Double Faith
by
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"This is the land of my forefathers. You are an alien here and I implore you and your lot to go back where you came from. And take that witch you call your lioness away with you too.” The perennial blabbermouth, Machaya, breached the security protocol around Chiwhenga.
Despite being one of the chief’s headmen, it beggared belief that his obtrusiveness should have been ignored in the first place, to give him such high authority. At most meetings, if he bothered to attend at all, his colleagues would remind him to shut up so they could hear each other speak good sense.
At feasts he would be relegated to menial beast slaughtering jobs with lowly herd-boys. Being as thick as a brick, he read nothing into it because he liked meat and ate copious amounts of it like a famished jackal would. Indeed, his fellow headmen would pass demeaning remarks about his love for animal flesh. If one wanted to quickly have him contentedly quiet, they only needed to shove a chunk of liver, his favourite, into his ever-masticating mouth, they would taunt.
The chief had not minded when he had seemed to want easy banter but when he uttered such venom the chief leapt to his feet to get away from the evidently inebriated man.
“Take this filthy pest away from me before I drill a hole through his head,” he had said swiftly un-slinging his rifle from his shoulder.
Machaya persisted, pursuing the chief and churning out unrepeatable superlatives with the abandon of a skylark. He was being perilously disrespectful as if some devil prodded him into a dungeon of ignorant bravado. This was his royal highness he was trying to upstage. Treading on thin ice did not quite describe the predicament he sought to dive into headlong. He was not far from sticking his fingers into a red hot furnace. Some people did not know when to stop even when all lights flashed desperately red. In a society such as this, where justice was on a whim, caution was of essence in order to save skin.
Before long he was surrounded by the chief’s sons, Mbobo, and his sons.
Like a doomsday moron, Machaya made as if to strike the chief with a fist. Mtakhathi ( his name meant witch, for some reason or other and he did justice to it), with the fighting prowess of a tiger, who Chiwhenga had invited over from Mataga to live in Mazvihwa in the hope he would be the match for the maddening Dhliwayo, decided enough was enough. He had been tailing Machaya closely from the time he had smelt trouble before anybody else when Machaya’s banter bordered on profanity.
He swung his axe in the air and with one deadly strike, irretrievably imbedded its shiny razor sharp blade into the side of drunken man’s head. With the sound of Machaya’s cracking head; a cross between the sound of breaking wood and big stone hitting a wall, he dropped stone dead, a flimsily weak gurgle his only protest. Preceded by the sickly grey matter of brains, a pool of fast gushing blood spilled at the sides of the axe blade, a sure fatal loss of the vital life-essential fluid soaking into the thirsty sand where his head had hit the ground with a nauseating thud.
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About the Book
Double Faith seeks to share with the un-initiated those experiences of life that are almost Utopian if told to an audience so used to things modern where life is squeaky clean and wizardry a phantom of imagination. But because there will always be skepticism for things described in Double Faith the writer found his impetus; almost thriving on the disbelief that invariably seems to be generated by the occurrences especially the self launching stones. But then…..who has not heard of ritual murders? Even in civilized societies, up to this day, weird murder still holds us in thrall and wonderment. Yes humans kill each other for the most unfathomable reasons. Put reward ahead of a murder and one will surely happen. The motives and methods applied will most certainly be the only difference. Faith will remain but that, faith. Looking closely at the main character in the book and indeed his people, faith seems to mould their existence almost holding them captive. The Christianity that invades their core belief is just but another faith the priests are unable to demonstrate as of more value than the tribesmen's deep routed practices. Even with the best of intentions, the witch doctors, the priests and the settlers seem only to be bull-dozing chief Chiwhenga in all directions as he seeks to meet his core faith requirement. The insight Double faith gives the reader into things tribal is almost unequalled by any script into as many things that it lays bare for the spiritually adventurous
About the Author
African folklore is oft told almost in competition with itself; the stories invariably seeming to merry go round on similar issues.
Now this writer has come up with a story he can vouch for. As will pan out in his story it would have been difficult to thumb suck most the events without a deep knowledge of them.
Sharing his experience, almost carrying them through the time that he has lived, the writer entices the reader to join him on an African spiritual adventure. For the reader who seeks to get an in depth peep into the para-normal, almost a daily existence, especially in the days gone, of a village life, belief, culture and resource, go no further. Just flip though the pages as the writer is sure you will do with easy and unbridled expectation, and drink in the well of deep unedited tribal culture. This writer promises the reader to almost live the life as discribed in the book. The reader will awaken from the dream and want more of it.
The comparisons of the faiths discribed, will leave most buffled by the stark choices that will be hard to make especially if they should choose to empathise with the predicament of Chiwhenga, the main charater.
As an 'A' student of Literature in English in his class at high school, although this be his first works, there is a rich promise to deliver a captivating story.
Just as he was good with Literature in English, he was as well very good in composition writing and storytelling. His English school teachers, from primary to high school, Mutsungi, Mugabe, Makuve, Mrs. Clark and Nyathi, invariably read the writer's offerings ahead of any other and most times came back to class to share their reading bliss with the writer's captivated classmates.