We were the ones who had no fear of death, the ones who recognized that, whether we chose to sit back and do nothing or stand up and fight, we’d end up dead, so why not fight? Sometimes we wondered what it was that separated us from the others, why other men our age with ample vigor were unwilling to risk their lives in pursuit of that which is paramount and just. We could only surmise that it had to be something in our spirits, a thing the Spirit had decided not to give all humans for reasons we didn’t attempt to conjure. But this thing in our spirits, it couldn’t protect us from the agony of waiting, year after year, for our suffering to reach its finale.
Kosawa had been fighting Pexton since we were children; our land was poisoned even before we were born. Few were the days of our lives that weren’t nestled between oil spills and deafening gas flare roars. Countless were the hours when we spoke of little else but Pexton. We had worried and hoped and gained small victories and endured many losses, yet little was changing. The Kosawa of our dreams remained a mirage. During our student days at Lokunja, our teachers had spoken often about the approaching new millennium, how the world would be different then, and we imagined it would be so, because in the eighties the year 2000 seemed seventy-seven lifetimes away, but now it was only eighteen months away, and instead of strutting into it, we were crawling.
Only the mercy of the Spirit kept us from losing our resolve, for it gave us reasons to smile in the laughter of our children, the appearance of rainbows that left us in awe, the birth and marriage celebrations that filled Kosawa with gladness in the days before and after, the euphoria on full-moon nights when we took out our drums and our children skipped around the square while the elders cheered and our wives twirled their hips, causing our groins to stiffen.
At times like these, we thought little of how many years of waiting still lay ahead; we thought mostly of how blessed we were, what boundless promise life bore. Such moments reminded us that, no matter how long the night, morning always comes.
We thought often, also, of how blessed we were to have Thula.
We never feared she’d toss her hands in the air, forget about Kosawa, and return to Bézam telling herself that she had done her part and failed. That was never who she was. She had the fortitude of the sun—no matter how dark and thick the clouds, she was confident she could melt them and emerge in full glory.
Six months after her return was when she gave us the money for the guns.
She did it without ceremony. She simply took out an envelope while we were sitting in one of our huts. In it was the full amount we had requested to buy five powerful guns and sufficient ammunition. She said nothing as we stood up, one after another, stooped next to her, bowed our heads, took her hand in ours, and expressed our gratitude. When she did speak, her tone was stern. She told us that we were not to use the guns without her permission. We were not to use them for anything but the defense of our lives and those of our families and friends. No one was to know that we owned guns until the day it became imperative that we use them. We were never to say she gave us the funds to buy them. If we were to kill anyone with them, may the Spirit be her witness that she never gave us her blessings to take the life of another human. We gave her our word.
The next morning, one of us went to Lokunja to meet with the soldier who’d approached him about the gun sale. The soldier agreed to get us five guns, though not before making it clear that if the government found out that we had guns we’d be dead. He’d also be dead, he said, and he’d rather not die for our sake; he was merely a broker, doing what he needed to do to supplement his government salary and take care of his family. One mistake from us and he would be ruined. We assured him we’d be careful.
On the day he brought us the guns, we met him deep in the forest.
When he took the guns out of his bag, our mouths dropped open in awe. There they were, at last. Smooth-skinned. Perfectly weighted. Blacker than crude. We turned them in our hands. We held them upside down and sideways. We looked at each other, the look of men who in an instant had been born again. The soldier showed us how to use them. How to clean them. How to prevent jams. The magic of the weapons’ telescopic sight. He told us how, with the telescopic sight and suppressor, we could kill from afar, soundlessly, leave no trace of our culpability. We never knew
