Tale of an African Woman

Chapter Twenty Eight

157 28 t was late in the afternoon when they left for Yakiri. They arrived around dusk when the chickens were coming back to roost. Tela used the trip and his role as interpreter to stress his importance to the community. While he was spinning long yarns on how he had performed before the paramount chief, the priest quickly went to inspect the site where the school would be constructed. He was amazed by how much work had been done in a day. The site had been cleared down and hoed and all the tree stumps removed. Piles of bamboo had already been stacked in a corner of the plot. After tethering Shannon, the name he had already given his horse, to a tree near the church, he retired to his house. By the door, he found baskets of food, a wicker basket containing a fat rooster and some calabashes of water. He took a glance at the rooster and remembered. After bathing, he went to bed early, exhausted by the trip and in anticipation of work to be done the following day. He got up very early the next day and started to draw up a doctrine and school program for Yakiri. When it was time for mass, he went to the church. Then he came back and continued with what he had been doing until midday. He went to the school site and found out that more bamboos had been piled up and the entire village had been mobilized for the work. Before the month was out, doctrine classes had already started and a school was poised to begin. The priest invited the sub-chief and all the village notables who initially wanted only their women and children to attend. Tela found himself in very trying circumstances when it came to interpreting concepts and ideas which were totally new to him. In the Lord’s Prayer, he had fumbled with the concept of “our I 158 daily bread,” since bread was not known to the people of Yakiri. That was just one of many things. Day and night, the priest boned up on Wotikar. With very few people with whom he could speak Mikari, he rapidly became proficient in the language. His acquisition of language skills gradually phased out interpretation. Apart from putting an end to Tela’s newly found glory, this development set the village for even more serious discussions. Many of the villagers had no problem adhering to the white man’s God. What they could not understand was why they should discard ancestral worship. In this respect, the sub-chief in particular found himself in a rather awkward situation. In his capacity as traditional leader, he represented an intermediary between the ancestors and the people. From his discussion with the priest, he did not see how he could fully become a Christian without giving up some of his traditional spiritual roles. If he gave up these roles, he would have rendered himself irrelevant in the eyes of his own people. In the end, he sought a compromise, borrowing selectively from both worlds. As a Roman Catholic Christian, he resolved to stay with only one wife. He also attended mass every Sunday, took communion, went for confession, paid all his church dues and lived up to Christian standards in the way he treated others. However, he refrained from turning his back on his ancestors, perhaps frightened by the wrath which they might unleash on the community. Takwabe was eventually baptized and took the Christian name of Patrick. Nding, his father, deeming the new faith irrelevant for a man of his age had advised his son to seek a comprehensive insurance by not rejecting what he did not know. Thus, Nding flirted with some aspects of the Holy Scriptures, mainly those which he felt vindicated some of his practices. The village of Yakiri had benefited too. With the mission and school came a postal service. Most importantly, work on the road which linked the village to Abakwa started. This made it possible for vehicles to shuttle between the two places throughout the year, transporting travelers and supplies. The impact of most of these developments was farreaching . The ability of the priest to speak the local language got 159 more and more people interested in the word of God and many of them who had applied to be prepared for baptism attended doctrine classes regularly. Many...