Mavuki: Great Legend

By Phathisani Mlotshwa

An inquisitive and daring archaeologist sets out to unravel the great mystery surrounding the claims centered on the discovery of an ancient city of Mavuki somewhere on the fringes of Gulati village in the Matopos area.
The highly determined explorer does not only come closer to fulfilling his very important mission, but he discovers that the most revered gods of Mavuki are ready to take him to an ancient epic world.
This is the greatest epic novel that elevates the readers imagination far and beyond the ordinary trials and tribulations of mankind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Mar 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496975300

Phathisani Mlotshwa

Phathisani Mlotshwa is the author of the best-selling Night to Day: Poetry Anthology. He lives in Bulawayo with his family.

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© 2014 Phathisani Mlotshwa. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/18/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7531-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-7530-0 (e)

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Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

To my Loving parents

Who taught me

Love

Respect and Humility

To

All

Mankind

Prologue

I sat in the office in my executive chair, holding a glass of pure apple juice—my favourite drink in the world. I tried to make myself more comfortable by leaning hard on the back rest and I fixed my gaze on the fitted fan on the ceiling, trying to shake off some prickling thoughts from my troubled mind.

Here I was running a prestigious organisation in the country, National Archaeological Services Agency (NASA). It was an empire which I had built with my own hands after resigning from civil service. Hard work pays greatly; I had worked for the government as an archaeologist for a period of about twenty years. However, after being driven by the greatest instinct of exploration, I decided to resign and establish my own archaeological firm which started as an almost indistinct organisation, but with the passage of time it grew to a well respected Archaeological Research Centre in the Republic of Zimbabwe.

The whining fan seemed to have an effect upon my senses. As I continued to watch it spinning in about a hundred or so revolutions per minute, I began to feel a great force of hypnotism, sucking me away into a great vacuum of nothingness.

Things began to fade out of the picture of my mind and there was a strange feeling in my head. It was as if I was beginning to sink into a bottomless pit. I continued on my long descent in my dark psychological elevator. I think I was about to hit the bottom of that great abyss when the unexpected happened.

‘Arise and meet my messenger,’ the words seemed to emanate from deep down underneath the ground.

‘Who are you and what do you want from me?’ I blurted out the questions overpowered by great fear and anxiety.

‘Arise and meet my messenger,’ said the voice. By now the words were more guttural than natural. I started sweating profusely looking in all directions searching for the source of that strange voice, but I was surrounded by a strange vapour of blackness.

I started to hear strange footsteps headed in my direction. Was I going ballistic? I tried to crack the puzzle which I found myself in now. Whoever it was, that person was coming straight for me, I was convinced. Every step carried with it a sharp precision that sent a cold chill down my spine and my heart was pounding like a million horses in full gallop. No words can describe what I was feeling at that rare moment of my life.

If this thing takes a few more steps, that will be the end of me. I digested the bitter thought. And it did. Then there was a pause, followed by some clicks and clanks as if somebody was meddling with the gears of an old machine. I am about to be chopped into pieces of flesh, cartilage and bone. That was my final conclusion. But I was not prepared to take defeat in a cool way like a sacrificial lamb. RETALIATE-was the word. But how and how do you defend yourself from something you don’t even know.

‘Nooooo!’ I squealed like a cornered rat.

‘Doctor Fuya! Are you all-right?’ the words hit me like a cold splash on my face and I was suddenly brought back to reality.

Standing in front of me was Jonas my senior research assistant, and it was at that time that I realised that I was back in my office in the NASA Complex.

‘You were having a bad dream Sir?’ said Jonas, still bewildered by the strange behaviour of his boss.

‘No I was awake all the time Jonas,’ I barked at my research assistant.

‘But Sir, I could hear your screams down the corridor,’ he insisted.

‘Okay, you are right, I was having a day mare since it’s during the day,’ I said a bit embarrassed by the whole turn of events. Inwardly, I was very sure that I had not fallen into any dream. Somehow I had simply stepped from the ordinary to the extraordinary in the ‘fully conscious mode.’ I had not been dreaming I was very convinced. But how does one step from one realm to the next fully awake? I was determined to find an answer to that million dollar question.

‘What are you still waiting for?’ I growled at Jonas. My reaction caught him off-guard and as a result he dropped a file he had been carrying all along, scattering the papers everywhere on the heavily carpeted floor.

He tried to pick them up one by one in a very clumsy and sort of amusing way.

‘Sir did you take time to read that report?’ inquired the visibly shaken Jonas. ‘I left it in on your desk in the morning,’ he continued. I then realised that there was a document on the desk. On the cover was a photograph displaying some granite formations in what appeared to be a rocky landscape. The title at the top of the page read as follows;

DISCOVERY OF AN ANCIENT CITY IN THE MATOPOS AREA

I flipped through the pages and feasted on the nitty-gritties of that five page document. The claim was that there could be remnants of an ancient civilisation lying hidden under several metres of soil and residual debris somewhere beyond the fringes of the Gulati village. Attached on the document were nebulous images taken using a PMH83 sonar device, the latest of its kind and still not yet commercially available.

‘Impossible! I thought we had agreed never to talk about this hotch-potch study of yours,’ I burst out with great annoyance and impatience.

‘Besides, what does it help to call for funding on a hazy project that is clattered with claims that lack substantial evidence?’ I further continued, trying to hammer sense into the persistent young man’s head.

‘But Sir, we might be headed for the greatest discovery of all time,’ he persisted, his eyes glowing with a spark of determinism I had never spotted before on any young man of his age.

‘Forget it son, this proposal is a product of a hyper-active imaginative mind,’ I concluded the discussion with an air of dismissal.

Jonas said nothing, but kept on looking at me with a steel gaze of an immortal and our eyes remained locked in combat. I was about to concede defeat, when Jonas suddenly turned and left the office. Closing the door softly behind him, he tapped the red mahogany tiles with the hard soles of his shoes. Every sound made by his feet was like a diabolical laughter of a ghost disappearing down the corridor of a haunted house.

What if the boy is right? I wrestled with my thoughts and guzzled the remaining juice in my glass. I stood up and strode to the office window of the seven storeys NASA Complex. I was in very deep pools of thoughts, but still I needed a breath of fresh air.

* * * * *

The golden morning sun shone brightly on the velvety blue sky. Its delicate and magnificent rays were the emblem of greatest magnificence and splendour. It was a cool morning. A new day had come for a new beginning.

I stood on a rocky ledge scanning the area with a pair of high tech-binoculars. To my right I could pick out a small figure of Jonas foraging about in the small bushes. Several metres down, there was a small river that meandered like a silver snake down to the furthest horizon. Periodically, a bunch of ducks scudded across the surface of the water before taking off into the blue sky. For a few seconds small trails would form on the surface of the water before melting into the molecular fabric of the silvery waters.

Yes, I was in the Matopos, the most beautiful place in the world. It is its grandeur and mystery that fascinate me the most. Lying about thirty or so kilometres south of the City of Bulawayo, the Matopos are rich in cultural and religious history. Generally, the Matopos is an area of fascinating granite formations which include the dome shaped hills, kopjes of granite rocks as the geographers would say. The huge forests give the environment a beautiful and breath-taking landscape.

After being privileged to have the Majestic view of the Matopos, any explorer would ascribe to the following assertion, ‘Nothing is as beautiful as nature’s beauty, for it is pure and original.’

The locals believe that the area was once and it is still the home of the benevolent spirits. If you venture further into the heart of the Matopos into the Kezi district you might come across Njelele shrine where it is believed that the Supreme Being Mwali worshipped by the indigenous black people in former times communicated with the people in the form of a voice emanating from a sacred rock.

King Mzilikazi founder of the Ndebele nation once settled in the Matopos and upon his demise, his body was laid to rest in the area which has now been turned to a national heritage site. Cecil John Rhodes the great British pioneer once graced the Matopos when he first set foot there. When he passed away in the early 1900s, Cecil John Rhodes’ body was also buried in the Matopos, in an area that is now a heritage site. In simpler terms, the Matopos formed a great confluence of cultural streams of the indigenous people and the white settlers.

* * * * *

When a man has set his mind on doing something great, his quest is automatically transformed to a great calling. I was still holding onto the images Jonas had taken with the sonar device. Somehow, I had developed a keen interest on the whole expedition and I was prepared to part with large sums of money in order for the mission to be a success.

I had suddenly become a staunch supporter of the theory that explains the existence of ancient remains of a historical city assumed to be buried underneath the ground. I looked closely at image—D2 and I thought I could read some detail on what appeared to be ancient walls buried deep under the ground. Surely, those could have been man-made structures.

‘Jonas you are a brilliant boy!’ I shouted in the direction of the small acacia bushes where the young man was still busy inspecting the vegetation.

‘Pardon Sir, I can hardly hear you.’ he shouted back, his face knitted with a puzzled expression.

‘Never