(This is an extract for a forthcoming script from our columnist Alex Magaisa)

My Friend, Cotwell …

I loved Cotwell. I was six years old when they took him away. They send my friend, Eddie and I to get him.

“Go and fetch Cotwell” said one of the elders as the men of the village gathered under the big Musasa tree at the edge of the village. It was very early in the morning and our feet were already wet from the dew on the grass. The men had already made a fire. They gathered around it to ward off the chill of the morning air.

One elder turned to the older boys and said, “Please make sure all the knives and ropes are ready. We want to do this quickly”.

I felt sick. The words hit me like a dagger in softest part of the heart. It suddenly dawned on me what was about to happen.

All night I thought it was just a nightmare. The evening before, as we went to sleep, I had overheard the elders talk about it. Cotwell’s name had been mentioned. They had mentioned other names but they had settled on Cotwell. Cotwell was old, they said. They said Cotwell no longer served a useful purpose. He would not last another season and if he did he would fetch very little at the market. There were other younger ones to replace him, they agreed. I had drifted off to sleep as I was tired after a hard day’s work in the fields.

But I had not slept well all night. I told myself it was just a dream; a bad nightmare and waited for dawn to arrive and bring a new fresh day with new possibilities. I was refusing to face reality.

Cotwell and I had a special relationship; a relationship that speaks and signifies the language of the world.

Paolo Coehlo refers in The Alchemist, to something called the Language of the World – the language that connects everything in the world, a language that cannot be explained and perhaps needs no explanation. It is the language through which everything in this world communicates. It could be the beautiful smell that tells us that the rain is coming or the rare cry of Haya bird which signals the coming of the rain. It may the presence of vultures hovering in the sky that tells that there is a dead animal close by or the soft rock that allows water to flow across the land and form streams and rivers. It could be the Baobab tree, whose presence in an area communicates the scarcity of water or the Shezhu bird which, if he follows it, could guide the hunter towards a beehive.

I like to think that Cotwell and I were connected in a special way by this language of the world.

I was a small boy who spent a lot of time looking after Cotwell and other domestic animals, alongside my friends. We gave every one them a name. They knew and answered to their names and I like to think they knew us too. We led them to find food and water and they obliged by helping us till the land and giving us milk. Eddie, my friend was especially good with cattle – he could tell each cow by sound of their mooing.

Cotwell was one of the biggest oxen we had in the village. He was a gentle giant. He had a pair of long horns which pointed backwards. He worked hard and was loyal and obedient. And he was also very intelligent. Like all things, sometimes, Cotwell could be stubborn. In that mood Cotwell would choose to do one thing and no matter how hard you tried to change him, he would persist. He was especially bossy when dealing with smaller people like me at the time.

I remember one day, chasing him down the fields, crying out for Cotwell to come back. I was crying and shouting his name, calling Cotwell to turn back. But Cotwell continued to run away. He would run far ahead of me and then stand at a distance to watch me running and yelling. Then just as I thought I had got to him, Cotwell would start to run away again. It was all a game to him. Then Babamunini (Uncle) Josh would come to my rescue.

Cotwell did not want to make the elders angry so often he would behave n their presence. At first, Cotwell made me very angry and I would tell myself that the next time I found him in the cattle pen, I would hit him so hard with my whip until he cried. But as time went on I realised that I did not hate Cotwell. I grew close to Cotwell and I think he probably liked me too. We had probably found the part of the language that everyone speaks – what Paolo Coehlo calls “the language that everyone on earth was capable of understanding in their heart”.

So I was sad as we led Cotwell away from the cattle pen, for the past time. It dawned on me that I would have to live with memories; that this gentle giant was on its way to the land of the unknown. I wondered if Cotwell was aware of his impeding fate; if indeed he had prepared himself for this day. I wondered what he thought of me in that situation. This was a most brutal encounter with the reality of this world. I hated myself for not having had the courage to wake up and drive Cotwell away. I had almost convinced myself during the night, to go to the cattle pen and take Cotwell and drive him away to the Gandamasungo Mountain on the other side of the mighty Save River. They would have gone to the cattle pen and found nothing.

I saw the big boys leading Cotwell to the Musasa tree where they where the elders lay in wait with their instruments. I could not bear to watch so I left and hid behind the bushes. I overhead the sound of struggle. I think he put up a good fight. But they were too many of them. There were too many men with too many instruments. I heard the sound of the last departure. A big moan. It was all over.

I was only six. I did not have the power to stop them. They were too powerful and they did what they had to do. They probably had sound reasons. I just did not understand them. I never could. I only told my grandmother that I would not eat meat from Cotwell. I boycotted. That was my first boycott. Later, my friend Eddie joined me.

To this day, I remember Cotwell, the gentle giant who made me cry and smile. Maybe, in the language of the world we are still communicating; maybe that is why I have told his story ...