The Wonder Land

By A.J. Gottlieb

With a traumatic existence comes a troubled mind, no matter how old, how rich, how poor or where you live....death is final, good is right and evil is to be feared. Justice's circumstances in life make her both victim and perpetrator, protector and predator. It's an unrelenting storm for this young African girl, who will battle with her own head, all throughout her journey in the many different worlds that make up this life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tablo Publishing
• Release date: Aug 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781649699176

Book preview

Chapter 1: Operation brand new day

My name is Justice Selassie, and I come from the centre of one of the oldest civilisations in the world, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, mother of Africa, home of the first human beings. My farther he was a great man, he loved my country and all its rich history, as a young student he dreamt only of helping the people of Ethiopia live better lives, and once he finished school he was accepted into the university of Nairobi in Kenya, another great land and farther of Africa. Upon completion of his studies in Kenya he returned to Ethiopia and began work as a lawyer and because he studied English too, he was appointed special liaison of the courts in dealing with judicial matters of the former British colonies of Africa, places like Kenya that he could put his foreign studies to good use, but I won’t continue on with his many achievements and accomplishments as they aren’t why I remember him, no I remember a short dark haired man with what could only be described as a crew cut hair style and a thin dark moustache. I only ever remember him always in a crisp white shirt, short sleeved of course because of our warm climate and never a tie, probably for that same reason. I must point out however that in the only two pictures I have of him, he is wearing a tie in both, I should also point out that one picture is from his wedding day and the other from his graduation so it’s safe to assume apart from special occasions he was a bit alternative for his day, for a man in his position in society he never felt the need to wear a tie, and from what I hear from my aunt, his older sister, he was very much a practical man, practical and worldly, and apart from what others have told me I cannot remember anymore of him, sigh! What I do know is he met a woman and married, and yes this woman was my mother, Jamaica Selassie, her real name I do not know, but the story of how my mother’s name came to be is quite an interesting tale in itself. So the story goes, my mother, Jamaica, was in fact born and raised in Kingston Jamaica, the daughter of freed slaves who spent her teenage years on a farm as a labourer working with her parents, by the time she reached 17 years of age both her parents had passed away, apparently this was not unusual in those days and in their line of work. So yes at 17 years of age and fully emancipated, she with no family spent a lot of her time living in a communal camp of Rastafarians, living a self sufficient if not a rather primitive existence in the out skirts of Kingston, this community however welcomed her and in time became her new family. A little over 12 months of my mother living with her new family, a traveller arrived in their little community, an African American man from the states, who came with a proposition to the people of Jamaica, ‘come back to mother Africa with me, serve your heavenly Emperor, the ever loving, ever merciful King Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia’. King Selassie was worshipped by the Rastafarian community of Jamaica of which my mother now called her family. With all that spin it did not take much more to convince my mother to sign up and in a couple of weeks packed and on her way to her mother lands to serve the Emperor of Ethiopia, a man her community so revered and worshipped, while she may not have been entirely convinced by one man’s power, she was completely in love with the idea of becoming a pioneer and returning to Africa. After a long boat journey she arrived in the port of Mombasa Kenya and from there her new home of Addis Ababa in Ethiopia. Now you see the pride I feel for both my parents, both were pioneers and adventurers, it must be in my blood or maybe it is just that they are dreamers who looked for more out of life, but again I have gone off topic. Yes my mother was now a disciple of the all holy emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, and planting her own roots now firmly in African soil. The stories I most remember my mother telling me were of how great the Emperor was, and how she had even met him, and here’s where I finally get to the origins of my mother’s name, so taken back with the greatness of this one man, she changed her name to Jamaica Selassie, in honour of her old home land and in honour of her gracious host who had welcomed her to her new one.

After one year of patient devotion to the emperor my mother, who at this stage was employed doing domestic duties in the royal families Addis homes, one day met a man at one of these houses, he was there on official business is all I know and she answered the door with a knock from my farther, as it turns out there was no official business at all, my farther had simply seen a beautiful young woman dressed in bright colours with long brown dreadlocks and as a bonus when the door opened was drawn straight to the deepest brownest eyes he had ever seen staring back at him, and if you are wondering, yes I believe these are the same eyes I have inherited from her, whiter than white eyeball, browner than dark chocolate pupils, like a bottomless pit leading straight to my heart or as has been described straight to the darkest parts of the soul, depending on which side of the fence you sit, that comes much later in my story. Again I digress, my father saw her and simply knocked on the door asking for the master of the house, ‘I’m afraid there is no one in’ my mother replied in her sexy Jamaican accent and I think at that moment the deal was sealed for him, who can resist a Jamaican accent, always so cool and confident sounding, even white people can’t resist. And with that my mother and my farther became the wonderful and spectacular couple that they were always known for by everyone whoever met them. That’s probably why I wish I had known them more, more than just a young child’s memories, hearing the magnificent stories of how much fun it was to meet them both from others who knew them, shame really but I like to think that the few years I did live with them made me the person I am today.

Now for the record my father’s name was Lyton Cassius Newham, where it comes from can only be some colonial throw back to a past his parents must have desperately wanted to cling on to. For my mother though her name could not change even after marriage, and to show his undying devotion to my mother, my father went and changed his name to Selassie, because in those days it was simply not permitted for a man’s wife to keep her unmarried name, and so it goes Miss Jamaica Selassie became Mrs Jamaica Selassie following her marriage to Mr L.C. Selassie, I never get tired of telling people that part of the story of my parents, it always makes them smile. Then some four and a half years later they had a healthy baby girl, me, and to thank my farther and show her appreciation for him changing his name to Selassie, my mother gave him the honour of naming his first child, and so I become Justice, ‘Justice Selassie’. Unfortunately I don’t really know too much more, my mother taught me English and my farther went to work, they weren’t rich but he did make a good living as a government lawyer and was in line to become a judge, he loved the country and served Ethiopia much like my mother did serving the Emperor. However things in their beloved Ethiopia were changing, and at the age of ten I was sent away for my own protection, sent to live with my father’s sister in the impoverished countryside of Ethiopia’s rural communities, just until things settled down in the city. Things didn’t settle however, in fact they got much worse, the Emperor was gone and so was the government, both curtesy of a military coup that plagued the country, while the countryside saw little disruption for me my aunt and her five other children, my parents were to receive no such peace for their lives. The military declared that Mr and Mrs Selassie were devoted followers of the former royal family of Ethiopia, something hard to dispute when you have the same surname and yes that statement is true but here’s the untrue part, they also declared them to be employees of the corrupt former government something that stings and hurts me very much, corrupt like they were thieves or something, and thus are to be banished from the land they both loved and called home, If only the last part of this official statement from the military records were also true, you see it was one thing to be sentenced to be exiled from the country and another for it to actually take place, no the fact of the matter is this, my parents were not expelled from their homeland nor did they flee for their lives in some well-planned escape from the new regime like some dictator and his fur coat, draped in jewellery, million pairs of shoes wife, no they were brave souls who stood up for their belief in the Emperor and a free Ethiopian society. So one still evening while a young girl was fast asleep on a rural farm in the middle of the Ethiopian countryside, her parents in their home in the city were plucked from their beds, taken to a military occupied police station in the middle of Addis Ababa and were never seen or heard of again.

I like to think they both lay together somewhere in the African soil that they both loved so much and that no matter what happened to them I know their last thoughts were of me. Together they will lay for eternity with no grave stones marking the exact spot, all I need to do is feel the earth of this land and they are connected to me. Speaking of me I guess the end of my parent’s story is kind of where you’d expect I start my own, but this is not the case, you see for the next eight years I gave in to my fate as a farm girl, plenty of hard work, no luxuries, a simple rural village existence, just the basic essential needs, this life was not just mine but that of my cousins too, now my siblings and of course the life of my aunt. In fact this was the life for the whole village in this rural community, a life but not the life I wanted, even if I was completely and utterly unsure of what it was I really wanted out of life for myself now and in the future.

Chapter 2

The Ethiopian plains and countryside is a most beautiful place, an arid harsh beauty but one that can be appreciated by any visitor laying eyes upon it for the first time. But amongst the desert landscape with its hard dusty soil that looks like the earth has rusted to give an almost aged look and the barbwire shaped shrubs that seem to look as if they are dying, people, me and my family live a hard life, surviving and toiling away in a desert land that if you are unprepared for will see you wither and die. Just like the landscape, we have adapted and without a tough hardened exterior a girl cannot survive in this place. These were my years with my family, my father’s younger sister and her five children, all girls younger than me, my aunt Lolo was your typical African rural woman, she once lived in the city like me but fell in love with a farmer and soon moved to the countryside with him to his family’s village and started his own family with my aunt. Lolo was herself a beautiful woman, she was never seen without her work clothes and scarf wrapped around her head, and she was also a strong woman physically, with strong African legs, ample breasts and big round backside. She worked around the farm hut from sunrise to late at night every day. Loving but firm with her children, she spent her time seeing to all our basic needs, her only luxury was to sit down at the end of every evening after the family had finished dinner and gone off to sleep, on the chair out front of the farm hut and sip a cup of coffee which she would add a drop of local spirits to, and then head off to bed too once she had finished her ritual night cap.

My aunt did have a husband, the man who she fell in love with and had managed to woo her to the farm from the city, his name was Donald, a typical African farmer who tended a farm purely to feed his family. His parents had passed this small arid land holding down to him and he had never lived anywhere else. One day so the story goes he went for fire wood as he had done every day, and simply never returned, and so my aunt, since that day was left to look after the farm and us six children all by herself. Now don’t get me wrong this life may not have been for me, but my aunt was the perfect role model for a young girl, I looked on each day with admiration as she learned to manage without her husband, heartbroken as she was, she always carried on without a fuss. As a young teenager I would watch and learn from her, with no man she relied on being street smart and careful not to trust the outside communities. Our farm was part of a small village, essentially a collection of seven families farming side by side in allocated allotments each with its own farm hut, all huts were small round red earth brick with thatched roofs, one room with a cooking fire pit out back and sleeping mats scattered throughout the floor space inside, at the entrance two chairs sat either side of the arched doorway, this was my aunts perch, where she entertained visitors and ate, while we sat on the ground and ate too, and where she finished everyday with her well-deserved coffee. A humble but loving home, primitive but the only place I knew, and we felt safe and stable, but I could never accept the fact that the people I cared so much for would never experience anything more than this in their lives.

My daily tasks consisted of waking just before sun up, washing, dressing and because I was the oldest helping the other children get dressed and washed. My aunt was up even earlier than me, making sure the fire was lit and a breakfast of maze meal cooking away so us children could fill our stomachs for the long day ahead, strange as it sounds I always looked forward to my breakfast bowl of runny maze and even though it never changed I still gobbled it down making sure every drop was gone. Then it was time to start my long journey to the ground water well to collect water for the family, I would grab the seven litre plastic water container and my cousin Mwewe would take the three litre one, and off we’d go on our 26 kilometre walk to the well. My cousin Mwewe loved to talk English and as soon as we hit the trail to the well she would spend much of the time practicing it with me, my mother only spoke English so I from infancy had heard enough to pick up a conversation and between the two of us and some old magazines we self-schooled ourselves in English classes as we crossed the dusty plains of the rural African landscape. Even though we would set off first thing in the morning, the Ethiopian sun is strong and would begin to bake the gravel road, never the less we just walked on, Mwewe in her young bare feet getting toughened each day, like mine had become and I’m sure like all the women in the village. My young cousin was a skinny little thing who tried as she might but was never as strong as me or as fast over the four and a half hour round trip to fetch water for the farm and family, and as we headed back and even though she would only be carrying half as much water as me I could see the strain on her little face, it was at this point we would take a rest stop, but not at the side of the road. You see my country is not safe for young women and the temptation of two tired young girls to a passing traveller may be too much, so we would head off the road and lay our backs against some boulders, taking advantage of what little shade they offered from the now baking midday sun beating down and scorching the already dry earth.

‘Justice, what do you think the people from the cities do for water?’ Mwewe asked in her young innocent voice, ‘ I have no idea’ I replied, I did remember we always had water at the place I lived in with my parents in the city, I just assumed this came from wells right next to the houses as I can’t remember my mother ever heading out to go get it, but this concept seemed too much for me to explain and understand fully let alone poor little Mwewe, who like me had done this trip for water for most of her short life, and probably would continue to do this until she married and had her own children to fetch the water while she tended her own hut. Wow is that what will become of me too, an old woman tending her hut waiting for her children to return with water while her husband herds a flock of goats or collects more fire wood to chop. I guess it’s something everybody does, but my mother never ended up this way, no she left the land, left her country of birth even, so many adventures, so much she would have seen and done. I’m not sure what it was that made it that way for her but it does sound very appealing for a strong simple girl looking to follow in the footsteps of a pioneering mother and a farther that himself achieved so much in his all too short life. But more than that my young cousins have no dreams, Mwewe can speak some English but can only use it to shout at the goats or talk to me, no one else in our community speaks a word of it. No I want to give my family dreams and a future, they are good people with their whole lives ahead of them, carting water and farming to just barely survive will only push them down further.

‘Back at last’ my aunt yelled as we entered the gate to the yard out the front of our hut, ‘yes aunty’ I replied, she took the water inside with Mwewe and I headed off to the other side of the village to the unfarmed hills to collect what little bits of kindling wood there was for our fire. There was not enough daylight left for me to go further to where the bigger trees were, and bring back lots of wood to see us through for a long period, so I had to ensure each day we had enough sticks of kindling to cook dinner and for breakfast the following day, and maybe if I could find a little more boil up some water to wash up in some evenings before bed.

I’m soon nearly out of daylight and must return to our hut, again probably not enough for a warm wash, like most days it was either not enough wood to burn or not enough water to wash with. I must not complain tough as our small heard of goats is giving milk and this blessing is all I should hope for so we may sell it for maze and beans for the village and its families to eat and stay alive, so the children may grow up strong and be put to work to keep our little community going and not become an arid wasteland like so much of the scenery around us.

Dinner time, samp and beans, which is a kind off mush of soft beans slopped into a bowl, we would eat then wash up, then it’s off to bed for us all to begin another day. Aunt Lolo is settling on her chair outside the door, the beautiful stars in the clear black sky her companion for the night, I will do it for her now, but soon I will do it for me, her and all the village.

Chapter 3: Operation Lunar Surface

A few years passed and Justice was now eighteen years old. It is at this point where I will take over the telling of this story, who I am is not important now, much much later you will meet me, and don’t fret you will again continue to hear from Justice herself. For now young Justice was an adult and had it not been for her being a woman she would have been the head of her family.

Hard times had now hit her family and indeed the whole village, month after month of no rain had now turned into a little over 2 and a half years of dry desolate starvation that parched the throats of the people and scorched the bare earth leaving little life on the land. The already dry desert lands that stretched for miles around Justice’s home, and that at the best of times resembled a baron wasteland had now turned to dust, crops could not grow, water had to be fetched from further and further away as underground wells began to dry up. With barely enough food for the people the goats in the heard withered and died, and those that had survived to this point were no more than walking skeletons draped in leather hide. The people of the village too became malnourished skeletons, as the old perished and the very young became sick. Justice’s family was now relying on weekly handouts of maze from the Red Cross who visited the larger towns in the district. Justice and her younger cousin would now make the journey once a week to fight the crowds for their family’s share of this food that they all so desperately needed. Justice would play the part of a single mother to her young cousins at the food aid stations, this would ensure they would at the very least receive some food and water, but there were no guarantees and coming back empty handed would see Justice and her aunt reduced to eating and drinking water only every second day in order to help the family survive.

When Justice was not making the long journey to town for this food aid, she was taking the long road to fetch water from the nearest well in the district that would provide a reasonable share of water to sustain her family’s needs. However this well too was slowly succumbing to the drought and each trip would yield less and less for the family. Never the less Justice would rise each day before sunrise and return to the village long after sunset with the water she had gathered. She did this now every day as she became a life line for not only her family but many of her neighbours in the village too weak to make their own journey. It was hot, dry, thirsty work but Justice knew it was her duty to provide for her community as much as she could. So along the moon like landscape that seemed to stretch on forever and in the hot blistering sun, Justice walked and walked everyday with her water container, back and forth by herself, sometimes she would even run in the cooler mornings and late evenings, this feet of endurance was fuelled by a need to keep her loved ones alive.

On one of Justices trips to the town for the now more frequently distributed food aid she came upon a convoy of two four wheel drives parked along the dusty red dirt main road at the entry to the town, a few locals were milling around them, and a couple of well-dressed men in suits standing and talking amongst them. Justice thought perhaps another aid agency was operating in the town, and this was a chance to get something extra for the family. As she and her cousin approached the parked convoy and crowd she was pushed aside by some angry locals who walked past in the opposite direction, clearly disgruntled by the outcome of their own investigations into the strange array of suited men in the sleepy part of the main street. Justice walked closer clutching her young cousins hand so as not to lose her in the crowd, she peered into the semi-circle grouping of people who were listening with intent to one of the men in a clean grey suit and light yellow collared work shirt, his dialect indicated he was from one of the big cities and Justice couldn’t quite get the gist of what he was on about, as she was about to edge closer to the front of the group a voice whispered in her ear, ‘it’s not a safe job for a man let alone a young woman’, Justice turned to see a young man, he dressed like a town dweller, baggy red T-shirt, black jeans and an old faded black baseball cap, not like the rural village men she was used too, she pulled him aside to the very back of the crowd and well out of earshot of the men hanging out of the four wheel drives. ‘What do you mean? What is this all about?’ The young African man began to explain to Justice that this was a group of men hired by the government to recruit new soldiers for the Ethiopian army, but even with the offer of regular pay and food, people in the district knew better, and Justice understood that apart from the army being a dangerous place to work in, the stories she had overheard in the town of new recruits being thrown to the wolves by the army commanders was all too common, let alone what might become of a young country girl, falling into their clutches. ‘ These guys just want to fill a quota, they want the strongest who will be selected by the army officers, the more new recruits chosen, the more money they make, you cannot trust them’. Justice thanked the young man and went on to the regular aid station to continue her much more important duty, feeding her family. She gave little thought to the army recruitment drive, hopefully it would bring prosperity to those who took their chances in that line of risky work.

The events of the next part of this story would have one of the most dramatic effects on Justice’s life, so much so, that only her own words can describe them.

I returned late one night, much later than usual, the aid stations were even busier now days and the wait for food was the longest it had ever been. I walked through the darkness of the village and toward my hut, the dim embers of the fire inside were still burning. ‘I’m sorry I’m late aunty’, her old weathered face stared up at me in the doorway, I hadn’t realised just how much this hard life had aged my poor aunt beyond her years, to feed us all she would go days with very little food and it was now starting to show in a most dramatic way. ‘It’s your cousin Benel, she is not well’. The hunger was now starting to take hold of the young and the weak, not a day went by without some villager falling ill and inevitably dying, my youngest cousin was now in the grip of this starvation. ‘She will not last the night’ my aunt whispered as she walked me over to where Benel lay. There the site of my dying cousin cut like a knife straight through me, there was nothing left of her, stick like limbs making this 10 year old look like a small skeleton, much like the dying goats of the village. Too weak to do anything she just lay there awaiting the end, I sat down next to her, held her hand and kissed her forehead, my aunt sat beside me, ‘I will not leave her’ I spoke softly, holding back my tears. My aunt said nothing and so as the rest of the children slept, we sat there into the night performing our bedside vigil for this poor child who of no fault of her own would soon leave this world far too soon in her short life. I will not be doing any chores tomorrow, tomorrow I will bury my family.

We all stood there silent as dawn broke around us, the only activity the sound of men digging my cousin’s grave in the hard dry earth. I stared off into the distance my mind could no longer think of sadness, no my heart was done with that, the sadness and fear had now turned to anger. As I watch them lower her tiny body wrapped in a white sheet, I could only feel anger, anger for how helpless I was to save my family and community, it was at that moment that I made the decision that no matter what it takes, no matter the risk to myself I would find a way to break this cycle of death and hunger. As the last of the mourners left, I stood there alone for a few minutes, and suddenly it hit me. ‘Aunty!’ I yelled as she and the other children slowly headed back to our hut. ‘I must go to town today’‘today?’ my aunt