You are walking in virgin jungle. It has never been touched by shovel, brick, mortar, or tyre. This place is full. Years back it was assumed to be an Evil Forest. Too evil a place for people to even dump the dead bodies of suicide victims, unwanted twins, murderers, and other people who were considered by Igbo and Ibibio traditional societies to be abominations. The Idiok baboons told me all of this when I was too young to really understand. But they have a way of teaching where the knowledge that is planted within you blossoms when you are ready to understand it. This is their own special way of teaching that human beings are still not able to master. I was taught in this way. Parts of this book are based on information they told me and experiences I had when I was under the age of three. It is clear to me as day.
This small patch of forest I show you was haunted. People believed that if you stepped even two feet inside, you would never be able to find your way out. Maybe this was true for Lambs. Superstitions are like stereotypes in a lot of ways. Not only are they based on fear and ignorance, they are also blended with fact. This place was the physical mundane world and the wilderness all in one. This was why these baboons loved it, for they were Leopard People, too. And for centuries, generation after generation, they made this place their home. Here they were safe and here they could speak with their ancestors, spirits, and other creatures of the wilderness.
You can smell the purity in the air, can’t you? Stop and touch the leaves on this bush. Run your hand over them. They whisper, and if you look closely, you’ll see that that brown cricket with the long antennae just walked through the leaf. You will not find it again. Spirits who do not like to be seen become unseen when they are accidently seen.
That is me, sitting with those four baboons. They told me that when I tell my story I should leave their names out of it. The baboons have names but not in the sense that we have names. Their names are not just their identities; they carry bloodline. Unlike with human beings, their names are the same as their spirit faces. So they don’t share their names so freely. See the large one with the matted fur; he likes to swim in the ocean often, and the salt mats his hair and makes him smell like the sea. Many were sure he was close with Mami Wata. He taught me my first juju, which was how to open a coconut without losing the water. My first jujus were with Nsibidi, not powder or a knife.
The one with the patch of red fur near her eye hated me from the moment she saw me. She tried to tear me apart, but the others would not let her. She taught me how to climb trees by letting me fall. Then, impressed that I didn’t die, she taught me how to climb the highest tree in the forest. It led to a place in the sky where you could walk because it was also the wilderness. Strange fruits grew there that only she and I enjoyed eating. The small one with the mangled leg was my best friend. We slept in the same nest until the day I was taken to live with humans.
And the fourth one with the white-grey fur is an elder. He is the oldest of the entire clan. No one knows how old he is, but his memory of Nsibidi is unmatched. Some say that his great skill with the language and storytelling is why he lives so far beyond everyone else. He moves slowly and only eats the softened fruits, but he could make the entire clan disappear if in danger. He is known throughout the wilderness. He speaks regularly with masquerades, and these powerful spirits love him because he can drop into the wilderness completely and return to the living world as if he were a ghost. As a matter of fact, that is his nickname, “Ghost.” I know his true name and that used to make several of the others jealous, for only I and his companion, an old baboon elder who rarely left her nest, knew his true name.
I am about three years old. See me there beside the tree, sulking. The brown-skinned, naked little girl with a bracelet made from tiny shells, found near the seaside. My arms are around my chest, my chin to my neck. Even having been raised by baboons, I still exhibit human traits. I know I am human. They made sure I understood that. The Idiok do not believe in lies. It is two weeks before the seventeen-year-old boy who would become my father would find me. I was happy the day before, but this day I am not.
I am so young, but Ghost has shown me the faces of my parents. I’ve seen humans before, from afar, as they drive past in their cars or hurry past our forest. I’ve listened to them speak and even picked up some of their words, to the Idiok’s delight. But when Ghost made those signs before my face, something happened to me. I began to recall how I got there. I believe my parents were murdered. And this is why I am sulking. It is too much for someone as small as me.
However, stand here. Watch me. I will not stay upset for long. I am a young child and the world is beautiful to me. But I will remember. That is one of the powers of Nsibidi. Memory. When you close this book, think of—
Sunny came back to herself and leaned against her bed’s pillow, her copy of Sugar Cream’s Nsibidi: The Magical Language of the Spirits on her lap. She could smell the fresh leaves and pure dirt. It was warm and humid, and a breeze was blowing. She could hear the calls and chirps of strange birds. But the human mind often denies when it can’t understand. How can baboons teach a magical language? she wondered. It was ridiculous. The entire book was all ridiculous, but cool, too. She’d ask Sugar Cream directly about this. And maybe she’d ask about Ghost and the Mami Wata baboon. And maybe she’d ask how one even writes a book in Nsibidi. She laughed. Sugar Cream had very strange origins, indeed. And “reading” about it was making Sunny feel equally strange. She yawned. Her body felt sluggish and thick.
“Sunny?!” her mother said, opening her door.
“Yes, Mum.”
“Chukwu’s leaving. Come say goodbye.”
“Oh!” Sunny said. She’d been so wrapped up in her book that she’d lost track of time. Had two hours passed already? She slowly got out of bed, closing her eyes for a moment and then opening them. She shook herself. “Wake up, Sunny,” she said. She jumped up and down. It helped, but not much. She’d been “reading” her Nsibidi for two hours. Nothing could chase away the fatigue but a nap. She’d have to play it off.
Sunny’s brother’s Jeep was full of suitcases. “I can’t wait,” Chukwu declared. “First semester, I’ll have chemistry and biology classes. I will show them what I am made of.” His best friend, Adebayo Moses Oluwaseun, sat in the passenger seat. The two had been friends for years, but in the last year they’d become inseparable. Both were good soccer players, though Sunny’s brother was easily better. And both had discovered weightlifting at the same time.
“I was going to say that you should watch for armed robbers on the road, but you two look too dangerous to bother.” Their father laughed.
Adebayo flexed a muscular arm. “No bullet can penetrate my flesh,” he said.
Chukwu laughed hard, and they both exchanged a look, sharing some sort of inside joke.
“Just drive carefully and quickly,” Sunny’s mother said. “Get to campus before dark.”
“Mummy, campus is a half hour away,” Chukwu said. “It’s morning.”
“Better to be safe,” she said.
“Sunny,” Chukwu said, smirking. “Stay out of my room.”
“As if I have a reason to want to go in that smelly place,” she said, leaning against the house. Her legs felt so weak. She sat down on the curb, gazing at her brother. He was really going off to university. “Wow,” she said to herself.
“Ugonna, stay away from my side of the room,” Chukwu said, waving a dismissive hand at Sunny.
“Your room?” Ugonna said. “You don’t have a room anymore, and I have a big one.”
“We’ll see about that when I visit for Christmas,” Chukwu said, starting the Jeep.
“Call when you get there,” their mother added, opening the door and hugging him in the driver’s seat.
“Study hard, my son,” his father said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Sunny leaned to the side, her hand in the dirt, as they all watched him drive through the gate onto the road. Then he was gone. Sunny frowned, her mind jumping to what she’d just “read” in her Nsibidi book, that the Idiok who’d adopted Sugar Cream were Baboon Leopard People, and they all had the same name as their spirit faces. That is just… bizarre, she lazily thought. Then she laughed and slowly got up. Good luck, Chukwu.