Liberty

Book 0: The Africa Trilogy

by Jakob Ejersbo, Mette Petersen

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

Two young men from very different backgrounds. Christian is the son of Danish ex-pats; Marcus works as a house boy for a Swedish family, hoping they will eventually take him back to Europe with them. Their friendship defines a divided continent. When they decide to go into business together--a teenage dream of playing at discos--they unwittingly set a collision course. But will it be love or money that tears the two apart? Spanning a decade from the dawn of the 1980s, the story of Marcus and Christian's dissolving friendship plays out amid a vast cast of characters, all fighting to make their way in a country defined by corruption. As the Tanzanian authorities and European aid agencies compete to line their own pockets, the rise of 'the disease' threatens to lay waste to an already stricken continent.

Release date: September 9, 2014

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 788

Sample

Christian

As I step out of the aeroplane tropical heat sweeps around me – in the distance I can see Kilimanjaro’s snow-capped crown in the twilight. A group of black men are lounging about outside the single-storey airport terminal, smoking cigarettes next to a couple of scarred luggage vans.

“Welcome to Africa,” Dad says, putting a hand on my shoulder as I step onto the tarmac. The aircraft engines have stopped. The only sound is that of cicadas. The airport has a single landing strip, and there is no plane there but ours.

I look at the black men. A fat black woman is telling them off in Swahili. They grin and slowly lug the clattering luggage vans towards the plane’s belly. Their faces are blank now.

When I got up this morning it was the day after Boxing Day, and I was a Danish boy who lived with my mother on the outskirts of Køge. Now I’m going to be living in Tanzania and attending an international school. Our family will be together again soon. Dad’s days of being a Mærsk man stationed in the Far East are over. My baby sister was born in October and Mum will be bringing her down in a few months. Everything has been turned upside down.

“It’ll be a while before the luggage arrives,” Dad says. We pass some shoulder-high plants with leathery leaves and enter the concrete building, which is blacked out.

“Why is there no light?” I ask.

“I expect there’s a power cut,” Dad says. “They probably just need to start the back-up generator.” I stay close to him while the other white people, a few blacks and quite a few Indians enter the dark arrivals hall. We changed planes in Amsterdam and there were stopovers in Rome and Oman. Somewhere in the building an engine sputters into action, and a few seconds later some of the light bulbs in the ceiling start glowing faintly.

“Niels, Niels,” a woman calls. Dad turns.

“Hi,” he calls back and waves. “That’s Katriina,” he tells me, walking towards the glass partition. He’d told me that a Swedish family had taken him to the airport, and that they would be there to pick us up in his car. I look at the police officers, standing idly by with their machine guns strapped across their chests. I follow Dad.

“So this is Christian,” the woman says and nods, smiling. “Hello, I’m Katriina.” She is wearing a flimsy summer dress and sandals.

“Hello,” I say and try to smile. Dad tells her something about our trip here, and it seems odd that he should be standing chatting to a woman I don’t know and that Mum should be in Denmark.

“Was it good to see your new daughter?” Katriina asks.

“Yes, it was lovely,” Dad says. “And my wife is looking forward to coming down.” A sound makes me turn. The baggage carousel isn’t moving and suitcases are flying through the hole in the wall. A skinny black man in a grubby pale blue uniform crawls through the hole and scrambles over the suitcases, which he starts hurling onto the floor.

We get our bags together and walk over to passport control. The officer stares for a long time at the photograph and then at me. I try to smile at him. Suddenly he grabs a stamp and hammers it onto an inkpad and then into my passport – three different stamps before he takes a pen and adds a few scribbled words. He hands me back my passport.

“Welcome to Tanzania,” he says in strange English, smiling broadly. At customs control we come across a fat man who is sweating profusely. He signals for me to open my bag. He kneads my luggage with his meaty hands, grabbing my football and saying a lot of things I don’t understand. He smiles, slamming the ball into the ground and catching it again.

“He thinks it’s a good ball,” Dad says.

“It is,” I say, smiling at the man. I’m nervous. I don’t know what his smile means. Is there a problem? He puts the ball back, makes a quick mark on my bag with chalk and pushes it towards me, nodding:

“Football, very good,” he says. Dad has gone on ahead. The Swedish woman is hugging him. Luckily she only shakes my hand. She has large breasts.

“How old are you?” she asks in Swedish.

“Thirteen,” I say.

“I have a daughter who is eight. And my fifteen-year-old nephew is staying with us. Solja and Mika,” she says, grabbing one of my bags. “We’re going back to our place now for a bite to eat – we’re having a small welcome party for you. We’ve moved to a new house.”

“One without rats?” Dad asks.

“Yes,” Katriina says. “And we have a nanny called Marcus.”

“A man?” Dad asks.

“A boy,” Katriina says. “He’s an orphan and used to live with some Germans but they went home. Solja and Mika found him. He was living with a local parson in Moshi who had put him to work in his fields.”

We go out to the car – a white Peugeot 504 with the steering wheel on the wrong side. The darkness is solid and as soft as velvet. We pass a guard at a barrier – leave the airport and drive through the night. The road is straight, the landscape flat. No street lamps, no buildings. The headlights sweep over greyish-green shrubs at the side of the road.

Three months ago Dad started working as Head of Accounts at a sugar plantation called T.P.C. – Tanzania Planting Corporation. It used to be owned by Mærsk but has now been nationalized by the Tanzanian state, and Mærsk have been contracted for the next few years to teach the locals how to run it. It’s just outside Moshi, which is where my school is. Dad turns around in the front seat.

“Are you alright, Christian?” he asks.

“When will we be going out to the house then?” I ask.

“We’ll go later,” Dad says. “It’s only seven.” He has told me it gets dark early and that it happens very quickly because we’re so close to the Equator. I feel lightheaded. What I wouldn’t do for a cigarette.

“Alright,” I say and look out of the window and up to the sky, studded with bright stars stretching all the way to the horizon.

We reach a T-junction. Wooden shacks and little brick houses cast faint light into the darkness. There are shops on the bare ground. Dark shapes move around between them. We turn right, towards Moshi.

“This is one of the best roads in the country,” Dad tells me. “Almost no potholes.” The darkness envelops us completely. There is almost no traffic, and Katriina is going fast. There’s a bend in the road, then it dips into a ravine – our headlights illuminate the steep rock walls on both sides.

“What?” Katriina shouts and steps on the brakes, turning the wheel to avoid slamming into a large leafy branch lying across our side of the road. The brakes lock, and the car skids into the branch, pushing it ahead of us until we come to a complete standstill.

“There’s someone there,” Dad says. I can just make out a dark shape a bit further ahead, but with the leaves of the branch in the way, our headlights don’t provide much light.

“Is it highway robbers?” Katriina asks.

“I don’t think so,” Dad says, opening his door. “The branch is a Tanzanian warning triangle.” I get out with Dad and help him pull the branch away from the front of the car while Katriina reverses. Now I can see that the shape is in fact a lorry that has slammed into one of the rock walls and is blocking the road – a large fresh branch is poking from under the rear bumper. We lug the branch back to its position on the road. There is no-one to be seen.

“What do you think happened?” I ask.

“Dodgy brakes,” Dad says. “The driver probably drove into the rock wall to stop.” We get back into the car.

“Fa’n!” Katriina says – damn, hitting the wheel before getting the car in gear and driving on more slowly. We can just about edge past the lorry. As the road straightens out again at the bottom of the ravine, Dad turns to me:

“When you drive through here during the day, you’ll see a load of wrecked cars,” he says.

After twenty minutes we reach the outskirts of the city and drive down some smaller roads.

“Why does it smell of cow dung?” I ask.

“The Maasai drive their cattle through here when they’re going to the abattoir at the other end of the city,” Dad says.

“Almost there,” Katriina says as we turn into a bumpy dirt road that runs between two rows of white villas behind tall fences and gates.

Marcus

MARABU

“Hey, are you there?” bwana Jonas shouts from the veranda.

“Yes, bwana,” I call back from the kitchen where I am sitting, waiting for Katriina to return from the airport.

“Bring out some beer,” bwana Jonas shouts.

“Right away,” I answer and dash to the fridge. Solja comes out into the kitchen.

“I am hungry,” she says – already she is good with the English language, even though this Swedish family has only been here four months.

“I will fry some meat for you in a minute,” I tell her and run out with the beer to the veranda, where bwana Jonas is sitting with his colleague Asko and his wife from Finland. I put the beer down on the table. Asko is very big and fat. His wife, Tita, titters like a bird:

“Thank you so much.”

“Do you want me to make some food for Solja?” I ask.

“If she’s hungry,” bwana Jonas mutters with his Swedish tobacco-dirt in his mouth, shrugging without even looking at me. I hurry back to the kitchen and take the chicken outside and put it on the barbecue. Looking after this eight-year-old girl is my ticket to the good life. I have been with this family for only two weeks, and it’s hard to understand what my role is. Am I a nanny, or am I being adopted? Life is hard when you have abandoned your own parents. I turn the chicken on the barbecue.

“Do you like chicken?” Solja asks.

“Yes, very much.” I love meat. When I was born – in 1965 – my family lived like marabous, scavenging for meat in Serengeti National Park. My father worked there because even though we are of the Chagga tribe from the slopes of Kilimanjaro we have no land. As a child I was almost a wild animal – running about in the dust while the tourists came in little planes to be driven around in Serengeti for one day only. They brought lunchboxes from the hotel in Nairobi – big white cardboard boxes. They want to sit down and eat, and us blacks, we keep an eye on them. We live on corn porridge and spinach – and these boxes contain white meat from the chicken, dark meat from the cow, they have lovely strong breads, a golden apple – loads of flavour. But meat is the most important thing – we are starving for meat in a place where meat is walking around on all fours. We’re not allowed to kill the meat, because the tourists want to see living animals. We keep an eye out for when these wazungu are done eating, and as soon as they leave the table we make a run for the boxes. The tourists laugh at us, call out to us. Sometimes they throw the chicken on the ground, so it becomes dusty and we must fight for it. We can wash the chicken, but we can also eat it with dust on. At other times the tourists throw the good food into a bin for rubbish, where the winged marabous come to feast. We throw stones at the birds. We fight for the food. The white people take photos of us as if we were strange monkeys. We’re not strange. We’re just hungry.

The smell of grilled chicken rises to my nose. I dash over to the Swedish sauna hut next to the house and make sure there is a good fire in the oven so the white people can sweat a little more in the warm country. Then I set out a plate for Solja with chicken and bread and butter – and salad, which she never eats.

“And a Coke,” she says. I take a Coke from the fridge and open it for her. She takes her food to the veranda to listen to the adults talking. But what should I do now? Should I get started on the rest of the food, so it’s ready when Katriina gets back from the airport with bwana Knudsen and his son?

DANISH BOY

“Thanks for dinner,” Solja says. Like the good girl she is, she brings her plate back to the kitchen. I take the chicken scraps and gnaw off the last bit of meat – lovely and fatty. Until two weeks ago I was living with the Lutheran parson in Moshi, who made me work in his fields. I have told these Swedes that I don’t have parents – they are dead from disease and a traffic accident. It’s safer to lie – maybe the whites can’t understand that my parents were so bad it would be better if they really were dead.

A car honks its horn at the gate; the guard dashes out. Katriina is bringing bwana Knudsen and his son, who is my size and very quiet; not wild in the eyes like Mika, who has run into town saying he was going to the cinema. This Danish boy looks like Gerhard, my German childhood friend from Serengeti.

I call on the house girl from the servants’ quarters, our shared ghetto. She is to help me in the kitchen, so the white people can eat. I put more meat on the barbecue and carry drinks to the veranda.

“Coke?” I ask bwana Knudsen’s son, handing him the bottle.

Christian

Katriina’s husband is called Jonas. He is sitting on the veranda with a fat Finnish man – Asko – and Asko’s tiny wife, who is called Tita. They’re speaking a strange language I don’t understand at all.

“Do you understand what we’re saying?” Katriina asks slowly in Swedish. I shake my head.

“Swedish with a Finnish accent,” Dad says, laughing. A young black guy appears on the veranda and hands me a Coke before leaving again.

“Is that the new nanny?” Dad asks.

“I’m damned if I know what he is,” Jonas says.

“Don’t say that,” Katriina says. “Marcus is very helpful, and we only give him food and lodgings.”

“And his school fees,” Jonas mutters.

“It’s nothing,” Katriina says.

“Marcus is my friend,” says a little girl who has just appeared on the veranda – she must be Solja.

Not long after, Marcus and a black girl bring the food. The black girl is young and silent, wrapped in a brightly coloured piece of thin fabric. We eat on the veranda with our plates in our laps. The adults drink beer, smoke cigarettes. The cicadas sing, the bats scurry through the air.

“The sauna is ready,” Katriina says. They’re all talking and smiling as they get up – Dad too. People go into the sitting room.

“The sauna?” I ask Dad.

“The Swedes and the Finns are very keen on their saunas. Come along,” he says.

“I’m not going in there,” I say and stay in my seat. He looks at me for a moment. I can’t read his look when it’s so dark on the veranda.

“Alright,” he says and follows the others. Solja has gone – maybe she’s been put to bed. I look into the sitting room. They’re all undressing. I see Asko’s cock under his big paunch and look away. So weird. I look again. Dad has wrapped a towel around his waist and is going into the sauna, which has been added to the back of the house. I wonder what Dad has been up to for the five years he was stationed in the Far East without Mum? Going to bed early?

Asko has left his cigarettes on the table. I started smoking last year with the other outsiders in my class. I can tell myself that I want to wake up at three a.m. Then I sneak out and go the corner shop, put coins in the machine and draw a ten-pack of Princes. When the drawer is open, my hands are just small enough that I can push my fingers in and grab onto the next pack and pull it out; I can empty an entire column for the price of just one pack. Or I could. Down here I have no idea how to get cigarettes. Asko’s cigarettes are called Sportsman. It’s quiet here – everyone’s in the sauna. Do I take one? But I’m afraid to. I wish Mum was here.

My parents almost got divorced a year ago. Late one night my mum came into my room – I was already in bed. There had been a lot of rows on the phone with Dad in Singapore when she thought I was asleep. Mum sat down on the edge of the bed.

“Christian, I need to talk to you about something serious,” she says.

“Are you guys splitting up?” I asked.

“No, of course not,” Mum said. She looked at me then turned away, holding a hand up to her mouth and swallowing. “No,” she said again. I knew they were getting a divorce.

“Then where will I live?” I asked.

“We’re not getting a divorce – I’m pregnant,” Mum said, smiling in a strange way. Once, when he was drunk, my dad had told me there was something wrong with Mum’s plumbing. She couldn’t have any more children.

“Pregnant?” I asked.

“Yes – you’re going to have a little brother or sister,” Mum said.

“Is Dad coming home then? To stay?” I asked.

“You bet he is,” Mum said.

“O.K.,” I said.

“Aren’t you pleased?” Mum asked.

“Yes,” I said. The plan was for Dad to come back to Køge and work for Mærsk on Esplanaden in Copenhagen. I would believe that when I saw it.

Mum arranged a party for the day he was to arrive. The day before, I heard her screaming into the phone:

“We are divorced. We have been for ages. If you don’t want to be with us, I’ll sell the house and send you your half. I can’t do this anymore.” There’s a break – Dad is saying something from Singapore – and I hurriedly open my door just enough to listen in. Mum is speaking quite calmly again:

“Either you get here, or I’m through with you.” She puts down the phone and comes to my room to say goodnight. I don’t ask her until she is almost out of the door again:

“Isn’t Dad coming to the party tomorrow night?”

She stops without turning.

“I don’t know,” she says and leaves. Not long after I hear the car starting. When I turned twelve, she started working nights – it’s fine to leave me home alone. I get up and go outside, smoke a cigarette. I go inside and flick through all the pages in the notebook by the phone. Tap in the numbers.

“Knudsen speaking.” The connection to Singapore crackles.

“Dad?” I say.

“Christian! Do you know what time it is here?”

“Are you coming home?” I ask.

“Where is your mum?” he asks.

“At work,” I say. He sighs.

“Something’s come up. I can’t leave for another few days. I’m sorry, Christian,” he says.

“No,” I say.

“Christian,” he says, “your mum is …” He doesn’t go on.

“You said you’d be here,” I say.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” he says.

“But …” I say.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says.

“Goodbye,” I say and hang up. My hand is shaking.

The next day Mum had her party. She was dancing tight with a tall doctor – I hated her for it. Dad came through the door. I looked at him, he looked at her. He had made it. He raised his hand and smiled. She looked at him and went on dancing. She was pregnant, but it didn’t show yet. Why was she still dancing with that doctor when Dad was here? The doctor looked at my dad and stopped – let go of her. She smiled at the doctor and looked vacantly at Dad without moving. He was standing just inside the sitting-room door, still had his coat on and everything. I hurried over to him.

“Dad,” I said.

“Christian,” he said and held me up high in the air even though I’m too big to be lifted. Mum came over to us.

Now I’m going to be living with him for a few months until Mum comes down. It’s a bit odd. I don’t really know the man. And when Mum comes down with my little sister, we’ll all be together, like a proper family.

I hear a squeal from the other side of the house. Get up and take a couple of steps into the sitting room, look through the windowpane in the back door. Katriina is skipping about on the lawn. Her full breasts bob up and down – her nipples are very dark. Dad appears from the sauna with a garden hose in his hand. Its jet of water sprays onto Katriina, who stops, breathes heavily, shakes a bit. She’s standing still, letting the water wash over her – I can see the large dark bush between her legs. The jet of water hits her upper body, and she twirls into it. I look at Dad, who is smiling and holding the garden hose over his own head so the water flows over his naked body.

I quickly go back to the veranda before they see me. Sit down for a bit.

“Come out here, Christian,” Dad calls from the other side of the house.

“Why?” I shout.

“Don’t worry, no-one’s naked now,” he shouts. I go out. They’re sitting on benches around a table in a small fenced-off area just outside the sauna. The men with towels around their waists, the women wrapped in brightly coloured cloths like the one the black house girl was wearing. Katriina is sitting next to Dad. She takes his hand in hers.

“I can’t wait till your wife brings your little daughter down,” she says.

“Why is that?” Dad asks.

“Because I’m pregnant as well,” Katriina says. Tita sighs and looks sad. She looks down. I look over at her husband, Asko. He looks ticked off. Maybe she would like to be pregnant as well.

“Congratulations,” Dad says. “When are you flying back to Sweden then?”

“I’ll be having the baby at K.C.M.C.,” Katriina says. “There are so many white doctors there.”

Asko and Jonas are talking in Swedish. Tita doesn’t say anything. I look at Jonas. He is tucking chewing tobacco behind his upper lip, moving it around with his tongue and fixing his eyes on something in the darkness. I turn my head and follow his gaze. It’s the house girl. She’s standing at the corner of the house, bent over, scrubbing the barbecue grill – her arse is sticking out, bobbing up and down as she works.

“What are you looking at?” Dad asks, laughing. “Do you like the look of her?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t tell him that I’m looking at what Jonas is looking at, just get up and step out into the garden.

“Where are you going?” Dad asks.

“I’m just going to have a look around,” I say.

“Don’t get lost,” Dad says.

Marcus

MY MZUNGU

All the wazungu have gone naked into the sauna – a big production in pink flesh. Katriina comes into the house:

“Marcus, will you be sure to brush Solja’s teeth?”

“I will do it,” I say, and Katriina goes back to the sauna party.

“But I want Mummy to do it,” Solja says – she is eight, old enough to do it herself. Afterwards she goes to her room. But right away she calls:

“I can’t find my nightie.” I go to her. Her nightie is in her wardrobe, right in front of her, but the girl wants the attention, so the negro must do his bit. Solja starts putting on her nightie.

“Goodnight,” I say, leaving.

“I can’t sleep, Marcus,” she says. “They’re being noisy.” It’s true, they’ve left the sauna and are sitting on the small wooden veranda, talking, drinking, shouting. “Can I sleep at your place?”

“No, that won’t do,” I say. How will this bwana Jonas react if Solja sleeps in my ghetto? – I think he wants white and black to be kept well apart. I go to her bed and hold up the duvet up for her. She gets in and I smooth down her hair.

“Tell me a bedtime story,” Solja says.

“O.K.” I lie down next to her on the bed, and she puts her head on my shoulder. What should I tell her? About the marabou in Serengeti? About slaving for the Reverend? About the teacher’s rod at school? No. I must think of another story.

“Go on,” Solja says next to me in bed. So I tell her about Bob Marley; how his father was a white man who soon went away and his mother was black, and Bob grew up in poverty and came to Kingston in Jamaica and sang about freedom. I sing quietly:

“Won’t you help to sing, these songs of freedom, ’cause all I ever had, redemption songs.”

“That’s a good song,” Solja mutters. I tell her about the descendants of the African slaves on Jamaica who created the Rastafarian religion. They call God “Jah”, which is short for Jehovah from the Bible. The religion took its name from the Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, who was christened Ras Tafari. They see the emperor as God’s incarnation on earth, because Haile Selassie was head of the only African state that was completely independent of white people. Rastafarians don’t accept that Haile Selassie is dead.

Solja breathes quietly; but it’s too soon for me to move – she might wake up. This girl child is very important – I have to look after her.

My first mzungu was Gerherd from Germany – his parents came to study wild animals. We lived in Seronera, and all the children used to play together, black and white. Gerherd is like me, except for the colour of his skin. His skin is always covered by sneakers, blue jeans, jeans jacket. My skin is on show. I only have old school shorts and a worn-out T-shirt with the word BAYER printed on it, a hand-me-down from Gerhard. We kids are bored because Seronera is just a small cluster of buildings surrounded by Serengeti National Park.

“What should we do?” Gerhard asks.

“We could play football,” I say.

“But we’re not enough to make up two teams,” he says.

“We’ll just go over to the village – there are plenty of children there,” an English boy suggests. It’s the village where the guards live with their families. You have to cross the grasslands to get there.

“We’re not allowed; it’s dangerous,” Gerhard says.

“I am not afraid of those animals,” the English boy says. “It’s the animals that are worried when they see so many two-legged beasts.”

“What do you think, Marcus?” Gerhard says.

“I’m used to the animals,” I say. We’re seven children who set off; waafrika, German mzungu, English mzungu – we don’t ask the adults, we go quickly. Then the earth shakes – it’s the heavy thunder of hoofs. Gerhard is next to me.

“Rhino,” he shouts. The beast is coming at us at full speed. We’re running to all sides; Gerhard one way, me another. With a rhino you have to stand still – we know that. The animal doesn’t see at all well – it can only see movement. If we’re standing still, we could be trees. If it comes at me, I must jump out of the way at the very last moment, right before the burning spear rams into me. If I jump too soon, it has time to change direction. But can you stand still when the earth is trembling and you’re staring Death in face? We scatter, the rhino swings its lowered head; there’s Gerhard – on top of the horn now. The beast throws him into the air – he is simply flying, landing like a sack of rice on the ground. The rhino jogs off. We run over to Gerhard – a big hole in his stomach, bloody with white things hanging out – maybe from the chicken he had in the box today when he pretended to be hungry.

“Start carrying him back, then I’ll run for help,” the English boy shouts and scrambles off through the grass. Along with the other waafrika I start to carry Gerhard back – he is even whiter now.

“Marcus,” he says. “Don’t let me die here.”

“Don’t worry – it’s only a small hole,” I say. But the hole is a big one.

The adults bring a Land Rover, but the car only makes things worse on the bumpy road. Gerhard has passed out by now. Luckily there is a tourist plane – a small one. They carry him into it, take off. But he dies in the air above Arusha. Who will get Gerhard’s special shoes with bumps under them for playing football? I will. Gerhard’s father and mother want to be visited; they have two little girls, but I can play the part of the boy, even though he is dead in the ground.

Soon I am wearing Gerhard’s clothes, and it makes my father angry. He thinks I am letting my own family down in order to be with the white people. My father beats me so hard I run to the safety of Gerhard’s mother and am adopted into a white life with my dead friend’s family.

Gerhard’s parents are strange. All fruits must be scrubbed with washing-up liquid, and all vegetables must be rinsed in chlorinated water which stinks badly; otherwise they are dangerous for the white stomach. The woman sits all day, drinking coffee and reading books. She has waafrika for every job: washing, cleaning, cooking. But she pays them far too much and doesn’t see that they steal sugar and flour. At night the white woman sits on her sofa, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes like the man, and sometimes she speaks to him in a nasty way, but he never hits her while I’m there – at worst he sneers at her like a grumpy monkey. Sometimes the man kisses her, right in front of me – whatever will they do next?

Then the Germans leave for another national park to study the hyena. They like to count the animals. I go with them, like a piece of luggage in their trunk. They take good care of me. Being fed well, having fun, riding bicycles – it overpowers my brain; I am being carried forward in life. If I just play with their children, they are happy. They even teach me to drive a car, so I sit behind the wheel in the national park while the German man uses the binoculars. But after a year their research is done, and they must go home to the white country. I am shocked. What will happen now? I thought they would take me with them to Europe. But the man sends me by car to Seronera like a tourist. They have given me money; I am wearing sneakers and jeans and a jeans jacket; my packed lunch has the white meat.

My parents left Seronera – the work was over; they went back to Moshi. They couldn’t take me – how would they find me? I am fourteen. I take a bus to Moshi – several hundred kilometres, all alone in the world. I find the house my parents have rented in Soweto. The walls are sticks and mud, the floor is dirt, and the roof is a large tin can for cooking oil which has been cut