After coming out of the tunnel, the rat ran through a bush, and then they were at a place with a number of people, as if they were idlers at the market place waiting for the beer to arrive. The musu dashed past these people, and the dog pursued, very close after it. But when Mpobe reached this spot, he was surprised to see these people, for he thought he was in the bush, where only game and hunters lived. But here were people wearing bark cloth, in the fashion of the way they buried people, and there was a large garden nearby, many houses all around, some were huts, others were the new types with iron-sheet roofs

He stopped running, and though he was out of breath and now very frightened, he greeted these people. They responded to him politely.

“Have you seen my dog?” he asked them.

“It went that way,” a woman replied. “It was chasing a very big musu.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Do you want a drink of water,” a man said. “You look thirsty.”

No! Mpobe now knew exactly where he was. When he looked behind him, he could not see the exit of the tunnel through which he had entered this world. It was okuzimu, the country of the dead. He had wandered into it, though he was still alive in his body. And now the stories his mother had told him came in handy: if you ever find yourself in that country, never drink or eat anything when you are down there, otherwise you will never come back.

“Thank you,” he said. “But my wife has water waiting for me when I get back home.”

“This is sweeter water,” a woman said, and he knew she was not talking about drinking water after she chuckled.

“Here is meat,” a man said. “It’s antelope, soft and tender. Your wife can’t roast anything like this.”

He ran away from those people before they could tempt him. After a short distance, he heard the bells, and he followed the sound to find his dog standing side-by-side with the rat, as if they were good friends. They were near a very important looking person. It had to be Walumbe.

Mpobe fell down before him, just as he did when he was at the presence of the kabaka, and greeted him.

“Where have you come from?” Walumbe asked.

“I came from above,” Mpobe answered.

“What have you seen since you entered my country?” Walumbe asked.

“I have not had time to look,” Mpobe said, for his mother’s stories were now very clear in his head. If you tell Walumbe that you admired his country, you would never go back home. “I was too busy following the dog so the only thing I’ve seen are footpaths. It’s not nice here.”

“Not nice?” Walumbe said. “Too bad for you, because people who come here never go back above. So I will give you land to build a hut, over there, and you can live here, you and your dog.”

“Nooo!” Mpobe cried. “I got lost! I was just following my dog. Please, let me go back. I got married last week, and I have not even had a child yet. Let me go back.”

Walumbe saw his tears, and softened a little bit. “If you go back, will you show people the door to this place?”

“No, I won’t!” Mpobe cried.

“Okay,” Walumbe said. “I’ll let you go back, but never tell anyone where you have been, and never mention what you saw here. Not to your father, or your mother, or your brothers and sisters. Not even to your wife. Even if you are in the comfort of her bed and she asks you, don’t say anything!”

“I won’t speak,” Mpobe said. “I promise!”

“The moment you do, I’ll come for you,” Walumbe said.

“I promise, I will never speak.”

Then, Walumbe nodded at the dog, and it burst into a run, the bells tingling. Mpobe did not wait for another prompt. He ran after the dog. He did not look back at the big and juicy rat, and he thought he would never hunt the musu again. Never!

Presently, the dog dashed into another hole and Mpobe followed it into a tunnel. They ran for a short while, and then they came out on the other side. Mpobe was totally exhausted, out of breathe. When he looked behind him, he could not see the hole. Just a big bush near a big rock, but he knew the doorway to Walumbe’s country was somewhere there.

His other dogs had caught another rat, and it looked like an ordinary musu, so he carried it back home.

“Where have you been?” his wife said the moment he appeared.

“I went with Omuzizi to catch the musu,” he said, showing her the rat. “Here, cook this meat.”

“That was seven days ago,” Nakayanja said.

“Eh!” Mpobe said. “That was just this morning!”

But he looked at her face and knew it would be difficult to keep the truth from her, and so he came up with a lie.

“Okay, you see, we were chasing the rat, and then I got this sudden thought to visit my mother, so I ran all the way to her village. I just came back.”

Nakayanja did not say anything, and he realized he had trapped himself in a lie when she went to the home of a nearby relative and returned with his mother, his father, and his siblings. They were all afraid that he had died in the bush and were planning to hold a funeral, if the search failed to reveal anything in another seven days. So when she told them what he had said about going to his mother’s village, people were not amused. They demanded the truth.

He got angry. “I was in the bushes hunting all the time,” he said. “That is final. I am not going to tell you anything further.”

Seeing his anger, they stopped asking him questions. His family returned to their village, seeing that at least he was alive and safe. His wife kept quiet only for some days, but inside she was dying to find out the truth, for she feared he had gone to be with another woman. So after some days, as they lay together in bed, she pressed him against her body and whispered into his ears.

“No one is here,” she said. “Tell me the truth.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Were you really in the bush all those days?” she said. “What did you eat and drink? Where did you sleep?”

He grew angry, and pushed her away. “As I have said, that is where I was.”

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

He did not know how to respond to that, for he was still on defensive mode. Then he realized that he should be celebrating, and so he let out a little ululation.

“But I’ll remove the child,” she said.

“Eh!” he said.

“I can’t produce for a man I can’t trust,” she said.

“Please don’t ask me to tell you,” he said.

“Speak, or I divorce you,” she said.

“I promised someone that I won’t ever say,” he said.

She came over to him, and held him tight, and he could feel her warmth. And then she spoke quietly into his ears.

“Is this person more important than me?” she said.

“Please don’t ask me,” he said.

“We are alone in our hut,” she said. “Whisper into my ears so that the walls can’t know what you have said, and if they can’t hear you, how will this person know that you told me?”

Mpobe really loved her, and he could see that she was insinuating he was cheating on her, and so he told her how he entered the hole that led to okuzimu, and then the promise he had made to Walumbe.

“Woiwoiwoi!” Nakayanja wailed after he had finished speaking. “I’ve killed you!”

At that same moment, he heard a voice shouting outside with his name. “Mpobe! Mpobe!”

And he replied, “I am here.”

He walked out of the door, and his wife never saw him again.

The next day, she went to the place where he saw the hole, that perhaps she might go down there and plead with Walumbe, but she did not find it. There was just rock and bush. And she could not even grieve because there was no body to bury. When she told people what happened, no one believed her. They thought she had mistreated him by demanding for meat so often that he had run away.