Tale of an African Woman

Chapter Two

6 2 long, long time ago, even before my country, Mungo, came to be administered as a colony of the Europeans, in the northern part of it, there was a small village called Bankim. The village was just one of many scattered all over Dawa, a vast savannah of rolling hills and valleys. All the villages had a common culture and traced their roots to the same ancestry, the great Wotikar farmers and warriors. The climate of Bankim was harsh and swung from one extreme to another like a pendulum. Bankim was a sweeping plain set in the midst of hills and for most of the year, it gurgled with numerous streams. A big river, the Noun, set its western borders with some other villages. The village was covered mainly with grass, randomly offset here and there with patches of tiny forests. In the dry season, when the tropical sun burned brightly, the vegetation withered, turned brown and sometimes died. This made it susceptible to the numerous bush fires often started by hunters in search of a quarry. It was during this season that the streams and tiny rivers dried up and their beds, under the suffocation of the blistering heat, formed cakes with countless cracks. Once bush fires had erupted and swept across the land, they left no plant standing in their wake. With the vegetation gone and the entire village almost reduced to a bald and sprawling black carpet of soot, it looked miserable and destitute. Then came the first bursts of rains and the plants sprang back to life, becoming green and luxuriant again. Most of the insects, which had been reduced to silence, resumed their chirping in the underbrush. From the treetops the birds twittered and the monkeys chattered in celebration. The streams which looked so miserable exploded with laughter of joy as they came tumbling and splashing over rocks. Boulders, laid bare by the scorching heat and the blast of the winds, started to turn green again with moss. A 7 Since Bankim was a very hot place, with temperatures sometimes rising to sweltering and intolerable levels during the day, the rains constituted a balm. They made the environment more attractive to the existence of man, plants and animals. Back then, the relationship among the different Dawa villages could not have been described as friendly. There were incessant quarrels over arable land and sources of water supply, but out of the need to survive in the midst of great odds, they had learned to tolerate one another. As long as there was peace and they could come to the aid of one another in times of serious crises, they often met to exchange goods and services. Occasionally, as it is often the case when different people live side by side, a young man and woman would defy their communities and get together in a union or elope. This kind of union set tongues wagging for a while but gradually the incident receded further and further away into the collective mind and then was eventually forgotten as things returned to normal. Among the villages, Bankim stood out for three main reasons. It was the largest, its soils the most fertile and its people law abiding and extremely hardworking. These factors, which were interlocking and tended to spur and complement one another, had caused the village to explode into a populous and wealthy community. With almost all the land of the villagers brought under the hoe, their barns were filled with all kinds of foodstuff. Their animals, often kept in enclosures not far from their homes, were usually healthy and fetched good prices during their weekly barter trades. A Council of Elders elected by the people ruled Bankim. The Council came under the authority of a wise man whom it designated. He was given the title of Tabih. Apart from convening and presiding over some of the meetings of the Council, his other functions included setting the dates for and presiding over ancestral sacrifices, adjudicating disagreements which cropped up in the village Council, ensuring that people were law abiding, as well as a wide range of other minor duties. The village was made up of many large families whose ancestries went far back in history. The most notable of them were the Konchus, the Gings, Bamus, the Forsuhs, the Mbis, the Ndas, 8 the Pefoks, the Abamukongs, the Ayaahs, the Fombuhs, the Wankis, the Atuches...