Three: Raid in the Congo

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2033 Congo River Valley

“Mwamba! Mwamba, come here child!”

The young boy, about eleven years old, barely prepubescent, ran into the room from outside, with a look of concern on his youthful face. Sweat glistened on his brow, and his deep ochre skin was covered in a thin layer of red soil, a sign that he had been tending the garden. Already he had begun to grow into a strong man, and his body was rapidly developing a taut musculature tempered by the physical demands of the agrarian life they both shared.

“Here, Mwamba, ‘elp me get dat pot down off de wall there, son.” The elderly woman couldn’t have stood more than five feet tall, her ancient back twisted and sculpted by years of labor. Despite her physical failings, her deep chestnut eyes sparkled with wisdom hidden beneath a veneer of pretend senility, and the thick lines of silver that penetrated her braids were markers of the vast wisdom concealed behind those eyes.

In spite of his young age, the boy Mwamba was already a head taller than his grandmother, who had taken him in when he was only an infant. His parents were likely dead, victims of a political coup in a long-forgotten election. But his grandmother had suddenly appeared, as though in a dream, taking him up in her arms and bringing him back to her village, deep in the jungle. Mwamba had been too young to remember anything, and relied on his grandmother for even the slight information he had.

“T’ank you, child, you a good boy,” she settled onto a sun baked wicker stool next to a fire pit in the earthen floor. Coals burned slow and hot in the pit, and she accepted the pot from Mwamba’s slight hands and placed it securely in the center of the coals. First she poured some water into the pot from a ceramic pitcher the same color as the soil that colored the youth’s skin, and procuring a small woven bag from her hip, she began to place bits of herbs and plants into the pan, stirring it slowly as she did so. “Come here, child, time fo’ your lesson today.”

Mwamba sat cross legged on the other side of the steaming pot from his grandmother. Closing her woven bag, she reached into a carved wooden chest resting under a small portcullis in the earthen wall that allowed a stream of amber colored light to enter the room. Next, she withdrew a small metal cylinder that looked as if it had originally been an aluminum cigar tube, the markings having been rubbed away long ago. Once again she spoke as she unscrewed the lid and very carefully pulled out a small violet colored flower. “Dis a powerful herb, Mwamba!” He nodded dutifully, “you remember what I told you?”

“Yes, grandmother. Power is raw, it is unrefined, it must be crafted.”

“Good, and why do we pray to de ancestors?”

“Because they help us talk to the gods, and through their petitions we can learn how to talk to the gods ourselves so that one day we too can guide our descendents as we have been guided.”

“Yes, Mwamba; and you must remember dat dis power being raw make it so dat we got more responsibility dan t’ose who ‘ave no power, mmm?”

“Yes grandmother.”

“Good boy. Dis herb ‘ere ‘ave to be crafted den, it all depend on what you mix it with, ‘ow you cook it, and what you do wit’ it. Dem gods given it to us, but we ‘ave to decide what to do wit’ it.”

“So what are you making today, grandmother?”

“Dis for Arkunja’s wife, Maylou, she ‘aving dem bad birthin’ pains and needs be able to relax ‘erself so that ‘er baby can come out okay.” Mwamba gradually became aware of a woman’s deep grunts and punctuated cries in the distance, a sound he had been largely unaware of until he turned his mind towards it.

The old woman crushed the tiny flower between the tips of her fingers, which released a pungent odor that whispered into the air for a brief moment, and softly recited an incantation in an almost-forgotten tongue. Mwamba watched carefully, silently mouthing the ancient words along with her, as she mixed just the right amount of ingredients in the water and then, taking a cloth for her hand, took the handle of the old cast iron pot and lifted it up out of the coals.

“T’ere, we be done now, time for making de baby come.” Signaling Mwamba to come with her, the elderly woman stood up with some arthritic hesitation and walked to the door.

She froze.

Mwamba sensed the tension, something was wrong, he could feel it suddenly, like a splitting axe rending the back of his skull. Creation groaned in agony and the sudden rush of uncontrollable pain nearly sent him to his knees.

Something was wrong.

Time began to slow. Too much information flooded into his youthful mind all at once, overloading his senses and drawing him into the nightmarish scene of which he was about to become a part.

The pot slipped from his grandmother’s cracked fingers, spilling its precious medicine and slinging it across the room.

Mwamba blinked.

Something warm and slightly metallic sprayed across his face. His dry, cracked lips screamed as the liquid assaulted their sun-baked surface.

Blood.

The sound of the gunshot hadn’t registered at first, neither had the sight of his grandmother falling to her knees, an exit wound appearing out of her back, the source of the spray of liquid. None of it had registered until the taste of the blood had touched his lips. Finally finding the strength to move, Mwamba rushed across the small room to help her. The harsh light blinded him for a moment, and finally his eyes adjusted and the grisly scene was drawn for him in perfect detail: his fellow villagers were fleeing in all directions only to be mercilessly gunned down in the street. A line of Jeeps had entered by the southern path bearing a band of ruthless conquerors, armed with automatic rifles and a lust for violence. Their guns barked out death everyway they turned, all the while screaming in sadistic glee at the carnage they produced.

Mwamba barely caught his grandmother in his young arms as she fell. The moment seemed to hang there forever, and while his mind raced for some answer, some reaction to the situation, he was met only with the steady image of her eyes penetrating his soul as the last bit of life that was behind them screamed out with every fiber of her existence, yet as the life leaked out of her she was only able to whisper her final words into his adolescent ear, “Run… Mwamba… run…”