Chapter 2 – Bo Inyambo

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As she was running, she could only think about the extraordinary encounter that had just happened. Her feet were flying over the path, avoiding holes and stones. She didn’t have to pay due attention to her steps, her legs knew where to go. She wanted to fixate every details into her memory.
Ah! when the lady gave her the envelope! “Thank you so much Sayowa” she had said. She was trusting her and she was right to do so. She, Sayowa, would bring her everything she wanted. And she would be proud. And she would be right to be proud. Maybe they would even become friends. Sayowa would then ask her many questions about her country! She wanted to know how it was over there, how people were. By the way, she wanted to know where over there was. By the way, what was written on that piece of paper?
Sayowa stopped in a slide that produced a brown cloud of dust. She unfolded the page. A pretty, fine and round handwriting had written with a black pen:

Ingredients for a pizza:
Flour (wheat)
Water
Salt
Yeast
Olive oil
Tomato puree
Mozzarella

Okay, what was all that?
She read it again. That time she recognized the following words: “flour”, “water”, “salt”, “oil”, “tomato”. She folded the piece of paper again, put it her skirt’s pocket with the envelope of money and kept going, skipping and smiling.

Sayowa’s village was made up of fifteen mud huts with thatch or zinc roofs, rectangular or circular, the largest being over twenty metres long, the smallest only a few metres. They were placed randomly over a few hundred square metres, delimited on one side by a thick field of African bush, and on the other side by an abrupt bank that dived into the river. Some large trees were scattered and gave shade to the few elders who hadn’t left the island for the town, and to the dogs, always on the lookout for any crumbs or bones that these old men and women would sometimes throw. The ground was covered with thin beige sand, stamped on by some chickens and goats. In the centre of the village was a thousand year old baobab, several tens of metres high, which trunk had a diameter of at least fifteen metres. A single path lead out of the village, through the bush, until the bridge which crossed a stream and reached the island’s main gravel road.
Sayowa was coming in through that path. She went straight to her house and entered it.
It was a small rectangular house, a simple white sheet as a door and no window. Light would enter by transparency through the sheet and through the space that existed between the top of the walls made out of mud and the straws of the thatch roof. Inside, a small bed for two in a corner, with untidy sheets, was protected by a mosquito net. It was adjacent to a school desk on which were lying a few books and two metal cups.
Sayowa jumped on the bed. She laid on her back, her hands crossed on her stomach, her legs dangling on the side. She closed her eyes. Some time passed by, between consciousness and sleep.

– Sayowa?! What are you doing here?
That was her brother, Mutondo, who was standing in the door’s frame. His face was worn out, even though he was only twenty two years old. He was tall, skinny, had very short hair, yellowing eyes, always low. He wore a very dirty white t-shirt, with inscriptions that had not been visible for a long time.
– Why are you not at school?
Sayowa sat up straight on the side of the bed.
– The teacher told us to go home.
– You know, school is important. You must be serious and study well.
– There was a lady today. A white lady, so beautiful. She said that Monday we will make a pizza and that I’m the one who have to find the ingredients.
– A pizza?
– Yes and she smelled good too. She smelled like apple. You smell like cow!
Mutondo made an offended face.
– Well yeah, I spend all day with cows. Somebody better do it.
Sayowa knew that what her brother and the other farmers of the island were doing was important. It was thank to them that they had enough food on this little piece of land, isolated from the rest of the world by two rivers. But she could not resist the urge to tease him.
– You know, you must get good grades at school, he carried on, it’s important.
– Yeah yeah. Come on.
She left the house and walked towards a big round hut, ten metres away. She opened the wooden door without a knock and went in.
– Kuku! she shouted as she jumped over her grand-father, Inyambo, who was sitting in an armchair at the back of the room. The old man held her in his arms, laughing.
– Mulumele bo Inyambo, said Mutondo who had followed Sayowa into the house.
He had said these words while bowing and clapping his hands twice.
– Shangwe, replied Inyambo.
– Shangwe, concluded Mutondo.
Inyambo, even though he was their grand-father, was an elder, a wise man. With these words and gestures, Mutondo expressed the respect he deserved. He did not like that Sayowa ignored that protocol, but he had never said anything because Inyambo had never said anything.
Sayowa was already telling her grand-father about her climbing of the baobab, her race to school, the arrival of the blond lady.
As she talked, she was filling a pot with water, immersing it directly into one of the large plastic buckets that Mutondo had filled at the village’s tap that morning. She placed the pot on a small cooking plate and rotated the knob to position 5.
– A white woman? Inyambo said.
– Yes, and she must have been on a plane to come here, right Kuku?
– That’s possible, if she came from Germany or the United States.
The inside of Inyambo’s house was more spacious than what it seemed from outside. A large empty space under the roof reinforced that impression: it was formed by a big cone of reed straws, which summit was at more than twice the wall’s height. A curtain divided the room in two, parallelly to the door. Behind the curtain was the bed. In front of it, on the right, there was a fridge connected to an electrical installation supplied by a solar panel placed on the roof. Next to the fridge, a big cupboard, on which sat some books and framed pictures, struggled to fit into the walls curvature. On the left, the table where Sayowa was busy, and behind it the grand-father’s comfortable armchair. A big brown rug and two small school chairs placed in the centre of the room supplemented the furniture.
Sayowa adored her grand-father, she admired him. She believed he held all the knowledge in the world. Her favourite activity was to listen to his stories and to ask him a thousand questions. He had studied in South Africa, travelled to several African countries, and even to Germany. He had taken part in the revolution, and could have become an induna, counsellor to the king (or chief) of the tribe, but had refused.
Now Inyambo was a white haired octogenarian, with hollow and wrinkled cheeks, yellow and penetrating eyes. He had skin as dark as Sayowa’s, which rendered almost invisible the few beauty spots which ran around his nose, and of which she knew the position by heart. When he was standing, he was tall and thin, with an imposing posture. There always seemed to be an invisible smile on his lips. He usually wore a long traditional tunic, green, yellow, brown or red, which let only show his worn out feet wrapped into old sandals and his giant hands, which seemed to be able to hold the whole of Sayowa when she was little. He spoke with an old man’s voice, calm, with the confidence of someone who lived long, never sounding arrogant.
The water was boiling, Sayowa poured the end of a bag of corn flour into it. With a big wooden spoon she stirred the mixture with a rapid wrist movement. Mutondo was telling his grand-father about an incident that had happened that morning with one of his cows.
The meal ready, Sayowa used the wooden spoon to make lumps of pap, which she arranged in a plate. Mutondo took another plate out of the fridge, which contained a portion of spinach bathing into tomato soup.
Both dishes were placed on one of the small chairs, positioned in front of Inyambo’s seat. Sayowa and her brother sat on the floor, facing their grand-father, on the other side of the chair. They added a generous quantity of salt and they all ate and chatted.

When the meal was finished, Mutondo left and went back to his cows. Sayowa set up to do the dishes in a basin with soapy water.
– Kuku, she said, I need to find ingredients for a pizza. The blond lady asked me.
– Is that so? And do you know what a pizza is?
– No, but I got a list. And money!
– Show me.
Sayowa wiped her hands, took the paper out of her pocket and brought it to her grand-father. He looked it over carefully, his smile growing after each line.
– Tomatoes, Mutondo has them, she said, and…
– And mozzarella, do you know what that is?
– No.
Inyambo had an imperceptible eyebrow movement.
– Go and fetch that picture on the cupboard for me. No, the one below. There you go.
Sayowa held the small sepia picture with both hands. She could see two young men on it: a tall black man with his arm around the shoulders of a small white man. Both of them were smiling.
She gave it to her grand-father who looked at it pensively. He remained lost in his thoughts for a few seconds. Sayowa waited, because she knew this look was usually followed by a nice story.
All of a sudden, he left his torpor and stared at his grand-daughter with a strange look. He seemed to be conversing with himself.
A conclusion appeared to be reached in a tiny nod. He smiled and put his big hand on Sayowa’s small shoulder.
– My child, my dear child, you grew so much.
He paused.
– On this picture, you could recognize your grand-father, in his glorious youth. The other man is Stefano, he is Italian. He is… he was a very good friend. He changed my life. And he knows all there is to know about mozzarella, pizza and olive oil. All of these are Italian specialities you see. He lives in Swakopmund now, on the Atlantic coast.
He posed again.
– Sayowa. You… you are going to go find him.
– What?! On the coast?
– Yes, on the coast.
– But how am I going to get there? And I have to go to school on Monday!
– You are going to visit your cousin Muyambango who works in Livingstone. He has money and a car, he can drive you. Tomorrow morning we are going to find you a boat to go to Livingstone and from there you will drive to Swakopmund. You will reach there Sunday morning, you will find Stefano and you will be back Sunday evening. There, give me a pen.
He wrote a few words for his friend at the back of the list of ingredients and added the address:

Stefano Limoni
Torino Guest House
Swakopmund

– This is where he lives, I think. Sayowa, you are going to meet with Stefano and give him this note. Tell him that your grand-father sends you, Inyambino.
He smiled as he mentioned this nickname.
– Go and rest a bit, tomorrow you have to leave early.
Sayowa had held her breath during the whole speech. She exhaled. She took the piece of paper back from Inyambo’s hand and slowly exited the house. She closed the door and remained there for a moment. She was looking far in front of her.
Something had happened in her grand-father’s eyes, right before he had put his hand on her shoulder. She did not know what, but it was the first time he had spoken to her that way.
The coast. That was over a thousand kilometres away! Did she really have to go that far to find mozzarella?

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Thomas Botte22 octobre 2019