Blessing

Chapter 5

53 5 emkeu shoved the blanket from his body, jumped out of bed and fastened his loincloth. Yawning and stretching, inching and groping, he unlatched the door and flung it open. Outside, he traced the familiar path to the back of his hut. Standing with his face to the bush, he emptied his bladder of the overnight load. He walked to a cypress tree and brutally attacked a small branch, not letting go of it until it let go of its hold on the stem. After peeling off the bark, he thrust the branch into his mouth and attacked it with his kola nut-stained teeth. He was walking back to his hut when he ran into Nkem on her way from the latrine located out of eyeshot and earshot from the compound. ‘Has day come, Mbeh?’ ‘Did you sleep well?’ ‘Yes, Mbeh,’ she answered and then added ‘You are up very early. It seems you want to go out. Should I heat up the fufu corn and njama njama so that you eat before you go?’ ‘You know that it is too early for me to eat. I will go and come back before I push down the morning spittle.’ ‘As you say, Mbeh.’ She hesitated and then added, ‘Since you may return when I have already gone to the farm, I will tell Fatti to stay back and give you food before she joins me.’ ‘I am going far and will surely return very late in the afternoon or early in the evening; so do not worry about food for me.’ He was walking away when he turned and asked, ‘You did not go to greet your white man God this morning?’ He chuckled. ‘Has He travelled? Or maybe you are angry that He has kept Fatti out of your bed for so long. Maybe He is the one who is angry because you go to bed with His name and get up with His name, blaming Him for everything bad, even that which comes from the evil spirits.’ Temkeu laughed as he made for his hut. ‘I warned you people about that white man and his God but you refused to listen to me.’ Back indoors he examined the items of clothing hanging from T 54 nails on a lath stuck to the wall and selected one of his pairs of jumpers. In front of his slab, he picked up a comb, passed its teeth through his greying hairs and then covered them with a black twine cap. Finally, he put on Achum’s gift of a leather watch, though it no longer ticked with the passage of time. Before stepping out, he stopped in front of his skulls. ‘Keeper of our people, right hands of our gods –’ Temkeu stared hard at the two skulls ‘– I offer you the mission of this morning. Bless my feet so that I hit no bad stone on the road and put the right words into my mouth. I beg you today that you reveal to me that which will bring peace back into my heart.’ Temkeu closed the door behind him and set out. He did not need to lock the door. Though access into his hut was open to anyone, respect kept everyone out, even a stranger who came by when the compound was devoid of human presence. The doors of the women’s huts remained ajar throughout the day. They did not just leave the door wide-open but displayed food for any hungry passerby . These could be men, women or children on the way to or from their farms. All a hungry person needed to do for food was arrive at the nearest compound. The only price was that they keep in mind the next hungry passer-by. It was always easy to tell which hut belonged to the head of the compound: that with the closed door. After many hours of trekking, Temkeu finally sat opposite Samboa, the diviner in Nchusa village. ‘The last person to bring dust into my shrine yesterday was your son. You are the first to wake up the dust today. What would we do without sons to announce us?’ Samboa said. ‘Yes, our sons are our feet when we are young and our walking sticks when we grow old.’ Temkeu answered and then cleared his throat. ‘So tell me, eye of the gods, what have your powerful eyes seen about Saha Tpune, that man to whom my Fatti was sent? I...