Tudor Parfitt - The Lost Ark of the Covenant - The Remarkable Quest for the Legendary Ark

The functional similarities were striking. But the differences in form were significant. The Ark was apparently a kind of box, coffer, or chest, while the ngoma - although it also carried things inside it - was a drum. The Ark was made of wood but it was covered in sheets of gold; the ngoma was just made of wood.

Most critically, there was no connection in ancient times between the world of the Bible and this distant and remote inland corner of Africa. And there was no proof at all, in any way, that the Lemba guardians of the ngoma were of Jewish ancestry. Nonetheless, the area of overlap between these seemingly very different objects attracted me and turned my mind towards the strange story of the Ark of the Covenant. It was an interesting comparison but, I thought, no more than that.

* * *

Outside the chief’s hut, with the tumultuous din of the drums crowding out all the night sounds, I leaned against the mud and straw wall of the hut and slowly felt the pain of the blow recede. Sevias looked ill at ease. He took my arm and raised me to my feet, guiding me further away from the groups of men who were standing around, enjoying the cool of the night air before returning to the frenzy of the dance.

‘Talking about the ngoma and the things that were brought from Israel is too dangerous, Mushavi . This is part of the secret lore of the tribe. I cannot tell you any more about this than we have already told you. We told you that we call ourselves Muzungu ano-ku bva Senna - “the white men who came from Senna”. We told you that the ngoma came with us from Senna. We told you what the ngoma used to do. And we told you that the ngoma has not been seen by men for many, many years.’

Sevias was about to turn away when he hesitated and put his hand on my arm.

‘The old men say it was the ngoma that guided us here and some people say that when the time is right the ngoma will come to take us back. Things are getting worse in this country. Perhaps the time is coming.’

‘Sevias,’ I asked. ‘I know this is one of the great secrets of your tribe and I know that there are many in the tribe who do not wish to share their secrets with me. But I am leaving soon. I don’t want to leave empty-handed. Could you just tell me, please, if you have any idea where the ngoma lungundu might be?’

Sevias paused, looked around, and fell silent. He glanced up at the disappointingly bright night sky and again shuffled his feet in the fine dust of the kraal . ‘Where it is now I do not know. But some years ago the very old men used to say it was hidden in the cave below Dumghe Mountain. It is safe there. It is protected by God, by the king, by the “bird of heaven”, by twoheaded snakes and by the lions, “the guardians of the king”. It had been taken there, so the old men said, by the Buba from Mberengwe. They are the clan of Lemba priests and in those days there were some of them who stayed down on the Mberengwe side. But, as you know, that is the one place that you should not go. Not on Dumghe Mountain.’

He bade me goodnight and walked quickly back to join the elders.

I took Tagaruze, the policeman who had been instructed by the local police headquarters to act as my bodyguard (and to keep an eye on me), and walked the couple of miles back to Sevias’ kraal .

I felt a pang of regret that I would soon be leaving this beautiful place with its rugged hills and great rounded boulders, moulded and shaped by aeons of wind and rain, sun and drought.

The next day, I was planning to move on north towards Malawi and Tanzania, following the trail of the passage across Africa of this enigmatic tribe, in search of their lost city of Senna. It seemed a long, lonely quest and all of a sudden I found myself yearning for home.

I had had a letter from Maria, my voluptuous, salsa dancing Latin American girlfriend. It was tender but firm. She wanted me to go back, to leave this self-indulgent quest of mine for what she called the non-existent Senna. She wanted me to marry her and lead a normal life, the conventional and sedentary life of a scholar and university teacher. If I didn’t want to marry her there were plenty of men around who did.

‘Men,’ she said, ‘there are millions of them. Yo u are an imbecil if you do not take the chance now when you have it. Others would.’

And it was true. Every time she walked down the street there were very few men who failed to notice her. She had a way of walking. I tried to put her out of my mind. She would wait. Probably.

I was still feeling tipsy from the chibuku . If what Sevias had told me was correct there was perhaps some chance of me actually finding their ngoma lungundu. This would perhaps reveal something about where the tribe had come from. It would perhaps help me find the lost city of Senna. Perhaps there was some writing on it, or secret, sacred objects inside it, which could help me on my quest. All I needed to do was to go to Dumghe.

I felt a tremor of excitement. The sacred mountain of the Lemba is situated a couple of miles away from Sevias’ kraal . It was a beautiful rounded hill, east facing and covered with the characteristic rounded boulders of the region and was sparsely wooded. There was open country between the kraal and Dumghe. There were no villages or kraals - and no noisy dogs to alert the tribe to my activities. There was no dangerous wild life, save packs of jackals and the occasional leopard and I was too drunk to be overly concerned about them.

Following a sudden, chibuku -inspired urge, I decided to walk to the sacred cave, the one place where the tribe had forbidden me to go. A no-go area. In the past anyone daring to go there not of the initiated would be punished by death.

The elders would be dancing and drinking for hours to come, I thought to myself. The rest of the tribe were asleep. No one would ever know I’d been there. I knew that the cave was situated at the base of two massive rocks which had sheared away from a cliff which formed the eastern side of the mountain. It is covered with great, smooth round boulders created over the millennia by wind erosion. The rocks behind which the cave was hidden had once been pointed out to me, and I had been told that behind the sacred cave there was another cave even holier than the first. That was perhaps where the ngoma was protected, as they said, by its guardian lions and polycephalous snake.

It was about two o’clock in the morning when I arrived - along with Tagaruze, my tough police bodyguard - at the great meshunah tree where I had encountered the Lemba guardian of Dumghe during my first days in the village. From the tree all paths leading to the cave could be seen. The official guardian was reputed always to be on duty but that was difficult to believe and, in any case, as far as this occasion went, I had little to worry about for I had seen him at the rain party, drunk like all the others.

We paused for a moment and then made our way up the side of the mountain towards the rough track which led down to where the cave was. To one side the path hugged the rock face; to the other there was a sheer forty-foot drop into the void. It was a treacherous descent and stones kept plummeting into the abyss.

Even Tagaruze was scared. Tonight he was going way beyond the call of duty. He was as fascinated by the Lembas’ stories as I was. But he was beginning to regret having agreed to accompany me this night. He was not much given to words but finally he muttered, ‘Why are we doing this? What are we looking for?’ I was scared too, and did not reply.

I thought I heard a noise in the trees and brush above the stone face of Dumghe. We fell silent. One of the elders had seen a lion, a white lion, he had said, on the mountain, a few days before. The elders had told me that the ngoma was always protected by lions. These were the lions of God, the guardians of the king. We pushed on, slithering down the path which led down to the cave at the base of the rocks, pausing from time to time to listen for signs of danger. Tagaruze took the gun from its holster and stuck it into his belt. There was a damp, acrid smell in the air. My hands were wet with sweat from the effort of the walk and from fear.