Chapter 4

Out of harms way from Kobus Jansen Van Rensburg and his redneck lynch mob, Lord Balah and the Witches sank quietly into their seats in the mini-bus taxicab.  As they hurtled dangerously through the streets of Johannesburg, the twins took it upon themselves to convince the large African woman sitting next to them to braid Lord Balah’s hair.  Preppy and well groomed in appearance at that moment, Lord Balah still looked remarkably like that irritating character Carlton from popular 90’s TV show “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air”.  Intent on giving him a make-over like the ones they used to watch illegally (its illegal to watch American TV in communist China) on pirated DVD’s they would buy from bootleggers in dark alleyways, the twins skillfully cajoled the large woman into performing their request.

An entrepreneurial pair if ever there was one, the twins Fei-Ying and Fei-Yang had begun concocting money-making schemes from a young age.  They were the only children of a single mother who worked two jobs- one sowing rice in the rice fields during the day and another making Nike sneakers in a sweatshop at night- in order to put food on the table.  Not exactly dutiful daughters but yet still aspiring businesswomen, the twins had begun their now exhaustive list of money-making schemes in order to help their mother pay the bills and send them to school.  Groomed on re-runs of “The Apprentice”, the twins dreamt of the day that they too would own a large multibillion dollar corporation like their hero, Donald Trump, and get to sit behind a desk all day telling people that they were fired. 

Lord Balah stepped out of the mini-bus taxi a changed man.  Maybe not spiritually or even emotionally, but he certainly looked very different: his hair was now a large mane of Rastafarian-like dreadlocks which had random, colorful beads littered within the strands like the lights on a Christmas tree.  In addition to this, the twins had swapped his Polo golf-shirt and khaki pants for a large animal-skinned coat, which Lord Balah now found himself wearing.  Not a modern, conventional look by any means, the twins had “gone with their gut” (as their other hero, Heidi Klum, likes to say when it comes to fashion).  All in all it was agreed amongst the group (Trudie silently nodded her head but as yet was unable to speak due to the steadily mounting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which was in the process of ravaging her fragile psyche) that Lord Balah indeed now looked like a Sonoma.  Feeling a bit uncomfortable in his new outfit, especially since he was no longer wearing pants, Lord Balah quietly convinced himself that the twins had done him a great service.  He was on a quest to become a powerful Sangoma like his father, after all, and he knew that in this day and age- where image, quite literally, is everything- that in order to fulfill his destiny he would eventually have to look the part.

Arriving in the not-so-sleepy but still unconscious town they call Sofia, Lord Balah was greeted by a sea of stares as he and the Witches stepped uncertainly through the busy shopping center.  To stand out in a place like Triomf, dear reader, is indeed a very serious accolade, and it was with great intrigue that the locals watched Lord Balah and the Witches make their way through this new and unfamiliar territory.

The history of Sofia Town (also now called Triomf for some curious, unknown reason) dates back many years.  Once the bustling Jazz capital of the world, it is often rumored that Mariah Carey lived there as a teenager, where she learnt how to find her “inner voice” and become the sensational singing super-star she is today.  Lord Balah was a huge Mariah Carey fan, in fact, and had read this informational tit-bit about her once on Wikipedia.  However, looking at the townspeople as he stepped through the crowd that day, Lord Balah couldn’t help but feel that the story was nothing more than a vicious rumor, for all he could see here were zombie-like creatures possessing varying degrees of Down Syndrome dressed in clothes that Elizabeth Taylor would have worn sometime in the 1970’s had she been born colour-blind and raised in a trailor park.  Indeed, nothing in his life before this could have prepared him for what he saw today…It was as if he had fallen straight into the Village of the Damned because, truly, by the looks of these inbreds Lord Balah could not help but feel that the town as a whole was being punished karmically for some great sin they had obviously once committed.  As a once-practicing Buddhist, Lord Balah knew that life is not innately unfair, but rather the case that when it does become so its probably because the person (or town as a collective whole, in this case) in question did something to deserve it.

As the unlikely foursome exited the shopping center and made their way through the parking lot, they were suddenly approached by a carguard who swiftly produced a large open suitcase before them and began to hawk a cacophony of cheap, thoroughly useless items.  An enchanting salesman nonetheless, the carguard proceeded to offer them special discounts on a vast array of stolen  and/or cheap imitation products.  Unfortunately, none of them had any money on them, and so it was within a blink of an eye that Lucky the carguard had closed his seductive suitcase and disappeared from before them as if an apparition dissolving into the night.

Before they could proceed forward in their journey (they did not know where they were going but Lord Balah had once read that it was always better to go forward, not backward, and so he had decided that they would proceed forward), another relentless hawker jumped unexpectedly into their path.  This intrepid entrepreneur- with distinctly Chinese features, the twins thought but were not sure- quickly introduced himself as Solomon and presented them with his product:  “Mucodo Cream” which, it said in small letters beneath the title on the  tube, was “for enlargening the penis, making it big and strong on a permanent basis”.  Being a virgin himself, Lord Balah’s face soon had turned bright red, which- together with his chocolate-brown skin- served to cause him to have turned a dark shade of purple and to look like a purple smurf.  The twins, not understanding the dialogue taking place before them nor the fine print on the Mucoco Cream tube, looked on curiously at the man named Solomon, feeling in their gut that they had seen him somewhere before.  As this all took place, Trudie stood at their side watching people walking in and out of the shopping center, understanding for the first time the negative biological consequences of interbreeding, and said a silent prayer of thanks that that one time her and her second cousin Jaco fooled around that they didn’t get any further than second base.  Lord Balah by this time had grown more embarrassed than he had ever felt in his entire life, and suddenly and without warning yelled out to the Witches to run for their lives…And so the four of them ran out of the Sofia Town shopping center, looking forward but not backward, unsure yet again of where to go next.

As the man named Solomon watched Lord Balah and the Witches escape from his near grasp, he stealthily moved his hand over his face and pulled away the prosthetic mask which hid his Chinese features, and pulled out his Secret Service Walkie Talkie in order to contact “Mother Goose” (the code name for the Secret Service Headquarters) and inform his Lieutenant that he is close to capturing the twins.  Hot on their heels, Secret Agent Hudson Hawk knew that Lord Balah and the twins could not outrun him forever, and so he changed his disguise and proceeded to follow them to their- as yet unknown- next destination.