The Nyamwezi porter's words, each syllable laden with the terror of far-off Zanzibar, hung in the cool evening air of Jabari's ikulu like a death shroud. "A great council in a place called 'Berlin'… divided all of Africa amongst themselves on a great map… tens of thousands… cannons that spit fire without end… a new Jenerali… to take your head, Ntemi Jabari, back to his Queen in an iron box!"
Silence, profound and absolute, gripped the assembled council. Hamisi's hand, instinctively clutching the hilt of his captured British sword, was white-knuckled. Lبانجى of the Wanyisanza, who had faced red coats and their rifles with laughing defiance, now stared at the trembling porter with wide, unblinking eyes. Mzee Kachenje's ancient face seemed to crumple, the weight of generations of Nyamwezi history pressing down upon him. Even Boroga, his usual robust confidence deflated, looked ashen. Seke the smith, who had rushed from his forge at the urgent summons, unconsciously wiped soot-stained hands on his leather apron, his gaze fixed on Jabari.
Kaelo, within Jabari, felt a chilling vortex open in his soul. This was it. The Scramble for Africa, no longer a vaguely understood future historical event, but a present, visceral reality, its iron jaws closing around them. His victories against Steiner and Harrison, so monumental in their regional context, now seemed like children's games played in the shadow of an approaching avalanche. The Berlin Conference – he knew its devastating import. It was the formal, cynical codification of Europe's intent to consume an entire continent, a pact amongst wolves to divide the spoils. His fledgling Batembo Kingdom, a beacon of defiance, was now marked for exemplary destruction.
Jabari rose, the movement slow, deliberate. Kaelo willed strength into his limbs, a cold, hard resolve into his voice. He could not afford to show the despair that clawed at him. His people, his allies, looked to him.
"The porter speaks of grave matters," Jabari began, his voice surprisingly steady, cutting through the oppressive silence. "Matters that reach far beyond our borders, far beyond even the lands of our Nyamwezi kin. These sun-haired tribes, it seems, have tired of snapping at each other's heels for scraps. They have gathered like vultures over a dying buffalo and agreed on how to share the feast. And we, my friends, are part of that feast."
A low growl of anger rippled through the assembled leaders.
"This new Jenerali," Jabari continued, "this 'Butcher' they send with his tens of thousands… he comes not just to avenge Harrison, but to enact this great carve-up, to make Unyamwezi a 'British garden' as the porter said. He comes to make an example of us, to show all other African peoples the futility of resistance."
"Tens of thousands?" Lبانجى finally found his voice, a harsh croak. "Against our few? With cannons that spit fire without end? Ntemi, this is not a war, this is… an extermination!"
"It is an extermination if we allow it to be, Lبانجى!" Jabari retorted, Kaelo infusing his words with a desperate fire. "It is a war if we choose to fight! We have faced their red coats before. We have made them bleed. We have sent their generals home in disgrace!"
"But not in such numbers, Ntemi," Hamisi said heavily. "Steiner was a jackal. Harrison, a wounded leopard. This… this is a herd of elephants, with fire in their trunks."
"Then we must be the mountain that breaks their charge!" Jabari insisted, Kaelo's mind racing, searching for a strategy, any strategy, against such overwhelming odds. "We cannot meet them in open battle, that much is clear. Their numbers and their great guns would crush us. But Unyamwezi is vast. Its hills, its forests, its hidden valleys – these are our allies. We showed Harrison that this land itself can fight against invaders."
He turned to Boroga. "Every village, every homestead, from our southernmost allies to the heart of Batembo territory, must prepare. The scorched earth policy we used before? It must now be enacted on a scale never before imagined. Every granary emptied, every waterhole fouled or guarded, every path an ambush. We deny them sustenance. We deny them rest. We make this land a hunger trap."
Boroga nodded grimly, the logistical nightmare already forming in his practical mind.
"Hamisi, Lبانجى," Jabari continued, "our army must transform. No more talk of defending fixed points like the Black Hills against such a force. We become the wind, the fire, the fever that saps their strength. Every warrior becomes a skirmisher, every small band a thorn in their side. We will harass their supply lines – for even an army of tens of thousands must eat, must carry its powder and shot. We will strike at their patrols, their scouts, their isolated detachments. We will make them pay in blood for every mile they advance, for every hour they remain on our soil." Kaelo was outlining a total guerrilla war, a people's resistance.
Seke, who had been silent, finally spoke, his voice rough. "Ntemi, my forges will work day and night. The new rifle barrel… it is strong. I can make more. And the great thunder-sticks from the second sun-haired chief… I believe I can make one of them speak again, if I have enough of the black powder and iron balls."
A flicker of hope. Kaelo seized on it. "Do it, Seke! Every spear, every arrow, every bullet, every cannonball we can fashion is a shout of defiance! And the gunpowder… Kibwana, your knowledge of the earth. We must find more saltpeter, more sulfur. We must make our own thunder!"
Then, Jabari addressed Mzee Kachenje, his voice dropping, filled with a desperate urgency. "Old father, your wisdom is needed now more than ever. The message I sent before, calling for a council of Nyamwezi chiefs, of other great leaders… it was a request. Now, it is a plea, a demand, a cry from a land about to be drowned! You must go again. Travel further, faster than ever before. To Munyigumba of the Hehe, though he scorns us. To the Sukuma chiefs by the Great Lake. To the Vinza, the Ha, any who will listen! Tell them what comes. Tell them the Europeans have declared war not just on the Batembo, but on all of Africa! Tell them that if Unyamwezi falls, their lands will be next. Beg them, bribe them, threaten them if you must – but bring me allies! Bring me warriors! For only if Africa itself stands together do we have even a sliver of a chance to turn back this tide!"
Kachenje, his ancient face etched with sorrow but also a rekindled fire, rose slowly. "I will go, Ntemi. I will carry your words on the swiftest winds. Perhaps now, with the shadow of this great carve-up falling upon all, even the proudest kings will see the wisdom of a united shield."
The days that followed were a blur of frantic, desperate activity. Kaelo pushed Jabari, and Jabari pushed his kingdom, to the very limits of endurance. The evacuation of outlying territories began, a heartbreaking exodus of entire communities, driving their precious livestock before them, carrying what little they could, their faces grim with the knowledge that their homes and fields would soon be given to the torch by their own warriors to deny them to the invaders. Boroga's organization was superb, but the sheer scale of the scorched earth policy was devastating.
Hamisi and Lبانجى worked to restructure the army, breaking down traditional clan units, forming mixed regiments trained in guerrilla tactics, emphasizing speed, stealth, and self-sufficiency. The Nkonde sya Ntemi, now numbering over three hundred, were the hardened core, their captured British rifles a symbol of both past victories and future defiance. They became the instructors, spreading their knowledge of firearms and disciplined skirmishing to the thousands of warriors now flocking to Jabari's banner from every corner of the confederation.
Seke's forges were indeed the heart of the resistance. The old cannons captured from Harrison were painstakingly cleaned, their mechanisms analyzed. Seke, with Kaelo trying to explain the basic principles of metallurgy and ballistics from his fragmented twenty-first-century knowledge, focused on trying to make them functional. He experimented with casting iron balls, with strengthening the barrels, with improving the Nyamwezi gunpowder. The risks were enormous; a faulty cannon could kill its own crew. But the potential reward – even a few working artillery pieces to counter the British guns – was too great to ignore.
Kaelo found himself wrestling with the ethics of his strategy. The scorched earth policy would cause immense suffering to his own people, even if it denied resources to the enemy. The guerrilla war he envisioned would be brutal, attritional, turning every man into a soldier, every village into a potential battleground. Was he, in his desperate bid to resist, becoming as ruthless as the invaders he fought? The thought haunted his sleepless nights. But then he would remember the maps from Steiner's and Harrison's baggage, the casual European arrogance that saw Africa as an empty space to be claimed, its people as mere obstacles or resources. And his resolve would harden. This was a war for survival, and survival had a terrible price.
His attempts to foster literacy and record-keeping took on a new urgency. Juma and his young scribes now worked not just on inventories, but on trying to copy any useful diagrams from the captured European documents, on creating simple coded messages for their runners, on recording the oral promises of allegiance from new allied chiefs. Kaelo knew that if their kingdom fell, some record of their struggle, some testament to their defiance, must survive.
As weeks turned into a month, the first reports from Mzee Kachenje's far-flung diplomatic missions began to trickle in. Most were disheartening. Many powerful chiefs, secure in their own domains, dismissed the threat as exaggerated, or saw Jabari's call for unity as a ploy to extend his own Nyamwezi hegemony. Some were already too deeply entangled with Arab traders or had made their own tentative, naive pacts with other European agents, believing they could play one power against another.
But there were glimmers of hope. A few smaller, more vulnerable chiefdoms, directly in the path of rumored European expansion further south or west, pledged their support, promising warriors and resources. More significantly, a powerful sub-chief of the Hehe, a young, ambitious warrior named Mtwa Mkwawa, who was known to be chafing under Munyigumba's cautious rule, sent a secret envoy expressing interest in Jabari's call for a united front. He could not openly defy Munyigumba yet, the envoy explained, but he was watching Jabari's stand against the British with keen interest. If Jabari could demonstrate that effective resistance was possible, others, even among the mighty Hehe, might be swayed.
Then, as the kingdom held its breath, its people toiling, training, preparing for the inevitable, Juma's scouts brought the news that Kaelo had been dreading, yet expecting. "Ntemi! They have landed! The new Jenerali, a man they call Sinclair, his army is ashore at Bagamoyo! Thousands upon thousands, as the porter said! They are building a great camp, unloading endless supplies from their smoke-ships! They prepare to march inland. Their destination… their scouts ask only of the path to Unyamwezi, to the lands of Jabari Mshindi!"
Jabari stood with his council on the highest kopje of the Black Hills, now their main fortified command post. He looked out over his lands, at the distant plumes of smoke from villages being systematically evacuated and stripped. Seke, beside him, presented a newly forged iron ball, crude but heavy, designed for one of Harrison's repaired cannons. It was a small, defiant symbol of their readiness.
Kaelo felt a profound weariness, but also a surge of unyielding determination. The Great Carve-Up was no longer an abstract political event in a distant European city. Its iron teeth were now, quite literally, on their shores. His desperate efforts to build a kingdom, to forge a shield, were about to be tested by the full might of an enraged empire. This would not be a battle, or even a series of battles. This would be a war for the very soul of Unyamwezi, a war that would determine if an African people, led by a chief with the knowledge of a lost future, could indeed defy the seemingly unstoppable tide of colonial conquest. The storm clouds had not just gathered; they had broken.