Flood

The majestic Zambezi river ran before the home of the Chief.

The sky was plumbeous, thunderous and the rain poured amidst lightning. The river, increasing in width, streamed threatening, whirling, muddy and dark. The heat was troublesome, the humidity oppressive, the loneliness unbearable... The Chief, still a single man, had his sweetheart living far away.  He stopped his work and came out of the house. The scene was desolating at the sides and back of the house. The trees, with the flashes, had its green of the leaves intensified, or, its dead branches looking, and reminding, as gallows. Added to all this, the thunder was so heavy that the house shook from base to roof! Under this natural disaster, this normal fury of nature, the fate of the village, almost underwater, was alike all years! The river and the crocodiles would kill many people!

The Chief watched, the river was nearer but he also saw, the closest telegraph post, forty metres/yards far at water, had a native woman hanging with a child on her back! We must know native women always carry children at their backs with a improvised rucksack. And she was there hanging at the telegraph post with a big snake above, on the top, and coiled in the wires!
The Chief, near the river and soaked in rain, raced to the house, tore the blinds out of the veranda and tried to set a raft amid blasts of wind, rain and lightning. But he plunged in the river. The raft was rough! He added inner tubes but he sank in the water again and again. And the crocodiles were there! It was when the Chief saw a native child in a canoe and gesticulated to him.

So, the child saved the woman and her little one!

Afterwards, writing a letter to my mother, the Chief said:

«...my worry, my anxiety, my affliction with the native woman was so strong, so huge, that it was how if you were there!! »