Four weeks. That was all they had. Four weeks between the joy and hope of a new life and the heartbreak and desolation of death. Four weeks between holding his beautiful new daughter and lowering his beloved wife into the empty hollow dug into the African earth.
The trek from the Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek had been brutal. They knew it would be. They were not the first group of people to embark on the more than two-thousand kilometre, “Thirstland Trek” in search of freedom. One group, with more than a hundred families, lost a quarter of its six hundred souls to the Kalahari desert and the trek. The ordeal, leaving an enduring impression on the psyche of the survivors and those who followed after them. Having learned from the others, they had all survived the thirsty sun drenched days and the fearful dark nights, until now.
The wagons were pulled in a tight circle with a hardwood fire at its heart. Though it was the early hours of the morning, it was still burning strong, occasionally spitting embers into the night sky. It felt as if the dark kept pressing in, or maybe it was just the grief, vast, endless and smothering all at once. Occasional sounds of oxen, shuffling in their makeshift pen of native bushes and shrubs mixed with the lonely call of a jackal. All the adults sat in silence, staring into the fire, faces shadowed by the flickering flames and grief. Some women clutched their children close, whispering quiet prayers. The youngest ones were fast asleep in the safety of the wagons, oblivious. The older boys lingered beyond the firelight, shuffling their feet, as if they were waiting for directions that would not come.
They had come so far. Yet, it felt as if they were nowhere. German South West Africa lay beneath them, a land of contrasts, of danger and whispers of war between local inhabitants and the colonialist Germany and other boers. Behind them, the British kept clawing at the independence of the family and friends they left behind. Ahead, Angola waited, still dominated by the Portuguese, still uncertain, but hopefully far enough. Far enough to start again. Far enough to maybe find a home, finally.
At first they had hoped it was simply exhaustion from the pregnancy and the endless jolting of the wagon. Then, as the days passed by, they prayed that it was just fever, some passing sickness. But they knew Africa, they remembered the stories and secretly the fear grew. Then the fever worsened, and the vomiting and seizures set in. Malaria had come for her, silent and sure, digging in with unrelenting persistence, stealing her last breath early in the night.
Now, he stood alone. A widower with four children to care for. One, barely four weeks old, who would never know her mother. A wife who could not be mourned as she should have been.
She would be buried in secret that night. Her grave covered by the tracks of oxen and wagons, lost to Africa forever. There would be no headstone, no place of remembrance. The land would reclaim her, as it had claimed so many before, and he would ride on. Because he had no choice. This was Africa, and Africa rarely allows time for weeping and grieving.
Yaku 