Chapter 96 Northwest Elegy
In September, there was light rain in the sky in the northwest of East Africa.
Bukoba, a small fishing village on the west bank of the Great Lakes (Lake Victoria), is a small village under the rule of the Karawi Kingdom.
The rippling water of the lake gently slaps the wet soil on the shore, and the drizzle falling in the lake can't stir up any waves.
In the early morning, the sun did not rise, but the rays of light still penetrated the horizon and reflected in the sky west of Bukoba Village.
Misty water mist, mixed with drizzle, a gust of cold wind blowing, cold and damp, and the drowsy sky made Bukoba Village look a bit miserable.
As a village, Bukoba Village has an original architectural structure. When you walk into Bukoba Village, you can see a circle of fence walls made of rattan and mud, which are covered with moss and look low after wind and rain. Dwarf mottled.
In the fence, a one-meter-high semicircular skeleton house is built with vines and branches around it. Banana leaves and other plant leaves are used to pave to prevent wind and rain.
In the center of the village is an altar, surrounded by stones of different sizes, which is the place where villagers usually gather and hold activities.
Behind the altar is the residence of the chief and the elders. Except that it is higher than the houses of the villagers, there is nothing special about it. This is the general shape of the whole village.
As a village with a hundred people, Bukoba Village mainly relies on fishing for a living, relying on the rich fishery resources of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria).
The Bukoba people cut down trees from the shore, most of which are thick trees. They hollowed out the trunk with an ax and made them into canoes two to three meters long.
The perennial fishing and hunting life makes the Bukoba people very good at water. They drive homemade canoes and rough fishing nets made of hemp, and cooperate with each other to catch local freshwater fish from the big lake.
Relying on fishing, the Bukoba people live fairly well, and the excess fish can be traded with the surrounding tribes in exchange for living materials such as clay pots and salt.
…
Bukoba Village in the past was a very lively village. The village was full of fireworks, men went out to fish, women did housework at home, and waited 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 normal state of some tribes and villages in African countries in later generations. Life is nothing more than eating and drinking every day and being carefree.
Of course, except for some special cases, such as war.
The most serious conflict between countries and tribes in Africa is West Africa. After hundreds of years of slave trade, they can't wait to capture and execute all hostile tribes.
Western colonists, with only a small amount of supplies, can provoke conflicts among the many tribes in West Africa. The reason for a war may be that a certain tribal chief hopes to obtain the glass ball brought by the western colonists.
This kind of asymmetric trade and exchange takes advantage of the low productivity level, little knowledge, and even superstitious psychology of backward areas.
Some people in East Africa did this at the beginning, that is, businessmen from Zanzibar and the Arab region. When the East African colony was established, this method was dismissed.
It is not necessary to focus on a simple and rude native who uses tricks to deceive children to play with ignorance. After all, East Africa is not as densely populated as West Africa. To deal with the aborigines on the East African grasslands, the East African colonial government can fight by itself.
So a large number of indigenous peoples in 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 a million lands is still quite considerable.
A large number of people suddenly poured into the northwest region. If the resources in this region were only enough to support five people, and now five more people came, then five people must disappear, and the remaining five people can survive.
And Bukoba Village was scourged by the East African colonies in this way.
Eastern Bantu people poured in and slowly spread to the location of Bukoba Village, responding to the call of the kingdom, and at the same time defending their homeland.
The people of Bukoba Village fought fiercely with the invaders. Together with the nearby villages of the Karawi Kingdom, taking advantage of their familiarity with the terrain, the people of Bukoba Village and the East Bantu people launched a guerrilla war.
The Eastern Bantu were hastily expelled to the northwest by the East African colony, so it was naturally impossible for them to bring food. At the same time, as a people who lived on hunting, 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 what to say about settling down, the Karawi Kingdom must agree.
Especially those Karawi nobles who were the first to suffer in the south, they can't wait to eat the flesh of the Eastern Bantus.
There are irreconcilable contradictions between the two parties, so naturally they will fight, and it must be a life-and-death kind.
And the more wars are fought, the deeper the hatred and the larger the scale, which is why the tragedy of the Northwest countries has been caused.
Bukoba Village survived the impact of the first wave of East Bantu tribes, but the East Bantu people were like flowing water, continuously pouring into the entire Northwest from the East African colonies.
Bukoba Village was annihilated in the repeated baptism of war, and the current Bukoba Village is only an empty shell.
The tribes of the Eastern Bantu did not choose to stay. After all, they are not tribes that live near the Great Lakes and rely on fishing and hunting for their livelihood.
Without relative skills, they naturally cannot survive on fishing and hunting like Bukoba Village, so the Eastern Bantu people can only continue to go north.
Today, the Eastern Bantus are not facing one or two enemies, but the combined army of the countries in the Northwest.
So the war is far from over, and the vanguard has spread to areas such as the Kingdom of Buganda and the Kingdom of Turou.
The countries in the Northwest have low levels of productivity, so they are naturally unable to build a certain number of cities and fortifications. That's why the Eastern Bantu tribes can pass through the territory of the southern country and directly threaten the northern country.
As for Bukoba Village, after the Eastern Bantu left, only the corpses of the villagers in Bukoba Village were left, and no one cared about them 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 corroded by nature a little bit, and most of these buildings built with plant vines and mud will not be preserved in the future.
No one can remember the suffering that happened here. Such a war in the northwest of East Africa is inconspicuous, and no one records it. Even the last evidence is destroyed by nature.
The culprit that caused this suffering was the colonial government of East Africa. The so-called praying mantis catches the cicada, and the oriole follows. 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 Northwest countries and the East Bantu tribes are all victims. They fight to the death. No matter who wins in the end, the final beneficiaries are the East African colonies.
War is just a microcosm of East Africa and Northwest. Affected by the war, the famine caused by land abandonment, the two sides fighting, the plague caused by corpses left behind, and the water source polluted by corpses are all exacerbating the demise of the population in Northwest China.
Only the northern parts of countries such as the Kingdom of Buganda and the Kingdom of Turou have not been greatly affected for the time being, and life is barely going on.
As for the entire Northwest countries, the land of more than 100,000 square kilometers, the south has completely become a battlefield, and the north is also threatened by war.
The entire northwest region is in mourning, but no one in the world knows the pain he has endured. Only the East African colonists stare at this land greedily.
(end of this chapter)