BLACK FATHERS, WHITE FATHERS.

The complete book "Black Fathers, White Fathers" is made up of four connected short stories. Each story, except the prologue entitled "Black Fathers, White Fathers" (see excerpt), is a complete story and can stand alone.

The stories are listed in the table below. The table is meant for ease of navigation between documents since the excerpts that go with each story are quite long.

Fall from Grace

Plot

A short story of life in an African Empire before the advent of the west, during and after the advent of the west, war with the west, victories won over the west, final defeat and subjugation by the west, detailing the gradual changes that the meeting of the two worlds brought with it.

Excerpt

The mystic figure of the sun slowly rose from the depths it had sunk the previous night, a new, fresh, and pleasant warmth radiating from it. It looked to have recovered from the loss suffered yesterday, its energy replenished from that mystic source, the energy it lost doing the age old, seemingly repetitive, but time constant battle against other mystic elements, elements that fought within and without it, elements that would change, weaken or strengthen, either gradually, or, with every cycle, every new position of the celestial bodies; with seasons, or suddenly. On earth, each cycle was a year, and each year was the same, and also different. The same pattern was followed year by year, a mere version of that which was before, with minor, and to those with the ability to detect conflict, predictable, and not predictable variations. The way the sun fought the elements now promised a fertile and productive year to those whose very existence was a product of, influenced by, and dependent on these same wars fought in the mystic skies; fought, in the case of the sun's battle with the earth, winds and clouds, on their behalf, or on behalf of themselves; on behalf of nothing, and other times still on behalf of some eternal mystery whose nature and workings they, nor their instincts, could never completely understand but observe, and reduce to symbols that gave an observer's interpretation, by which they found their place in this mystery, by which they made themselves, by which they preserved themselves; the foundation of their view of reality.

Sometimes, the satisfaction of these mystic workings could mean their salvation. Other times it meant their ruin.

It was a battle fought for preservation, for dominance, and not quite; a battle fought by forces not cognizant, or partly cognizant of their acts, of themselves, and of the outcome; a battle fought, and not fought. They were merely playing roles assigned them by the greater, eternal mystery, to which all that played was not essential, but the mystery essential to all, and all the elements that played here were that greater, eternal mystery.

Mukalu sat in his yard in these early morning hours, enjoying the early August tease of the sun. The clouds would at one time obscure the sun and it would get cold. Then the cloud cover would clear and the sun would shine through, warming him to the bone, but then just as he was enjoying the sun the most, the cloud cover would return and a sudden cold feeling would grasp him, the feeling not too severe to make him want to find warm covering. He knew the sun would be coming out soon so could sit there calmly waiting for the clouds to clear. Their time was up. The sun was stronger now, and would be so for some time to come.

He had played this season's teasing game longer than he could remember and never got tired of it. In fact, he enjoyed it more as the years went by. He had woken up particularly early this day. His first wife, Sombo, who almost always woke up earlier than he did, was still asleep.

The sun now seemed unable to break through the unending amount of cloud cover that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere and Mukalu started thinking about alternative warmth. His thoughts went to his first wife whom he had not slept with for quite some time now. The thought of her after such a long time titillated him. He made a slight effort to go to her room, then changed his mind. It would not be wise. She was bad tempered in the mornings and it had got worse since things started to change between him and her; sexually that is.

A noise from his neighbour Luka's house distracted him from these concerns. He stood up and went to the fence to see what it was, more to hear if he could discern what the commotion was all about because he couldn't quite see into the yard for the fence that went all round almost every house except those of the young and newly independent, weak by disease, age or merely lazy. He heard the sound again and recognized it as loud laughter from his neighbours; playing with his wife again, Mukalu thought. That man never grows up, he thought with disgust. They have been married for almost two decades now, just as long as Mukalu was married to Sombo, but with each passing year they got worse at playing like kids. Both families had teenage children already, matured young men and women and could any time turn into grandparents. He wondered if Luka's poor children managed to get any rest with the kind of commotion their parents created at such ungodly hours.

Mukalu had done this kind of thing too in his youthful days. Not anymore for a long time now, in fact, this behaviour had disappeared the very first year he married, when Sombo gave birth to their first son, Kayombo.

His new wife was still in the playful adolescent age and not yet aware of the difference. She was a stranger to maturity, ignorant of it. She was young and excited; about life, about her luck. She was allowed to marry the man she most liked. He had noticed her admiration of him, had noted that she was of age, and had then proceeded to ask her parents for their daughter's hand, before the girl was asked if she wished this too. She had conceded to marriage.

The girl was pleased. It clearly showed. She was filled with a joy and energy that radiated on her face, showed with her every move, got brighter with the day. She had developed some habits which were a result of her extreme like of the situation she was in, the new things in life that were suddenly so agreeably opened up to her. She especially liked to provoke the man. He found that annoying sometimes, but failed to let her know. He didn't posses in his repertoire safe ways of letting a woman know of this discomfort. The male adolescent group's belief that a man need not give the wrong message where virility was concerned still interfered with his judgement. He feared for worst to come, blaming the situation on the fact that she was still so puerile, that he had not followed mature advice and made the choice in the many ways custom prescribed, or as his mother had advised, with a much more stable personality. No need regretting the situation now. In fact, he was regretting it because he feared for worst to come, and was just heightening his discomfort and increasing the chances of failure that way. It was a till-death-do-us-part situation; he had to make the best of it.

His first wife Sombo got selected for him by his parents when they thought it time for him to settle down. It annoyed him at first to be called without warning and told that they had found a woman for him. He had not expected this thing to happen to him. He was not shy with women and already had some intimate relationships with some. He knew, and this his parents had obviously observed, that he could get his way with a few among them if and when he wanted. He was not that old yet; he was a mere twenty, and the usual time when parents stepped in to get their sons married was when it was getting too late, when the man was well past his prime and was becoming a shame in the society as an elderly unwed man; which was seen as an aberration.

Mukalu could still picture such sorry men in his youth, how they had walked the paths in the land, and actually seemed - to their young and already prejudiced eyes - to have something wrong with them, this as the elders, mostly the mothers, so often hinted. He remembered how they would follow these men in groups, jeering, making fun of them, or merely watching them closely, curiously, to see if they could detect the purported wrong thing the man had about his character. They looked for the ailment in his gait, in his appearance, in his attire; they watched him until he disappeared beyond the horizon, and never failed to detect the ailment - in their minds. They had already been fed with a label, and whenever they observed the men, they detected the lameness, but this was nothing more than the label they had been given by their elders, something similar to a man entering a room he has been told smells will expect to find a smell there, which he will find when in the room, even if the suspected smell is from his own mouth.

These men were usually too shy with women and chances that they would ever change nonexistent. He had worried then because he felt his parents had placed him in the same brackets as these misfits. The whole thing had seemed like a premature decision by misinformed parents. It didn't take long before his wife was pregnant and borne their first son that the answer came to him.

Sex, like many other bodily needs, has a purpose, and as needs go, there is a lot that needs expressing. The human animal will, for example, lose its appetite for a food that is often eaten and long for other flavours. Enjoyment in the act of eating the regular food subsides, and a longing for another arises. This has a function. It helps maintain a balanced diet. Sex is also the same. Its end is propagation, but here too, the preference is for as much genetic variation as possible, for the survivability of the offspring; for as much a number as can be had to ensure survival where it is hard, hence the need for multiple partners for example. But sometimes, when not controlled, the expression of a need can become stultified.

A being can become enslaved to an activity or a substance. The act of satisfying a need can become a fashion, a prestige item, or a deluded outlook. The need for diversity in the offspring can lead to for example a polygamy where there is lack of care and love for the offspring given the complexities of human dealings with each other. Sex can sometimes be performed for the sake of enjoyment, a futile act since enjoyment of a need is built in, once the conditions are right, a lack of which will lead to the demise of the genes involved; or worse, sex will be performed for the satisfaction of a purported enjoyment in which case the actor is enjoying not the act, but the fact that the act is said to bring enjoyment.

Apart from this is also the need for security. Human beings are not creatures of the moment. They plan ahead. Humans use the past and present to project an attainable future. They for example want to know if their own individual genes are present in their offspring. The need to know the parentage of a child, or the fertility of an individual can sometimes take priority over the satisfaction of the need itself, unlike animals where the survival of ones genes is more or less a hit and run matter. Humans can take control of these factors and remedy faulty situations if this is within their means.

Tradition, being the accumulated wisdom of the race, sets down simple laws to be followed, and the best solution as of yet were the very laws that Mukalu's parents obeyed in finding the woman for him so early.

Mukalu was now also certain that the decision had not been mere blind following of rules. Tradition can be questioned, and at times even disregarded if it doesn't make sense. There is no better route to stultification than blind compliance with all tradition, and his intellectual society knew better than this.

Lobotomy Labs

Plot

A short story of life in the new banana republics. The story's focus is the effect of indirect rule on the philosophy of leadership in African republics, and the personalities the positions of rule have tended to attract as a result of these effects; on the education system inherited from the west, tailored for other mentalities, and therefore not congenial to the minds and cultures of the concerned continent, and the mental state of the products of these institutions of learning.

Excerpt

Mukalu was exhausted. It had been a long and tiring day. He walked into his living room and sat himself down on his easy chair. He took his hat off, and lit a cigarette. His son, his namesake, came to him, calling his name repeatedly. The boy had been born when he was away in the capital celebrating independence day, and his father-in-law had made the choice of name, which was normal in his culture. This was never done in Mukalu's culture. They never gave the names of close relatives still living to newborns. This was believed to be replacement of a living soul with another, creating a conflict of identity between the two, and leaving one soul hollow, lifeless, rendering the person's existence empty, void of the life he had.

He remembered that the boy had turned four on Wednesday, two days ago. He felt guilty as this thought of his forgetfulness made him realize that he was not spending enough time with his family anymore. He had not been home the whole day, and today was not unique.

His son's voice sounded hollow in the big colonial building they had just moved into a few months ago, thanks to his new position. He was the headmaster of the best secondary school in the land, a promotion that had ran faster than normal, from teacher to deputy head to headmaster within a year, as they had sent away the few remaining Mzungus in authority to complete what the new generation of rulers, the freedom fighters, called "Indigenisation".

The selections of candidates for the higher posts were arbitrary, mostly based on tribe or consanguinity, or on who talked the loudest, who ran the fastest, or who stampeded the hardest. It was a free-for-all situation. They threw the progress that came of meritocratic management to the dogs. They sowed the seeds for the want of future generations, and all this for the sake of helping a relative now - the traditional social security system working to the good of the individuals involved, at the time in consideration, but against the good of the greater whole, and those to come in these conditions in the end - this itself affecting the competitiveness of the land on the international economic arena, decreasing the gross national product, and then the standard of living.
The effects of the fight to survive, of "politics of the belly" won't be felt for some time still. It will be a gradual process which is hardly noticeable or attributable to this political immaturity, except in cases where the changes are extreme and blatant enough to be traced to this factor. Mostly, they will blame the backwardness, chaos and poverty on "secondary effects of the actual cause", like corruption, nepotism and tribalism.

The tumble into an abyss never experienced before by their kind could have been prevented if people fought the real evil, realized the necessity of looking around for qualified personnel, even if these were partly so, the need to change with the times, the need to accept and leave human conditions to nature. They had enough qualified people around, enough visionaries, but since the social brains got smashed, they did not see the brainy that remained as assets to the greater whole, but as threats to success, or promotion. They actually feared, and destroyed them or frustrated when it was possible, in the name of survival.

There was so much to gain in the situation, so much to get that would all be lost if they gave the posts to the envied and hated few, and besides, most of them were sleeping. The talented kept away from the life threatening stampedes, refused or failed to use, or be reduced to the same tactics that the others used. There was no stopping these people now, and for a long time to come possibly, considering the odds.

When Mukalu considered the situation, he found he couldn't blame the guilty people for not seeing that they were actively dooming their own progeny. After all, only a few people do really think. The majority just feel. They need the thinkers, the brains to guide them out of trouble, and not into trouble as was the case now, where the man doing the thinking for the majority was a worse thinker, if not a thug with the usual complex of such: a need to shine before family and friends in a mansion in a land without enough essential commodities, a need to drive in an expensive new car in a country without roads, a need to pose in expensive clothes in a land where the majority didn't know where their next meal was coming from, a need to be attractive to women in a land where a purse got more love than the man, a need to boast success in front of people who had no chance at any; men who were as dangerous to the people as the acts they were involved in.

The brains of these people had unfortunately been smashed as always happens during the process of subjugation, after conquest, and where these had survived they were unable to take the reigns of power. The paradox was that the children of these same people's "bad guys", and all included, would bear the brunt of their progenitors' very natural scramble to survive in a social system that had broken down and offered them very little if they had done the opposite.

Mukalu was a stranger in this region, but had been selected for the post because he was prominent as a bright and highly educated man. He was one of those lucky talented people. He had not faced a distrusting mob. He would not have worn the storm if it had come to that. As things had been, however, they had simply reserved a place for him and he had accepted it. This he had to thank on his likeable personality. This will be the solution. Certain things are stronger than survival instincts awakened when the state becomes an enemy to the people. If we can maintain a stable government for long enough, gifted blood will gradually take hold of the major posts, and eventually create a competitive society by standing up against the mandates of the former dominators as men wanting to lead themselves the way they saw fit, on their own terms, and not as lackeys, like had already become obvious with the new generation of rulers. There was no way out of that. Unless the coups he had heard were happening in other areas of the continent started to happen here too. It was a long and dangerous process, but as sure as sure can be, they would get there.

He caught his son as he ran up to him, stood up and lifted him above his head, then sat again. He didn't feel so good now. He never felt well every time he entered this house. This condition was common with the whole family. Their tendons had weakened, and the little ones sprained themselves rather easily. This had started when they had entered this new house. He wondered if it were a chemical in the paint that the colonial man had used. It could be something buried under the house, or merely the air he had left which wasn't compatible. He had moved in without painting because he hadn't had the time. The vibrations in the house needed changing, or was he just being paranoid, he wondered. Something told him that a man in his position had to become paranoid, unless he wasn't very observant. He could even be schizophrenic. The conditions mandated that it be so. He made it a point to buy paint the very next day.

'Why isn't he sleeping?' he asked as his wife walked into the room.

'I was just washing him up. He will be in bed as soon as I finish warming your meal. Where have you been all this time?'

'Do not ever let that boy stay up this late. His mind is still weak, still developing. You will stunt him if you don't force him to get the rest that stubborn head needs.'

'But all his friends are still playing outside.'

'Do you remember how you grew up? If your parents let you stay up so long, then they had also forgotten. They never allowed children to stay up as late as grownups in my times. This is what is happening to us. We are forgetting our ways, and not adopting the best qualities of the other's ways. We have a void that is not getting filled. Soon the whole tradition of how children should be raised will break down, and there will be no viable replacement.'

The Wilderness

Plot

A short story of life in Africa in our times, when "things have fallen apart". The story follows the tragic life of a direct descendant of the protagonist in the first story "Fall from Grace", Mukalu, also called Mukalu. We follow his attempts to free himself from the prison of his own mind, a common mental state nowadays when high-tech lynching of individuals, even whole communities, is the norm.

Excerpt

It was the twenty ninth of November nineteen ninety two. He stood at the central station in this big Utopian city called Utopiatown. He stood in the area where the homeless, the destitute, the wine-heads, and drug addicts stood waiting, trying to find some relief, be this shelter from the weather outside or intoxicated relief.

The homeless would be standing there, sheltered for the moment from the weather outside, and since most of them would be penniless, they would be thinking where and how they could get permanent abode, or where their next meal would be coming from.

Among the many destitutes in the city were also those made up of men who had just arrived in the country from far away lands, from poorer countries mostly, who had made the sacrificial journey to find a better life here, and upon arrival had not found the essential connections to help with the start in the prosperous land. Some had lost all hope of ever starting a new and better life here, and if they hadn't lost the hope of ever returning home and being viable there because the days spent in want had had their toll on them physically and mentally, were thinking of making that little money to pay for the return trip, enough to sustain them for the first few days in their mother lands.

Those who hadn't lost hope of success here, despite the failures to date, kept their ears and eyes open for that chance that would change their fate, believing that this could be a transitory stage that had to be endured. There is actually very little hope for a person who falls into such trouble in the west because, with every day spent hungry and dirty, he becomes less and less fitting, less and less acceptable, not even as a worker in the worst firm, a cleaning company at that, so that the chance for the means of earning money with which to live in the west or return to his home country slowly diminishes. He is then like a man marooned on a desert island, hoping against hope that a ship will one day dock on the stormy shores and deliver him from the hell, keeping watch for signs of that saviour ship whose captain would have to be mad to risk the high coastal waves that could wreck him.

Soon, the waiting in vain would start having its toll on these men. As the possibility of ever returning home, or living a good life in the west disappears altogether, and gets replaced by the present and gradual decline to a grave, they will realise that they have to slowly start accepting their new fate forced on them by a system too hurried to notice this truth, and make the best, or quickest, of it, and this by either being constantly drunk or, for those with enough aggression left in their systems, to be criminals constantly looking for a chance to make a few bucks which, unfortunately, would be spent quickly in this expensive street life. It is paradoxical that a person without a roof spends more in a month than a person with rent to pay every month, unless the individual in crisis is extremely shrewd. Being clever, or thrifty when one is in desperate need and a day is spent on the edge of certainty is a business so tricky only those who are on the streets for the kicks can manage.

Getting relief from the various wants they had, be this hunger, shelter or addiction, and mostly all of these, was therefore the main theme here. Those who had found relief were making the best of it, or, since this was temporary, trying to map out their next move, an occupation non of them could escape, whose effect was to make the weaker start those famous dances of the mentally disturbed.

Some were waiting for the seller, the dealer who would sell them what they wanted at a cheap price. There were others still who were broke and were looking and waiting for a chance to make money; looking carefully for that dropped bank note, the dropped purse, or for the careless traveller. They would wait for those rare moments when these hurried travellers would get unwary and not guard their valuables, or would be making a call at one of the many telephone cells at the station and would not guard, or forget their bags or purses there, the excitement of the instance overriding their sense of security. Bicycle racks outside were constantly checked for a valuable bike that hadn't been locked properly, and if non were available, then they took the cheap bike with a cheap lock, which they would drag through the streets to a secluded location where the lock would be broken.

When their aggression ultimately started bearing no fruit, since this would gradually fade away to ineffective levels as the days went by, when this would slowly bend to the pressure of society; the watchful eyes at the approach of a thief like figure, the handcuffs, the cold inhumane cells, the fights with guards at the bicycle stalls or in supermarkets; and they couldn't steal enough to get by, they would start begging. A begging man is usually a sign of a man beaten by society. They would beg from anyone that looked sympathetic. They would beg for a small and easy to give amount, using the most touching story to explain their need. Since the amounts they asked for were small, they had to beg from as many people as they could. Those that could play a guitar played some music, a little plate before them awaiting the coins.

Homage to the eleemosynary spirit.

The pressure on them never ended with their breaking. The travellers passed them by with looks of contempt, sorrowful looks, or fearful looks; the look of one seeing a social problem that has to be solved, a thief he has to be careful with. Sometimes the passers by gave these destitutes a look of superiority; the kind one gives when one is looking at a lesser mortal, or at an incompetent.

The law enforcement officers harassed them when they stood in the wrong place, or simply payed too much attention to them, and one wondered when one saw this situation, the one-sided attitudes, whether these already broken souls here being broken even more were the cause, or the effect of a success story's bad ends. One wondered why they harassed the harassed, whether deep down in everyone else was fear of a potential, and this harassment was just a reaction to this fear; whether the poor passers by saw themselves in these degenerates and destitute and strived, by creating this distance, to prevent this from happening to them. In this equation, the passers by became the degenerated and destitute too.

They were only too blind to see that they harassed themselves.

The human race is exacting, and rightly so. In nature, sanity survives, and insanity doesn't. Those who fail, or are swept away by life's whirlwinds become a burden to those who are not derailed. Every contact with the derailed threatens to pull the others along with them, into this abyss that knows no sight, no hygiene, which has no coping strategy to speak of.

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