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Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
To my family
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Praise
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
THE PREPARATION WAS COMPLETE, so I waited. The muscles in my arms still burned from having worked so hard, but now I was finished. The machinery was bolted and secured. The tower was steady and unmoving under the weight of twisted steel and plastic. Looking at it now, it appeared exactly as it was—something out of a dream.
News of the machine had spread to the villages, and people were starting to arrive. The traders spotted it from their stalls and packed up their things. The truckers left their vehicles along the roads. Everyone walked into the valley, and now gathered in its shadow. I recognized these faces. Some of these people had mocked me for months, and still they whispered, even laughed. More of them were coming. It was time.
Balancing the small reed and wires in my left hand, I used the other to pull myself onto the tower’s first rung. The soft wood groaned under my weight, and the compound fell silent. I continued to climb, slowly and assuredly, until I was facing the machine’s crude frame. Its plastic arms were burned and blackened, its metal bones bolted and welded into place. I paused and studied the flecks of rust and paint, how they appeared against the fields and mountains beyond. Each piece told its own tale of discovery, of being lost and found in a time of hardship and fear. Finally together now, we were all being reborn.
Two wires dangled from the heart of the machine and gently danced in the breeze. I knotted their frayed ends together with the wires that sprouted off the reed, just as I’d always pictured. Down below, the crowd cackled like a gang of birds.
“Quiet down,” someone said. “Let’s see how crazy this boy really is.”
A sudden gust muffled the voices below, then picked up into a steady wind. It took hold of my T-shirt and whistled through the tower rungs. Reaching over, I removed a bent piece of wire that locked the machine’s spinning wheel in place. Once released, the wheel and arms began to turn. They spun slowly at first, then faster and faster, until the force of their motion rocked the tower. My knees buckled, but I held on.
Don’t let me down.
I gripped the reed and wires and waited for the miracle. Finally it came, at first a tiny light that flickered from my palm, then a surging magnificent glow. The crowd gasped and shuddered. The children pushed for a better look.
“It’s true!” someone said.
“Yes,” said another. “The boy has done it.”
CHAPTER ONE
BEFORE I DISCOVERED THE miracles of science, magic ruled the world.
Magic and its many mysteries were a presence that hovered about constantly, giving me my earliest memory as a boy—the time my father saved me from certain death and became the hero he is today.
I was six years old, playing in the road, when a group of herd boys approached, singing and dancing. This was in Masitala village near the city of Kasungu, where my family lived on a farm. The herd boys worked for a nearby farmer who kept many cows. They explained how they’d been tending their herd that morning and discovered a giant sack in the road. When they opened it up, they found it filled with bubble gum. Can you imagine such a treasure? I can’t tell you how much I loved bubble gum.
“Should we give some to this boy?” one asked.
I didn’t move or breathe. There were dead leaves in my hair.
“Eh, why not?” said another. “Just look at him.”
One of the boys reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of gumballs, one for every color, and dropped them into my hands. I stuffed them all in my mouth. As the boys left, I felt the sweet juice roll down my chin and soak my shirt.
The following day, I was playing under the mango tree when a trader on a bicycle stopped to chat with my father. He said that while on his way to the market the previous morning, he’d dropped one of his bags. By the time he’d realized what had happened and circled back, someone had taken it. The bag was filled with bubble gum, he said. Some fellow traders had told him about the herd boys passing out gum in the villages, and this made him very angry. For two days he’d been riding his bicycle throughout the district looking for the boys. He then issued a chilling threat.
“I’ve gone to see the sing’anga, and whoever ate that gum will soon be sorry.”
The sing’anga was the witch doctor.
I’d swallowed the gum long before. Now the sweet, lingering memory of it soured into poison on my tongue. I began to sweat; my heart was beating fast. Without anyone seeing, I ran into the blue gum grove behind my house, leaned against a tree, and tried to make myself clean. I spit and hocked, shoved my finger into my throat, anything to rid my body of the curse. I came up dry. A bit of saliva colored the leaves at my feet, so I covered them with dirt.
But then, as if a dark cloud had passed over the sun, I felt the great eye of the wizard watching me through the trees. I’d eaten his juju and now his darkness owned me. That night, the witches would come for me in my bed. They’d take me aboard their planes and force me to fight, leaving me for dead along the magic battlefields. And as my soul drifted alone and forsaken above the clouds, my body would be cold by morning. A fear of death swept over me like a fever.
I began crying so hard I couldn’t move my legs. The tears ran hot down my face, and as they did, the smell of poison filled my nose. It was everywhere inside me. I fled the forest as fast as possible, trying to get away from the giant magic eye. I ran all the way home to where my father sat against the house, plucking a pile of maize. I wanted to throw my body under his, so he could protect me from the devil.
“It was me,” I said, the tears drowning my words. “I ate the stolen gum. I don’t want to die, Papa. Don’t let them take me!”
My father looked at me for a second, then shook his head.
“It was you, eh?” he said, then kind of smiled.
Didn’t he realize I was done for?
“Well,” he said, and rose from the chair. His knees popped whenever he stood. My father was a big man. “Don’t worry. I’ll find this trader and explain. I’m sure we can work out something.”
That afternoon, my father walked eight kilometers to a place called Masaka where the trader lived. He told the man what had happened, about the herd boys coming by and giving me the stolen gum. Then without question, my father paid the man for his entire bag, which amounted to a full week’s pay.
That evening after supper, my life having been saved, I asked my father about the curse, and if he’d truly believed I was finished. He straightened his face and became very serious.
“Oh yes, we were just in time,” he said, then started laughing in that way that made me so happy, his big chest heaving and causing the wooden chair to squeal. “William, who knows what was in store for you?”
MY FATHER WAS STRONG and feared no magic, but he knew all the stories. On nights when there was no moon, we’d light a lamp and gather in our living room. My sisters and I would sit at my father’s feet, and he’d explain the ways of the world, how magic had been with us from the beginning. In a land of poor farmers, there were too many troubles for God and man alone. To compensate for this imbalance, he said, magic existed as a third and powerful force. Magic wasn’t something you could see, like a tree, or a woman carrying water. Instead, it was a force invisible and strong like the wind, or a spider’s web spun across the trail. Magic existed in story, and one of our favorites was of Chief Mwase and the Battle of Kasungu.
In the early nineteenth century, and even today, the Chewa people were the rulers of the central plains. We’d fled there many generations before from the highlands of southern Congo during a time of great war and sickness, and settled where the soil was reddish black and fertile as the days were long.
During this time, just northwest of our village, a ferocious black rhino began wreaking terror across the land. He was bigger than a three-ton lorry, with horns the length of my father’s arms and points as sharp as daggers. Back then, the villagers and animals shared the same watering hole, and the rhino would submerge himself in the shallows and wait. Those visiting the spring were mostly women and young girls like my mother and sisters. As they dipped their pails into the water, the rhino would attack, stabbing and stomping them with its mighty hooves, until there was nothing left but bloody rags. Over a period of months, the feared black rhino had killed over a hundred people.
One afternoon, a young girl from the royal Chewa family was stomped to death at the spring. When the chief heard about this, he became very angry and decided to act. He gathered his elders and warriors to make a plan.
“This thing is a real menace,” the chief said. “How can we get rid of it?”
There were many ideas, but none seemed to impress the chief. Finally one of his assistants stood up.
“I know this man in Lilongwe,” he said. “He’s not a chief, but he owns one of the azungu’s guns, and he’s very good at magic. I’m certain his magical calculations are strong enough to defeat this black rhino.”
This man was Mwase Chiphaudzu, whose magic was so superior he was renowned across the kingdom. Mwase was a magic hunter. His very name meant “killer grass” because he was able to disguise himself as a cluster of reeds in the fields, allowing him to ambush his prey. The chief’s people traveled a hundred kilometers to Lilongwe and summoned Mwase, who agreed to assist his brothers in Kasungu.
One morning, Mwase arrived at the watering hole well before the sun. He stood in the tall grass near the shores and sprinkled magic water over his body and rifle. Both of them vanished, becoming only music in the breeze. Minutes later, the black rhino thundered over the hill and made his way toward the spring. As he plunged his heavy body into the shallows, Mwase crept behind him and put a bullet into his skull. The rhino crumpled dead.
The celebrations began immediately. For three days, villagers from across the district feasted on the meat of the terrible beast that had taken so many lives. During the height of the festivities, the chief took Mwase to the top of the highest hill and looked down where the Chewa ruled. This hill was Mwala wa Nyenje, meaning “The Rock of the Edible Flies,” named after the cliffs at its summit and the fat delicious flies that lived in its trees.
Standing atop the Rock of the Edible Flies, the chief pointed down to a giant swath of green earth and turned to Mwase.
“Because you killed that horrible and most feared beast, I have a prize for you,” he said. “I hereby grant you power over this side of the mountain and all that’s visible from its peak. Go get your people and make this your home. This is now your rule.”
So Mwase returned to Lilongwe and got his family, and before long, he’d established a thriving empire. His farmland produced abundant maize and vegetables that fed the entire region. His people were strong, and his warriors were powerful and feared.
But around this time, a great chaos erupted in the Zulu kingdom of South Africa. The army of the Zulu king, Shaka, began a bloody campaign to conquer the land surrounding his kingdom, and this path of terror and destruction caused millions to flee. One such group was the Ngoni.
The Ngoni people marched north for many months and finally stopped in Chewa territory, where the soil was moist and fertile. But because they were constantly on the move, hunger visited them often. When this happened, they would travel farther north and ask for help from Chief Mwase, who always assisted them with maize and goats. One day, after accepting another of Mwase’s handouts, the Ngoni chiefs sat down and said, “How can we always have this kind of food?”
Someone replied, “Eliminate the Chewa.”
The Ngoni were led by Chief Nawambe, whose plan was to capture the Rock of the Edible Flies and all the land visible from its peak. However, the Ngoni did not know how magical Chief Mwase was.
One morning, the Ngoni came up the mountain dressed in animal skins, holding massive shields in one hand and spears in the other. But of course, Chief Mwase’s warriors had spotted them from miles away. By the time the Ngoni reached the hill, the Chewa warriors had disguised themselves as green grass and slayed the intruders with knives and spears. The last man to die was Chief Nawambe. For this reason, the mountain was changed from the Rock of the Edible Flies to Nguru ya Nawambe, which means simply “The Deadly Defeat of Nawambe.” This same hill now casts a long shadow over the city of Kasungu, just near my village.
THESE STORIES HAD BEEN passed down from generation to generation, with my father having learned them from my grandpa. My father’s father was so old he couldn’t remember when he was born. His skin was so dry and wrinkled, his feet looked like they were chiseled from stone. His overcoat and trousers seemed older than he was, the way they were patched and hung on his body like the bark of an ancient tree. He rolled fat cigars from maize husks and field tobacco, and his eyes were red from kachaso, a maize liquor so strong it left weaker men blind.
Grandpa visited us once or twice a month. Whenever he emerged from the edge of the trees in his long coat and hat, a trail of smoke rising from his lips, it was as if the forest itself had taken legs and walked.
The stories Grandpa told were from a different time and place. When he was young—before the government maize and tobacco estates arrived and cleared most of our trees—the forests were so dense a traveler could lose his sense of time and direction in them. Here the invisible world hovered closer to the ground, mixing with the darkness in the groves. The forest was home to many wild beasts, such as antelope, elephant, and wildebeest, as well as hyenas, lions, and leopards, adding even more to the danger.
When Grandpa was a boy, his grandmother was attacked by a lion. She was working in her fields at the forest’s edge, scaring away some monkeys, when a female lion came upon her. Villagers heard her cries and quickly sounded the drum—not the fast, rhythmic beat for dances or ceremonies, but something slow and serious. They call this emergency beat the musadabwe, meaning, “Don’t ask questions, just come!” It’s like dialing 911, but instead of police, you’re calling other villagers.
By the time Grandpa and others arrived with their spears and bows and arrows, it was too late. They saw the lion—its body the size of a cow—drag his grandmother into the thorny trees, then toss her body into the bush like a mouse. It then turned and faced its challengers, let out a terrible roar, and disappeared with its kill. The poor woman’s body was never recovered.
Grandpa says that once a lion gets a taste for human blood, it won’t stop until it’s eaten an entire village. So the next morning someone notified the British authorities, who still controlled our country. They sent soldiers into the forest and shot the lion. Its body was then displayed in the village square for all to see.
Not long after, Grandpa was hunting alone in the forest and came upon a man who’d been bitten by a cobra. The snake had been hiding in the trees and struck the man’s head as he passed. His skin quickly turned gray, and minutes later, he was dead. Grandpa alerted the nearest village, who arrived with their witch doctor. The wizard placed one foot atop the dead man’s chest and tossed some medicines into the forest. Seconds later, the moist ground came alive as hundreds of cobra slithered out from the shadows and gathered around the corpse, hypnotized by the spell.
The wizard crouched on the dead man’s chest and drank a cup of magic porridge, which flowed through his feet and into the lifeless body. The dead man’s fingers began to move, then his hands.
“Let me up,” he said, then stood and faced the army of serpents.
Together, they checked the fangs of every cobra in attendance, searching for the one that had killed the man. Usually, the wizard would quickly cut off the head of the guilty snake, but this time, the dead man took pity and allowed the cobra to live. For his services, the wizard was paid three British pounds. My grandpa saw this with his own eyes.
When my father was a young man, he often went hunting with his father. Even then, the forest was so dangerous that hunters observed a sacred ritual before their outings. Hunts were usually initiated by one man, the mwini chisokole, or owner of the hunt, who called together all the willing men from the surrounding villages. The owner decided where and when the hunt would take place, and in the event of a kill, he’d receive the choicest portion of the meat, usually the hindquarter. Grandpa was often this person.
On the night before the hunt, the leader wasn’t allowed to sleep with his wife, not even in the same room. The purpose was to keep the man’s focus and attention as sharp as possible, and to guarantee a solid night’s rest. Losing focus made you careless in the forest, and worst of all, left you open to bewitching. That night, sleeping alone at a neighbor’s house, or in a separate hut with his sons, the leader would boil a pot of red maize mixed with certain roots and medicines, which he’d distribute the following morning to each hunter in the party. This was part of the magic, because everyone believed this protected them from danger.
Before setting out, the hunters also instructed their wives to stay indoors until the hunt was over, preferably lying in bed and sleeping. They thought this would cause the animals to sleep as well, allowing the hunters to sneak up on them with ease.
WALKING THROUGH THE FOREST as a boy, I didn’t worry so much about cobras or lions, since most of them had vanished. But other dangers were waiting in the forests that remained, and along the quiet, empty fields where the ghosts of trees seemed to whisper their sadness. Walking there alone, one of my greatest fears was the Gule Wamkulu.
The Gule Wamkulu were a secret gang of dancers. They performed at the chief’s request at funerals and initiation ceremonies, when many Chewa boys become men. The Gule Wamkulu were said to be the spirits of our dead ancestors, resurrected from the afterworld and sent to roam the earth. No longer human, they shared the skin of animals, and their faces resembled the beasts of hell—twisted devil birds and demons howling in fright.
When the Gule Wamkulu performed, you dared to watch only from a distance. Often they appeared from the bush walking on stilts, towering above the crowd and screaming in different tongues. Once, I even saw one of them climb a blue gum pole while upside down, like a spider. And when they danced, one thousand men seemed to inhabit their bodies, each moving in the opposite direction.
When the Gule Wamkulu weren’t performing, they traveled the forests and marshes looking for young boys to take back to the graveyards. What happened to you there, I never wanted to know. It was bad luck to even speak about the Gule Wamkulu. And God help you if you were ever caught doubting them, saying, “Look at their hands, they have five fingers like me. These guys are not real.” Doing this would surely get you bewitched, and since the Gule Wamkulu answered only to the chief, there’d be no one to defend you. When they appeared in the village, every woman and child dropped what they were doing and ran.
Once when I was very young, a magic dancer appeared in our courtyard, strutting like a cock and hissing like a snake. His head was wrapped in a flour sack with a black hole for a mouth and a long trunk for a nose. My mother and father were in the fields, so my sisters and I ran for the trees, only to watch this passing ghost steal one of our chickens.
(Donkeys are the only creatures not afraid of Gule Wamkulu. If the donkey sees one of these dancers, it will chase them into the bush and kick them with its mighty legs. Don’t ask me why, but the donkey is very brave.)
I tried to be courageous like my friend the donkey whenever I walked through the forest. But witches and wizards never reveal their identity, so you never know where their traps lie waiting. In these places where they practice, their potent magic takes on many shapes. Men with bald heads, twenty feet tall, are said to appear on the roads outside of Ntchisi, a few at first, then dozens all around. Ghost trucks drive the same roads at night, coming on fast with their bright lights flashing and engines revving loud. But as the lights pass by, no truck is attached. No tire marks are left on the road, and if you’re driving a car, your engine will die until morning.
Magic hyenas wander the villages at night, snatching several goats at once in their razor jaws and delivering them to the doorsteps of wizards. Magic lions are sent to kill delinquent debtors, and snakes the size of tractors can lie in wait for you in your fields.
But the dangers for children are even greater. As I mentioned, these wizards command great armies of children to do their witchcraft, and each night they prowl the villages for fresh recruits. They tempt them with delicious meats, saying it’s the only way to heaven. Once the children devour the tasty morsels, it’s revealed as human flesh. By then it’s too late, for once the wizard’s evil is inside your body, it controls you forever.
In addition to casting spells for curses and revenge, the witches often battle one another. This leads to great confusion in the kingdom of the devil, and this strife leaves many dead and injured, which is why children make the perfect soldiers.
The children pile aboard witch planes that prowl the skies at night, capable of traveling to Zambia and London in a single minute. Witch planes can be anything: a wooden basin, a clay pot, a simple hat. Flying about on magic duty, the children are sent to homes of rival wizards to test their powers. If the child is killed in the process, the wizard can determine the weapon of his enemy and develop something stronger. Other nights, the children visit camps of other witches for competition. Here, mystical soccer matches are played on mysterious fields in places I’ve never heard of, where the cursed children use human heads as balls and compete for great cups of flesh.
AFTER ESCAPING THE BUBBLEGUM vendor, I became terribly afraid of being captured, and I tried to think of ways to protect myself. I knew witches and wizards were allergic to money because the presence of cash is like a rival evil. Any contact with money will snap their spell and revert them back to human form—usually naked. For this reason, people often plaster their walls and bed mats with kwacha notes to protect themselves during the night. If they’re suddenly awoken by a naked man trying to escape, their suspicions are correct.