The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Chapters 6–7

Each day as they left Gilbert’s and continued down the road toward our house, I imagined my father and me walking beside them, heads toward the ground, scouring the soil.

Instead of the mountain of nsima cakes I was so accustomed to, the bowl contained only one gray blob. It didn’t even look like food.

When a woman gets pregnant in the village, it becomes taboo, an open secret never to be discussed.

In hungry times, the situation is always worse. Because of this, names often reflect the circumstances or the parents’ greatest fears.

Whether it was due to her good health, or a kind of blind faith as we entered a famine, my parents named her Tiyamike, which means “Thank God.”

Even the birds became brave and gathered in the yard to sing a woeful tune.

The friend had come along as a ruse and taken the bag ahead. That way, no one would suspect anything if they saw Mike and my sister together.

The mother will talk to the father, who will speak to his wife’s brother. The uncle then approaches the groom’s uncle and the two men convene.

The bride’s uncle then names the price of the dowry—usually money, anywhere upwards of one hundred thousand kwacha, or livestock, such as a cow.

He seemed to grow increasingly quiet and sullen, which did little to help our confidence in the face of looming hunger.

The skin around their cheeks was shrunken, and their eyes were pinched against the light. They probably hadn’t eaten much in weeks, and I suspected the ADMARC was their only salvation.

Ahead of me, I saw a hill of maize as high as my waist, more food than I’d seen in months. The sight was intoxicating.

Just near the door, several women carrying infants jumped out of the line to avoid being crushed. These women had been there since sunrise, but by pulling themselves out of the fracas, they also lost their places.

I waited for the rain to taper off, then followed them down the muddy trail to the trading center.

The rainy season normally doesn’t deter the market women, who stand out all day under giant umbrellas and never get wet.

Usually people who wanted to sell their possessions would spread out tarpaulins to display what they had.

A few other women appeared and tried to console her.

As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies.

As the machine rumbled and spit a white cloud of flour into the pails, the multitude of old people, women, and children watched intently with eyes dancing like butterflies.

In better times, we’d celebrate Christmas Eve by attending the nativity play at the Catholic church down the road, watching Joseph and Mary and Baby Jesus try to escape from Herod’s soldiers and their wooden swords and AK-47s (it wasn’t the most accurate version, but it was funny).

No one showed up. And with everyone so hungry and getting weaker, my sisters couldn’t even muster the energy to catch flying ants.

I could see that his anemia was still bothering him, and he was losing weight.

As we walked to James’s stand, we saw that the kanyenya boys were doing brisk business as usual.

When the fire was strong and hot, Charity and I held the corners of the skin and stretched it flat over the flames. Soon the heat was singeing the hair, curling it black.

Charity took his knife and fished through the froth, pulling out a piece of steaming hide.

The skin was sticky, as if covered in scalding glue.

And making an exception on Christmas, Charity even let Khamba come inside the clubhouse.

As the sun went down that afternoon, we sat around a dead and smoldering fire, content with the warm feeling of meat in our stomachs, because that’s what Christmas was all about anyway.

The rainy season was when the insects bred and hatched their young, when blowflies swarmed the latrines, coming up from the septic hole fat and greenish black.

They unfortunately took after my mother—small and lithe—so the hunger ate at them more and revealed itself more clearly in their sunken faces.

We’d managed to buy one tablet of cheap Maluwa lye soap at the first of the month, but it had already vanished.

“But just like in any institution of learning,” he continued, “this school has rules that must be followed. Every student should be in a proper uniform and be punctual. If not, the punishment shall be swift.”

Even after seeing Geoffrey’s condition and leaving his house, I still sulked around feeling sorry for myself, thinking, eh, why me? as if I was the only one stricken with such luck.

The same people I’d seen carrying their belongings to the trading center now stumbled past us in a daze, their eyes swimming in their sockets.

The hunger ravaged the body in two different ways.

Others resorted to eating the seeds from government starter packs, scrubbing off the pink and green insecticide that kept off the weevils.

More than ever, they now converged at the trading center like herds of crazed and wasting animals driven together by fire.

Women with thin, ashen faces sat alone, pleading with God.

The president scoffed at this absurd idea, saying he’d grown up himself in the village where people often died of other things, such as tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, or diarrhea, but never from lack of food.

The president scoffed at this absurd idea, saying he’d grown up himself in the village where people often died of other things, such as tuberculosis, cholera, malaria, or diarrhea, but never from lack of food.