Foreword
Drinking from the Stream is a tale of modern Africa. The story takes place in 1971, 1972 and 1973, a time of violent upheaval when the Vietnam War and the Chinese Cultural Revolution marked a generation. The action spans ten countries, from Louisiana and the United States to Tanzania.
Mass killing in Uganda was already in full swing in 1972 when the Stream characters arrive, a year after General Idi Amin overthrew President Milton Obote. Yet Amin could not rule Uganda without the guns of his soldiers. Amin feared anyone, military or civilian, who might still be loyal to Obote. He opted to kill as many Obote supporters as he could. The killings started within the army and quickly grew to tens of thousands.
Post-independence Africa was unstable and very poor. Social change had been frozen for close to a century within nonsense colonial borders. Self-government was novel and untested. Political challengers—and there were many—incited armed uprisings, military coups, and merciless ethnic slaughter. In the years after 1960, the Great Lakes region—especially Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (later renamed Zaïre), plus Ethiopia—experienced a level of mayhem that few Westerners understood or now remember.
Aside from Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi also were poorly equipped to cope with the rigors of independence. These two tiny former African kingdoms both counted a minority cattle-owning caste—Tutsis—and a majority agricultural caste of free peasants—the Hutus. In both countries the traditional ruler, the king, was called the Mwami. But by introducing democratic politics the Belgians wrecked the centuries-old traditions that shored up stability. Free elections gave politicians in both countries the tools to mobilize Hutus as an oppressed underclass and a path to power. The first years of independence brought political assassinations, massacres, tides of refugees, and military coups. By 1972, Hutu soldiers ruled Rwanda and Tutsi soldiers ruled Burundi.
During the spring of 1972 bloody events overtook Burundi. They turned on a story so outlandish that no one could have invented it. Stewing in suspicion the ruling Tutsi military clique under President Michel Micombero was busy arresting rival Tutsis whom, they feared, were plotting to oust them from power and reinstate the Burundi monarchy. Then the unexpected struck. Not one, but two Black Swans occurred within a month of each other—an apparition followed by the Apocalypse.
First, the twenty-four-year-old ex-king Charles Ntare, the former Mwami Ntare V, arrived unannounced after six years in exile on a Ugandan helicopter, almost literally parachuting into Burundi. Charles was immediately arrested; the country was plunged into the deepest doubts about why he had returned. Conspiracy theories were rampant. Many imagined that Charles commanded an army of foreign mercenaries poised for invasion.
Meanwhile, as Burundi was freaking out about Charles, no one dreamed that Hutu revolutionaries, who for years had been patiently burrowing underground like Marx’s Old Mole, were on the eve of launching an insurrection against Tutsi power. A month after Charles appeared a bloodstained Hutu revolt broke like a thunderclap. The timing was unfortunate—or perfect. Panic followed panic. Then confusion. Then savage vengeance.
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When I first sat down to write this novel I wanted to capture in one fictional tale the hardships of coming of age and making one’s way in the world; explore the unexpected, unpredictable consequences—good and bad—of personal decisions, the enduring blessings of friendship, and the joys of discovery; to illustrate the state of mind that propels adventurous youth to travel to strange and distant lands, and spend month after month on bad roads with little money.
Stream has several themes: Politics, of course, that endless contest for human allegiance; racism, that stupid plague; the lust for revenge and murder that infect the human species; the perennial lie or deluded dream that overthrowing the existing order—revolution, in other words—will right every wrong and resolve every social ill; and despite all, humankind’s everlasting duty and will to resist injustice, oppression and tyranny.
I hope you enjoy reading Stream as much as I enjoyed writing it. And I’d love to hear your honest opinions as a review on Amazon. Or write to me via richardsacks.com.