The Spirit of the Waterfall

By Antony Obwari

Benard Wafula is a young journalist working with The Telegraph. His editor calls him to his office to brief him on an assignment to cover an apparent case of cannibalism in the coast region of the country. At the same time Martha, a nun, is assigned to go and make arrangements to receive take a group of children from a Children's home to the same region through a Kenya Airways plane on its maiden flight. The two are strangers. They travel on the same bus, share a seat and a brief talk. Later they go their separate ways. Martha is struck by Ben and keeps thinking of him, while Ben too is almost sure he is in love with her. Meanwhile, unknown to both Ben and his editor, the former is a subject of a Biblical prophecy of the revelations. Two spy agencies have just put in operation a project called Gold. Its purpose is to monitor and help Ben. Ben's assignment has to be cut short when terrorists bomb Nairobi and Dar-es Salaam. Mossad and CIA agents establish contact with him, and with some effort, begin to explain his identity and new role in the unfolding of the Christian apocalypse. Martha too has to come away from the city. Some of the destitute children in their charge died in the tragedy. She experiences the urge to quit the convent, and to meet, and marry, Ben. Man and woman; and man and God, are now on a cataclysmic course to look for and find each other, and come to new terms of an ancient covenant.

Kulova is a middle-aged herdsman, and Kundu a younger wanderlust. Both work for a wealthy village landowner. Kundu is way past marrying age and does not intend to marry, while his mate is restless and hardly ever in one place. There is a vast forest of pine trees across an earth road in which they daily take the livestock to graze. There are times Kulova feels he can see shapes and figures in the clouds in the sky. The matriarch of the home is an ailing, good-natured woman. Cynthia, one of her daughters, spires to be a musician and owns a keyboard on which she regularly practices. Her boyfriend Peter is going to be part of her team. The pine trees are now mature and have to be cut down and carted to a paper factory. People from distant villages come to gather branches and burn charcoal, starting a small community of traders by the riverside. Mama passes away, leaving the two grieved. Cynthia is devastated but recovers to start composing a song in memory of her departed mother. Kulova meets a woman in the forest one day and the two start an illicit romance. Later she goes back to her husband, with whom she was temporarily separated, leaving him feeling morose and waking up to the ways of love. When the meet later, briefly, she exhorts him to stand up and be a man, work and trade and save, and then confides that the baby she now has was actually fathered by him. Eventually the two men start out on the road to manhood, walking its threshold, and find that it is not easy, while Cynthia continues to craft a song for mama. The story affirms the worth of human beings even in a challenging environment that denies them the full expression of their intrinsic value.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0CDZ991P1
• ISBN13: 9798366870887
• Release Date: August 2023
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 120 Pages
• Weight: 0.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 6.0" x 9.0"