Erina

Wim Boswinkel

Description

Johan comes to Africa to manage a tea plantation. He meets Erina, and his life changes forever. The story takes a leap into the unknown, cleverly blending an African setting with the fantastic premise at its core: the arrival of a black female Christ-figure. The use of AIDS as a weapon to effect the ultimate defeat of Satan adds a powerful and provocative dimension. Erina won Best First Book at the Zimbabwe Book Publishers Association awards

Sujets

• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: amabooks
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780797493766
• Langue: English

Extrait

Erina
Wim Boswinkel
amaBooks
ISBN 978-0-7974-9376-6
Wim Boswinkel, 2003
Published by amaBooks P.O. Box AC1066, Ascot, Bulawayo email: amabooksbyo gmail.com
Cover painting by Anne Simone Hutton
This book is a work of fiction: any characters, organisations and situations mentioned bear no relation to any real person, organisation or actual happening.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter One
After her third child, Tembi decided to do something about it. Whether it was her neighbour, the foundry foreman, or just a customer, a condom would have to be employed, irrespective of the value or the colour or the scent of the presents they brought. After the coming into the world, a year later, of baby number four, she had a loop inserted but also kept insisting on the use of rubbers. This time it took almost three years for the next brat to see the bright tropical light.
Tembi was a decisive lady; a few months after giving birth, she spent two days walking to arrive at the mission hospital, where Dr John Fitzgerald, defying the Pope but following his own vocation, sterilised the determined woman. A few hours later she received the basket with free groceries that was handed to all treated women as an encouragement. The next day she left; it took her three days to get back home. Life had taught her to be careful, not to take anything at face value, so she decided not to take chances: at the village clinic another loop was inserted and she never allowed the stock of condoms to run low.
And then everything went fine, at least for quite a while.
In the early 1930 s it was generally considered that the British Empire would at least stand for a couple of centuries more. In the backward continent of Europe, Hitler was yet no more than an agitator, not to be taken seriously. The Japanese, in their country of the smile, hadn t started expressing their imperialistic ambitions yet, while the Soviet Union, just about to turn one and a half decades, was not expected to have staying power.
In Nyasaland, at the State House in the capital Zomba, a delegation of white farmers and planters were petitioning the Governor to do something about a major economic problem: their tobacco enterprises and coffee and tea estates were hardly viable due to their small sizes, because those lazy natives don t want to come and work there; they are content with the growing of maize and sweet potatoes on their own plots .
His Majesty s representative knew a good solution: plenty of examples that could be followed existed in the other colonies and protectorates.
He did two things: firstly he expropriated even more of the land of the indigenous population, diminishing their food production to a level that would no longer allow the peasants to be self-sufficient and secondly he enacted a law, obliging each person between twelve and fifty years old to pay an annual income tax of two shillings. To achieve a stoppage of two shillings from their meagre wages, people would then have to work for half a year; which also meant that if a man worked a full year, his wife could stay home to look after their children, the goats and the small field. And so it happened that the profits of the white-owned enterprises started to soar, but at a high price: a main consequence of the new policy was that whole family structures started to fall apart, because most people didn t have an estate next door where they could work. In most cases they had to be engaged hundreds of kilometres away from their farms and villages, in another, threatening world.
It took almost another ten years before the new law reached Mhoenga, a small village in the extreme north of the country.
Only narrow and winding footpaths crossed the tall and heavily-forested hills, that separated the area from the administrative centre far away; most people didn t even know that they were part of a country . The Phiris lived in a number of tidily arranged huts, separated from other homesteads by a fence of chopped thorny branches. The family consisted of a few old people, a number of brothers with their wives and a bunch of children who were naked except when they went to church, once a month, when the mission father passed through.
One evening all adults were assembled outside around a fire to discuss important business.
The English District Commissioner had explained the new tax law to the village elders with the help of a translator. It had become clear to them, that if they did not want their goats to be impounded, they would have to start earning wages. That was only possible on farms and plantations, more than seven hundred kilometres to the south.
Nine Phiris were in the right age group, which meant that five of them would have to work full-time in order to contribute sufficiently for all.
The discussion focused around the question of whom to choose to take on that gigantic and frightening task, and it was not before the shine of the fire was replaced by a faint light from the eastern horizon, announcing a new day, that a final decision was taken. Two married brothers would go, accompanied by three youngsters, two teenage brothers and their niece Tembi, who at that time slept peacefully on her bamboo mat in one of the huts. She kept herself warm with a rough woollen blanket and two sisters on each side of her. She was unaware of the fact that at that time her destiny had been decided and the course of her life set out.
The Great Rift Valley, that runs in a north-south direction through eastern Africa, is the cradle of humanity. Here the mutations happened that led to the rise of our ancestors, who, hundreds of thousands of years ago, moved in small groups to all regions of the world and, through inbreeding and adaptations to their new living areas, started to develop distinctive racial characteristics.
The ones that stayed behind and their offspring lost all contact with their cousins in Asia and Europe over hundreds of centuries. When, at last, they met again, only a short time ago, they were unable to recognise each other because of their changed features, colours, habits and languages.
The inhabitants of that area always knew that the creation of mankind by the Great Ghost had taken place in their region and that really important matters, that were essential for man, would be dealt with there. Prophets and shamans were highly regarded, they were the ones able to receive and interpret godly messages; their authority was undisputed and not diminished by the appearance of missionaries and the fact that people had started wearing clothes and adopted Christian names. The real belief remained strong; if anything, it became somewhat richer from new influences, but it did not really change.
The small Phiri-group footed in a southern direction; roads at that time, even past the administrative centre,