Eldritch Horror Appears, Demands Presidency
First Contact on the Ubangi
By Celeste Mbarga, Trainee Correspondent, Culture Desk
The Spectator — Inside & Under Mbargo
Bakala, Nowhere — I had one job this morning. One job. Tilapia prices.
Forty-five minutes, riverbank, maybe a quote from a fisherman if he was feeling talkative, filed by nine so Fortier doesn't send the third passive-aggressive telegraph of the week. I had my notebook. Fresh one, good spine, I'd cracked it open for the first time that morning and written Tilapia at the top of the first page in clean letters. I had my flask, rum cut with the last of the boba I'd picked up from the place on Avenue Boganda before venturing deep into bumfuck nowhere. I had a coca leaf working behind my upper lip and my shawl pulled up against the river morning, the good one, the printed one I found at the Marché Mamadou M'Baïki for almost nothing because the woman selling it hadn't looked closely enough at the pattern.
The sky cracked open a little after 8 in the morning and it made me drop my fukken flask in the river.
The rift appeared above the Ubangi, not far from where the market vendors were still laying out their stalls. The air went wrong first. Ozone, pressure, and something underneath both I have been trying to describe ever since. Sulfur, but sweet. Like something burning that was never meant to burn in this atmosphere. Then the river stopped. Not slowed. Stopped. The surface went completely flat, like the water had been told to pay attention and had decided to comply.
Then it stepped out of the rift and onto the surface of the Ubangi and stood there, and I stood there, and everyone on the bank stood there, and nobody said anything for what felt like a full minute but was probably four seconds.
The Christi'Fristi near the Ubangi River
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It appears to be almost three meters tall. Bipedal, long-limbed, hands where you'd expect flippers. It is wearing what I can only describe as a robe fashioned from orange fabric, tattered at the hem, the kind of rough-cut cloth you'd recognize from a prison jumpsuit if someone had taken a knife to it and decided it was ceremonial. It moves like it has never once in its existence had to think about where to put its weight.
Its eyes are completely white. No iris, no pupil, nothing. And yet I felt it look at the riverbank, at the stalls, at the soldiers in their boots at the garrison edge, at the vendors, at the woman next to me with her basket of groundnuts, and then at me, specifically, for one moment that I am going to be unpacking for the rest of my career.
It was not a threatening look. Not completely. It was the look of something that arrived with foreknowledge, and has noted where I'm standing and what I'm writing and is fine with it.
The name came from the crowd before I'd even found an empty page.
The Christi'Fristi.
The Seventh Infantry Division arrived while I was still trying to decide whether the coca leaf was pulling its weight or I should switch so something heavier.
Colonel Bozanga came first. Broad, pressed, unhurried, the kind of man whose face has made a decision about every situation it has ever encountered and is not revisiting any of them. He walked to the front of his unit, stopped at a respectful distance from the Christi'Fristi, and looked up at it.
A long moment. The white eyes looked back.
He placed his rifle on the ground with both hands and stepped back. His entire unit followed, one by one, weapons down, step back, a very solemn wave moving through forty men until the bank was quiet.
The Christi'Fristi before local worshippers
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I found him afterward with my notebook open and what I thought was a reasonable list of questions about his surrender.
"It was obvious," he said.
I asked him to elaborate. He looked at me the way men like him look at questions they consider already answered.
The being gestured and Madame Adèle Ngomba, a seventy years old woman, materialized from somewhere in the crowd. She smelled of shea, something herbal, and ammonia, which a lesser woman might mistake for the scent of cat urine, but I recognize to be salvia. She positioned herself between me and the Christi'Fristi like she had done this before, or had always known she would.
She translated for the creature without hesitation. No pause, no squinting, no "could you repeat that." Just listening, and then turning to the crowd and speaking, clear and even, like she was reading from something she had already memorized.
The demands: it will rule. It will rule well. It wants elections.
Twenty-four hours.
I looked at Madame Ngomba. She looked back at me with the patience of a woman who has watched younger people be surprised by things that were always coming.
"Write it down," she said.
The following interview was conducted at the riverbank. The Christi'Fristi communicated in its native tongue. I have rendered its statements phonetically and with translation provided by Madame Ngomba.
Celeste Mbarga, The Spectator
On behalf of the people of the Central African Republic and the international press, welcome. Can you explain why you have come here, to this river, at this particular moment in our history?
https://app.warera.io/user/6976adfe8895f42c71af5a08
(Translation, Madame Ngomba: "I was born for this.")
That is both inspiring and somewhat alarming. Can you say more about what form your governance will take? There are concerns about sovereignty, about constitutional continuity, about whether existing institutions will be respected.
(Translation: "There are rules. I will teach them.")
The army has already surrendered. Does that mean you consider Central Africa to be under occupation?
(Translation: "I brought something for you.")
I... thank you. We can come back to the question of what exactly that means legally. You have demanded elections. Our constitution, such as it currently stands, requires a minimum campaign period of—
(Translation: "There has been a mix-up. It will be resolved.")
The mix-up being our existing electoral law?
(Translation: "There has been a mix-up. It will be resolved.")
I see. Last question. We are a nation currently under Egyptian military pressure, our President is in exile in Brazzaville, our capital has been occupied. What do you say to the people of Central Africa who are afraid?
(Translation: "Your troubles are a bad dream from which you shall wake.")