Chapter 1. Descendants of Mediums

African Poacher’s Son

Little Jean Batist was running so fast that the wind, swelling the lungs as a sail, interrupted his breathing.

He was 7 years old. He ran with his head down watching each step carefully, viewing the splitting jungle wilderness on the run. Jean Batist was in a hurry to get back before the sunset.

The sunset on the equator was early – it was already dark at 6 pm. And then wild animals went out for hunting. He had to run to make it home in time. But yesterday while running his 11 kilometers home from school he did not meet the snake. That was not good. It meant that they might meet today. And he would lose precious time.

Rwanda or as they also call it “Land of a thousand hills” is covered with subtropical forest. Lake Kivu being the most beautiful of the African Great Lakes, the waters of which are free from crocodiles that live in all the other bodies of water, and the banks of which are inhabited by 2 million people, amazes with its authentic beauty.

In the period of Jean Batist’s childhood the Rwandese Republic, located between Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Zaire, was different. Only 4 million people lived there. But until now, after civilization has come to this African country and its population has increased to 11 million people in just some 50 years, Rwanda is still considered to be a paradise on Earth. During the year the air temperature remains around 25 degrees Celsius. The harvest which is reaped several times a year has an excellent taste.

Local residents are engaged in agriculture and hunting. Nobody rushes to the palaces of education. Because intermittent wars and life on land do not assume that children would leave their families for a long road of education. But half a century ago, when two tribes of Tutsi and Hutu had already been at war with each other, creating a semblance of a relative peace, Jean Batist’s parents had made a decision that all five of their children should go to school, though only Jean proved to be able to study.

It was not easy.

At that time there were only 15 hospitals for the whole country and 95 percent of the population was illiterate. Jean Batist’s parents could not write or read as well as actually everyone else in the area – there was no need for that. Other values made these people’s lives replete and happy:

– To get up at dawn with the first lights of equatorial sun.

– To reap a harvest working 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

– To go hunting successfully trying to avoid to be killed by wild animals.

– To cook and eat fresh food as the food can only be freshly cooked – there is no place to store it.

– To relax in the evening with dances and freshly brewed banana beer by the fire, in a big friendly company.

– To sing a lullaby to a baby.

– To listen to a medium, the tribe’s voodoo, who was Jean Batist’s grandfather and who revealed to people amazing mysteries of predictions.

– To kill a snake.

Among the country’s population of 4 million people only very few kids could become elementary school pupils. After 7 years of elementary school, even less kids used to progress to the secondary school which lasted for 6 years.

There was no need for that. It was much more important to continue carrying out their father’s work: to work on land, raise cattle or to learn the trade of hunting.

Jean Batist’s age mates who were 7 years old got up at dawn to clean the barn from cows’ and goats’ dung and then went to help at the banana plantations. For the sake of attending school Jean Batist’s father relieved him of other work. So in the morning the boy just cleaned the barn and then ran to school.

This was difficult but his father could afford it. He was a poacher from Hutu tribe, and at his banana plantation worked the Rwandans from Tutsi and Hutu tribes, who needed money and who could dig the ground. Jean Batist’s father could not. He was a mine worker. And after work at the mine he hunted wild animals and buffaloes.

When Jean reached the age of 7, he was sent to school. The only one of all the families who lived in the area. It was 11 kilometers to his school. Every day little Jean Batist ran the distance of 22 kilometers.

He ran only because if he walked he would not make it to school on time in the morning, by the time the classes began. As well as he would not manage to be back in the evening before the sunset, before the moment when wild animals went out for hunting. By running he saved time to study and managed to survive. But he had one problem – not to miss a snake.

The parents told their children since childhood:

– If you see a snake – you should kill it. If you do not kill it – the snake will kill you. Or somebody else. A snake has to be killed.

That is why when he saw a snake he stopped. He knew that a deadly black mamba bite was too fast. And he had to react in time.

Black mamba, reaching a length of 4 meters, is notable for the speed of its movement. It can move with a speed of 15 kilometers per hour. Jean Batist was a child of an elementary school age, his speed could not exceed 10 kilometers per hour, and so he could just watch how a black snake dissolves and disappears in the jungle. I such a case he did not even slow down the speed of his running. As this made no sense.

He was strictly prohibited to go inside the jungle by his father, who used to say that the jungle fed the first and killed the second to feed the first. And children had nothing to do there.

And so Jean Batist kept on running. He was a skilful long-distance runner and preferred not to stop without an urgent need, but only to change the intensity of his run.

So he ran without stopping. Until he met a black ribbon on the road. Then he had to act to the most of his abilities as a child.

But Jean Batist was a son of a hunter, of a poacher. His ancestors’ blood was in his genes. The blood of those who had survived because they were faster than death. And he used to grab its tail with a proven movement, to lift it up with a sharp jerk and to hit its head on the ground at full force. Then he hit it again and again. Until the intense and solid flesh of a deadly reptile turned into just limp remains of a legless animal, with a thin, largely stretched body, without movable eyelids.

Many years later, when the tribes of Tutsi and Hutu started to fight for power and the war broke out with Tutsi genocide, in which about a million people were killed, Jean Batist would see how this method of killing poisonous reptiles worked for his own countrymen.

Warriors from the tribe of Hutu annihilated Tutsi with extreme cruelty, sparing nobody. Tutsi soldiers from the patriotic front, who attacked Rwanda, also annihilated every Hutu they met on their way.

They killed children like snakes.

They killed infants in an absolutely terrifying way. They took kids by a leg and hit hard against the ground or a solid object. They hit them until the brains started to flow from a small skull. After that they threw the babies together with their parents in the waters of the Nile to be eaten by huge – five meter long, with the weight of six or seven hundred kilograms – crocodiles-cannibals, which destroyed the bodies in a matter of minutes.

War is always devastatingly disgusting.

But one still had to survive until a war.

It was like that during all seven years of the elementary school. Until Jean Batist had advanced to a secondary school. The education was stationary and the parents had sent their son for another six years to live in a relative analogue of a college. It was when Jean Batist had already turned 13 years of age, that they have bought him the first pair of shoes in his life.

He tried to do his best. Realizing how many hopes his parents associated with his education, Jean Batist, having a natural curiosity and an inquiring mind, demonstrated remarkable achievements in his studies.

The experience gained from the men of his family – his grandfather-medium and his father-poacher – and piled in a neat sandwich with new sciences, had produced a striking contrast.

Jean Batist knew no fear.

To be more exact, he demonstrated some special state, which could be characterized as a rejection of fear. This helped in everyday life as well as in socialization with his peers. From his grandfather-medium he had got a developed intuition as well as an insight. He always felt what the other person had in mind. And as the years went by it became more and more interesting for him to learn the mechanism of functioning of this strange system called the brain. He kept remembering the incident, which occurred to him when he still was at the elementary school and which affected his whole life, becoming probably his determining factor in choosing a profession.

It was the second year of his running to school. Once, when he ran in being a little late after killing another snake, Jean Batist was surprised to find out that there were no classes. All the children had been gathered in a big classroom where there were unknown people in white coats. The children were vaccinated. Jean Batist had never been vaccinated before. But he already knew that a doctor was a being close to God. The most kind, the most compassionate being in the world. This was what his parents always said. This was what everybody around said. And he lived in an absolute awareness of this truth.

When a doctor in a white coat came to him, he started to watch happily and curiously how he would be vaccinated for the first time in his life. The doctor came closer and roughly grabbed Jean Batist’s forearm to turn his back. Before he could resent in surprise, Jean Batist felt the syringe needle entered his shoulder blade and the fire broke out in his body. It happened so quickly that the next moment he was screaming something through tears to the back of the retreating doctor in a white coat. Severe pain entered his shoulder blade as a burning flow, and the worst of all was that this pain started to increase. Lurching from a sudden coming fatigue, he felt the trembling in his weakened legs and wanted to lie down right on the classroom floor.

But the fire greedily devouring the little body was so unbearable that in his last effort, lurching, he got out and ran.

He wanted to cool his body and he ran faster and faster so that the wind blowing from the run could bring some relief.

Thus, not seeing anything around from the pain, he ran until he got home.

Catching the sight of his home he started to slow down and then, already losing his consciousness, slowly sat down in the shade of a tree behind the house. Leaning back against the familiar trunk of the oil palm tree he sat there till dark, wiping away bitter tears of resentment and broken illusions.

This old oil palm tree was his secret friend. He used to come to it sometimes just to worry about something, turning over in his hands the dry leaves, which covered the ground around. Or dreamed about something, slowly touching the amazing bark of this tree. The tree, which had so much changed the life of the whole mankind.

Many years later, already pursuing science, Jean Batist would find out what a catastrophe had struck the whole planet in connection with this ordinary tree, from which the palm oil was produced.

The thing was that for getting this highly profitable product large areas of tropical forest were cut down every day.

The areas of the size of 300 football fields.

Per day.

Every day.