones. Emptiness descended heavily upon his heart. It wavered under the weight, fractured, and finally gave into a gaping hole. He fell in. It was a swamp; cold, black, its weeds grabbing like the limbs of the long lost. He wept.

Thando was Pitso’s only child. He had doted on her. She was his everything. His only thing. Perhaps this is why at Thando’s funeral, Pitso gave all his money away. Carried a briefcase and handed it out to mourners like tissues. We swore the poor man had gone crazy. Not that it stopped us from taking the money. Money is money, you must understand. And the Lord knows we needed it.

Men went to drink to ease the yoke of women’s voices. It was in the tavern where Pitso was put on a pedestal that his life was examined.
“Poor Pitso, good man he is, that he should lose all his children.”
His new wife had a clumsy womb; it dropped babies before their time. Each year she fell pregnant. Each year she lost the child. Once, she had carried to term only to gift a horrendous creature with eight legs, one protruding from the chest. It died soon after birth. They gave up trying then.
“Even the wealthy are not without problems.”
“All that wealth and no one to share it with.”
“How can a man be so unfortunate?”
“Are you blind that you do not see? He took the pact. He sacrificed his children for wealth.”

Now that it was thrown out there, they considered it. And went home to the women proud like they had solved the mystery.
“Pitso is burdened by the pact.”
“Kick the man while he is down, won’t you?”
“No, no, my wife. Think about it.”
So, the women too thought about it. What is it that made Pitso a rich man? For he and his first wife had been dirt poor. But with this new wife whose poison womb swallowed its children, his businesses had blossomed. The women said, we shall see, time has a way of telling life’s secrets.

And time wasted none of its minutes. It said come and see, the thing speaks for itself. Come and see the wickedness of it. Where there is smoke, there is fire. It was Chunu who saw it first. It was Chunu who sounded the alarm. Pitso’s clothes were burning from the washing line as if someone had set them on fire. Only there was no one there to strike the match. The fire simply started without anyone’s assistance. We gathered and watched, mouths hanging, as the clothes went aflame, one after the other, charred into heaps of ashes. Then the hut in the far end of the yard caught fire. Smoke seeped through the thatched roof before it blenched and roared into an angry blaze. No one moved to put out the fire.

We looked at each other, “What witchery is this?”
It was beyond us! “Call Njongo.”
Children ran and came back to report that Njongo has said, “There, it is so! I did warn you but you are hard of hearing, you Ndonga people. I cannot help you.”
“The KwaManxuluma people were right all along. We harbor a warlock.”
“Pitso is a pact man.”
“Does he no longer feed his snake that it should eat our children?”
“He fed our children!”
“Serves you right! When was it ever a good omen to take money at the graveyard?”
“You speak nonsense. When it is not fed, it consumes the bloodline. Not just anyone.”
“The clothes, it speaks. Is it not that this evil takes its wealth when the owner has died.”
It was only then that we asked, “Where is Pitso?”

He was later found floating face down as if listening to the whispers of the chattering waters of Ndonga River.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Wolfgang Hasselmann on Unsplash