Chapter 1

In the land of the High Plains, there lived a man whose name was Kisasi wa Ndulu. Kisasi lived alone in his lone grass-thatched hut, at the edge of the large Musewa village. He was the talk of the village for his reputation as the most handsome man ever to grace the High Plains, and indeed the lands beyond the ridges.

Kisasi was well into his middle age and still he cooked, cleaned, washed and toiled for himself and his ailing mother, and never took a wife. So what was wrong with the man? Why did he live alone? Well, that is the question that all the tongues of the people of the village and those of the bordering mountains constantly asked. Kisasi was no deformed hunchback, he was tall, broad chested and more powerful than any other man in Musewa and all the surrounding villages. In the festival of the full moon after harvest, when the drums would split the air, calling all to the village square for the wrestling contest in the moonlight, the eyes of all would look out for Kisasi of Musewa village.

At length, the door to his hut would fly open and Kisasi would come out through it like honey from a big gourd, making all to hold their breath. (This was especially the young maidens who had refused the hands of many suitors, hoping one day – just one day oh God! – This man’s shadow would cover them to their very feet and his soft voice would waft down and whisper, ‘Beautiful maiden, will you marry me?’)

Perhaps that was why he was hated by all the heroic young men of the villages. Perhaps that’s why they all looked forward to the Festival of the Harvest and the highlight in the moonlight, when the champion wrestler would be crowned. Thereafter, he would dance the dance of the champion and choose whichever maiden he liked to be his dance partner of the festival, and who knows, happier moments would follow down the remaining years of the couple’s life.

At such times, each wrestler would have his secret plan and a bag of tricks to beat Kisasi, the Magnificent (that’s what I hear they called him). Some would lure him to their drinking dens intending to lace his beer with sleeping potions, easily trip him, then pin him down upon the floor and claim a rare victory. But Kisasi wa Ndulu never tasted alcohol, “a man who wastes his mind, soul and body in drink is not worth the breath his name is uttered in,” he would say. Kisasi preferred the cool, bubbling, clear waters of the mountain spring and he never fetched water from the same spring!

Others made elaborate plans to waylay him on his way home but here again, they failed miserably. For he had the instincts and the lightning reflexes of the cat. It was often rumored that he could hear the faintest rustle of the leaves a hundred paces away. He could feel the presence of a body from afar just like the feared cobra knew the presence of his prey in the earth, deep behind the cliff face and even if the enemy approached him unaware. Kisasi had the speed and strength of three men put together and he would quickly do short work of them.

In despair, the young men including the aspiring champions got together. They whispered and conspired for they were afraid, lest the wind carried their conspiracy into the broad light of the day. For it is true what the wise ones of our ancestors said, “the bush has ears, my son, the bush has ears!” This one time, men of the villages put their differences aside to deal a permanent blow to their common enemy.

It was Muvayo, the village wag and a reigning champion in his own right, whose fame had washed the villages before Kisasi appeared on the scene and overthrew his reign. Yes, it was this ever-smiling ex-champion who offered a solution.

“Friends,” he said, “everything has failed. Every time the man uncoils out of his hut and challenges us to the wrestling match, our knees turn to melted ghee and butterflies hatch in the pit of our bellies. We have tried every trick – even the trick to make the cat land on his back. We have pooled finances, sold our goats and sheep to afford the spells and the services of the greatest witch doctor from the lands of waters but what happened?”

“Let Chenze wa Maliti say it! He’s the one we sent to fetch the charm and bring it to us on the back of his donkeys. A long-distance trader has more tricks in his medicine bag than this Kisasi can match. Let Maliti’s son say the word. We shall follow him.” Someone put in.

“How on earth can he say anything? Just look at him! Since he came back, carrying those rude concoctions of the devil, his mouth has gradually turned aside. Now it resides where his ear used to be and the ear has decamped and migrated to the top of his head!” another jeeringly answered him. “This Kisasi seems to have strong medicine – a charm that protects him…”

“Charms! Bah!” Another scoffed. “Only fools believe in charms,” oh, a fellow has a bad cough because he built his house in the marshes and the wind whistles through the gaps in his walls. He feeds on dry maize gruel and never lets anything else down his throat – morning, lunch and dinner, from New Year to Christmas and the fellow believes “Mama Beleleh has weeping eyes! She looked at me through them and therefore made my chest wheeze and weep! Charms and witchcraft indeed ugh!”

“So what do you suggest, wisecrack?” Rebuffed Muvayo angrily. “Well, you tell us!” Another said. “You seem to have all the answers. You always have a plan up your sleeve.” “Indeed!” Another agreed. “Muvayo has an answer for every problem, that’s how he has outwitted every champion in the wrestling square – until Kisasi appeared among us!”

It was suddenly quiet. All eyes turned on Muvayo the wag. At length he said, “this man has unknown powers and he grows stronger with age. The secret I think is in his food. Perhaps that’s why he lives alone…”

“With his mother!” Another disagreed.
​“He sleeps alone in his hut! Why? I’ll tell you. Only a glutton with dark secrets to hide, likes to eat and sleep alone and only his mother can provide a window to his secrets, what he eats and what he does the whole day long. Has any of you ever seen him leave his house? From sunrise to sunset, his door is always locked! Find out what he likes to eat. Then we can pattern our lives upon his and, maybe in the next tournament we will win…”

“Then I can find me a wife!” Interjected another. “Every time I approach a maiden to fire the cold ashes of my hearth the reply has always been ‘Kisasi has yet to ask me!’ – Kisasi this, Kisasi that! I want to settle down and raise a family without his shadow hovering above me like a cloud of doom! Yes Muvayo! You are the best choice to go to his mother and find out everything you can about him.”

It was unanimously agreed that Muvayo was to find out and report the secret of Kisasi’s power to the group. And it was, thanks to this wag, who never could clamp his lips upon a secret, that I came to know about it and much more besides. That’s how I can confidently tell you his story ashis mother proudly told me.

On the morning of the day this story begins, mama Mukulu wa Ndulu woke up with a start. All night she had tossed and turned upon the hides and skins on which she lay. It was dark. All was unusually quiet (not even the nagging cicada with his endless ee-ri-ri-rii song tore across the heavy silence of the darkness). She was later to tell the village that she could actually stretch forth her hands and claw away at the silent darkness that seemed to enshroud her like a clammy mist of death.

Then suddenly, the cock crowed from inside her hut. She sighed with relief. At least someone else was awake. She gathered courage and stepped out into the darkness, with the cock-crow cheering her on.

Her son’s hut loomed larger now, and her courage grew. She reached his door and listened, it was silent! She listened again, then heard it – the loud regular rumble of her son’s snores, and without knowing why, Mukulu’s anger boiled over. She tried his door and it opened without the slightest resistance. He hadn’t even bolted it from inside. Her anger filled the room and washed the floor, threatening to rock the reed bed on which he lay.

“Kisasi!” She screamed. “Oh, you’ll be the death of me! Still snoring at this time of day! The cock-crows, the birds sing and here you are, sleeping like the hippo that stuffed itself to sleep with our last crop of maize! And what did you do? Slept! Slept while the hippos fattened upon your late father’s sweat! You couldn’t even rouse yourself to guard the crop. Now our granary is empty! Wake up and go to the millet plantation before the sun rises and the birds feast upon your father’s sweat! Oh why did he bother to toil till the stars shone upon his back to leave you wealth you’ll never protect? Wake up!” She ranted on till the hides rattled in protest and Kisasi woke up.

“Eh, it’s you mother!” He said and yawned. “For a moment there, I thought it was my father…” “Stop dreaming! Your father went many years ago!” the mother said.

“That’s just what I was saying. It was him I was dreaming about. And he was roaring about the millet. ‘Don’t let my work lie forgotten. Against the advice of all those cowards who litter our hillsides. I, alone, dared to cross the river of life and death! I fought the torrents of the angry Mavoloto river. Yes! I alone struck down the forests of the forbidden lands and made the maize and millet plantations, you now boast about! Don’t let my millet go to waste!’ He was crying over and over again! And in a low, sad voice.”

Kisasi continued, “Then in my dream, all the men descended upon our garden in the forbidden lands, and their machetes hacked the millet down and gathered it in one heap. Then they set fire to it, dancing around it with their weapons gleaming high in the moonlight. Yes mother, it was then that all power left me and I could not get it back. No! Not even when I drained the last of the milk-and-millet gruel you make for me every night.”Kisasi sadly said and weakly turned to face the wall and hide the tears welling up in his eyes.

“What did I tell you!” She cried frantically. “I knew there was something about this night. Your father wouldn’t leave the Feast of the New Born that our ancestors prepared for him in the land of the dead out there in his new life. No, not if there wasn’t something important he wanted done. Run my son, run to our garden in the forbidden lands! Run! Do not let the birds sing their song of thieves as they feast upon your father's sweat!”

“Aw mother! Don’t carry on! When did I ever go to our shamba in broad daylight? When was I ever late?” Kisasi protested, reaching for his gourd of millet gruel.”

“Is my food ready?” he asked.
​“It was ready last night.” She replied as she romped back to her hut. It was taboo for a mother to watch her grown-up son getting out of his bed and dressing.

Kisasi dressed up in alacrity, then, picking up his bow and the quiver of arrows, he stepped out of his hut, into the dark, impenetrable darkness outside. Out of the darkness his mother cried, “here!” He reached out, took the gourd of gruel and ran all the way to his plantation in the forbidden lands.

The rocky path took him from the high and grassy ridge that some ancient explorers called ‘The High Plains’. From here the land descended steeply to the wide flat grasslands that stretched to the horizon far to the west. At the base of the plains, the great river Mavoloto lazily meandered its way to the east, losing itself in the thick forests of the forbidden lands.

Nobody knew where this name came from. But everyone knew why these lands held one and all in fear and terror. Hunting parties followed the myriad antelopes, gnu, gazelles and the proud ostriches whose immortal kicks disabled lions along the Mavoloto river banks. None ever returned. Other brave men were sent in search of them and still none returned. So the lands were held in awe by the people of the High Plains and none dared again to follow the course of River Mavoloto into the dense forests.

Until the hunter – Ndulu wa Mulului! If the people of the High Plains agreed to say yes, Ndulu’s lone voice would say no! If they said the river was dangerous and that it teemed with dangerous serpents, hippos and crocodiles, Ndulu would scoff at them and say, “a crocodile is only a large lizard that’s all! And what’s a hippo? Ha! Only an overgrown cow that forgot its ancestors and returned to the river to swim with the crocodile! Let me see one in my shamba at the banks of the river and it would know Ndulu wa Mulului was not born yesterday! I will tie it to the nearest tree and milk it while her cubs watch and yawn with hunger.” The wise ones of our people once said, “son guard your tongue! What you say today, the gods grant you tomorrow!” And so it was with Ndulu.

He hacked the forest edge and made a wide field where he planted millet. Since the land was near the thick damp forest with the ever-raging Mavoloto river nearby, rain was plenty in the forbidden lands most of the year and his millet plantation prospered. Across the river, he planted maize all the seasons of the year. The son of Mulului ate green maize all year round. He prospered, and people came from all the villages to buy food from his bursting granaries.

Then the gods became angry and jealous! I don’t know why but the wags said the gods hated arrogance and pride, and Ndulu was proud and arrogant. Increasingly so! On market days, he would climb to the top of the platform at the centre of the market square and look down upon the ill-clad people, milling about in it, their sweat reeking up into the air around him and he would think, “Surely, it must be hard work to be a god! All this stench and sweat and their weak everlasting prayers!” He would then shove his hands into his pockets and scoop coins of all denominations. Then he would hurl them into the air, sending them scattering and jingling upon the populace on the dusty ground down below him.

The populace would go mad upon that square, fighting for the coins and burying most of the treasure in the red soil with their frenzied feet. Then Ndulu would laugh in high exultation and lifting his hands to the blue sky like a benevolent priest, he would intone:

“Work! People work! No joy comes but through toil and sweat and roiling dust. Who ever got rich sitting on his bare backside? Work! People of the poor plains – Work!” Then his voice would boom out like an oracle.

“Auwuui! Aahwuuui! Listen children of misery, what shall I ever do with all this wealth? Who shall dare to come and help me spend it? Aarg!”

Perhaps that’s why the gods sent the hippo and her cubs to his maize plantation.