She shook her head.
No, she said. We can’t do it. If we are to stand for peace, we are to stand for peace at all times. How can we speak of making peace with them while planning to kill them?
We’re not planning to kill them, we said. We won’t resume any attacks on Gardens. We won’t threaten the laborers. The guns will be solely to protect ourselves in the event of another attack. We cannot keep on speaking of peace while we remain defenseless—that would be reckless and absurd. His Excellency and Pexton have no qualms about spilling our blood for their gain; why should we not seek to combat that? We hope the day will never come when we do likewise to them, but we have to be prepared for it.
We promised her that if she provided the funds for the guns we would do all we could to see her vision of a revolution come true. As soon as she gave us the word, we would start meeting with village heads in our district and nearby districts to listen to the stories of their people’s woes of mudslides caused by government mass deforestation; lands under seizure by decrees; dying children; raping soldiers; schools with collapsed roofs. We would ask the village heads if they wanted to join us to defeat our common enemy. It’s possible some of them would dismiss us after hearing us say that we hoped to bring down His Excellency by marching. We imagine elders laughing in our face and saying: Oh, you young people, you still have the strength to be angry, what a luxury—wait and see how much angrier you’ll be when your teeth start falling out. But we would persist, no matter the ridicules, because we believe, as she does, that victory is possible. Without the guns, though, we couldn’t commit ourselves to her ideals.
* * *
—
Whatever joy she had brought to Kosawa was gone from her face the next morning.
Still, she forced herself to smile during the meeting she had with the entire village just before she left to return to Bézam to start her government job. Standing in the square, beside Sonni, she told the gathering that the time had come for us make our final push to save Kosawa. She said she would need everyone to join in the efforts as much as their bodies allowed—the village stood a chance only if we were united. She promised to come back as often as she could.
After she was done talking, before she got into the car with her mother and brother, our wives and children took turns hugging her. She stooped to receive blessings from the elders, who assured her that they were behind her, the ancestors and the Spirit were behind her, all of Kosawa would add their strength and hope to hers.
* * *
SHE RETURNED FOR A VISIT a month later, but she had no response for us about the guns. We got no response the next month either. Eager as we were, we did not pressure her, for it was obvious in her demeanor how torn she was on the matter. The state of Kosawa only compounded her indecision—the graveyard had doubled in size in her absence; a few huts that had once been crowded with families now stood empty and derelict; so much oil had spilled into the big river that the little ones no longer called it the big river, they called it the sad water. Thula did her best not to reveal her despair; it was important to her that the village see her optimism at all times. Repeatedly, she asked everyone to believe. But what use is mere belief? Without us, she could do little for Kosawa. She had the vision and funds, but we had the muscles. Our friends and siblings were fleeing, or praying for miracles, or resigned to whatever fate His Excellency had drawn for them—they all wanted better lives, but none of them were willing to pay the utmost price for it.
We were the ones who had no fear of death, the ones who recognized that, whether we chose to sit back and do nothing or stand up and fight, we’d end up dead, so why not fight? Sometimes we wondered what it was that separated us from the others, why other men our age with ample vigor were unwilling to risk their lives in pursuit of that which is paramount and just. We could only surmise that it had to be something in our spirits, a thing the Spirit had decided not to give all humans for reasons we didn’t attempt to conjure. But this thing in our spirits, it couldn’t protect us from the agony of waiting, year after year, for our suffering to reach its finale.
Kosawa had been fighting Pexton since we were children; our land was poisoned even before we were born. Few were the days of our lives that weren’t nestled between oil spills and deafening gas flare roars. Countless were the hours when we spoke of little else but Pexton. We had worried and hoped and gained small victories and endured many losses, yet little was changing. The Kosawa of our dreams remained a mirage. During our student days at Lokunja, our teachers had spoken often about the approaching new millennium, how the world would be different then, and we imagined it would be so, because in the eighties the year 2000 seemed seventy-seven lifetimes away, but now it was only eighteen months away, and instead of strutting into it, we were crawling.