Over the course of 2024, I published a revised, weekly chapter of my ethnographic novel for paid subscribers. This sequel to Salt & Honey is called Kalahari Passage and it’s about an abducted indigenous girl’s search for her identity. I’d love you to read these novels; not only will you learn about the world’s oldest living culture, you’ll also be supporting the education of their children, via the Nyae Nyae Village schools Feeding scheme.
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Chapter 24 of Kalahari Passage
In which Koba realises her future is with Mannie, but finds he’s left due to a misunderstanding.
N!ai’s family were huddled together, rocking and moaning their pain. Their faces looked thick from crying and they were all hoarse-voiced from keening. Waves of pain emanated from them, each one a body blow to Koba. She couldn’t bring herself to step into their space.
They gave me kindness, I repaid them with grief. I am not a rain-season child, I am worse than drought. People survive drought; they do not survive |’Hun. Better I creep away and take my death-thing with me.
But they deserved an explanation; the whole village did, Koba felt. Now, more than ever, she needed to talk to Tsamkxao. She would consult him about the best place and time to confess to the group. He’d been furious with her for letting a white into the camp, but if she explained her and Mannie’s suspicions about N!ai’s murder, he’d help her, she felt sure. After all, she reasoned, the last thing he’d want was for her to endanger the band further.
As she drew close to his hut she heard him making loud love to a woman inside. She saw the shoes. Xoan||a. Koba felt the insult for N!ai. She backed away and looked beyond the hut to where Mannie’s fire glowed reassuringly bright.
But her first duty was to the band so she had better go and consult Big-Owner Xoan, she decided.
The old woman sat alone amid the detritus of her camp, smoking a wooden pipe. ‘Is that you, granddaughter of Old Zuma?’
How does this blind old mother know someone stands here? But she assumes I am |Kuni. I would like to be, to take the tears from her.
‘No, Xoan Big-owner, it is Koba, daughter of Nǂaisa-late.’
‘Aie, I know; you are the one they call Koba Frog-bringer.’ She smiled so that the fallen apples of her cheeks lifted; she looked almost girlish. ‘Come closer, child. I am nearly dead, you know. I cannot be expected to shout to far-offs. Come and sit with me, put some wood on my fire. No one ever comes to visit me, no one ever brings me food or firewood, even though I am so old I am pitiful. Ehhhh-weh.’ Koba fetched a log from Xoan’s well-stocked pile. She stoked the embers and blew the fire into life. Then she sat back on her heels.
‘My heart is heavy, Xoan n!a’an’ Koba murmured.
‘Eh, I feel you are crushed like grass an elephant has slept on. We are all flooded with sorrow tonight — aiee-aiee-aie.’ Cupping her own elbows, Old Xoan rocked herself. Eventually she spoke. ‘Crack open your story, little-daughter, if it will lighten your load.’
Koba did, faltering at first, but eventually with a flow that spoke of grief too long stoppered. She claimed culpability for the sickening mist and for N!ai’s death and did not spare herself the shame of admitting she’d consulted the oracle discs and seen danger there. ‘But I looked the other way, down at my own belly. I was thinking only of . . .’
‘The baby you have decided to keep?’
‘Yes.’
Xoan clapped and rocked herself again, this time ululating softly. ‘Life for death, life for death. It should be so.’ Then she stopped and gripped Koba’s arm. ‘If this bad person is close you must-must save yourself and your child.’
‘I will.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘Towards sunset is where the discs said.’
‘And the handsome |’Hun you have tucked away at your fire?’
‘He goes towards sunrise.’
Xoan sucked her teeth. ‘Let me see these discs.’ Hesitantly Koba produced them from her pouch around her waist and laid them one by one in Xoan’s lap. The woman’s old fingers crabbed across them. Swifter than Koba would have thought possible for her, Xoan gathered them together and flung them into the fire. ‘They are wrong-things!’
‘But . . .’ Koba felt shocked. They were her guides; they’d belonged to her grandmother. The Ju|’hoan taboos forbidding her from using them, did not apply to her; she was leaving. With rising anger she watched them curl then crisp up in the fire.
‘Follow your heart, not the discs,’ Xoan said. ‘Go and tell your |’Hun you will go with him – towards sunrise, sunset, it doesn’t matter. Go wherever you and he and Little Fists can live in peace.’
‘Hnn’ Koba felt unsure now about Xoan’s judgement. ‘M-mustn’t I . . . shouldn’t I tell everyone? Beg forgiveness —’
Xoan cut her short. ‘Is there is a bad thing you did, not one that was done to you, little-daughter?’ '
‘The discs,’ Koba said quietly.
‘The discs are gone.’
Koba sat back. Suddenly she realized what a relief their loss was. She could leave her past behind, walk off into a future with Mannie. Her stay with the group had been an interlude. They would always have a place in her heart, like Marta and Deon did, but this was not her n!ore. She wanted to make a new life in another place for her child. She should return to Mannie and tell him. Unable to help herself, she gushed about her beloved.
‘His name is Mannie — “small man” in one |’Hun language, but he is not small, he is tall, but not ugly-tall.’
‘How is his heart?’ Xoan asked, sucking on her pipe.
Koba blushed, hoping Xoan’s sharp ears weren’t able to detect skin warming. ‘Better than mine, n!a’an. His heart did not lose hope. It drove him from a place of plenty, with water and meat to eat every day, to come and find me. He walked many-many-many days. His heart has not thrown me away since we were children together.’
‘Go to him. Time is short. Go before the day brings its sorrows.’
Koba placed a kiss on one of the bald patches on Xoan’s woolly grey head and left.
Like a moth she flitted back through the trees towards the light of Mannie’s fire. There she stopped, breathless, surprised not to see Mannie’s horse outside the hut. Had it broken its tether? She peered around, but the animal was nowhere to be seen. She stepped into the hut. Empty. On top of the neatly folded blanket was a piece of paper.
My dear Koba,
I am writing this on the only paper I’ve got — an old letter to you. I’ve tried to cross it out but the pen’s not working. Sand in the nib. Don’t read the old letter; it’s rubbish. What I want to say now is this: I am sorry that I came here and disturbed you all. I can see you have a new life and I wish you happiness. You deserve it. I’ll go now and get on with what I’m supposed to be doing.
Listen, please warn your boyfriend about André. He needs to take care of you; get you out that lunatic’s reach. You should think about Botswana.
I’m going to miss you, Koba.
Your loving and respectful friend,
Manfred Marais
Boyfriend? Koba knew the word. It meant Mannie. But who was this ‘he’ who should protect her? She read the letter again, slowly, convinced she was not understanding it properly. ‘I’m going to miss you’ – that part was unmistakable. It meant he had gone and didn’t intend to see her again. She sat down on the blanket, the letter shaking in her hands.
‘Why, why?’ she wailed.
Mannie thinks I have another boyfriend. Tsamkxao?!!
She sprang up, indignant that he could think she’d give her heart to another so easily. And what evidence did he have for his belief? she wondered. Then it came to her: Xoan||a’s shoes. Mannie knew them as hers. The shoes she’d given Xoan||a. But this was a simple misunderstanding, which she could explain. She would go after him. He couldn’t have been gone long.
*
The horse’s trail was fresh, the imprint of hooves in the dew-covered sand obvious in the dawning light. But Mannie had galloped. She could imagine him whipping the animal to keep it at full stretch. The horse would have obliged, probably petrified to be out in the predator-scented open. Koba thought. She didn’t have time to worry about that herself. Judging by what people had said of the route, even if she ran she would arrive in Tsumkwe many hours after Mannie.
Run she did, her feet finding the dark hoof-hollows like they were stepping stones. Come sunrise she found she was still jogging. ‘Like a tireless jackal. Love makes my feet light, my limbs liquid,’ she sang. Her kaross streamed out behind her like a wing; she felt she was flying.
As the heat increased, the miles seemed to lengthen. She slowed, feeling the sun bearing down on her. There was no time to rest. She picked up a branch with a spray of grey-green leaves and carried it like a sun shade. Eventually it felt too heavy to hold aloft. She knew she should stop and rest under one of the thorn trees along the way, but there was no time. She stumbled on.
‘He loves me, he came to find me, now I must find him,’ she burbled to herself. Every panted breath seemed to scald her parched lips. She needed to drink, but there was no time to stop and search for water. She had to find Mannie before he moved on.
We will go to Botswana and find work and help with the struggle-thing and live and live. Live and live. Live, live, live, like in those story books Marta showed me. Happily ever after.
Happily
Ever
After
Happily
Ever
After
Happilyhappilyhappily . . .
Everevereverev . . .
Chapter 25 coming soon.