Ethno-fiction serialisation begins
Koba book 3, Chapter 1 is here
Greetings, mi #arasi, my friends, in Ju|’hoansi,
the language of the people my historical fiction series is about. As promised, I will be sharing chapters of my latest novel, the final in the Koba trilogy, here, on Substack, for my paid subscribers.
Paid subscribers help me put food in the bowls of Ju|’hoan school children deep in the Kalahari desert. I co-founded the feeding scheme in 2017 and with your help and sales of these novels, have been supporting this marginalised community in their desire to help their children become ‘paper-people;- i.e. reading and writing- literate, so they can better face the challenges of the modern world knocking on their grass hut walls.
If you are not a paid subscriber, please consider becoming one for just £40 or $50 a year. You’ll be giving some of the world’s most marginalised children the chance to stay in their mother-tongue school because there is food available at the hostel. And you’ll get a stonking good read.
Daughter of the Kalahari
Koba 3
Daughter of the Kalahari
Part 1, Chapter 1
He might still be out there, that Honey badger.
Koba didn’t know how long she’d been lying in the grass. After the rifle shot she’d fallen to the ground, where she found herself lying now, face down.
Had she been shot? Hhnn, she wasn’t aware of pain anywhere. But she didn’t dare stand or even sit up - the policeman might still be within shooting distance. Silently she rolled onto her back and ran her hands over her body. No sticky wetness to indicate a bullet wound. She deliberately slowed her breathing to quieten the hammering of her heart.
He might be creeping closer; Honey badgers were fighters; they never gave up . Uhn-uhn-uhnnn, she hushed her thoughts. Listen to what the surrounds are saying.
Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch.
Dried out grass stalks chafed irritably against one another, the Kalahari wind whispering false promises of rain. From the far distance, a snort. Koba identified it as a warthog calling to her piglets. Nearer, she heard the click-click of a grasshopper’s wing – a male warning off an intruder, she decided. But no unusual noises, no |‘Hun[1] ones like the growl of a truck, nor squeak of leather boots, nor that particular policeman-one, the one she wanted to forget, the jangle of handcuffs.
Koba rolled again onto her stomach and began to wriggle backwards, pushing off her elbows while she bent first one then the other knee, gripping with her toes to get traction in the grass. Its desperate dryness rasped her thighs, while shards of broken rock bit into skin. She’d only reversed about five feet when her foot touched something soft. Soft and hairy.
Her body froze, but she swivelled her head fast, looking over her shoulder. And there lay an eland, a huge dun-coloured buck, with the characteristic three faint white stripes across its back. It lay dead still with wide-open eyes and a bullet hole squarely between the base of its gently spiralled horns. Blood oozed from its soft muzzle.
‘Huw, has that heavy person eaten my bullet?! Then she saved my life,’ Koba thought
She wasn’t as surprised as she might have been. Healers had spirit animals; a female eland seemed to be hers. Once before she’d had the distinct impression that one had saved her from certain death.
That time she’d been hunted by her old enemy, André Marais, the man who had murdered both her mother and father all those years ago near the Forbidden Pool. That eland hadn’t died.
But this buck was dead. Motionless, but still blood-warm. Mi ui a[2], she whispered to it, as she slithered past, stopping for a just a second to rest her forehead on its rump and mouth her good wishes for its journey to its ancestors.
It was then that she thought she heard two thuds: one sounded something like a blow, metal striking something softer, then a second thud which reverberated through her bare toes as something heavy hit the earth. Face down, she froze, heart pounding again and her mind racing. Was that Mannie, her lover? Or one of his new comrades? Foolish gova ma[3], in her opinion, liable to get themselves and Mannie killed.
Koba strained to hear more. She’d tensed herself for another gunshot, but instead heard a muffled argument between young male voices. She sprang up. She was in time to see two dark figures running away, dragging something between them. From the sheen of fair hair she feared it was Mannie.
Hitching up her bulky kaross[4] she began to run after them, careless now of being seen. And that’s when she tripped headlong over him. Not Mannie, but a powerfully built |‘Hun, white man, with a streak of grey in his dark hair – the policeman she called the Honey Badger. She’d met him months before, at the railway station with André Marais. Was he dead? No, she could see his chest rising and falling underneath his blue serge uniform. But he did have a big lump on the back of his head. Perhaps a blow had knocked him out? Why would the boys have attacked him?
And then she knew; Mannie would have doubled back. He must have seen the policeman lift his rifle to shoot when she rose from the tall grass to act as decoy. When she fell, Mannie would have struck him. But why hadn’t Mannie come to find her?
