Chapter 3: The Seed of Discontent
It started small—a conversation with a neighbor, a comment overheard at the market, the simple observation that a man his age should own something.
"You work like a king's servant," his friend Joseph said one evening, sharing a beer outside the trading post. "But at the end of the day, it's still his land. His cattle. His success."
The words burrowed into Mulenga's mind like parasites, feeding on old wounds, old shame.
He began to notice things he had previously overlooked: the way Mr. Banda sometimes looked at the thriving farm with a proprietary satisfaction, as if Mulenga were merely an extension of his own ambition. The way visitors would compliment the farm, and Mr. Banda would accept the praise without mentioning the man who actually made it flourish.
"I could do this myself," Mulenga said to Thandiwe one night, the words coming out before he could stop them. "I could have my own farm. My own cattle."
Thandiwe was quiet for a long moment. She was peeling cassava by the firelight, her movements practiced and efficient. "We have security here," she said finally. "We have a home."
"We have his home," Mulenga replied, and he heard the bitterness in his own voice and hated himself for it.
But the seed had been planted.
Over the next year, Mulenga began to save. Every coin from the sale of surplus crops, every bit of money earned from selling milk and eggs at the market—it all went into.