Chapter 22. Amy and the Kids
"What have you got there?" Amy asked, as Karl a neared the summit of the steep hill, hugging an armload of vegetables. The youngest member of the family, now seven years old, had been out harvesting from secret locations scattered around the Kakamega Forest.
"Sweet potatoes," she said. "Jo-Jo has some honey." Ten-year-old Jo-Jo was just coming out of the forest at the base of the hill. He waved his arm in a wide circle above his head, a signal Amy recognised immediately. She gathered her few belongings and called to Karla.
"Inside," was all that she said. Karla glanced briefly back at Jo-Jo, who was climbing the hill in earnest now, before she stepped quickly into the manmade cave. She and Amy moved quietly but unhesitantly toward the chamber that was almost fifty metres into the side of the hill . They instinctively protected their faces from the bats that they knew would be at the twenty metre mark.
Meanwhile, ten-year-old Jo-Jo had been joined half way up the fifty-metre hill by Simon, who, at 12, was the next oldest of the eight children still in Amy's care.
Simon had been able to hide the pumpkin he had been carrying under a bush, so he could give Jo-Jo a hand. Together the two were able to carry the bucket of honey more quickly up the hill . Each held one end of a branch extending through the handle of the bucket. It would not do to leave the vessel out where it could be found.
Each person knew what they were to do, and they each acted without saying a word.
When Amy reached the heavy curtain at the back of the cave, which soaked up most of the light from a lantern that burned behind it, she passed the palm of her hand across her face, and 14-year-old Lucy, who had been studying some books, immediately knew that she must blow out the lantern. The pitch blackness was not a handicap to any of them, for they had each learned over the past two years how to navigate every inch of the cave in total silence and without visual assistance.
The tunnel like cave had been constructed by a mining company many years earlier and had been abandoned shortly after its construction. From the tunnel entrance one could look out over the top of the forest, and either see or hear if anyone was in the area. Because the children had been down below gathering food, they had heard something before Amy did, so she knew they all had plenty of time. There was no sense of panic.
When the two boys arrived at the darkened inner chamber, they placed the bucket of honey to the side of the opening and joined the others on a long couch constructed of boxes that were full of pamphlets.
Everything was relaxed as they waited silently for sufficient time to pass. But then they heard a noise at the mouth of the cave. It sounded like several people were entering the cave. Everyone stiffened.
But then there were three loud claps, and they each breathed a sigh of relief.
Lucy struck a match and relit the lantern while the others got up and walked toward the opening.
"Jambo!" said the voice of a young woman.
"Rosy!" Karla whispered loudly as she looked up at Amy in the near darkness of the tunnel.
"Eh, Rosy," Amy responded softly, squeezing the little girl's hand. They never shouted, even when they believed the forest to be empty.
"Jambo!" Amy spoke in response to the 17-year-old.
"Look! Micah!" Karla said, as they neared Rosy. "And Jane!" Karla let go of Amy's hand and raced toward the others. Jane's 16-year-old twin brother, Gene, was there too, hidden behind 18-year-old Micah. At 17, Rosy was not the oldest, but she was the natural leader.
For more than two years the family had lived undisturbed in the cave.
Tourists never came to the forest at night, nor did they carry pocket lights with them during the day. Any who reached the hill , separated from the dirt track by half a mile of forest, and who ventured into the mouth of the cave, using only matches, soon turned around when they reached the bats. Amy and the children had come to appreciate the bats, who fed on mosquitoes, deterred visitors, and provided them with protein.
"The road was empty, so we jumped out and ran into the forest without anyone seeing," Rosy explained. "I hope we didn't scare you. The truck will be back tonight for more pamphlets. Then they'll be off to Uganda."
It was the sound of the truck stopping that had alerted Jo-Jo and Simon.
Normally the older children would arrive and leave late at night, under cover of darkness, so that no one could witness their movements.
The family had been hiding in the forest ever since that day two and a half years earlier, when they had created a false trail that led Moses and others to believe they had gone to Nairobi. It was a simple enough task for Josephat to guide them back, in the middle of the night, to where they had previously spent time exploring "God's good earth".
Over those years, the four older children had often left Amy with the three youngest ones, so that they could assist Josephat and other members of the secret underground movement in northern Kenya and Uganda. Because of their youth, Amy's teens were able to wander freely through the streets of various villages, without arousing suspicion. They would surreptitiously visit members of the movement, often leaving pamphlets and posters to be further distributed by the ones they visited. Josephat was responsible for about 1,000 members of this movement, but there were more than 10,000 others in an area overseen by two leaders in Turkey.
Back in the interior cavern, Amy added a bit more avocado oil to the lantern.
They squeezed the oil themselves, from the big green vegetables that grew wild and in abundance in that part of Kenya. Josephat had a secret beehive in the forest, from which they were able to get honey. They used the beeswax to make candles. On the floor of the jungle there were inconspicuous crops of everything from passionfruit and tapioca to guava, pumpkins and wild spinach. Even if someone stumbled onto some of these plants, they just marvelled that they had started growing "wild" in the lush conditions.
Monkeys were a constant threat to anything edible, but root vegetables and the very hard jack fruit always survived in sufficient quantities to keep the family fed, as well as feeding teams that passed through.
During their first year they had raised rabbits high up in the rocks, and used the skins to make blankets, rugs, and even clothes; but it was considered too risky to continue raising them, after a tourist almost discovered one of the hutches. Now they had to rely on more exotic sources of meat.
"Micah, do you feel up to checking the traps?" Amy asked when they had eaten their fill of a hastily prepared lunch, and after they had caught up with the highlights of the latest outing. "We have plenty of time to make stew before the others get here, but I need some meat."
"Can Gene come with me?" Micah asked, looking at Gene to see if he was in favour of it.
"Of course," Amy said, and Gene showed his enthusiasm by leaping up off a box of pamphlets to join Micah on the walk out through the tunnel.
The children all knew how to set string traps for wild birds and moles, which, along with the bats, added flavour to Amy's famous stews.
There was very little that these cave-dwellers needed money for. The last time any of them had gone shopping was when Lucy broke her arm quite badly falling from a tree five months previously. Josephat had taken the last of the stamps that Moses had donated years earlier, and had traded them in Kakamega for pain killers. He knew it was risky, but he could not stand to see her suffer.
Just after Micah and Gene left to check the traps, the other children decided to go outside and scatter themselves around the cave's entrance, where they talked quietly with each other about all that had been happening in Uganda and elsewhere. They always tried to keep someone posted at the entrance, to alert the others if they noted any movment in the forest.
Amy and Rosy stayed back in the chamber to talk.
"Meshach thinks he saw Moses on the road between Shinyalu and Kakamega this morning," Rosy said. "I had to keep down, but I wanted to look so bad."
"Do you miss him much?" Amy asked.
"Course," said Rosy. "He's my brother. But he made his choice, didn't he?"
"Mmm, he did, girl," Amy said sadly. "But it don't make the pain go, does it?"
Rosy just nodded her head, said nothing for a while, and then changed the subject. She had her brother's talent for not dwelling on the negative.
Very late that night, Josephat returned with an older member of the underground movement. The boys had moved boxes of posters down closer to the dirt track as soon as it was dark, so they could load them into the truck quickly before anyone spotted it parked on the road. Fortunately, almost no one ventured into the forest in the middle of the night, for fear of leopards.
Amy had a full hour with Josephat, catching up on news. When he left, he took Rosy and the twins, leaving Micah to help Amy till he returned in two weeks' time.