Anthills of the Savannah

“Yes, and mother.”

His explosion into laughter took everybody by surprise and then dragged them all into his bombshell of gaiety. Except Elewa’s mother.

“You young people,” said the old man. “What you will bring this world to is pregnant and nursing a baby at the same time… Give me a little more of that hot drink.”

Elewa rushed the whisky bottle and the little glass back to him.

“A jolly old fellow,” said Abdul.

“You no know am. So make you wait small.”

Elewa’s poor mother was left high and dry carrying the anger of outraged custom and usage made none the lighter for having no one to focus it on. In the end she turned and heaped it on the opportunistic old man, a medicine-man hired to chase evil spirits whom evil spirits were now chasing.

“You will return my bottle of Snaps and the fowl,” she said to him, to everyone’s surprise. His face clouded over for a very brief instant and quickly cleared up again.

“As to that,” he said, “what is brought out before a masquerade cannot be taken indoors again. Food goes one way—downwards. If you see it going up you know the man is in trouble.”

“You will return my Snaps and the fowl,” she repeated obstinately.

“Listen to me my wife and let me give you advice. You are annoyed and I cannot say that I blame you. But what is the use of bending your neck at me like the chicken to the pot when its real enemy is not the pot in which it cooks nor even the fire which cooks it but the knife. Your quarrel is with these young people. Hold your daughter and her friends to refund to you your bottle of Snaps and your fowl. But as for the tribute placed in front of a masquerade, that one is gone with the masquerade into its ant-hole.” He went into another paroxysm of laughter scraping his sides which he now held like a loosening bundle between his palms. Everybody joined him once more, except Elewa’s mother. He stopped abruptly and turned to the rest:

“Let me tell you people something. When my wife here came to me and said: Our daughter has a child and I want you to come and give her a name, I said to myself: Something is amiss. We did not hear kpom to tell us that the palm branch has been cut before we heard waa when it crashed through the bush. I did not hear of bride-price and you are telling me about naming a child. But I did not contradict my wife because I want fish in my soup… Do you know why I am laughing like this? I am laughing because in you young people our world has met its match. Yes! You have put the world where it should sit… My wife here was breaking her head looking for kolanuts, for alligator pepper, for honey and for bitter-leaf…”

“And Snaps and agriculture chicken.”

“True. Those as well. And while she is cracking her head you people gather in this whiteman house and give the girl a boy’s name… That is how to handle this world… If anybody thinks that I will start a fight because somebody has done the work I should do that person does not know me. I only fight when somebody else eats what I should eat. So I will not fight. Rather I will say thank you. I will say whoever ate the foofoo let him mop up the soup as well. A child has been named. What else is one looking for at the bottom of the soup-bowl if not fish? Wherever the child sleeps let it wake up in the morning, is my prayer… My wife, where is that kolanut? I shall break it after all.”

Everybody applauded this strange man’s sudden decision, sparked off perhaps by the utterance of the word prayer. Elewa’s mother could not keep up against the powerful current in favour of the old man. She opened her bag and handed a kolanut to him.

“Elewa, go and wash this and put it into a plate and bring me water to wash my hands.”

Elewa and Agatha went into the kitchen to do as the old man had commanded. After he had washed his hands and wiped them importantly with a sparkling napkin that contrasted so harshly with his own dirt-and-sweat-tarnished jumper that used to be of white lace he assumed a sacramental posture, picked up the kolanut in his right hand and held it between four fingers and thumb, palm up, to the Almighty.

“Owner of the world!

Man of countless names! The church people call you three-in-one. It is a good name. But it carries miserly and insufficient praise. Four-hundred-in-one would seem more fitting in our eyes. But we have no quarrel with church people; we have no quarrel with mosque people. Their intentions are good, their mind on the right road. Only the hand fails to throw as straight as the eye sees. We praise a man when he slaughters a fowl so that if his hand becomes stronger tomorrow he will slaughter a goat…

“What brings us here is the child you sent us. May her path be straight…”

“Isé!” replied all the company.

“May she have life and may her mother have life.”

“Isé!”

“What happened to her father, may it not happen again.”

“Isé!”

“When I asked who named her they told me All of Us. May this child be the daughter of all of us.”

“Isé!”

“May all of us have life!”

“Isé!”

“May these young people here when they make the plans for their world not forget her. And all other children.”