Genocide - A gift from the Kaiser

My name is Sarah.

A corrugated truck skidded into the camp. First, the lorry hooted and then grated its ring-shaped rubber tyres on the bumpy road.

Soon, half-starved children galloped towards the vrooming Bedford. A group of ballooned-stomach toddlers faked the truck’s sound as they dog-tailed it.

Then, the commanders jingled the bell. We stooped under the shade of a nylon house.

“Tomorrow is the Kaiser’s birthday,” said the commander. His remarks triggered a mass-panic flight and the prisoners stepped on the toddlers, who were waving greywinged insects. Later, the crowd quietened when a trooper lashed the horsewhip on the children’s faces.

“I’ve a riddle,” said the commander, peeling up his military cap. “When is the Kaiser’s birthday?” he asked.

There was silence in the bitterly cold daylight. A woman in a wheelchair lifted her yellow fingernails. Everyone cocked their necks towards her. “Who’s Kaiser?” she asked, defiantly.

Instantaneously, a trooper flogged her crippled legs with a leather rope. Afterwards, a fresh-faced soldier pulled the web-legged women into the windowless nylon hut.

First, I chronically cleared my throat and lifted my index finger. Then, I quietened my pounding heart, and squeezed the yellowish water dripping under my toothpick legs. I rubbed off the trickling water from my strawlike legs.

“What’s today’s date?” I asked, stuttering. “The 16th January 1905,” said the commander.

His pit-yawning smile, masked by a trimmed beard wiped off the terror from my voice. I was about to figure out the Kaiser’s birthday, when a light-skinned girl shouted: “Your majesty, she’d tinkled in her skirt,” she said, pointing at my soaked skirt.

First, the trooper stooped to examine the tinkling water dripping from my torn-up skirt.

“Dear commander. The Kaiser’s birthday is on the 17th January,” I stammered. “What?” crooned the tobacco stained-teeth commander, punching his fists in the air.

“The Kaiser is the God of all the soldiers!” I bumbled.

Instantly, the gun-waving trooper pressed his bushy chest against my itching breast buds. “You’re free on the wish of the Kaiser,” said the commander. “Grab your belongings,” he said, facing the hand-clapping prisoners. “I’ve no belongings,” I said, waving a red pocket-size book.

Fast-forward, a baby-faced trooper escorted me to the iron steel gate. That moonlight, he gifted me a freedom passport.

Footnote: “Pursuing the genocide to my Mbango family in Ondonga.”

* Ruben Kapimbi hails from Okangeama in Otjituuo. He is a fifth-generation offspring of the genocide. This story is historical fiction.