Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight_ An African Childhood - Alexandra Fuller [99]
In the backseat Vanessa and I sink into ourselves. I want to say, “He was just kidding. Only a joke. Don’t shoot, really.”
But the soldier starts laughing. “Ah, Fuller,” he says, “you are too clever. Too clever.”
Dad doesn’t wait for him to wave us through, but drives ahead; the wheels of the car spit gravel up against the drums that guide us away from the spike-toothed barrier.
People have died like this. They have driven through roadblocks when it has not been clear that they have been waved through and a drunken sergeant has pumped several rounds of ammunition into the backs of their heads. Cause of death: Accident.
We say, “Acci-didn’t. Acci–didn’t stop. Ha ha.”
There is a madman who lives on the road to Mkushi. Every full moon he comes out onto the tarmac and digs a deep trench across the road. Dad would like to find the madman and bring him back to the farm. “Think what a strong bugger he is, eh?”
“Yes, but you could only get him to work when there was a full moon.”
“Which is twice as hard as any other Zambian.”
We cross the second bridge (one more roadblock) and reach the gum trees, their ghostly white limbs stretching into the sky, and now we are almost home. The road is dirt, washed, potholed and ribbed from here, spitting up a fine, red, throat-coating dust, but the peace of the farm is already spreading her fingers toward us.
The farm does not come as a surprise, because it’s where I would put a farm. It’s where any sensible person would put a farm. We have driven hundreds of kilometers and each kilometer brings land more beautiful and fertile and comforting and with each passing kilometer the air clears and the sky appears wider and deeper. And then, when it feels as if the land could not have settled itself more comfortably for human habitation, there it is—Serioes Farm—lying open like a sandy-covered, tree-dotted blanket. Softly, voluptuously fertile and sweet-smelling of khaki weed, and old cow manure and thin dust and msasa leaves. It seems the logical place for this family to stop. And mend.
Zambia has been independent since October 1964.
The president, Kenneth Kaunda—affectionately known as KK—is a deeply religious teetotaler, the son of a missionary. He is prone to tears and long speeches and calls himself a Social Humanist. He speaks of love and tolerance and reconciliation.
“One Zambia, one nation.”
“UNIP is the people’s party.”
UNIP stands for United National Independence Party. It is the sole legal party in Zambia.
KK orders his critics and those who oppose his government to be tortured, killed, imprisoned. He is the only presidential candidate at election time, winning a landslide victory against no one year after year.
Election times come and go and nothing changes; the pointless elections are not memorable.
The occasional, quickly squashed coup attempts are what I remember.
Anyone can stage a coup. I have the impression that even I could arm myself with enough gin and anger to walk into the radio station in Lusaka and break off the nightly broadcast of African rumba to declare myself the new leader of the country.
“Stay calm,” I would say into the microphone, “it is me, Bobo Fuller, in charge. I hereby declare the third Republic of Zambia.” And by the time my words reach the rural areas (days, maybe weeks later) I will have been locked up and will be on my way to death.
The leaders of the coups, the political detainees, the student rioters are quickly forgotten in jail. Their heroic dissent melts in the tropical heat and washes away with the next rainy season.
Vanessa is away at secretarial college in Zimbabwe when we arrive on the farm, that