Blessing. Florence Ndiyah

They left behind women with cainjas strapped on their backs and young men strolling lazily, chewing sticks sticking out of their mouth. Aside from the whistling of the cold wind, the air also bore the sound of dry corn grains bouncing against the iron walls of a corn mill and that of exploding gunpowder. When the distinct cry of the juju gong commanding all women to opt for blindness met up with them, they immediately halted, turned their heads to the bush and waited until the sound of the juju, which was returning from or heading to a burial or death celebration, faded in the distance.

      Almost thirty minutes after they set out, Nkem and Fatti finally arrived at the church door and crossed the boundary into serenity. Though the church had existed only for about a year, Nkem and a handful of other women, like Suum’s mother, had made it the most regular place they visited, second only to their farms – and it was only after daily morning Mass that many of these new converts set out with hoes and cainjas. Such swift attachment to so alien a culture had not gone unnoticed by other villagers. Of the many rumours circulating on their account, the most prominent was that the white man had charmed them. But how? Some villagers had taken it upon themselves to dig out the truth. They had returned from spy missions to the white man’s haven with the theory that the charm was put in the wafer: ‘The white man eats a large piece, prepared differently, but gives our people very small slices.’

      Even before the village had time to digest the charm theory, others had moved on to analyse the wafer-size evidence: ‘Our people, in other parts of the country, labour hard in the fields to grow the wheat and produce the flour. Our women, in the convents, prepare the bread. The white man comes and all he does is say a few words over it; yet he eats the greater share!’

      The more they speculated, the more theories they devised. At the end of the day, the white man was not only considered as a lazy glutton but also an egoist who drank alone while the natives ate and swallowed saliva.

      As time passed, the villagers’ concerns had moved from the rapid adhesion of the women to the priest’s lifestyle: ‘We need at least three women before we feel there is a piece of manhood in us. But look at this man who survives without even a quarter of a woman? He is not normal!’ A few words but repeated over and over by many mouths.

      The Christians did not give in without a fight, ‘Our priest, our man of God, is a special man. God did not use a woman’s rib to make him. God used his own rib. So a woman kills our priest like salt kills an earthworm.’ Even these many words from Fr. Maxworth Cain’s few supporters did not prevent the sceptics from growing in number and propagating their theory further. Everyone in the quarter knew the songs that had been composed to describe him.

      What inspired Nkem and the other adherents to follow the new faith? Was it some deficiencies of their own traditional religion or simply adventure? Was it curiosity over the white man and all he represented or surrender to a force too powerful to be ignored? Though Nkem and the other Christians so far had been unable to give satisfactory answers to these questions posed by their contemporaries, the doubts remained in their compounds and in the quarters. In church the priest had no equal.

      After Mass, Nkem took Fatti to Fr. Max. ‘Pray that God should protect her, Father.’

      While chanting an incantation, Fr. Max sprinkled holy water on Fatti and used his chrism-greased thumb to cross her forehead. ‘Pray the rosary with her everyday and bring her to Mass as often as you can,’ he said to Nkem, ‘and get her baptised.’

      ‘Her father is the problem,’ Nkem retorted.

      ‘Fatti, do you have a rosary?

      ‘No, Father.’

      They collected the rosary from the presbytery and got to the compound in time to catch Temkeu’s last words to his skulls: ‘… protect Fatti so that she stays here on earth. There is still much she has to achieve. Let her not come and go without a history big enough to be passed down.’

      Temkeu got out of bed with a word to his skulls and went to bed with a word to his skulls. The last visit he made each night was to Mefo’s hut and the first in the morning was still to Mefo’s hut. He did not want to hear from another that Fatti had woken in the same state in which she had gone to bed. He had to verify for himself that her breath had not been snatched away during the night. Like everyone in the compound, Temkeu agreed that one good had at least been born from the crisis: For the first time in a very long time, Mefo’s and his thoughts had moved in the same direction. They had unanimously agreed that Mefo was in a better position to do the right thing should the ancestors try to take Fatti during the night. That was how Fatti, for the second time, had left her mother’s hut for Mefo’s.

      Soon the three days of rest were over. Fatti returned to accompanying her mother to the farm. When she got back home in the evening, she made for Mefo’s hut where she spent the night. As she continued to live with the days and weeks, Temkeu’s attention gradually shifted to another aspect of her life. Each morning, as she walked past his hut on her way to the farm, his eyes did a tour of her anatomy.

      ‘Why is her chest is still flat? Where are the signs of womanhood?’ In need of answers to the questions he asked himself, he called her to his hut one evening. ‘How many branches have you cut from your age tree?’

      ‘Nine, Papa.’

      In the continuous absence of the sight his eyes were on the lookout for, the news that she had added one year from the time he last inquired was good enough to merit celebration over palm wine and corn beer with his friends. Fatti was getting riper and the time was drawing nearer.

4

      February sailed along gracefully with life for the Fopous being as normal as it could be. Day after day, the boys ran after knowledge or cattle, while the women bent over farms, deracinate shrubs and stumps, gathering and burning, and then tilling and waiting. By mid month each nose full carried the scent of dust stirred out of slumber by the first rains, heralds of the approaching season. March came along with the beginning of the rainy season. The Fopou women, along with others in the village, returned to their farms, this time planting and weeding.

      Life for Temkeu Fopou was also as normal as it could be. A typical morning for him started with a heavy meal, which digested as he took the short walk to his pottery and carpentry workshop, where he spent most of the day. Before returning home in the evening, he often stopped in the village square to make some noise and share some palm wine or corn beer with his friends. He was making for the village square, one evening, when it suddenly started raining. He rushed into a nearby compound but not fast enough to avoid the first few drops of rain, which ran down his torso to be trapped in the folds of his loincloth. He sighed and sighed. His problem was neither his wet skin, which will dry in a few seconds, nor his wet loincloth, which will dry in a few minutes. Superstition held that anyone who was soaked by the first rain would be caught in the rain throughout that rainy season.

      By August, the flurry of raindrops had become the most faithful companion wherever anyone went. September stepped in with the start of another school year. After primary education, which was all Temkeu could offer his sons, the first two had moved to Yaoundé, the capital of the French Cameroons, with promises of getting more education and returning home to sow its benefits. Five years had gone by since he had last heard from the second. Though Makam, the first, rarely made the one-day journey home, material evidence and remittances showed he carried his family in his thoughts. Achum, Temkeu’s fourth son, had decided to try his hand at trade by moving to Douala, the economic city. The twenty-seven-year-old gave Temkeu reason to walk about with raised shoulders. Apart from his frequent trips home, he was changing the face of the compound with the brick house he was building nearby. The pampering lavished on Temkeu by his daughter-in-law also added to Achum’s list of achievements.

      Whenever Temkeu talked about Makam and Achum, his tongue rolled with the ease of one comfortable with a subject. When the discussion stirred towards the likes of his third son, Bacham, his tongue grew heavy with shame. A failed trip to acquire employment in banana and tea plantations in the coastal region, drunkenness and women – these were all he had to show for his twenty-nine years on earth.