Rubberland

By Matilde Mbulo

When Joanne's parents fled from their country, Kowikia, to escape from paying their accumulated debts, taxes and a horde of other personal problems, the neighbouring kingdom of Lucklandia seemed like the perfect place to start afresh. What they didn't realize until they had settled across the border into Rubberland province were the social and economic implications of moving from a democratic country headed by a president across the border into a kingdom ruled by a King, where most things functioned differently. From the shock of walking into a highly stratified kingdom where wealth, social status, ethnicity, gender and in particular a family name could instantly open or shut doors, to walking into a society where there was little tolerance for foreign nationals, they find themselves stuck at the mercy of 'the powers that be' in Rubberland and at the same time unable to return back to their country due to the fear of facing their accumulated unresolved issues.
Rubberland follows the life and challenges of the aforementioned Kowikian family, their ups and downs as they navigate the treacherous path of being a low income foreign family living in a highly stratified kingdom marred by discrimination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matilde Mbulo
• Release date: Jan 19, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215405079

Matilde Mbulo

Matilde Mbulo was born on the 12th of July 1980 at the Maputo Central Hospital, in Mozambique. She attended primary and secondary school in Mozambique, Liberia and Ghana, and high school in Kenya. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Law and a Bachelor's degree in Psychological Counselling. While in high school, in boarding school in Kenya, Matilde discovered her passion for writing. She hand wrote poems, articles and short stories during her free time as an outlet for her thoughts and feelings about personal experiences and events, usually those that she didn’t feel safe to express. Matilde describes herself as a Writer dedicated to analyzing everyday issues through her very own unique lens, which is reflected in her books. Matilde Mbulo is the author of seven books including Hiding in Plain Sight, Stories From Lucklandia, Mistakes Experience Wisdom, The Kanzas, Narrow Crook, Rubberland and Through The Dark TUNNEL.

Book preview

This book is set in Lucklandia, a fictional country.

1

For a couple of years, I lived with my family in a small house in rural Rubber-town, a semi-urban but mostly rural town located in Rubberland, a province in Southern Lucklandia.

I was born in Kowikia, a country that borders Lucklandia to the lower West. When I was five years old, my family fled from Datoria, the capital city of Kowikia, across the border into Lucklandia in search of safety and better opportunities because the ongoing economic collapse and political instability in Kowikia had gravely disrupted the economy.

Crime, unemployment and corruption were at an all time high, pockets of insurgents were often surfacing and attempting to overthrow the Kanza government, the education system was broken (there were no accredited schools in our country), there were violent strikes almost every other day and the atmosphere in the country in general was one of apprehension. However, none of the other ongoing problems even came close to the gravity of the food security crisis. Simply put, there was no food and we were slowly dying of hunger and malnutrition. There was famine literally everywhere, we could go for days at a time without food. For many consecutive years, the World Bank had listed Kowikia as the poorest country in the world, and with good reason.

I can't begin to express how relieved I was when we hopped onto that greyhound bus out of Kowikia. I suspect that it was a Spur-of-the-moment decision because my parents didn't say goodbye to anyone. Not to family, not to friends and definitely not to neighbours. We had gone for five consecutive days with barely anything to eat, we had some money but the shops had no food to sell. My parents went out at 6am that Wednesday morning looking for food to buy and returned with three greyhound bus tickets to Lucklandia which I assumed were food stamps which were the equivalent to gold during that period. There wasn't much to pack because most of our stuff was old and dirty. We had many months of dirty laundry lying around which my mother initially wanted to pack but my dad told her not to. So my parents only packed the essentials. We only had very light hand luggage. When the taxi picked us up, I assumed that we were going to a soup kitchen or meal center although we normally walked to such places. My parents always brought me along when they visited such locations because the presence of a four or five years old child meant that they could jump the ridiculously long queues. In order to be able to jump the lengthy lines to get food, you had to be old, disabled, pregnant, a child and /or parent accompanying a young child. In fact, whenever my parents needed to get away with taking from others, they often showed my innocent starving face. That was usually enough to get people to acquiesce. People tended to sympathize with suffering children, so if my parents walked into a soup kitchen, a charity organization or shop with their five years old daughter and said that they hadn't eaten for many days, the chances of getting food donations was higher. Thus I had no idea that we were leaving the country until we got onto the bus.

I was seated by the window on the upper deck, enjoying the view of the old, decaying and mostly crumbling buildings in Datoria city when the bus started to pull out of the station. As the Greyhound bus left Datoria city en route to our destination, my mother, who was seated next to me, turned to my father, who was seated next to her, and said...

When we get to Lucklandia, we should call Brad to inform him that we've left the country otherwise he might go to the authorities and report us as missing. Or maybe not! He might be upset about the way we left his house, although it wasn’t our fault. I wonder what Brad will do when he finds out that we left without giving the one month's notice or paying the six months of rent that we owe.

Bradley Westley was our Landlord.

He'll just have to sell all our furniture and other stuff in the house. My father replied dismissively. We were dying of hunger, he'll have to understand. We left all the appliances including TV, stoves etc. The beds, the furniture... I'm sure he'll find someone to buy the stuff.

Let me just pause for a moment here to say that in the weeks prior to leaving the country, my parents had attempted to sell all our stuff in order to get money to buy food. They couldn't find a single buyer! First and foremost most of our appliances were rusty and barely working properly. Our furniture was old, tattered and worn out. The aforementioned, coupled with the fact that people had very little money and were hungry (in other provinces in Kowikia people had already started dying of hunger) meant that it was literally next to impossible to find buyers for anything (but food) leave alone old furniture and rusty appliances!

Come on Kirk you know all that stuff was old and worthless. My mother chuckled, a hint of amusement visible in her eyes. People are dying of hunger! The country is in a crisis, there’s no food in the shops. No one will want to buy rusty appliances and much less tattered furniture and stained curtains while they’re children are starving at home. We did a good thing running away. It's not our fault that the country is in crisis, the Kanza government is entirely to blame! The Kanzas and their associates are living in luxury while the rest of the country is falling apart! We’re the victims! Brad will just have to understand and move on! It's just rent! What's the big deal?

I hope he doesn't go to the authorities. My father said. I don't want to end up in the news because of rent. My hunch tells me that he won't though. Bradley has always been a peaceful, trusting and compassionate guy! He's the stupidest and most naïve person that I know. My father laughed and then continued. He believed everything that I said. I know somewhere deep down he sensed deception but the idiot is a good guy, I mean a real fool who actually has genuine concern for others! F*cking clown! He has so much empathy that it’s blocking his instincts! Trust me, he won't go to the authorities! He'll just have to clean up that hideous mess that we left behind, I mean really do a lot of deep cleaning and disinfecting otherwise no one will agree to rent that place! Hahahaha...

I suppose my father was right about cleaning and disinfecting the place! I think that no decent human being would have agreed to move into the house in the state that we had left it in. To summarize the damage that we did to our landlord, Bradley, without his knowledge, let’s just say that we left the house in a state that was unwelcoming to potential tenants, basically uninhabitable! After several months of failing to pay the water bill, the city council had cut the water supply to our house. We started asking around for water. At first my parents did the asking but when people began to complain about the constant begging, they began to send me to knock on the doors with two 1.5 liters empty bottles. My dad would push a wheelbarrow containing many empty 1.5 liters bottles and hide in a corner while I went from door to door asking for water. Each time I got water, I would take the full bottles back to the wheelbarrow and then collect two more empty bottles before going to the next house to knock on the door. We were usually able to fill fifty bottles a day which was hardly enough for three people. Initially, begging for 3 liters per house per day worked. Many neighbours found it hard to say no to a five years old girl begging them to fill two 1.5 liters bottles of water, over and over again. After a couple of weeks of daily begging though, they also became tired and many simply refused to open their doors whenever I went knocking. In other words, after many weeks of consistently begging for water from literally all the neighbours, the people in the neighborhood decided to stop helping us. They shut us out, so we were stuck in a rented house without any form of water supply. The result is that we repeatedly used the toilets without flushing and when the toilets were full of poop and no longer usable, we started digging shallow holes in the sand in our backyard to poop and pee. The whole place stunk of poop! I have no idea why the neighbours did not report the issue. Our landlord, Bradley, was unaware that, in addition to running away without paying the rent, my parents had also left a huge water bill that had to be paid before the council could reestablish water supply to the house. But that was not all. Following many months of non payment, electricity supply had also been cut. My father knew a thing or two about electricity, so he secretly rewired our electricity to one of our neighbours house without the latter’s knowledge. I have no idea how he did it but it worked. So basically, after our electricity was cut due to non-payment, we started stealing electricity from our neighbour (who probably had no idea why his electricity bill was so high). In short, when we ran away to Lucklandia, we left behind unpaid municipal bills (many months worth of unpaid water and electricity) for Bradley to pay and a very filthy house.  The place was messy. I had scribbled on the walls, the floors, doors and windows with permanent markers, a situation which my parents found to be amusing. When we moved into that rented two bedroomed house the walls, which had been freshly painted, were spotlessly clean and white. The house had just been renovated by the landlord and everything was brand new. As a young child who was often alone, bored and without any friends, I had developed a love for drawing so I started using whiteboard markers, permanent markers, highlighters and a children’s paint set that had been donated by a charity organization to scribble on the walls in my room. After I'd messed up all the walls in my bedroom, I started doing the same to the corridor walls, then to the walls of the dining room, then to the doors...you get the picture. By the time we left that house, I had scribbled all over the place with markers and used my children's paint-set to paint the doors, walls, built in cupboards and tiled floors! Basically the interior of the house looked more like a very busy painter's workshop than a home. But it was not just the scribblings that made the place disgusting. There was usually no tissue at home so after pooping outside, I would walk back into the house and smear my little buttocks against the wall and edges of the doors in an attempt to remove the itchy poop remains from my bottoms. Need I continue? There were months of dirty moldy dishes in the kitchen, I had developed dysentery so my poop was more like dirty water, I remember vomiting in the corridor and a huge worm parasite that had been living in my stomach came out with my vomit and literally slithered away from the pool of vomit out the door...

The bottom line is that here we were, on our way to another country to start afresh, having left behind resentful neighbours, debts and a hideous mess (that we had created) for someone else to fix.  

As the speeding bus continued to move through the old city en route to the border between Datoria and the Great Ganolands province of Lucklandia, my parents continued to chat...

My mother laughed. He'll have to hire a really dedicated maid to clean up that place or no one will agree to rent the house!

And pay the accumulated water and electricity bills! my dad added. Thankfully, that's no longer our problem! We're going to start afresh in Lucklandia! That Bradley guy was just an idiot! I don't know what part of the world he grew up in! He's just a nice, stupid and compassionate fool!

I've never seen such naivety in my entire life! my mother continued laughing heartily. Now he's been left cleaning the poop!

My father burst into laughter!

Oh here comes the hostess with burgers and soft drinks! I'm starving! Thank God! Our new life starts here!

We are blessed! my mother said as the hostess approached. It's a six hours drive to the border. Thank God!

The hostess who served us was jittery and often discreetly reaching for her nose. She quickly served us each a burger! She looked like she wanted to get away from us as fast as possible. Unfortunately, my parents weren't ready to let her go! Those burgers were the first thing that we had eaten in many days! We were starving! My dad asked if we could have more burgers! She smiled uncomfortably. He reached into his pocket, took out some money and waved it at her. She declined to accept the money but did give us each two extra burgers. I was a starving five years old child, so I begged for more. I suppose extreme hunger causes politeness to fly out of the door. She gave me a fourth burger and my parents bought three sodas from her, one for each of us. The soft drinks were for sale for everyone so she had to accept the payment. Afterwards she quickly moved on to the next seats to serve!

The one thing that my parents failed to do was perhaps read the room! The lady sitting on the aisle seat on the same row as us on the left side of the bus kept staring at my parents with a look of disbelief on her face! The people passing were also giving us funny looks. I also noticed that the people sitting around us were, in addition to shaking their heads and also giving us weird stares, constantly reaching for their noses. I remember at one point during the journey, I was feeling bored so I stood up on my chair with my muddy sandals and was looking around. I noticed that the people sitting on the seats immediately behind us were all holding their noses. I made eye contact with the guy who was sitting behind my mother, in response he cringed and intentionally began to fan his nose!

There was also another hostess who kept spraying the area around us with what I believe was either air freshener or some sort of disinfecting spray. She was being very discreet but she kept coming back from time to time to spray the air space around us. 

My parents seemed completely oblivious to everything that was happening around us. They ate, chatted loudly and were merry. I think that at some point almost everyone around was listening to their endless conversation but my parents didn't seem to take notice. Or maybe they were enjoying the attention. At one point they both fell asleep and the lady who was in the same row separated from us by the isle sighed loudly.

Okay! Let's take another pause. The thing is that even as a five years old child, sitting in that greyhound bus that was heading to Lucklandia with those two adults who were my parents, something at the back of my mind felt like something about those two was odd! Of course they were my parents and as a five years old child, I couldn’t understand why I felt disconnected from them or why I felt like something was missing from those two and much less put it into words, but that feeling, albeit suppressed throughout my childhood, never quite went away. It surfaced from time to time as I grew older, such as on instances when I heard other adults describing one or both of my parents in their absence. On one such occasion, when I was seven years old, my second grade class teacher, Mrs. Ariel Kamara, told the principal of my new school in Lucklandia, Mrs. Alma D'aha, that she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with my mother, whom she  described as a disturbingly cold, calculating and vicious narcissistic sociopath. The principal and my class teacher came to an agreement not to discuss any problems that I was having in school with either of my parents. On another occasion, when I was eight years old and in fourth grade, a neighbour who had had close interactions with my parents described my mother as a hostile person with a serious lack of empathy who had mastered the skill of mirroring people to avoid detection. That same neighbour went on to describe my father as a covert aggressor who masked his evilness behind an outward appearance of an approachable, loving, friendly and peaceful person. She also described him as someone who gossiped a lot behind people's backs! My parents always said that that neighbour was jealous of our family. In fourth grade, I remember feeling sad and upset about not being invited to another girl's birthday party. I was eight years old and my other classmates had been invited. Many years later, when we were in our twenties, she apologized to me. She told me that I couldn't be there because her parents did not want my parents around. As a child, all the negative conversations about my parents that I heard were almost always made behind their backs. No one dared to confront them, particularly my mother. The few who did instantly regretted it because not only did she enjoy drama and confrontation, she also had an innate ability to make just about anyone look guilty. Even so, with the exception of the select few who really knew my parents, the majority of people in our new community in Lucklandia adored them and often invited us to most functions.

What I came to realize much later in life is that it is only those select few who had had a close, constant and / or intimate encounter with my parents, those who had witnessed the mask fall off and seen and experienced what was behind the mask really knew who my parents were. Unfortunately, the aforementioned few were also the ones who were generally disliked by the members of the community! Such was the case with the principal of my new school in Lucklandia, Mrs. Alma D'aha, who after a few encounters with my parents started avoiding them at all costs, even going as far as refusing to call either of my parents to address any problems that I had in school.

It is also those select few adults in the community, those outsiders who were going against the wind and just doing the right thing despite the hostility that was directed at them who indirectly instilled in me a sense of right and wrong. One such person was Ms. Maria Scottina, a manager at Miller Inc., a Conglomerate holding company owned by the Miller family, one of the wealthiest families in Rubberland province. Ms. Scottina, who lived in a middle-class neighbourhood and often volunteered as a Sunday School teacher at the community church that we attended in Rubberland, sometimes chatted with me during and after Sunday School as I was growing up. She always spoke to me about the mistakes that she made while growing up and in her early adulthood, and what she could have done differently. She fed me brownies and cookies with a carton of milk to keep me going back for more counselling sessions. I now realize that growing up I did end up experiencing many of the things that she spoke about and I can't thank her enough for giving me some basic training and preparation to face life's challenges. She was one of those who helped me to understand the boundary between wrong and right and made me understand that even when toxic behaviour and evil is normalized, it is still wrong! I believe that there's something that God puts inside each and everyone of us, something that we’re born with, something that instinctively helps us to identify that which is wrong, immoral or evil, even if it is normalized inside a home or community, and she helped me to tap into and develop that sense. As children, we may suppress that inner whisper that alerts us if something is not quite right, especially if we're being raised in an environment where we don’t feel safe, but that instinct, that sixth sense never dies. We just have to learn to tap into and listen to it!

It's not just our former landlord, Bradley, that my parents took advantage of. I often watched them getting away with taking advantage of and abusing other people! They always picked their targets carefully, often targeting vulnerable, trusting, quiet, isolated, compassionate, forgiving and inattentive people who did not have the mental, emotional, intellectual or financial knowledge and tools to protect themselves or fight back. Basically as long as they felt that they could get away with taking advantage of someone else, they did! Without an ounce of remorse!

As our bus entered Lucklandia through the western section of The Great Ganolands, I suddenly thought that I had entered into heaven! Going from the impoverished, old and dirty Datoria province that was literally in ruins into The Great Ganolands, a state-of-the-art, first class, province in Lucklandia felt like leaving hell and entering heaven. Contrary to Datoria where the streets were littered with dirt, the story buildings old and dirty looking, where shops were empty and people were starving, The Great Ganolands was a modern province with magnificent mansions, lots of gated communities, malls, parks, state of the art infrastructures... it was like suddenly walking into a heavenly place that until then I had no idea existed! Even the air smelled cleaner and fresher in The Great Ganolands. The presence of heavily armed military soldiers on the roads, police vehicles visibly patrolling and the uniformed royal guards was a clear sign that the inhabitants were very important people. And they were! The most important members of the Lucklandian nobility, namely the Lucklandian Royal Family also known as the Twanadi Royal Family, lived in The Great Ganolands.

From the moment that the bus entered The Great Ganolands, everyone who had cameras were running to the windows to take pictures. These were the seventies, there were no cellphones, few people could afford cameras and most cameras worked with black and white film that was very limited. Only a few pictures could be taken before one ran out of film. My parents had no camera so we didn’t get to take any pictures of the magnificent Ganolands. The driver even went off course so that we could all see the magnificent chateau de Twanadi, the golden Twanadi Royal Palace where King Phillip of Lucklandia lived. The Twanadi Royal Palace, which was commissioned in the 1800s by King Asante of Lucklandia shortly after he paid a visit to his counterpart in France