Kachamba could fix anything.

In the village of Kitengo, in what was then called Zaire,

there stood a large mango tree that was rumored to be five

hundred years old. Beneath the tree, in the shade, beside the main

avenue that ran through the village, Kachamba would sit on a small

wooden stool and calmly fix whatever was broken. The people of the

village always had something for him to do. They would bring him a

cracked pot, a bent machete, a dead radio, a broken shovel—whatever

it was didn’t matter, for they knew that he could fix it.

When I lived in Kitengo, I used to pass by Kachamba every day on

my way to the valley. He always had a smile and a wink for me,

sometimes even two. It was a very soothing sight to find him beneath

the mango tree. He was somewhere near forty years old and had fine,

weathered features in his face. He was bald up top but had long, thick

sideburns that were steadily turning gray, and he was lean and

muscular despite all the hours he spent just sitting in one place. He

always wore a pair of rust-colored cut-off shorts, never any shirt or

any shoes, and he liked to bury those bare feet in the sand of the road,

creating two perfect little triangular-shaped mounds. A small wooden

toolbox sat below him to his right, and he liked to hum to himself

(always the same melody) while he worked to breathe life into

whatever dead thing lay before him. I once asked him what song he

sang all day long, and he told me it was no song at all; it was just

something he had made up to pass the time.

It was on my second day in the village that I first met him. I had

been sent to Kitengo to help the farmers of the area raise fish, and as I

was walking toward the edge of the savanna, I passed the mango tree

and Kachamba looked up and winked at me for the first time. He had

a flashlight in his hands, and he was busy scraping off rust from the

coils of the battery tube. My assistant was traveling with me, a

friendly young man named Pumbu who told him my name was

Michael Shaw. Pumbu explained to me that Kachamba was the cousin

of the village chief and that if I ever had anything that needed fixing,

he was the man I should see.

It was at that moment that Kachamba began to study me, in the

same way that he studied each item the villagers brought him. His

eyes tightened, and for a long time he did not say anything. I

remember feeling a bit uncomfortable. But then he relaxed, and a

smile crept across his face. He winked at me again.

“Bring me something to fix,” he said.

I said I couldn’t think of anything I had at the moment that was

broken.

“Everyone has something that is broken,” Kachamba said, and

then winked at me for the third time.

I immediately liked him. I told him that I would look around and if

I found something, I would most certainly bring it to him to fix.

I politely excused myself. Pumbu and I went on our way and spent

the afternoon down in the valley speaking with farmers. A group of

four men was interested in setting up a small fish farm, so I spent the

day hiking around in the thick, hot forest trying to locate a creek or

spring that could be used as a potential source of water. It was a full

day’s work, and by the time evening drew near and the light in the

sky had begun to finish its own work in a flourish of scarlet, orange,

and gold, I found myself walking back along the main avenue toward

my home, and back in front of the mango tree, where Kachamba still

sat, humming, and working, and winking at everyone that went by.

And it was not long after that, when night finally fell, that I heard

him scream for the first time.

Pumbu and I had just finished a supper of ground squash seeds

cooked with hot pepper and oil. The sting of the pepper was still on

my lips as the two of us sat behind my house and began to pass a

bottle of Johnnie Walker back and forth. There was no electricity in

the village, so we relaxed by the light of a small petrol lantern,

looking up at a night sky that seemed low enough to touch and held

twice as many stars as I had ever seen before in my life. The whiskey

slid down my throat as I counted my first shooting star. A steady

breeze moved through the palm and banana trees that lined my yard,

and it was such a perfectly relaxing scene, that it was even more

shocking when our little cocoon of serenity was suddenly ripped

wide open by the sound of loud, violent shouting from down the

road.

It sounded at first like a whole group of people in an intense

argument. The voices tripped upon each other so fast and furious that

I would never have guessed they all came from one man.

“What is going on?” I asked as I twisted my body in my chair.

Pumbu took a sip from the bottle and said nothing. Then came a

horrible, anguished, banshee-like scream, slicing through the air like

an arrow from a bow, and flying straight into my ears and to my brain.

It made the hair on my arms stand up.

“Pumbu, what is going on?”

“It’s Kachamba,” Pumbu said.

“Kachamba?” I said, taking a moment to remember whom he was

talking about. “The fix-it man?”

“Yes,” said Pumbu.

“Is he okay? Is someone attacking him? Should we go there?”

“No, no one is attacking him. He is only attacking himself.”

Another scream pierced the night.

“Pumbu, I want to go over there. I want to make sure he is all

right.”

“He is all right.”

“He doesn’t sound all right,” I said and stood up. “Are you

coming?”

Pumbu reluctantly agreed, and the two of us circled the front of

my house and went back out onto the main avenue. The voices (for

again, though they came from one man, there were many) rose in

volume and pace as we drew near.

I could see the glow of a fire up ahead of us, and as we reached the

mango tree, Pumbu motioned for me to stay low and follow him along

a small wall of honeysuckle bushes. We crouched down, and from our

hiding place, I saw Kachamba furiously pacing back and forth in his

yard in front of a small bonfire. He swung his arms wildly in the air as

if he was fighting off something that was falling on him. He dropped

to his knees and then suddenly sprang three feet off the ground. Then

he began to dance, swaying and spinning his body so close to the fire

that I was certain he was going to fall in. All the while he screamed

and shouted deep into the empty black night...