The wind ripped the loincloths of grinning youngsters at the Augusteneum Mission. Underneath the sun-blocking tree, Karuru wrote his name on the rose-coloured sand. 

Firstly, the clumpy bearded teacher drew a tick next to the mass killings’ name. He shook his scattered-brained head and erased the wicked name with his military boots. 

Secondly, he sprinkled sand over Kouvati, a backward name written by a sprinkled-haired girl. The teacher raised his bushy eyebrows after stomping on Karumbuu’s name. 

Thirdly, he rubbed his bushy hair and chained the devil-may-care nametags around the skin and bone kids. Karuru became Heinrich, and Kouvati changed to Kurt, while Karumbuu who smiled ear to ear was baptized Victoria. Finally, he hung a placard onto the tree. 

“What’s in the name?” he asked, tapping the poster. The retired soldier grinds his tobacco-stained teeth towards the teary-eyed kids. 

Before the teacher could clink the tree-swinging bell, Karuru’s mom shouted that the barbed thorns had trapped their black-headed sheep. Suddenly, Karumbuu’s nephew pinched her rabbit-size ears because her grandparents were killed by hanging at this tree. 

Kouvati’s uncle lashed her toothpick legs for playing under the spooky tree. The one-legged uncle rubbed cow dung over the boy’s guitar-like ribs and showed him how to dig milk-churning roots. 

That night, the moon shined over the pitch-black hills and its light swallowed up the twinkling stars. 

Inside the cracking walls of the dung-plastered huts, the children quizzed their death-cheating guardians. “What’s the meaning of my name?” Karuru asked, widening his eyes. 

“It means the thick sour milk,” his mother said, biting her lips. “What!” Karuru yelled. “It means the bitter berries,” she said, her turned-up lips hiding the naked truth. Next door, Karumbuu was told that her name refers to the light-brown cows that survived to tell the campfire story of the mass graves. 

Fast forward, Kouvati’s uncle bribed him with brandy berries that his name refers to the littered carcasses of red cows that had perished after drinking poisoned water. 

The next day, the genocide-friendly teacher spilt the beans on the soul-piercing meanings of each name as the three children sobbed until their eyes looked like ripened tomatoes. 

“It was the God-fearing schutztruppe that harvested you from the rubble of breathless bodies. ‘That’s why your name is Karuru,” the repentant teacher said, mining stick-mounted sweets. 

 This is historical fiction.