In the summer of 1806, a stranger whose lips had been peeled by thirst strayed into Chief Karuru’s compound. The knife-sharp rocks scraped his blistered feet. 

In fact, the dry sweat on his forehead had sketched a cross. 

The sweat-draining sun roasted his feet, while the wild dogs barked at his jutted guitar-like ribs. That night, a hooting owl alerted the chief that the mop-hair guest had choked on his saliva during his sleep. 

The women sang funeral songs, and the white-faced witch-doctors warned that burying him in the local grave would anger the picky spirits. 

“A donkey will grow horns,” said a broom-waving witch-doctor.  “The stars will twinkle before sunset,” said another healer, before magically turning into a termite hill. Immediately, the visitor’s body perfumed the air as death-watching beetles timeously ticked the clocks. 

“The sun is hugging the moon,” said a woman dressed in a grass skirt. “The traveller’s family will accuse us of bewitching him,” said a man wearing a thorn-sewed shirt. 

“The goats are chewing dried meat,” stuttered Chief Karuru, coughing from his tobacco pipe. “The stranger’s god is tracking his footprints,” sang a red-beak bird, fluttering its black wings. 

“If we bury this stranger amongst our ancestors, a tortoise will climb a tree,” said a woman with thimble-thorn earrings, wiping her mouth. 

The funeral arrangement stirred the chief to turn his lips upward. Finally, Chief Karuru buried the stranger amongst the restless ancestors. 

“Flies gather over any rotting carcass,” he said, wagging his magic stick. First, the servants pinched their runny noses and carried the foul-smelling body into the bush-fenced cemetery.  Instantly, the tearful clouds became pregnant and vomited gallons of rain. 

“The stranger was sent by the rain gods,” Karuru said, as the raindrops mixed with his crocodile tears. However, the rain refused to stop, and the crying rivers broke their sandy banks. Later, a quarrelling river divided the village; one river flowed towards the sea and reported the blood-curdling happenings to the fish-shaped spirits. The other half carried the whispering water towards the Kalahari, and snitched the heart-skipping events to the tsama-shaped spirits.  

By the time the blinking lightning had stopped, the stranger’s grave had been swept miles away from the local cemetery. In the end, the weeping villagers built a barbed wire fence around the traveller’s grave and crafted a mountain-size tombstone. 

ˆ– Based on a true story