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?
Nothing and no one could stop the takataka of time, no event, no eruption; it moved on, sometimes listlessly, with Cyclopean strides. It walked, it swam, it flew. Days drowned in the torrent of time, and the nights drew in, filled with mystery, with silence, with sound, and left again. Still Alú lived in his neighbourhood; still he had a particular way of seeing, of thinking about things. Every day, he tried to savour a sawa-sawa, his favourite fruit. Alú kept growing.
Alú grew out of his bostololo trousers, so too did his curiosity. Though, like his parents, he had never left his island, he could not understand why in this town people had cut down the trees despite knowing full well that the opportunistic sun would make the most of this to rain its fire upon the earth. From November to March, the heat was stifling. Successive mayors had brazenly ordered the trees felled. This was something Alú knew because he had been told. And it made him think, think, think, ponder, ponder until a wave of sadness flooded his being. One of the mayors with a very particular approach to civil hygiene went from barrio to barrio in a hard hat carrying a chainsaw. Every tree in the town was felled.
But this affront to life on the island did not change the fact that every day, every hour, a new baby was born and, although it should have been cause for celebration, often the birth of a child was tinged with sadness. Though Alú tried to paint a smile on his lips in spite of this paradox, his heart bled to see mothers and fathers break down at the loss of a child, to see grandmothers shattered by grief when a grandchild died of typhoid fever, of mosquito bites and tropical diseases that had been eradicated in other tropics.
From the outset, we have talked mostly about Alú, but the boy also had a mother and a father. A mother like so many others in the town who would have put her hand in the fire for her children. One of those mothers who would do anything, give anything, so that her children did not have to bear the burden of everyday life. Do not think that all of Alú’s little friends lived with their parents. Some lived with uncles, aunts, with stepmothers, stepfathers, grandfathers, grandmothers, with older brothers or sisters. In some cases, they lived with people with whom they had no blood ties.
Alú’s mother was not a poet or a witch doctor, a teacher or a nurse, but she was an inspiration to her children and her neighbours. Sita Konno was a woman with great charisma; a good person prepared to shoulder every burden life put in her path. To Alú, his mother’s commitment to the community seemed magnificent; it inspired him. Sita Konno helped to build the community. Engraved on Alú’s memory was something that his mother had once said to him and to some other friends his age.
It happened on an afternoon not unlike yesterday afternoon when the sun sank slowly to hide behind the mountain. It was one of those afternoons when Sita Konno invited children in to eat fuludum. And when the boys’ bellies were full, she began to feed their souls. Knowing his mother as he did, Alú could tell that something was amiss. Though she tried to hide it, he could see her face was lined with worry. Secret thoughts teemed inside Alú’s head but he did not have the courage to ask his mother. Sita Konno had decided to speak; she had been waiting for her son to grow so that she could tell him what she had never dared to relate. For many years, the boy had been curious to hear about his grandparents. On that afternoon, Sita Konno said this:
‘Our ancestors never learned to read or write; they taught us through stories, through fables and legends. I did not have the good fortune of growing up with my grandparents. Time was, people would sit around the kitchen hearth and tell children fables, legends and stories to teach them the difference between black and white, good and evil. They told their children stories in order to feed their souls, so that they might grow to be competent human beings. Then, as now, in our towns, our neighbourhoods and in our houses the voices of women went unheard. Many women’s voices were stifled. If I dare to speak today it is because I remember that I was once a girl, because I know that one day you will be fathers and grandfathers. I want my mother’s story to help you open up new pathways, help you to move always towards the horizon. I want you to fight to be happy; I want to shrug off the weight of this ghost that is devouring me. And so, for the first time, I want to tell my story because in the village where I come from, when a tree falls we use it to make firewood.
‘My mother was scarcely older than a child, she was living happily with her parents in a tiny village. They had nothing but my mother told me that they were happy nonetheless. As a girl, I often asked my mother how she could have been happy if they had nothing, if she never even had a doll. And my mother would always say that happiness does not depend on whether or not you have material things. She used to say that happiness was an act of will repeated every morning, every evening, every night. That it was a daily struggle unrelated to the waves we had to face.
‘My mother was only fourteen when she lost her parents to an epidemic of cholera that swept through her village. My mother told me it was a miracle that she survived. I don’t want to upset you, so I won’t tell you the devastation my mother saw with her own eyes, but I will tell you that she lost her parents, my grandparents. Can you imagine how many people lost their parents, their children, their mothers to diarrhoea? Countless.
‘My mother told us that she was forced to move to the big city, there to weave new dreams. She had to move to the big city where everything was different, where there was no sense of community, where there were big cars, big houses, where people had learned to live with rats and cockroaches. She had to fight off her old ghosts, had to forget the love of her parents if she was to fashion new paths, new dreams.
‘Make no mistake, even my mother had dreams.’ Sita Konno picked up a plastic cup, opened a plastic bucket, dipped the cup into the bucket, drew out water and took a sip. The sun by now was fading; tik went the light switch that Sita Konno flicked and the bulbs began to glow.
Translated by Frank Wynne