Chapter 96 Northwest Elegy
In September, there was light rain in the sky in northwest East Africa.
Bukoba, a small fishing village on the west bank of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), is a small village under the rule of the Karawi Kingdom.
The rippling lake water gently lapped at the moist soil on the shore, and the drizzle fell on the lake without causing any ripples.
In the early morning, the sun did not rise, but the glow still penetrated the horizon and reflected in the sky to the west of Bukoba Village.
The hazy water mist, mixed with drizzle, a cold wind blowing through, the cold and damp weather, and the gloomy sky made Bukoba Village look a bit miserable.
As a village, Bukoba Village has original architectural structures. When you walk into Bukoba Village, you can see a fence exterior wall made of rattan and mud. It is covered with moss and looks low after being blown by the wind and rain. Short and mottled.
A semicircular frame house about one meter high is built around the fence with vines and branches. It is paved with banana leaves and other plant leaves to prevent wind and rain.
In the center of the village is an altar, surrounded by a circle of stones of different sizes. It is a place where villagers usually gather to hold activities.
Behind the altar is the residence of the chief and the elders. Apart from being higher than the villagers' houses, there is nothing special about it. The general shape of the entire village is like this.
As a village of a hundred people, Bukoba Village mainly relies on fishing for its livelihood, relying on the rich fishery resources of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria).
The Bukoba people cut down trees from the shore, mostly large trees as thick as an arm, and use axes to hollow out the trunks to make canoes two or three meters long.
The year-round fishing and hunting life makes the Bukoba people very good at water. They drive homemade canoes and simple fishing nets made of hemp, and cooperate with each other to catch local freshwater fish from the big lake.
The Bukoba people live a pretty good life by fishing, and excess fish can be traded with surrounding tribes in exchange for clay pots, salt and other daily necessities.
…
In the past, Bukoba Village was a very lively village. The village was full of fireworks. Men went out fishing and women did housework at home, waiting for important festivals.
The chiefs and elders will also organize sacrificial activities. Everyone gathers around the bonfire, 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 eating and drinking every day, without worries.
Of course, there are exceptions to some special circumstances, such as war.
The most serious conflict between countries and tribes in Africa is undoubtedly West Africa. After hundreds of years of slave trade, they are eager to capture and execute all hostile tribes.
Western colonists can provoke conflicts among many tribes in West Africa with only a few supplies. The cause of a war may be that a tribal chief hopes to obtain the glass balls brought by Western colonists.
This kind of asymmetric trade and exchange takes advantage of the low productivity, low knowledge, and even superstitious psychology of backward areas.
Some people in East Africa also did this, namely merchants from Zanzibar and the Arab region. However, when the East African colonies were established, they no longer bothered to use this method.
It focuses on a simple and crude story, using tricks to deceive children to play with ignorant indigenous people. There is no need at all. After all, East Africa is not as densely populated as West Africa. To deal with the indigenous people on the East African grasslands, the East African colonial government can go into battle 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 nearly one million acres of land is still considerable.
A large number of people suddenly poured into the northwest region. If the resources in this region were originally only enough to support five people, and now five more people came, then five people must disappear before the remaining five people can survive.
Therefore, the approach of the East African colonial government was somewhat similar to that of covering up others' affairs. It was clear that they wanted both sides to fight.
This is how Bukoba Village was harmed by the East African colonies.
The influx of Eastern Bantu people slowly spread to the location of Bukoba village, responding to the call of the kingdom and at the same time to defend their homeland.
The people of the Bukoba village fought fiercely with the invaders. Together with the nearby villages of the Karawi Kingdom, and taking advantage of their familiarity with the terrain, the Bukoba villagers and the Eastern Bantu people launched guerrilla warfare.
The East Bantu people were hastily expelled to the northwest by the East African colonies. Naturally, they could not bring food with them. At the same time, as a people who relied on hunting for a living, they did not have the habit of hoarding food.
On the way into the Karawi Kingdom, they lived by killing, burning, and looting. As for settling down, the Karawi Kingdom had to agree.
Especially the Karawi nobles in the south who were the first to suffer disaster were eager to eat the flesh of the East Bantu people.
There are irreconcilable conflicts between the two parties, so they will naturally fight, and it must be a life-or-death kind.
Naturally, the more the war rages on, the deeper the hatred and the greater the scale, which is why the northwest countries are in such tragic situations.
Bukoba Village survived the first wave of attacks from the East Bantu tribe, but the East Bantu people were like flowing water, pouring into the entire northwest from the East African colonies.
In this way, Bukoba Village was annihilated in the repeated baptism of war, and now only an empty shell remains of Bukoba Village.
The Eastern Bantu tribes did not choose to stay. After all, they were not tribes that lived near the big lake and relied on fishing and hunting for their livelihood.
Without the corresponding skills, they naturally cannot survive by fishing and hunting like Bukoba Village, so the Eastern Bantu people can only continue to move north.
Today, the Eastern Bantu people are not facing one or two enemies, but the combined armies of the northwest countries.
Therefore, the war is far from over, and the vanguard has already spread to areas such as the Kingdom of Buganda and the Kingdom of Turu.
The northwest countries have low productivity levels and naturally do not have the ability to build a certain number of cities and fortifications. Therefore, the Eastern Bantu tribes can pass through the territory of the southern countries and directly threaten the northern countries.
As for Bukoba Village, after the Eastern Bantu people left, only the corpses of Bukoba villagers were left, unnoticed in the wilderness.
All kinds of scavengers happily enjoyed the feast. Bukoba Village lost its former activity and vitality and became an uninhabited village.
Gradually being eroded bit by bit by nature, these buildings built with vines and soil will probably not be preserved in the future.
No one can remember the suffering that happened here. Such a war is inconspicuous in the entire northwest of East Africa. No one records it, and even the last evidence has been destroyed by nature.
The culprit of this suffering was the colonial government of East Africa. As the saying goes, the mantis stalks the cicada while the oriole stalks the cicada. Regardless of whether the East African colonies were directly involved in this war, they were still the culprit.
On the contrary, as both sides of the war, the northwest countries and the East Bantu tribes were all victims, fighting life and death. No matter who would win in the end, the final beneficiary would be the East African colonies.
The war is just a microcosm of the northwest of East Africa. Affected by the war, famine caused by land abandonment, fighting between the two sides, plague caused by corpses left behind, and water sources contaminated by corpses are all aggravating the demise of the population in the northwest region.
Only the northern parts of countries such as Buganda Kingdom and Turu Kingdom have not been greatly affected for the time being, and they can barely survive.
As for the entire northwestern countries, with more than 100,000 square kilometers of land, the south has completely turned into a battlefield, and the north is also threatened by war.
The entire northwest region was in mourning, but no one in the world knew the pain he endured. Only the East African colonists stared at this land greedily.