Read an Excerpt
Zambezi Wind Song
By Donette Read Kruger
Trafford Publishing
Copyright © 2011 Donette Read Kruger
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4269-4599-1
Chapter One
C1: Escape
Circa 1888, a young ambitious unknown British entrepreneur, Cecil John Rhodes obtained the mineral rights for gold, copper and other valuable deposits in Zambezia. He obtained these surreptitiously from the African Chiefs ruling that vast land. Twenty-two years later, as a consequence of now being under British control, in 1910 Zambezia was then divided into Nyasaland, Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia. The two Rhodesias were separated by one of Africa's mainline arteries, the magnificent but treacherous Zambezi River. (Now independent, these countries stand as Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia.)
In the same year of 1910, some 3000 miles south in Cape Town, on a freezing cold night in June, Margot Kennedy slipped out from the maternity wing of Belville Hospital into the bitter cold, forsaking her infant daughter. It happened when the serious clinical conditions of post-natal depression and puerperal psychosis were unknown entities.
The next morning, excited to have hired a horse and cart in which to take home his young wife and infant from the hospital, Margot's husband instead found himself confronting a timid nurse who handed the new father a slip of paper. In his wife's familiar handwriting Martin Kennedy read the chilling words, "If this is married life, you can have it ... au revoir ..." With those final words "Au revoir!" underlining the fact that his wife was of French Huguenot descent, the confused young Irishman from Cork, stared at his red-faced infant screaming in protest from the depths of her crib.
Eventually, when he reached out and lifted her up, the new father found the infant clutching a gold Maltese crucifix, threaded onto a blue silk ribbon. In place of the gold dove usually swinging from the base of the cross there hung a perfect pearl. The dove epitomised the persecution of the French Huguenots for their belief in the Spirit of a supreme being.
Martin Kennedy, another broken white man in Africa, would never hear from his young wife again, and from that day he stubbornly refused to discuss the mother of his child that he named Antoinette. It seemed to him that the life he had lived with his young sweetheart and the dreams they had shared, all accounted for nothing. The only proof of her existence was the infant daughter Antoinette that she had given birth to, a beautiful child with intense dark brown eyes and mahogany locks. Martin Kennedy had no idea that his daughter was destined to die of a broken heart.
Grieving over the departure of a loved one in such an abrupt manner takes time and five years passed before the man fell in love with Maybelline Stewart. In 1917, Maybelline gave birth to Adelle, a sister for six-year-old Antoinette. The two girls were inseparable, but the good, kind Irishman was doomed to another short-lived relationship.
His second wife, auburn-haired Maybelline was beautiful, dramatic and sensual, with a throaty laugh that filled the room. She always yearned for a life on the stage, in theatre—any stage, any theatre and eventually, as a result of this deep desire, when the first opportunity arose after yet another heated argument, Maybelline exited the marital home in a dramatic flood of tears, dragging her vintage leather trunk out onto the street, defiantly slamming the door behind her.
It was not feasible that she should snatch the upset toddler Adelle away from Antoinette, who clung to her little sister, because on the day that Adelle was born, Martin Kennedy vowed that his daughters would never be separated from one another.
After Maybelline's theatrical departure for the bright lights, he confined the institution of marriage to a blood stained oubliette carved deep in his heart and, packing up the marital home, moved with his two girls to live in the port of Durban, along the Zulu coastline. Neither daughter would ever see her mother again.
It was there that Martin Kennedy met a lady who owned a boarding house for vagabonds and other entrepreneurs travelling into the interior of southern Africa, intent on seeking their fortune. Other disillusioned men on their way back to Europe, also passed through the boarding house.
Once the woman realised Martin Kennedy's two daughters who would be perfect handmaidens for her boarding house, potentially providing domestic services she would not have to pay for, she did not hesitate in coercing the man into proposing marriage, so that before Martin Kennedy realised what was happening, the unsuspecting and disillusioned father was married to this very astute businesswoman.
On the surface the boarding house seemed reputable enough, but Antoinette knew otherwise and soon grew to despise her father's new wife. In the corridors late at night she could hear the drunken men smuggling their whores into their rooms. Then after a sleepless night her new stepmother would awaken her early to ensure that Antoinette undertook the chore of polishing the lodgers' muddy boots and shoes, lined up outside their rented rooms, before she could leave for school. It was hard work for the slim young girl. In addition, Antoinette found it demeaning to darn their socks and do their mending.
When no one was looking the lodgers often reached out touching her small developing breasts, or tried to slide their hand up her cotton petticoats. Always anxious to get out of the boarding house as soon as possible and into the fresh air, breakfast was inevitably a hit and miss affair. It did not help that the scant meals for Martin Kennedy's two daughters consisted of the fat off the best cuts of meat, along with other scraps. As her stepmother quietly pointed out, they were not paying to live under her roof and if it wasn't for their father she should never have taken the homeless waifs in under her wing!
There were bitter disputes with her stepmother who knew from the start that, because of her loyalties to her father, however stubborn she might prove to be, Antoinette would never involve the man. The truth was that Antoinette was petrified he would side with his wife. As a result, she sometimes found refuge in the unkempt tropical gardens enveloped in fragrant frangipani blossoms. Hiding beneath lush palms she did her best to avoid the rustling bamboo. It was there that the cane rats were so unlucky, failing to escape the fatal bite of the king cobra that reigned in their midst.
It was incongruous that in 1926, in a desperate endeavour to escape this sordid existence, Antoinette, should find work as a nanny with a missionary family. Without saying goodbye to her father properly or giving him a valid explanation, she boarded a cargo ship berthed in this bustling port with her saintly new employers, and sailed up the East Coast of Africa via the fragrant spice island of Zanzibar, towards Mombassa.
The teenager did not know that originally it was given the Arab name of Manbasa, which later became Mombasa, and that some years after that again the spelling would be changed once more to Mombassa.
As the cargo ship chugged out past the familiar Bluff of Natal, Antoinette watched the horizon rising and falling across the bow, the sound of rushing waves pierced by the cries of seagulls. She licked the damp saline drops from her lips and thought about the night before. Kissing Adelle's curls for the last time, the heartbreak of separation between the two sisters was epitomised in the choked words of her 10-year-old sister, whispering to Antoinette, "As soon as ... I am ... sixteen ... I am going to ... join you." And Antoinette recalled wiping away her tears and promising her sibling that she would write every day.
Then, in order to console her little sister, Antoinette removed the precious pearl from the Maltese cross that she inherited from her mother and, threading the pearl through its blue ribbon, handed the keepsake to the child. "Don't ever lose it, little one. I inherited it from my mother and someday your daughter will inherit it from you. It is all I can give you, but every day we are apart you must remember that this pearl belongs to the cross, just as you belong to me," and with that she wrapped her arms tightly around the small girl and hugged her close.
The sisters were oblivious of the fact that barefoot men running miles with precious letters and legal documents, wrapped tightly into leather pouches jammed into cleft sticks for safety, were sometimes attacked by lions on the way, trampled by elephants or drowned in flooded rivers so that letters did not always reach the recipient.
After a couple of years in Mombasa, Antoinette followed Rev. Günter and her new "family" inland towards the Belgian Congo. Overland they trekked by foot, wearily traipsing one after the other on narrow paths along the banks of the gigantic Congo River roughly along the dedicated course of the sun above the Equator. Through tropical jungle affected by climate and intense rains, crossing tributaries that provided a source of food and water for their journey, she and the once-more pregnant Mrs. Günter, followed the determined preacher, each with a child strapped to her back, secure in linen hammocks tied at the waist. It was a practice they adopted from their black sisters, those resilient indigenous women who have inhabited the vast continent of Africa since time began.
Pristine and primitive, in those days the Belgian Congo was one of the safest places for a white girl on her own. The trees of the rainforest were amongst the tallest in the world, and the hunter-gatherer pygmy tribes amongst the smallest persons. Often seeking solitude to be at peace with herself, Antoinette explored narrow paths on her own, watched silently by the pygmies stepping aside to let her pass, clapping their cupped palms softly in greeting; mesmerised by this strange white girl with mahogany hair cascading down her slender back in an untamed mass of curls; she would never know of their burning curiosity to touch her soft locks—just once.
From the south, assorted rumours were trickling through the colonies, some by word of mouth and others brought by exhausted barefoot runners. In 1923 Southern Rhodesia opted to self-govern rather than exist as a fifth province of South Africa, and the most recent rumour was the existence of a document which entitled one to own property under the Land Apportionment Act.
Sebastian L'Estrange and Elias Siamkwari were tracking elephants for ivory on the banks of the Zambezi River when they learned of the Land Apportionment Act; filtering through on the wind song the news rushed down the valley pulsating with the throbbing of drums. To any man who had never been to school and could barely write his name, the legalities were all very confusing and Sebastian L'Estrange tried to spell it out to the tracker as best he could.
"Basically, my friend, come the year 1930, the law being updated by the British South African Company. That means it will exclude any of the 836,000 blacks from owning a piece of land other than that within the arid Native Reserves, which they have designated solely for your use. However, unless such contract for that specific piece of ground is made in the presence of a Magistrate and attested by such Magistrate, complete with a certificate bearing his legally appointed signature, any verbal contract you may make over land is invalid. The 28,000 whites have been guaranteed fertile land for which they will pay a price, and that money is to be repatriated to the United Kingdom. As for your people who own the land, you will get nothing. Not a penny."
Dwelling on the repercussions, a chill ran down the black man's spine. He turned to Sebastian L'Estrange, "Who makes these laws?" he asked in a subdued whisper. Sebastian shook his head solemnly, "I am not sure, but it's not good news, my friend." After a few moments he looked at Elias, "What do you say we go up to the Congo and try our hands in the diamond business?" Elias stared at him, "You kun't be serious?"
Sebastian grinned. He was always amused by the way in which Elias pronounced the word 'can't', and even though he explained the difference to Elias many times, the experienced tracker could not help himself, and he did not hesitate to say so, "But, I just kun't help myself," he said lowering his head in embarrassment, "It's the way I speak, for sure." It was a foreign word forming in the man's shallow pallet that, combined with his exotic Shona accent, morphed naturally from "can't" into "kun't". It certainly was not Elias' fault.
Sebastian nodded. "Of course I'm serious. Sure, why not? You do realise that this land issue is going to start cramping our style? Already the land is being carved up into farms and that means surrounded by miles of barbed wire fencing." Elias shook his head, "Mwari tibatsirei!" he muttered, but Sebastian understood Shona. The slightly built man at his side often said "God help us!"
Thinking ahead, Elias continued, "Well, if we are going to go up to the Congo, I'd better travel south and say goodbye to my wife and family ..." making a provocative taunt at the fact that Sebastian was still not married.
Sebastian nodded, understanding the full implications of his statement. In Africa it is common knowledge that if one sleeps alone it is not only a waste of a bed but it is also a waste of a roof, and he was determined to counteract with something equally antagonistic. "Yes, you should go. Your wife is a pretty little thing and if you don't make her pregnant soon, someone else will!"
Elias flinched at this taunt, but Sebastian continued, "If you want to keep challenging me because you are anchored down with a nagging woman and I'm footloose and fancy free, then so be it! If it wasn't for her we would break camp and travel north immediately, but life is made of choices and you chose to be married ..." He grinned as he watched the man bridling his mule for the journey.
Elias snapped. "If you want to see me again just write out the damn Travel Pass!" referring to the Master and Servants Act of 1901. This was another colonial law that irritated him. Basically it dictated that any servant absenteeing himself from his master's house without written permission was liable to prosecution, and that one word 'prosecution' could be interpreted in whichever way the magistrate decided, according to his interpretation of the law. On other occasions, the 'prosecution' fell within the jurisdiction of some ambitious white policeman out there in the wilderness who may have intercepted a black man's journey. Either way it was Russian roulette to leave home without the vital Travel Pass!
Laboriously Sebastian wrote out the letter giving Elias permission to go home on indefinite leave to his village in the Omay Tribal Trust Lands. As Elias climbed onto his mule Sebastian looked up, "Just get your black butt back here as soon as possible." He snarled, whereupon Elias laughed, "Even my brother Didymus has a wife," he jeered, "and he is blind!" at which Sebastian slapped the mule on its rump and blowing the tracker a kiss, grinned as he yelled after him, "I can tell you're missing me already ..."
As the lone rider galloped off into a hazy distance the warm breath of the wind song swirled behind him in the dust. It was not often that the two friends argued and those who knew them learned a long time ago that if a disagreement erupted between the hunter and the tracker it was just not worth interfering. Theirs was perhaps the oddest of relationships in Africa, but the two men, one black and the other white, were devoted to one another.
Within ten months of his journey home, Elias was pleasantly surprised to receive a message from beyond the silver arched bridge at Chirundu that his wife had given birth to a son, Chakafa Elias. As he always wondered why celebratory news of a birth often seemed to be accompanied shortly afterwards by tragic news, or vice-versa, this seemed no different because he was soon devastated to learn that his cousin's wife had died shortly after giving birth to a son. The boy Victor had survived but, as often-happened years ago, within hours his mother had died of septicaemia.
His aunt stared at Didymus cradling the son that he could not see, touching the tiny features gently before he spoke. "Is my child also blind?" he asked her through tears of emotion. Fervently wiping her forehead with a damp cloth, the mature woman reached out and, in a token of comfort, patted her nephew's arm, "No, my son, he will have sight, but what are you going to call him?" she asked changing the subject, whereupon the new father replied through his tears, "It is already decided then. His name will be Victor Sebastian, and he will be victorious!"
It must have been the drama of watching her sister-in-law giving birth and dying within hours that affected Mzuzile, Elias' wife. Chaos ruled shortly afterwards, as she too went into labour and within hours a son, Chakafa Elias, was born.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Zambezi Wind Song by Donette Read Kruger Copyright © 2011 by Donette Read Kruger. Excerpted by permission of Trafford Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
