The Bite of the Mango

by Mariatu Kamara

  Marie tried to prepare a nice dinner for Abdul. She collected the few leones we kids had saved from begging and went to the market to buy some fish. We all suspected we were about to have a celebration.

  After we had eaten our meal, Abdul told us the news. He was sitting beside Fatmata, and he stroked her hand as he spoke. “Fatmata and I are getting married!” he announced. Fatmata lowered her head shyly as Abdul kissed her on the cheek.

  Everyone jumped up. The women hugged and kissed Fatmata. The men patted Abdul on the back and shook his hand. Their faces radiant with happiness, they told us of their plans to hold the ceremony at Fatmata’s uncle’s home in Freetown. It would be too dangerous for us all to travel to Port Loko, where Fatmata’s family lived. They wanted to marry right away, that week if they could.

  But as we learned after Abdul and the other men had left, there was one problem.

  “You’ve been waiting your entire life since your Bondo initiation for this day,” Abibatu said to Fatmata with a big smile.

  Fatmata lowered her head again. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But I have not been initiated.”

  “What!” exclaimed Abibatu. “Well, you can’t marry until you are. We will do it immediately, here at the camp.”

  Most of the Sierra Leonean girls I know have been initiated in what we call the Bondo Secret Society. I had my own initiation when I was about nine. In the week leading up to it, I was forbidden to go to the farm or to do any chores, including helping Marie to cook or clean.

  “Just relax,” Marie told me. “Bondo happens only once in a girl’s lifetime. Go for walks, braid your hair with pretty beads, and take long naps in the afternoon.”

  The Bondo is seen as a rite of passage for young girls, and boys and men are banned from coming near where the Bondo initiation takes place.

  The day before my initiation, Marie prepared some elaborate rice dishes with fish, goat, beans, and spices that she made only for special occasions, such as Eid.

  The next day, she took Adamsay and me to the river, where we joined a group of about eight other girls. Accompanying each girl was her mother or auntie. We were each handed a new bar of white soap. That was very unusual, as we always shared soap among the family. I’d never been given a bar of soap especially for me. “Wash better than you’ve ever washed before,” Marie instructed us.

  After a long soak in the river, Adamsay and I donned matching Africana outfits. We headed into the bush to join the digba, the woman who leads the initiation, who was already there waiting for us.

  A hut had been erected especially for the other girls and me, and it would be our home. We’d be allowed to leave it only to use the toilet, and before we went outside, we had to paint our faces and bodies in white, chalky paint. The paint was to symbolize our purity, and the transition from child to girl or woman. Until the end of the initiation, we could only be seen in public covered in this paint. Living in the hut was fun, like summer camp for girls in North America. We stayed up late into the night, gossiping and telling stories. The secret society made us as close as sisters.

  There was only one part of the Bondo that I disliked, and it happened on our first night in the bush. After we’d eaten the delicious dishes prepared by the women, I was told to lie down on the dirt floor on a piece of cloth. Despite the fact that there were older girls being initiated with me, the digba had identified me as the karukuh, the girl with spiritual powers, so I’d been chosen to go first in the initiation. My skirt was lifted high over my waist. Some of the aunties and mothers held down my feet and arms while the other women there, including Marie, drummed and sang. A cloth was placed over my eyes.

  I felt the digba cut my vagina. The pain was excruciating, and I screamed as I struggled to break free. I even bit one of the women as she held me down.

  When the Bondo, or cutting, was done, I had to sit in a chair with strips of cotton between my legs to stop the bleeding. I watched as Adamsay and the other girls from my village went through the same ordeal. We were all in pain for days afterwards, but at least sharing the experience let us laugh about how awful we felt.

  During the four months we lived in the hut, the women from the village taught us homemaking, including cooking and sewing. We learned how to cook meals that would cure certain ailments, and how to use herbs to treat coughs and fevers. At the end of our time there, we returned to the village for a great feast, during which all of us danced.

  Fatmata’s Bondo initiation happened not in the bush but in one of the rooms at the camp. The ceremony lasted only one night, as Fatmata already knew how to cook, sew, and cure illnesses. In the West, this practice of cutting, known as female genital mutilation, is highly criticized. But in Sierra Leone, girls and women who are not initiated are considered outsiders.

  The wedding was held about a month after Fatmata’s initiation. An imam offered the blessing and read a sura, a passage from the Quran. We celebrated with a nice dinner of rice and goat. And that was it—Abdul and Fatmata were married!

  Fatmata was so happy that day, which made me happy too. She was like a gift from God to me, coming into my life at one of my darkest moments, caring for me in Freetown until my family arrived. She had become my mom, my sister, and my friend from the first moment fate brought us together in the back of that army truck in Port Loko.

  I was sad after Fatmata’s wedding. I even cried a little. I wanted to celebrate her marriage for days, weeks if I could, like we did when couples wed back at Magborou. But I guess that’s what happens during a war: occasions that make people feel happy aren’t as frequent.

  CHAPTER 10

  One late afternoon, after begging in the streets, I rounded the corner to my tent to see Musa standing there, talking to Marie. I was heavy by now with the baby. My walk was a waddle, like the women I knew back in Magborou just before they gave birth. I walked down to the clock tower in Freetown, which was the busiest part of the city and a good place to beg, with my cousins each morning, but I couldn’t keep up with them on the journey home, often falling so far behind that Freetown was shrouded in darkness by the time I made it to the camp. Recently, I had started leaving the city as soon as Freetown became thick with afternoon haze.

  When I saw Musa, I stopped in my tracks. I was paralyzed. A part of me wanted to run away. Another part of me wanted to fly into his arms.

  Musa noticed me before I could make a decision. His face opened into a wide smile. “Hello, Mariatu. How are you?” he called out.

  I stood quietly as Musa wrapped his arms around me. The scent of his warm body reminded me of our times together at the farm, holding hands under the hot noonday sun. I despaired at the thought I’d never be able to hold his hand again.

  “Do you want to go for a walk?” Musa suggested, standing back.

  I shrugged. “Sure.”

  As we strolled around the camp, Musa told me about his life since we’d last seen each other. He and his mother had escaped their village before the rebels burned it down. They had made their way to Freetown and were living in the cramped apartment of relatives along with another family.

  So many villagers were now streaming into Freetown to avoid the rebels that neighbors in the city often knew each other from the provinces. One of Musa’s neighbors had fled Manarma just before the attack. He told Musa that he’d heard afterwards that four cousins from Magborou had had their hands amputated there. Worrying that I was one of them, Musa had come immediately to the camp.

  By the time we circled back to the tent, Mohamed, Ibrahim, and Adamsay were having their evening meal of rice and groundnut soup.

  “Do you want to eat?” I asked Musa.

  He shook his head, so I motioned for him to follow me inside. We sat side by side on my straw mat. “Tell me what happened to you, Mariatu,” he pleaded. He listened patiently as my story tumbled out.

  Musa cried when I was finished. “If only I had stayed with you,” he said, “we could have escaped the rebels together. I love you.”

  My
body stiffened. His words echoed in my head. “I love you, too,” I wanted to tell him. But I didn’t. I didn’t want Musa to love me anymore. My body slumped forward as I wrapped my arms underneath me.

  “Musa,” I said in a voice drained of emotion. “I think you need to find someone else.”

  “No,” Musa cried out. He pulled me into his arms, starting to rock me, but I pushed him away.

  “Go,” I said to him. “Go, and don’t come back. I don’t want you to see me anymore, not like this.” I held up my arms, then rubbed my pregnant belly. “I want you to find a normal girl and have a normal life. And I want you to remember me for who I used to be, what I used to look like.”

  “I want you, Mariatu.”

  “Musa,” I shouted, “I’m telling you. Don’t love me anymore!”

  “But I want to be with you,” he stammered. “I want you to name your baby Musa and come and be my wife one day, like we promised.”

  I pushed him away from me. “It will never happen. I want you to go and never come back.”

  Musa continued to protest, but with every word I withdrew further. I stopped listening. I lost interest in even arguing with him. I let him ramble on and on until he stopped.

  When silence finally filled the tent, Musa kissed me on the forehead and slowly got up.

  “I will come back,” he said. “I will make you see that we can still be together.”

  I didn’t even look at him as he left the tent.

  Musa came back twice before the baby was born. Both times it was just as the sun was setting for the night and I had returned from begging. Both times I said I was too tired to talk. I left him by the fire, conversing with Ibrahim and Mohamed, and went into the tent alone. I didn’t cry. Every time a thought of Musa popped into my head, I shook it away. Yet when I heard Musa call goodbye, I felt a great emptiness inside me.

  On a morning not long after Musa’s third visit, I woke very early. It was still dark outside. My clothes were dripping wet from perspiration, and I felt cold and shaky despite the heat. As I rolled over to get up, pain surged through my abdomen and down my legs and arms.

  “OUUUCH,” I yelled. “OUUUCH.” Writhing around on my mat, I screamed for Abibatu, Fatmata, and Marie.

  Abibatu kept a small basket of clean white strips torn from sheets by the side of my mat. She intended to use them when she and the others helped deliver my baby, she said. Fatmata had been gathering secondhand clothes for the child, mostly from Father Maurizio, a bald-headed and almost always smiling Italian priest who worked at the camp.

  Marie rushed into the room. She felt my stomach, then examined me. “There is something wrong,” she said. “You’re not dilating.”

  Marie ran to get the camp nurse, who gave the same diagnosis. “Mariatu will have to deliver the baby at the hospital,” the nurse said. “I’ll call for the ambulance.”

  We waited several hours for the ambulance, which was a Red Cross jeep, and it seemed to take just as long to navigate the busy Freetown streets. By the time we got to the maternity hospital, it was noon. My contractions were coming fast and furiously.

  A female doctor there explained that my birth canal was too small. “And the baby is big,” she said. “There’s no room for the baby to come out. You’ll need to have an operation called a C-section.” She ran her finger along my stomach to show me where she’d make the incision.

  The last thing I recall is the doctor sticking a needle into my arm.

  Many hours later, I woke in a bright room, light streaming in through a big open window. I felt listless as I watched some dust dancing in the sun’s rays. My eyelids were starting to close again when I suddenly remembered where I was, and why. As I tried to sit up, I was greeted with more pain. Pulling the sheet away, I saw that my stomach was taped and bandaged.

  I started to cry, and the other girl in the room called out for help.

  Abibatu hurried in to comfort me. After a moment Marie arrived, carrying my baby.

  “It’s a boy,” said Abibatu, reaching over to take the child.

  A boy, just as Salieu had predicted in my dream. The baby was swathed in a blue blanket. All I could see were his round face and matted black hair. He was cooing. With one look at that little face, all my anger disappeared. The baby looked like I imagined an angel would, with his soft, chubby cheeks. “I can take care of this baby,” I thought. “I can even love this child.”

  “What do you want to name him?” Marie asked me.

  “Abdul,” I blurted out.

  I hadn’t thought about it in advance, but I knew instantly that this baby would be named Abdul, after Fatmata’s Abdul, Mohamed’s uncle.

  Abibatu held Abdul in one hand as she helped prop me up into a sitting position with pillows behind me. She shaped my arms into a cradle, then placed the baby in them.

  I’d never felt such love in my heart.

  Abdul made sucking sounds, puckering his lips like a fish.

  “What’s he doing?” I giggled.

  “I think he wants to be fed,” Abibatu replied.

  “Come on, little mommy,” Marie joked. She held Abdul as Abibatu pulled up my top.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.

  “You’re going to breast-feed your child,” Marie told me. She put Abdul back in my arms, pushed his face onto my breast, and fastened his mouth onto my nipple.

  My sensations of love soured as anger washed over me.

  “Can’t one of you feed him?” I asked Marie and Abibatu. No one had told me this would be my responsibility.

  Marie laughed. “Mariatu,” she said, “my breasts are old. There is no milk left in them. And Abibatu has never had a child. She can’t give milk. Only you can.”

  I stayed in the hospital for about two weeks. The doctors wanted to make sure that my stomach was healing properly and that I was breast-feeding Abdul before letting me return to Aberdeen.

  “There are lots of diseases at the camp,” a nurse told me. “Malaria, dysentery, colds, and flus. You need to be healthy so that your milk will give Abdul a shot at surviving those bad conditions.”

  “Food is scarce in the camp, so it’s important that you try to eat as much as you can while you’re here,” Abibatu added.

  Some people at the camp were so thin that you could see their ribs through their T-shirts. They coughed and wheezed as they walked. Some of the amputees had died from their wounds, a few right in their tents. It was common at night to hear someone screaming in pain. But I had become used to the sounds. I hadn’t realized that many of the diseases at the camp could be passed from one person to another.

  Abdul slept beside my bed in a small metal crib. Abibatu, Marie, and Fatmata felt that the baby and I would bond better if we were together all the time, but that never happened. Abdul would cry in that crib and I couldn’t move. I’d just stare at him until one of the women put him on my breast to feed. I didn’t rock Abdul in my arms. I didn’t sing lullabies to him. I didn’t talk to him. I don’t know why.

  When I first saw the gaping scar on my stomach from the C-section, I felt like vomiting. All I could think was: “What else? What other deformity will befall my body?”

  After the nurse removed my stitches, I headed straight to the washroom down the hall. In the privacy of a stall, I tried to rip off my bandages with my arms and teeth. My plan was to punch myself in the stomach until I bled to death. I couldn’t get the bandages off, though. Eventually I gave up and rested my head against the wall.

  Since finding out I was pregnant, I’d endured serious bouts of depression, followed by moments of extreme happiness in which I forgot all about the war. Fatmata and Abdul’s marriage was one such occasion. I’d felt hopeful then. I dreamt that one day it would be me wearing a beautiful Africana wedding dress. But as my gaze floated to the ceiling in that washroom stall, I wondered if I would ever have one of those happy moments again.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ibrahim, Mohamed, and Adamsay were very nice to me when I returned to the c
amp, taking turns holding the baby and asking me what childbirth was like. “I was asleep for it all” was my answer. Everyone gave me extra food, particularly vegetables. Over dinner, I’d lose myself listening to my cousins talk about their day, kids they’d met on the street while begging or something funny that had happened, like someone getting beaten up for stealing a pineapple from one of the vendors. Then Abdul would start whimpering. My cousins would go elsewhere as Marie or Abibatu passed the baby to me. The shadows cast by the fire couldn’t conceal the frustration that showed on my face.

  Begging was completely off-limits for me, even though I desperately wanted to go. I tried everything to get Marie to give me permission. “We need more food, because you’re giving me so much extra,” I’d plead.

  “No.”

  Mohamed made me feel worse by poking fun at my situation. “You’re a grown woman now, Mariatu,” he’d laugh. “Why would you want to hang out with us young kids? Stay home with the adults. Feed your baby and we’ll look after you.”

  The longing to join my cousins became so strong that one morning, after I’d finished breast-feeding Abdul, I handed him back to Fatmata, stood up, and declared: “I’m going with the others tomorrow!”

  “You can’t,” Marie protested. “Abdul needs you.”

  Abibatu stepped in. “I’m worried. You and Abdul aren’t bonding like a mother and child should. He spends most of his time with us,” she said, pointing to herself, Marie, and Fatmata.

  “I will go with Mariatu,” said a voice from the entranceway to our tent. Startled, we all turned to look. Standing there, her hands on her big hips, was Mabinty.

  Mabinty was an older lady who lived in one of the other rooms. She hadn’t been injured in the war, but rebels had burned down her home. She’d walked to Freetown along with many others from her village. She missed her daughter, who lived in her husband’s village in the north of Sierra Leone. “If I could get to her village without fear that the rebels might ambush me,” Mabinty would moan, “I’d go tomorrow.”