The fervent gatherings of the local children with a little customary ceremony along with the loud grumbling of the engine of the Russian plane ring in my mind. There was, however no jostling or shoving during the gathering period, and thus I often thought Africans were rather snail-blooded!
Our house was not so imposing. It was a simple two-storey house with all the luxuries of life the local people would not expect. The house was amongst those of my dad’s three other UN colleagues and there was a considerable amount of security surrounding our house. The local children had by now accustomed to our presence and some would try to befriend me. The language in this part of Nubian Sudan was Amharic and I had already picked up some words. It helped.
“Kadias (Hi),” I said to a boy about my age. He told me that he was Mluleki. Then he launched into a war of words, a rambled mixture of broken English but lucid Amharic words. At last I thought this what he said, “Do you like to walk? Maybe we could go down to the forest, it’s only 10 minutes.” I quickly gestured “Auo (yes)” and then “Mubgbeni Rawen,” thanking him for his offer.
Oh, I loved that life. When Mluleki took me for a walk, we could see plenty of giraffe and elephant and sometimes, luckily, an exotic wondrous animal such as the Sitatunga or a Kudu, the marks on their fur resembling works of art. A beautiful zebra and antelopes or a hippo would be a routine glimpse. Sometimes, when we often travelled by car through this area, I imagined a giraffe standing in front of the car and that the car ran over it. The car could very well crush under the weight and the legs of the giraffe would end up as an attack through the windshield!
A strange revelation had suddenly embraced us one day: one of disbelief and blankness. In other words, all of our minds went bleak and black and it was such a shock that we even had no reaction. It was the first time it happened in my life, and in most of our lives. Losing your loved one is not like losing a penny, I realised. I thought that I had been blindly cheated, but why, I had no idea. I had lost my uncle and everyone had lost a blinking star who they could follow if lost in the deep. I thought of my two-year-old cousin, now an orphan. This man, I thought, had left us at such a young age only because he had a pure heart and nothing else beside it. The shock had to be put behind and life carried on. That was the typical advice, but I wasn’t sure we could do that.
I woke up one morning and stared outside, resting my hand on the window ridge. Later, I decided I wanted to go outside. I sat down on the grass outside our house, trying to fix my muddled up thoughts. I spotted Mluleki, a good fifty meters off at the same time as the well-known hiss struck. It was sharp and shrill.
Mluleki yelled, “Hisham! Hisham!” “Beware, a huge snake behind you. Quickly quickly!”
I recognised it straight away. It was the giant amphiuma, sliding at the speed of a sprinter and hurrying towards me. I shouldn’t run I thought, as I knew this snake could go up to speeds of 50 m/s. I swerved around to face the battle. The soft crunching of the body among the dead leaves and the constant hissing signalled the snake’s anticipation to get me. I was bound to be a goner. I wasn’t completely hopeless, though. I picked up a branch, which fell of the acacia tree in our garden. I lighted a fire with some matches. I got the snake, the flames licked onto its flesh and it had lost its eyesight. Then, I took a garden rake and
