Restitution

The third short story from the future of the Congo Basin rely on the advice of an old woman

I remember how it used to be. How we followed thin trails through kola nut forests and corn farms to the streams down in the valleys to fetch water. We went to palm bushes around or to the forests at hill tops to fetch dry bamboos and fallen branches of eucalyptus trees for firewood. When the nearest stream was smoked to bare earth by the roasting dry season sun, we walked distances for water. And, indeed, the chattery in the caravan walk to bigger streams made long distances seem to be nothing. We scrambled to fetch water for the elderly, and we were taught it was the noblest thing to do. At the stream, we would go in search of raffia nuts, blackberries, passion fruits and all sorts of wild delicacies that soothed our youthful exuberance. The forests were dark and monstrous. No one went fetching wood in the forest alone. It was there in the forests that different animals hid to come out in the night and steal from people’s farms. We were told that in some parts of the world, such forests haboured human eaters and traffickers. As such, fetching firewood as well as water was a collective endeavor. There is the drama of one particular morning, when we woke up breathing vapours of warmth into the freezing environment. That morning, as the fowls retired from their roost, birds singing, amazed at the folds of cotton smoke hanging over the burning twilight, we sang with them. I had mastered the twitters of different birds and could effectively mimic the weaver bird in particular. The glow in the sky, which shone in yellow and grey, had the intensity of sharp flames, like prolonged sparks from a welder’s shop. In that state of amazement at the works of nature, we heard an ululation: “Wilililili wir a nway wir a nway … wiri wa wiy oh” (Green grasshoppers, green grasshoppers, come and harvest some). Everyone knew it was Ba Lanjo. It was not his first or second time making the communal call. Often, on his way to his palm bush every morning, he would be the first to notice a troop of mushrooms sprouting from the earth over an extended piece of land. Then, he would raise an alarm as was the tradition. Everyone would come out, each with their calabash bowls or containers, calling out neighbours to come and share in the free gift of nature which an individual was not to keep to themselves. That particular morning, just within the last days of the rainy season, before the coming of the dragon flies, official announcers of the dry season, the green grasshoppers had come again. I picked my own container and took the lead while my siblings followed. My father had taken time to weave wet bamboo laces round my calabash. He said I had broken all his calabashes in careless play and rough-handling. With the lace, the calabash would fall and roll on the ground and would not be broken. Before the sun could emerge from behind the cotton smoke properly, the whole place was filled: jesters, hunters, farmers, mothers, fathers and children were all there. The communion was deep. That was in the early nineties, when my right hand could barely touch my left ear. As my mind flashed back on those memories of old, a thick muscle of red-hot wind, burning like the fiery winds that blow over your face as you pass across the scene of a fire incident, inflated my light shirt and burnt all over my body. It felt like I was being rolled over the steaming heat in a barbecue. Children started crying and adults joined them too because no one knew what to do. It felt like we were all locked up in an oven, like bread in baking pans. I am seated in the shed of plantain leaves almost naked. The pants, only meant to cover what everyone covers from the merciless sun, become less comfortable. We were told old age comes with peace and rest. But I have begun to regret why I had prayed for a long life and prosperity. What is a long life in hell fire? What is prosperity when you have to leave all your wealth and fight for space under scarce trees with goats and fowls? I can perceive heat waves curling in the horizon like mirages. The earth is boiling, and there seems to be no difference between walking bare-footed and wearing shoes. Each footstep is nothing less than walking on blistering bars of iron roasted red. The whole fondom (kingdom) is thrown into chaos, children, the elderly and animals dying together. Everyone is looking forward to a message of hope. Very early in the morning of the week’s market day, everyone gathers around the market square. They are out on a summon from the palace. Perhaps, there is a pending appeasement. If they were still worshiping the god of the sun, they would consult him. Maybe witches and wizards have gone to God knows where, and what they have brought back is fire. A sorrowful murmur is spread all over the market as people are whispering from mouth to mouth. The dead left back home unburied and there is a smell of dead bodies stinking in every breath. A booing hum is heard from one corner of the market. and everyone turns their attention there. It is the Fon (King) himself. No royal procession, no protocol. Only the bearer of the royal umbrella, made out of bamboo splinters carefully knit together with help of raffia fibre to appear like a small roof held above the Fon. The Fon moves with his head bowed low, and when he has reached open space at the entrance of the market, beside an age-old fig tree which has grown pale and desolate, he stops and the bearer of the royal umbrella motions everyone to maintain calm. Women bend low, with their hands on their knees and men bow down their heads, cupping their mouths with their palms. ” … Verdzekov (Forest dwellers). That is who we were. We came from the forest. And how did we think we would survive without it? When you made me king, I promised security of life and health. I am not vindicated holding on to this title if I have to watch things fall to naught every new day. I have come here today void of every protocol because we share the same fate. I have slaughtered animal victims as our fathers did. I have consulted with the elders in council. We have gone before our ancestors. They say we hold the yam and the knife. They say the same hands with which we lit the fires all over the world should be used to put them off. It is morning, but we are already melting in the heat. I have come here myself for one thing, and if you have not heard a word from my mouth, hear it now. You must open your ears widely and wait impatiently for the message that will be communicated to you. When it comes, do as it says. At this desperate moment, all we need is hope. Return home and find shelter before it is hotter than we can survive in the open.” The Fon returns and sits with his close collaborators in the innermost courtyard in the palace. They have waited for the government until grass has grown on their feet. They have been promised many things at lip service conferences. They have received groups of people in the palace promising the same things but fulfilling none. Would they not take their own destiny in their hands? As they discuss, a messenger enters with a woman who bears different styles of marks all over her body. There are some with the shape of half-moons, visibly dark on her jaws, some of stars on her arms. She breathes mystery, her entire face as deep as the darkest side of the Bui Riverin the heart of the rainy season when it starts washing away neighbouring farms and pulling down mighty trees. Each time she moves, her footsteps spread vibrating currents all over the floor as if the soles of her feet make electrifying disconnection and reconnection to the nerves of the universe hidden beneath the earth. “She sees today and tomorrow.” The messenger reports. “Speak, woman. We have heard a lot about you. Shall we all die without respite?” “I only speak what I see … ” “What do you see? Can you help us?” “There is only one solution, which is out of my reach. I am seeing a person who is in a pool of water, yet he is dying of thirst. As he bends down to drink, the water volume reduces and disappears if he reaches ground level. But as he gets up erect, the water rises to his neck. What can I say? There is only one woman, the mother of crickets, in-law to the bees and relatives of beetles and green grasshoppers that you have all murdered. You do not have food because you have driven into extinction her family and where she has escaped to, I do not know. How do you think you could approach her, if you know where she is, and do you think it normal if she accepts to grant you an audience? If you see her, you will have a solution to your problem … ” “Can you tell us more about this woman?” When the Fon asks this question, his eyes open beyond the physical. He sees a woman with the wings of crickets, the head of a green grasshopper and the belly of a beetle, having the colour of a bee. Her age, he cannot tell… She wanders around wetlands, river banks and valleys and eats only grass. Her excrement is made up of seeds and eggs of different insects which she commands to come into being. As she moves along, and passes out, new things come into life. “She does not live in a house and has no latrine or toilet. She lives with her brothers and sisters and family. If she comes here and wants more bees here, she would call ‘bees … bees … bees …’ and when she passes out, the waste will subsequently turn to bees. The same happens if she wants crickets or beetles or green grasshoppers. Without small things, there cannot be big things. She does not make big animals and trees be, but when she brings into life smaller ones up to crickets, and grass along river banks and valleys, big animals and trees gradually come to be.” Explains the woman with different marks. “We would do everything to have her here. Just tell us what to do.” “You cannot commend her. You cannot see her when you want. She appears when she wants. You may start by not poisoning her kith and kin anymore. Do not kill her kind. Till you have truly repented, and she is pleased with your efforts, she would not do anything. When you are ready, she will be here, and you will not cry for anything. It is up to you to make the decision.” The Fon sends his collaborators back home to sleep over what they have just heard and report to the palace the following morning for what must be done. “We have said no one should go close to the Bui River again for whatever reason. No one should cut a tree around it or burn a fire around there. The only thing one should have with the river is crossing the bridge over it. No farm around the river must be fertilized or poisoned with chemicals. No one should trespass the forests at Taayav and Rao Ntseni anymore. We have not said do not go to your farms or do not work for more yields in whatever you do. You have only been given limits to what you have to do. lf we want a better world, it must be clear in our minds that we cannot have it without any form of sacrifice. The sacrifice must be painful, and when we have attained our objectives, knowing the pains we went through, we would never fall back to our past errors.” Stanislaus Fomutar This text has been written after two participatory foresight workshops on #CongoBasinFutures and #RoyalAnimalsFutures in Yaoundé, Cameroon, on Saturday 7 September 2024. It has been edited by Nsah Mala and published by Next Generation Foresight Practitionners.