by Kola Boof
The baby had the eyes of the woman that Namibia believed Nkrumah to still be in love with--Ife Ife--and this hurt her, slightly, but she forced herself to bare her breasts for her daughter and bless her.
Calmly, after blessing her, she called for Nkrumah to come and take the child for the naming ceremony, which would be carried out in the fashion of Nkrumah’s kind, the Gods.
Because it was inappropriate to name a girl after its mother, Nkrumah would be expected to name the girl after other women that were dear to him. Immediately, he thought two women. His mother, Roo Naboo, and his life’s passion, Princess Ife Ife.
Lifting the child up to the clear night sky, raising her naked frightened body over his head as though handing her to the Creator as a sacrifice, he recited several prayers of his people...and then he called the child’s name, so that the ancestors would know it. He yelled out, “The new one that I called...Roo Ife Ife!”
And Namibia looked at the dead grass. As African wives do.
••
Princess Ife Ife pulled back the tye dyed indigo cloth that covered her son’s head and kissed him, gently, as she thought his father would have wanted. She called him Shange instead of Shango--the name Shange meaning “he who walks like a lion.”
Dinari Zezuru helped her and the baby down from the elephant’s carriage and led them to the sea.
With one arm encircling her shoulders, his other hand securing her waist as she held the baby, Dinari and his wife waded into the shallow surf as though they were Ajowans instead of Gods.
Shange, of course, would be baptized and given to the ocean just as Shango Ogun had been. Ife Ife would see to it that he learned to swim immediately. But also as a God woman of proper dignity and respect for the African being, Ife Ife placed her dark fingers against the boy’s heart and recited the mantra of the goddess flower into the baby’s ear, “If my father dies...I will give birth to him again.”
Dinari then took the tiny wooly-headed chocolate boy from his mother...and carefully lowered his frightened body into the Sea.
And now there was Shange...he who walks like a lion..in the world.
In came the tide...out went the tide.
Princess Ife Ife’s celestial eyed stare becoming one with the ocean’s timeless luster until she was one with its mysterious breeze, weightless and roaming the earth, her beautiful charcoal face suddenly nothing more than myth and fantasy for the nine year old Shange. But not memory.
“Mommysweet?” the lonely little black boy called one sunny morning after rising out of the tide.
And of course, Mother Iyanla, who sat in the shade weaving a basket and keeping an eye on him, would never look up and shake him from these rare fleeting moments when he called out for the beautiful dead princess. Mother Iyanla let Shange call for his mother on these rare occasions when he did it, because it was like a dream for the boy, and always, he came out of it.
But this particular morning...all of a sudden, Mother Iyanla felt the presence of another being on the beach. She looked up from her weaving and saw a thin, dark reed of a girl child. No more than nine years old herself. Standing behind a rubber plant clutching a handful of sand in her little fist of a hand. Standing behind the little girl--was Namibia.
Mother Iyanla recognized her face instantly. The jungle wild prettiness of it. The rugged nappy hair. The smooth, liquid dark eyes.
“Greetings, Great Mother...it is my tragic return!”
As Namibia went to Mother Iyanla in tears--to tell her of white-skinned men appearing out of moonlight and abducting her husband, Nkrumah--Shange stood on the white beach staring into Roo Ife Ife’s wood brown face as though he were seeing a spider or a sea horse for the very first time.
He wanted to say, “Mommysweet” again, but then he couldn’t.
Roo Ife Ife stared back at him with great fear and wonder, but as he ran up to her, she didn’t flinch or back away.
Shange got in her face and stared into her eyes. He looked at her mouth as though he expected a certain sound to come out of it, and when she said nothing, he grabbed one of her long, stretched ears and yanked it violently, his eyes watching her mouth for the sound--but Roo Ife Ife made no sound, she hauled off and slapped him across the face instead.
Then, as though the slap had made him silly, Shange tried to kiss her on the cheek, but Roo Ife Ife squelched her face and yelled, “Don’t kiss me!”
“Children...children”, called Mother Iyanla from a distance.
And that was the sound. The voice Shange had known was inside her. He said to her, “I remember you...don’t you remember me?”
Roo Ife Ife stared at the boy as though he were crazy.
“I knew you would come”, he said in the sweet, innocent voice that little boys have. “I’ve seen your face before. Down at the bottom of the Sea. Want me to show you?”
It seemed that instantly, she was the center of his world.
“Come on”, said Shange, taking her hand excitedly. “I will show you where I’ve seen your face at the bottom of the Sea.”
Mother Iyanla took Namibia’s hands into hers and said, “Now stop crying my child and tell me what happened. Start at the beginning.”
“The Bambara kicked me out of their land--because they think I’m hallucinating and that I’m either a witch or cursed by one.”
“What did you see?”
“Men...with white skin. Their bodies covered in flags and horns. They rode strange animals, the kind we’ve heard that Arabs ride. And they had a mixture of tribes, all of them chained by the necks, their black faces stricken by moonlight. Nkrumah was resisting, but they had him caught by the neck and were dragging him across the ground...pulling him to their band.”
“But, Namibia...there is no such thing as...white men.”
“But don’t you remember, Mother Iyanla? I gave birth to one!”, Namibia retorted hotly. “And when I told the Bambara people about that, they shook their heads. To them, I was seeing things. They claim that Nkrumah ran off with some young girl, but it’s not true. White men abducted him.”
“They must have come out of the moon”, said Mother Iyanla. A look of blank terror came across her face at the thought of it, and then she looked over and noticed Shange and the little chocolate girl running hand in hand down to the sudsy white tide and dashing in with laughter.
“Nkrumah gave me a daughter--Roo Ife Ife. I haven’t been able to birth a child since her, though...so Nkrumah was trying to father a son with the young Bambara girl I told you about.”
“Did she disappear as well?”
Namibia nodded her head in shame. “But not with my husband, I tell you. White men from the Moon abducted him! They had a whole herd of people they’d abducted. Chained by the necks, I tell you!”
Naturally, Mother Iyanla found it very hard to believe. In fact, she didn’t believe it, but she felt so sorry for Namibia’s loss.
“You realize that if my son were to see you--he’d have you killed. My grandson Shango is already dead.”
Namibia gasped! Her hands flew over her mouth and tears of shock filled her eyes as Mother Iyanla told her, “He came to me...in spirit...and told me that the God King beheaded him for impregnating that Princess he loved. That boy out there is the cub, Shange, my great grandchild. Of course, I didn’t want to start a war, so I never told Hoodi or Rain Iyanla. I let them believe that he simply ran away and never returned. But he’s dead, Namibia. And so is the God Princess. She couldn’t bear to be without him. After she gave me the boy to raise, she died in her husband’s arms. And he, the husband, a man called Dinari, he comes to see the boy from time to time as though he himself is the father, but you only have to look at little Shange...he is Shango...all over again. The face, the eyes, the smile, the nappy coconut head, the voice.”
••
Holding Roo Ife Ife’s hand, Shange guided her deeper and deeper, and although she hadn’t expected to be able to stay underwater as long as he could, Roo Ife Ife found herself moving fluid and
unconcerned, her body dutifully following him beyond a school of silver fish and then a forest of coral before he halted suddenly and pointed down as if to say look there--and when Roo Ife Ife looked down the long length of her smooth chocolate legs (and her legs seemed amazingly long all of a sudden!), she saw a mammoth turtle shell resting on the ocean’s floor, green jade colored and stained with the design of a tree’s innards, but nonetheless ancient and dark as the mirrors in space, and a jolt like lighting went through her body and she could hear the sound of a mercilessly loud bell ringing, and with all his strength, Shange grabbed hold of her body and propelled the two of them upwards, fast as he could, their heads breaking the surface and crashing into blue sky and fresh, clean air--Roo Ife Ife gasping for breaths and breathing mightily--and then, with the passing of several eye blinks, she looked at the boy and saw that he was suddenly, and miraculously, not a boy--but a fully grown man!
As one hand went to her chest and another over her forehead, she looked at her arms and body, and realized that she, too, was suddenly an adult.
Astonished, her mouth ajar, she asked, “What...kind of magic?”
“The magic of love”, Shange told her. “The every day magic of being born again.”
Ife Ife looked into Shange’s eyes as though he were some dangerous sorcerer, but then, the longer she stared, the deeper into his soul she could see, and she saw inside until...she could see their naked black flesh, the legs and torsos entwined like vines of baby’s breath...making love on the jungle floor, in a cavern, beneath a waterfall, on a beach in warm white night, on a mountain top where tired lions watched from a far, careful distance.
“How many times”, she asked him, “have you made me a woman?”
“As many times as you’ve given birth to me”, he answered.
“Shango!” she exalted and fell against his chest in the sea, her arms encircling the width of his shoulders. “You came back to me!”
He held her close and whispered the words that only she would know, “Find my prayer...and open it with your hands.”
••
“Where will I go with my daughter?” Namibia asked the old woman.
“Leave the child with me”, Mother Iyanla told her. “The Kofi will never know that she is your daughter with a God man or that I ever saw your face again. We will devise a secret place and meet on those days when you can come to her.”
“But where will I go?”
“Into the sanctuary of the Sula women.”
“The Sula women! But they’re savages living in the jungles without men! They’re outcasts, Great Mother.”
“It’s not true. You remember Soraya don’t you, the sweet honey colored child that I wanted for Shango’s wife? Well she comes to me in secret sometimes. She is now a Sula woman. Her life is her own and she is happier than I’ve seen even the happiest of married women. Soraya will take you into the tribe. She will do it for me. And you will live a safe, happy life.”
“But what about the Moon?” Namibia asked gravely. “He seems to follow me wherever I go. First he put a son inside me then he stole my husband. What curse will I carry to the Sula women? He curses my flesh!”
“How do you know these are curses...and not blessings?” asked Mother Iyanla.
8
•
COAST OF WEST AFRICA
1625
•
The Dutch cargo ship “Gevangenis” (prison) appeared one morning in the crystal clear blue waters just a few miles off the coast of the Ajowan Kingdom...looking to Mother Iyanla’s squinting, shocked gaze to be some giant wooden whale swimming on top of the water instead of inside it. She had wanted to make a sound, but without a thought she could interpret, no words passed her lips, only the hard, heavy slow, slow breathing of terror wrapped in fear and wonder.
Her great grandson Shange, who was now all of twelve years old, shot past her and dived into the ocean! Not far behind him was Roo Ife Ife.
Immediately, Mother Iyanla wanted the children on dry land, but she said nothing. Something in her spirit instead made her burst into a loud sorrowful, moaning, and as she sang so strangely, it got the attention of the children as they splashed in the water, but they only stared at her as she came quickly to the shore--her eyes obsessed with the giant approaching vessel.
There was more than one. The Dutch slave ship was followed by a smaller yet equally famous vessel, “Her Majesty of Peace”, an English ship that had been carrying Christian missionaries to convert the tribes and kingdoms of West Africa for more than fifty years now, but of course, the Ajowans had never seen white people, other than baby Bono, before. To them, this would come as a tremendous oddity and shock.
As the ships got closer and closer, it dawned on Mother Iyanla that she had better go and warn the others, so she called for Shange and Roo Ife Ife to come out of the ocean, but as they came walking out of the tide, their eyes did not fall upon Mother Iyanla...but stared ahead, entranced by the legions that gathered behind her.
She turned around, and stopped dead in her tracks, shocked and speechless to see that over five hundred Ajowan soldiers had lined up in silence--a silence so silent that not even mother nature seemed to detect it, their bodies painted and their heads covered with elaborate headdress, their faces hidden by masks. They held their spears and swords at the ready.
“Great Mother”, said one of the leaders. “We advise you and the boy to return to Banjula City at once.” Then he turned his head to a fleet of lithe naked Ajowans. He ordered them with a loud damnation, “Destroy it!”
As Mother Iyanla took the children by their hands and hurried into the cover of beach jungle, the Aquatic forces of the Ajowan army, rows and rows of expert swimmers equipped with poisoned berries, dagger arrows and toori oil, for which to set fires, leaped into the tide like human spears.
“Look, great grandmother!” Shange said as she pulled the children through the jungle. “Look...up in the trees!”
Mother Iyanla and Roo Ife Ife looked up and saw the squirrel men hoisting fire lamps on bamboo pods to be shot into the Sea. It was a great tradition of the Ajowans to ward off invasions by the Wolof and Herrerro tribes by setting the ocean on fire, but as Mother Iyanla and the children shot through the jungle, they were suddenly knocked off their feet by the loudest, most powerful rumble they’d ever heard, and in fact, it was louder than thunder--the sound of a cannonball being fired from the slave ship. It hit the ground, causing an earthquake of both vibration and sound and was quickly followed by a second one, but that one was wobbly and fell into the ocean.
Shange laughed and looked into Mother Iyanla’s face as though she would be able to explain this, but she only went into chant, praying for the Creator to keep them both safe. Once they got to their feet, they looked behind them and saw a great mountain of black smoke rising over the ocean and giant flames leaping and flickering just as passionately as the strange foreign voices that cried out for mercy.
There was, however, no mercy. The Ajowan swimmers had invaded both ships and set them on fire and for days to come the citizens of Mars, Banjula City, the jungle flats and the clay villages would trek down to the shore to watch the two ships burn and burn and burn.
And, of course, that was just the beginning. The real shock for the masses would be the sight of real live white people...”the living dead”...as West Africans originally called them. For weeks, the whole nation would gather in wave upon wave of craning, ducking and staring black faces. Absolutely fascinated and astounded to see that it was true--there were white people in the world.
••
Kofi Hoodi and Rain Iyanla sat naked upon thrones of stone and red rubies, surrounded by Spirit Rulers, soldiers and magic totems (to ward off evil) as the Ajowan army marched into central Banjula City with a dozen white skinned captives roped together by the necks. Their hands were tied as well in the back, and the Africans gathered on either side of the main road ogling in disbelief. The African men made jokes and laughed about the prisoner
’s pale ugliness (“they look like their mothers were Llamas!” shouted one Ajowan) while bare breasted bare-backed black women tilted the baskets on their heads to the side so as not to miss a shocking detail of what the creatures looked like.
“Why are their bodies covered up that way? Don’t they have any respect for the Creator? How can they stand the heat? What are they trying to hide? Look at how indecent they are. Covered up like that.”
“They have long hair like wild dogs”, one woman whispered. “Just like Bono, the miracle baby.”
“And they’re whiter than milk, too”, said another. “And they smell like wet dogs, just like Bono did. They must be his tribe coming to find him.”
“No”, said another woman. “That one in front looks like he’s Bono, only all grown up. That’s him!”
In patches of voices the people began to sing, “He’s come back to us...our son has returned.”
The tribal men clapped in agreement causing the singing to break out like a wild fire and spread all the way to the special throne in the center of the city that Kofi Hoodi used for greeting armies and dignitaries from other nations. Kofi Hoodi was perplexed, saying, “Is this yet another miracle, the return of Bono?”
Mother Iyanla, who sat behind her son and his queen, had a very sour feeling in her soul. She leaned into her son’s ear and said, “This has nothing to do with Bono. These people are evil. They mean us no good.”
“But how can an old woman know something like that?” Hoodi snapped, indignantly. “You’re just full of crabs, mother.”
As the bound whites reached the throne of Kofi Hoodi and were thrown at his feet, there was a sneer of arrogance on their furious beet red faces. Their eyes shot around like little blue marbles, fast and icy. Mother Iyanla lifted her crusty black toes off the ground, because she didn’t want them breathing all over her royal feet. They were disgusting looking! And when they opened their mouths and spoke in the Mende language that Africans used for trading--she got up and left. Obviously, they had been traveling in Africa for some time.
