Sitting on a stoole outside his mud hut The mzee scratched his head in a slow motion,
Trying to recall
His dim grey eyes quiveringly stared into the distance
And with a faint foltering voice he spoke
Of the wind that stirred sinister feelings
Of the leaves that rustled with forebording,
Of the men who talked of deliverance and freedom,
And of the warriors who pledged to fight.
Then he paused and snuffed some tobacco
„The Germans" He shook his head and shuddered:
„Yes, they came – with guns, to be sure –
Many guns.”
His glance slowly shifted in a broken semi-circle
At each of the few listeners who squatted on the ground.
He pointed to the distant hills on his right:
„For many days,
They resounded with drum-beats and frenzied cries;
Then with the spirit of alien ancestors
They thundered with strange unearthly sounds.”
Placing both his hands on his head,
He looked down on the earth and pronounced,
„They fired bulls, not water, no, not water.”
He looked up, with a face crumpled with agony,
And with an unsteady swing of his arm, he said,
„Dead, we all lay dead."
While the mzee paused, still and silent,
His listeners gravely looked at each other
Seeming to echo his last words in chorus.
Finally, exhausted, he sighed,
„The Germans came and went,
And for many years
No drums beat again.”
(Yusuf Kassam, läßt einen alten Mann seine Erinnerungen an den Maji-Maji-Krieg ausdrücken)
"...Fugufugu ... In dem Kriegsgebiet brach eine katastrophale Hungersnot aus,
der etwa 250 000 bis 300 000 Menschen zum Opfer fielen ..."
http://www.lwg.uni-hannover.de/wiki/Der_Maji-Maji-Krieg