By Rosemary K
Magume was the president of the Republic of Rutookye. He sat in one of his air-conditioned private studios, at Glade Heights. His forehead was furrowed in deep thought, about the message he just received from Omar Gobez, his old classmate at University. Omar Gobez was the president of the Dune country, which lay in the Western part of Black Soul continent. Magume fixed his eyes on the message, with Gobez’s signature hurriedly fixed at the end of it. He complained aloud.
“Old Gobez has become utter disgrace to me. I can’t imagine he still wants to fight this war…” before he finished this loud utterance of his thoughts, the phone rang. Who the hell was on the line? He had told Lovette Bibero, his personal aide, that he wanted no disturbance that evening.
T-r-r-r-r-r! T-r-r-r-r! The phone kept on its disturbing monotone. Magume reached his right hand to the ivory phone stand, and reluctantly picked the phone up.
“Hello old pal, Omar here,” the unmistakably high-pitched voice of Omar Gobez came through the receiver.
“Hi, Magume here. How are you, old man?” he replied, concealing his anger. Omar Gobez at the end of the line went straight to the issue of his call. He was sure that Magume had received his fax message. He would have preferred to speak to him on phone before he sent the fax, but the lines were continuously engaged. Omar Gobez had just had another attack from the neighboring country, and he feared that the attackers could take over the City of Angur, anytime. He wanted Magume’s urgent help, in terms of backup troops from Rutookye army.
“Old Gobez has become utter disgrace to me. I can’t imagine he still wants to fight this war…” before he finished this loud utterance of his thoughts, the phone rang. Who the hell was on the line? He had told Lovette Bibero, his personal aide, that he wanted no disturbance that evening.
T-r-r-r-r-r! T-r-r-r-r! The phone kept on its disturbing monotone. Magume reached his right hand to the ivory phone stand, and reluctantly picked the phone up.
“Hello old pal, Omar here,” the unmistakably high-pitched voice of Omar Gobez came through the receiver.
“Hi, Magume here. How are you, old man?” he replied, concealing his anger. Omar Gobez at the end of the line went straight to the issue of his call. He was sure that Magume had received his fax message. He would have preferred to speak to him on phone before he sent the fax, but the lines were continuously engaged. Omar Gobez had just had another attack from the neighboring country, and he feared that the attackers could take over the City of Angur, anytime. He wanted Magume’s urgent help, in terms of backup troops from Rutookye army.
“I understand your urgent need, but currently the army is almost depleted. We too have had to send our national troops outside the borders, for peace keeping,” Magume replied. He told Omar Gobez that he would have to consult the Minister for Extra-state security, to verify the position of the army. If there were a few ranks not so busy at the time, then he would ensure their immediate dispatch to Dune country.
“Phew! That was close!” Magume cursed under his breath, as he replaced the phone. Somehow, he had remotely fallen out with Gobez, but he could not blatantly say so. His feelings came close to real hardened hatred, and thank God, Dune country was not near the Republic of Rutookye, he could have annexed it, just as he planned to annex Animas state, where his troops now fought.
Magume could have given his old friendship with Gobez a chance, but when the latter started selling out so openly to foreign agendas, he lost complete hope in Gobez as a close ally for Black Soul philosophy. Magume’s mind went back to their days at University, and how Gobez chaired the Native Ideology Student Council (NISC). When it came to defending the ideas considered culturally relevant to the continent, NISC was renowned for its fanatical revolutionary stance. Omar Gobez actually organized a seminar, in which he specifically invited lecturers for a challenge over the idea of academic content. In his keynote address, Gobez said that Black Soul philosophy had been sold out by none other than the very children of the continent. He questioned the relevance of studying theories evolved by the so-called white scholars and scientists, who had no idea what it meant to be a true Black Soulian. Gobez said that the current vices of wealth accumulation by the rich at the expense of the poor were owed to the betrayal of the good ideals of community sharing and belonging. No wonder that the same hypocritical scholars and scientists caused the two World Wars. They owed Black Soul a very big apology, as big as the clan gatherings, before their decimation by the marauding slave traders and invaders!
Pwa-pwa-pwa! The NISC supporters clapped for Omar Gobez, who now wiped sweat from his temples. He called Miriam to the front, and asked her to explain to the people the NISC proposal for a reformed approach in academics. Miriam was the Publicity Secretary of NISC, and on this occasion, she came to the seminar wearing one of the tribal traditional costumes. It was made from beads carefully sewn together in a long pattern of strings. The bead strings were then wrapped around the waist, and tied around the ankles and the wrists. The chest was left bare, with the breasts swaying about in the air. As Miriam emerged from the back seat, the participants made catcalls and whistled. When she took her position near Omar Gobez, the latter warned the people in the hall. Their polluted minds must desist from obscene foreign garbage, by keeping their fiery desires in check. That was exactly why he was unhappy with the University courses. They turned beautiful Black Soul culture into something demonic, and each time a true Black Soulian like Miriam appeared, the first thing on their mind was how she could fare in bed!
“I support the Bakiga, who knew the medicine to the results of lechery. They threw pregnant girls over a high cliff,” Gobez made an allusion to one of the tribes known for their war-like traits. As he had not come to give a lesson in morality for the present, he would let Miriam speak.
“Black Soulians oye-e-e-e!” Miriam started.
“O-ye-e-e-e-!” the crowd responded. Miriam introduced the topic: The philosophy of going native. Black Soul had accepted too much of a foreign culture, and that was why the people suffered from the vices of rape and theft. All through her childhood, her grandmother told her about the beauty of their land, before foreign invasions. The new domineering structures planted themselves in the midst of clan harmony, like the despicable fly, which fell into a hungry beggar’s soup. Yes indeed, when foreigners brought hospitals, they also brought diseases. They carried them in test tubes, carefully kept in sickening laboratories, and injected them to unsuspecting people. The most devastating diseases came with the introduction of stupid things like child immunizations, and compulsory antenatal visits by expectant mothers. To the best of her knowledge, her grandmother had never seen the insides of a hospital or labor suite. Hadn’t she given birth to Miriam’s father, and the rest of her eight uncles and five aunts? She wanted another story! It was time the University closed its useless laboratories, and cleaned up the library filled up with dead white people’s literature! Black Soulians never desired, or indeed, craved the copycat syndrome the current leaders loved to swallow. People no longer recognized themselves, and children were hostile to their own siblings. With the onslaught of the so-called modernity, children were torn from their clans of origin, and scattered to the four winds. They rushed to the hostile cities and scrounged around for slaving jobs. Although she hated the thought of having to borrow from foreign sources, the only hopeful message came from Karl Marx, who predicted a revolution of the oppressed. That Karl Marx boy must have undoubtedly had some Black Soulian blood in his veins. He loved the idea of community, the lifeblood of Black Soul solidarity. Perhaps Marx was one of the unfortunate relatives, mercilessly sailed across the oceans as slaves in foreign lands. He was a true son of the revolution, and that was what Native Ideology Student Council pursued: the birth of true children of the revolution!
Pwa-pwa-pwa! The seminar crowd clapped for Miriam’s delivery. She was a true daughter of the revolution. A revolution seeking to restore the original ideals of Black Soul continent. She was everybody’s pride, and blessed girl, her evenly dark skin, like oncoming dusk, asserted her true roots. Miriam despised the gruesome things that most girls at campus did to their skins. Some of them bleached their skins so dangerously, that only blue veins were left to peep out of them. There were those whose skins resembled overripe papaws, leaving the onlookers in utter shock. One wondered if such girls would survive their next bath, without dissolving in the foam.
Gobez set himself a task of transforming the University. First, he started with the students. He believed that student voices were louder than theoretical lectures given by ageing bespectacled professors. Native Ideology Student Council was meeting again, and following their first seminar to popularize their philosophy, some overzealous students started donning traditional regalia around the campus. Omar Gobez became so possessed with the NISC ideology, sometimes called native charm, that he called an assembly to discuss the dress code for adherents.
“My fellow combatants against foreign domination, we come here today to disown all badges of slavery! We are here to claim what is rightfully ours, and to show the misinformed and intellectually raped professors how narrow-minded they are!” he started. The crowd responded with loud cheers, and they immediately started drumming. Omar Gobez removed his trousers, his shirt, and necktie. He remained in underwear. The rest followed suit, and soon the assembly was full of half-naked people. The males covered their front parts with short grass hurriedly woven into dangling mats, while the females wore pieces of cloth torn from their discarded skirts. Strings, around their waists suspended the pieces of cloth. Their breasts were left hanging out in air, and they twisted their hair into pointed knots. The crowd leader sounded the signal, and the semi-naked students started a march through the campus grounds. It was their day of native charm, and they must show their professors what wretched freaks they were. Did they ever hear of ancient man dying due to coldness? Time was up for them to keep selling out to foreign clothes. What about the lies about pneumonia and lung dysfunction? Then the malicious rumors that AIDS, the mystery disease, was rampant on Black Soul land? All those were hatched-up diseases from foreign saboteurs, aimed at destroying the enduring species of Black Soul continent. Who was more promiscuous than the foreign cheats? Who did not know that obscene films and literature were made in Hollywood? What of certified red light districts in their accursed cities? To hell, Gobez had seen it all from a visit overseas. He saw how pieces of colorless dead flesh displayed itself in glass compartments, waiting for depraved buyers to take it for the night. How hypocritical, indeed! International hypocrisy stunk like a drunkard’s fart! No true native of Black Soul had interest in bonny colorless flesh, as if the native beauties did not abound in plenty. Native Charm revered rounded bottoms shaking in the vast wild beauty of antelope and deer! Besides, the women of Black Soul knew their place. They practiced no such nonsense as denying a man a wholesome meal, under the misguided crap called female freedom!
As the drummer sounded his signal, the marching crowd now swarmed around the Chancellor’s office. They carried their memorandum, carefully written out on banana leaves. They demanded total disbanding of foreign shackles from their lives. There was no sense in spending three or seven years at the University, absorbing theoretical garbage from across the seas! Had the Chancellor heard of the French Revolution and the installation of the goddess of nature? Time had come for people to reject the insane pursuits of glamorized but rotten ideas. It was time to return to harmless nature, and NISC wondered why the learned professors feared it so much. Why did some of them shamelessly dye their grey hair with blonde and brunette chemicals? How long did they plan to hoodwink the onlookers about their age? It was quite lamentable that some went to the extent of walking on sharp pointed sticks as shoes, when they could do a less strenuous job with their bare feet. The NISC had woken up from the slumber induced by deadly sedatives of foreign knowledge; this was a new chapter.
(story continues...)
Magume could have given his old friendship with Gobez a chance, but when the latter started selling out so openly to foreign agendas, he lost complete hope in Gobez as a close ally for Black Soul philosophy. Magume’s mind went back to their days at University, and how Gobez chaired the Native Ideology Student Council (NISC). When it came to defending the ideas considered culturally relevant to the continent, NISC was renowned for its fanatical revolutionary stance. Omar Gobez actually organized a seminar, in which he specifically invited lecturers for a challenge over the idea of academic content. In his keynote address, Gobez said that Black Soul philosophy had been sold out by none other than the very children of the continent. He questioned the relevance of studying theories evolved by the so-called white scholars and scientists, who had no idea what it meant to be a true Black Soulian. Gobez said that the current vices of wealth accumulation by the rich at the expense of the poor were owed to the betrayal of the good ideals of community sharing and belonging. No wonder that the same hypocritical scholars and scientists caused the two World Wars. They owed Black Soul a very big apology, as big as the clan gatherings, before their decimation by the marauding slave traders and invaders!
Pwa-pwa-pwa! The NISC supporters clapped for Omar Gobez, who now wiped sweat from his temples. He called Miriam to the front, and asked her to explain to the people the NISC proposal for a reformed approach in academics. Miriam was the Publicity Secretary of NISC, and on this occasion, she came to the seminar wearing one of the tribal traditional costumes. It was made from beads carefully sewn together in a long pattern of strings. The bead strings were then wrapped around the waist, and tied around the ankles and the wrists. The chest was left bare, with the breasts swaying about in the air. As Miriam emerged from the back seat, the participants made catcalls and whistled. When she took her position near Omar Gobez, the latter warned the people in the hall. Their polluted minds must desist from obscene foreign garbage, by keeping their fiery desires in check. That was exactly why he was unhappy with the University courses. They turned beautiful Black Soul culture into something demonic, and each time a true Black Soulian like Miriam appeared, the first thing on their mind was how she could fare in bed!
“I support the Bakiga, who knew the medicine to the results of lechery. They threw pregnant girls over a high cliff,” Gobez made an allusion to one of the tribes known for their war-like traits. As he had not come to give a lesson in morality for the present, he would let Miriam speak.
“Black Soulians oye-e-e-e!” Miriam started.
“O-ye-e-e-e-!” the crowd responded. Miriam introduced the topic: The philosophy of going native. Black Soul had accepted too much of a foreign culture, and that was why the people suffered from the vices of rape and theft. All through her childhood, her grandmother told her about the beauty of their land, before foreign invasions. The new domineering structures planted themselves in the midst of clan harmony, like the despicable fly, which fell into a hungry beggar’s soup. Yes indeed, when foreigners brought hospitals, they also brought diseases. They carried them in test tubes, carefully kept in sickening laboratories, and injected them to unsuspecting people. The most devastating diseases came with the introduction of stupid things like child immunizations, and compulsory antenatal visits by expectant mothers. To the best of her knowledge, her grandmother had never seen the insides of a hospital or labor suite. Hadn’t she given birth to Miriam’s father, and the rest of her eight uncles and five aunts? She wanted another story! It was time the University closed its useless laboratories, and cleaned up the library filled up with dead white people’s literature! Black Soulians never desired, or indeed, craved the copycat syndrome the current leaders loved to swallow. People no longer recognized themselves, and children were hostile to their own siblings. With the onslaught of the so-called modernity, children were torn from their clans of origin, and scattered to the four winds. They rushed to the hostile cities and scrounged around for slaving jobs. Although she hated the thought of having to borrow from foreign sources, the only hopeful message came from Karl Marx, who predicted a revolution of the oppressed. That Karl Marx boy must have undoubtedly had some Black Soulian blood in his veins. He loved the idea of community, the lifeblood of Black Soul solidarity. Perhaps Marx was one of the unfortunate relatives, mercilessly sailed across the oceans as slaves in foreign lands. He was a true son of the revolution, and that was what Native Ideology Student Council pursued: the birth of true children of the revolution!
Pwa-pwa-pwa! The seminar crowd clapped for Miriam’s delivery. She was a true daughter of the revolution. A revolution seeking to restore the original ideals of Black Soul continent. She was everybody’s pride, and blessed girl, her evenly dark skin, like oncoming dusk, asserted her true roots. Miriam despised the gruesome things that most girls at campus did to their skins. Some of them bleached their skins so dangerously, that only blue veins were left to peep out of them. There were those whose skins resembled overripe papaws, leaving the onlookers in utter shock. One wondered if such girls would survive their next bath, without dissolving in the foam.
Gobez set himself a task of transforming the University. First, he started with the students. He believed that student voices were louder than theoretical lectures given by ageing bespectacled professors. Native Ideology Student Council was meeting again, and following their first seminar to popularize their philosophy, some overzealous students started donning traditional regalia around the campus. Omar Gobez became so possessed with the NISC ideology, sometimes called native charm, that he called an assembly to discuss the dress code for adherents.
“My fellow combatants against foreign domination, we come here today to disown all badges of slavery! We are here to claim what is rightfully ours, and to show the misinformed and intellectually raped professors how narrow-minded they are!” he started. The crowd responded with loud cheers, and they immediately started drumming. Omar Gobez removed his trousers, his shirt, and necktie. He remained in underwear. The rest followed suit, and soon the assembly was full of half-naked people. The males covered their front parts with short grass hurriedly woven into dangling mats, while the females wore pieces of cloth torn from their discarded skirts. Strings, around their waists suspended the pieces of cloth. Their breasts were left hanging out in air, and they twisted their hair into pointed knots. The crowd leader sounded the signal, and the semi-naked students started a march through the campus grounds. It was their day of native charm, and they must show their professors what wretched freaks they were. Did they ever hear of ancient man dying due to coldness? Time was up for them to keep selling out to foreign clothes. What about the lies about pneumonia and lung dysfunction? Then the malicious rumors that AIDS, the mystery disease, was rampant on Black Soul land? All those were hatched-up diseases from foreign saboteurs, aimed at destroying the enduring species of Black Soul continent. Who was more promiscuous than the foreign cheats? Who did not know that obscene films and literature were made in Hollywood? What of certified red light districts in their accursed cities? To hell, Gobez had seen it all from a visit overseas. He saw how pieces of colorless dead flesh displayed itself in glass compartments, waiting for depraved buyers to take it for the night. How hypocritical, indeed! International hypocrisy stunk like a drunkard’s fart! No true native of Black Soul had interest in bonny colorless flesh, as if the native beauties did not abound in plenty. Native Charm revered rounded bottoms shaking in the vast wild beauty of antelope and deer! Besides, the women of Black Soul knew their place. They practiced no such nonsense as denying a man a wholesome meal, under the misguided crap called female freedom!
As the drummer sounded his signal, the marching crowd now swarmed around the Chancellor’s office. They carried their memorandum, carefully written out on banana leaves. They demanded total disbanding of foreign shackles from their lives. There was no sense in spending three or seven years at the University, absorbing theoretical garbage from across the seas! Had the Chancellor heard of the French Revolution and the installation of the goddess of nature? Time had come for people to reject the insane pursuits of glamorized but rotten ideas. It was time to return to harmless nature, and NISC wondered why the learned professors feared it so much. Why did some of them shamelessly dye their grey hair with blonde and brunette chemicals? How long did they plan to hoodwink the onlookers about their age? It was quite lamentable that some went to the extent of walking on sharp pointed sticks as shoes, when they could do a less strenuous job with their bare feet. The NISC had woken up from the slumber induced by deadly sedatives of foreign knowledge; this was a new chapter.
(story continues...)
**Rosemary won the NABOTU First Prize in Short Stories for Songs of the Third Life shory story book.
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