“Chief Saul had lost dozens of humped white cows,” said Mathew. 

Soon, wrinkled-faced men with rounded-crown hats chuckled. “Now he bounces like a lame cow,” said Peter, giggling. 

“He grazed the cows in the missionary’s yard,” said John, tittering. 

“The horse-tailed hair pastor had shipped in these pus-oozing cows,” said Mark, pelleting rough-edged rocks at the deep-brown cows. 

“So, his cows had perished?” asked a commoner, levelling his knees to the hips. 

“I’ve spotted the chief at the steel house,” said a fortune-teller, gazing at the rusty cross atop the church. 

“Let’s replace him,” roared a lanky man. 

The next day, everyone gathered around the sun-bleached tree.

“We can’t be led by a down-and-out chief,” said a ballooned-tummy man. 

Snooping this, Chief Saul dropped his hollow-cheeks between his toothpick legs. 

The crowd booed and circled the chief. 

“Let’s stone him,” said a straw-like man. The reedy man grabbed a heart-shaped rock and lowered it on the chief’s scattered hair. 

“What a disgrace?” he said, as the crowd planked. 

Then, the mob spewed thick-yellowish saliva on the chief’s untamed hair. 

“Bury him alive,” John said, slipping a barbed-wire crown on the toppled chief. 

Thereafter, Chief Saul galloped to the steel building. 

“They’ve stoned me for worshipping your God,” he said, kneeling before the pontiff. 

“Is your God strong?” asked Chief Saul.

“He brings forth the rain,” said Hugo, leafing through a thick black book. 

“This steel house brought cows’ diseases,” Chief Saul said. 

“That’s God’s temple,” quipped Hugo, wide-eyed. 

“Is God at home?” the chief asked, squatting to spot a deity behind the steel door. 

“God will bless you with 20 guns,” prophesied the evangelist, trickling clear-golden oil over the chief’s blood-oozing forehead. 

“You’ve become Paul,” said Hugo, thumbing through the sacred scripture. 

“When …?” Chief Paul asked. “First, sell 20 miles of land,” Hugo said, winking. 

“I’ll fill up 20 enamel buckets with sand,” said the chief. 

The cleric gripped a revolver and baptised Paul. 

“First, sign here,” Hugo said, unrolling a paper on the steel tripod stand. 

“I can’t sign,” Chief Paul said, stamping his feet on the holy floor. 

“Filth your finger in the blue ink, and thumb it here, here, and here,” Hugo hissed, spelling out the conditions of the protection treaty. 

Then, the priest blew out the beeswax blue and pink candles.

* Ruben Kapimbi hails from Okangeama in Otjituuo. He is a fifth-generation offspring of the genocide. This story is historical fiction.