WHO ARE OUR ELDERS?

In the Serengeti, as the full moon rises, I watch a giraffe savor an acacia branch, relishing its long, sturdy thorns the size of toothpicks, and the tiny, tender leaves they protected. Gingerly holding the branch in his lips, the giraffe curls his tongue around the thorns and gently strips them into his mouth. After a few minutes, he turns away from the tree and ambles towards a shallow ravine. The trees have released their tannins, carried by the wind to other trees and giraffes nearby: Time to move on. No more feasting here. After about fifteen minutes of feeding, the trees know to do this so as not to be consumed. I imagine the giraffe’s nostrils and the leaves themselves tingling in the afternoon air. In the Serengeti, the air itself has texture, lent by the sun, limned with gold as if inside a luminous golden bubble that floats on the washed out blue of the sky.

The clouds begin to gather, imperceptible at first, just a wisp here and there, growing denser and a deeper gray as the heat abates and shadows come to life. After the torpor of midday, there is a quickening as dusk approaches. Gold spills down the tree trunks. The underside of the clouds swells and glows, as if they have formed just then, when we momentarily looked away. Vultures circle but we can’t find the kill.

In the streambed, a dozing jackal suddenly pricks up his ears, sits up, then stands, rigid and listening, and trots upstream towards the sound he has heard. David, our guide, carefully follows the jackal, inching our vehicle forward until we come upon a pride of lions devouring an impala. The jackal and David had heard the lions’ triumphant roar after the kill, a sound that has eluded those of us with untrained ears. We drive close – no more than five feet from a lioness gnawing on the rib cage, and sit in the fading light listening to the wind and the cracking of bones. Soon the hyenas will come, the vultures and marabou storks. Hyena scat is chalk white because of all the bones they eat, finishing the skeleton after the lions are through. Giraffes and other ungulates eat hyena feces for the calcium. David tells us that lions do not hunt unless they are hungry. They don’t stockpile food. No scarcity. No waste. 

I ask David what are the most amazing things he’s seen in his years of guiding. He says there are two moments he will never forget. Both times he was alone. The first was seeing two pythons mating then lying together, exhausted and intertwined. The second was seeing an elephant give birth, surrounded by a group of females, who then buried the placenta.

David is an initiated Maasai warrior. Except for the gaping empty holes in his earlobes, you wouldn’t know it to look at him, in his T-shirt and khakis. He believes the Maasai are descended from the twelve tribes of Israel. In five years he is to be initiated as an elder in a ceremony that happens only once every fifteen years. But what will he teach the new young initiates? He has left the village and does not know the ways of the elders he is to join who will initiate him. They are the last of their generation. In just fifteen years, maybe less, an ancient, collective memory has been wiped clean.

It’s a familiar story: as a young child he was sent to the Catholic mission to get a Western education. He has been a guide for seven years. Now he wants to go back to school to get a Western education and become a journalist. What will he write about, I wonder? I ask him about village life, about the elders, especially the diviners and healers. I ask whether they foresaw who he would be before he was born, choosing a name that would remind him of his life purpose, as they do in parts of West Africa. He says vehemently, “I hate those people!” (meaning the shamans and medicine people). He repeats it again, and then again. He hates them, hates what they say and hates what they do. He hates that some of them take advantage of people or use their power to do harm. 

His breath hisses and lingers on the word: hate. He speaks for a long time. I do not interrupt. The story pours out of him as we bounce along looking for wildebeest. After a time, he falls silent, then turns and asks me what I think. I pick my way carefully through the sharp edges of his story and the path of my response, saying first that I agree that there are those who use their power to do harm, and that this is not good, but that this doesn’t apply only to corrupt shamans. There are many people with power who do this. I say that I think his hate is the church talking, not his own heart, and ask how he can be a warrior and an elder if he hates his people and his culture. I say that the church, and governments, the media, and big corporations are threatened by people who have natural power derived from a relationship with the earth and the ancestors, and power sustained by being in dialogue with the Great Mystery, because people who understand this kind of power cannot be controlled. I ask, Are there are any elders or diviners whom he likes and trusts? There is one. David’s face softens into a fond smile as he tells of this special man whose predictions invariably come true. The man can look at you and tell you your future in a glance, and he is always right. He has 16 wives and 42 children, and people come to see him from all over. He is kind and smiling and keeps nothing for himself, giving everything away to his community. I ask whether David has ever talked to this man. He has not. He is afraid. I ask when he is going back to his village for a visit and whether, just out of curiosity, maybe as a journalist, it would be interesting to hear what the old man says. David grins and says, “But I am going at the end of September! I can go see him!”

BEARING WITNESS: SNAKES 2

The butt of his rifle or maybe someone’s fist keeps her from screaming, but it isn’t necessary because she refuses to give them the satisfaction of her screams or her tears. After the boys have all left themselves inside her, they use their knives to carve their desperation in her as if she were a tree where their signatures would be large and indelible. They pour their agony into her, thrust after thrust, driving it back through time to the ancestors that had bequeathed it to them. Lying at the edge of the clearing among the shocked trees, she feels the life draining out of her, feels the earth receiving and recognizing itself, welcoming her back. The broken, blood soaked twigs and the shattered branches dig into her bare flesh. Unable to move, she grows accustomed to the contour of her deathbed. She hears the people of her village calling her name, thinks she can distinguish the voice of her best friend, Beatrice, from among the desperate shouts. She knows that if there had been any dogs left in the village, they surely would have found her by now, but they have been gone for some time, eaten during the last wave of starvation. Even the leaves used to cover the dead have been eaten. Even the grass.

She feels the snakes being called into her, feels them enter her and slide up through her wounds. She feels the rapid, tiny gusts of cool air that precede each flick of the tongue as they lick her blood, reading the story that has been inscribed in her flesh. Each ancient caress carries her away from this place, bearing her like the sacred vessel they know her to be. They are careful not to spill a single drop of the redemption she may be carrying.

This story was given to me by Beatrice, a young woman from Sierra Leone who was the best friend of the girl in this story. When they found her, she was able to tell them what happened, including the way the snakes had entered her. She was taken to hospital and died a short time later. The speculation and the interpretations are mine.

BEARING WITNESS: SNAKES 1

Shortly after Voinjama’s first Mourning Feast, in November of 2004, the ancestors instructed the diviner we were working with to begin the process of restoring the land and the water by performing certain blessing ceremonies. Specific offerings were to be made to call to the animals and the birds and reassure them that the humans were returning to the land in peace and felt truly remorseful for the bloodshed they had committed. This was a very difficult ceremony. She and her entourage were to go deep into the bush and stay for 7 days without food, sleeping on the ground, making offerings, calling the animals and communicating with them. They were to capture 7 white birds and tie a thread to the leg of each one so they would take the message of peace and show it to all the other animals.

During our visit, the first of several preliminary water ceremonies was called for. We were to buy a special gourd in the market and fill it with specially ground rice flour, a favorite food of the forest animals’ spirits. The diviner gathered the other items needed – kola nuts, more gourds, some money in small bills and coins, and other sacred objects. We drove for about 40 minutes and hiked through the forest down to the Lofa River, a tributary of the St. Paul, where, during the war, many people had been shot or bound and tossed into the water to drown, and many dead bodies had been disposed of. The diviner and her husband, a powerful herbalist, made offerings and prayers to all the creatures of the forest, the land and the trees. The diviner went into trance, as she often does, as it is the primary mode of receiving messages from the ancestors. Eyes closed, she runs through the forest at full speed, and always returns without a scratch, never trips or bumps into a tree or bush. A small group of women – acolytes and relatives – run after her so they can be there when she wakes up and guide her home. They must exert a terrific effort to keep up, dodging fallen trees, brambles, and mud holes that she doesn’t even notice.

On that day, three different snakes appeared in the forest, birds called in obvious conversation, and we saw butterflies and brightly colored millipedes making their way to the offering site. The diviner later told us that the appearance of these beings in such profusion was a sign that the animals were grateful and so showed themselves by way of greeting. One of the snakes was poisonous and came to the edge of where they were running, and sat, calmly watching without attacking or running away. When they returned about half an hour later, they found that chalk had appeared on a large termite mound near their first offering site, a sign of protection and of Spirit’s presence and acceptance of the offerings on behalf of all living things.

Catfish and crocodiles, two of the diviner’s totems, appeared during the water ceremony and told her to return with larger quantities of rice flour, as they were very hungry and the amount she/we had brought was insufficient. Afterwards, she was told that the ancestors would be waiting for her at thirteen towns, in a particular sequence, that she was to visit one by one to work for peace and to continue ceremonies of cleansing and reconciliation with the water and the land. (She did.)

That night when we returned to the UN compound where we were staying, we had a scrumptious Pakistani feast with the officers in their dining room, about 100 men, attended decorously by the soldiers on serving duty and by Col. Raza and then Major Shahid, the commanders of the UN Pakistan Battalion II stationed in Voinjama. Before and after the meal we gathered in an anteroom where the men had a chance to relax, smoking and watching the latest Bollywood hits on TV. Gifts were always exchanged, theirs always more lavish than ours. We were free to ask questions and just get to know each other. Col. Raza told us, “Outside of Pakistan, this is our favorite place in the world. This is the place we would live if we couldn’t be at home. We love Liberia and we love Voinjama.” Wherever Col. Raza went in Voinjama, he drew crowds, and was greeted with shouts and cheers, “Col. Raza! Col. Raza!” A career military man, young, perhaps 40, he embodies the highest ideals of the warrior as a guardian of peace. Once people felt safe to return to Voinjama, and did so with great jubilation, he and his men could not help but fall in love with Liberia and Voinjama, the people and the place, and it immediately blossomed under his care.

The Pak Batt grounds are dotted with signs: “No White Man is superior to a Black Man. No Black Man is superior to any White Man.” and “If you kill one human being you kill the human race entire.” Because the people of Voinjama were hungry, the officers voluntarily fasted one day each week and donated their rations to the community. At their clinic, the doctor saw over 150 local patients a day without charge (although technically he was assigned only to the 600 men in the battalion).

While we were there, the men took turns standing guard along the perimeter and at their checkpoints. An off-duty soldier, in his white tunic and trousers, stood outside the guest house, which was in Col. Raza’s bungalow, and brought us thick, sweet Pakistani tea with canned milk every morning. At night a sentry stood guard outside our bungalow, armed with a long iron staff, like a Pakistani Maasaii with his spear.

On the night of the water ceremony, we stayed up late listening to our young Liberian camera woman tell a frightening dream she had had in which she was pursued by a large snake. When we finished our conversation, she stepped outside to go to her lodgings and suddenly came running back to the door shouting, “Come outside, quick! There are snakes right here!” We ran outside just in time to see two snakes streaking away into the bush between our bungalow and the little zoo that Col. Raza has created to protect feral animals when they find them. One of the snakes was about 5 feet long, thin, dark, and very fast, possibly a black mamba. There was a second snake moving beside it that was thicker and shorter, maybe three feet, and nearly as fast. A third, even smaller snake, about 2 feet long, lay dead by the footpath, victim of the night watchman’s quick reflexes and prowess with the iron staff. He said the snake was a dangerous one. Although I felt sad and horrified that our presence had caused the snake’s death, I thanked the watchman for protecting us.

Three different species of snakes, moving together, in swift parallel formation from the bush to our doorstep in the center of town, on the day of the Lofa River forest ceremony. In over a dozen trips I have only seen one other live snake. Perhaps a herpetologist will one day prove me wrong, but for now, I choose to think that their exuberant and daring appearance confirms that they risked their lives to come and greet us, perhaps to thank us for the offerings that were made.

THE SOIL REMEMBERS 1

The soil of Liberia remembers the taste of the ancestors whose placentas were buried at birth under the trees, uniting the bodies of people with the trees and the land. The trees and the rain remember the taste of a land that could not be bartered or sold, paved or mined or moved away from. It is not the same as the taste of dismemberment and grief, of sewage and fear, not the same as the empty soil where birdless trees are struggling. In this soil are the nephews that were sacrificed to ensure peace, buried alive, one in a generation, an offering from people whose word for sacrifice means to give more than you can. The offering is not meant to placate an insatiable or bloodthirsty Spirit. It is an offering of themselves to each other that delivers them into the hands of the mysterious forces that keep them indivisible and safe. How then, can it recognize these children forced into it at the point of a gun or a knife, their blood drained and stolen for purposes never intended or demanded by the gods? The soil remembers the old times when the villages that sacrificed a nephew were not touched by war. Because of this, a boy whose name we do not know, in a small village not far from the capital, may have kept the killing at bay. They say the story is true, that it really happened.

Here is how I imagine it: On the day of the offering, at the center of the village, is the mother of the boy. The whole circle watches, hushed and humbled, terrified by their gratitude as the silence swallows him on their behalf. They say that everyone in the village – except the mother - helped to dig the grave, even the toddlers who are too small or the ones who are too old to understand exactly what is happening. They say that each person removed one shovelful, or one fistful, and added it to the common pile, until they had opened a chasm that was wide enough to hold the end of a life, all the days that lead up to it and all the days that would never come after. Perhaps this is because everyone knows that in order to meet the magnitude of the offering, everyone must recognize that they are responsible. This is why the grave became a sacred spot in the center of the village, where the people built a sacred palaver hut so the councils of elders can gather and, before they speak of weighty matters, they remember where they are.

What are the appropriate questions here? Are they: Who, exactly, was that child? What actually happened? Was it foreseen? How did the dreams inform them and what did the animals know?

Each person watching knows that boy and must now relinquish who he has been to them: The young men offer their companion, the child who was their playmate, with their memories of playing marbles together in the late afternoon heat before the fireflies appeared, a game played in the last light, and the way he became so absorbed in the game that the world fell away as they watched him move noiselessly on his haunches, fast as a shadow, artfully flicking his marbles into the dust.

The town chief offers the lanky, quiet boy who used to loiter by the teashop, listening to the men as they worried about the war, deliberating whether their Christian god could save them or if He had brought it upon them, and, if so, for what reason? Had they offended Him? Or had they offended the ancestors? Did they offend one by honoring the other and did the honoring of one inevitably mean the other had to be destroyed? Who or what could they call upon to solve the riddle of such suffering? What were they to teach their children about the order of things in a world such as this?

The uncle offers the memory of the boy learning to prepare the council tea for the elders: the small cup that barely fits in the palm of one’s hand. The ancient kettle, smudged and dented, as the uncle lifts it from the fire and fills the cup. As he has seen his uncle do countless times, the boy raises the cup above his head and tilts his left hand until the tea flows out in a long, steaming curve that disappears into the cup held in his right hand. Then the right cup up and the left one down. Raising one, pouring into the other, now closer together, now farther apart, shrinking and stretching the thick brown arc of sweet, scalding tea, never spilling a drop, not even at first, as if he had been born to pour this tea in this way, as if could conjure it even without a kettle, a young Zeus practicing with tea until he can pour lightning between his hands. Teacup to teacup, palm to palm, he pours the possibilities back and forth until the tea is ready and his mind is made up. As he offers the first cup to his uncle, he informs him that he wishes to be the one who is sacrificed, buried alive for the sake of the village, in the center of town, as it used to be done before, for peace. Is this how it happened?

What are the questions here? Are they: What actually happened? Did anything change afterwards? How do they speak of it now? And, Is this real or is it a story, and what’s the difference? Whether it’s a story or it really happened, what do we make of this?

The boy’s mother does not offer her consent. She does not give her permission and refuses to relinquish a single memory. The mother can only bring herself to take a pinch of dirt form the pile and sprinkle it into the pot of rice that she must cook for the common meal. She will force herself to swallow just one bite so that she can carry a grain of him inside of her always.

Even the birds must relinquish him, the echo and answer conversations of his boyhood. The dog he has secretly been feeding will expect no more rice. The shaman who dreamed this is secretly begging the spirits, and God, that he will never again receive such a vision in this lifetime.