There were women and girls at Mile-Thirty-Eight. The women did the cooking; the girls were child-soldiers like us. The girls had their own unit. The unit was run by a vicious cow who was trigger-happy with a machine-gun. (A ‘cow’ is a fat woman with bad manners.) Her name was Sister Hadja Gabrielle Aminata.
Sister Hadja Gabrielle Aminata was one-third Muslim, one-third Catholic and one-third animist. She was a colonel on account of she had lots of experience with young girls because over twenty years she’d excised nearly a thousand girls. (‘Excise’ is the part of the girls’ initiation where they amputate the clitoris.)
The girls all lived together in an old girls’ boarding school in Mile-Thirty-Eight. It was made up of about ten houses built around a rectangular concession. There was a sentry post at each corner of the cloister defended with sandbags. The sentry posts were manned day and night by girl-soldiers. The camp was surrounded by human skulls on stakes all round the boundary. That’s tribal wars for you. It was kind of a boarding school that Sister Aminata ruled with a rod of iron.
Reveille was at four in the morning. All the young girls did their ablutions (‘ablutions’ means ‘washing of the body as part of a religious rite’) and bowed for the Muslim prayer even if the girl wasn’t a Muslim. Because waking up early made the girls strong and the morning ablutions got rid of the smell of pee that always hangs around Black Nigger Native girls. After the communal prayer, there was cleaning fatigue, then exercises, then drill. Sister Aminata yelled a lot during drill and thumped any young girl whose manoeuvres were half-hearted. Afterwards, all the girls lined up and marched down to the river at the double singing patriotic Sierra Leonean songs. At the river they all bathed in lots of water. They marched back to the headquarters at the double singing patriotic songs like when they left. After lunch, the girls did normal lessons: reading, sewing and cooking. Sister Aminata, armed with her AK-47, kept an eye on everything.
In her long career as an excisor, Sister Gabrielle Aminata had always refused, downright refused, to excise any girl who had lost her virginity. That’s why she got it into her head, during all the troubles and the tribal wars, that she had to defend the virginity of her girls at any price until peace returned to the beloved motherland of Sierra Leone. She defended it with a kalash. This mission to defend her girls’ virginity with a kalash was vigorously enforced without a grain of pity. She was like a mother to the girls in the unit, she was jealous and protected the girls in the unit from any advances, even from chiefs like Tieffi. Sister Gabrielle machine-gunned any girl who strayed from the path. And mercilessly machine-gunned anyone who raped any of her girls.
One day, a young girl was found raped and decapitated between three labourers’ camps. Eventually they found out the poor girl was called Sita and she was eight years old. Sita had been horribly killed in a way you wouldn’t want to see. Even someone whose whole life is blood like Sister Hadja Gabrielle Aminata cried her heart out when she saw it.
For a week, a whole week, everyone rushed round trying to find out who was guilty of the crime. But in vain, nothing came of the investigations.
At the beginning of the next week, things started to go from bad to worse. Any workers who ventured beyond the camp at night to relieve themselves never came back. He’d be found dead the next morning, emasculated (with no penis) and decapitated like poor Sita with a note on him that read: ‘The work of the dja, the avenging spirit of Sita.’ The workers panicked. Child-soldiers were dispatched to guard them. Every night the child-soldiers were overpowered by masked figures who came and kidnapped workers from the camps. In the morning, the victims were found murdered, emasculated and decapitated like little Sita, and there was always a note explaining that this was the work of Sita’s dja.
The workers went on strike, some even went and hid out in neighbouring camps. It was no good, it didn’t work: wherever they went, death was following behind.
This was in General Tieffi’s time. General Tieffi, supreme master of the district and all its inhabitants, investigated the case himself and he eventually figured it out. He called an assembly of all those living in the huts, and Sister Gabrielle Aminata and her closest colleagues were invited. The women all arrived with AK-47s, and the colonel herself came in hajj dress, meaning dressed like a Muslim woman on her way back from Mecca. She carried her kalash under the frills of her skirts. That’s tribal wars that does that.
All afternoon there was a heated palaver. At sunset, the camp workers finally convicted some poor wretch. He was guilty of the death of little Sita. He and no one else. He was handed over to Sister Gabrielle Aminata. What she did to the poor wretch doesn’t need to be told. I don’t have to tell everything in my bullshit story. Faforo!
When the Kamajors arrived at Mile-Thirty-Eight, some of them, seeing all these young virgin girls in one place, were drooling with desire, jumping for joy. Here were lots of girls to marry. Right away, Sister Gabrielle Aminata had a meeting with the general, the master hunter in command of the regiment of hunters. She told him she did not have any marriageable girls, only girls she had to keep on the path of righteousness. She intended to safeguard the virginity of all of her girls until peace came. When peace returned, she herself would excise the girls before returning them to their families where they would be ready to make proper, decent marriages. She warned him that she would ruthlessly and summarily execute any hunter who tried to corrupt one of her girls. Her threats had the lecherous hunters in fits of laughter. (‘Lecherous’ means ‘given to excessive indulgence in sexual activity’.)
One day, a girl ventured outside the compound. She was with her mother who had come to visit her. She was hunted down by lecherous hunters who caught her and took her to a cacao plantation. In the cacao plantation they raped her, gang-raped her. Sister Aminata found the girl lying in her own blood. Her name was Mirta, she was twelve years old. Sister Aminata Gabrielle went to see the generalissimo, the master hunter, the leader of all the hunters of Sierra Leone. The generalissimo promised to investigate. The investigation didn’t go anywhere. Night and day, there was a hunter always loitering round the girls’ barracks. Sister Aminata was very suspicious of him. They lured him into a trap. They sent out a girl and she wandered around the compound. The hunter threatened her with a kalash and took her to the cacao plantation. Just when the lecher was about to jump on her, girls came out of the forest armed to the teeth and arrested him. They tortured the hunter and made him confess. He had been involved, well and truly involved in the gang-rape of Mirta. With a hail of gunfire, Aminata Gabrielle shut him up permanently. They threw his body over the wall of the camp into the next street, shouting indiscriminately (at random), ‘He was involved in Mirta’s rape.’ When the hunters saw their friend’s corpse, there was an outcry. The hunters rioted and attacked Sister Gabrielle’s compound, they laid siege to it night and day. Three times in one night, Sister Gabrielle herself walked out of the compound and spread panic among the hunters. Every time she came out, she killed at least three men. Enraged, the hunters showed up at the compound with an armoured car. Sister Aminata, in her hajj robes, carrying her kalash, managed to crawl as far as the armoured car. She climbed on to the hood and tried to kill the driver, but a hunter lying in ambush fired and she fell down dead. She died like a soldier.
Sister Aminata Gabrielle’s corpse threw the association of Sierra Leonean hunters into terrible confusion. Sister Aminata Gabrielle was a woman, but a woman who died a war hero. The code of honour of the hunters demands that all those who die as heroes be treated as master hunters and buried with all the honours of a master hunter. But the rules said a woman couldn’t be buried as a master hunter. The question was put to the generalissimo of the hunters. His response was unambiguous (categorical, unequivocal). Though she was a woman, she had held out for two weeks against two regiments of hunters; she had killed nine hunters in nocturnal sorties and she had died capturing an armoured car. She richly deserved to be buried as a hero, a master hunter. She deserved it no matter w
hat her sex.
That’s why Sister Aminata was given the funeral of a master hunter, of a great master hunter.
From the moment she was considered a master hunter, she was considered to have lots of gnamas (the avenging spirits of men and animals that you’ve killed). These had to be gathered up, and they were gathered up in a small gourd. The sora, the hunters’ griot, came to deliver her funeral oration. The hunters, in order of rank, walked around the body. As the sora continued to sing the magical verses, the hunters walked round the body carrying their homemade rifles diagonally across their chests, marking the rhythm of the song by swaying their torsos, once to the left, once to the right.
After the dance, the corpse was immediately carried to the edge of the grave. Three master hunters came and bent over the grave of Sister Aminata. They removed her heart, gathered it up and, taking it, left the ceremony. Far from the ceremony the heart was fried, then placed in oil in a kanari. The kanari was sealed tight and buried in the earth.
As soon as the three master hunters had left, the hunters bid farewell to Sister Hadja, Gabrielle, Aminata, the excisor, the woman who was buried with the honours of a master hunter. All the hunters bade farewell, firing their homemade rifles into a pit dug parallel to the grave. It made an extraordinary cloud of smoke. While the grave was still smoking, the earth was drawn back over the body of Sister Gabrielle.
With the twilight began the vigil in the place where Sister Gabrielle had lived. During the vigil the hunters talked about the deceased as if she were still alive. Forty days after the death, in a ritual intended to purify and invigorate the soul of the deceased, the gourd was burned.
Every year, between early March and late May, the brotherhood of hunters organises the donkun cela. The donkun cela, or ‘rites of the crossroads’, is the most important ceremony of the brotherhood. During the ceremony, all the members of the brotherhood share a communal meal. At the end of the meal, the dagas conons are exhumed. The dagas conons are the kanaris containing the fried hearts of brave hunters. These hearts are consumed by the brotherhood in secret. It gives them passion and courage.
This is why people say, why everyone says, that the heart of Sister Aminata, colonel of the army of Sierra Leone, served as a delicate and delicious dessert at the end of a merry meal. (A merry meal is a meal during which lots of millet beer is drunk.) Faforo! Gnamokodé!
6
As soon as the professional brotherhood of traditional hunters took control of the district around Mile-Thirty-Eight, happiness and us weren’t living in the same village any more. (That’s the Black Nigger African Native way of saying we weren’t happy any more.) We means Yacouba, the crippled crook, the grigriman, the money multiplier, and me, your humble servant, the blameless, fearless street kid. They searched us, stripped us down to our underpants, and took everything we had. When they got down to Yacouba’s underpants, instead of just finding his big arse, they found lots of little purses with diamonds and gold in them. Yacouba, the crippled crook, kept his savings underneath his bubu in his trousers. When they searched my underpants, they found gold and diamonds too, but it was nothing compared to Yacouba who looked like he had a massive hernia. That’s how many purses he had round his waist and in the folds of his trousers. The hunters took everything he had, they took everything we had.
They shut us up in a pen. There were loads of us, soldiers, child-soldiers, women even. There were loads of us, the whole battalion of starving wretches that tag along in the wake of tribal war armies just to get a bit of manioc to eat. They penned us up in a pen where they gave us nothing to eat. We howled with hunger. Yacouba tried to use the fact he was a grigriman, but it didn’t wash, it didn’t work. Seeing as how we were getting hungrier and hungrier and screaming louder and louder and they couldn’t find anything to give us to eat, they let us go. After summary interrogations, they let us go. We were free, with no money and no guns we could use to extort anyone.
The traditional hunters had no need of Yacouba the grigriman; they were grigrimen themselves. I was set free too. The professional brotherhood of traditional hunters, the Kamajors didn’t need child-soldiers. Their code forbade them from using children in wars. To fight in a war with them you had to be initiated as a hunter. For the first time, we (Yacouba and me) were confronted with the reality, the uncertainty, of tribal war.
It was only when we were confronted with all this uncertainty that I came to admire Yacouba’s resourcefulness for getting by. We left Mile-Thirty-Eight for Freetown. When we got there, he took three tree-trunks and a bit of straw and made a paillote (‘paillote’ means a straw hut). He set himself up in it as a shaman, a grigriman skilled at transforming speeding bullets into water. At first, we had it tough. I was his coadjuter, his assistant. But in the end we had enough manioc to eat. It wasn’t a four-star hotel, but at least we had something to eat every day. It was at that point everything happened, proving once again that Allah never sleeps, that he’s always watching over the earth, that he’s always watching out for miserable needy people like us.
In the end, some kind of truce was reached between the forces of the democrat Tejan Kabbah and those of the four bandit warlords pillaging Sierra Leone. The ECOMOG forces commanded by the Nigerian bandit general, the men of the bandit leader of the Sierra Leonean forces, the forces of the warlord Foday Sankoh, and the forces of the warlord Highan Norman, minister of defence and leader of the Kamajors, the professional brotherhood of traditional hunters. Yes, a balance was reached between all these different freedom fighters, these rival factions, and then the IMF had to go and stick its nose in. The balance of power had been set at eight hundred Kamajors, fifteen thousand soldiers, twenty thousand guerrillas loyal to Foday Sankoh and a surreptitious number of ECOMOG forces. The soldiers in the regular army got a monthly allocation of forty thousand sacks of rice as part of their salary, and one dollar per soldier. The traditional hunters got an allocation of twenty sacks of rice. The IMF found out that the soldiers were eating too much rice and costing the international community too much money. (Walahé! Bankers are merciless, they have no heart!) The IMF wanted to scale back the number of soldiers from fifteen thousand to seven thousand and the monthly allocation from forty thousand sacks to thirty thousand. The soldiers grumbled and swore by all their gods that they weren’t eating too much. It was just that whenever they tried to wolf down their meagre ration of rice there was always some family member hanging around, right where they were trying to eat. So, on account of African solidarity, the rice had to be shared between an infinite number of people. The IMF hadn’t counted on a fucked-up country like Sierra Leone doing African solidarity. The soldiers had the last word, they refused to reduce their forces; they categorically refused to accept less than thirty-four thousand sacks of rice per month.
In order to come up with the extra four thousand sacks of rice and distribute them (the difference between thirty-four thousand and thirty thousand), the poor democratic government of poor Tejan Kabbah was forced to increase the price of fuel across the whole country. But the increase in the price of petrol didn’t make much difference. The first month, it paid for three thousand sacks of rice, the second, only two thousand, and the third month, the month of May 1995, there was only money for five hundred sacks of rice. Five hundred sacks. After the officers had been served, the ordinary soldiers, the privates got nothing. The consequences weren’t long coming: on May 25, there was a coup. It was easier for the coup to take place on May 25 on account of how Tejan Kabbah was guilty of partiality. (‘Partiality’ means that Kabbah’s government was playing favourites with his own tribe, the Mende.)
It started at dawn on May 25, there were bloody clashes between ECOMOG troops and factions in the regular army. The elected president Tejan Kabbah jumped in an ECOMOG helicopter djona-djona. The helicopter took him to Conakry, capital of Guinea, to dictator Lansana Conté, where he’d be safe. Once he got there, he had all the time in the world to demand that the members of the CDEAO return him to power. And it
was a good thing that he ran away. Because after he’d gone, everyone in Freetown started shooting everyone else. ECOMOG boats from Nigeria were shelling the whole fucking mess. The shelling went on for two days and resulted in the best coup d’état—meaning the bloodiest—in the history of Sierra Leone, a fucked-up country that had seen lots of coups. More than a hundred dead. After two days massacring, things started to get organised. The new junta (a ‘junta’ means a revolutionary military council) dissolved parliament, suspended the constitution, outlawed party politics, and established a curfew. The junta set up the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council government (AFRC).
The putschists (‘putschists’ means a group of armed people who seize power) ask Johnny Koroma to be leader, to be president. Johnny Koroma accepts. They let him out of prison where they locked him up after the first attempted coup. They appoint Foday Sankoh vice-president and from his cell in Nigeria Foday Sankoh orders his personal guerrillas in the jungle to follow the junta’s orders.
Well, as soon as they heard about Vice-President Foday Sankoh, the whole unanimous international community condemned the coup, they came down hard. Everyone was sick and tired of fucking Sierra Leone and its fucking problems.
On May 27, following deliberations, the UN Security Council, made a statement ‘deploring the attempt to overthrow the government and demanding an immediate return to constitutional order’. Important fact: the security council ‘calls on all African countries and the international community to abstain from acknowledging the new regime or supporting the authors of the coup in any way whatsoever’.
Allah is Not Obliged Page 16