10

Early morning, even before the birds felt hungry, I started walking downhill along the pathway which everyone used to follow. I believed it to be safer than walking across the bush. At the same time, I was afraid of being caught escaping, though, presumably, no one except the daughter of the village chief knew about it.

‘You soon be caught by Lomas,’

‘You will be caught,’

‘You will be caught,’

I heard the voice of my grandfather: Oldman. He appeared in dreams a couple of times whenever something bad was about to happen.

The day before Kumba lost her belly*, he appeared in a wired mood in a dream and begged me to take care of someone whose name was not clear. The following day, Kumba fell terribly sick.

‘My big boy,’ I saw Oldman rushing into our hut crying, two days before we left for the bush to find some medicinal herbs for my father. It was another dream I completely ignored as my mind was engaged in thousands of worries and tasks at the same time. Besides that, my hopes were heightened by the heroic determination which was pumped in by the notion that my father was strong enough to hold on till we found the herbs. Therefore, I was trying to avoid the negative thoughts that crept in from time to time and focused on hopefulness.

Either my thoughts were not processing merely through the hopeful, positive end or they had already sensed the bitter reality which might be stored in proximate future and I was in a constant struggle in rationalising my fantasies in denial.

When I heard the voice of Oldman in the bush which was hallucinatory, I was completely conscious that he was gone long ago; All of his post-mundane communications started populating my mind one after the other like black ants gathering around a dead insect. The things that I did not either pay much attention to or completely ignored with no regard started conquering my feared mind and ran all over my body through my veins into my muscles and reached my skin protruding my follicles like the skin of a bread-fruit.

‘You will be caught,’ I muttered.

‘I will be caught,’ I said again.

Fear pushed me out of the village, led me along the pathway and again diverted my way into the thick bush.

‘Change often occurs out of fear,’ the healer told me while I was taken for cutting.

I started rushing through the bush downhill and gradually distanced from the common pathway which the villagers used to go. The more I moved out from the village, the more I felt a mixed feeling. I was relieved as no one would possibly catch me, but at the same time, there will be my blood left alone, helpless, among the Lomas in chilling mountains. I felt that I had already built a bond that was constantly trying to keep me attached to Loma village even though many other thoughts caused by fear pushed me out.

‘Life is all about maintaining equilibrium between the different external and internal forces that attempted to tear one`s life into pieces. If you allow one side to be greater than the other, life will be torn into pieces, and it will lose the peace of equilibrium.’ Teachings at Poro, by the old man, ruled my thoughts.

Passing through the bushes, plains, and marshy lands, I had made my way out almost the whole day. The sinking sun had allowed the darkness to take its turn to dominate the bush just the way I allowed my fears to guide me out of Loma village keeping me safe and vigilant through the risky journey and to change the destiny of ending up in an unknown community like the old Kissi man whom I met there in the mountains.

The tricks that the man had taught, who took me to the bush in search of Jusu, helped me out a lot. When the darkness started swallowing the sun, I chose a safer tree which was high and strong enough to give me a good protection. I climbed the tree and sat on a place where three boughs met one another. Even though the sleep was hindered by the vigilance, I rested in comfort on the tree top.

At sunrise, I started to cross the bush and at sunset I chose a tree to rest. The fifth night, I was tired and almost fell asleep on the treetop. I heard human voices all of a sudden and woke up with an intense fear thinking that the Lomas had succeeded in tracing my path.

‘Lomas, mountains to them are like water to fish; they smell every single change in the bush like wild foxes; they are men of high wild,’ a part of a story about Lomas, related by my grandfather came to my shaken mind. Just like a poisoned arrow piercing through a hunt paralysing it and leading it to a painful death, I felt every single stage of my fate being caught by Lomas. I closed my eyes and tightened my arms around one of the boughs. With closed eyes, I heard the voices closer and closer. They came with the breeze that was blowing across the bush and disappeared in the absence of the breezes.

‘You listen to the wind, smell it and watch what it brings! It will tell you what you may encounter at your next step,’ Poro teachers taught us everything for survival in the dense tropical forests that were full of life threatening risks.

I decided to go a little bit up and watch who they were. As I climbed the top of the tree, I noticed a cloud of smoke far away. It was clearly noticeable, but it was in the opposite direction from where I had come.

‘Another human presence.’ I said to myself and got down the tree. I had two choices between going near the village and checking what it was; who was there, or avoiding the direction where the smoke and the voices were coming from and then going towards the south or north.

I had heard that subgroups of Mande tribe were distributed across the North and North-west regions whereas the West coast was occupied by the invaders from another part of the world called Congo-people. They had come in by big sailing ships, landed on the Atlantic coast and occupied the whole coastal belt restricting it to the local tribal communities. They spoke the language of the man without the skin: the chicken-skinned white one. And they carried a cross hanging on the neck. Once, my father said that he met one of them in a neighbouring village where they had come to meet the village chief.

‘Chicken skinned had come with Congo-people to Guinea border. They say they brought an Almighty who was more powerful and merciful than our Creator,’ my father came back home furious and scared. Oldman was listening to him and said.

‘Bush is for the Bushmen, and our Creator rules it,’ he laughed out.

I decided to walk away from the village and advance to the West. If I walked straight on condition that I survived in the bush, I would reach the western coast of Liberia one day. But, I did not have a clue about when I would be able to reach and how long it would take. Probably, before the next full moon, I would be able to arrive at the coast where Congo-people lived; the place where no one knew each other unlike in the tribal villages. I thought that it would be the perfect hideout and an ideal location for a brand-new start. The new beginning that I was longing for after a chain of catastrophic events would be a reality in the place where the cultures merged, soaked in the salty waters that came from the other side of the world and disappeared in the sea breezes leaving nothing but unknownness.

Days and nights rolled away, and I moved further from the place where I had started which I felt safer and confident. I avoided walking across the plains and river banks as there was a probability of being noticed by either animal or human beings. Many days, I had only a few mangoes or bananas in my stomach. I felt that I had already become a walking skeleton and developed a severe cough which bothered me mostly in the night making me a possible prey to the predators.

My grandmother used to give us ginger leaves whenever we coughed. ‘The evil will jump out when you chew this,’ she used to say. I decided to take a break as I was becoming weaker with every passing day. The next morning, I located a safe tree and set a snare, hoping to eat some meat of any animal. Before I climbed the tree, I searched for some ginger bushes and grabbed a handful of leaves to chew during the night.

I just sat on a bough when a roaring sound was heard in the bush right under the tree. ‘No way,’ I said to myself. It should be a leopard. I felt that I had set a snare for myself, and my plan to have a rest would end up resting in peace. When I was in Kissi village, we often heard about leopards. They used to kill goats and chicken and sometimes they attacked the humans as well. On top of everything, climbing a tree was not a big thing for a leopard. The whole night, on the one hand, my mind was preoccupied with the leopard, and on the contrary, I was exhausted. I had fallen asleep without my knowledge and woke up hearing a scream right behind me. I thought that time had come for me to join my ancestors. I did not see a thing below the tree. It was all dark, and I had completely forgotten about the snare under the tree.

‘Heeezzzz,’ again the painful scream was emitted into the humid air in darkness adding a dreadful mysteriousness to the night in the bush which was full of secretive elements. Nonetheless, this time I realised it was my snare which had worked and I would have either an edible meat or the leopard down there. I felt consoled whatever it was. The risk I was going through had gone down a bit as, in case the leopard was caught in, it would not be alive to kill me. And if another animal was caught, it would not bother to climb a huge tree when it had an easy meal.

I could not wait to see what was waiting for me down there and, at the same time, I was battling with my own thoughts because I did not want to see a yellow skin with black spots.

With the sun rays that started peeping through the green canopy, I took a deep breath and looked down. As it often happened, the human mind would always anticipate the worse. I noticed spots; just a blotchy skin and still it was fighting for life.

‘I would not go down till this beast dies,’ I thought.

Out of curiosity, I looked down again. There were spots this time too, but the skin was brownish and instead of paws and killer nails, there were tiny hoofs in small legs.

‘A deer,’ I yelled without my knowledge. For a second, I forgot that I was in the bush and there was no one around who would understand what I said. Instead, the animals might react to the hint of the human presence.

I hurried down and pulled out my hunt out of the snare. Before roasting it, I had already felt a pang of hunger that sucked every single cell of my body. I felt as if I was going to faint.

Poro was a blessing while in the jungle. I made a little fire in the middle of the bush and roasted the beast. I did not have sharp things to cut the meat or clean it. I ate whatever the places that I was able to chew and tear. I ate as much as I could as I knew very well that it was not possible to take meat with me. Not only carnivore animals but also the evil spirits loved to eat meat. Therefore, I did not want to invite troubles in the middle of nowhere. I decided to leave the remains in the bush and cover the ashes with fresh leaves because leaving the live traces of recent activities in the bush could be a strong clue for tracking me down if someone was after me.

After four nights in the jungle, I reached an open area which I had never seen before. I felt the human presence even though I did not see a single human being. The place was vast, and there were small pathways between the areas where there were some grass like plants. When I got close, I noticed that it was a muddy place. The water was blocked, and the plants were in mud. I slowly started walking in the small paths that divided the fields of green plants. I felt safe and relaxed a bit, and a sleepiness was gradually growing inside me. I was tired and hungry. I did not have the energy anymore as it might be the fear that brought me so far. I lay down on a small path between two muddy fields.