Ten! one and a big fat zero!This is the number of the people that survived with us at the mountain of doom and they were the heroes that saved us. Altogether we were 15 thats if l am counting the dogs and cats that made it.Afterall this was their land now too,the land of barking and hissing to ghosts they used to know and get fed by!I noticed a sketchy trend as l woke up and gathered my strength. We were all in disarray when it came to clothing but if pity had a price then the look in everyone's face was epic enough for the highest bidder! No one seemed okay, trauma was allover the place.It was as if people wanted to share their pain but their swollen eyes and dry tears were enough to tell you the full story. We survived on bananas dear friends! Yes,bananas. You see there is a deep level of romance that takes place when you devour a banana. The fruit promises to satisfy your every need with its deliciousness but betrays the laws of attraction when it fills you up with nothing but air!However if you eat them long enough, they begin to honor this agreement and before you know it, you surive with a reserve tank of much needed energy!
As time passed by l got to know my fellow survivors ,their stories and unfortunately their loss! One of them had 2 shops, 2 wives,2 houses and 200 cows excluding other livestock but guess what, he narrated his ordeal to us having nothing but dry cattle dung that he used to illustrate the size of his vanquished kraal! No one from his house made it!All the kids and wives were swepted away. It was like the cyclone had came and left us with a talk show of comparing loss and pain since some had clearly and literally lost everything and everyone!Miraculously, we had a 92 year old lady survivor amongst us!God is great l thought everytime l looked at her.It was a mystery how she made to the mountain but what l know was that she was not only special because she had survived but because she had mild amnesia which made her forget some of the trauma and loss from time to time. You could find her in a very heated debate, smiling and talking alone and all you could do was envy her and wish you had some of her gifts,atleast the smiling part!
Hours became days and days became nights but still there was no feasible help. The water didn't not sink speedily into the ground as it normally does nor did the corpses stop floating. The land was swarming with hordes of flies and bugs that follow the infamous stench of decay! Vultures were circle this once a lifetime buffet as the dead bodies kept on piling and surfacing up on the water! In some instances it wasn't the full body,it was the upper body only or a leg or a torn hand!Everything floated and it was up for grabs to anything or anyone that could or wanted to use it! We didn't know if we were trully going to be saved or surivive any longer as our water spring that we depended on was slowly running low. In groups and alone separately, we prayed and even did periodic hourly sessions for mourning our lost loved ones but no one came! Everyone was at breaking point and most were beginning to fall ill. I mean how couldn't we when we were surviving on a comtamined water spring and a tremendously unbalanced diet? When day 7 kicked in,only me and 3 other women were standing but the rest were on stone-cold rock sick beds! The temperatures had reached a level of coldness that felt like electric jolts to the joints everytime you made any movement. It felt like our bodies were shutting down to a new disaster or a cold pandemic if l may exaggerate! But l say it again, God is good all the time! As we attend to the sick and gathered dry decayed shrubs to make a fire for everyone to warm up. We noticed everything was just to wet and damp. There was no way to start a fire and besides we had no lighter or matchsticks to light it up. We were just waiting for a slow ,sneezing,dry and cold death but as we held our heads down in grief awaiting our fates, we heard a foreign sound and saw a large beam of light from afar! It had the shape of a very large bird but this bird had the voice of an amplified human tone. As it got nearer,we all cried and screamed at the same time.It was the first time that we had ever spoken , cried or even smiled in hope at once! Yes it was a helicopter and they were searching for survivors, searching for us!