Did the couple finally strike luck after a long line of daughters?

Everyone queued outside the hut at sunrise pondering how they would react to the announcement of the newcomer.

Ambane who was fighting a vicious and bloodthirsty war with a neighbouring clan was informed of the news and took a shortcut home to show his resentment in the arrival of yet another daughter.

He was angered at the news and discerned that he had to kill the new baby as a sacrifice to the masalai so next time he would surely have a baby boy.

The forest seemed distressed as he ran noticing nothing, full of the thought that he had to kill the baby girl. It was not impulsive; it was something he had vowed to do when he learnt that Gundu was with child.

Gundu, dismayed by her predicament, knew she had to move immediately and take the baby into hiding before Ambane returned.

She knew he would show no mercy and would kill the baby. Gundu did not blame him for this; she blamed herself. Why did the masalai curse her to conceive only girls? Perhaps she may have disturbed them or accidently been sighted by one whose glare caused this curse.

She thanked the midwife and gently took hold of her baby girl and attempted to get up and walk. But she was weak and her legs trembled and failed to assist her attempt to flee.

Gundu fell clumsily to the dusty floor of the hut and the agonising pain that exploded from her lower abdomen travelled instantly throughout her being.

Her need to escape was overwhelming yet the ordeal seemed impossible. She slumped on the floor in a distressed state, knowing that she stood no chance of saving her baby. She gave in to fatigue and fell into a deep sleep with her baby in her arms.

The baby did not cry but somehow reciprocated her mother’s emotions in a calm and subtle way. It was as if she felt the pain and distress she was causing her mother and did not want to add to her long list of problems.

She slept peacefully in a bilum covered in pandanas leaves and dried crushed stalks from trees. Her face lit up with innocence and her skin glowing from the pig’s oil, a healing remedy for the wounds mother and baby suffered during delivery.

A loud call woke the exhausted mother and now the baby started crying from the clamour in the village. Gundu knew the familiar sound of the calls from the mountain tops followed by confused and grief stricken cries. Someone must have died.

Footsteps surrounded her hut and within seconds wailing commenced. Gundu did not want to believe what was happening but her instinct told her that tragedy had stumbled upon her husband.

A painful scream left her mouth and the villagers burst in to the hut, crying with grief and sympathy for the loss of a brave warrior who was a pillar of strength in the village.

The crying went on into the afternoon and the women remained with Gundu to mourn until the next new moon as tradition had it. She was not allowed to see Ambane despite her need to prove that he was gone from the face of the earth on a spiritual journey.

She knew he would visit from time to time in reincarnated animal or spiritual form.

Gundu looked down at the baby who was now sleeping soundlessly in the bilum and saw how much she resembled her father. Her baby’s name would be Baundo Dekemba and she would grow into a strong-willed woman with her father’s tough character and outspoken wit.

Baundo would one day be told that her life had been spared as the result of her father’s untimely death at the hands of the enemy tribe.

Ambane’s head had been cut off and taken by the enemy warrior as a trophy while his body had been brought back and buried at the entrance to the village as he would continue his duty in the spiritual realm to guard and protect.

Ambane was destined to die as a warrior but the incident of his daughter’s birth was the deed of the masalai and their all-knowing manipulation of life and death.

Gundu was full of hope for she believed great things were in store for Baundo who was granted life when Ambane’s life was taken.

The masalai always knew what would become of people and it was no mistake of theirs that Baundo, Gundu’s last daughter, had lived.