African Pursuit Read Online Free Page A

maybe us as well. Remember,’ he added, ‘from what you have told us the parents of this child can be in no doubt that she did not survive and they arefortunate to have escaped with her twin. We must pretend that the baby is yours – if anyone asks, we’ll pretend you had a white husband who had to return urgently to Europe without ever knowing about his daughter – and your aunt and I will help you to teach her and bring her up. One day perhaps, when things have changed, we can tell her the truth.’
    And so it was that Mzuri came to have a child. She called the baby Neema because she represented good fortune and grace, and grew to love her as her own. Her uncle Ulindaji who was now chief ranger at the reserve was very busy because the National Park had become a prime target for animal poachers during the civil war, but her aunt, who was a teacher, made sure that Neema received the best possible education under the circumstances. She was a happy child who was good at her school work, loved music and dancing, and excelled at all kinds of sports. The most striking thing about her, however, was her passion for animals and the degree to which they responded to her. Even the fiercest village dog would lick her hand and wag its tail for her and she was always surrounded by a variety of pets, some domestic, others half-wild who had come in from the bush and adopted her as their mistress.
    Then one dreadful day in the aftermath of the second Congo war, when Neema was eleven years old, Mzuri’s worst fears were realised.
    Neema, as she had done frequently in recent months, had gone with Mzuri’s uncle to the reserve where she seemed to be fascinated by the bonobo chimpanzees. A group of militia had turned up at the house and arrested Mzuri and her aunt. They then took them to the reserve where they arrested her uncle. Fortunately Neema was notwith her uncle at the park office, but out in a forest research cabin watching the bonobos. She was not listed in any records and the army unit were completely unaware of her existence.
    Mzuri was taken away in an army truck with her aunt and uncle. As they were driven away to an unknown destination Mzuri dreaded what might lie in store for them but most of all she feared for the fate of her precious Neema, alone in the forest and ignorant of what had happened to her family.

3
A Special Child
    N eema’s earliest memories were of happy times spent playing with her pets in the house and garden where she lived with Mzuri, her mother, and her great-aunt and great-uncle, whom she knew simply as ‘grandma’ and ‘grandpa’.
    As she grew older she was thrilled by Mzuri’s stories of the faraway land where she had been born – a land of endless plains where giraffe and antelope grazed; where rhinos and elephants lived; and where lions, cheetahs and hyenas roamed in search of prey. Grandma was very kind but also very firm; she made sure that Neema learnt all her lessons, and taught her many things more than she learnt at the village school. Grandpa worked in the immense national park called Salonga which, he proudly told her, was the largest forest reserve in the whole of Africa and contained some of the rarest and most exciting animals in the world. After school he would take her with him on his expeditions along the enthralling jungle waterways and paths and she came to know the forest and its animals as well as any of the rangers who worked there.
    Neema had discussed her pale skin with Mzuri and her ‘grandparents’ many times and knew that her father had been an Englishman who had returned to his own country long ago as the result of thetroubles. There was not a single child in her school and village who had not been affected in some way by the two Congo wars that had occurred in their short lifetimes, and to have a missing, unknown or foreign parent was sufficiently commonplace as to arouse no curiosity whatsoever. Neema had always assumed Mzuri to be her mother and while Mzuri