The Bride Price: An African Romance (Chitundu Chronicles) (32 page)

After washing the clothes and putting them out so they would dry in the sun, there was wood to gather, floors to sweep, the courtyard to sweep free of leaves and debris, and the garden to weed. If someone had made soil on the ground, we would pour sand on it, then scoop it with a leaf into the garbage pit.  We planted the normal crops; some grew at the same time. Beans would sprout up two days after the first rain fell,  followed by tomatoes, then the groundnuts, and finally, the mangos ripening on the mango trees.  All of the vegetables grew under a canopy of banana and cassava leaves, if the rains came. We kept the goats out using thorn bush fencing that could be put around the plants, the same kind used for the corrals at night. 

My father, Festal, would split the larger wood and make tool handles from the thick limbs. We had a walking stick, a hoe, and a pick axe for land clearing.  He  borrowed a saw when we needed one from the neighbor who was a carpenter as well as raising cattle. My mother showed me the impala he had carved for her from the white mahogany wood when they were expecting me.  It was delicate but strong, and smooth from wear.

I can still see the rows of cooking fires dotting the darkness of the village before the sun rose.  When the sun came up, the roosters ceased their crowing, no doubt thinking they had brought it about. The birds would sing at first light.  The sun came up in a rush of heat and light.  At this time, the birds ceased their singing and the waft of scented lilies was in our yard.  Each of them would unfurl in the sunlight. After I was bathed, my mother would have me sit between her knees and plait my hair into corn rows or other designs. I could feel the baby bumping against me as I pressed near her stomach. We had a mirror over the table, but I could touch the braiding and feel how regular it was.  When I pulled on my dress and my sandals, I was ready for the day. 

In the morning, many of the girls went out to gather firewood or to carry water.  They usually went in small groups, carrying the jerry cans on their heads and trekking to the watering hole.  I was very fortunate that we had a large cistern to hold our water.  Once a month, if we had no rain, my father would hire the neighbor to bring barrels of water on his donkey cart and empty it into our tank.  We did not lack for clean water, except during the time of drought, when the waterholes dried up and even the cattle could not find water to drink.  We could see the buzzards circling as they waited for a gaunt animal to finally drop.

During the day, the orphan child, Mpala, would gather firewood and drag or carry it to the house.  He would also weed the garden with the hoe, gather stones to line the gutters on the ground around the house, and do any tasks my mother needed done.  He did not speak the same language as our village when he came, and my father said he had come from somewhere west where wars were going on.  He slept in the storage room on a mat and helped keep the compound free of litter and rodents, which he loved to kill with the slingshot he had made of a piece of wood and some old tire tread.  I think he was around 8 or 10 years of age.  We called him Mpala which is antelope, because he could run and jump like one.

Let me tell you about our house.  My father had built it himself, starting with clearing the ground, then assembling a set of mud blocks carved out of the earth and set to dry in the sun.  The bricks were not kiln dried in their first rondavel, so they had to be careful about keeping it plastered so the rains would not wash away the walls. It had a thatched roof made of the long grasses that grew near the river some distance away.  In time, my father was able to purchase the harder bricks from the local merchant who made them, and they enlarged the size of the house, using the older rondavel to store the kitchen pots, firewood, and their tools. We had a hoe, a storage jar, and a length of rope, two cooking pots, a brazier, and a small set of dishes, a tea pot, our mortar and pestle for grinding the
nshima
, and a set of red harness for the donkeys my mother bought.  He was working on making a double set with his leather punch and the leather he had cured when my mother surprised him with a store bought set.  The home-cured leather smelled like dead rats. He used bird droppings to soften the leather. There was also a pile of reeds in the storehouse that Mpala could weave into mats. I would play in this room and had a miniature brazier and a tiny cook pot made of clay which I used to cook food for my doll.  Sometimes my friend Precious would come over and we would play house together.  I never let her be the mother. She had to be the baby or the customer.  If we played store, I was the clerk, the mother, the teacher.  I wonder if she thought then I was too bossy, and later, when she had my doll, she was the boss of all. My mother gave it to her when I passed, and not to my sisters.

Precious was a good friend.  We made designs in the sand with  stones and  sticks, shared secrets, and sometimes  caught a locust and would tie ribbons to its legs so it made a beautiful kite as it tried to fly away.  We would keep the locusts in a small basket in the storeroom and try to feed them something so they would not die.  Sometimes the rooster would jump up and grab one when we forgot to shoo him away, and our game would be over.  The locusts were not always around, but if you dug in the ground, you could sometimes find one.  They were longer than my hand and their wings were like window panes of silk. We also had termite mounds among the mango trees that were higher than my father’s head.  We would hide behind them, climb the sides to poke sticks in the holes, and often found shiny stones the insects had dug up while making their mounds. These stones were the semi-precious garnets that predicted diamonds were beneath the earth, I was to learn later.  These mounds were shade on the hottest days, and we pretended they were castles or tall buildings that we had seen in my books.

I liked the singing games we played.  We also would pull the rope out of the storage building and play jump rope, although it wasn’t easy because we were not allowed to cut the rope and it was too long for single skipping. It was made of thin cords of cowhide and plaited into a single strand.  I would tie it to the cashew tree and then turn it for Precious to skip rope.  My favorite game we played, other than
mancala,
was hopscotch.  I used my smallest coin for my marker, and Precious used a broken comb.  We could play this for hours and had to be reminded to do our chores. Sometimes Mpala would join in and he always won, he was so graceful.

When I learned to read, I would read to Precious.  She did not have a mother who knew book, so I could tell her anything, turning the pages slowly and making up stories.  One day my mother caught me doing this, and said she was going to get me a pen so I could write down my stories.  I passed before she had a chance to buy a pen. There was one in the village, but she couldn’t risk it going missing. Ours had long since run out of ink.

We did not have many people in our village who were different than ourselves.  We had heard of the colonials, but by the time I was five, the country was changing its name, its boundaries, and we were making new rules to live by.  My mother told me one day I would go to school and I would vote.  I didn’t know what vote meant, but I would tell Precious that she had my vote, because it made the adults laugh and poke each other when I said it.  I didn’t know if it was possible for a girl to vote or to get a vote, but it made my mother smile.

I have told you how my house looked.  It was round and made of mud bricks with a straw roof and a floor that was smooth as a pot.  Surprisingly, the floor was made of cow dung.  Once it was laid and pounded, Mpala polished it each day after sweeping and you could see a reflection when the door was open.  The house also had an opening to let light in, but we kept it closed because of the flies.  Flies do not like the dark, so inside, there were no flies, unless the door was left open.  We did not have the brazier inside because my mother said this was a danger. Sometimes it was cold as we had no furniture except for a small table and our carved stools.  These were heavy and dark, made by a carver in the village.  Each person in our house had a stool.  Mine was very small with a little cross on the leg made of cowry shells.  I could see it in the night if the moon was out and I had left it in the courtyard.

We slept on mats on the floor, and I slept beside my sisters, each of us nestled against the younger one’s back.  Mother would tuck me in and I was asleep before she climbed into her bed.  She was usually up before I was.  My father would bathe in the evening and sometimes I heard him asking my mother to scrub his back with the loofah, or sponge.  We grew these in our garden under the platform and when they were big, we gave them to the neighbors.  I liked how their vines crept over the mounds and made spirally circles on the ground.

Our garden also had groundnuts. You may call them peanuts. These were so good roasted on the flat iron tin over the fire, or boiled in a pot in the cold weather.  We had to watch that the termites did not eat the roots of the plants in our garden, and this is one good thing about the chickens, they loved to eat the bugs. We would cluck to them when we saw any ants or termites near the house and the flock would rush over. When the rains came, the ants moved their nests and the chickens filled their craws with them.

My mother was heavy with the baby when I last remember her, but before that, she had lots of energy and would make some little pots of the clay from near the river.  These would dry in the sun and I wanted to be able to do this one day.  I liked the feel of the silken mud on my hands.  She never let me go near the river, because of the danger of a crocodile.  I never saw one, but she described them as enormous lizards that would gobble me up like the geckos did with the flies on our walls.  I shivered at the idea of such a huge lizard, and imagined it would get me in the night if I didn’t keep my sleeping cloth wrapped tightly over my head.  Maybe that is why I never suffered from malaria.  I was too busy warding off the crocodiles!

My friend Precious had a mother and an aunt who could weave incredible baskets out of grass.  Precious said her mother was going to make one big enough for us to get inside and keep us safe, but she never did.  She would make the flat winnowing baskets with patterns of brown circling the center grid.  Her aunt made round baskets that came up like a pot and on some there were lids attached with a thong of woven grass.   Some pots were so tightly woven, they could carry water.  We had two tiny ones they made for us to play with and to put termites in.  Some of the older women would use these tight little baskets to store their roasted mopani worms, then snack on the dried caterpillars in the late afternoon when they made their pots of tea, before they prepared food for the evening meal together.  These worms were good, but not available except in the rainy season in the mopani forests further south.  We always had a good supply of them. The traders would bring us gifts when they came to visit during the dry months in July and August to trade for our cow skins and dried beef.

One day Mpala carved me a whistle.  I was blowing on it when my father came home and he was not pleased.  He told me to give it back to the boy; I was never to receive a gift from a boy without it being presented to him or to my mother.  I was embarrassed and a little angry at this.  I never knew why this was a rule, nor did he explain.  Mpala never gave me anything else after this and we stopped playing in the storage building.  Mpala joined the herdsman that spring and no longer worked with my mother.

My mother had a sister named Violet.  She was a tall woman with eyes like the moon.  She didn’t come to see us often, but when she did, she brought gifts. She brought cloth and a sewing machine for my mother and books for me. She brought us pens and a notebook, which was where I started my stories.  My mother taught herself to sew and was soon making repairs to the clothing of everyone at the cattle station. She was also able to piece together curtains for the openings in our house and hung them on sticks so we could let the light in without the insects.

Mother made a cloth for the table, a shirt for my father, and many other things, just by seeing a picture and then copying the design.  After I was gone, she taught other women this skill— men as well.  This was the beginning of her earning some money for herself and how she was able to occasionally order a book, buy a pen, and even provide shoes for her children to come. The last gift Violet brought was a kerosene lamp, which my father grumbled about for the next 30 years. Violet said little to me, but she gave me lots of hugs and listened to me with all her heart. When she had her children, I was already departed, but I know she always wanted a girl like me.  She said she would name her Lily Wonder.

Now, you may be asking where I am now.  If I told you, you wouldn’t believe it.  So I am sticking to the things you can understand of my earthly home.  Let me tell you how life went on with my Aunt Violet.

Violet lived in the village close to what is now called the capital in a town called Blancville.

When Violet sent me a letter, I began to think about her more often. Everyone dreams of being remembered, and to receive a letter was a great honor.  I put it on the wall in our sleeping room.  I thought I had missed how much she cared for me, and how important her sister was to her, for she didn’t like to travel.  Violet would also fuss with my mother’s hair, something no one in the cattle station had done.  She would sit my mother down and wash her hair, lavishing on shampoo and conditioners made especially for delicate curly hair.  Then she would massage her head, finally braiding it in loose coils and fashioning them into a crown that was cool and regal.  Even my father had to smile at the transformation, for Myrna was a beauty.  The hair piled up above her bronze-gold forehead accented her silhouette and the long lashed lids above her large tilted eyes.  From Violet, as a child, I learned that family counts, and can be counted on.

You will hear from me again, for I am bound to my family until they no longer grieve or mourn my passing.  Until then, I can see what is going on in their lives, but I can only watch.  –