chapter one when magic ruled the world my name is William kam Wamba and to understand the story I'm about to tell you must first understand the country that raised me mal why is a tiny nation in southeastern Africa on a map it appears like a flatworm barrowing its way through zambia Mozambique and Tanzania looking for a little room mal why is often called the warm heart of Africa which says nothing about its location but everything about the people who call it home the Camco camp Columbus hailed from the centre of the country from a tiny village called masa Tala located on the outskirts of the town of whim Bay you might be wondering what an African village looks like well ours consists of about ten houses each one made of mud bricks and painted white for most of my life our roofs were made from long grasses that we pick near the swamps or dam boughs in our chick away in what language the grasses kept us cool in the hot months but during the cool nights of winter the frost crept into our bones and we slept under an extra pile of blankets every house and masa Tala belongs to my large extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins in our house there was me my mother and father and my six sisters along with some goats and guinea fowl and a few chickens when people here I'm the only boy among six girls they often say bomba which is like saying hey man are so sorry for you and it's true the downside to having only sisters is that I often got bullied in school since I had no older brothers to protect me and my sisters were always messing with my things especially my tools and inventions giving me no privacy whenever I asked my parents why do we have so many girls in the first place I always got the same answer because the baby store was all out of boys but as you'll see in the story my sisters are actually pretty great and when you live on a farm you need all the help you can get my family grew maize which is another word for white corn in our language we lovingly refer to it as Chi manga and growing cha manga required all hands every planting season my sisters and I would wake up before dawn to hoe the weeds dig our careful rows then push the seeds gently into the soft soil when it came time to harvest we were busy again most film is and Malo our farmers we live our entire lives out in the countryside far away from cities where we can tend our fields and raise our animals where we live there are no computers or video games very few televisions and for most of my life we didn't have electricity just oil lamps that spewed smoke and coated our lungs with soot farmers here have always been poor and not many can afford an education seeing a doctor is also difficult since most of us don't own cars from the time were born were given a life with very few options because of this poverty and lack of knowledge mala Lyons found help wherever we could many of us turn to magic which is how my story begins you see before I discovered the miracles of science I believed that magic ruled the world not magician magic like pulling rabbits out of hats or sawing ladies in half the sort of thing you see on television it was an invisible kind of magic one that surrounded us like the air we breathe and mal why magic came in many forms the most common being the witch doctor whom we called Zheng Ganga the Wizards were mysterious people some appeared in public usually in the market on Sundays sitting on blankets spread with bones spices and powders that claim to cure everything from dandruff to cancer poor people walked many miles to visit these men since they didn't have money for real doctors this led to problems especially if a person was truly sick take diarrhea for example diarrhea is a common ailment in the countryside that comes from drinking dirty water and if left untreated it can lead to dehydration every year too many children die from something that's easily cured by a regimen of fluids and simple antibiotics but without money or faith in modern medicine the villager takes his chances with a single descri diagnosed oh I know it's wrong the wizard says you have a snail a snail I'm almost positive we must remove it at once the wizard goes into his bag of roots powders and bones and pulls out a light bulb lift up your shirt he says without plugging the bulb into anything he moves it slowly across the person's stomach as if to illuminate something only he can detect there it is can you see the snail moving oh yes I think I can see it yeah there it is the wizard returns to his bag for some magic potion which he splashes across the belly all better he asks yes I think the snail is gone I don't feel it moving good that would be 3000 Kawachi for a little extra money the single guy can cross curses on your enemies to deliver floods to their fields hyenas to their chicken house or terror and tragedy into their homes this is what happened to me when I was six years old or at least I thought it did I was playing in front of my house when a group of boys walking past carrying a giant sack they worked for a nearby farmer tending his cows that morning as they are moving the herd from one pasture to another they discovered the sack lying on the road looking inside they saw that it was filled with bubblegum can you imagine such a treasure I can't begin to tell you how much I loved bubblegum now as they walked past one of them spotted me playing in a puddle should we give them to this boy he asked I didn't move or say a word a bit of mud drip from my hair and why not his friend said he looks kind of pathetic the boy reached into his bag and produced a rainbow of gumballs one of every color and dropped them into my hands by the time the boys disappeared I'd shoved every one into my mouth the sweet juices dribbled down my chin and stained my shirt little did I know but the Bubblegum belonged to a local trader who stopped by our house the next day he told my father how the bag had dropped from his bicycle as he was leaving the market by the time he circled back to look for it the bag was gone the people in the next village told him about the herd of boys now he wanted revenge I've gotten to see the singing guy he told my father and whoever ate that bubblegum will be sorry suddenly I was terrified I'd heard what the Singhania could do to a person in addition to delivering death and disease the wizards controlled armies of witches who could kidnap me during the night and shrink me into a worm I even heard about them turning children into stones leaving them to suffer an eternity in silence already I could feel a single go watching me plotting his evil with my heart racing I ran into the forest behind my house to try to escape but it was no use I felt the strange warmth of his magic eyes shining through the trees he had me at any Moony moment I would emerge from the forest as a beetle or trembling mouse to be eaten by the Hawks knowing my time was short I hurried home to her my father was plucking a pile of maize and tumbled into his lap it was me I shouted tears running down my cheeks I hate this is dull and gum I don't want to die Papa please don't let them take me my father looked at me for a second and shook his head and it was you uh he said then kind of smiled didn't he realize I was in trouble well he said in his knees popped as he rose from his chair my father was a big man don't worry William I'll find the traitor and explain I'm sure we can work something out that afternoon my father walked five miles to the trainer's house and told him what had happened and even though I'd only eaten a few of the gumballs he paid the man for the entire bag which was nearly all the money we possessed that evening after supper my life having been saved I asked my father if he truly believed I was in trouble he became very serious oh yes we were just in time he said then started laughing so hard his chair began to squeak William who knows what was in this door for you my fear of wizards and magic only grew worse whenever grandpa told stories if you saw my grandpa you might think that he was of a wizard himself he was so old that he couldn't remember the year he'd been born so cracked and wrinkled that his hands and feet looked as if they were chiseled from stone and his clothes grandpa insisted on wearing the same tattered coat and trousers every day whenever he emerged from the forest puffing on his hand rolled cigar you think one of the trees have grown legs and started walking it was grandpa who told me the greatest story about magic I never heard long ago before the giant maze and tobacco farms came along and cleared away our great forests when a person could lose track of the Sun inside the trees the land was rich with antelope zebra and wildebeest also lions hippos and leopards grandpa was a famous hunter so good with his bow and arrow that it became his duty to protect his village and provide its meat one day while grandpa was out hunting he came across a man who'd been killed by a poisonous pit viper he alerted the nearest village and soon after they returned with their witch doctor the singing go took one look at the dead man then reached into his bag and tossed some medicines into the trees seconds later the earth began to move as hundreds of Vipers slithered out of the shadows and gathered around the corpse hypnotized by the spell the wizard then stood on the Dead Man's Chest and drank a cup of potion which seemed to flow through his feet and into the lifeless body then to grandpa's amazement the dead man's fingers began to move and he sat up together he and the wizard inspected the fangs of each snake looking for the one that had bitten him believe it grandpa told me I saw this with my own eyes I certainly believed it along with every other story about witches and things unexplained whenever I went down the dark trails alone my imagination spun wild what scared me the most were the ghoul a one Kulu the magical dancers that lived in the murky shadows of the forest they sometimes appeared in the daylight performing at tribal ceremonies when we Chua boys became men they were not real people we were told but spirits of our dead answer stirrers sent to roam the earth their appearance was cast Lee each had the face and skin of animals and some walked on stilts to appear taller once I saw one scurry backward up a pole like a spider and when they danced It was as if 1,000 men were inside their bodies each moving in the opposite direction when the ghoul a1 Hulu weren't performing they traveled the forest and Dumbo's looking for young boys to take back to the graveyards what happened to you there I never wanted to know whenever I saw one even out of ceremony I dropped everything and ran once when I was very young a magic dancer suddenly appeared in our courtyard his head was wrapped in a flour sack but underneath was the long nose of an elephant and a gaping hole for a mouth my mother and father were in the field so my sisters and I ran for the bush where we watched the dancers snatch our favorite chicken unlike the Goulet one Kulu or the singing guy in the market most witches and wizards never revealed their identity in the places where they practice their magic mystery abounded like strange weather in the nearby town of Nicky see men with bald heads standing as tall as trees walked the roads at night ghost trucks traveled back and forth approaching fast with their headlights flashing and engines revving loud yet when the lights finally passed there was no truck attached and one of the neighboring villages I heard about a man who'd been shrunk so small by a wizard that his wife kept him in a coke bottle in addition to casting spells for curses the singen God often battled one another at night they piled aboard their planes and prowled the skies looking for children to kidnap his soldiers the witch planes could be anything a wooden bowl a broom a simple hat and each was capable of traveling great distance mal why to New York for example in a single minute children were used as guinea pigs and sent to test the powers of rival wizards other nights they visit camps of other witch children for games of mystical soccer where the balls were human heads stolen from people as they slept lying in bed at night I would become so frightened thinking about these said I'd cry out for my father papa I'd shout summoning him to my door I can't sleep I'm afraid my father had no place for magic in his life to me this made him seem even stronger as a devout presbyterian he believed that God not juju was his best protection respect the Wizards he would tell me shortening my bedcovers but remember William with God on your side they have no power against you I trusted my father but as I got older I began to wonder how his explanation I founded for Chuck Norris Terminator and Rambo who arrived at the wimba Training Center one summer and caused all kinds of ruckus these men appeared in action movies that played in the local video show which is really just a mud hut with benches a television and a VCR at night wonderful and mysterious things happen there but since I wasn't allowed out after dark I never saw any of them instead I had to hear stories the next morning from friends whose parents weren't so strict last night I watched the best of all movies said my friend Peter Rambo jumped from the top of the mountain and was still firing his gun when he landed at the bottom everyone in front of him died and the entire mountain exploded he pretended to clutch a machine gun and fire in all directions when all they start showing these films during the day I said I never get to see anything the night the Terminator came to the video show it was simply shocking when Peter found me the next morning he was still in a state William I just don't understand this movie this male shot left right and center and yet he's still managed to live I'm telling you this Terminator must be the greatest wizard ever it sounded fantastic do you think the Americans have such magic I asked I don't believe it this is what I saw Peter said I'm telling you it's true although years would pass before a society of these films they began influencing our games at home one one was a shooting game that I played with my cousin Jeffrey using toy guns we made from a map alone a bush finding a straight branch we removed its core like taking out the insides of a ballpoint pen and used it as a ramrod to fire paper spitballs I was the captain of one team and Jeffrey was the captain of the other along with our cousins we formed squads and hunted one another between the houses in our village you go left and I'll go right I instructed my soldiers one afternoon then crawled on hands and knees through the red dirt my poor mother was constantly scrubbing our clothes right away I spotted Jeffrey's trousers from around the corner of the house slowly without spooking the chickens I snuck up behind for an easy ambush tonga I shouted then jam the ramrod send me a shower of slime into his face he clutched his heart and fell to the ground my ona he gasped you got me we were a solid gang of three me Jeffrey and our friend Gilbert Gilbert's father was the chief of our whole web a district a man whom everyone called chief one Bey even though his real name was Albert when Jeffrey and I got bored with playing our games in the courtyard we often headed to Gilbert's let's see how many chickens we can count I said taking off down the path going over to Gilbert's house was always fun since the Chiefs work was never finished as usual we found a long line of truck drivers farmers traders and market women all waiting to voice their concerns as we suspected many of them carried a chicken under their arm a gift for their chief I counted ten Jeffrey whispered yeah I said must be lots of problems today the Chiefs messenger and bodyguard mr. Nagata stood at the door in his short pants and army boots dressed as a police officer it was mr. new guachos job to protect the chief and filter all of his visitors he was also the chicken collector come come he said emotion Duss inside the chief sat on the sofa in the living room dressed in a crisp shirt and nice trousers she's usually dressed like business people never in feathers and animal skins that's in the movies another thing about chief wind bay was that he loved his cat which was black and white but had no name and Moll why only dogs are given names I don't know why we found Gilbert in his room singing to the radio Gilbert had most beautiful voice in June of becoming a famous singer my voice sounded like one of the guinea fowl that screech in our trees as it pooped but I never let that stop me from singing Gilbert bow-bow sharp sharp that was our slang we used every time we saw one another the word beau was short for Bonjour started by some chaps who were learning French in school and wanting to show off it means hello in that language I don't know where sharp came from but it was I saying are you cool and if we were feeling really good we went a bit further sure sure fit fit hey let's go to the training centre I said I bet there's a mountain of treasures outside of Phase II Oh Phase II boozing Center was the local bar in one Bay it's most popular drink with shake shake a kind of beer made from corn that was sold in cardboard cartons I wasn't allowed inside Oh Phase II but I'm guessing they didn't have a garbage can because every night the men toss their empty cartons into the road Gilbert Jeffrey and I like to collect them after we wash the cartons out with water they made the perfect toy trucks even though we lived in a small village in Africa we did many of the same thing kids do all over the world we just use different materials after talking with friends I met in America I know this is true children everywhere have similar ways of playing with one another and if you look at it this way the world isn't such a big place my friends and I loved trucks it didn't matter what kind we loved the four ton dump trucks that rumbled out of the big farms kicking up dust we love the small pickups that took passengers from when beta cos and goo the nearest city we love them all in each week we compete to see who could build the best one I know that in America you can buy toy trucks already assembled in a store in Mal why we build ours from shake shake curtains and pieces of wire to us they were just as beautiful the axles were sections of wire we bought by picking mangoes and for the wheels we use bottle caps even better were the plastic caps from our mothers containers of cooking oil which lasted much longer and if we check our father's razor blades we can cut designs in the wheels to give each truck its own you driving that way the tracks in the dirt told us if the truck belonged to camco wamba Toyota for instance or to Gilbert company ltd we also built our own monster wagons called qi Guerrieri that looked like american go-karts we made the frames from thick tree branches careful to find ones with giant knots or fork that can be used as a seat we then dug up larger tube roots called kombu that looked like mutant sweet potatoes and shape them into wheels the axles were poles carved from a bubble a blue gum tree after everything was assembled we tied it all together with vines and hoped it didn't fall apart to make the car move one person pulled with a long rope while the drivers filled with his feet with two cars side by side we held derbies through the training center let's race for sure last one to reach the barbershop will go blind go after the race if we had some money in our pockets we'd stop by mr.
Bandhu shop for a cold bottle of Fanta and some dandy sweets mr. Bandhu ran the Malayan version of a convenience store on his shelves were packages of margarine and powdered milk since most people didn't have refrigerators at home to keep milk cold he also sold aspirin cough drops lotions bars of lifebuoy soap and on the very bottom shelf Drw's liver salts I have no idea what liver salts were used for but I'm certain they tasted run whenever we entered mr. Bandhu greeted us in our usual male and custom muli Boulanger he said how are you new dairy boy no Chaya anew we answered and fine how about you Nadira boy knows the Como and fine thanks for asking after that it was more of the same stuff you boys keeping out of trouble yeah helping your mother and father at home yeah well give them my greetings for sure if we were really hungry we combined our money and headed to the Cayenne raka stand which was like I'm always in fast-food restaurant it was really just a vat of boiling grease over a fire but the fried goat me in potatoes they served were heavenly the man tending the firewood grunt and say how much and we would answer five quanta or however much money we had five cuatro was less than one American dollar the man then turned around and cut a few chunks of meat from a goat hanging from a rail he dropped the meat into the boiling oil followed by a handful of slices two potatoes when everything floated to the top he served it on a wooden counter along with a pile of salt for dipping your mother's a good cook Gilbert told me once but not as good as this yeah my parents wanted me home before dark but that was my favorite time of day anyway it was when my father and uncle John Jeffries father finished their work in the maize fields and came home for supper in the kitchen my older sister Annie help my mother prepare the food since we had no electricity we still cooked everything over a fire as Annie fed sticks into the flames my mother shared a pot of something delicious letting the smells escape into the courtyard since I was a growing boy it was hard for me to wait even if I just eaten Cayenne yeah in the trading centre with my stomach growling I'd stand in the doorway begging just a few more minutes my mother would say by the time you wash your hands and face it will be ready usually before supper my cousin's gathered in the courtyard and played soccer since we had no money for a real ball we made our own using plastic shopping bags that we call Jumbo's wadded together and tied with rope they didn't have the same kind of bounce as a real soccer ball but they still allowed us to play all across Africa children use the same jumble balls if it was the rainy season when the mangoes were ripe we filled our pails from the neighbours trees and ate them for dessert we bit into the juicy fruit and let the sweet syrup run down our fingers if there wasn't any moonlight for playing soccer my father gathered all the children cousins and all in the living room lit a kerosene lamp and told us folk tales be still and hush up he would say now have I told you the story about the leopard and the lion tell it again Papa sometimes my father forgot the stories and made up new ones as he went along creating new characters and outrageous endings and while we loved hearing the tails the truth was that real life was sometimes difficult to distinguish from fantasy during the times of year when we planted and harvested our maize two jobs that required lots of work my father and uncle John hired someone to help them the most famous of these workers was mr.
fury a man of incredible power in fact whenever John and my father needed to clear a new field for planting they didn't even bother with tractors instead they sent fury who yanked entire trees out of the ground as if they were weeds everyone knew that fury secret was Mangalam era a kind of magic that delivered superhuman strength only the strongest wizards and Malwa could give you this potion which came in a paste made from the bones of leopards and lions to get the strength the wizard cut your skin with special razor blades and rubbed the medicine into your blood once part of you it never left in fact the magic only became stronger with time only the toughest men like fury could live with it inside them fury was so strong that no person or animal could beat him once while working in the fields a deadly black mamba slithered over his foot and prepared to strike but fury wasn't afraid he reached down and with the Mambo with a blade of grass leaving it paralyzed then he grabbed it by the head and tossed it all the way to Mozambique people said he carried another Mamba in his pocket for good luck and that snake was too afraid to bite him by the time I was eight or nine years old the thought of Mangalam era seemed more and more attractive you see I was very small and this led to constant trouble with bullies at school the worst was named limbic Connie who was tall and muscular and had older brothers at home which made him even more ruthless for some reason limba Connie liked to pick on me in Gilbert one day on her way to school he waited for us on the road and jumped out from a grove of trees oh look it's William and his friend little chief when Bay leave us alone I shouted but my voice cracked and gave me away limbic Connie put his chest in Gilbert's face where's the big chief monkey boy looks like he's not here to protect you he grabbed the backs of our shirts and dangled us in the air like two sad puppies then he stole our lunch this happened again and again not only do my size leave me defenseless against bullies it also haunted me on the soccer field and loved soccer more than anything and each week I glue myself to Radio one from always super league action my favorite team was the nomads whose star player was Bob the Savior Matheny jira this savior got his nickname from one Christmas Eve when he saved us from good feet against the big bullets and I can't tell you how much I hate the big bullets despite my size I long to be a player as worthy as my heroes whenever all of us boys gathered for practice and drills I was some kind of star in my own mind oh how I would shine zigzagging between defenders and firing the ball at missile speed then one day I was displaying my various skills when Jeffrey and some others call that to me hey caiera give us the ball Kyra as in Peter Kiera despite my love for the nomads my greatest hero in all the universe was indeed Peter Kiera the best player for the flames our national team and to me a man even greater than the president to be called Kiera was no small thing I couldn't stop smiling soon everyone on the practice pitch was calling me Kiera even when I went to the training center I was greeted with shouts and praise hey Cara I heard you play like a lion but when it was time to pick the teams for competition the captain somehow skipped over me thinking this was a serious mistake on their part I pointed it out only to be told to sit on the bench how could this be well I thought the captains are clever fellows perhaps they're saving me from injury keeping me as a secret weapon for the finals this made me feel even more special but while I sat on the sidelines the other players ran past me and yelled keep the bench warm cry era or Cara will be needing you soon as the bull Eila a bowl ela was a ball fetcher that's when I realized it it all been a joke I was called chimera not because my fro just skills but because I was a lousy player the following summer I decided to do something about it mr.
