Chapter 2

She is a Prisoner in her Own Home

Note before we get started:

Kahambu - Belgian Congo (Modern DR of Congo)

Manon - Belgium

March 1912

Kahambu cried out as she felt the whip strike her back yet again. It had already been 10 lashes, yet she still wasn't allowed to fall into a blissful unconsciousness because of what she was. Her wounds burned like fire and a thousand bee stings.

Again and again the hippo-skin whip stung her skin, and again and again she cried out; she wasn't allowed to fall asleep, nor was she allowed to die. Kahambu cursed whatever divine being made it so that she had to be the one representing the land and the people of the Congo.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the last strike fell on her back. A man—a white man—undid the ropes binding her arms and she was roughly pulled up. The man shouted something that she couldn't hear over the ringing and the pounding of blood in her ears. Her vision was littered with stars and the edges of her vision were fading from the pain. She had no energy to move her arms and legs, and they felt like lead.

She was shoved and she stumbled into the gentler arms of another, likely one of her own. This person, careful not to touch her back, gently helped her somewhere that she was unaware of. She was laid on a coarse cot on her stomach. Gentle murmuring soothed her and her tears of pain. Something cool was pressed onto her back and she was finally able to fall asleep from exhaustion.

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Her back, fresh with still-bleeding wounds screamed in protest, but Kahambu did not—could not—stop harvesting the rubber sap, otherwise she would be whipped again, or worse: have her hands cut off. Too many of her countrymen had fell victim to such treatment already. She saw many of them with stubs on their arms or whip lashes on their back. She glanced up at the despicable white men. They didn't have the right to enslave her people like this! They couldn't speak any of the many languages she knew: Instead, she was the one that was forced to learn the white men's language, an ugly language known as French.

The white men came from a land far away that they called Belgium. They came, "employing" men and women from her villages, and then treating them like slaves. Kahambu could feel the pain of her people, yet she couldn't identify the cause of their pain until they came for her. She could still remember the fateful day when white men came to the village she was staying in. They spoke with the chief, and tricked him into unknowingly selling her, and many of the people in the village, for merely some pieces of cloth. And from there, her time in hell began.

When Henry Stanley, a white explorer, first came to her land, she didn't know that he was here to claim the lands for the king. Maybe if she simply didn't allow him to go through the Congo, she wouldn't be where she was now.

She heard that the person behind her enslavement was a man named Leopold II, the supposed "king" of Belgium. Hah! A real king wouldn't allow his people to treat others like this.

Furthermore, she heard stories of a young woman from the men. She had eavesdropped on the white men. From what Kahambu gathered, the woman was named Manon, who essentially was Belgium, much like how Kahambu herself was the Congo. Manon was supposedly a kind woman with a kindhearted personality. The white men described her as having a sweet voice, blond hair, and green eyes.

Kahambu could not understand why someone like Manon would allow such atrocities to happen, if she really was as nice as the men said. Why would she allow her king to kill, mutilate, and torture her? Why did she enslave Kahambu's people? Why? Why? Why?

Kahambu knew that Manon could not be the nice person that she heard stories about. Perhaps she was actually a devil in the form of a woman. Or maybe the kindness was merely a facade, and she really was an kongamato wearing a human's skin.

The men said that they needed this land for the sake of pride and glory, so that Belgium could be strong and respected. They called this imperialism, but the concept was foreign to Kahambu. All of the nations like Belgium apparently followed the idea of taking other countries for their own benefit. Could they not find their own land, or use their own resources? Why must they take the land that belonged to her and her brothers and sisters? What was the point of having this much land?

They believed her to be naive, stupid, and uncivilized. That wasn't the case. She wasn't ignorant to the horrors of the world. She could have easily learned about that the machines and weapons that the white men seem to rely on so much had they bothered to teach her. At the moment, she was easily more civilized than any of the white men on her land were right now.

Kahambu was abruptly awoken from her musings by the cries of a child. A young girl was being dragged across the camp by the white men towards the cutting board. Her mother was begging the men for her daughter, but was beaten aside and left lying on the dirt ground, tears streaming down her dark cheeks.

This was a daily scene. The first time it happened, Kahambu was punished badly for trying to stop it. She has since learned her lesson. However, every time Kahambu saw something like this happening, a little bit of her cracked. Today, that final blow was dealt, and she dropped her rubber when the girl's arms were forced down onto the cutting board.

Kahambu sprinted towards the white men despite her legs' protests and with roar, she tackled the man with the axe just before he brought it down on the poor child's hands, and began pounding her calloused fists into his face.

A blow to the side her head knocked her off the man she had attacked.. Before she could recover and get back up, another blow came down on her. She raised her arms above her head in an attempt to block the blows, but they proved useless as her arms were soon broken.

She started crying. She couldn't help it. The pain was too much. She could feel each blow being dealt to her break another piece of her. She could feel the agony that her people were going through. And she couldn't handle it. She was begging them to stop. Yet they would not stop.

She hated it. She hated everything about it. She hated Stanley for coming to her land and claiming it for another country, a country that wasn't even his. She hated the pain that every blow to her body came with. She hated the men that beat her. She hated the men that had practically bought and enslaved her people. She hated the rubber and ivory that she was forced to harvest. She hated being treated like a prisoner in her own home. She hated Leopold, who was the one who dealt her injuries. She hated the country of Belgium and she hated the idea of Imperialism. And most of all, she hated Manon, for allowing all of it to happen.

She was dragged to the cutting board, still weeping. She screamed as the ax came down on her hands.

Weee! Another chappie up! A bit of a short one. I know this is probably not something that most people were expecting, but I had a rather large reserve of info on me, so I might as well put it to use. But not to worry! I've currently written out several more chapters on paper (maybe we might see some Russia, or France, or Spain, or Japan. Who knows?) that I will be transferring and editing soon.

Once again, thank you to my awesome beta, bubblesodatea, who this time taught me a little bit about formatting. (And screamed at me about spaces :))

Historical Notes (Aw geez, where do I start):

The Belgian Congo was a colony of Belgium from 1908 - 1960. They were taken by King Leopold II, also known as "The Butcher of Congo," because of the atrocities he committed when he colonized the Congo.

There were many terrible things that happened in the Belgian Congo before the Belgian government seized the Congo from Leopold, who covered it up with the story of colonizing in order to bring religion to the Congolese. The Congolese would have to harvest things like rubber sap, ivory, and other resources. If they did not fulfill a daily requirement, they could be beaten, whipped, or have their hands cut off.

Leopold never once stepped in the country of Congo, which is why here, Belgium never makes an official appearance.

The person who signed the treaty between Leopold and the Congolese chiefs was none other than a British man named Henry Stanley, the one who found Dr. David Livingstone. He was actually not told that Leopold was going to claim the lands, who had approached him under the disguise of an international scientific and philanthropic organization.

A kongamato is a type of monster from Congolese legends. It attacks humans that provoke it and resembles a pterodactyl.

Imperialism, which was very prominent in the late twentieth century, is a policy in which a state extends its power and influence on another state (one good example is with Great Britain and India.)