Chapter 96: Lament of the Northwest
September, and a light drizzle fell from the sky over northwestern East Africa.
Bukoba, a small fishing village on the western shore of the Great Lake (Lake Victoria), lay under the rule of the Kingdom of Karawi.
Gentle ripples lapped at the damp soil along the lakeshore, while fine rain fell into the lake, stirring no waves.
Though the sun had not yet risen, a faint glow from the horizon lit the western skies above Bukoba.
A misty haze mixed with drizzle and a cold wind brought a chill. The dim, overcast sky lent Bukoba Village a sorrowful stillness.
Bukoba retained its primitive architectural style. Entering the village, one could see its perimeter wall made of woven vines and mud, covered in moss and worn down by wind and rain.
Inside, vine and branch-built half-domed huts stood just over a meter tall. Their roofs were thatched with banana leaves and other foliage for wind and rain protection.
In the center was a ritual platform, encircled by stones of varying size, used for village gatherings and ceremonies.
Behind it stood the chief's and elders' residences, slightly larger than the others but otherwise unremarkable. This was the shape of the village.
Home to a hundred or so residents, Bukoba survived primarily on fishing, relying on the abundant freshwater resources of the Great Lake.
The villagers carved dugout canoes from massive tree trunks using axes, shaping them into two-to-three-meter-long vessels.
With years of fishing and hunting experience, the Bukoba people were excellent swimmers. They worked in tandem from their homemade canoes, using rudimentary fiber nets to haul in local fish.
Fishing sustained the village, and surplus catches could be traded with nearby tribes for pottery, salt, and other daily essentials.
...
In the past, Bukoba had been lively. Smoke rose from kitchens, men fished while women handled housework, and on important holidays, the chief and elders would organize celebrations.
Everyone gathered around the fire to sing and dance. The villagers lived fully and freely.
This was typical of many African villages: so long as they had food and drink, they lived with little worry.
War, of course, changed that.
In Africa, tribal conflicts were most intense in West Africa.
After centuries of slave trading, tribes were eager to capture or kill their enemies.
Western colonizers could provoke wars between West African tribes with just a handful of trinkets—sometimes over something as trivial as a glass bead.
Such asymmetrical exchanges took advantage of the region's low productivity, lack of knowledge, and deep superstition.
East Africa once experienced similar manipulation, notably by the Zanzibar Sultanate and Arab traders.
But once the East African colony was established, these subtle tactics were abandoned in favor of blunt-force methods.
There was no need to trick ignorant natives like children.
Unlike West Africa, East Africa was sparsely populated. The colonial government could take care of native resistance directly.
Thus, large numbers of East African natives were driven into the northwest.
Despite East Africa's vastness, the native population still numbered in the millions.
Suddenly, the northwest was overwhelmed.
If a land could only support five people, but five more arrived, five had to disappear for the rest to survive.
The colonial government's method was essentially fueling conflict—openly expecting the two sides to destroy each other.
Bukoba was one of the villages devastated by this policy.
As the East Bantu tribes spread, they reached Bukoba.
The villagers, responding to the kingdom's call and to defend their home, fought fiercely against the invaders.
With help from neighboring Karawi villages and their knowledge of the terrain, Bukoba's residents launched guerrilla attacks.
But the Bantu tribes, hastily expelled by the colonial government, came without supplies.
As a hunting people, they didn't store food, and survived only by pillaging as they marched into Karawi.
They couldn't settle without Karawi's approval.
The southern Karawi nobles, having suffered first, hated the Bantu invaders with ferocity.
The enmity between the two sides was irreconcilable. The war turned into a fight to the death.
And the longer it dragged on, the deeper the hatred grew, and the more brutal the violence became—devastating the northwest.
Bukoba survived the first wave of attacks, but the Bantu tribes kept coming, like an unending tide from East Africa.
The village was repeatedly caught in the crossfire until it was destroyed—only an empty shell remained.
The Bantu did not stay.
Not being lakeside dwellers, they lacked the fishing skills to live like Bukoba's people.
So they continued their push northward.
Now, they faced not just a few villages, but the united armies of the northwestern kingdoms.
The war was far from over.
Their advance units were already approaching Buganda and Turou.
The northwest had no real defenses—low productivity meant no fortresses or strongholds.
The Bantu cut through southern territories easily, now threatening the north.
And Bukoba?
Its people lay dead in the wilderness.
No one came to bury them.
Scavengers feasted on the corpses.
The vibrant, lively village had become a ghost town—slowly reclaimed by nature.
Its vine-and-mud homes would soon rot away, and no one would remember the pain suffered here.
This war, like so many in the region, would go unrecorded, with even its last evidence erased by wind and rain.
And the true culprit? The East African colonial government.
Whether it had directly participated or not, it had set the whole thing in motion.
The northwestern kingdoms and the Bantu tribes, though locked in deadly combat, were both victims.
Whoever won, the real beneficiary was still the colonial power.
The war was just one part of the tragedy.
Famine from abandoned land, disease from rotting corpses, and contaminated water only accelerated the population collapse.
Only the northern regions of Buganda and Turou were still hanging on, their people barely surviving.
Across the northwest—tens of thousands of square kilometers—the south was a battlefield, and the north trembled on the edge.
The entire region cried out in agony, yet no one in the world heard it.
Only the East African colonists, ever greedy, continued to eye the land like a predator.
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