by Suzanne Popp
CHAPTER 28
UNDER THE MANGO TREE
Gift gathered the women into groups of four, handing each of them a slate and chalk. She brought the toddlers into the courtyard of the rondavel and pulled the gate shut. She had arranged small pots of water for the children to pour and cups to measure it with. There were drums and sticks for them to bang together. For the children who were able to walk, there was a small ladder and a hollow piece of wood that would one day be a bee’s nest. Until then, it would serve as a toy they could squirm through or make into a see-saw. She watched the twins copy the older children, her little Royal swaying along on his bowed legs, laughing and clapping his hands. As they played, she wove her endurance baskets from the grasses she had gathered.
It had only been a year since Myrna and Gift started the women’s co-op. They were now meeting weekly. Women were learning their letters and sums, and two work projects had been started. At first, the cattlemen were suspicious about their women gathering together at midday to attend the meetings. The women met once a month at the beginning, and the first order of business was to learn to write their husband’s names and surnames. At each meeting, the women would bring a small gift, or food to share. At the end of the meeting, they would take home a simple recipe and a Bible text, neatly penned out to hang on the wall of their parlor. For many, these were the first written words they had ever had in their home.
Myrna and Gift then taught them to write the names of their children. They would mark the box with an “x” whether the child was a girl or a boy. The first lessons were spelled out in the sand underneath the mango tree that spread over 60 feet in width and provided deep shade from the noonday heat. Once the women could write their own names, they learned the alphabet in English, and each woman helped the others to learn letters she had mastered in her own name.
The government heard of their teaching and provided some small gifts to encourage the women to attend. Lessons were on basic health issues such as well-baby care, correct nutrition for toddlers, and simple first aid. Myrna would also share pictures from her biology book to let the women who were pregnant see what was going on in their bodies. She loaned the women her mirror so they could look at their genitals in the privacy of their home, then return it at the next meeting. It was the first time most women had seen themselves, or learned the names of their body parts. Myrna asked the health department to bring them a scale so they could weigh the babies and chart their progress. It was Violet’s husband, Joseph, who first brought a scale for them to use. Two years later, the first government scale arrived.
Gift knew how to make baskets from the grasses that grew near the river bed, and taught the women the patterns to weave them into. Merchants from the larger town took the baskets to sell for the women. Women learned to make new recipes and how to dry fruits, as well as how to keep their food from spoiling. The biggest benefit of the co-op was the friendship and trust that built up between the women, and the knowledge of childcare the co-op provided. Women who had once left newborns alone the first day without nursing them, learned it was good to hold them and feed them breast milk right away. They were told how important it was to boil water for formula. With the Phiri twins, they learned that multiple births could result in healthy children. Sam and Reuben were robust and it was clear there was no demon stunting their growth. Some babies who had been sickly began to thrive as the women compared what worked. Royal Festal was disabled, but the community saw how he was loved and able to learn.
They learned from the new charts and scales the government health department had finally given them to verify that a child was thriving. Gift and Myrna learned to knit and taught the women this skill so they could make caps to put on the newborns. The men began to see the importance of the women coming together as they enjoyed each other’s company, and consolation for the difficult job of raising a child through toddlerhood in cattle country.
When Lily died, Myrna was surrounded by women who had gone through loss. Festal held her but he could not listen to her weep. He was the one who dug the grave and placed a plumeria seedling above the mound. They never spoke of the child to each other, or their sorrow in losing her until their last daughter was born fifteen years later.
One of the things that Myrna learned was never to ask a woman why she stopped attending class. If a woman was absent for more than two weeks, either Myrna or Gift would go to her house, bringing a small gift and see for themselves what the problem was. Just as Myrna had seen bruises on Gift and knew that she was being hit, Gift would report back that she had seen that the woman not attending did not have sufficient food, or her child was not thriving. The group would then think of a strategy to combat this problem. Men who hit their wives soon learned that they would be shunned if the abuse did not stop. When a woman was treated well, that report flew through the village and a husband heard his praises sung out. Myrna had learned how important reputation is to a man. The husband was envied because his wife was quick to tell of his good qualities. His lapses were not overlooked, but neither were they exploited or gossiped about. Myrna and Gift also learned it was better for the women in the co-op to receive goods or foodstuffs because if they earned money, it was too often used by the husband to buy local brew or throw a party.
Gift was pregnant again and due in a month or two. She sat on the stool in the courtyard sorting over the groundnuts spread out in the roasting tin. Royal was playing with the other children on a teeter totter that Festal had rigged up from a hollowed out stump of a tree and a flat board he had planed. The women watched one child and then another go up in the air and the shrieks of laughter
as they bumped at the top of their ascent, and then come down to earth. The twins were the most evenly balanced and could teeter-totter for hours, if they did not have to take turns with the others. The neighbor’s children came by to share the amazing toy.
“Sister, what is it that you get from your books? You read them every day, but I want to know what is in them that satisfies you.”
“Some of them are old friends. I read them and remember the first time I read them, and what they meant to me then. They have not changed, but I know I have because they have new meaning for me. Some I like because they allow me to see things from a different point of view. I may not agree with them, but the words are always the same, and different ideas are revealed to me, depending on what is going on in my life. That is how I read the Bible. Right now, I am thinking about the inheritance I have. I like to see myself as God’s dream. Some books I read because they tell me how to do something, so I learn new skills; or how someone else does the same thing in another part of the world.”
“I get that from people I meet or know,” Gift said.
“Yes, that is firsthand, and it is the most direct. Usually. Except some people conceal what it is they think or know. In a book, the author wants you to get their point or their information.”
“I don’t believe what I read. I have to have someone explain it to me. Then I try to decide if it is true. After I hear it more than once, I will begin to think it might be true. Pretty soon, I think it is my own idea. Especially if other people are saying the same thing.”
“I also like that a book can talk about the same thing, but you get to see many ways of saying the same thing, or slightly different ways of saying the same thing. Also, the book may have metaphors, where something difficult is told in a story. You can like the story for its direct telling, but you can apply it to other circumstances. Like our folk tales. Many of these are metaphors for what we know, and should do, but we make it into an easy telling so we can hold the truth in a nutshell, like groundnuts. A kernel of truth.”
“Gift, tell me a story from your village.”
“Let me think of one. Okay. Here is the story of the hungry mother. She lived in a small hut with her husband who beat her every day. She did not have enough food for her child, and only that child was left. Every day she would cry out as she hunted for something to feed her baby. One
day, the elephant queen heard her cry. She came to the hut and asked the woman for a ground nut. The woman had no food, but she gave the elephant the last groundnut. The elephant told her, “Now I owe you a wish. Call on me when you need me the most.”
“That very afternoon, the woman was carrying her winnowing basket but there was no grain to winnow. Her stomach hurt and she called to the elephant queen to hear her cry, and help her. As she leaned over her basket with her baby on her back, she saw her feet becoming larger and larger, and she could see her nose becoming a trunk. Her child was on her back and she felt the two of them becoming one as she turned into a powerful elephant with the voice of power. She could walk anywhere and when her husband came home that night, he saw only the marks of the winnowing baskets on the ground, and a path leading into the forest. There was a herd of elephants surrounding the young and feeding each other with limbs they had pulled down from the forest. No one walked alone, and no one went hungry.”
“From that day forward, women knew that their strength lay in caring for each other, for the elephants revere women and give them their knowledge of how to endure. On their feet they bear the patterns of our winnowing baskets. And that is why we call the baskets we make the endurance baskets.”
“That is a beautiful story, Gift. I am going to write it down so I do not forget it. I will tell it to the children tonight.”
“Sister, I am your metaphor. I am Gift. You have never unwrapped me. I thought for a long time that you wanted me to leave. I do not think that any more. It takes me a long time to trust anyone, but when you called me Sister, it was the start of my happiness.”
The two wives scraped up the groundnuts and put them into the mortar to make a paste to add to the evening meal. The children would be coming in soon, and there would be calves to feed and clothing to iron for the Sunday service tomorrow. The sun dropped like an orange being tossed into the trees and it was nightfall.
Festal had continued to fear for his family and sometimes could not sleep at night for worrying that something would come to destroy them. When Gift had tried her sexual skills on him, Festal told her, “A man should surround a woman. A woman should not surround a man.” Gift learned to let him be the one who made the decisions, and to hold her tongue when she thought he was wrong. She found it very hard to trust a man after her early experiences, or to be clear about what she was thinking and feeling. She hid many of her feelings behind the routines that she developed to make her feel secure. As Myrna showed trust in her judgment and confidence in her skills, Gift began to be more sure of herself. Her teaching of the women taught her what she most desired to learn. As she learned to love herself, Festal began to treat her more kindly, and he doted on little Royal.
Royal was a child who commanded attention. He would clown for the other children and everyone loved his antics. When Festal came home from the pastures, the toddler would follow him, uncannily imitating his every move, even to the hiking up of his pants and the slight tilt of his head. He could imitate any body noise and gesture, even the limp of an old man with a cane. With Myrna, he would nestle in and hug her, then dart back to his mother, so that there was no jealousy. One day when it was the heat of the harmattan season, Gift asked Myrna to cut her hair for her. The women sat in the courtyard with Myrna plaiting Gift’s hair after she had trimmed the ends. She told her the story of the baobab tree. It was revered by her people, and Gift had asked why they never planted one in the yard. Myrna gathered the hair she had trimmed, then tossed it into the rubbish heap, poured them each some tea, and sat to tell her tale.
The baobab is a mighty and powerful tree in the land, but it was not satisfied with itself, and so it complained to the Great Spirit which ruled the land, the sea and the winds that it wanted to be more. It wanted to have flowers and fruits and to be even mightier. The Great Spirit ignored the complaints. But when they continued day and night, the Great Spirit lost patience. It reached down and pulled the tree out of the earth, and rammed it down again, with its roots on top and its branches shoved into the soil. All the animals and the birds saw the tree with its roots exposed, and recognized the power of the Great Spirit. From that day forth, the tree remained leafless nine months out of the year, with its roots growing into the air.
It is believed that our ancestors hover in the branches of the baobab tree and gather there. So we don’t plant one in our yard because we do not know how the ancestors would respond to such a thing, and the tree takes more than our lifetime to mature. We use it for all kinds of medicine, as you know, so it would be convenient to have one growing close by, but sometimes we value something more when we have to go far to harvest its benefits.
As Gift and Myrna gathered their work and went into the rondavel, they thought they saw someone in the rubbish heap, but they were tired, the children were now napping, and they did not investigate.
Gift became pregnant and gave birth to four more children over the course of ten years, but none of them survived infancy. Only Royal Festal endured. Myrna watched the care Gift gave the children and could not see why they would begin to lose weight and eventually pass away. Myrna had suckled Royal when he was small because she had such a supply of milk. But this could not have been the reason for his survival.
Gift had been healed from her fistula, and went to the hospital each time before she gave birth, but Royal was to remain her only surviving child.
CHAPTER 29
MYRNA AND FESTAL VISIT JOSEPH AND VIOLET
Joseph and Violet could only speculate how Myrna had become such a wife and mother. “We need to have them come and spend a week with us and get to know their children,” Joseph said. Violet agreed, and that Christmas, the families met together.
It was in the dry season that Myrna, Festal and Gift, along with their six children came to spend Christmas with the Leibitsang family, including their six sons. Seventeen made a very full house, even for the large home that Joseph and Violet now enjoyed. While Violet’s boys were rowdy and often needed a diversion, Myrna’s children were content to watch and participate quietly. They were easily amused with a story or a book, a picture or a small toy they could roll about the floors. Royal Festal was the comic, and loved by them all. He had captured the heart of Grandmother Beatrice as well. She held him and asked him tell her all about the trip coming to Blancville. She was so sorry Bishop was sick and not able to enjoy this little jester.
“Joseph has made our family very comfortable with all the things he has provided,” Violet said to her sister.
“Yes, we have more than we need to get along. But you and Myrna seem to have captured the things of the spirit,” Joseph said, and Violet had to agree. Festal was proud of his new found faith, content with his life, his wives and his children. Myrna was a large part of this. Gift praised her, and her children adored their mother. Myrna was aware of this praise, but she thought she fell short of her duty as a daughter. She had never really forgiven her mother, or gotten to know how her mother’s life had been, and now, she wanted to give special honor to her mother Beatrice.
Myrna asked to hear details of how her life had been since she left. Beatrice was glad to have an audience for her reminiscing. Her life had become easier and more comfortable, she said, with her younger daughter living close to her. Jethro had been her last pregnancy, and the joy of grandsons gave her renewed energy. Myrna heard how she was missed. She was pleased at the love and respect her family showed to her and her family. Only the absence of her father Bishop saddened her during this all too short visit to her childhood home. He was sick with pneumonia and quarantined in the family house. No one was to visit him on doctor’s orders.
One night as the girls were sprawled on the overstuffed sofa, the boys all bunked away upstairs, and only Myrna, Violet, Gift and Beatrice sitting out on the verandah, Violet asked Gift about her family. All of them were interested in hearing the account, as Myrna and Gift would be leaving for Copperfine in a couple of days, and no one had heard how Gift came to be married t
o Festal.
“Oh, this is a story I have never told anyone,” Gift started. “It is a tale of long ago when I was living with my mother and father, and all my brothers and sisters, in another country. We grew small crops and made baskets from the grasses that grew along the river. It was a river filled with crocodiles, which were our totem. I was attending school at the Holy Sepulcher Primary in Form One. One day soldiers from the Lord’s Resistance Army came and broke into our class right after we had finished our flag salute and prayers. They grabbed ten of us girls and told the Sister not to make a sound or they would shoot the rest of the class. We were forced to march with them into the forest, where I was given to one of the older soldiers to be his wife. The other girls were also given to the soldiers. We were told if we tried to run away, our families would be killed. I didn’t know they had already killed all my family and burned our house.”
“When my new husband went away, other soldiers would take me for their wife. I did not have enough food and we were tied up at night. By day, we had to work gathering firewood, preparing food, and washing the clothes. There were some very young soldiers there too, and they would sometimes cry at night for their mothers. If they were caught, the other young soldiers were made to shoot them, so they stopped that very soon.”
“One day, I saw my chance when we were taken down to the river to bathe and wash clothes. I left my clothes scattered on the shore, made tracks to the water, then ran back using the clothes as stepping stones so there would be no tracks. I must have run for three days, but no one came after me. I had told none of the other girls what I was going to do, as I was afraid the soldiers would force them to tell, and then punish them for my disobedience. I thought if I left my clothes and the tracks to the river, they would think a crocodile had taken me. I was naked and bitten by insects, and very thin.
