The Bite of the Mango

by Mariatu Kamara

  Not long after my return, I went to visit Victor. Several members of the theater troupe had moved away, he told me. Some had returned to their villages; others had received houses built by the Norwegian nonprofit group, just as Adamsay, Marie, and Alie had.

  “The government is moving people to these houses,” said Victor worriedly, “but they’re far, far from their home villages. Some members of the troupe went alone to these places, without family or friends. It’s just not right.”

  The theater troupe, he said, was also slowly losing money. Now that the war had ended, nonprofit groups weren’t giving the troupe as much support. “I’m doing what I can,” said Victor. He explained that he was writing a report about the benefits of theater in the emotional healing of both victims of the war and child soldiers.

  Ten members of the troupe remained at the camp. On weekends, we would meet at the center, as in the past, to perform some skits, dance, and sing. But mostly, we’d sit around and talk.

  “How was England?” my friend Memunatu asked me one day.

  “Very cold,” I replied. “You wouldn’t have liked it.”

  Even though I hadn’t believed Yabom when she said people would be jealous and out to get me, I didn’t say too much about England or Canada to my friends and family. I’d realized soon after returning to the camp how incredibly lucky I was to be able to leave. I didn’t want to make others feel worse about their situation.

  “Come on, it must have been more than that!” Memunatu said. “Where are your new hands? I don’t see you wearing any.”

  I didn’t know how to reply. There was now a nonprofit group based at the camp fitting amputees with metal devices like the one I’d had in England, as well as plastic hands, feet, and legs. People were using their prosthetic hands to eat, drink, cook, and clean themselves. But I felt most comfortable doing things on my own, with the body parts I had remaining. I think I had felt so different from everybody else when I had Abdul that now I desperately wanted to blend in. When I’d hidden my arms and walked around London in those tall black boots, I’d felt stylish, like I belonged in the city.

  Comfort arrived at our tent one afternoon, plopped herself down on a stone, and announced that she, not Yabom, would be organizing my trip to Canada. “And I’ll be coming with you,” she grinned. I tried not to show my dismay. I had come to love Yabom like a mother.

  Bill was sending me about $50 a month, which was enough, combined with my remaining money from London, that I didn’t need to beg anymore.

  It took a few months for Comfort to make the arrangements for my Canadian visa. Yabom was right: there was no Canadian consulate or Canadian government office in Freetown, so I had to travel to the neighboring country of Guinea to complete my application. Comfort accompanied me on the short flight. But unlike Yabom, she didn’t let me hold on tight to her arm as we took off.

  “Mariatu, you’ve flown so much now, you should be used to this,” she laughed. She lifted my arm and put it back on my lap.

  Shortly after our return, Comfort informed me that we were scheduled to leave for Canada in a few days.

  “But I want to visit my mother and father,” I protested. “I need more time. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

  “I only received the airline tickets today,” she replied. “I didn’t know either. So pack your things and get ready.”

  It was too far to travel to visit my mother or my grandmother, whom I wanted to hug one more time; my grandmother was old by now, and I feared she might die before I returned to Sierra Leone. However, I decided I would visit Marie, Alie, and Adamsay in their new village. I didn’t tell Comfort my plan, as I thought she’d say no to that too. I had a young man from the camp named Alusine take her a message as I flagged down the poda-poda headed to Masaika, the nearest big village.

  It shouldn’t have taken more than an hour to reach the village, but the road hadn’t been maintained during the 11-year civil war. It was full of potholes so deep that the minibus often had to swerve into the thick elephant grass to avoid sinking. Even though I had left the camp in mid-morning, I didn’t reach my destination until late afternoon.

  Adamsay, Marie, and Alie’s new village, located right off the main road, was a series of 10 new clay huts with tin roofs. The place didn’t have a name yet, and my relatives knew few of their neighbors.

  “I recognized a couple of people from the camp,” Marie told me. “But we know no one well. Our family is now all over the place,” she lamented. “We live among strangers. It’s not right that I have to ask the woman grinding cassava beside me her name.”

  Marie, Alie, and the others had tilled and planted a new farm. The crops wouldn’t be ready for another year, so they were using the money Bill sent me while I was in England to buy produce. There was a lake not far off where Alie did a lot of fishing.

  I had planned to stay with Adamsay and my aunt and uncle all night long. But just as some boys had lit a big bonfire and the girls were donning grass skirts for dancing, Alusine, the boy from the camp, showed up.

  “You have to come now,” he said, breathing heavily from running.

  I stood up quickly, in shock. Even in the firelight I could see he was covered from head to toe in red clay dust. “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “I took a poda-poda, but it stopped in Masaika for refueling,” he replied, still panting. “Gas is so scarce, the driver was told it could be an hour or two before some was available. I ran from there.”

  Adamsay was looking sadly off into the fire. We both knew Alusine’s presence would cut my visit short.

  “Comfort says you must return to Freetown now,” Alusine continued. “She gave me some money to bring you home. You have to fill out some paperwork in the morning or you’ll miss your flight.”

  “It isn’t for another two days,” I said.

  “Comfort says to come. You have to come now.”

  I sat down in front of Adamsay and put my forehead against hers. “I love you,” I whispered. “I always will. And soon it will be your turn.”

  CHAPTER 17

  I actually watched as the airplane descended into Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. “I can’t see anything except white,” I exclaimed as I peered out. “Are we dead?”

  “No,” Comfort laughed. “We’re just going through the clouds.”

  We’d been traveling for about 19 hours. The best outfit I owned, an Africana red, yellow, and green docket-and-lappa, was now well wrinkled. I felt dirty, even though I had washed my face and brushed my teeth three times since boarding the flight from London to Toronto.

  The plane dipped. “Whoa,” I yelped, grabbing Comfort’s arm and burying my head in her neck.

  She didn’t push me away this time. “It’s just turbulence,” she said. “Look now.” She pointed out the window.

  I gasped at the sprawling city below. It was so big! My eyes caught a large patch of green, followed by brown cement houses and then more green. “I’m going to like Canada better than England,” I thought. “Already I can see color.”

  Inside the terminal, a customs official fingered through my passport, pausing to look at the visa. “Welcome to Canada,” she said with a smile.

  As we walked out into the Arrivals area, I braced myself for the first sights and smells of this new land. What I got instead were voices: voices calling my name, then blinding camera flashes and people thrusting their arms out to touch me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Comfort.

  “They are journalists,” she replied.

  “But what do they want with me?” I asked.

  “I guess they are fascinated by your story.”

  I shrank behind Comfort as she smiled for the cameras. But it wasn’t her picture the journalists wanted, it was mine. The cameras stopped flashing.

  “Come on, Mariatu,” she turned to whisper in my ear. “We’ll find Bill and be rid of all this.”

  Two men in uniforms walked up to me and said hello in English. I was scar
ed at first. Police in Freetown are usually rough, and these two men, with their serious expressions and their stiff, strong walks, looked like police officers too. When they told Comfort and me to follow them, I thought I was in trouble. Maybe they knew I didn’t belong in Canada. After all, I was a poor Sierra Leone village girl who used to beg for food.

  But these police seemed nice. They walked on either side of us, protecting Comfort and me from the journalists. They directed us to the very back of the waiting area, to a tall blond man. Beside him were a blonde woman and a boy about the same age as me. “Hello,” the man said, shaking Comfort’s hand. “I’m Bill.”

  Bill’s wife, Shelley, and son, Richard, each gave me a hug. Bill slipped a gold chain with a charm on it around my neck. As he and Shelley talked to the journalists, I ran my right arm over the smooth gold. No one had ever given me jewelry before. A few minutes later, we all posed for a photograph. I smiled, following Comfort’s lead.

  It was the heat that struck me first when we got outside. Toronto was warm, like Sierra Leone. Toronto was humid too, just like home. The air smelled fresh, as if there had been a shower.

  “Where is the snow?” I asked Comfort when we were tucked beside each other in the back seat of Bill’s minivan. I’d never known anyone who owned their own poda-poda, but here many people seemed to be driving them.

  Comfort laughed. The snow came in the winter, she said, which was still a few months away. “Don’t worry, Mariatu. It will get very cold.”

  I wasn’t sure how much Comfort really knew about Canada. The only place she’d ever been outside of Sierra Leone was Guinea, when she’d accompanied me to get my visa. But I didn’t argue. I had to trust her wisdom as I didn’t speak English very well and couldn’t ask Bill directly.

  Comfort rolled down my window, and as we drove I gazed out at the green fields of grasses and funny dark green trees with leaves that looked like needles. “Where’s all the garbage?” I asked Comfort at one point. Freetown’s garbage trucks had stopped running during the war, and the streets were filled with litter, everything from empty cigarette packages to broken plastic bottles.

  “They throw everything away in plastic bags here,” Comfort replied in Krio. “People buy whatever they want in North America, and when they don’t want it anymore, the garbage trucks take it away.”

  Her words made me scared. “What if I am not what this Canadian family expects?” I asked myself. “Will they get rid of me?”

  On the street where Bill and his family lived, it was so quiet at night that I could hear crickets, just like back in Magborou. As in England, I had my own bedroom, with a single bed and a fluffy patchwork quilt that Comfort said was a bedspread for when the nights got chilly. A big window framed with frilly white curtains faced out into a forest.

  The sun seemed to shine all the time in Canada, and we went for long walks in the hills. Shelley made us Western-style lunches and dinners of grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza, spaghetti, and salads.

  After a few days of getting settled, Bill told me we’d been invited to a party. On the way there, he and Shelley took me to get my hair braided. The woman who did my hair was black-skinned, though she didn’t speak Temne. I understood little of what was being said, but I liked getting the colorful ceramic beads woven into my hair.

  When we were finished, we drove to another part of the city. Bill pulled up in front of a two-story house and a Sierra Leonean woman with a wide smile opened the front door.

  “Welcome!” she said in Temne, her eyes sparkling.

  Behind her stood a tall older man with short hair. “Come in, come in,” he beamed, opening his arms.

  A grin crossed my face as I stepped inside. I was back home, or so it seemed. Kadi and Abou Nabe’s house was full of Sierra Leonean wood carvings and paintings, and photographs of people wearing traditional Africana outfits and headpieces. As they led me through their kitchen, I smelled the rich, spicy aromas of simmering Sierra Leonean dishes. In the backyard, I could hear children laughing.

  I had one of the best times of my life that afternoon. I kicked a soccer ball around with some of Kadi and Abou’s nieces and nephews. I met and talked about Sierra Leone and Magborou with some girls my own age, who had grown up not that far from where I did, in a town called Makeni.

  One of the girls told me that Kadi and Abou had been living in Canada since before the war. When the fighting started, they had brought many of their family members to Toronto to escape the violence. The girl explained to me that a summer backyard party in North America is usually called a barbecue, and that people cook hot dogs, hamburgers, and steaks on coal- and gas-burning outdoor stoves. She laughed. “In Sierra Leone we cook all our food that way. Every day is a barbecue!” she kidded.

  “Don’t worry,” Kadi jumped in, sitting down across from me. “We have chicken and hot dogs for those who want to eat Western-style, and Sierra Leonean food for you! I bet you miss home.”

  By the time we left, it was close to midnight. Kadi and Abou hugged me goodbye and invited me to come back soon.

  When I fell asleep that night, my head was filled with happy thoughts. I really loved being around Kadi, Abou, and their family and eating Sierra Leonean food again. My mind soon flooded with so many thoughts of home.

  It felt as if I had just drifted off to sleep when I felt someone shaking my shoulder. It was Bill. He had turned the light on in my room and was sitting on the corner of the bed, his index finger to his lips to say: “Shush.”

  Bill pointed silently at my clothes, then at a small backpack. He smiled and said, “I’m taking you to see Kadi and Abou again.”

  Although my English was poor, I understood. It was still dark outside, but I didn’t care what time it was. Bill left the room as I changed. He then thrust a carton of juice and a banana into my arms before we got into the car and left.

  When we arrived at Kadi and Abou’s house about an hour later, Kadi was waiting in the driveway. She explained in Temne that Bill wanted me to spend the day with her. “You are more than welcome,” she said. “Some of the girls from yesterday will be home for the day, too.”

  Bill handed Kadi my backpack, which I had tossed in the back seat of the car. He gave me a hug goodbye and hopped back into his automobile. I had an eerie feeling as he drove away that I might never see him again.

  CHAPTER 18

  Kadi paced the kitchen. “Check to see if there is a message on the telephone,” she said to Abou.

  Abou lifted the receiver. “Nothing,” came his gruff reply.

  I was seated on a chair, my back up against the wall, heart pounding. It was well past dinnertime, and Bill was supposed to have picked me up by now. He’d called once during the day to say he would be a little late, but that was the last we’d heard of him.

  I watched Kadi’s daughter Ameenatu stroke her bulging stomach. She was due to give birth any day. She was sitting on the couch in the television room beside the kitchen, her feet up on a stool, fanning herself with a magazine. “Maybe he’s run into traffic,” she called out.

  “But rush hour is finished,” Kadi said, scratching her forehead. “Where could he be? Check if there is a message on the telephone,” she asked Abou again.

  This went on for another hour, until the telephone rang.

  “Hello? Hello?” Kadi said, first in Krio and then in English. Her expression became grave as she listened, saying only a few words. “Yes. Okay. Yes.” She hung up the receiver slowly. “Mariatu, Bill wants you to stay with us a little longer,” she said, getting down on her knees and rubbing my legs.

  “Because he doesn’t like me,” I said with a sigh, thinking back to my initial worries that Bill might not like me.

  “No, Mariatu,” Kadi reassured me. Then she gave me the whole story: Bill had called her very early that morning, saying Comfort seemed determined to take me back to Sierra Leone for some reason, and that was why Bill had woken me when it was still dark outside and brought me to Kadi’s house. “Bill wants you to stay
in Canada and go to school,” Kadi said. “He hoped he could convince Comfort if he had a few hours to talk with her alone.”

  “But that didn’t happen?” I asked.

  “Not yet,” Kadi replied. “We have room, so you can sleep in the basement tonight with the other girls.”

  A smile crept onto my face at this suggestion. Suad, Haja, and Fanta were the girls I had met at the barbecue. We’d watched music videos during the day and we all prepared a Sierra Leonean rice dish together for dinner.

  “Besides,” Kadi continued, “right now you need some family and some Sierra Leonean cooking to help you get used to this strange country.”

  One week stretched into two, then three, then four. Bill called a few times to check up on me, but he never suggested I return. During one of their conversations, he told Kadi that Comfort had gone back to Sierra Leone. I don’t know if she tried to find me first. I just don’t know! This part of my story is confusing even for me.

  Suad, Haja, and Fanta were only a few years older than me. Each of them was related to Abou and Kadi, but I couldn’t keep track of exactly how. I just called them all “the nieces.”

  The war in Sierra Leone had forced the nieces to move to Freetown. All of them had met up with the rebels in some way or another, but none of them had been attacked. Another big difference between us was that they had all been in school in Sierra Leone, and would be going to school here when summer turned to autumn. Everyone encouraged me to join them.

  “School is fun,” Suad said breezily. “I liked learning to read and hanging out with my friends.”

  I asked the three girls about school in Sierra Leone.

  “All the kids around the same age met every morning in the schoolhouse,” Fanta explained.

  “I wore a green uniform that my mom sewed,” said Suad. “The teacher taught us everything from how to read and talk in English to which water was safe to drink.”