African Pursuit (2 page)

The stewardess started to pull up the blinds in the cabin. It was time for breakfast. Richard waited impatiently for Joanna to wake up. They had a lot to talk about.

M
zuri-Mlezi Hakimu had been born in Kenya in 1976 where her father worked as a game warden in the Tsavo National Park. When she was five he had been offered a post as a ranger in the Salonga National Park in the Congo where his brother already worked as chief ranger. Her father had felt honoured to be offered a position at the famous game reserve, the largest tropical rainforest reserve in Africa, which had become a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1984. Despite the upheaval of moving to a new country with a young child, he and Mzuri’s mother had both realised that the job was one that he had to accept, and so they had set up home in the heart of the Congo.

Her mother, known to everyone as ‘Big Mama’, was a midwife who ran a small maternity clinic, funded by the WHO, in the tiny village where they lived. Opposite the clinic was a house owned by the United Nations Organization where various scientists stayed when conducting studies at the nearby game reserve. Petrol generators maintained the electricity supply to both the clinic and the UN house during the frequent local power cuts. Throughout Mzuri’s childhood there was an undercurrent of political unrest and her mother, aware from her own childhood during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya
of the intense passions that could be aroused by tribal loyalties and jealousies, decided to build an underground storeroom in her clinic which could, in a crisis, act as a temporary refuge or hidey-hole. She was a large, strong, practical woman and over a period of months she excavated a large chamber under the floor of a back room in her clinic and covered it with timber, which became the restored floor of the original room.

A trapdoor and a few steps led down into the chamber and when the trapdoor was shut, and the boards covered with rush matting, no casual observer would ever guess that a secret chamber existed below the floor. In this cool chamber lined with shelves she kept some clinic supplies, tinned food and bottled water, and a chemical toilet, a refrigerator and a freezer. The only other people who knew of the existence of this extra storage space were her daughter and her husband, Mlinzi.

From an early age Mzuri had decided that she would like to train as a nurse and eventually take over her mother’s clinic. In 1996 rebel groups started the campaign of insurgencies that would eventually culminate in the first Congo war and, in an early incident in this unrest, the hospital at which Mzuri was training was burnt down. She returned home to help her mother at the clinic and was delighted to earn some money by doing some housework and cooking for the current tenants at the UN house opposite – a Dr and Mrs Bonaventure.

Mrs Bonaventure was pregnant with twins and just before she was due to return to England she went into premature labour. By a malignant stroke of fate this happened on the very day that a violent insurrection occurred in a nearby village and during the labour Mzuri was terrified by the sound of repeated gunfire drawing ever nearer.
When the first baby was delivered Big Mama was concerned that its airways were obstructed by mucus. ‘Take the baby to the clinic,’ she told Mzuri quietly, not wishing to alarm the Bonaventures. ‘Quickly, there is a sucker there and you can extract the mucus. Then,’ she added more loudly, ‘clean the baby, wrap her and bring her back here so you can help me with the next one.’

Mzuri hurried across the road with her precious bundle and was horrified to see a band of armed guerrillas moving up the road towards her down the street, firing randomly into the air over the houses they passed. Some drank beer from a bottle held in one hand while firing a rifle with the other. One of her neighbours, a kind man she had known for years, ran out into the street to protest and she saw him fall in the gutter riddled with bullets. She hurried into the clinic, praying she had not been seen. She cleaned out the baby’s nose and mouth with the sucker, switched off the machine, opened the back door to make it look as though the clinic occupants had fled, then opened the trapdoor into the hidden storeroom. She took the baby down, closing the door behind her. Big Mama had nailed a square of rush mat to the top of the door, so once it was closed it was invisible amongst the other squares of matting. The baby, stimulated by being cleaned, was now crying lustily and Mzuri hurriedly made up a bottle of feed from the supplies in the chamber. No sooner had the infant started sucking at her bottle than Mzuri heard the front door crash open, the clump of boots across the floor above her and coarse shouting and laughter from the soldiers. Mzuri sat terrified as she fed the child and prayed that she wouldn’t start crying again; her initial fear subsided when there was no sign of the trapdoor’s being discovered, only to be replaced by a fresh horror: from the shouted instructions she could hear she realised that the officer in charge had decided to make the
clinic their base in the village. How on earth could she keep the baby quiet for days on end? She cuddled the baby close and to her relief the infant eventually fell asleep. Mzuri had never felt so lonely or frightened. She was desperately worried about what might have happened to her mother and the Bonaventures, and if the soldiers above her settled in for several days, she couldn’t imagine how she could avoid detection. She was in no doubt as to what the outcome would be for her and the baby if they were discovered.

In the morning, after a night spent sick with fear – she didn’t dare even to doze in case the baby woke and started crying – Mzuri was surprised at the absence of noise above. She gently laid the baby down, and treading carefully went up the steps and listened at the trapdoor. To her disappointment she could hear heavy breathing – they must still be there. Then she heard what sounded like a groan and someone retching. They were obviously all in a drunken stupor. She crept back to the baby and used the temporary respite to have something to eat herself and to prepare some more feeds for the baby. She then sat down to wait and eventually, as all remained quiet above, she fell into a fitful sleep. She awoke with a shock to hear the baby crying and hurried to calm her, but all remained quiet above. She looked at her watch and saw that it was already six in the evening; she had been in hiding for almost thirty hours. By midnight she had still heard nothing from above and wondered if she dare peep out, but decided that she would play safe and wait until early the next morning when any soldiers still present might be asleep or still drunk. At five o’clock the following morning she cautiously pushed the trapdoor but to her horror it did not move. She pushed harder and suddenly it gave way and swung open much faster than she had intended. There was a thump as something fell off it. She froze but there was no further sound.

Eventually she put her head out and looked around. An extraordinary sight met her eyes. The bodies of three soldiers lay in the clinic; the leg of one had been sprawled across the trapdoor which is why she had at first been unable to open it. She climbed out and looked around. The room stank of beer and smoke but there was also another smell: a chemical odour. Guns and beer bottles littered the floor. The shelves of the clinic were practically empty and Mzuri now saw that among the discarded bottles strewn about the room were the clinic’s entire stock of chemicals and reagents. Looking out of the window she saw the body of another soldier in Big Mama’s little vegetable garden and in the dawn light she could see smoke rising from the neighbouring plots and houses. The entire village had been ransacked and burnt. She and the baby had been saved from being hacked to death by Big Mama’s secret chamber, but they had only escaped being burnt because the soldiers had chosen to make the clinic their own base. But what had happened to the soldiers? She looked around the devastated clinic and the truth dawned on her. The soldiers had drunk everything in the clinic that smelt of alcohol. The clinic had supplies of ethyl alcohol for medicinal purposes but other alcoholic substances were used as solvents and cleaners and chemical reagents. At her feet a young soldier was clutching a large flask with an English label. She bent down and read:

Danger!

Methyl alcohol. Use only as instructed.

Poisonous substance. Ingestion may cause blindness or death.

The flask was empty.

Despite the devastation wrought in her village Mzuri felt a spasm
of sympathy and sorrow for the young rebels – conscripted probably against their will into an uprising that had led them to a ghastly end because of their inability to read a label. The front door was open and she ran out to see the smoking remnants of the Bonaventure house. She picked her way gingerly through the charred rubble and there, in the garden behind the house, lay Big Mama. The body of her father, Mlinzi, who had died trying to protect his wife, was lying nearby. Of the Bonaventures there was no sign. Mzuri knelt and rocked her mother’s body in her arms and wept. She was there until the sun was flooding the garden with the light and heat of a new day, when she heard the baby crying and remembered that she now had a new responsibility. She covered her parents as best she could with bricks and stones and then hurried back to see to the baby.

Later that day, praying that she would not meet further rebels, she put the baby and some supplies into the basket of her bicycle and set off along the dusty road, strewn with cartridge cases, to her uncle’s village. She had only cycled a hundred yards or so when a thought struck her. She stopped, torn between what she had just remembered and her desire to escape from the dreadful scene behind her as soon as possible. Soon, she had made her decision and reluctantly turned and cycled back to the Bonaventures’ house; it was to be a decision with far-reaching consequences. Mercifully, the baby was fast asleep. She propped the bike against the blackened trunk of a tree and, averting her eyes from her parents’ little cairn, dashed back into the ruined dwelling. She ran into the room that had been Dr Bonaventure’s study and looked anxiously about her. The desk and all the filing cabinets had been destroyed, but the fireproof wall safe was intact. Its feet were cemented to the floor and its back screwed into the wall. Its solid steel door was pockmarked by bullets and the lock bore the
scratchmarks of knives and bayonets, but the rebels had failed to open it. They had intended to return later with explosives but their plans, as Mzuri well knew, had come to an abrupt end in her own clinic. She knelt down and felt for the piece of Blu-Tack stuck behind the back foot of the safe. To her relief the key was there, embedded in the adhesive. She had never opened the safe but had been told where the key was, so that she could leave it undisturbed when cleaning the room. She hurriedly found what she sought: the passports that would prove the parentage of the baby now in her care. She also removed as many research files as she could manage: one day, she was sure, the child would be proud of her parents’ discoveries. Soon she was back on her bike and cycling away as fast as she could.

As was the case in many such insurrections the fighting had been sporadic – at least in this area – and though her uncle’s village was only a few miles away it was further from the main road, had no strategic importance, and had been completely unaffected by the fighting. Her uncle and aunt were horrified to hear her story and immediately took her and the baby in.

Mzuri wanted to report the baby to the authorities so that she could be reunited with her parents if they were still alive, but after some thought her aunt and uncle advised her against it.

‘In these troubled times,’ her uncle said, ‘we can trust no-one. The fact that you worked for the English scientists may upset some of those in authority who are not friends with the UN. Others may be upset because you survived the massacre when others didn’t, meaning you may be in sympathy with the rebels. If you talk to anyone you will put yourself and the baby in danger – and maybe us as well. Remember,’ he added, ‘from what you have told us the parents of this child can be in no doubt that she did not survive and they are
fortunate to have escaped with her twin. We must pretend that the baby is yours – if anyone asks, we’ll pretend you had a white husband who had to return urgently to Europe without ever knowing about his daughter – and your aunt and I will help you to teach her and bring her up. One day perhaps, when things have changed, we can tell her the truth.’

And so it was that Mzuri came to have a child. She called the baby Neema because she represented good fortune and grace, and grew to love her as her own. Her uncle Ulindaji who was now chief ranger at the reserve was very busy because the National Park had become a prime target for animal poachers during the civil war, but her aunt, who was a teacher, made sure that Neema received the best possible education under the circumstances. She was a happy child who was good at her school work, loved music and dancing, and excelled at all kinds of sports. The most striking thing about her, however, was her passion for animals and the degree to which they responded to her. Even the fiercest village dog would lick her hand and wag its tail for her and she was always surrounded by a variety of pets, some domestic, others half-wild who had come in from the bush and adopted her as their mistress.

Then one dreadful day in the aftermath of the second Congo war, when Neema was eleven years old, Mzuri’s worst fears were realised.

Neema, as she had done frequently in recent months, had gone with Mzuri’s uncle to the reserve where she seemed to be fascinated by the bonobo chimpanzees. A group of militia had turned up at the house and arrested Mzuri and her aunt. They then took them to the reserve where they arrested her uncle. Fortunately Neema was not
with her uncle at the park office, but out in a forest research cabin watching the bonobos. She was not listed in any records and the army unit were completely unaware of her existence.

Mzuri was taken away in an army truck with her aunt and uncle. As they were driven away to an unknown destination Mzuri dreaded what might lie in store for them but most of all she feared for the fate of her precious Neema, alone in the forest and ignorant of what had happened to her family.