“Tumi, my child. It is time you must pack. Tomorrow early the Transport will come for you.”
“Ee, Nkuku,” I answer, but I do not get up.
We are sitting high on the hill, my grandmother and I. With our backs against her reed hut. The ROs offered to build her a house of bricks. They are always offering things, the ROs, every time they visit with their copter blades throwing up sheets of sand.
But grandma refused. She did not want a brick house. Bricks do not smell sweet like reeds. Nor are bricks soft against your skin when you lean back to watch the Afrikan sun set over Swallow Lake.
They are fiery orange now, the sun and the lake both. The water looks alive, dancing and diamond-twinkling with the sun’s light. Even though no birds will ever swoop down, no small buck will ever drink from its deadly edges. And no fishermen will ever cast their lines into its lifeless depths.
“They said you must take only one case, Tumi my child. They say you cannot bring too much weight on their helicopter. Have you decided: will you pack your mother’s shawl?”
But I don’t want to talk about packing. I don’t want to think about leaving. This is my home! Lentswe la Rona, that’s what we call it in Setswana: simply Our Hill. With our small cluster of homes on the flat, tree-less summit: one reed hut and six RO brick houses.
Just as our village in the valley was once called simply Motse wa Rona: Our Village. Back in the days when there was a village. And countless reed and mud houses. Brick ones, too, in Ward Twenty and above.
My friends Neo and Lindiwe are packed already. And excited. They come to join us, greeting my grandmother politely. But she has closed her eyes and doesn’t reply. My grandmother often takes naps now that she is old. And weary from all she has endured.
My friends squat down in the sand so their cheeks glow golden in the sunset rays.
“Just think, Tumi!” says Neo. “Tarred streets and cars. And lots of TV channels to watch, not just boring education programmes. Movies and music videos and soapies! And cell-phones working properly so you can talk to your friends even when you are out! Yes, and there’s a proper school there too, full of other teenagers. Lots of teenagers! Not just three of us like here! I swear: we will never be bored again! There will always be something to do!”
“Even the date we are leaving is special,” adds Lindiwe. “Have you seen? Fifth of February, twenty fifty, right? Just look!”
Lindiwe writes the date with a stick in the sand: 05.02.2050. So I can appreciate its magical properties.
“That must be a sign, right Tumi? It’s a sign! A sign that wonderful things await us. By Christmas-time we will be well settled in Siberia. I bet there will be huge Christmas parties. Imagine!”
I know all about Siberia. Well, about Siberia of Before. Mostly from my grandmother’s pile of school books.
Long ago, Siberia was a desolate region, frozen and uninhabited. Wild wolves roamed its snowy forests. Russian criminals and political prisoners were sent there as the worst punishment.
But Siberia of Today is different. It is not a place of punishment, it is a place of hope and promise and Good Times Ahead. Well, that’s what my Uncle says.
My Uncle took his family there seven years back. They were part of the first evacuations from Swallow Lake. My Uncle sends old-fashioned letters and old-fashioned photos that the RO copter delivers every three months. There is no longer Internet here.
The copter pilot who flies the route is a woman. She comes from the Northern Lands.
She takes off her goggles so I can see the pale blue of her eyes. As if they are made of ice. She shakes out her wild blonde hair. Ingrid, her name is.
She says, “Swallow Lake? Tell me, do you get swallows here? You know, those birds with the lovely long tails? Is this where they migrate to? I see them flying away from my home in England as our winter starts. Do they fly all the way here then? Is that why it is called Swallow Lake?”
She always asks this. But before I can reply, she is already fussing about other things: like offloading food donations. Or collecting the RO engineers for take-off. So I never get to explain why this water has been named Swallow Lake.
My Uncle’s photos show my smiling cousins. They are dressed in thick coats and scarves. The trees behind them have no leaves and no birds. The earth behind them is piled high with snow. The sun seems small.
When I look at the photos, I shiver.
But in his letters, my Uncle always says: Dearest Mama, dearest Tumi, it is not so cold here. Truly! We only have snow seven months of the year. This Global Warming has been very good for us. Climate Change has changed things for the better here in Siberia. The summer can get hot, almost as hot as Botswana. And we are used to the weather now.
In fact, young Tshepo loves the snow. She is a champion cross-country skier. And she has won medals for her ice-skating! And the ROs make sure our homes are well-heated. There are radiators in every room. So do not be worried, Tumi. You will do fine.
We look forward to your arrival. All your cousins are very excited, especially Lesedi. Do you remember Lesedi, Tumi? You used to play skipping games together. There is a great future waiting for you. I know you will be happy and successful.
The warm Afrikan sun shines on my bare arms. Even at sunset its rays are strong and loving. Beside me, my grandmother’s eyes are opening. She smiles and her eyes look brighter, as if she is young again.
“Tell me about Before, Nkuku,” I ask. “Tell me about Afrika Before the Twin Catastrophes.”
I am always asking that. My grandmother was a teacher long ago. Back in 2026 she won a medal: Botswana’s Teacher of the Year.
Neo and Lindiwe leave us. They are not interested in Before. They are interested in tomorrow and what they will wear for the transport.
“Ao, my Tumi! It is good to understand about Before!”
Grandmother smiles at me, then takes up Lindiwe’s stick. She draws a wide shape in the sand. A magical shape, full and rounded like the belly of an expectant mother. It is a shape that makes me catch my breath, makes my spine tingle even though she has drawn it for me so often.
So beautiful!
The sunset sparkles across the sand, shining like tiny diamonds across my grandmother’s map.
Once, here in Botswana, real diamonds hid in the ground. Until giant earth-movers and bright yellow Caterpillars ripped apart the earth beneath us, grabbing for those ice-blue diamonds. Sending them way across the seas to sparkle on the fingers of Northern and Western women with ice-blue eyes and blonde hair. Leaving behind giant craters and gouged valleys and devastated hill-sides.
“That’s how Afrika looked Before,” says my grandmother. She caresses the soil with worn hands. “Mama Afrika, we called her, Tumi. But Mama Afrika was under attack, slowly being destroyed down the centuries. Careless, thoughtless, money-hungry fools created giant holes and craters beneath our very feet. Digging and drilling and gouging out tunnels and shafts. Seeking platinum and gold, copper and cobalt and diamonds. Ripping out anything that had monetary value. Leaving devastation and ruined earth behind them. Forgetting, aah forgetting, that land itself is the greatest value. Beyond price and impossible to replace.”
She has described this so often, her voice barely trembles. And I have listened so often, but still my heart trembles to hear.
“Finally, Tumi, the earth gave up her fight. With tremors and then with earthquakes, she shuddered and sank. Deeper and deeper.”
This was known as the First Catastrophe. It happened some twenty years ago: up and down the sub-Saharan continent, the abused and violated land caved in, with many lives lost beneath the collapsing soil. And when finally the ground stabilised, much of Afrika lay below sea-level.
“And then came the sea,” continues my grandmother, “Flooding Afrika from all sides. Catastrophe beyond bearing!”
This was the Second Catastrophe. It happened back when I was three years old. But no one wrote it into any school textbooks. Everyone was simply trying to survive.
I know the shape of Afrika as it is today. We have Geography lessons on the RO Educational video channel, powered by the RO generator. I try to pay attention while Lindiwe and Neo chatter behind me.
Except now it is called the Afrikan Archipelago. A vast collection of large islands. That once-beautiful shape has been sliced apart from the east, carved up from the west. Dismembered like some muti corpse. By the Gauteng Straits, by the Zambezi Channel, the Okavango Gulf.
Further north, the Congo Ocean spreads far and wide to encircle the Atolls of Nigeria and the Buganda Peninsula, before it joins up with the Nile Sea just north of the Kenyan Isles.
My grandmother looks down and sighs. She is old and she has lived through so much. The orange-brown of her dress is faded so that the traditional patterns barely show. She puts a stone in the southern centre of her map of Before.
She says, “This is where we used to be, here in the landlocked country of Botswana. This is where our village stood. Motswe wa Rona. Far inland. Far from the sea. When I was a little girl, I used to beg my parents: Take me to the sea! I want to play with dolphins and whales and hear the roar of tidal waves. I want to watch big ships sailing. I never imagined that one day the sea would come to me!”
The sun is fast sinking.
I help Nkuku build the night’s fire. Lindiwe’s mother and Neo’s grandfather cook on RO gas stoves. But my grandmother loves her wood-fire. Even though we must walk long distances to collect wood. The smell of wood-smoke rises from her very skin.
We stare into the flames. Nkuku stirs the pot and says, “I will miss you, Tumi. But it is right that you should go. There is nothing for you here, ngwana ke.”
My bag is packed for tomorrow at last, standing dark inside the hut by my blankets. With my mother’s shawl inside. It was the only thing we salvaged. Such a delicate shawl, blue and black and white like our flag, that she wore always on Independence Day. Blue for precious water and blue for precious harmony holding together people of all races.
The shawl came floating towards us on the scum of a wave. Sodden and thick with salt.
I was very young when the sea rushed in. Just four years and a few months. I don’t remember much.
My grandmother had taken me up onto this very hill, Lentswe la Rona, looking for honey hives amidst the thick trees that used to grow here. She sat down suddenly, I remember that. She sat down with her legs and her arms like branches held in front her. Wailing, howling, the most unearthly sound. So that I was afraid.
There was another sound too – a roaring sound that seemed to vibrate out of the very soil. Like the buzz of a million angry bees.
“Did the bees sting you, Nkuku?”
But I remember the fear in my four-year-old heart. I think I realised that something worse than bee-stings was happening.
“Must I fetch Mama, Nkuku? Are you sick?” I buried my face in her chest and she held me there, wanting to protect me from the sight of the devastation below.
I remember the helicopters coming. But that was much later. All these strange-looking people from far away. With their ice-blue eyes, so many of them, when they removed their sunglasses. And snow-blonde hair beneath caps to shield them from the sun’s warmth. Wanting to help us.
“Relocate!” They said that word over and over.
“We will relocate you. Siberia is vast and empty and good for farmlands and cattle now. We will organise, we will arrange it all: communities will be kept together. We will restock your herds. We will provide seed and fertilizer. And everything else you need. Be ready to evacuate!”
Evacuate. They said that word too, over and over.
They said, “This was our fault. The greenhouse gases, the global warming, the melting ice-caps, the rising sea. We are to blame. Yet we were not the ones punished. Afrika rescued us. Now let us rescue you.”
That’s why they call themselves the ROs – the Rescued Ones. Sometimes they call us the SOs – the Sacrificed Ones. But not often.
The ginger-haired Geography teacher on the educational TV, says, “It was our ceaseless demand for minerals that collapsed your continent. The rising sea-levels should have flooded our coasts. But instead, it was your continent that was flooded. And we were spared.”
His eyes under his bushy ginger eyebrows fill with tears. “Yes, spared by your suffering. Spared because Afrika paid the price!”
This is what it says about Global Warming in my grandmother’s school books – printed long ago, even before she was made Botswana’s Teacher of the Year: Global Warming is the process that causes the Earth’s temperature to rise. Human activity plays a large role in this increase. Certain gasses such as Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) hold heat in the atmosphere. This is known as the Greenhouse Effect. This has led to the rising sea-levels.
However some scientists disagree. They insist that the global warming has nothing to do with human activity. Instead it is just a natural phenomenon. The Earth has always moved in cycles of warming and cooling, they say.
“Such nonsense!” declares my grandmother when she reads this. “That is just hopeful thinking and guilty conscience at work.”
Once she took me outside, down on the hill-slope.
“It is a chain of events,” she explained.
My grandmother loves nothing more than explaining. She says she will always be a teacher in her deepest heart. She explains to anyone who will listen. Mostly it is me who listens.
“It is cause and effect, action and consequence, my Tumi.”
There on the side of the hill she drew diagrams in the sand – diagrams with arrows leading to further diagrams. Paper is scarce on our hilltop.
“We humans wanted manufactured goods. And cars and aeroplanes. And electricity. For these, we burned fossil-fuels.”
She snaked an arrow through the lifeless sand. “But that burning filled our atmosphere with gasses. Mostly Carbon Dioxide. And these greenhouse gasses trapped the heat of the sun. And that caused Global Warming.”
Another arrow snaked sideways. “Meanwhile we humans were chopping down trees. Great forests of trees! To make space for factories, for roads, for shopping malls. And what do trees do, Tumi? Trees absorb Carbon Dioxide from of the air. So you can see how that compounded the problem.’”
A warmer atmosphere means warmer seas and therefore higher sea-levels, she told me. The warmer liquid is, the more it expands. Simple Grade Five Science. My grandmother taught Grade Five for many years.
And meanwhile, the extra warmth was melting glaciers too, melting the ice at the North Pole and South Pole. And all that melted ice was flowing into the sea, making its levels rise and rise even higher. It threatened to flood coastal and riverside cities: like New York and London and Shanghai and Sidney and Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town.
I said, “Except all those cities escaped. They were not flooded, not so, Nkuku? Instead the ground of Afrika collapsed until it was below sea-level. So the rising sea flooded us instead. London and New York and all the rest still stand.”
“Yes, they still stand,” sighed my grandmother, looking down on Swallow Lake. Shaking her head, mourning all she had lost.
Lindiwe and Neo join us around the wood-fire. Sharing our evening meal, even though they have already eaten. Chattering between mouthfuls.
“So are you packed and ready, Tumi? And can you imagine how it will be to fly in a copter? And then there will be a Shuttle from Harare Bay. Imagine that! Imagine how high we will be then! We will sleep overnight on the Shuttle, did you know that?”
“Yes, Tumi, and remember: they promised to give us clothes. Warm clothes. Padded jackets and snow-suits. Because it is mid-winter there now. And skates! Imagine! I will learn to ice-skate. I can’t wait! And you, Tumi?”
It is hard to sleep.
The Afrikan moon shining through the hut doorway is full and bright, sheening our blankets silver. Laying gold-dust across the ground. My packed bag is the only patch of darkness.
From far off in the distance come the night-sounds. Deepest inland where the sea never managed to reach. The deep cough of a lion desperately searching for a mate and for supper. A howl of wild dogs and bats squealing. Then a long silence more powerful than sound.
Long ago, my grandmother says, Botswana was famous for its wild-life. Tourists came from far and wide to view the hippo and elephant and lion of our Okavango Delta. We had a Sanctuary where rhino were sent from other countries to keep them safe from poachers.
But I remember only the wildebeest. I was about six by then. And the wildebeest came in herds to drink at Swallow Lake. But they were inland creatures. They didn’t understand about sea water. They drank and drank from the lake, swallowing down the salty water. But it just made them more thirsty. And even more thirsty.
My grandmother tried to stop me from seeing. But I still remember those wildebeest, their stomachs bloated, lying down and dying there on the shores of the lake. Hundreds of them. I still have nightmares.
“It is for the best, ngwana ke.” My grandmother tries to disentangle my arms from round her neck. But still I cling to her, breathing in the wood-smoke from her skin.
Lindiwe and Neo are yelling that they can hear the copter. Already they are rushing down the hill, sliding down through the thick sand, their goodbyes said. With their bags bouncing against their legs.
“Hurry, Tumi! Siberia is waiting!”
It is the woman RO pilot again. Ingrid from England with the blue eyes and the wild blonde hair that seems to have its own separate life.
Lindiwe and Neo are climbing into the copter, shifting into the red plastic seats. Shrieking their excitement. “Siberia, watch out: here we come!”
“Hi there,” says the pilot, checking her clipboard. “Tumelano Lesenyamotse, right? Is that how you pronounce it? So are you ready? If you feel sick, there are packets. And I will check your seatbelt is properly fastened. Don’t be frightened, dearie. It is only a two-hour flight to Harare Bay and then you will transfer to the Shuttle.”
From the top of the hill, my grandmother waves. A small figure in her orange-brown dress beside her yellow-brown hut.
“Hmm, Swallow Lake,” says the pilot as though she has never asked before. “Is this where our swallows migrate to? Is that the reason for its name? I always wondered where they went in winter.”
This time I find the words to explain to her – clear and forceful and loud so that she will be forced to listen.
I stand my ground and say the words I have wanted to say to this Northern woman. For so long now.
“Once, Mma, my village stood here, spread all across this valley, you understand? Motse wa Rona. It spread far and wide, as far as the eye could see. So many huts and neighbours and yards and hedges. And the kgotla in the centre where our chief and our elders discussed. And goats and mealie patches and fields of spinach and butternut. And donkeys wandering down in the dry river bed. And herds of cattle with their cowbells clanking. And anthills and a baobab tree.
“It was a happy, carefree time, Mma. My family surrounded me on all sides. I played with my friends, feeling safe and that I would always be protected and nothing bad would ever happen to me. Even when the earth tremors shook our ground and the grown-ups stood in groups discussing and concerned, they kept their voices low so that we children would not be disturbed.
“But then the sea came, roaring and thundering – even so far from its ocean bed. And it swallowed up the village and my home. It swallowed up my mother. And my brothers and sisters. It swallowed up everything we had and everything we loved and everything we were, you understand, Mma? That is why we call it Swallow Lake.”
I am glad she asked. It has made me understand too. Clearly now.
I don’t wait for her to answer. What is there that she can possibly say? Instead, I pick up my bag that holds my late mother’s shawl and I turn away from the copter.
Neo and Lindiwe yell above the sudden throb of the copter engine. “Girl, are you crazy? Come back, you crazy person.”
But I wave goodbye to them. I smile to show all is well. They are welcome to their new life in Siberia. I hope they will be happy. I hope it will be everything they expect it to be.
Then I trudge my way back through the thick salt-sand. Back towards the hill with its six brick houses and single reed hut and dead trees. Back towards my grandmother. With the sunrise rays of the Afrikan sun warm and loving on my shoulders.
Around me, the sand whips up, stinging against my legs, as the helicopter blades begin to spin and whirl.
But I keep going, heading up the slope of Lentswe la Rona.
I have lost too much already. I refuse to lose any more.
THE END
