"The Page" by John S LES, part 3

And now Part 3…."The Page"

“The Page”

By John S LES ©

Initially it was my infatuation for Jamila that motivated me to learn about the continent of Africa and even her mysterious ancestral country, Bustani.   But as the school year continued I soon realized that my high school’s world geography class was not going to be sufficient enough to teach me everything I needed to know about my girlfriend’s native land.  My being African American didn’t give me any special inside knowledge or connection.  Having never been overseas, I was on the outside looking in.  I was above all, still above all very much so American and needed to educate myself outside of my classroom and my native culture.

I started out scouring the Internet and library to find information on Bustani and Africa in general.  It was this research that began to really open my eyes to a place I thought most people who live in the Western hemisphere think that they generally know about.  We don’t.  In addition, my father had me have a sit down with a NYU Economics professor who was from originally from Uganda, who did some interpretation work at the UN.  Dr. Peter Kavuma was fluent in 6 different African dialects, including Swahili which was the main language spoken in Bustanti.  He would later introduce me to three colleagues of his over dinner at a restaurant not too far from the UN.   One was from Uganda like him.  He also worked in the UN as an interpreter.  Another was a history professor at City College who was originally from Kenya, and the third was a math professor from Nigeria.

Over the course of the dinner the four men gave me a short but informed lesson on how vast Africa was.  Using a laptop they condensed a college level course on African studies into the near two and a half hour dinner.  Africa is the largest continent on the face of the earth.  It is so vast that you could fit the continental United States, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, the Netherlands, India and China inside of it.  It has 6 time zones and 9 different climates.  We only have 4 time zones and 5 climates here in the US.

Africa was rich in most of the world’s most precious resources, however every region is managed so differently.  Abundance of one set of resource in one area could mean a shortage of the same resources in another region.  Most of their best resources still distributed out to other parts of the world.  Moreover, there are strong countries, adjacent to economically weak countries, which boarded some corrupt countries.  All of these countries interwoven with one another on the same continent.  There was not enough unity amongst the 47 countries within Africa to jointly alleviate and balance out the populations that suffered from drought, famine, poverty and disease.

That was where Bustani came in.  It had been basically untouched and isolated from Western Imperialism.  Despite this, they learned from the Eastern and the Western economies the past century and developed some immense economic vehicles through their vast resources and small but powerful military.  All of this money and power despite their small populace of only five million – the actions they took would be usually followed by many surrounding African countries.

Bustani is located just off the coastal border of Somalia and Tanzania.  They were monotheistic, but strangely had a mystical worship of lions, leopards and cheetah’s.  They were composed of two specific ethnic groups, the Simba Mtu and the Tumbili Mtu, respectively translated as the lion man and monkey man.  The Simbu were the ruling class and the Tumbili were the lower, semi enslaved working class.  They made up 3 million of the countries 5 million and were generally shorter in height and much thinner.  The Simba’s, who numbered a little over 1.5 million, were noted for their extremely robust, taller and very athletic, dark skinned physiques.  They practiced a mystical style of martial arts that imitated the movements of lions, cheetahs and leopards.  They were easily identified by their phenomenal physiques and green eyes. 

After the American hostage rescue and the ensuing civil war several years ago, some western scientists via UN relief groups were able to finally enter the country and discover that the zambarau berry that the Simbas harvested and ate exclusively for themselves reacted in their body chemistry like a super steroid.  The same berry did not affect the Tumbili, or any other ethnic group quite the same way.  It appeared that over centuries the Simbas metabolism had an aggressive adaptative reaction to the progesterone, androstenedione and estriol found in the berry.  Even their green eyes, normally a recessive trait, had become a dominant gene, as they never mated outside of their ethnic group.

That was my education on Africa and Bustani.  It was information that I thought I would never need, but I was wrong.

January 2011 in New York City was marked by record snow in so short a period of time.  It had even interrupted me from spending a weekend down in Virginia, staying with Jamila’s family.  We had to hold off visiting one another until the weather cleared and we got through the early part of the spring.  But Jamila seemed distracted when I spoke of waiting to the spring to visit her again.  Then to pick her spirits up, since she already knew I had plans to apply to Georgetown University – I dropped a surprise on her.  I told her that I had applied for becoming a Page for my local congressman for the summer.  That my father had pulled some strings and I filled out an application and it was looking good that I might get the job and stay with relatives in nearby Washington, DC for the whole summer.  She and I would only be a short drive away instead of a 4 or 5 hour car ride.  However, instead of being surprised, she became visibly upset.  She ended our conversation and was unreachable for several days.  Then I would call her house and her parents would barely speak to me.  All they would do is give me the old “Sorry Isaiah, Jamila is not able to talk to you at this time.  Try back in a few days or wait until she calls you.”

The first couple of days it didn’t bother me.  I was angry at her reaction to me spending the summer near her.  Then the next several days it began to bug me, to the point that my three best friends at school began to feel sorry for me and my depressed behavior.  My three best friends in school are Tanya Woods, William Chin and my “proud to be atheist” friend Zachary Silverman.  It just so happened that the four of us became good friends since our freshman year, when we all joined the computer science club.  We maintained our Geekdom standing by refining our computer skills over the years.  We could hack into a few good secure places if we wanted to.  Instead we used our formidable skills to help the club maintain it’s creative superiority in Manhattan.  Only the Bronx School of Science could really give us a run for the money

The four of us were an odd group to start with.  A tall black guy who everyone thought was on the basketball team.  A biracial black girl, who looked so girly, girl – she looked like she couldn’t type on a keyboard with her long nails or even had the time to run a program with all the time she spent primping herself at her chair.  Then there was William Chin, my brother from another mother.  He grew up mostly south of Houston Street, closer to the projects around a lot more black and Hispanic families, not Chinatown.  He listened to more rap music, and went to rap concerts than I did.  He called himself an éclair.  “Tan on the outside and chocolate on the inside…bro!”

 He and Zach were really superb at hacking and spent a lot of time with people who worked underground.  They did enough dirty tricks to maintain their credibility in the hacker world, but they kept themselves legit with their school work and projects.

Zach came from a parents who were reformed Jews.  Their parents – his grandparents were practicing Jews who went through their hippy phase during the ‘60’s and then went back to a more traditionally conservative lifestyle.  I guess the free mind and free will skipped a generation.  Both his parents were lawyers.  If he didn’t watch himself, they’d be spending more time trying to keep him out of jail for hacking into things he didn’t need to, then they spent working.  Zach was clearly a free spirit.  However, the best thing about Zach was his loyalty and sense of nonpolitically correct humor.  Oh and he was a devote atheist. 

Our fearsome, foursome usual hang out spots was the cafeteria, side doors of the school (we were too cool to walk into the front doors before the freshmen), the local pizzeria, the Computer Science Club classroom…and of course the virtual chat room we created with our own program online.  We could operate it under a cloud and tell if anyone was listening in.

Nearly 11 days, on a Thursday in early March 2011, I could no longer take the cold shoulder.  Zach and Will met with me that night after classes to drop a bomb on me.  They had gotten Jamila’s Internet Protocol, or IP address and hacked her machine.  They were checking up for me to see if she had moved onto another guy.  Said Zach, “I just wanted to make sure that if my best friend was going to lose his Super Model girlfriend to another guy, that the other guy had better be a great guy.”

To summarize it all, it wasn’t a guy that Jamila seemed to be following.  It was newscasts from Africa that she was following.

Will, “Bro, I’d say from the looks of things – the airline ticket searches, and travel brochures – your girl and her family are going back to Bustani, man”

They handed me the printouts.  She had dozens of hits on stories and files on a Bustani, priest named Masamba.  He was a member of the Simba Mtu class that was being overturned.  To keep from becoming a victim of civil war, Masamba had become a voice for the downtrodden in Bustani and around the world.  He constantly fed civil unrest local and abroad.  He recruited the leftover that was pulling from the now growing numbers in the Arab Spring that was taking place in Northern Africa.

By the end of January the Tunisian president had stepped down.  There were full blown riots and or protests in Algiers, Egypt, Palestine and Yemeni.  Masamba used this energy to gain more disciples.  Instead of wanting his ouster, there were thousands of Tumbili who supported him.  What none of us knew at that time was that Masamba was simply assembling a small army to carry out his greater plan.  His plan was to assassinate 10 of the world’s major leaders and try to throw the world into chaos. 

What was Jamila doing?  Why was she going back to Bustani?  Her family were supposed to be members of Tumbili who fled to the United States for political asylum.  Why would they suddenly go back, now while their country was still engaged in a civil war?  Why?  I had to know.  I had to confront her.  Doing it from 245 miles away just wasn’t going to work. I had to go see her.  I had to go Arlington.  I had to go right then...

 

TO BE CONTINUED: