Broken Sleep

Today is the twelfth moon since the raid. We are many miles from Kibuye, our lake-side village. Once upon a time, it was home. But now it is several piles of rubble. We are roaming the banks of Lake Kivu. We are not lost. We are avoiding soldiers. We have many long nights ahead of us. They are long for us, not because they are actually long, but because we want them to end. Life is simple and things can get very boring. Every morning, we wake up and walk. We walk, walk, and walk. We walk through empty villages and bush paths, where other raids happened. We walk during the day and rest in the evening. We are tired from walking. But that is not even the problem. The problem is getting through our days without televisions, laptops, or video games, and getting used to things dying around us. Like Ndika’s batteries. I am talking about the batteries in Ndika’s Game Boy.

On Bonfire Nights, we gather around the largest fires ever made and sing till we croak. We sing to fan the flames in our hearts. It is not flames like petrol-fire. It is the kind that catches you when you think about those you have lost and realize, for the uncountable time, that they are gone. You are never going to see them again. Loss has a way of lighting fires in people. So when people want to ruin our party by wailing, we dance with them. Yes, we force them to dance with us. It is a must. We make them stand up and dance. They can cry if they want, but they must stamp their feet. Preacher Man calls it stamping out the flames in their hearts.

“Dance,” Preacher Man says. He turns to me and smiles. “Azizi, dance. I haven’t seen you dance before.”

He picked me out of a group of teenage boys. We are chilling beside the drummers, acting like we are too cool for the party.

“We want beer,” one of us says to Preacher Man and laughs at himself as if he is joking, but I know he means it. He is only laughing because he knows it will take a miracle to find alcohol in these bush lands.

Me, I am not gonna dance. I am not gonna. I don’t feel like shaking my ikibuno. I don’t care if our Bonfire Nights serve to remind us of our roots. Or if they revive our spirits and prevent our culture from dying.

Preacher Man grins. His face creases to carve out his smile lines. He thrusts his groin at us and does a silly dance before he leaves. We laugh. Not at him. At his moves. He is at that age where it is no big deal to be uncool. If I ever do something like that, my friends back in Kibuye will say I am embarrassing them.

Ndika and I leave our group of boys. We poke through bushes with long sticks and wander away from the light of the bonfire and the bonfire crowd. Ndika thinks, maybe, we will find batteries someone has thrown away that still work, or something worth more. We head for the forests on the hills, where people go to take a wee. We hold our torches away from our eyes because they blind us when we hold them close. We are using flame torches instead of flashlights because our batteries have died.

Faint screams. Moans. Ndika hears them too.

They are coming from the tree at the bottom of a slope. Behind the tall grasses in its shade.

The sound leads us to the palm fronds close to a stream. They are the moans of a woman. She goes into a song of some sort. Gaspy and high-pitched. Increasing in volume and becoming more ragged. It is as if she is bouncing on something and panting. She screams.

Ndika mashes the head of his torch against the sand and puts out the flames. He motions me to do the same.

I comply.

“It’s a full-moon night. We can see without these,” he whispers.

The sound stops. The only sound we hear is the chirping of crickets. Ndika has seen something. He slinks towards a set of wild shrubs and I see what made him move in that direction: the glints of a rifle.

A bra and panties are spread over a bush. A belt and a pair of trousers lie in the shadows like snakes. Ndika peers over the bush. I don’t know what he sees, but he doesn’t look happy to see it. I thought he would beckon me over, smiling slyly. But he just stands there like a woodcarving. A woodcarving with a yam-like tuber for a back of the head. He can look all he likes. Me, I am not gonna look. It is wrong. Come on. We are not small boys. We know what that sound means. I will have to go to Confession if I look. I want to walk away, but a hardening inside my short knicker stops me. Take a small peep, it says. A small one. Just small. It won’t be your first time watching a blue film.

I tippytoe to Ndika’s side and stand beside him. I don’t have to stretch my neck to look over bushes. All I need to see is right there in front of me. Two buttocks make one bottom. I’m looking at a man’s ikibuno. His back. His lover’s legs folded over his arms. He is on top of… Imana. She is a girl about our age. A girl most boys have a crush on, including Ndika. I can see her face clearly as she grimaces in his embrace. He is crouched over her and she is arching towards him and clinging to him by the neck, her legs spread over his arms, feet flexed and pointy. He releases her and slumps on the grass beside her. He is about to open his eyes and look up when we lower our heads. It is Souza. I should have recognized his rifle.

After a while, the moans start again. They are so engaged in their act that even if we make a noise, they will not hear. And if they hear, they will not care. Souza slams into her repeatedly. He grunts. She moans. He grunts. She moans. Grunts. Moans. Grunt, moan, grunt, moan, the moon carving out their sheeny bodies. Isi yo gutangara, world of wonderment.

Ndika’s eyes have a wet shine to them. His nose is running. He likes Imana and has been looking for a way to tell her. Well, he can look all he wants. An older boy is contaminating his prize. Imana and Souza are making a baby. And the chances are, they will marry. I want to speak but I do not. I want to say to my friend, ’Pain is part of life. So also is pleasure. If you do not let one renew you, the other will become you.’