Valenzetti Journal

“A hundred years ago, the Germans used to hang people here at Mwembe
Kinyongo.”

This is actually the middle part of the entire story. After two days
here of plying the oldest men in town with good beer and bad Swahili,
I learned the rest.

It is after midnight in late June of 1908, and except for the constant
growl of the undergrowth, all is quiet. A scream suddenly rises from
within the whitewashed walls of the provincial Governer’s
compound. Scalding bright arc lights spark to life, bathing the square
in an unnatural daylight. The Governer, a powerfully built German man
whom the locals call “Milkono wa Damu” and who is called “Herr Doktor”
by his guards, runs into the square. His personal guards follow
behind, bayonets at the ready as they haven’t had time to load their
rifles.

Governer Milkono clutches at his head, screaming and barking orders at
his guards. The guards dutifully drag the villagers from their nearby
homes. “Msafiri Bia!” the Governer shouts, over and over again at the
terrified natives. Msafiri is a small boy whose mother died of a
strange fever a few weeks before. Nobody knows who Msafiri’s father
might be, and Msafiri himself has not been seen for several days. Most
believe him lost or dead.

The Governer becomes more agitated, returning again and again to shout
into the face of a crippled man named Kitasa. Kitasa says nothing to
the Governer, just leans on his crutch looking the Governer steadily
in the eye. Finally, the Governer grabs a Mauser from one of the
guards and forces several young men to climb up to the gallows erected
in the central square.

Pulling the noose over the head of the first young man, the Governer
doesn’t even hesitate before yanking the lever that drops the trap
door from beneath his victim’s feet. The young man kicks and dangles,
then falls to the ground. Kitasa stands upon the gallows platform,
having cut the rope with a black iron knife. He hands the knife to
Governor Milkono, then whispers something to him.

The Governor listens. He presses his Mauser into Kitasa’s back and
orders the guards to follow thm into the wilderness that borders the
edge of the township.

The arc lights burn all night, but no one returns from the
forests. Days pass, then weeks. The rope marks fade from the neck of
the young boy the Governor tried to hang.

Then, almost two months later, Herr Doktor Governor returns to the
village. His hair has turned white. He still clutches his Mauser, and
says over and over again “Flüstern in den Bäumen.” The next morning he
awakens in the infirmary, claiming no memory of any events from before
the night he ran into the forests. He returns to Germany soon after.

The guards are never found, and all that is ever found of Kitasa is
his crutch, discarded by a stream in the deep forest. Nothing is ever
heard again of Msafiri, and his name becomes a sort of trigger for the
elders of the town to quietly tell this story of the madness of white
men.

The package I received last month came from here. When I have more
bandwidth available, I will post photos.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 7:22 pm and is filed under Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.