PAYING FORWARD
The van tips into another pothole and the three of them lurch to one side. Kaneza grips the handhold above her window but still ends up slamming into Bizimana. He clears his throat and shifts, pressing more firmly against the boxes of equipment. For all the years she has known Bizimana through childhood and awkward puberty stage a decade ago, he has never outgrown that shyness.
With a smile, the driver looks back. “The roads get pretty bad this far out.”
Kaneza tightens her free hand around the belt cutting across her chest.
The driver gives a hearty laugh but turns back. “This is upcountry; there’s nothing to worry about! Even the rebels were driven out of the forest.”
Kaneza pulls her eyes away from the forest whizzing by with its towering kapoks. She glances at Bizimana. With the quirk of their eyebrows, they come to the unanimous decision they will pretend they never heard that and there really is nothing to fear but the odd snake or colourful spider.
Bizimana gives her a reassuring smile. “The rest of the team is already on site. And we only need to get a couple of samples. I doubt we’ll even have to go far.”
Kaneza smiles back.
The van parks with a jolt and Bizimana curses. They get out of the van, bags in hand. Kaneza checks her phone. It says there’s one bar of service but when she tries to send a message to the group chat, it refuses to deliver.
She wipes a hand over her brow. Barely a minute out of the shade and sweltering heat is getting to her. At least in this rainy season, relief is just an hour away.
They walk up to another driver leaning against his own van. “They went this way.” The driver pushes out his lower lip, pointing at the path in front of the vans.
“We’ll find more if we go the other way,” Bizimana says, already walking ahead.
Kaneza hurries after him. Two paces into the forest, the bright sun overhead almost disappears. The tall eucalyptus and occasional papaya trees stand close together and soon enough, they can’t see the vans.
With his pale green shirt, Bizimana disappears into the few clusters of ferns separating them.
“Don’t go too far,” Kaneza shouts at Bizimana.
“Eeegooo!” Bizimana stresses out like a child and waves a hand over the greenery.
Kaneza rolls her eyes. Still, she finds her gaze searching for his shape every few moments.
They don’t have to walk far to find the first ones. Shrivelled leaves and dry branches crack under their sneakers. With a stick lying by, Kaneza pokes at a pile of leaves. Overturned, the wad of damp vegetation reveals beetles and worms and little curved bones. A particularly fat brown beetle struggles on its back.
Kaneza curves a hand to her mouth and calls, “Weh! Come see!”
She tilts her head to one side to listen, her hand falling to her side but Bizimana doesn’t answer. He must have found a more interesting cluster of critters and bones. Kaneza squats in the dirt, skin alight in little spots from the sun streaming through the canopy. Her bag is already half full of fragile heron ribs. She looks at her phone. If they keep looking for another hour, they can make it back to the van before sunset.
Scanning the ground, she catches the bright yellow beak of a desiccated carcass. Pushing large leaves out of the way, Kaneza goes to it. She flips the bird over with a branch and frowns. It doesn’t look scavenged at all.
A scream echoes throughout the forest and a thousand little critters scatter, the underbrush rustling with it.
“Bizimana?” Kaneza whispers. When no answer comes, she stands fully, thumb and index at her ear, fretfully twisting the stud there. “Bizimana!?” Her eyes scan her immediate surroundings, but young banana leaves block her sight.
“Weh!”
Kaneza turns around, looking for another researcher if not Bizimana but only catches an odd movement. She bends down to look more carefully through the multitude of holes of a monstera leaf and catches the moulted browns and the bright greens of a military uniform. She raises a hand to wave at the officer when he comes into full view.
Faded black fabric is twisted around his head catching whatever sweat doesn’t drip down his face. His camouflage shirt hangs open, tattered and blood streaked.
Her knees lock as he sneers at her.
“Bizimana?” she croaks.
His chest heaves and a beam of light catches on his blood-streaked panga. His head whips around, sweat flying off his brow before his dark eyes land back on her. He tightens his hands around the straps of leather at the hilt and calls out to Kaneza. A warning... a threat? Kaneza doesn’t know; she can hardly hear beyond the rush of blood in her ears and her haggard breaths.
He lifts his panga and she runs.
He keeps pace with her, hacking at the leaves, spitting curses. Kaneza wants to beg for her life, to say she has seen nothing, will say nothing. But all she can hear are their thunderous stomps through the forest. At the same time as Bizimana’s echoing scream haunts her and the malkohas take to the air with frantic caws.
Kaneza takes a sharp turn, back to the vans, and the land crumbles under her feet. With one hand, she steadies her fall and as soon as she has regained her footing, she is darting behind imyumbati. Still, she hears him following after her, calling for other men to join him.
A light rain starts. Kaneza looks back and just as she does, her foot catches on a root and she comes crashing down. Her landing has her knees, palms and arms scrapped raw. The rain hasn’t managed to penetrate through the canopy yet, the soil is damp against her bruised cheek.
Her vision sways, weeds and moss merging until the pain in her forearm clears her mind. The bag has torn, bones scattered around her, one jagged thigh bone from the bag piercing through the flesh of her arm. Kaneza gives a little shriek at the sight but she digs her fingers in the red soil and pushes herself back up and keeps running. She has to get to cell service or Bizimana and anyone else on the project.
The air feels thin even though they aren’t all that high up on this hill. Kaneza pants, petrichor filling her lungs when the phantom iron scent doesn’t. She rounds banana trees, a hand on the smooth trunk as she flings herself ahead, away from the small pools of sunlight.
But there are only more trees. More bushes. More pitfalls where the earth has cracked and taken a young palm tree with it. The forest doesn’t break, doesn’t thin but Kaneza thinks – knows they passed through here. Right? Kaneza pushes against the lightedness settling in, so hard she can hardly breathe but the rain is getting louder and the men sound further and further away. And that’s the most important thing, that they are getting further away and she is growing closer to the vans.
The rain stops all at once and the forest is so quiet. No hare scurrying under bushes or even a caw in the sky. Kaneza stops as well, taking a breath. When she doesn’t hear footfalls stalking after her, she exhales and takes a step but the soil crunches so loud in the dead silence she can’t make herself take another.
“Ganha, ingo ganha!” A rough voice calls.
She grabs her arm, nails clutching around the sluggishly bleeding wound both to distract and centre herself. They didn’t hear that. Did they? At least she’s lured them away from where Bizimana was. It was the only thing she could do. Yes, she couldn’t have fought him – especially now that she knows there are more.
Kaneza looks back and where she crashed through, under-ripe tomatoes crushed into the soil, there is Bizimana. He is lying face down, back of his green shirt torn open and dark around the gash. She blinks and he is gone, flattened green tomatoes replacing his shirt.
Kaneza clenches her eyes shut. She takes a deep breath and tries to piece together how many rebels there are and where she should head but her heartbeat is deafening, her hands trembling with it.
She fishes her phone from her pocket but there are no bars. The rain starts again, bringing with it a torrent of sounds. Their steps are approaching and there’s no better time to run. Kaneza takes off, steps masked by the shrill call of birds and the scuffle of monkeys.
Again and again, Kaneza matches the rain and listens for the men. Like a game of un, deux, trois, solei. She remembers being a child and fitting her dirty little hands over her face, back to Bizimana as he charged until she reached solei! And she would turn back, and he would be on one foot, the other raised in a step, arms shaking just the slightest to stay balanced. She would turn back and start again, laughter bubbling in her just as much as the needling anxiety of having him rush after her, hands ready to grab at her back.
But they aren’t six and it isn’t his tickles Kaneza has to worry about.
She jumps over a stream, landing at its shore, the bottom of her khakis drenched, and runs into clouds of mosquitoes. Nothing stops her until the eucalyptus trees break apart for a patch of packed red dirt and a little hut in the middle of the clearing.
Where are the vans? There is only a squat hut at the center of the clearing. Its pointed roof of grass is an ashen blond in the sunlight, the grass walls a darker yellow brown held together by bamboo. The gaping entrance gives nothing away. A foot in, there is an impenetrable darkness.
Kaneza takes a step back but then hears faint voices calling and the patter of rain.
She steps away from the tree line and all the noise drops. She eyes the space between the green and grey trees she came from but it is all still. Not even a leaf flutters. Like a picture.
Shaking her head, Kaneza tries her phone again but there are still no bars, at least her phone is still at half charge. She sends Bizimana and the group chat an SOS text. It doesn’t go through. She curses. She hopes she didn’t hear right. Maybe she missed him in her panicked run and he is going to get that message.
Kaneza lifts her phone higher and paces around the entrance of the hut when the scent of freshly cooked rice floats to her. Kaneza pockets her phone and walks ahead, hands fisted into the fabric of her drenched yellow shirt. Her stomach groans.
The sky is overcast, clouds moving so fast they roil but there is no rain and the hut is dry. The red soil has been meticulously swept, not even a pebble mars the ground. Kaneza hesitates but this is no pseudo-military base.
Still out of breath, she presses on. Using the bamboo walls of the house to support herself, she walks around it until she sees a woman seated on a mat.
Kaneza stops, eyes frantically looking for danger – a panga. But it is only an old woman… alone… in the middle of a forest. Kaneza takes a step back, half turned, ready to run.
The woman is draped in maroon bark cloth. It hangs over one shoulder and covers her lap. A flat woven basket with a large mound of dry rice on it sits on her lap.
Kaneza’s stomach grumbles again but the woman doesn’t have anything else with her.
“Come, have a rest,” the woman rasps. Her face is full of sharp features under piles of wrinkles, and her bloodshot eyes are grey with cataracts.
“There were men – in the forest–!” Kaneza looks behind her but the men are not there.
In fact, the forest looks so far away, like the russet land has stretched and devoured until the hut is but a lone island. The trees are but little sticks in the distance and Kaneza has to shake her head to bring back the urgency in her voice
“We have to leave – get help for Bizimana! They could hurt you too!” Kaneza wraps her arms around herself, shirt now streaked crimson.
The woman laughs, a sharp thing, through her yellow teeth. “I’m not worried; why are you?”
Kaneza’s shoulders slump before she hears a crack. She whips around, watching the tree line but when she turns back, the woman has a thin bird rib in her mouth. She snaps it between her teeth but there is no sound.
“Please tell me how to get out of the forest. I just ran… I don’t know how to get back to the road.”
“You want my help?”
“Yes, please! Before they come back!”
The rice goes flying. Each little grain of white rises like a fountain only to hover for a little bit in the air. They fall back in an arc, flecks of shed skin, critter carcasses and tiny rocks cast away. She shakes and shimmies the basket and the sound of rain is alive again.
Kaneza blinks.
She is seated before the woman on a mat that wasn’t there before, wearing the same clothes as the old woman. Kaneza wants to ask her… but her thoughts are muddled. She looks down at the swirling patterns across her lap and feels at peace. Her mind travels somewhere between dream and memory.
One, white line splits and torrents out of the fabric and out of her lap and Kaneza’s arm freezes under the frothing water at the base of a waterfall. She giggles and it’s her child voice. She turns but Bizimana is not behind her, jumping in the river barefoot and bare-chested. The questions build in her throat but the peaks and valleys on the cloth dance the yellow and red of flames and Kaneza warms once more, belly filled.
Again and again, the sun stays high in the sky. The horizon cycles through dusks and dawns. Whole weeks seem to pass in between.
Kaneza thinks she should be afraid, concerned, but there is nothing but the hut and the woman and the ocean of red dirt separating them from the world. Her memories drift away. They are but a story she once heard or maybe dreamt. The only thing that remains with her is the scabbed and scarred arm that aches dull when she presses a nail to it.
She remembers the fall and the man chasing her and Bizimana and it is like her body has dropped back to the hut, its clearing and the woman sitting cross-legged before her.
“Mushingantahe,” Kaneza ventures politely.
The woman lifts her eyes pale with cataracts to Kaneza’s and nods for her to continue.
She is standing again. Her clothes are clean and pressed and dry. The cut on her forearm has scabbed over. She shows her healed arm. “How do I repay you?” Kaneza asks, finally.
“You have already paid me.” The woman gives her a coquette smile.
Kaneza blinks again. She reaches up to twist her earing but the anxiety never surfaces and she leaves it alone. “When...?”
“Ejo. A wonderful meal; fright and fermentation.”
Kaneza is too mollified to do more than arch an eyebrow. “What about–?”
The woman points behind herself, still facing Kaneza. The barren red space snaps back to, the forest a few feet away, looming closer than ever. Kaneza takes out her phone and curses when it won’t even turn on. It is dead. She thanks the woman breathlessly and runs into the forest.
Barely a minute later, Kaneza hears a crash and she stops, holding her breath. Stock-still, she looks past imyumbati. Her eyes strain as they inspect through the bush, looking for the men.
There is a pair of khaki pants. The hair at Kaneza’s nape stands. She pulls at a few red stems until her view clears. A bag is torn, its contents, bones, strewn around a body on the floor. Kaneza covers her nose with the hem of her shirt. The body is ripe, face bloated, skin patches of bruised purple. Bile rises to her throat , Kaneza turns her head and spits.
But her mind turns to Bizimana and she has to look. Just a little. Just enough to see the logo of the university he and Kaneza attend on the yellow shirt she wears – not pale green like Bizimana’s. Just enough to spy the cut on the corpse’s arm oozing with pus, a copy of Kaneza’s own. Just enough to catch the little gold studs on the corpse.
Kaneza grabs the stud in her ear and twists and twists and twists. It’s… her. Kaneza is looking at herself. On the ground. That’s Kaneza but lifeless, dead. She places both hands on her mouth to keep from screaming.
She reaches out but can’t make herself go to... it. Kaneza lets out a shuddering breath and runs. Out. Away.
The trees thin and she laughs, tears shining in her eyes. The van is still there!
Her driver looks up from his phone and stands from his lean against the van. “Did you hear something?” he asks the other driver.
Kaneza gasps already willing this as nothing but a fever dream, hoping Bizimana will round the van any second now and flash her one of his reassuring smiles. “Where is Bizimana?”
The drivers look at each other and shrug.
“Hewe, where is he!?”
They go back to their phones. Her stomach drops. They don’t look her way even when she stands right in front of them. She looks back at the forest but her feet remain planted remembering that body on the forest floor.
***
Ernestine-Vera Kabushemeye Gahimbare is a Burundian writer, reviewer, and artist who has had the good fortune of traveling all her life. This exposure to various cultures has been a well of inspiration for her; she is currently working on her first novel: an afro-futurist fantasy based in Burundian culture. She has a blog where she shares reviews, reading recommendations, and her thoughts on writing. She also contributes to the anime and manga review YouTube channel: Comet Reviews. She has a Bachelor of Commerce in Business Administration and Management.