Some time after her first blood showed, Ndora went to her husband’s room. On the first occasion she was carried, according to custom, on the back of one of the senior wives. From then on she spent three nights with Saidu in turn with each of her co-wives. Ndora’s first son she named Morlai and suckled him for two years. The second child, another son called Mohamed, was born after the harvest in the month of tarokans, a year after Morlai began to eat his first mouthfuls of pap.
Ya Yima was entranced by Ndora’s fat, bright new son. After Mohamed was weaned she insisted on taking over care of the baby herself and, ignoring Ndora’s protests, she brought the child into the big house she shared with Saidu. Ndora was left outside. Yima passed her time playing with the little boy, while Ndora worked long days in the fields side by side with the other junior wives and the indentured men. Sometimes on her way home, she would go by and take little treats to her son: a catapult she made herself or a little piece of canya made of rice flour, sugar and peanuts.
Months passed and still Ya Yima kept little Mohamed by her side. She brushed aside all Ndora’s entreaties. Didn’t she take good care of him? Besides Ndora was so busy. And the little boy was happy, said Ya Yima.
When all else failed Ndora determined to bypass her senior wife’s authority and beg her husband in order to have her child returned to her. Saidu, by now, was used to Ya Yima’s wilfulness. It came as no surprise she had upset a co-wife; nevertheless he did not expect to have to intervene in their concerns. He told Ndora he would handle the matter himself, to be patient and not to worry. But when Ya Yima refused to listen to even his efforts to persuade her, he lost his temper and ordered her to return the boy to Ndora.
Ndora sent her son to join his brother Morlai at the home of an aunt in Rothomgbai. One night a snake crept into the hut where several children lay sleeping side by side on a mat. A few minutes later Mohamed woke screaming, with two small puncture wounds on his foot. The poison lodged in his foot: he survived, though nearly lost the foot. Not one of the other children was harmed. A diviner was brought in and an investigation mounted. There was only one explanation: witchcraft. Suspicion fell on many and rumours rustled through the villages: Who had seen a soul stir? What old grudges were borne? Who else might fall ill? Nothing was ever proved.
Realising the folly of his actions had put his own son in danger, Saidu immediately brought the child back to Rogbonko into his own home, and returned him to the arms of Ya Yima.
Two years later war broke out in Europe. Up in Rogbonko at first it had little impact. But after the British lost control of the Mediterranean and were forced to route their supplies bound for the east through Africa, they were attracted for the same reasons as the slaving ships two hundred years before to Freetown’s deep natural harbour. Men from the protectorate were recruited to fill the demand for cheap labour, including many from Mamunta and the surrounding villages. Thousands more were drafted to fight the Japanese in the jungles of Burma. There was an even greater demand for produce for export and yet the prices offered by the colonial rulers never improved. With the extra hands gone from the fields, life grew hard for everyone in the villages.
Ndora began to lose weight. The white doctors at the hospital failed to heal her, so the family turned to their own medicine. The day came when Ndora couldn’t climb up off her sleeping mat. Fearing the worst the family sent for the healer, Pa Yamba Mela, at the house Pa Mas’m provided for him in the Fornas’ compound.
Pa Yamba Mela arrived at Ndora’s bedside carrying his divining thunder box. He was as handsome as he was terrible; it was he who smelled the odour of magic behind the snakebite on Mohamed’s foot and again when the boy was struck with smallpox some years later. People for miles around claimed Pa Yamba Mela could even draw thunder out of the sky to strike wrongdoers down. Indeed, it had been known to happen to some errant souls who had committed God knows what crime. They were found lying in the fields or under a tree during the rains. Some died; the others were never the same again.
The medicine man knew immediately he had found the culprit. Only by confessing to dabbling in witchcraft could Ndora save her own life; she had become ensnared in the power of the rites she had tried to use for her own purposes and now she was being consumed from within. All day Pa Yamba Mela stayed with her mouthing incantations and exhorting the dying woman to admit her guilt, even as the delirium overwhelmed her. Finally, just before her last breath slipped over her lips and mingled with the air, Ndora confessed.
Shortly afterwards Chief Masamunta passed away and his spirit flew home to Futa Jallon, the home of the Temne kings. Before he was interred his head was removed, to be preserved and buried alongside the next king, whose own head would be buried with the next and so on in perpetuity. Chief Masamunta’s Pa Mas’m, Saidu Forna, presided over the burial rituals and was afterwards elected to take the place of the dead ruler: he was anointed Pa Roke, Regent Chief of Kholifa Mamunta.
While the other children were raised by their mothers, my father grew up in my grandfather’s house. And so, even though Mohamed was only the younger son of a junior wife, Pa Roke came to favour our father above his other children.
It may have been the weekend. At any rate, unusually for the time of day, my father was in the house. The sun was high, so it must have been early afternoon, at the time when everyone had just eaten lunch. At the back of the house Big Aminatta filled the dogs’ bowls with scraps from the table and put them out in the yard.
‘Daddy?’ A moment later I trotted to my father, who was sitting on the veranda with my mother. I scarcely allowed a moment to slip past before I began again: ‘Daddy?’
‘Yes, Am.’
‘Jack’s making a funny noise.’
Everyone followed me round the side of the house. I was right. There was Jack, the Old English sheepdog, standing with his head low, his stomach in spasms, heaving violently. With each painful contraction he gave a wheezing noise and a sort of hacking bark. He looked like dogs do when they are trying to be sick, but I’d never heard one make that noise before.
Jack had a chicken bone stuck in his throat. The walls of his oesophagus were torn and with each effort he made to dislodge it the sharp fragment of bone tore deeper into the wall of muscle. The pain must have been terrible. My father grasped the dog and, gripping Jack between his legs, bent over and prised his jaws open. Then he plunged his hand deep into the dog’s throat. You could see him feeling down inside the dog’s gullet. He pulled his arm out and tried again, over and over. And Jack just let him. He didn’t snap or wriggle; he submitted as though he already knew this was his only chance at life.
Minutes seemed to pass. The whole family watched and waited. There was nothing anyone else could do.
When my father realised the bone was too deeply embedded and it would take an operation to free it, he went to fetch his medical kit. There was no vet in Koidu. By this time Jack was feeble and had begun to whimper. My father took out a needle and syringe and gave Jack a dose of the anaesthetic normally reserved for humans. The hacking and whimpering stopped. Jack’s body relaxed and he stopped breathing.
For most of my life that image was all I could summon of my earliest years. I was very young the day Jack died but I remember vividly the sight of my father standing over him with his arm down the dog’s throat.
Afterwards my parents explained to me what had happened, although I wasn’t overly distraught because I didn’t have any understanding of what death meant. Gradually as the days went on I watched Jim prowl the yard looking for his brother and playmate, or lie listless in the shade and howl at night.
The next time Pa Roke visited and I saw him demolishing a chicken bone I thought: How come Jack dies and Pa Roke doesn’t?
Soon after that Pa Roke left us and returned home, departing as he came. He walked to the end of the road and vanished into the wind.