Chapter 7
Luyanda spend most of his free periods and lunch breaks hanging out with Nomsa and Jabu on the library lawn. Soon, he had gotten to know most of his classmates. He immediately hit it off with Imtiaz, a student who had been in primary school with Jabu. One of their classmates was a foreign student named Emeka, or Meks, as he liked to call himself. He was from Victoria Island and was studying Artificial Intelligence and Augmentation. Because every science student had to take a humanities module in their first year at university, and vice versa, Meks had decided to do African History. He was shy, serious and soft-spoken. Luyanda was in his programming classes. He was sure to always sit beside him and ask him what on earth was happening in every class, because most of it went right over his head. He also suspected that Meks was a hacker. He always browsing the latest news reports on hacking and would repeatedly burst out laughing at what he termed “amateur tactics.” He was also excited about the IT Department’s Decryption Key Generation facility.
“I would hate to see it fall into the wrong hands,” he’d say, with a glint in his eye, whenever a lecturer mentioned it in class.
Jabu was quite bored by his genetics elective, but he remained optimistic because they would soon get to do some lab work.
“That’s when the really cool things will start,” he said, one day as they made their way to their next class. “We’ll get a crack at experiments and stuff. I’m planning on making chimeras.”
“Is that even legal?” Luyanda asked.
“Who cares?” He pulled a key chain out of his backpack and held up a small plastic chip. “So long as I have this, I can go anywhere, anytime.”
“What’s that?” Luyanda reached for it.
Jabu pulled it away from him. “My genetics lab decryption key. They gave one to each of the first-year students. It gives us access to all the computer systems.”
“Isn’t that a bit too much power for first years?”
“Yeah. If you’re not a chosen one. Like a first-year genetics student.”
He stuffed the key into a small pocket near the base of the backpack.
“Yeah,” Luyanda rolled his eyes. “You keep telling yourself that.”
“As a matter of fact, I will.”
Nomsa took a course in environmental sciences, mainly because one of her friends from high school, a girl named Gina, had picked it up. Because she was friends with Nomsa, Gina became Jabu and Luyanda’s friend by extension. Along with Imtiaz and Meks, they formed a tight-knit group, and would often go from class to class together.
Nomsa, Luyanda and Jabu arranged things at the museum so that their shifts would coincide. It was their way of reducing the drudgery of their work. To their surprise, Amina, who was in charge of scheduling shifts, agreed to this. Later on, they discovered why. All the temporary staff had disappeared after that first week, and the five interns shouldered the weight of running the museum. The last thing that Amina wanted was for any of them to quit, so she was happy to accommodate their every wish, within reason.
Apart from the first years and Amina, the only other intern was a tall, strapping bearded final year student named Yisa. Judging from his physique, spent all his spare time at the gym. Yisa was snappy and seldom had a kind word or a smile for anyone other than Dr Uru. He was always at Uru’s side, committed and ready to do his bidding. Jabu was sure that he used steroids.
“How else do you explain him being that big?” he asked Luyanda for the umpteenth time. They were in the museum lobby, with Amina and the others, running through the schedule for the week.
“I think we should get more interns,” Nomsa said, after Amina had announced the shifts. “There’s more than enough work to go around.”
“The pay’s too low,” Amina answered. “Most students nowadays want to work short hours and get paid a lot of money.”
“Is that why there were mass resignations at the end of last year?” Nomsa asked.
“Where did you hear that?” Amina shot back.
“It was on the student news network. I found it when I was researching which uni to go to.”
“Thing is,” Amina mumbled, “they all wanted raises. So Dr Uru let them go.”
“I heard that they were disgruntled with Uru’s leadership.”
“Where did you hear that from? Students? You know how students are. I hope you guys will be more mature and stick it through. We have to work with what we have. Or can’t you guys handle it?”
No one gave her an answer. Nomsa folded her arms and pouted. After that, no one brought up the topic again.
The workload was quite demanding though. Each of them would dedicate two shifts to manual labour. This involved packing, labelling and photographing artefacts, and handling shipping arrangements. They would also clean the pieces and assemble and disassemble the temporary exhibits. Saturdays were when the museum would receive most of its visitors. Yisa and Amina would conduct tours, and the three first year interns would give them any help that they needed. If Yisa and Amina didn’t need anything, then Luyanda and his lot would carry on working in the warehouse, loading and unpacking crates.
Every day, new shipments of artefacts arrived from far-flung corners of the continent. They received weapons, drums, masks, statues, stools, thrones, charms and amulets.
However, most of the items proved to be fake or worthless. One of their main tasks was to separate the genuine articles from the cheap imitations. To aid them in their task, Dr Uru gave them a long list of what he called “Items of Value”, or IOVs for short.
“When a shipment arrives,” he explained to them, “the first thing you do is you verify if it’s an IOV. Look for it on the IOV. list. If it’s not there, return to sender. If it is on the list, unbox the item and check it for any damage. If it is damaged, enter it into the damage report. After that, label it and transfer it to the holding area. Clear?”
The interns nodded and set to their task with gusto. Several artefacts ended up being sent back to their senders because they were not on the IOV list. Jabu started calling the processes the 3Cs. “Confirm, Check or Chuck.” The term caught on amongst the others. They realised that the “Check” bit was by far the most difficult. Inspecting each item for nicks, scratches or cracks and filling out reports was a time-consuming process. Before they knew it, an entire week’s worth of shifts had gone by, and the holding area had very few artefacts added to it.
At the start of their second week of work, Dr Uru came to check in on them and verify that they were following instructions. “I am expecting a shipment from an old friend of mine,” he said. “If anything comes in from a gentleman named P.K. Mbuya, I want you to notify me immediately. Is that clear?”
They all nodded and returned to work.
“Look at this,” Jabu said as he unboxed a wooden mask that had arrived over the weekend. He read out the label. “Makishi Mask. Female. Worn during fertility dances. Origin: the former DRC, Central Africa. Catch,” he said, tossing it at Luyanda. “It might help you find a girlfriend.”
“You’re one to talk,” Luyanda replied, setting the artefact down on a disassembled display case. “It’s not as if you’ve had any luck with girls yourself, is it?”
“Oh, gosh. You’re such… guys!” Nomsa said, rolling her eyes. “I think I will go and work with Amina at the reception.”
“Yeah, go right ahead,” Jabu called out after her receding figure.
A loud whirring of propellers in the little courtyard outside caught their attention. A bright red courier-bot hovered a few feet above the ground and lowered a crate to the floor.
“Hey,” Jabu said, reading the label on the side of the box, “This is from that P.K. Mbuya guy. What do you think it is?”
“Let’s find out.”
They dragged the box inside and pried off the lid. Two wooden sword hilts bound in strips of rusted iron nestled in between bundles of straw.
“Wow,” Jabu gasped. He gripped one hilt and turned it over, holding it up to the light. “It’s heavier than it looks.”
Luyanda spotted a label inside. He grabbed it and read it out aloud. “Ozidi’s sword hilts. Fabled warrior of the Ijo people of the old Nigeria. Ozidi’s swords were reputed to be able to fight by themselves when he was nearby.” He spotted something else inside the box. It was a goatskin leather pouch. He read the leaflet stuck onto it. “Goatskin pouch. I found this in a little hamlet near Harare City. The old Shaman who gave it to me said it belonged to an heir of Massassi, the mythical hero of the Makoni people, of the former Zimbabwe. She was said to be able to control plant life. Her descendant died in the Twenty-Year War, but the pouch survived.”
“Are they on the list?” Jabu asked.
Luyanda shook his wrist. “Msiza, show me the I.O.V. list.” A long list of items popped up on the holographic display off his PAD. “Yeah,” Luyanda muttered, scrolling through it, “All that stuff’s on there… Ozidi… Massassi… Guess we will have to check it all,” he muttered.
“Wait a second,” Jabu said, pulling a fly whisk out of a crate. “Take a look at this. It doesn’t have a label, but it’s from that P.K. guy.”
“If it’s not on the list, we chuck it. We don’t need any more work. I just want to be done and go home.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Plus, it smells kind of funny. Like it’s been near something… dead… for a very long time.”
He waved it in the air.
“Put that down,” a voice boomed across the warehouse. They spun around to find Dr Uru marching in. Jabu tossed the flywhisk back into the crate. Without a word, Dr Uru slammed on the lid, hoisted up the box, and tramped out the door.
Jabu and Luyanda stood there staring at each other.
“What was that about?” Jabu asked.
“Don’t know,” Luyanda shrugged, “I guess it’s the thing he was waiting for. Remember, he told us to let him know if anything came in from P.K. Mbuya?”
“You reckon that was it?”
“Most likely.”
“Why do you think he got so emotional about it?”
“He’s a weird guy. It’s none of my business. Let’s forget it and go home.”
They finished up and left the museum. But even though he tried not to think about it, Luyanda found his mind drifting back again and again to the look on Uru’s face as he picked up the crate. There was more to that artefact than met the eye, and although Luyanda had no interest in finding out what it was, something told him he inevitably would.