GUARDIANS OF THE WATER

Chapter 2

Water is life.

Beware the water.

Now her life was made entirely of water.

She thought she was used to water. Before. When the Intertropical Convergence Zone pushed the bi-yearly rains through Wakanda, sometimes it seemed like there was more water coming from the sky than flowing through the rivers. Only a moment outside her home would leave her wetter than a swim in the lake and she felt like she had to swim through the mud to reach the gates to the city. She would complain about the mud and the wet and then just as quickly forget about it all and complain about the dust and the heat when the dry season came again. Then, the clouds rolled back from the shallow blue of the sky and stayed away long enough for the dirt to crack and splinter. Yet, the rain never stayed away long. It was the rain which made Wakanda come alive and forced the green to conquer the red clay of the soil.

Even during the height of the dry season, Wakanda never went thirsty. Lake Katunguru dominated the landscape of Birnin Zana. The seasonal rains rushed off the Rwenzori mountains to swell the Rift Valley Lakes and feed into the headwaters of the Nile. She loved to sit by the lake and watch the sun reflect off its surface, turning it green and gold and red and grey. She would sit and wonder what mood the sun would send the water into each day and whether she would be able to see her feet below the surface or if there would be too much mud and silt.

"Water is life," her baba explained, in one of his many lessons.

She remembered that one trip to Shire, Ethiopia. It was the dry season there and all the terraced highlands were browned and seemed to grow nothing but rocks. She went to the market in the center of town. Vendors sat under their umbrellas in their beautifully embroidered white kemis. They lay out their wares to sell, just as the vendors in the market in Birnin Zana. Yet, there was so little to buy. There, the tomatoes grew so small they could hardly be called tomatoes and the carrots were as long as her finger and just as wrinkled. She had never imagined life without constant water. In Wakanda, if someone discarded a mango seed, they might return to find a tree growing. Jackfruit trees and papaya trees grew wild, free for anyone to forage from. Not in Shire. They had to wait for the harvest and walk long distances for water.

Sometime after they returned from Ethiopia, he had taken her to nearby Uganda. He forced her to spend three hours meditating at the confluence of the waters. The air hummed with geckos and insects and sank heavy with moisture cast out by the turbulent turning of the waters. The sky gradually turned rose against the relentless green and red of the land. Still, he had her wait. The water roared through her head until it sank into her bones. It beat out a rhythm that reminded her of the King's Drums and the footsteps to the Dance of the Panther. Still, he made her wait. When the sky turned violet blue overhead and the flashing of distant lightning burst far away, on some other edge of the great expanse of Nyanza beyond, only then did he let her come away.

"Dada, this land is sacred," he told her. "This is where the Nile is born and where Nyanza begins her flow to the Mediterranean. On its journey, the Nile carries a bit of each of the land it rushes through, sustaining land far away with our richness. This place, these waters, these are life.

"Remember, water grows the maize, millet, and cassava for the farmers' harvest. Water feeds the wild fruits and grows the grasses that feed the herds and flocks. Without water, even the mighty lion will eventually die from hunger. Water is life.

"Water is also power. Not only do these waters generate electricity but they connect us to our neighbors. Three hundred million people rely on the Nile for water. He who controls the water, controls the people and the land. In our Ancestors' Days, it was across Nyanza that the Kingdom of Buganda sent their war canoes and it was along the rivers that the Arabs and Ottomons and Europeans crept towards us, swallowing up our neighbors as they went.

"Wars over water continue to spill blood. Fights over water sources are bitter and fierce. When our neighbors build their dams, our own currents shift and change. When our neighbors war, their corpses flow to our banks and feed our crocodiles. Their refuse and waste will be tasted in our rivers and eaten in our fish because no matter how high we build our walls, Wakanda cannot keep the water out. No matter how great our strength, we still must share our water with our neighbors.

"Remember, though, that water is also death. Water carries cholera and typhoid and malaria. Each year, these waters claim lives from capsized boats and hidden, hungry jaws. Even the wild creatures must risk their lives to reach water. When the dry season comes to the grasslands and the rivers and streams dry up, it is along the banks of the waterholes that the lions lay in wait. To seek out water is to risk the jaws of the crocodile, but to avoid the water is to court certain death.

"Water is the strength of Wakanda as much as it is our weakness. Our palace, our city, they are built along the lake and keep our people vibrant and our land green. When a king is chosen, we go to the Coronation Falls and the waters help us choose our king.

"You must honor our waters as much as you fear them. When you were born, you came with your mother's waters and then you were washed in the waters of your people. When you die, your body will be washed with the water of our land one final time before you are wrapped in our funeral shrouds and buried for the rain to soak you forever after. Listen to these waters. Let them remind you of your place in the world and let them keep your head from growing too tall for your shoulders."

She couldn't do anything but be reminded of the waters these days. These were not the waters that fed crops or antelope. These were waters inhabited by silvery-scaled creatures with fins and tales and slimy skin. She could not drink it. She could swim in it, but it could not sustain her. Her drinking water came from the land beyond her cave, the land she only caught glimpses of through the gaps in the rocks overhead.

While she sat beside the salt waters, she thought of old stories. There was a tale of a fisherman who caught a woman of the water, part fish, part human. He married her but she made him swear he would not tell any the secret of her identity. He did not keep his promise and so she disappeared, back into the water from whence she came.

Sometimes Shuri felt a bit like that fish-woman – stolen from her home and forced to live in a place she was never meant to be. Was it worse to be a sea creature on land or a land creature in the sea? She could not say she would prefer one to the other.

There was another story of a similar creature- half man, half fish, which dwelt in the wells and waters of humans and lay in wait to steal their souls. If any unfortunate woman or child went to the well at midday, the creature would grab their shadow and so eat their soul.

Sometimes, when she thought of her captor king, she was reminded of this stealer of amphibious snatcher of souls.

It was said that water drew spirits to it as effectively as thirsty zebras. Spirits inhabited the water, for good and ill. Water was never inanimate. It always had a force, a spirit, a personality. It carried grudges and favors. If displeased, the water would drown the person trying to cross it. To avoid this, coffee beans were cast into the water at a crossing. To gain blessings, offerings of food and animals could be left on the banks in hopes of finding favor. The memory of water was long and outlasted the lives of those born and raised along its banks. It was said, in the roar of the currents, sometimes they would hear the voices of their Ancestors. If they listened close enough, they would hear tales of what happened before them and be reminded of what they had almost lost.

When Namor emerged from the shadowed banks of the river that night in Wakanda, he appeared every inch embodiment of a water spirit. In his threats and bribes, he requested offerings from Wakanda that rivalled even those of the darkest, most blood-thirsty of spirits. He came by the water and it was his power. He would wield the water as a weapon of death, with all the silence, patience, and suddenness of a crocodile. He was a dangerous spirit of the water which lurked in the shadows and waited to devour the peoples of the land unfortunate enough to cross his paths.

In the days since she had arrived in Talokan, she decided he was even more intimidating than a crocodile. No, he was more like the Mukunga M'bura, the "Snake-Rain." The Kikuyu rainbow serpent was said to dwell in the water and his reflection in the sky created the rainbow. Just like Mukunga M'bura, Namor stretched from the waters to the sky and his reflection was as awe-inspiring as the rainbow. Just like the rainbow serpent, Namor wished to devour all the herds and homes and families of the humans who crept too close to his watery dwelling and he would swallow them all without mercy. This left Shuri, like the cattle-herding boy in the tale, to be the sole survivor of the snake's wrath, Shuri was left alone to grow into adulthood and determine whether to slay the snake or not. Would she pierce him through the finger only and so rescue her kin from his belly or would she choose to pierce him through the heart and end his evil for all time?

Yet, that was just a story – words and images shared by the elders around the fire and near the banks of the river. Somehow it didn't feel like just a story anymore. Now, she felt like she was trapped in the elder's stories and she didn't know how to escape from the familiar words or the worlds of the spirits.

Namor was flesh and blood. He laughed and wept and kept a pet orca and despised coconut. Still, she thought of him as part spirit, too. How else could he both fly and swim? How could he dwell in the waters, air and on land? He was something else, something more, something that belonged to no worlds and yet could survive in all of them. Whatever else he was, Shuri knew for certain that he was dangerous. As tumultuous as the waters which he claimed as his home and just as hard to navigate.

Namor summoned her every seven days without fail. She counted at first. Light, dark, and light again. Seven times and then his messenger came and brought her a new dress. Each garment appeared finer and more elaborate than the last. Coral and jade, abalone and gold, turtle shell and whale bone, were all sewn into ever-more complicated designs of fish and whales and wings.

Every time, Namor showed her another mural – both old and new and filled with bright images of people and animals and places only he recognized. He loved to paint almost as much as he loved to sing and he delighted in having a new audience for his performance. They were beautiful murals, though the corresponding tales sometimes made her blood run cold. When he displayed his latest creation, his voice grew low and deep until his tale became almost a song. Then he spoke of times past and events yet to come, his life in under the waters and his experiences above waters. He told of what he could see from the very pinnacle of the clouds to fantastic sights in the deepest of ocean trenches.

Sometimes, when his words dwindled, he melted into song instead. The melodies were woven with whale song and sea bird calls and words of languages none but the sea remembers. Shuri wished she knew what they were about, but when she asked him, he said they were the songs of Mami Wata and only Mami Wata could translate them.

Then, he invited her to share a meal. There, in his personal temple filled with oxygen and new images and stories, the pair feasted on foods from the land beyond the waters. There were papadzules and poc chuc and x'catic relleno. Then there was the fruit – the sweet, juicy, tangy bits of soil and earth that made her long all the more to see the trees they grew on. The best food she ate each week came from those times and she looked forward to the pungent tastes and spices almost as much as she did her strange companion.

He rarely asked her about her own home. He never let her paint her own mural or share her songs. In Namor's sanctuary, it was a hallowed space dedicated entirely to himself and she was another neophyte brought in to learn to worship him properly. Once he had completed his weekly rituals to gain her awe and admiration, then he turned to her and asked her the exact same question, every time.

"Princess Shuri, will Wakanda ally with Talokan to war against the peoples of the land?"

"No."

"Then you will remain until you change your mind."

"Then I will die here."

"As you wish."

Then the guard took her back to her ocean prison, took back her dress, and left her to dream of snakes and wings and bright color paint and whale songs. Sometimes, she thought it might all be an unceasing cycle of dreams. Perhaps, she was the one who had fallen into the underworld and now dwelt with the Dead. It would explain the cerulean skin of her captors and the immortal tenor of Namor's regime. Maybe, if she sought hard enough, she could find her brother and return to the land of acacias and baobabs and leave the seaweed far behind her.

Each morning, she woke and all she could see was water.

ooooooo

Author's Notes:

So very honored by the response this has gotten so far!

Ok, here's my first set of nerdy author explanations to explain my "theory" of Wakanda:

A.) Location: Wakanda is shown in some cases to be in north western Kenya on Lake Turkana. But, really, who wants to live in the middle of a desert? The Wakandan kingdom doesn't strike me as pastoralist nomads so we will leave the Turkana and Samburu there and stick with its alternate location. In these cases, it is shown somewhere in western Uganda. We will go with this option and put Wakanda to western Uganda/eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Theoretically, an unconquered, uncolonized kingdom of Wakanda maintained their hold during the Scramble for Africa so they maintained their land (from about Masaka to Nebbi on the Uganda side into a good chunk of the Maiko National park on the side of the DRC. This leaves them with the Rwenzori Mountains, Lake Albert, Lake George (Katunguru) Lake Edward, and a good bit of the White Nile. I envision the Wakandan capital of Birnin Zana to be near the Rwenzori Mountains, not far from Kasese.) Essentially, Wakanda is where the kingdoms of Ankole and Bunyoro were. I should note I pull cultural ideas from multiple tribes in East Africa but focus primarily on the interlacustrine region. I try to use local geographic names instead of the names of random European monarchs.

B.) Language: in the Black Panther movie, they speak Xhosa, a South African language. While the Pan-African celebration of Africa can be an adventure, I'm trying to ground Wakanda into a particular cultural/geographic region. The fictional country of Wakanda is over 2,200 miles away from where Xhosa is spoken. Therefore, I am going to use Swahili as my African language of choice (also a Bantu language but a commonly spoken one across East Africa). Technically Swahili doesn't even make sense to be their main language either as it's a trade language that developed from a mixture of Portuguese, the coastal Bantu, and Arabic.. It is more likely each distinct "tribe" in Wakanda would have their own dialect, unless they are bound by their own distinct language (most likely Bantu or Nilotic). Really, I suppose I should use Luankole or Lunyoro or Luganda but I am going to explain this away by saying they adopted Kiswahili as a formal trade language and a language for use between neighboring peoples and they speak this in formal/political situations (such as around the palace and by the "Golden Tribe"). At the same time, each "tribe" maintains their unique languages as well (though most people speak four or more languages).

FYI, I refer to Oxford Reference's account of the Kikuyu tale of Mukunga M'bura. I should also mention, I tap into John Roscoe's 1911 book about the Baganda often for inspiration thought I almost fell down a rabbit hole reading Speke's account of his explorations today. I pulled myself out of the rabbit hole in time to remind myself I was supposed to be writing not reading. Now, here we are.

Thanks so much for reading!