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The visiting strange lady put her empty glass down liking her lips.
Susan was quick to ask, “Would you mind some more?”
The young lady yawned.
“A little more please, I was very thirsty.” She said uncovering her mouth.
Susan leapt to her feet and filled her glass. Machira declined by shaking his head. She then disappeared through a kitchen door.
Machira was a young man of about thirty years, tall, handsome and well-built. He had a well-looked-after moustache and his black hair was cut short. He generally looked like a businessman but the strange girl wasn’t sure of it.
An Appetizing Smell From the Kitchen
An appetizing smell diffused from the kitchen and hit the two at once. Each reacted differently. The girl sat upright and managed to suppress a hippopotamus yawn while Machira sprung to his feet and disappeared through the door his wife had gone through. The girl was left alone listening to soft soothing music, which in some way, together with the fan overhead cooled the room.
Machira was the first to emerge carrying an overflowing tray of food.
“I am ravenous,” he said as he placed the tray on the table. “And I think I will eat a lot.”
“I will not allow you to overeat,” Susan said in a teasing manner joining them with more food.
“Can help in any way?” The girl asked desperately hoping to be of help.
“No… err…just relax,” Susan assured her. “Just feel at home.”
Feel at home? That would not be possible; her home setting compared to this was totally different. You cannot compare the Kalahari Desert to an equatorial forest inside the Democratic Republic of Congo.
It Was News Time
Machira interrupted her train of thought. “It’s almost news time,” he said looking for the remote control. He switched the TV on. As they tucked in, they watched the lunchtime news. Only the jaws were moving and the ears almost flapping as the trio listened. The girl could have been watching things stranger than fiction.
The news according to Machira was boring.
A man suspected to be a carjacker was shot dead the previous day while three others were held for interrogation following a botched-up carjacking. In the city, a police inspector was shot dead by suspected robbers who broke into a bank and staged a dramatic escape with an unknown amount of money.
Also in the news, a combined force of three hundred administration police and anti-stock theft police officers had been detailed to follow armed raiders who had stolen over a thousand head of cattle and over three hundred and fifty donkeys in a remote part of the country.
The cattle rustlers totting Kalashnikov rifles and Uzi sub-machine guns had attacked the five herdsmen killing two of them.
At the airport, the Anti-narcotics Unit had nabbed a suspect carrying 315 sachets of heroin and cocaine worth several billion. He had swallowed some of the drugs while the others were tucked inside jackets he had imported alleged to be for sale.
Inter-tribal Conflicts in the Society
The top news was that over one hundred and fifty people had been killed during inter-tribal conflicts in the southern part of the country. The skirmishes had also left scores of people injured. The warring sides had risen against each other with guns, pangas, simis and axes, to say nothing of arrows that were the most used weapons in the slaughter.
It was learnt that the two communities, which had been living harmoniously for over three decades, found themselves fighting over a trivial land dispute. And the land issue had turned them into savages, people who did not have a heart. This was evident in how they tore each other like beasts.
People who had been friends for a long time were now turning against each other without a second thought as if their brains were dead or had malfunctioned. Humanity is erased from their hearts and replaced with something worse than beastly feelings and thoughts, for even wild animals do not kill each other at will.
The major tribe wanted to expel the minor one claiming the land they had acquired belonged to their ancestors. The minor tribe had stood its ground saying that it didn’t matter whether ancestral or not they vowed to fight for their land which they had acquired legally and had documentation to prove that.
Heavily armed policemen had been deployed in the area to maintain peace and tranquillity. A commission had been set up to immediately investigate the origin of the violence although obviously it had been politically instigated. The area Member of Parliament could not be reached for comment.
Man-eat-man Sort of Society
“It’s nonsense,” Machira said.
The girl wondered what he meant when such barbarous acts had been committed. She would have wanted to know what the nonsense was about when so many people had lost their lives.
Then, as if the man had heard the unspoken thought or read her troubled mind through telepathy, he began to talk directing his speech to no one.
“Our society is now rotten. The kind of society we are in now is a man-eat-man sort of society. Only the strongest will survive.”
He paused briefly and reached for the fried chicken. “People have to die as the world of the dead is never satisfied.” Machira stopped talking but the young girl thought he would continue. He was brief and to the point.
Machira pushed his plate away and stretched himself. He took a glass of water and downed the contents in three gulps. His wife smiled cutely and replenished his glass.
The appetizing lunch was over suddenly and everybody looked satisfied. Susan cleared the place such that there was no evidence left of people having taken any food. She then sat close to her husband.
I Need a Job
“When you were away I received a visitor,” she said to Machira, “and she will tell us her name and perhaps how we can help her.”
The girl faced the two.
“Well,” she said, “the first thing that I would like to do is to thank you for your boundless generosity.”
Susan shook her head in agreement. “You are welcome”
“My name is Helen and as you can see I am out alone in the unfriendly streets.” She shifted her weight. “I am destitute and I need a job in order to survive.”
Machira assumed he had not heard the girl and asked eagerly, “You need a job?”
“Yes.”
“What sort of job to be exact?”
She let out suppressed air from her lungs.
“Any kind of job; I am not discriminating, even if it is housework.”
“I see,” Machira said stroking his walrus moustache.
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