it were the reporters, microphones and notepads dangling from straps around their necks. With their dull stares and occasional flicks of the hand, they looked like a dazed herd of cows.
Ba Nkoloso led the cadets through their drill exercises: jumping up and down and back and forth, clapping and singing. He paced in front of them, his voice booming vigorously: ‘Nkoloso watemwa malaila wateka nsongo tapema.’ He had revised the Bemba warrior song to include his name. Matha wondered if the reporters had any notion of what the cadets were singing, or of its relevance to the fight for freedom. Probably not. These men didn’t seem to grasp the political situation here at all. They kept asking the same obvious questions.
‘Mr Nkoloso.’ A British reporter with a goatee stepped forward now, the camera rattling on its legs behind him. ‘I understand that you have a rocket. Where is it?’
‘Yes,’ Ba Nkoloso said with his wry smile. He pointed at Cyclops I in the distance. ‘That is my rocket, and with it, we will go to the moon.’
‘And who will be the first Zambian on the moon?’
‘You have come at a most propitious moment,’ Nkoloso grinned. ‘We have just decided which of our astronauts will have the place of honour in the space capsule for our historic moon shot. Mr Godfrey Mwango has demonstrated an outstanding ability to walk on his hands.’
‘Walk on his hands, you say?’
‘That is the only way a man can transverse the moon, given the gravity conditions.’
The reporter nodded, his neck tendons straining like tree roots.
‘Mr Mwango has also passed the acid test of any aspiring astronaut,’ Ba Nkoloso continued, ‘simulated recovery from a space capsule following a landing on water. A fearsome test for a young man who has only just learned to swim! We must now prepare him for our anti-gravity drill.’ Ba Nkoloso bowed slightly and marched over to the training drum.
The reporter turned and spoke directly into the camera. ‘To most Zambians, these people are just a bunch of crackpots and from what I’ve seen today I’m inclined to agree.’
Matha giggled at his nasal voice. What did he mean, cracked pot? Something broken and useless? Or something sharp and dangerous, something that explodes on the fire like a bomb? These bazungu all spoke a strange and unwieldy English, an English that brokered no other tongue. Matha could barely understand them, especially the American, who was now beckoning her over to his permanent spot under a thorn tree.
When she reached his station in the shade, he smiled at her, sweat hanging from his upper lip like a veranda after the rain. He introduced himself – Arthur Hoppe – and asked her questions with his hilly, hairy accent. Her name (Matha, she spelled it out carefully), her age (sixteen), her level of education (Form I). His next questions were harder. She ran each one through a sort of thought experiment: What would Ba Nkoloso say? What would be best for the Academy?
‘I hear you have been training to go into orbit. Is that so?’
‘Yes, please,’ she said politely. ‘It is so. I am the one going to Mars.’
‘You’re way ahead of us!’ Hoppe grinned. ‘We don’t have any girls at NASA.’
‘Oh-oh? Is it?’ she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand.
‘Miss Mwamba,’ he leaned in confidentially, ‘I hear you have been raising twelve cats as part of your training? What is their function?’
‘Yes, please. They are to give me companionship on the journey. But they are also’ – she took a deep breath to get the pronunciation right – ‘technological accessories.’
‘Technological accessories?’
‘Yes, please. When I arrive on Mars, I will open the door of the rocket and I will drop the cats on the ground. If they survive, we will know that Mars is fit for human habitation.’
Hoppe laughed. ‘And what will you and your cats do on Mars?’
This answer she had memorised: ‘Our telescopes have shown us that planet Mars is populated by primitive natives. A missionary will accompany me on my trip but the missionary must not force Christianity on the Martians if they do not want it.’
Hoppe squinted at her, his smile wavering. He cleared his throat. ‘And do you find space training thrilling, valuable or merely routine?’
She thought for a moment. ‘It is a bit worrisome.’
‘Miss Mwamba, how did you become an astronaut? When did you meet the director of the…’ he checked his notebook, ‘Zambia National Academy of Science and Space Research?’
‘And Philosophy,’ she added. ‘Me, I have known Ba