Africa39 (11 page)

Owa Puroguramu called us to Mass after the deserters left and asked us to pray for their damned souls. For the souls of those who had been fooled by Father Romaro. As for him, she declared that he would not live to see the end of the month of July. He would die, his bowels would burst open, and no one would come to his aid as he lay writhing in pain, pleading with the Blessed Mother to forgive him. He would bleed to death because it was already decreed in heaven, and nothing could change that. He was not meant to enter the Year One of the new generation. He would be like Moses who was not allowed to enter Canaan, the Promised Land. Like Judas Iscariot who died in an open field. Father Romaro would die in an open field and grass would grow on his remains. She had asked us to join in cursing Father Romaro and damning him to a painful death.

Father Romaro had lived beyond the month of July. He still lives.

These meetings now were different from those held before Father Romaro’s departure. They were more strained and silent. Even Byaruha could not tell me much except that something serious was being discussed. The rest of us kept on praying and fasting as ordered. Even the sick were ordered to fast. They were told that if they did not intensify their prayers, then Sitani would come and steal their souls. We had to recite the scripture:
the thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly
–
John 10:10. The sick had to pray harder than everyone else so as not to miss Paradise and to build a shield against the thief.

After four days of intense praying and fasting between our chores, Owa Puroguramu
called us to a special Mass at 4 p.m. We shuffled to the church still sweating from the pineapple fields, banana plantation, cattle sheds and other places where we had been working. The visionaries and apostles were already in the church. While our skin was ashy, the skin of the apostles and visionaries was shining in the light. Their eyes were bright. They were already seated as always on the bench at the front of the church, looking as if they had just left the presence of God. It made us more conscious of our own sinful nature – our inability to commune directly with God. We took our rightful places as the archangels, as the Sunday church guards were known, positioned themselves at the doors and windows. From the way their eyes darted back and forth round the room, it was evident they were conducting a head count.

After a few prayers and singing, Owa Puroguramu
stood up.

‘My children,’ she started, ‘there is evil that has infiltrated our Movement and it pains my heart to see us come to this.’

This time I was sure she was going to point me out as the cause of the sin. It was like I had been waiting for this time to come since the closed meetings started.

‘We need to pray harder than before, to get rid of Sitani in our midst. The Blessed Mother is grieved with your lack of belief in her messages. She cries for you the chosen ones. Her back is turned to the world, but to you she beckons you to come join her.’

A child coughed as we waited for the message. Owa Puroguramu
continued softly, trying to mask her anger.

‘Someone pushed Sitanish writings under my office door.’ At this point she waved a Picfare exercise book, contorting her face as if the book emitted a sickening odour.

‘Why do you doubt the work of God’s chosen? Why are you threatening the wrath of the Almighty one upon us? He has had mercy and sent the Blessed Mother and Jesus Christ our saviour to warn us of the impending suffering to the rest of the world. He did so because he loves you. He does not want you to perish. But now you doubt him and threaten to make him turn his back on us.’

We were quiet as we stared, wondering who had caused this outburst.

‘Don’t you remember Sodom and Gomorrah? How Abraham interceded with God on behalf of those two sinful cities? How we have taught you the way of the righteous and still you doubt. The end time has not come because of God’s mercy. He has listened to your prayers and fasting. Because you have interceded for today’s Sodom and Gomorrah, he is giving more time to the world. He wants more people to enter Noah’s Ark and survive the suffering spelt out in the Book of Revelation. But you still doubt his mercy and goodness.’ She waved the book, ‘You reward our merciful God with this, asking for the return of your property. This is Sitani at work and we must get rid of him.’

At this point, the visionaries stood and walked towards us. They each carried plastic bowls and twigs, which they dipped in the holy water and sprinkled on us to cleanse us of the Sitani sitting in our midst. One of them emptied the contents of her bowl directly on my head. As the water washed over me, I shivered for a second because the sudden coldness attacked my skin. I rubbed the water from my eyes and kept my head lowered on the ground. I remembered the woman’s assertion when she said I was special. But this reminded me of my original sin that followed me wherever I went.

Alú

Recaredo Silebo Boturu

Time and weather did not dawdle, between thunderstorms and too much sun, the falling raindrops ringing out harmonious melodies as they hammered on the zinc roofs, a pitter-patter that filled the space. Time ran on ahead, it almost flew. Days and nights came and went. Alú kept growing. People said his birth had not been easy, that the boy had come into the world with little help from anyone. Life is unpredictable, and Alú's mother was still in her native village when her waters broke. Since there was no clinic and no midwife, she was forced to rely on the wisdom of an elderly woman, an aunt of her mother, who was known for helping those women who defied the odds in their attempts to bring a child into the world.

The old woman boiled up leaves and bark offered by the forest to remove the dried blood and did not charge a single
franc
. It was an arduous task. I cannot say exactly what the old woman did since, if truth be told, I do not know. What I do know is that it took several slaps before the baby began to bawl, before the first blast of air, burning though his little lungs like fire, finally offered itself to this life, this world.

Alú's town was bordered on one side by the sea and on the other by dense, dark forests. There were afternoons when it was possible to make out the humpbacked form of a rainbow impregnating the belly of the earth and the depths of the sea. The child would stop to stare and ask:

‘Mamá, what's that?'

‘It's a rainbow.'

‘What's a rainbow?'

But no answer ever came. If Alú persisted, he was told not to ask so many questions.

Alú's mother, like the other mothers, the fathers, the uncles, the aunts, the grandmothers, the grandfathers and the big brothers found it difficult to explain to their children, their grandchildren, their nephews, their nieces, their little brothers and sisters what exactly a rainbow was and how it came to be. Some did not know. Some knew but did not take the time to explain. This was why they were irritated by the insistence of the little children who had to content themselves with knowing that, on certain afternoons, a rainbow would appear, and when it did, was beautiful to behold.

Alú also enjoyed watching the sun as it rose and set. It seemed to him to be one of the finest spectacles that nature offered to delight her children. He found the shifting colours of the sun's ever-changing faces infinitely poetic. Often, he would watch and think to himself, not bothering to ask anyone for an explanation since, as likely as not, no one would give him an answer. Sometimes the sun would set slowly, slipping behind the mass of earth that rose to form a triangle and seemed to hang, suspended in space, a mass of earth that seemed to follow the walker wherever he went. This mass of earth, I should have mentioned earlier, was the Pico Basilé. This feeling of the mountain as a constant companion from the moment you arrived on the island was spectacular. Alú knew, because he had been told, that in its day the Pico Basilé had been much bigger and had been sundered in two by the eruptions of nature. Now, the two great mountains faced one another, though the second peak towered over another country and the two were separated by a stretch of sea. At other times, Alú would watch as this same sun, depending on the evenings, silently plunged like a diver into the depths of the sea.

The Pico Basilé was covered by a green mantle. It was, as I have said, a wonderful sight to behold when the clouds permitted, since often they would laze peacefully over the encircling trees, resting on the lush green foliage, forming undulating lines like a quivering froth of bubbles shrouding the peak in an impenetrable mist. The belly of the mountain concealed many mysteries. Alú had been told that the volcano was extinct now, that it could no longer spew lava, that hidden in its belly lived a bird incapable of surviving in any other place in the whole round world.

These and many other details made Alú realise that he had been born in an exceptional land ringed about by seas, a place that was mysterious and unique. Even as a boy, Alú felt that if sociologists could rise above the politics of monolingualism and dedicate themselves to analysing human behaviour –
our
behaviour – they would go down in history. Through their books and their theses, they might teach humanity not to create breeding grounds for rapacious minds, censorious minds, malicious minds, they might teach humanity not to produce people with dull minds, with dead minds. But, he also believed – as I have already said, he was a boy with a very particular way of seeing, thinking and reasoning – that as likely as not they would die of starvation because here people, many people, were forced to live through corruption.

Alú was nicknamed the ‘witch child'. Not because he disappeared from his bed at night using some magical power and caught a Boeing to other latitudes to live his other life only to reappear at dawn to live his everyday life. No, I am not referring to the type of witch who lurked in the subconscious of Alú's neighbours. Alú was a child like other children; the colour of his hair, the colour of his eyes was no different to his friends. There was nothing to distinguish him physically from the others. He played with other children. He went to the same school they did; the only difference between Alú and the other children was that he took the time to question while those around him never stopped to wonder at the why of things. This is what made the boy different from others: his way of seeing, thinking, reasoning and doing things.

You already know that the boy's first name was Alú. This was followed by his father's surname and then his mother's surname. Out of respect for the boy, I reserve the right not to tell you these surnames, since you would be able to find him on a map and since most of us here know each other, you would be able to track down his parents, his neighbourhood, his town . . . So let us just stick to his first name, Alú.

There is something you do not know, or perhaps you do but I will remind you: many years ago, there were men who believed themselves to be greater and more intelligent than others and they decided to journey miles and miles, carrying with them a cross. They rowed and they rowed until they came to some remote countries where, with neither permission nor compassion, they plundered the lands of foreign peoples, their seas, their forests, their names, their surnames, plucked out their personalities, stripped them and gave them different clothing, indoctrinated them so that they abandoned their traditions and their culture. And since that time, the people in Alú's town have not had African names, they are ashamed of their names and instead they bear contaminated names, and with these Christian names, the people were forced to take the surnames of their father and their mother. In this small patch of land surrounded by the sea on all sides, it was rare now for a father or a mother to give their child a typically African name. Was it an act of courage or a matter of principle that led his parents to decide to call him Alú? No one ever asked the boy who had chosen his name.

If I could meet with Alú today, or with his mother or his father, I would ask. I would ask the question because it is rare to come across an African child with an African name. The men who arrived on our shores were white – I forgot to mention this earlier – white men with thick beards. Whether because it was the fashion or whether it was for want of time or want of a pair of scissors, the white men all had beards. They claimed they found the Negroes naked but for animal hides covering their private parts. But these men themselves were not wearing suits by Cristian Door, Sahara, Bescha, Luis Buitoton, Maximo Dutin, Atmosfera, or whatever they're called . . . No, they were not wearing anything of the kind.

The years passed, the travellers left us their languages, their cross, their diseases . . . and what else? We fought in order to gain our independence only to become prisoners of our own brothers as dictatorships flourished in abundance. All these things Alú knew. All these things he shared with his little friends. Years passed, some dictatorships fell and others appeared dressed in other colours, other smells, propped up by the West and by feeble citizens. Little by little, people began to believe that everything that was imported was good. They began to abandon their own names; this was why Alú's friends had names like Giovanni, Ronny, Frank, Charlis, Yarni, Jerry, Mark, Robert, Richard, Efren, Nick, Eduard, Aitor, Michael, Steyci, Ares, Cris, Cristian, Axel, Yanick, Edgal, Andy, Aaron, Brus, Dona, Leyre, Eiza, Shakira, Melc, Nancy, Nurcy, Soraya, Dalia, Leyda, Marylin, Dorothe, Gimena, Sandra, Leonel, Leny, Fructu, Simpático. We could fill pages and pages with imported names. None of Alú's classmates had African names though all of them were black – well, there were a few half-castes. Alú took pride in his name and when his classmates mocked him, he would tell them his name was unique, that it was his. Once, the children here were called Boiye, Besaha, Besako, Bohiri, Rihole, Ribetaso, Boita, Riburi, Wewe, Motte, Rioko, Wanalabba, Sipoto, Bula, Laesa, Bosupele, Borihi, Rioko, Bosubari, Mome, Rimme, Momo, Obolo, Moretema, Sobesobbo, Bosope, Nta, Pudul, Zhana, Zhancuss, Tenzhul, Mafidel, Masse, Pagu, Massantu, Madesha, Madalam, Guttia, Magutia, Chitia da boto, Obama, Ada, Chicanda, Abuy, Mokomba, Masamdja, Molico, Ichinda, Ulangano, Mondjeli, Eboko, Beseku, Upinda, Motanga, Ikna. These days, you could count the number of children with African names on the fingers of one hand. I don't think I mentioned: the name Alú means ‘night'. Poetic, isn't it?