Describing Infrastructure
However, despite the hopelessness of the situation, she was sure that all this was happening for a reason. There had to be a purpose for her pain, for Pearson’s, for Lusungu’s, for everyone else’s. NyaMatochi’s tears weren’t dropped in vain, were they? Despite her stinging burns and her charred flesh, NyaMoyo held on to her life for there was more to it than the horrified looks and gasps of her relatives, friends and neighbours who came to visit her at the hospital.
“Daughter of my mother,” Mbachi had cried when she first saw the nurse changing her bandages. “Your life’s over.”
“No, it’s not,” NyaMoyo had whispered, her voice barely audible on the outside but she could hear it in her heart, booming with unimaginable force. She was sure that her ever present carer, wherever he or she was, was there in her soul, sustaining her. It didn’t matter if God was a woman or a man, if God existed or not, but she knew deep down her heart, that the energy was there, lifting her up when all she wanted to do was lie on the ground and bury herself alive. She felt his or her warmth and recognised the divine love that enveloped her soul. She snuggled deep in its protective veil and didn’t doubt at that very moment that she was free from trouble, free from unnecessary suffering.
Sometimes, she fought with feelings of rage after imagining how her future life would be. What severe wrong had she done in order to receive such unjust punishment? But her inner strength told her that she still had something to hold on to and no one could take that away. Her internal force was as unbreakable and unshakeable as all universal truths.
Her soul reminded her that it was as rich as the richest man on earth is. It wasn’t an empty shell. It wouldn’t let her physical frailty undermine her. Her soul told her that her inner strength was everlasting, not depending on the whims of the government or the moods of other people. Whenever she sought it, it was there, always giving her the warmth and affection that she needed, fulfilling all its promises. It didn’t need any praise or admiration; it overwhelmed her immensely without having to give back anything in return. Her inner strength was her blood and blood was her. Everything was within her, for her taking.
She saw her inner strength in her caretakers who looked after her with enormous patience. They saw continuing hope in her eyes, the hope that told them that she wanted to stay alive. They saw that spark without ambivalence and it infused them with renewed hope in their own future. It inspired them to do good. It reminded them of the value of their own lives and how sometimes we take everything for granted. Seeing such intense pain humbled them.
NyaMoyo remembered the day when the hospital ran out of morphine. It was the day religious counsellors flocked into the wards and caretakers forgot their roles, crying with the patients instead of comforting them. Mbachi had been no exception.
“Please, give her some painkillers doctor. If you’re a real human being, you’ll do something about it.”
“We’ve already told you.”
“Doctor, please. Just this once.”
“I’m sorry. I’m as helpless as you are.”
“Thieves! We all know that you sell that medicine instead of keeping it for the people that really need it.” Someone had shouted across the room in anger.
The doctor approached the dissenting voice. “No, please take that back. We try to do our best. You should even be grateful that we’re still here. We could have left the country a long time ago.”
He was right. The hospital was like a mortuary. Despair was everywhere. On patients’ gaunt faces, on doctors’ tightened brows, on nurses’ frantic schedules and on caretakers’ swollen hearts. It was a place where discharges meant loss of hope, and death certificates brightened up people’s faces.
The protester couldn’t be calmed though so she continued to criticise the whole health system that, in her opinion, seemed like an official organiser of mass murders. “Where are our politicians anyway? Why do they go to South Africa for treatment when they tell us that they’ve got proper hospitals in our own country?”
It was a light-skinned caretaker who came to the rescue of the doctor.
“I’m sorry but, please, we need some silence,” she begged in a tired hopeless voice. “Let my mother sleep.” The ‘mother’ was a pile of thin bones sticking out of heavy blankets.
Mbachi couldn’t be stopped though. Her wailing was stark clear, infused with the painful truths of a thousand years. It was no longer Mbachi’s voice, but her mother’s and her grandmother’s. It was the collective voice of several generations of lost women. Women lost in pain and misunderstanding; women united in their selflessness and resilience; women who never flaunted their achievements to the whole world but let their actions speak for themselves; women whose hearts were broken at the loss of a husband, a son or a daughter; women who strived to find purpose in their daily lives as they only saw mountains of trouble to move, endless wrongs to correct and boundless love and care to give to daughters and sons, granddaughters and grandsons, relatives and all those people who were in need of their love.
“Please, I beg you,” Mbachi implored but the truth in her voice failed to move anyone. The overworked doctor went about his daily tasks, staring at the patients’ records as if they held the sole remedy to their illness. One by one, the caretakers went back to their relatives, robbed of their hope but still praying that a miracle would happen. They masked their pain with talking and laughing for that was the only way they could keep on moving, counting seconds, minutes and then hours. They trained their eyes not to see and their ears not to hear. Their noses refused to acknowledge the smell of death. And when somebody finally lost the battle for life, the songs carried more weight than the wailing. Death was to be conquered, no matter what it took.
***
The noise was unbearable; the stench, suffocating; the dirt, unimaginable. His fellow inmates recognised him as soon as he stepped into the tiny cell. Look who is here. Pearson Manda? The public liar for the United Populists? Oho. Welcome, welcome. You’re a nobody here my friend. A nobody.
The room was filled with petty thieves, rapists, murderers and even innocent people, all waiting to be tried, all having a common aversion for old men who loved to tamper with innocent youths.
“I am not a child defiler,” Pearson protested and the crowd laughed in his face.
“That’s what they all say. We’ll kill you if you try to mess with us.”
“I did not kill her,” Pearson wailed.
“So why are you here?” they shouted back at him. “There’s no smoke without fire.”
“I mean I did not kill her deliberately. I mean intentionally.”
The younger prisoners became more boisterous, insulting him and his family, kicking him where he’d visibly failed to control himself.
There was one stubborn boy who never left Pearson alone. His name was Chuma but he loved to be called M.J. or Master Johnston. Everyone knew he was trouble. His thirst for tears was unquenchable. Whoever failed to oblige him ended up on the floor, face downwards. For several minutes, the offender inhaled years of urine, sweat, faeces and indiscriminate fluids.
M.J. could be mistaken for an underfed boy the first time you met him. His ordinary looks could trick you into thinking he was harmless. He had no big muscles or scars to show for his career as a notorious robber except his lopsided mouth, his major weakness.
It all started with what Pearson thought was a joke.
“What do you do at night M.J.?”
“I sleep of course mdala,” M.J. had replied but there was a puzzled expression on his face.
“I am sure I heard someone eating yesterday night.”
“You’ve read too many books old man.”
“I think I heard you eating cockroaches.”
M.J. was too stunned to answer right away. Then he opened his mouth, and closed it and…
“Do not deny. Your mouth has too many passages for little beasts to ignore.”
In a matter of few seconds, Pearson was wriggling on the ground, his hands pinned behind him, while his tongue involuntarily licked the dirty cement. No one made a move to help him. He was alone and he could only count on the boy’s mercy.
It was only a few hours later that he learnt about M.J.’s full criminal history. The boy was in jail for having killed another notorious thug. The fierce battle had left him six teeth-short. Pearson wished he’d left the boy alone, but it was too late. He’d become M.J.’s perfect whipping boy and it wasn’t about to stop.
It was also the beginning of Pearson’s daily nightmares. Each night, the cell took the shape of a dark jungle in which starved prisoners and bloodthirsty warders prowled in search for an easy prey. His agonising screams only served as material for more taunts, for more unkind treatment. Sometimes, he dreamed about home. NyaMoyo was never there. Her disappearance in his dreams worried him. Pearson wondered if she’d ever see him again.
When he woke up, M.J. and the prison’s ugly surroundings continued to haunt him. The dirty showers were still there. Lice minced about on any available surface: heads, bodies and clothes. The animal-like behaviour of some of his fellow convicts horrified him. Their stark dejection stunk and that smell of dejection wouldn’t dissolve into the barren grounds of the prison.
He couldn’t forget the soreness in his arms after hours of splitting wood. His red eyes burnt hours after cooking his own food in the dirty smoke-filled prison kitchen. His bowel ached after consuming the same unpalatable food. Slowly, he saw his own end coming and he had no power to stop it.
What worse calamity could now befall him after going all through that? What shred of dignity was he going to preserve after being poked into his bottom by young police officers? What ounce of decency was he going to salvage after his nakedness had thus been exposed to men that were old enough to be his own children?
He’d never been strong in fact. He was rotting and nothing could save him, not even his Cambridge Certificate, not even his forceful voice, not even the president of the United Populists. At least he had power over what he could do with his own life. It was just a matter of courage and opportunity. He would remain master of his own fate. He would choose his own end.
Salt No More, an English English Novel (Level B1-B2) (Click on the image to go to our Amazon store)
Further Exploration:
Read:
- Salt No More, Chapter 6, with vocabulary for Expressing Opinions (November 2018)
- Vocabulary for Describing Relationships (Salt No More, Chapter 3, October 2017)
- Vocabulary for Describing Life, Salt No More, Chapter 2, September 2017
- Vocabulary for Describing People’s Behaviour, Salt No More Chapter 1, September 2017
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