The pregnant clouds float over the spoon-shaped leaves, while the red cows sniff the earthy-smelling rain. Outside the bush-fenced kraal, balloon-tummy calves bounce like springboks to break down litres of milk in their tummies.
Underneath an umbrella-shaped tree, Kanairombe is shaking a calabash of churned milk, swinging between V-shaped branches. Meanwhile, Zakueeua, her only son, is numbering the grey houseflies dipping their mouths into a wooden spoon of sour milk. Suddenly, a watermelon-sized hailstone drops between them. The ground shakes and Murise yaps, wagging its tail at this heavenly magic.
In response, Zakueeua skews his eyes at Kanairombe, who is paging through her memory for a truthful lie. The black rainbow on top of the smoking mountains warns the two of a flood like Noah’s. For now, the colourless hailstone threatens to drown the village if it melts.
“Take this hailstone and warn the neighbours that the gods are mad,” says Kanairombe, her nylon hands rubbing her crocodile-skin cheeks. Immediately, Zakueeua scoops the shiny hailstone and waves a finger at everyone to run before the coming flood. He jogs from one corrugated-roof house to the next, hugging the diamond-coloured hailstone. Somehow, he removes his sandals so he can tip off the faraway homesteads.
The ice-cold hailstone paints his hands pink, but Zakueeua couldn’t tell whether the hailstone is melting or it’s his showery sweat. Thus, he takes the magic hailstone to the seer. Upon the holy man seeing the hailstone, he throws out all the bones that have made him the most sought-after witch doctor. The seer scratches his chin because the spirits did not show him the rocky hailstone during a consulting nightmare. “Now the sick will no longer pay for my dried leaves,” cries the seer.
Afterwards, Zakueeua drops the hailstone in front of the elders quarrelling under the fig tree. “What’s this?” stutters the chief, falling from his chair like a ripe berry from a tree. “Hailstone,” swears Zakueeua, and the men mumble strange words before dashing in different directions.
First, Zakueeua looks at the shiny hailstone and then at the black rainbow before the grapefruit sun blinds him. Minutes later, bead-sized hailstones pelt the roofs, and everyone ponders why the gods are so angry. The tennis-ball hailstones hit the chief’s house, the only house with glass windows. When the rain stops, the sun televises broken windows with shards littering everywhere. Thus, the chief resigns from his throne. Days later, ox-wagon travellers gossip that the so-called hailstone is a meteorite.
The pop-eyed villagers walk out of Ozombaue, arguing that the gods are mad at their evil practices. The next day, the gods throw more ball-sized hailstones, triggering the Department of Fauna and Flora to fence off the meteorite farm.