Ancestor Stones Read Free Page B

mother. The youngest of thewives I walked alongside. She was a few years older than me — just a sprouting seedling wife. By this time I could carry nearly half a bushel of rice. We followed behind the others and shared a load. Behind us came
karabom
, my grandmother who had left her own house to follow her daughter to this new place.
    Our belongings were carried on the heads of five indentured men. Every day my father sat in the courtroom listening to the disputes of men who laid down two coins to place their grievances before the elders. People respected him; he became chief advisor to the
obai
. Many of the men brought before the court were debtors. Sometimes my father agreed to clear their debts himself. And in return he took their sons from them, to labour for him until the day their fathers redeemed them. Whenever that day came.
    The men toted giant baskets of clothes, a woven cage of guineafowl, a pair of piglets with their feet bound together, our great iron cooking-pots, sacks of rice, salt, groundnuts and the chest that held my father’s fortune in silver shillings — the Queen’s money — with metal locks crafted by Fula locksmiths. Last of all came my father’s iron-framed four-poster bed, carried aloft by eight extra men. Past the main foot road, the path narrowed. The bed couldn’t pass. The men widened the track, slashing at the trees on either side. Progress was slow. My father decided we must press on. A few times I turned my head and each time the bed was further and further behind us. Eventually it disappeared from my view, behind the twisted bends, the giant trunks and curtain of ropes. It arrived in our new home three days after us.
    My brother walked along beside me. I was young but I knew things. I knew I was glad to be leaving the old place and the old women. My mother and father called us by the names the diviner had chosen for us: Alusani and Asana. As the sun rose Alusani fell behind. I urged him, but I couldn’t carry him. The bearers with their loads balanced upon their heads followed us with straight backs, their eyes fixed upon the horizon. Alusani trailed so far behind he became tangled in the feet of the first man. Our mother worried he was not strong enough to make the journey. So I walked on alone, under the weight of my load while Alusanirocked and slept under the canopy of the
maka
reserved for my father.
    The sky turned to violet and the trees on the horizon dark blue. The planes of our faces faded and disappeared. After some time the path broadened again; the shadows of the trees grew skimpy. I smelled wood smoke: a scattering of houses and some tents in the centre of a clearing. We changed our clothes and sat down to wait while a messenger ran ahead. In a short time the headman came hurrying out of his house and knelt before my father. One knee on the ground. Hands clasped across his thigh. I listened to him explain everything was ready. He would accompany us to the place himself in the new light. And so we accepted his hospitality. I was tired and hungry, yet I was excited, too. I rested on my haunches and I watched as each man and woman came before my father and bent down to touch his feet. And I wondered who they were.
    Like a mouse’s tail the path narrowed and came to an end. I rode on my father’s shoulders. Better than the hammock, I thought. There in the clearing stood four houses, so new the thatch was still green. Behind them flowed pale green waters, laced by mangroves, embroidered with water lilies: a river like a woman’s sleeve.
    The place was known only as Mathaka. Pa Thaka, a fisherman who lived there alone without a woman of his own, cooked and washed for himself. The people thought it was a joke. Behind his back they called him a woman. My father gave our home a new name: Rofathane, resting place.
    We were the descendents of swordsmen who came from the North. Holy men and warriors led by a queen who blew in with the harmattan