by Ishmael Beah
“There was a man who always complained about his condition and was unhappy with every aspect of his life, especially about his only pair of trousers, which had holes in them everywhere. Parts of his flesh could be seen through the trousers, so it looked from afar as though he had on checkered pants. When he got closer, you could not help but laugh at the natural beautification of his trousers. Soon all the young people whose pants had holes in them were referring to it as a new style, ‘skin to cloth.’
“The tailor in town was of course unhappy about this and blamed the man with the holes in his trousers for ruining his business. No one came to get things mended anymore; natural beautification had taken over. The tailor followed the man everywhere, waiting for the perfect time to steal and destroy his trousers. Late one afternoon, after the man had returned from his farm, he decided to bathe in the river. He took off his trousers and carefully washed them. Then he laid them on the grasses to dry and went into the river. He submerged himself in the water to get a nice soak. The tailor, who had been hiding in the bushes, decided this was his chance, but as he was preparing to move toward the trousers, another man came out of the bushes, took the trousers, and disappeared. When the man came out of the river, he couldn’t believe his pants were missing. He called out, ‘If this is some kind of a joke from gods or any human, I am not laughing.’ He waited awhile, but no response. Then he saw the footprints of the thief and began laughing so hard he fell into the water and struggled to pull himself out, still laughing. He said, ‘There must be somebody worse off than I am, and if so, please enjoy whatever is left of my trousers. Thank you God and gods for not making me the poorest of men.’ He danced in the grasses while the tailor watched, still not happy because he knew the thief would use the trousers. He wanted them destroyed.
“When the man walked down the path toward town, the tailor rose from hiding. He thought he should clean and cool himself off. He took off his clothes and dove into the river. The naked man heard the sound of the water and ran back, thinking he could see who had stolen from him. He saw no one, only some fresh new clothes: long pants and a shirt. He looked around, but the tailor was deep under the water, enjoying its coolness—even the top of the river had calmed. The man danced as he wore the new clothes, thinking that this was a wonderful day.
“When the tailor came up for air, he noticed that he had nothing to wear. It was a strange thing to see a naked tailor running through town.”
The gathering was in a fit of laughter. Colonel, Ernest, and Miller were the only ones to whom laughter didn’t succeed in introducing herself. Ernest’s eyes searched for Sila and his children. Watching their happy mood brought a stroke of peace in his heart. Colonel looked around to see whether he could determine who the thief had been. Miller had witnessed too many hardships to think about stories, to feel the functions of them. He got up and walked away, as though the laughter was tormenting him.
The children of Oumu’s generation laughed purely and repeated the funniest lines to one another. The adults laughed even more because they knew the story was true. The tailor was among them and the checkered-trousers man was there, too. But who was the trouser thief? No one admitted it, as usually things are mended at such gatherings.
After the laughter died down, the adults and elders formed their own circle, leaving the children to themselves to talk about the stories. The adults and elders started a serious conversation about godliness. The imam and the pastor agreed that all human beings embody God within them.
“Then how do you explain what happened during the war?” someone asked. There was no answer for a while, and then Pa Moiwa spoke. “When we are suffering so much, I believe whatever godliness that is within us departs temporarily. During the war and all that it brought about, we as a people of this land chipped away at the embodiment of God within us and all the traces of goodness that were left after God departed. And now there are many who are empty vessels and therefore can easily be filled with anything. I think stories and the old ways will bring them in contact with life, with living, and with godliness again. Of course, these aren’t the only things. There are practical measures that must be taken.”
There was silence among them, but the children were playing games, laughing and clapping.
If God could be anywhere, this was where he or she was tonight.
No one could have anticipated that this was the last of such gatherings. The elders would have told other stories if they could have seen the strange changes that were in the wind of time. But at such beginnings, it was too early to hope for more; they had hoped only for incremental changes and reintroductions of old ways. They couldn’t think too far into the future.
Oumu didn’t go home with her family that night. Instead she went with Mama Kadie and the two of them stayed up late into the night sitting around a small fire, their hands stretched out to receive its warmth. Mama Kadie told Oumu many stories until her voice became a whisper as the silence of the night deepened. She went on until Oumu’s eyes said she needed no more. It was the beginning of such gatherings for them and it continued for many other nights. Mama Kadie would sometimes ask Oumu to retell stories she had told her. The little girl would do so in a voice that was not of her age. Mama Kadie would smile, knowing that each story had found a newer vessel and would live on.
4
WAITING CAST A SPELL OVER EVERYONE in Imperi, and it ended when they found something to do. It wasn’t necessarily something life changing, but anything that brought about a routine that promised possibilities. Those who found nothing either left for other towns in search of employment or sat around, restless and irritable with everyone and everything.
Since the first day that Mama Kadie’s feet landed in Imperi, the town had begun shedding its image of war, starting with its physical appearance. Now, a year later, it was difficult to see that most of the houses had been bullet-ridden or burnt. Everyone had done their best to change the condition of their houses so they regained their vibrancy with yellow, white, gray, green, and black paint. Those who didn’t have paint plastered their homes with fresh brown and red mud.
The sounds, too, had changed, from hesitant winds and deep silences to the voices of children playing games, chasing one another, or playing in the river. The population had grown, but everyone still knew pretty much everyone else. Nearby towns and villages had also come to life, so the elders sometimes visited friends and vice versa. They would sit together eating cola nuts and discuss the old days when they were children and walking on the path was a pleasurable discovery. You would hear a man working on his farm, whistling tunes so beautifully that he put the birds to shame. Women and girls sang sweet melodies as they fished with nets in the river; farmers would lay out fresh cucumbers on the path for those going by to take a few and eat. Such things had returned during the latter part of the first year of Imperi’s revival.
There were only a few unexpected occurrences. Some bulldozers came humming into town, clearing the roads that had been dead for years. Men in suits that made their foreheads sweat too much came with an air of self-importance to discuss the reopening of the only secondary school in the area. They had a meeting by the roadside, standing and squatting around documents they laid on the earth and held down with stones. They couldn’t go into the school because it was still overgrown. But they decided that the campus would be cleaned and the school reopened even though it was far from town. A few weeks later, the school was functioning again, although no major repair had been done. The old bodies of the buildings were painted to make them look new. There was no ceremony for the reopening. A short, very dark jovial fellow with a round flattened head like a tadpole and red eyes and glasses stood at the junction on the road, handing out flyers. The incentive was printed in bold, while the words he feared would scare people off were faint and diminished in size. YOU WILL ONLY BE ASKED TO PAY YOUR CHILD’S SCHOOL FEES AT THE END OF THE FIRST SEMESTER. That same fellow had come to Bockarie’s house two days after the school was declared opened.
There were no students yet.
“My name is Mr. Fofanah,” he introduced himself to Kula, holding a black briefcase, constantly standing on his toes as though reaching for something or perhaps to look taller. “May I speak with your husband, Bockarie?” He wiped the sweat off his forehead with a handkerchief.
When Bockarie came outside, Mr. Fofanah wasted no time in offering him a teaching position. He had been told that Bockarie had attended the school and had also been a teacher. He wanted him to teach the subjects he had taught before: English, geography, and history.
After Mr. Fofanah left, Kula hugged her husband and he gave that half smile and hum that only she knew meant he was extremely happy. He wasn’t one who showed emotion as others did.
“Will you help me prepare for lessons, my dear?”
“I miss when we used to do that. Sit, I will get a pen and some papers.” She smiled.
“Yes, my lady. I miss that stronger commanding personality of yours whenever we start intellectual things.” He sat and she laughed as she ran into the house.
While he waited, a tall man with a medium beard came onto the veranda and said his name was Benjamin.
“Mr. Fofanah told me to come and introduce myself.” He spoke fast and his eyes opened wide whenever he did.
“Welcome to my homeland. Where are you from?” Bockarie spoke slowly.
“I am from Kono, the diamond area, but don’t ask me why I am here. I got a job offer, man, so here I am with my family. The rest isn’t interesting. Okay, man, I will see you in school or on the way there. I must go prepare for my lessons.” Benjamin tapped Bockarie on the shoulder and walked away. He jogged a bit with one hand in his pocket, dribbling an invisible ball, then resumed walking.
“Were you talking to someone?” Kula returned with some wrinkled pages and several pens, as she always had to go through a bunch before one of them worked.
“Yes, the Benjamin fellow that Mr. Fofanah spoke of. He went back home to prepare for his lessons as well.” Bockarie made room on the bench for Kula to sit next to him. They began from memory, from their school days, laughing and giggling as they teased one another with questions.
The following morning, Benjamin and Bockarie encountered each other on their three-mile walk to school. They strode quietly at first, the morning dew soaking their faces.
“You know, all of my life I have had to walk in the morning. At first it was to the farm, then to school, to work…” Benjamin started, and before Bockarie responded that he, too, had had the same experience, Benjamin spoke again. “The good thing about it is that I have always made a good friend on each of those walks. Okay, teacher Bockarie, let us walk like young men with life in them.” Benjamin started pulling Bockarie along as he hastened his steps and they laughed, walking as fast as they could. When they arrived at school, Mr. Fofanah, the principal, gathered all the teachers and gave them the first month’s salary followed by a talk about how wonderful it was that they were all there. Things looked promising.
“Don’t worry about the lack of school materials. The board of education has promised to send things right away. For now we have the basics, chalk and a blackboard and some desks and benches to start with. And here come the students.” The principal was distracted by a large group of young people walking toward campus. He guessed there were more than fifty, and that would suffice. More came as the day unfolded.
That same morning, Kula had gone to the river to wash some clothes and saw a woman she hadn’t laid eyes on in town. She was humming a tune while rinsing her laundry away from the other women. She was very tall and thin, with big brown eyes that brightened her narrow face.
“You must be the wife of the new teacher in town. What is his name, by the way?” Kula placed her hand on her forehead as she often did to remember something.
She stopped humming and responded with a smile. “Benjamin. That is his name and yes I am. My name is Fatu.”
“I am Kula. Please come by my home anytime if you need any help knowing the area. You have two young ones?” She washed her bucket.
“Thank you. I will, and yes, we have a girl and a boy, Rugiatu and Bundu. We just got here and don’t really know anyone, so it will be good for them to have friends and me, too. My husband was looking for something different and wanted to leave his hometown, Koidu, you know, in Kono, the diamond area. You must be the wife of Bockarie. My husband spoke of him.” She held the cloth between her knees so that the river wouldn’t take it away and extended her hand to Kula. They, too, just as their husbands, went on to become friends.
* * *
It had been many months since Mr. Fofanah came to Bockarie’s house and hired him and on that same day he had met Benjamin. Their teaching jobs and lives hadn’t unfolded as they had hoped. They continued walking to school every morning, now along with Bockarie’s three older children, Manawah, Miata, and Abu, and most of their students and colleagues. The three miles of dusty road with patches of tar here and there had become unbearable for them. To start with, though there were few vehicles on the road, when one was heard in the distance, teachers and students ran into the bushes, holding their noses. They hid themselves from the dust that looked for clean bodies, clothes, and hair to settle on. The leaves were already cloaked with enough dust that their colors couldn’t be seen. So running into the bushes was only to lessen the amount of dust that could find them. During the rainy season, they still ran, though not into the bushes but away from the many puddles to avoid being splashed on. There were too many puddles, so one had to zigzag strategically to this and that side of the vehicle or find a spot near the deeper holes where it almost came to a halt, the driver worried about getting stuck. If you had an umbrella, you could hold it against your side. But not many could afford umbrellas.
During the year of teaching, the materials that the principal had promised on the first day of school still did not arrive. Therefore, with barely any materials, the teachers continued preparing lessons from memory, from their own school days, and tried to write on the blackboard as much as possible whenever there was chalk. Otherwise, they dictated lessons and students wrote in their books, interrupting with a raised hand to ask for the spellings of certain words. For eleven months now, the department of education in Lion Mountain had sent only lengthy letters that the principal would read out loud to his teachers, his facial expression showing his disbelief in the message. “We have engaged on a remarkable revamping of our educational system,” the letters would start, and they’d end the following way: “Educational Ministry of Lion Mountain, working for the people, always.” One day while the principal was reading the letter, he couldn’t contain himself. “They manage to send me these useless letters every week but not school materials, not even a box of chalk,” he said and stopped before more words slipped out. It was clear that things were worse now than in the past. The neglect of this part of the country had increased. Before the war, they at least sent some school materials even if a month or sometimes a semester late. Salaries, too, unprecedentedly lagged behind. In nine months of teaching, the teachers had received only three months of salary that came every three months. As a result, Bockarie had started selling cigarettes, chewing gum, batteries, mosquito coils, and other small items at night on his veranda. He laid the items out in a small wooden box with a lamp that cast a dim light on the goods. This was also where he corrected students’ papers and prepared for lessons, sometimes using a flashlight when he had no money to buy kerosene. It was difficult to provide for his family, and he continued teaching only because as a teacher he received a reduction in school fees for his three older children. His pay was 150,000 leones, which could barely buy a bag of rice. Kula helped by selling food items such as salt, pepper, and maggi cubes at the market, but they still struggled to make ends meet. They were, however, better off than Benjamin, who, with the same salary, had to pay rent and feed his wife, Fatu, and two little children, Bundu and Rugiatu. Since he wasn’t from Imperi, he had no family house as Bockarie did.<
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“Sometimes, I think I should have stayed in my home, Koidu. I thought I could do something different with good pay, something less dangerous than mining diamonds … I also thought my wife could find work as an apprentice for her nursing career,” Benjamin had said once to Bockarie when he came by to keep him company on his veranda.
At school, everyone functioned as best they could. The excitement of the school’s reopening had lasted only for a semester, until they realized that this time around they would not receive the necessary support from the government. Nowadays, by the time teachers and students reached the school grounds, whatever happiness had been on their faces had disappeared with the long walk, the dust, the heat, the thirst and hunger. Looking around you couldn’t tell who was hungrier, the teachers or the students, but all of their demeanors announced that most of them wanted school to end earlier; in fact, the moment they arrived they couldn’t wait to return home. Coming to school for teachers and students had become a routine just to nurture whatever possibility of hope was left. Sitting at home all day, one is likely to fall in the way of the heavy wind of bad luck.
The only constantly lively person in the school was the principal, who had a brand-new motorcycle, and no one could figure out where he got the money to buy such an expensive thing that could pay for more than ten teachers’ yearly salaries. Every morning, in his annoyingly exuberant mood, he would gather the teachers and lecture them on the need to “inspire the students, to rekindle their fire for learning and show them the importance of education.
“I believe in you and I’m only here to guide all of you to achieve your best,” the principal would go on, walking on his toes, buttoning and opening his jacket and adjusting his tie, while sweating.
“Any questions that I may answer? No. I guess I made things very clear. Okay, let us go and inspire those youngsters.” He would end with a big smile, which no one in his audience of teachers returned. Under his breath he would sigh and then raise his head again with that jovialness painted on his face. The teachers could do little with his inspirational messages. They were missing all the ingredients: salaries, school materials, and faith in the educational system itself.