----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [u][b]Early August: South of Fort Portal, Swahili People's Republic [/b][/u] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "[i]They sold the righteous for silver, and the poor for a pair of shoes, and they pant after the dust of the earth on the heads of the poor.[/i]" Worldly education was brought to the deep parts of Africa by missionaries. They tacked the knowledge of their civilization on the word of God, so that Christianity brought with it instructions on the ways men and women are to behave, the ways people should dress, and work, and pray. They brought the ideas of nationalism, of democracy, and of socialism. The revolutions that convulsed East Africa were midwifed by men with crosses around their necks and bibles in their hands. Marcel Hondo-Demissie thought about this, sitting in the canvas-covered bed of an old truck. They bumped down a rutted trail cut through the grassland beneath the shadows of the Rwenzori mountains. He was surrounded by his fellow [i]Watu wa Uhuru[/i], sitting with knees folded up, clutching their guns to their bodies as if the weather-worn rifles were their children. So much had been brought by Christianity. How could the Freedom Army of God claim sole right to interpret God's will, and administer it by the edge of a machete? The massacres perpetrated in the north chilled Marcel when he heard of them. But didn't he know they would happen? He'd been hesitant to make a deal with that particular devil, and he'd been hesitant for a reason. African history, like the history of the rest the world, was littered with barbarian tribes. That was to say warrior tribes: people who didn't define themselves through the functions of civil society, but by their sheer strength, focusing their efforts on physical power, and unleashing that power in ways urban civilization found destructive. Shaka Zulu was the spiritual cousin of Attila the Hun. And who were those first Anglo-Saxons, landing on the shore of Roman Britain, but the cousins of the Bantu people who did the same thing to much of Africa, steel sword replaced with iron spear, wooden buckler replaced with hide shield. The Freedom Army of God were wrought in that same image. Had he unleashed them? Was he to blame? Or was this in their make-up, they a human virus, uncontrolled and uncontrollable? Could he blame himself anymore than the Romans who first paid tribute to Attila might be blamed for his onslaught? There was light conversation between the hunters. The [i]Force Socialiste[/i] wore their tattered blues, while the rest of the men wore casual clothes, shirts and trousers. Few men wore shoes. It was not unusual for their leader to share the back of the truck with them, and none of them reacted to his presence. Whenever he could, he killed the mystique of authority, introducing his [i]Watu wa Uhuru[/i] to a classless way of life. Blue clouds prophetic of storms hung over the mountains to the west. Those were the mountains of the moon, a place known to the ancient Europeans as the source of the Nile. So close to the plains, they were green and climbing with tropical vegetation. Further up and beyond the sight of the hunting party, the mountains were covered in snow as deep as the European alps, creating the barrier that divided the Swahili east front the Belgian Congo. The truck stopped. They were near the last place where elephants had been spotted. Here the landscape forced them to go on foot. They had one truck, and it was their plan to load it with ivory. He would have brought more if fuel wasn't so dear, but resources had to be saved. The truck was parked in a grove behind a thick mango tree. They marched into the hills. Would this world last? An anarchist paradise constructed from the naked will of the people? Grace was left behind in Fort Portal, managing the hospital and aiding with the affairs of the people there. It was too easy to imagine the Freedom Army of God burning the town and murdering its people. Murdering her. They were creating a new world, but could it survive the old one? Of course, Christianity didn't bring socialism whole-clothe. Africa was not a tabula-rasa. Socialism had its own natural logic in a world so tightly tribal, where it was often logical to assign goods according to their use rather than a tight system of property. But property hadn't been new either. Like so much of the world outside of Europe, the east African plateau hosted a long and storied history largely ignored by outsiders. The Empire of the Moon once ruled along the lake-shores, spreading their influence by the leaf-edged spear. Later it was the [i]Buganda[/i] around whose cane-fence compounds arose cities, host to thousands of long war canoes, watched over by warrior-magnates beneath who's fences flowed the blood of children sacrificed to the world of magic. They knew their own property in this way, their compounds an iron-age cousin of English estates, the children beneath the blade of the witch-doctor kin to the children mangled underneath the looms of Lancashire. They knew socialism in the tight relations of the village tribe. They knew it in the way rural farmers knew better how to handle their own crops than urbane kings. It was this natural common sense, unattached to the superstitious logic of the west that said the mangled child beneath the loom was necessary for progress, that'd allowed communism to take root here. Marx wasn't leading the way, or blazing new trails. The people were. They didn't need to be taught. They knew. When the priests came, they gave Africa the vocabulary of the West. Words rule the world. What seemed almost innate became revolutionary by their power. The storm winds came down from the mountains and made the tall grass hiss. The air was full of power and change. The wind in their ears sometimes created illusions of thunder, and made them wonder if they should take shelter. They climbed up a hill passed a wide umbrella tree. Though it was mid-day, the shadows beneath the tree were as dark as night. They climbed up and down the green piedmont. This was a tropical vision of Europe beneath the alps, green rolling hills, mountains in the distance. They went up and down and up and down until their feet hurt. This would be good land to hunt by horse. If it wasn't for the Tsetse fly, they probably would have. As it was, European livestock could not live in this part of the world, not for long anyways, and horses weren't viable. A number of horses had been sold across the lake to the anarchists a year before. They were all dead now. When the rain came, they camped in a grove of trees, using thick canvas tarps as large tents. They lit fires in the dry places beneath a dripping umbrella tree. Thunder rolled in the distance, and rain danced on the leaves. The hunters sang a song and ate salted fish. Marcel used a skinning knife to cut open a mango. A rogue drop fell from the canopy above and ran down his knife like a tear. "You have been quiet today." said Achille Ngongo. Achille was his second in command in the old [i]Force Socialiste[/i]. He held his position by simple fact he was still alive and thriving after so many of their comrades had been lost. "I have been thinking." Marcel said. "Do you worry? Is there something I should know?" "You know what I know." Both men leaned against the tree and ate. Achille looked at Marcel. Marcel looked at his hunters. "Our position is good." Achille said, "The other groups fight between each other. You have made a wall out of your own enemies. This is good work, like you always do." "What is good work?" Marcel looked at Achille. He looked deeply into his old friend, hoping for answers. Achille returned the look. "It is work that advances our cause, or protects it. We are in a better place now than we were a month ago because you have made the decision you have." "That's effective in the moment, but is it good?" Marcel returned, "If I were to burn down a village of my enemy, from a statistical perspective I would be doing good. But what would the other villages think? If I burn down two villages, I might look better to the mathematician, but what would be my reputation?" "What have you done wrong? You have burned no villages." "I don't know." Marcel looked west at the dark clouds above the mountains. "That's what I am thinking about." When it was too dark to see, they crawled into their make-shift tents and slept. Marcel stared out into the rainy darkness for a long while, his mind keeping him awake with possibilities. He did not notice himself fall sleep. When they woke up they were damp with dew and dripping rain. It was a cool morning, but the wet air threatened choking tropical humidity when the sun came out. They got moving, looking for signs of elephants. Two hours after waking they found their quarry trumpeting in a meadow. There were a number of elephants bathing in the mud, making sounds like groaning trees. The hunters with the biggest caliber guns took positions on a hill. They took out two bulls, three females, and a calf, the rest bellowing like they themselves were dying, running to a nearby forest for cover. The land to the south was covered in a wide forest, an outcrop of jungle like that in the Congo, the sort of land the [i]Force Socialiste[/i] had fled out of many years before. They went down to half-dozen fallen elephants. Half of the men went at them with saws, removing the precious ivory. The other men watched the forest in case the others returned. Elephants are unpredictable like humans. There was still the possibility of a rampage. Of revenge. Marcel looked down regretfully at the corpse of a calf. A shot had went low and struck it in the neck. It's eyes were glazed dead, but it still wore the playful smile so common in young elephants. A shout brought Marcel out of his trance. He looked up and saw that all of his men were looking in one direction. Something moved in the forest, not large enough to be elephants. The men pulled up their guns. Marcel imagined warriors of the Freedom Army of God. But would they be so far south? Perhaps they were monkeys? Something was moving in there though, and more than one something. A man walked out. He was less than five feet tall, wearing nothing but a grass skirt. His skin was leathery. He held an iron-tipped spear, but uncertainly. The pygmies knew what guns were, and what they were capable of. A whole band came out speaking in a language Marcel didn't know. Achille did know it though, and he spoke with the leader of the band. They were hunters too, but their luck was bad. Could they have what the other men didn't use? Achille translated this question to Marcel. "If they will carry the ivory to our trucks, they can have what is left. Does this sound right?" he posed the idea to the other hunters. Some assented. Most ignored him. Achille nodded and translated this back to the pygmy. They were elated by the idea. All this meat for a little work? They smiled, and nodded, and made agreeable sounds. One of their own ran back into the bush to find men for the elephants. The rest went about their work. They hefted the blood-spattered tusks over their shoulders, muscles working like cords as they moved, carrying them with what seemed to Marcel like joy. Simple joy. That simplicity seemed so good and so useful that Marcel made a mental note of how to cultivate it in the movement. The grass was wet and heavy, the ground muddy beneath their steps. The pygmies did not seem to tire. In the end, they camped beneath the same tree, the ashes of their campfire turned to a goop of charcoal mud, the impressions from where they'd slept still visible. Here they fell into the same patterns. The pygmies kept to themselves. "What a life to live." Achille said, "To be naked in the jungle. To live on bush meat and fruit. I know they do not live long. There is no medicine. And look how old they seem to be. Even the young ones. Their skin is like shit that had dried out in the sun!" "I would not judge them." Marcel said. "Why would they feel the absence of what they do not know?" "They must know what they miss when they see us." "They can see us, but I do not know that they envy us. Do you envy demons?" "Demons." Achille scoffed, screwing up his face so that Marcel wondered if he had offended him. "That's not a fair comparison." "Demons live forever. They do not worry about wants. I suppose if demons live for whatever mischief they cause, then they have desires and fulfill them. But you would not want to be one. I wouldn't want to be one. I would miss the sunlight. I would miss my habits. I would miss love. Ours friends have their own world. It might not be as comfortable as ours, but they wouldn't know what to do without it." Achille looked at the small men. This time his gaze was far off. Thoughtful. "I don't envy them though." "I wouldn't expect you to." Marcel said, "They have their world and we have ours. I cannot say which one is better or worse because I cannot feel all things. I only know one thing." Achille looked at Marcel with an expression of expectancy, but he didn't say a word. Marcel spoke. "I want to live as Marcel." "I am glad you have that." Achille smiled.