We could barely sing him a farewell song as we stood around his coffin, our tears drowning the words. Some of our fathers had to carry us home from the burial ground, faint as we were. Within five months of Wambi’s death, two of us would be dead. Those of us who survived feared our death was close; we were certain we’d be the next, though sometimes we feared we’d be the last—all our age-mates would be dead and we’d have no friends our size with whom we could stick out our tongues and taste raindrops, no one to play with in the square, or fight with over the right to the juiciest mangoes.
We thought about our departed friends whenever we developed fevers or someone coughed around us. We feared someone in our homes would catch this sickness that had arrived like a thief in the dark and was now hovering outside every hut, waiting for its chance to enter. We worried for our entire families, though the disease preferred the bodies of children. We feared the first person to catch it in our huts would pass it on to another person, and the second person would pass it on to someone else, and before long our entire family would contract it and die, one after another, or maybe all at once, but most likely one after another, from the oldest to the youngest, in which case we might be the last to die, after we’d buried everyone. Our anxieties kept us awake at night.
We hated that we went to bed in fear and woke up in fear, all day long breathed fear in and out. Our mothers and fathers told us to have no worries for the Spirit would guide and protect us, but their words brought us no comfort—the Spirit had protected the other children and what had become of them? Still, we nodded whenever our parents made their assurances—our fathers as we bade them good night; our mothers in the morning if we woke up crying over a bad dream—for we knew they lied only to keep us calm, so we would have no nightmares, so we would wake up rested and run to school after breakfast, carefree and merry as we ought to be. We were reminded of our parents’ lies whenever there was a new death, sometimes in our huts, sometimes in the hut next to ours, sometimes children younger than us, babies and toddlers, children who had barely tasted life, always children we knew. We were young, but we knew death to be impartial.
—
Please, you must do something, one of our aunts cried to the Leader, her baby limp in her arms. It was the poison—the baby was too pure for the filth in the village well’s water, the toxins that had seeped into it from Pexton’s field. One of our fathers asked if Pexton could in the meantime send us clean water, at least for the youngest children. The Leader shook his head; he’d heard this question before. He took a deep breath as he prepared to give his standard response: Pexton was not in the business of providing water, but out of concern for us he would talk to people at headquarters, they’d take our request to the government office in charge of water supply and hear what they had to say. Didn’t the Leader give this same response last time? a grandfather asked. How long does it take for messages to move from office to office in Bézam? A very long time, the Leader replied.
Some of our mothers began crying. We wished we could dry their tears.
Our young men started shouting. We’ll march to Bézam and burn down your headquarters, they said. We’ll hurt you the same way you’re hurting us.
The Pexton men simply smiled in response. They knew the young men wouldn’t do it—we all knew that His Excellency would have our young men exterminated if they dared harm Pexton and our village would only be left further enfeebled.
We’d seen it happen already.
Early the previous year, we had watched as a group of six men set out for Bézam, water and dried food packed in their raffia bags. Led by the father of one of us—the one of us named Thula—the group promised the village that they would return with nothing less than a guarantee from the government and Pexton that our land would be restored to what it was before Pexton arrived. Day after day, we waited alongside our friend Thula for the return of her father and the other men, all of whom were our neighbors and relatives, three of whom had sick children. When they did not return after ten days, we began fearing that they’d been imprisoned. Or worse. A second group of men traveled to Bézam to search for and bring home the Six, but they came back empty-handed. Months later, the Pexton men arrived for their first meeting with the village. When our elders asked the Leader at that initial meeting where he thought our vanished men might be, he told them that he knew nothing, Pexton did not involve itself with the whereabouts of the citizens of our country, unless, of course, they were its workers.
On that evening in October of 1980, still smiling, the Leader reminded us once more that Pexton was our friend, and that,
