-
Zuzu
Blighted land ran outside still, brilliantly distorted from the diner. The land seemed ancient and indistinct. A dusty track ran parallel to the rail. A truck drove alongside before it disappeared in a cluster of flat-roofed, mud-plastered dwellings. A shroud of dust elongated into spirals which rose and coiled and collapsed towards the new capital. Lonely baobabs rippled past in a landscape of familiar indifference. Occasional tilled patches leaped up to sight and hinted at a living. Years ago president of our republic had declared the town, then a minor trading post of dust and baobab pods, into the geographical centre of the republic. The party and its committee, the parliament, moved there for dry season's sessions and houses were built on the tumuli just outside the town. The train bowled briskly through the desolate grandeur. At that stretch, the tracks twisted into extravagant loops which could intermittently be seen as dark hints gleaming dull in the soft setting sun between bald hillocks. "Let the dead bury their dead, I am getting out." I exclaimed in my mind. There was no future there for me. Too many snouts at the trough. I was getting out.
The new capital was only a few kilometres away. Signs of foreign solidarity with the republic began to appear with a regularity of international pity. First there was the tile factory, neat and nice, in brown stones and ordered flowerbeds. Bless the People's Democratic Republic of Korea. The United Kingdom donated a wine factory towards the same drunk effort at the republic's development. I was familiar with the terrain in and around that area. A year before I was a national service recruit at a camp in the area. Our main task was to teach the locals to write and read and also to train them on how to transform the desert into rippling fields of wheat. We spent much of the first six months in the camp tending vegetable gardens of the commanding officer. On free weekends we hitchhiked to town with fellow recruit girlfriends. Some recruits had acquaintances in the town who allowed us the use of their rooms before we rambled off to restaurants for meals and returned to the camp at night.
With a anguish I looked at the indistinct hills, beyond of which was the camp. An immense pain was associated with the presence there. Probably not so much for us boys who could filch enough to bribe the commanders. Girl recruits paid in most cases with night-time pleasures to commanders. It was a place representative of the unending oppressive fear that accumulated in the insignia of the officers, both commissioned and non-commissioned. With it, the hierarchy of tyrannical costumes brought the privileges of picking and choosing among the most attractive recruits. The commanding officer took off with a girl of leisurely forms in my platoon who, as a reward for sleeping with the officer, was assigned secretarial duties in the officers' mess. Our platoon corporal satisfied himself with the most educated woman in the platoon, a university lecturer who never got to service her national after high school. It was a long lost hard to grasp memory that fell into petulant bits refusing to appreciate positive experiences of camp-life. I was enveloped only on the beatings I incurred at the hands of commanders when I was found, one night, talking with the commanding officer's girl. This is too painful and I ought to leave it out. Meanwhile, Musa came back from the cabin. True to form, he coughed, looked outside the window furtively and uttered the predictable:
"Money doesn't bring development, ha!"
"Yes?" I wondered.
"Try to convene an extraordinary meeting with air."
At the end of the diner there was a box made of wood, brown mahogany, polished and tight, with agitated hand-written letters, Opinions! Under 'opinions' there was a concise message: 'If you have any complaint concerning the running of this train, please do not hesitate to inform us.' The message was signed by the stylish hand of management. As if on second thoughts, another legend was added below the management's signature:
'Money Does Not Bring Development.'
I knew Musa was offended by the legend the moment we walked in. What bugged him the most I think was the fact that he could not speak out openly about it. The situation was such you could not trust your own shadow. But he was in no doubt where I stood. He began to talk.
"If you look at a column of ants on the march you will see that there are some that are stragglers or have lost their way. The column has no time for them; it goes on. Sometimes the stragglers die. But even this has no effect on the column. There is nothing wrong if you think hard about it," he said, "I think he meant well all the way. That is important. The motive." He insisted. "But the belief that one person knows what is best for everybody is wrong. We have lost our way and for that reason our positions must be stated with a conviction that all of us are capable of misinterpretation, the president included. Societies develop from a combination of experiences not pedigree truths."
He offered his theory.
In the milieus we were brought up in we are taught to match with the collective drum. There is no room for creativity. We all think so painfully alike. Like a herd of cattle. Our thoughts, values, ideas and pleasures are fashioned after the leader. We dress the way the spirits move him. We talk his talk. If he fasts we fast. As a result the people have come to be either cowards or servile. They don't know what is good for them. Only the one person does. This way of seeing the world is destructive as we see issues in group terms. The highest aspirations of an individual which ideally should explain a person from another are now part of the communal luggage. The development project has produced automatons of us and our only ambition is to be accepted in the herd. A legacy this is of our worship of others. Individuals in our society have lost that courage to dare which is a significant ingredient for progress. We have ceased to exist as independent units and we view those who are as aggressors. The march ahead has blurred the individual. We have to sing the same refrain.
"Truth is," he said, "that is not my understanding of progress. I am struggling in my own way to get an idea of who I really am. Where are we going. In spite my willingness to enter the currents of insanity and swim the direction of the masses I have never lost the sense that I am me. I see no reason to be part of the herd."
He lit a cigarette and veils staggered up the carriage.
"Be yourself. Doesn't take a man to suffer ignorance and smile, let no one fool you." he said with religious conviction. "Personally I don't doubt that there is an inner-self that put us apart. To make steps forward we need not people who think alike but those who can disagree and work together."
I was aware of my grief. He could have been as human as the next soul but he had given me a reason to respect him. Nothing is questioned of us when we operate as a group. Our journey ahead had become messenger of the lowest instinct. Group. There are those who either are limited and want to have fun. Let them. He was right. Some persons, like some circus animals, have an unexplainable disposition to thrive on mockery. Leaping up through loops of obscenity for a cheap thrill, wiggling in the dust for a pat on the back, making faces and grimaces, learning to stand on hind legs. With animals, at least, one could be sure. It was either a product of conditioning or constitution. Here, with humans, there was doubt as they curiously delighted on hearing only what pleased the ears, which in this case was the cool conveyance of belonging in a group.
I decided I wasn't going to sing the chorus.
We arrived in the new capital amid great bustle and the party's staged fanfare. The station was surprisingly clean and decked with frivolous colours of the party. Dignitaries of the extraordinary meeting rocked on heels with haughty indulgence, reviewing the travelling republic. The night was complete when we left. Outside, the immediate area after the capital was pitch black but for vaporous gleams of what I assumed to be kerosene lamps. Far away stars blinked with sudden flashes on a phosphorescent sky and shaped the sleeping horizon with dark endless humps. Inside the train, only the Buffet Car had two functioning bulbs. In my car, passengers mobbed the corridor. A thin shaft of light wobbled along the corridor as shouted discussions danced in monotonous rumbles of wheels on rolling iron slithering all the way to the coast.
I borrowed a torch from Musa, and went to the lavatory. 'European Style', it read on a plate on the door. The European Style was a round gash that opened directly on the zipping gravel. Gust of rushing air passed through the latrine and peeled off the filmy cover on the shit and released unbearable pong. But my bowels were upset. I went to bed. And I had a bad dream. I dreamed that I was lying, face up, looking inside a giant woman's private parts. She stood over me, or she was walking, one is never certain with these things, because the sharp heels of her pumps kept me detained under her. She was immense reaching out everywhere. It was within my faculty too, to view her from outside. Her bosom sprang up, her bottom spread out. She wore a black business suit with a green chiffon blouse. On one lapel a rose pin caught the eye. She was articulate and well-spoken, and mumbled with invisible commissions and conferences. She didn't say so, her pity was brighter. I was swallowing. She bled smelly milk. White ordinary milk dripped from her. I woke with a start. Musa in the innocence of sleep, fouled the air and his own purity.