Chapter 96 Northwest Elegy
In September, a drizzle was falling in the northwest sky of East Africa.
Bukoba, a small fishing village on the western shore of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), was a small village under the rule of the Karawi Kingdom.
The rippling lake water gently slapped the moist soil on the shore, and the drizzle falling into the lake did not cause a single ripple.
In the early morning, the sun had not risen yet, but the rays of light still shone through the horizon and reflected in the sky west of Bukoba Village.
The hazy mist mixed with drizzle, a gust of cold wind blowing, cold and damp, and the gloomy sky made Bukoba Village look a bit desolate.
As a village, Bukoba Village has primitive architectural structures. When you walk into Bukoba Village, you can see a circle of fence walls made of rattan and mud, covered with moss, which appears short and mottled after being exposed to wind and rain.
A semicircular frame house about one meter high was built around the fence with vines and branches, and paved with banana leaves and other plant leaves to protect against wind and rain.
In the center of the village is an altar, surrounded by stones of different sizes. It is the place where villagers usually gather and hold activities.
Behind the altar are the residences of the chief and elders. Apart from being slightly taller than the villagers’ houses, there is nothing special about them. The entire village is roughly in this shape.
As a village of about a hundred people, Bukoba Village mainly relies on fishing for its livelihood, relying on the rich fishery resources of the big lake (Lake Victoria).
The Bukoba people cut down trees from the shore, mostly large trees that were as thick as an embrace, and used axes to hollow out the trunks to make canoes two or three meters long.
Years of fishing and hunting have made the Bukoba people excellent swimmers. They use homemade canoes and simple fishing nets woven with hemp, and cooperate with each other to catch local freshwater fish from the lake.
The Bukoba people live a relatively good life by fishing, and they can trade their surplus fish with surrounding tribes in exchange for daily necessities such as clay pots and salt.
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In the past, Bukoba Village was a very lively village, full of the atmosphere of life. Men went out fishing, while women did housework at home, waiting for important festivals.
The chief and elders would also organize sacrificial activities, with everyone gathering around the campfire, singing and dancing. The people of Bukoba village live a fulfilling and transparent life every day.
This is also the norm in some tribes and villages in later African countries. Life is nothing more than having enough food and drink every day and being worry-free.
Of course, some special circumstances are excluded, such as war.
The most serious conflicts between countries and tribes in Africa are in West Africa. After hundreds of years of slave trade, they are eager to capture and kill all the hostile tribes.
Western colonists, with just a few supplies, could sow discord among the many tribes in West Africa. The cause of a war might be that a tribal chief wanted to obtain the glass balls brought by the Western colonists.
This kind of asymmetric trade and exchange takes advantage of the low productivity, lack of knowledge, and even superstitious mentality of backward regions.
Some people in East Africa did the same thing in the past, namely merchants from Zanzibar and the Arab region. But when the East African colonies were established, they no longer bothered to use such methods.
There is no need to use a simple and crude approach to deceive the ignorant natives by tricking children. After all, East Africa is not as densely populated as West Africa. The East African colonial government can deal with the indigenous people on the East African grasslands on its own.
As a result, a large number of indigenous people from the East African grasslands were driven to the northwest region. Although East Africa is vast and sparsely populated, the number of indigenous people living on this land of nearly one million is still quite considerable.
A large number of people suddenly poured into the Northwest region. If the resources of this region were only enough to feed five people, and now five more people have arrived, then five people must disappear in order for the remaining five to survive.
Therefore, the East African colonial government's actions are somewhat similar to covering one's ears and stealing the bell, and it is obvious that they want the two sides to fight.
The village of Bukoba was one such place that was ravaged by East African colonization.
The Eastern Bantu people poured in, slowly spreading to the location of Bukoba Village, answering the call of the kingdom and also in order to defend their own homeland.
The people of Bukoba fought a fierce battle with the invaders, and together with the nearby villages of the Karawi Kingdom, taking advantage of their familiarity with the terrain, the people of Bukoba and the Eastern Bantu launched a guerrilla war.
The East Bantu people were hastily expelled to the northwest by the East African colonies, so it was naturally impossible for them to bring food with them. At the same time, as a people who lived on hunting, they had no habit of hoarding food.
They survived by killing, burning and looting all the way into the Karavi Kingdom. As for settling down, they had to get the approval of the Karavi Kingdom.
Especially the Karawi nobles in the south who were the first to suffer, they wished they could eat the flesh of the Eastern Bantu people alive.
There are irreconcilable conflicts between the two sides, so naturally they will fight to the death.
Naturally, the longer the war is fought, the deeper the hatred becomes and the larger the scale becomes, which is why the tragic situation in the northwestern countries has been caused.
Bukoba Village survived the first wave of attacks from the East Bantu tribes, but the East Bantu people continued to flow from the East African colonies into the entire northwest like water.
The village of Bukoba was thus destroyed in the repeated baptism of war, and now only an empty shell remains of the village.
The Eastern Bantu tribes did not choose to stay. After all, they were not a tribe living near the big lake and relying on fishing and hunting for their livelihood.
Without corresponding skills, they naturally could not survive by fishing and hunting like the Bukoba village, so the Eastern Bantu people had to continue moving north.
Today, the Eastern Bantu people are no longer facing one or two enemies, but the combined forces of the northwestern countries.
So the war was far from over, and the vanguard troops had already spread to areas such as the Buganda Kingdom and the Torou Kingdom.
The productivity level of the northwestern countries is low, and they naturally do not have the ability to build a certain number of cities and fortifications. Therefore, the Eastern Bantu tribes can pass through the territories of the southern countries and directly threaten the northern countries.
As for Bukoba village, after the Eastern Bantu people left, only the bodies of the Bukoba villagers were left in the wilderness, and no one cared about them.
Various scavengers happily enjoyed the feast. Bukoba Village lost its former liveliness and vitality and became an uninhabited village.
Gradually being corroded by nature, these buildings built with vines and soil will most likely not be preserved in the future.
No one can remember the suffering that once took place here. Such a war is insignificant in the entire northwest of East Africa. No one records it, and even the last evidence has been destroyed by nature.
The culprit behind this suffering was the East African colonial government. As the saying goes, the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind it. Regardless of whether the East African colonies directly participated in this war, they were all the culprits of this war.
On the contrary, as both sides of the war, the northwestern countries and the Eastern Bantu tribes were both victims. They fought to the death, and no matter who would win in the end, the final beneficiary would still be the East African colonies.
The war is just a microcosm of the northwest of East Africa. Affected by the war, famine caused by abandoned land, plague caused by corpses left behind by the fighting between the two sides, and water sources contaminated by corpses are all exacerbating the extinction of the population in the northwest region.
Only the northern parts of countries such as the Buganda Kingdom and the Torou Kingdom have not been greatly affected for the time being, and people can barely get by.
In the entire northwestern countries, with an area of hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, the south has completely become a battlefield, and the north is also threatened by war.
The entire Northwest region was in wailing, but no one in the world knew the pain it was enduring. Only the East African colonists were eyeing this land greedily.
(End of this chapter)
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