Chapter One

I remember.

I remember Mema.

Mother. My mother.

My mother was a strong woman. I remember her. I remember everything. I remember her words, her story, her life, her pains, her tribulations and joys. I remember everything as if it happened yesterday. How old was she? I cannot tell with certainty because, like all people of her generation who were born before the freeing of our country from the rule of the Fulassi people, she was born ‘around …’ That is, around an obscure year that no one seems to be able to remember. Her age is therefore a guess, for no one knows exactly. But does it matter, really? No. Not to me. All that matters is that she was my mother. Why do I keep saying ‘was’? Should I not say ‘is’? In my village, the elders say that one can never say that the person standing over there was my father. Because blood relationships never end and can never be broken, we were all told as children that we could only use ‘is’ when talking about blood ties. So, I should probably be using ‘is’ when telling strangers about my mother. But you understand. This language I use to remember and tell the story of my mother is hard to master. It forces me to say ‘was’. This language is as forceful as the language of the Fulassi people.

The Fulassi are white people, just like the Dzaman and the Nguess. They are all merciless conquerors who took over our lands. My mother used to tell me about the authority of the Fulassi, who were very severe with us black people and forced everyone to learn their language and obey their laws. When one did not obey their laws, one was often beaten to death. Some youths were taken from villages for no reason and sent to work for the white man, who was building roads. He needed to build roads because he was cutting down big trees that he wanted to send back home for his people to use in the land of the Fulassi. My mother told me no one was paid for this, and several people from my village who were taken away never came back. Old people thought they did not return because they had died. My mother often heard stories of people being chained together as prisoners because the white man did not want anyone leaving work.

White people are really strange people, my mother used to tell me. She thought they were crazy. When you parted from them at night, you could never tell what they were going to do the next day. They could wake up one day and decide that it was time for them to go to war. This is how, one day, the chief of the white tribe we called Dzaman suddenly woke up and decided that he needed to take over the lands of all the other white tribes who did not speak his language. This is how the Fulassi who ruled our land and the Dzaman started to fight a big war against each other. The war became even bigger when all the other white tribes took sides. So, my mother recalled, when the war broke out between the Fulassi and the Dzaman, one of the Fulassi chiefs did not want to let the Dzaman rule his land. This chief, whom my mother remembers as ‘Gol’, was desperate. The Dzaman had taken his land very quickly, so he sought refuge in the land of the Nguess who helped him with the war. Because Gol, the Fulassi chief, had now become aware of the pain one feels when one’s land is taken over by strangers, he promised to leave us alone in our lands if we helped his people win the war against the Dzaman. Some of our people went to the land of the Fulassi to help them free their people. Most of our people who went there never came back. My mother heard strange stories of how some of our brothers died in the white man’s war. Others, she remembered, were said to have become crazy after the war and ended up roaming the streets of the white man’s towns like ghosts. Some were brought back to us, but they were no longer the same.

So, after the war, this Fulassi chief named Gol took his country back from the Dzaman people. He was so happy with the help of our people that he kept his promise and gave our lands back to us. The land where my people lived took on a new name. My mother told me this name was ‘Ngabon’, and we all became ‘Ngabonê’. Other parts of the big land that the white people called ‘Aferika’ took their own names too. Black people were very happy. They called this moment of freedom ‘independence’. The people who speak my language in Ngabon even created a dance called ‘Gol’ in memory of the white Fulassi chief who kept his promise and gave us our land back.

The people in my village used to say that a people without land was like a child without a mother. A child was able to know who he was, where he came from and where he was going only when he had a mother. Without a mother, the villagers said, a child was lost. He was lost because he knew neither his past, nor his present. In order for a child to know who he was, he needed to know his past. The past told him why his present was as it was. The past was the key to his present. He could unlock the truths of the present only when he used his past as the key to those truths. The same was true with regard to the future. For, if one does not have a past, then one cannot have a present. And if one has no present, then the doors to the future are locked.

So, I am lucky that I still have my mother. I am lucky that I have her in my head. I am happy that I can still hear her words in my ears, even when I am far away. Mema cannot die. She will never die. She will live for ever. She will always be with me, everywhere. She is with me. She is with me as I walk and talk. She is with me as I eat and sleep. She is in the breeze that softly hisses through the leaves of the trees, in the wind that I breathe, in the rain that soothes my body after a hot day, in the night that accompanies my sleep. She lives in my memories of her, reigns in them, like a queen, supreme, black, beautiful, proud and strong.

I know there are things in life that one cannot help. The weight of years necessarily took its toll on Mema. That’s how life is. Things must come and go. Trees grow tall, then one day the wind blows them down. A river springs from the bosom of the earth and nourishes the lives of the fishes, then it dries out, taking away the lives it had created. It is in the nature of things that the years should take their toll. But the years did not vanquish Mema, because Mema was strong, a strong woman indeed.

Mema had a big mouth too. And when I say a big mouth, I mean she really had a big mouth. Not in the physical sense. But in the sense of the things she said, and how she said them. Somewhere in her heart, Mema always believed she was the most intelligent person in the universe. It was not easy to win a debate against her. She would always try to convince others that she was right. But she was never easily convinced. I vaguely remember those times when she would have a dispute with either her husband, my father, or other people in the village. The days following the dispute would always be days filled with tension. They would also be days of apparent hatred during which Mema would adopt a stubborn demeanour, working her way silently throughout the hut and the village. She would not speak to anyone, and nobody would dare to speak to her. When she was in such a mood, even my father could not dare to approach her. I have never been able to tell whether this was part of my mother’s theatrical way of doing things, or whether she was serious. All I can tell is that this could go on for days.

Of course, as was required by our village customs, when a member of the community was at odds with another, someone from among the most influential speakers in the village had to attempt a reconciliation. It did not matter whether the dispute was a private matter between husband and wife, or a public matter between two villagers. Something had to be done. But the task of reconciling estranged parties was particularly daunting when Mema was involved. The person secretly appointed by the village to act as mediator would have to approach her with extreme caution and expert tact, for fear of my mother’s mouth. Everybody knew her mouth. Everybody knew that her mouth could become a terrible weapon if caused to start spitting out words like bullets.

So, my mother would sit there, patiently listening to the village mediator. Reassured, the mediator would continue his speech of appeasement, encouraged by my mother’s apparent willingness to listen. But, as could be expected, my mother would eventually interrupt:

‘Have you finished?’

Startled, the speaker would say:

‘Errrr … yes. I mean … Not really … You know … I …’

‘Because if you have finished,’ my mother’s mouth would strike, ‘let me tell you one thing …’

And my mother’s mouth would start to talk. It would talk longer and longer, bigger and bigger, and louder and louder, with that high‐pitched something that always caused the insides of people to shrink, you know, the kind of thing that happens to your insides when you are afraid. The kind of thing that made you want to rush out to pee in the bushes behind the hut, only to find out that you did not have anything to pee out at all. Yes, that’s it. Fear. Fright. That is what people experienced when my mother’s mouth started to talk. She had the kind of strong voice that could be heard from one village corner to the other. When that voice started to talk, it sounded very frightful to both males and females.

Was my mother angry about something? Perhaps. About what? I cannot tell. All I remember is that when that voice came out of a mouth that was going to spit out feelings of anger, spite, sorrow and sadness, it was unstoppable. It really caused heavy shrinking in your bowels. And when that voice was heard thundering into the air like thousands of guns, the village would stop breathing for a while. They just knew. It was her again.

Gathering his courage with both of his hands, the mediator would try to continue:

‘Woman … Please listen to me a bit. I am just trying to …’

‘Woman what?’ my mother would interrupt. ‘Did you hear me talking when you were telling me your nonsense? No! Now I say: listen to my