Indaba, My Children: African Tribal History, Legends, Customs And Religious Beliefs. Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa
Then somewhere in the forest she heard the steady sounds of marching feet and the clash of metal on metal coming nearer and nearer. She sensed the murderous purpose behind those sounds and the dead man at the gate confirmed her worst suspicions. Ojoyo screamed in terror.
She ran back to the Royal Hut and tried to waken Lumbedu by shaking him violently and calling his name repeatedly. But he only turned over on his back and snored louder than ever.
An alien war-cry shattered the starry night like a blow from a knobkierie as the Strange Ones burst into the kraal like a horde of mad bronze-clad demons from hell itself. Ojoyo crawled out of the Great Hut like a scalded snake and made her escape through one of the small emergency gates in the stockade, leaving the drunken Lumbedu to his fate.
First one and then the other of the two guard-huts flanking the gate burst into flame as the attackers set them on fire. Soon the whole lower portion of the kraal near the main gate was a mass of flames and redly glowing clouds of billowing smoke. The Strange Ones began to ransack the empty huts and to remove hundreds of sourmilk calabashes and dozens of baskets full of corn and yams. These they placed in the centre of the vast clearing before they set the huts on fire.
It was then that Lumbedu awoke and crawled drunkenly out of his hut and stood swaying on the raised clay doorstep.
‘You . . . why are you burning my kraal?’ he cried thickly.
A group of Strange Ones came running towards him, brandishing swords and gleaming bronze spears, but Lumbedu was far too intoxicated to be scared and stared blearily at them, standing his ground.
One of the Strange Ones aimed a sword blow at Lumbedu’s head, a blow that was not intended to kill or to injure, but which passed harmlessly over his shiny bald pate. Lumbedu balled his fists and stood his ground, not even blinking.
One of the Strange Ones said to the King’s brown-haired son: ‘Behold, how brave this fat barbarian is; he has chosen to remain behind while the rest of his people escape. I did not know these black pigs could be so brave.’
Suddenly Lumbedu began to dance, urged by nothing less than the fumes of the strong beer he had drunk in such quantities. He stamped and capered like a mad gorilla up and down the firelit clearing in the centre of his burning kraal. He puffed and stamped and grunted and shook until his fat feet stirred up clouds of dust around them. Then, for a reason which even he could not understand, he snatched a spear from the hands of one of the astonished Strange Ones and ran himself through with it.
The young prince of the Strange Ones stood over the body of the dead Lumbedu and for once he was not smiling. He shook his helmeted head and said: ‘He was a very brave man. He chose death instead of slavery – just as we would do.’
‘Let us take what we can and leave here,’ said the prince a while later. ‘I’m sure that my father will be pleased to hear that he is now the Emperor of a great land full of thousands of black, thieving dirty-skinned barbarians!’
The traitor Lumbedu who had played into the hands of the Strange Ones and had betrayed hundreds of thousands of his people into slavery, was dead, but of his woman, Ojoyo, a story remains to be told.
Ojoyo paused once in her wild flight through the forest and, looking behind her, saw the two huts near the main gate in flames. That blood-chilling sight caused yet another spurt of speed and she ran even faster than before. In the course of her flight she heard the sounds of a wild animal in the forest and stopped dead in her tracks with her heart in her mouth, until the beast had gone past. At last she came to a familiar stream which she knew flowed past the cave where she was keeping the youth Kadimo a prisoner. As the grey light of dawn touched the sky, Ojoyo found the well-worn path that led up to Kadimo’s cave and followed it slowly and wearily as it twisted and turned past great rocks and boulders. As she approached the cave, a squat ugly figure detached itself from the rock behind which it had been hiding and barred her way.
‘Ho! Who you?’ growled the ugly one. ‘You go back or you die.’
‘It is I, Ojoyo, my trustworthy Zozo,’ said she with a smile at the hunch-backed and unbelievably ugly idiot whom she had placed to guard the youth Kadimo day and night.
‘Zozo see you, Queen,’ said the idiot, dropping on his knee.
‘Open the cave for me, Zozo, and then you can go into your own cave and sleep,’ Ojoyo commanded.
The powerful hunchback rolled aside the boulder that stood in the entrance of the cave and then fled into his own cave. Ojoyo entered the prison cave and felt around in the darkness for her youthful captive.
‘Wake up, Kadimo,’ said she, ‘wake up, my love.’
For a long time after that Ojoyo and Kadimo sat side by side in a dark recess of the cave conversing in low voices. Ojoyo told the youth about what had happened in Lumbedu’s kraal that night and concluded by saying she feared Lumbedu had been killed.
‘Now you . . . belong . . . Kadimo, . . . all his,’ said the youth who could by then speak a few words of the language of Ojoyo’s tribe.
‘Yes, Kadimo.’
‘When dawn comes, we . . . go away . . . back to my village. You come . . . back with me.’
‘And Zozo too?’ asked Ojoyo.
‘No, Kadimo hates Zozo . . . Kadimo wants Ojoyo . . . alone.’
‘As you say, Kadimo.’
By midday of the day that followed Ojoyo and Kadimo were far away from the burnt-out kraal which Ojoyo had ruled with cruelty and insolence only the day before.
Ojoyo was beginning to become very afraid of Kadimo as his attitude rapidly changed from one of respect to insolence. He had now stopped calling her Queen and addressed her as ‘you’. He even threatened to beat her up if she tried to sit down and rest. But the greatest surprise was yet to come.
‘I’m tired, I want you to carry me on your back, you fat cow,’ he indicated in a broken tongue.
‘Fat . . . fat cow!’ gasped Ojoyo. ‘Did I hear you call me a fat cow?’
‘Yes . . . you fat cow,’ said the youth. ‘Now bend down . . . and carry me.’
‘Never!’
Kadimo’s great knobkierie thudded solidly against Ojoyo’s royal ribs many times. She screamed and writhed and rolled on the ground as Kadimo gave her the greatest beating of her life. At long last the pain became such that Ojoyo began to whimper like a child and to beg Kadimo not to hit her again.
‘Why are you so cruel to me?’ she sobbed. ‘I am your Queen.’
‘You are my supper . . . you are my edible queen!’
‘What, you mean that you are a cannibal!’
‘I am Kadimo . . . son of Dimo . . . son of Sodimo . . . my father . . . King of the Cannibals.’
‘But you can’t eat me, beloved one,’ pleaded Ojoyo. ‘I love you and I am still beautiful . . .’
‘You . . . more beautiful . . . in stewpot. Tonight . . . we come to father’s village. Come . . . carry me!’
How long Ojoyo carried the youth she did not know – it seemed like hundreds of years. When she stumbled and fell, throwing Kadimo, he always got up to beat her cruelly before getting on her back again. On and on she stumbled until the skies became as black as midnight and bolts of bluish lightning began to scourge the tortured heavens, while peal after peal of thunder shook the very roots of the earth. Kadimo prodded his human steed to the shelter of the forest where they found a small cave and in this cave Ojoyo found a chance