Hello Lovelies

Kamlepo- ker-mmm-lay-po

Kapito- Ker-pee-tow

Kapito and Kamlepo were outspoken critics of Malawi’s former dictatorial goverment

Chiumya-Chee-oo-mee-yer (mya are pronounced a single syllable)

A strong independence fighter who successfully toppled Colonial Rule

Kabwila-Ker-bwee-ler

A lecturer of English and a fight for Academic Freedom during Malawi’s previous government tyrannical rule.

Fumukazi- leader of Kaulimi

Chapter 10

Ipyana

I always knew that I was adopted. In my heart was an abyss that had many questions and grief for what I had never known. When I was ten, Salifya gave me my parents’ tablet which had their photos. On some nights I lay starring at the tablet wondering what my mother was like, what made her laugh, was she talkative? What was Father like? When I slept I dreamt of a life with them.

“I found their last location. It was Karonga. The house of a Nengezwayo Sikwese.” The nice lady at the registry said, leaning back on her chair. A part of her upper torso was blocked from my view because of the glass desk between us. Times like this made me wish I had Salifya’s tall stature.

“Does it say where Mr Sikwese is?” Sali asked.

The lady shook her head. “These history types they like to be off the grid.” She pursed her lips together after saying grid. “I am sorry I couldn’t help.”

“You have helped us a lot.” I said. “Thank you.”

“I hope you find them.” she said smiling. We got up and left her office. I knew that Ama could find Mr Sikwese.

Ama was out visiting her sister who stayed on the other side of Nkhatabay. I thought I would get home tell Ama our lead and she would type for sixty seconds and have the address of this Sikwese character. I knew visits to Aunty Lusekelo would end up in Ama staying for dinner. Those two sisters always had so much to tell each other. I got a message from Chirwa telling me to meet her in the next hour. The location she listed was a Musangwe gym. I figured it was good to meet at different places each time. I lied to Salifya that I was going for a walk. I felt excited. I was kind of like a spy. Maybe later I could be recruited by KUA and be an analyst. Who knew?

“Hello Chibambo.” Chirwa said she shook my hand placing a small usb in my hand. I slipped it into my pocket as stealthily as I could. “Today we will train.”

“For?”

“Soon you will be going on raids to collect data. I need to see that you are ready.”

“Me?” I asked. My eyes darting across the gym, taking in the several men and women training with the gym’s training humanoid bots. The training bots were only distinguishable by their lack of emotion and the occasional glowing blue circuits in their limbs.

“Yes you. You think we were going to waste a valuable K’limian like you on desk duty.”

I face-palmed myself. Moments like this made me wish I did not have these tattoos. “I’m not a fighter.” Going into the HM with Sali and Xo as different, Sali would protect me. Here I would have to protect myself. Sali and Xo took out a prisoner and would try to do it stealthily. I had seen Aka-rebel raids there was nothing stealthy about them.

“The work we do is important. You know that. They are 3 guys in here, all part of your team, only of you have had any combat training. We need you.” She walked towards the ring closest to us. I followed silently trying to take in the situation. Inside the ring was an Akafula man and a normate woman. The woman was winning. The woman pinned the Akafula on the floor, with her two legs she was choking him. The referee bot blew his whistle she released him.

“You are next” Chirwa said facing me. “There are clothes in the back. Get changed and warm up. Be in the ring in the next ten minutes.”

I walked into the changing room. Why was she acting like she owned me? The contract I had signed with Aka-rebel said that my handler was of higher rank than I. So I had to listen to her. I thought of running away and just going home.

My nostrils stretched out with each short breath. I felt my chest heave forward and back. I tried to calm myself by taking big breaths. My opponent was an Akafula woman. I kept telling myself I could do it. I managed to get a few punches in but for the most part she had pinned to the ground. The first round she kept punching my face while sitting on my stomach. I was going to pass out and Limbani would kill me in his macabre shows for sure. The ref’s whistle brought me back to reality. I was at the gym, I was not at the H.M.C. I exhaled trying to calm myself down. The second round she was choking me like the tall lady had been with Akafula. In the third round she had me on the floor in thirty seconds. She was confident. She had me in a choke hold. But she made a mistake she left my arms free. So I pulled her leg off my neck with all my might. She screamed. I stood up. So did she. I grabbed her arm and threw her on the floor face first. I wanted to make her pass out but I remembered this was not at the HM facility. I was going to sit on her, when she stood up. She was hurling jabs at me. I covered my face with my arms. She kept going. Bang! Bang! I could hear the Limbani’s laugh ringing in my mind. He thinks our pain is funny. He thinks we are nothing because we are pygmies. The ref’s whistle slashed through my thoughts. I exhaled deeply. I was in a gym not the H.M.

I pulled myself out of the ring and walked up to Chirwa.

“You lost.” Chirwa said. I was silent. It was obvious I lost why did she have to mention it? “I am disappointed.”

“Because I am a K’limian. Not all of us are combat ready. I told you I am no fighter.”

“Yes you are. You just choose to hold back.” Chirwa’s voice was calm unlike mine.

The air I drew in lacerated my nostral passage as it made its way into my windpipe. “I am no fighter.”

She handed me a water bottle. “You are not going to be the person taking out the guards as we get into the cells. You will be the person going into the computer room which prolly has a guard or two.”

“Why can’t I be the person who doesn’t go on the missions but sorts through the files?”

“We need your hackarchiving skills to get the files. We still don’t know how many HMC facilities they are. Our intelligence says over a thousand all over Zamania. Files gotten from the HM facilities help us find other facilities and shut them down. And there will be evidence when we decide to go public with the illegal HM activities. Your job is very important. But it also dangerous. So I need you to release your inner fighter.” Her eyes were looking directly at mine. I looked away and nodded my head.

“Get cleaned up. You go again.” She said in an authorative tone. Her tone changed from friend to commander in a second. How did she get like that?

I nodded my head and went to the bathroom. I washed off the blood on my face and my fingers.

I kept thinking about what she said “release the inner fighter.” I had a young Akafula man as my opponent. His left side was stronger than his right. So whenever he hit me with his left hand I would stumble backwards. And oh my. It hurt A LOT. He won the first round. In the second round I dodged his left side. He threw a jab and I ducked by moving my upper body backwards. I leg sweeped him till he was on the floor. I climbed on his stomach and threw a succession of jabs. He grabbed my wrists and flung me off him. With a few quick movements he had in a choke hold with his legs. I barely heard the ref’s whistle. I went to the bench and gulped water. I saw from the edges of my bottle Chirwa walking towards me.

“There was a slight improvement.” She said. “Tomorrow we will work on removing that mental block.”

“What time are we meeting?”

“Same time. Same place.” She stated. “I need you to jog 2 kilometres a day starting tomorrow.”My jaw dropped. “It’s for your own good.”

I nodded my head sadly. I watched her exit the gym. I leaned back into the bench. Its over, I whispered to my aching muscles.

“Congrats.”I opened my eyes to see the speaker. It was my last opponent. “I imagine that I am not your first cyborg.”

“Huh?”I asked. His left arm and leg glowed blue.

“You are a Modified human.” I said slowly. He nodded. “You are my first.”

He sat down next to me. “What I thought you guys in Kaulimi train with Q’s like me.”

“Q’s?”

“Quentocin it’s the metal they use for our limbs so we are called Q’s.”

“Oh. Well we don’t train with Q’s in Kaulimi.” I chuckled. “Someone has been lying to you.”

“Well I am honoured to be your first Q.” He smiled. “You performed well for someone who has never fought a cyborg before.”

“Thanks.” I retorted. “I noticed that you were very strong and agile on your left side but I thought you are left handed.”

“Well I am left handed but it’s mostly the synthetic limb.” He said. “I’m Kanyama Chiumya.”

I was going to tell him my real name when I realised that he had given me a name of an independence fighter. So I gave him my alias.

“So what field are you in?”

“I’m in intelligence. You?”

“Tactical.” He said. “I was rescued from an HM facility a year ago. I joined Aka-rebel soon afterwards.”

“They rescued me six weeks ago.”

“How are the nightmares?”

“How did you…”

“We all get them. Some its flashbacks some nightmares. The first few weeks are the hardest.”

“They are not as bad as they used to be.” I noticed the darkness creeping into the sky through the glass walls of the gym. I looked at my watch it was 530pm. “I have to go. Nice meeting you.” I ran out.

I lied to Anganile that I got lost coming back. Her and Chikondano teased me about it. It wasn’t a complete lie. I did get on the wrong bus pod coming home but I got out of it then into the correct one in good time. Ama came home at eight with a smile on her face and pumpkins in her basket and greetings from Aunty Lusekelo and accusations about how we don’t visit her. I was only able to ask her to check out Nengezwayo Sikwese later just before bed. She was too tired to do it then. She promised she would get on it in the morning when she had rested. How tiring could chatting all afternoon be?

“Good! You are awake!” Ama remarked. “I knew that name sounded familiar. I knew it. In 2042, two daughters of the Minister of Education ran away to Kaulimi. They said that their father was sexually abusing them. It was a huge scandal.”

I pulled myself out of bed. What does this have to do with Nengzwayo Sikwese?

“A fornight after the girls had arrived. They were found dead in their foster’s mother’s house. The minister had sent a female assassin after them who had pretended to be a refugee. Everyone was outraged with the Kaulimi Police for not protecting those girls. In the following decade the K.P branched into KUA. KUA boosted security and surveillance in Kaulimi and Zamania. If there was chatter about an attack on one of the women they knew about it while it was in its inception. They moved from information gathering to controlling political appointments in all of Zamania. They infiltrated every top office and security institute in Zamania. They were everywhere.”

“The time of the Kassassins.”

She nodded her head. “One of the ways they did this was through a programme called “Muwoli”. Attractive KUA agents married men in power, had affairs with married men in power, for the married men who wouldn’t have affairs the K.P agents pretended to be long lost firstborn daughters with their girlfriends in secondary school or pretended to be daughters of their relatives. This was done to gather information and control politics. Lizwe Sikwese is the journalist who exposed this. This almost made Zamania annex Kaulimi. A public apology by the Fumukazi of Kaulimi, many agreements that reduced the power of KUA and placed them under the supervision of Zamania Underground Army. KUA murdered Lizwe Sikwese for exposing them.” Ama turned around towards her computer and pressed a button on it. An image of two young boys came on the screen. “Nengezwayo is his oldest son. His brother is the ex-general Muhlabase. This was taken shortly after their father’s murder.”

“Did you find him?”

“Yes, he is in Chitipa.”

“He is in Chitipa.” I said.

“That’s just our luck.” Salifya muttered picking up a swimming costume lying her bed and placing it in her bag. “We have to start applying for a permission to enter and stay in Chitipa. It takes about a month to be processed. It will take longer because I work for the police”

“I know.”

“I am going to the beach do you want to come with me?”

I was going to say yes. Then this anger rose in me. She had left me. “No.”

“Please.”

I had never heard her beg before. It was strange. I looked at her with surprise. Who was this person in front of me? This was not the Salifya I knew. “I will get my swimming costume.” I walked out.

“I joined the Aka-rebels. Xo and I got an email inviting us to join so we joined.” She looked different without her long hair. Her high cheek bone and powerful jawline were more defined by the tapered cut. I nodded my head. I had only told Ama, Tali and Vilela about my joining Aka-rebel. I did not think it necessary to tell Salifya.