Little one, you are still only a seed inside me, but one day you will come out from your home in my belly, from the place between my legs, and you will breath in the air and feel the wind off the sea on your face. I will feed and protect you little one. The world is a place of danger, and you must be ready.
Your coming into the world will not be like mine. My mother said before I was born, death and hunger were strangers, but since I was born they have come to join us like ghosts of the old ones who come back to take life from their children. She does not blame me, yet she says I brought something bad with me when I came into the world. The day I was born, the Lady of the Waves took my father’s mother and sister when they were washing by the shore. She came in a mighty wall of water and pulled them under, like pebbles. My father says my coming caused his sorrow. All he does is eat the warm sap of the qamak, which he keeps in a shell until it is strong enough to make him drowsy, and then he sleeps all day.
We will leave this place soon but there is work to do yet. The fisher boy brings me the back of a great turtle. He made a bed of palms inside the turtle back, and bound to it some branches of the yeheb tree. He tells me that the soul of the turtle is very old and knows all the ways of the sea, and that she has left her shell as a gift for us so we will never go under the waves. I love this fisher boy and I love the soul of the turtle. She was so kind to leave us her shell.
You will never see our home in the dunes, little one. I will take you across the Sea of Blood, to a place where there is no death or hunger and we can make a new home in the floating island beyond. The Lady of the Waves may try to take us to her cave under the sea. She took my father’s mother and sister and so she knows our family well and may have a taste for our kin. But she will have to overcome the spirit of the turtle and the Moon, who is my husband and who will guide us to safety. He will make a path for us through the waves with the light from his fingers. They say the rain over there is pure and falls often, the trees grow tall and the fruit is so heavy it lands at your feet and the bees fly to you and drop honeycomb on your tongue. Just as it was here in the time before the White Rain. How do I know this? Because the Painted Grandmother told me and she can see where the eagles fly.
The Moon my husband
I live with my mother, who looks like me but is older and her skin is tough like the bark of the tree, and my father, who is old and lazy. We live near the Long Lake where the water is green and warm and where all kinds of fish live. This has been the home of the people since the Stars first led us here among the palms and the white sands and gave us the fish to eat and the palms to build our homes and the rocks to shelter us from the Sun’s eye and the dunes to hide us from the hyenas and lions.
One night a few suns ago, the Moon came to me in the night. He crept into our home when all were asleep. The Moon said he had been watching me for some days. I did not know what he wanted. I was afraid. Why have you come to me, I asked him? ‘I see you looking at me every night, and as I grow brighter, I see you more clearly and I see you are looking at me too.’ What do you want, I asked the Moon. The Moon said he had made me bleed when he came before during winter. It was true that I had begun to bleed once every moon when the nights were long and cold. Now it is summer and the sand is hot and the lizard puts up its fan all day long to cool itself, while the Sun’s eye beats down on all who stand under her for longer than a spider takes to crawl under a stone. The Painted Grandmother told me the Sun is God’s right eye, and the Moon his Left so it must be true.
The Moon said he makes all the women shed their blood every time he returns so that they know he is their master. He said he can stop them bleeding too – by giving them a child or making them barren. The Moon said he could have any woman he wanted, and on the night he is full he comes and gives his seed to the girl he likes the most. Tonight he chose me. I said I was faster and stronger than the other girls, and he would have to catch me. I once ran faster than a wild ass that chased me and the Painted Grandmother said I had a Panther as my shadow. I will not chase you said the Moon and just then I felt the juice in my belly rise to my mouth. Very well, you can make love to me, I told him, but only if you tell me a secret. What do you want to know the Moon asked? I did not know why I said this, then I said: ‘Tell me, why did the White Rain come and why did my brother die?’
I will tell you why the White Rain came, but I cannot tell you why your brother died. Many moons past, the Sun become angry and she grew very hot and she cried tears of ash, which covered the Earth.
Why was she angry, I asked?
Because she fell in love with a man, who was very strong and handsome. He asked her the secret of making fire and she gave it to him. She warned him to use it with great care but the man did not listen. He set fire to a blackwood tree and the flames from the fire rose up to heaven and burnt the eye of the Sun. So the Sun cried tears of ash, which covered the earth.
The Painted Grandmother once told me another story about the White Rain, that a man set fire to a bush and it burnt the backside of the sun, and the Sun pissed ash on the earth to kill all the People. The Moon said I should not fear for my brother as he was now under the Earth with all the other people who had gone there and that he was happy with lots to eat and a wife to keep him warm at night. I felt happy for my brother as I had not gone to the place we had left him on a high rock and asked if he needed any more food or water for a long time.
The Moon stood over me and with the white light that shone from him he covered my body. I felt afraid no more. My mother had told me this day would come and so I was ready. When he touched me I had to hold my breath because it stung like running across the hot rocks at midday. After that I could feel nothing. He left me telling me that I would have a daughter when he returned in the month of fasting. I did not know how many Moons this was, except that it was a lot.
Tears of Ash
One day when I was very young the rain turned white and bitter to the taste. The world changed and life for the people grew hard. Before there was plenty, and after we never had enough to eat. Since the White Rain came, the fruit and the trees began to die. The hunters used to come home after three days with antelope or ostrich meat for all the people to eat. Now they would go for seven days and nights and return empty handed. Any game they find they eat before they return. They only brought us bones and skin. The old ones and the babies grow weak and ill. Some die.
Because there is not enough food, the elders told some of the people they could not stay in the dunes and would have to move further up the beach. The Tattooed Grandmother put on her scorpion mask and she danced with her painted stick. Whoever she touched had to leave the dunes and never return. They wept and cried and then took their things and climbed down the dunes and walked along the shore until we could see them no more. I asked my mother where would they go. To another place where there was still fruit and birds and fish, she said. Can we go with them, I asked. But this made her angry and she sent me away.
My mother said to me that many men would try to make love to me, as my breasts had grown full, and all the men had seen them. Even One Eye with One Arm said ‘girl, you have full breasts, like the fruit of the fig tree when it is ripe.’ I told him he was too old and ugly for me, like a lame hyena, and he laughed an old man’s laugh.
My Brother the Termite Hunter
I am hungry sister, let’s find some termites to eat.
Since the white rain we eat more termites because there are more of them, and there is less of all the other things we used to eat, like fish, and fufu and sweet roots. The termites have no eyes and live in their great towers near the trees. Some of their towers are as tall as the boabab tree. The towers belong to the termite queen who makes them with her magic song. She rules over the termites and when she dies, the termites leave the tower forever. After they leave we find mongoose and spineback living in the empty towers. The termites mostly stay near the trees because they like to eat wood. We have to walk some way from the sand dunes to reach the trees where the termites live. To hunt termites we take two sticks, a big one to hit the mound with and a small twig with leaves on to collect the termites as they come out of a hole in the mound.
First of all my brother calls out to the termite queen, ‘O lady of the tower, for what we are about to do may you forgive us, but you have many children and we are hungry so we must eat a few of them.’ He looks at me and says that the termite queen is happy for us to begin our work. Then my brother scrapes a hole near the base of the tower with the sharp end of the stick, he hits the tower, boom, boom, boom. He keeps doing this until the termites begin to come out of the hole and walk along the twig. Then it is my job to collect them in a coconut husk. I feel my brother likes to do this as it makes him feel useful, and I like it also, although I do not really like to eat termites, as I think they are lizard food and that people should eat catfish, mango and lizard meat. My mother tells me of the old days when there was plenty of kudu to eat, for they ran wild and in large herds. Now they are rare.
Once we get the termites back to the dunes, we bake them on a small fire until they are crispy and smokey. Everybody comes and eats some. My brother looks happy. My father does not eat the termites as he is usually asleep and he never seems to be hungry. I think it is because he is already dead but does not know it. His body is like those you will see when a person dies and they place their body in a pit.
Sometimes instead of hunting termites, we hunt for lizards. They are harder to catch and there are less of them but their flesh is sweet. My brother made me laugh by acting a fool and he could also become angry and make me afraid. He was angry at Swift Spear for saying he would never be a good hunter when he saw him crying after a fall. But mostly he was angry at my father for being drunk on the qamak juice.
I did not cry when my brother died because just the day before he had been cruel toward me. He told me to go away and leave him alone, then he pulled my hair. Before I asked the Sun to punish him I went to my father and told him what my brother had said. But my father did nothing and told me to go away and stop with my childish ways and false claims against my brother. I did not see why my father would not believe me and this made me sad.
That night my brother began to moan in his sleep and begged me and my mother to help him. My mother looked at him and she found the cause of his pain in his foot. He had been bitten by the spider that eats birds. My father found the bird eater outside in the dune and he killed it with a stick. Then he went back to sleep. My mother sucked at the poison in my brother’s foot all night long, while my brother moaned until he had no more strength. The brave hunters came to see and they cried because they knew that a boy could not survive the bite of the spider that eats birds.
The Painted Grandmother came to him and she danced and used all her songs to protect my brother and keep Death away from him. She put on her scorpion mask and she threw dirt on him, which she had taken from the place where the dead go, to draw out the evil spirit that had entered him. She said that my brother had been fooled by a spider demon, which used magic to make him believe it was his friend and so he was not ready to fight it or run away. And so the earth took him.
I knew something the painted grandmother did not. The Moon had punished my brother for his cruelty toward me.
When my brother was gone we took him out into the dunes and placed him high up, placing stones around him and over him. Then we prayed for him so that he would be happy in the land of the dead. My brother had dreamed to be the Keeper of the Honey. Now it never could be. The keeper of the honey was an old man. He came to where my brother lay and he placed a piece of honeycomb on top the stones. I went to the trees and took my brother’s termite sticks and gathered up as many termites as I could find and brought them to the dune for him. ‘You did me wrong brother. I bring these termites because you are my blood and I do not want you to think that I have no feelings for you. I was angry but now I am not. I forgive you.’
When the night came all the food that had been placed there, the cactus fruit, aloe, dried flesh of reedbuck, was eaten by the people. They only left the honeycomb for my brother for it would be all he needed where he was going. The taste in my mouth was bitter and I wanted it to stay that way. All I could taste was the termites and my own tears.
At times I did not know whether I had been right to ask the Moon to revenge me for the time my brother pulled my hair and sent me away. One day I told my mother what I had said to the Moon before my brother died. I was afraid because I knew my mother loved my brother, that she loved him more than her own life. But the people say that no one knows how long their time is but that the Earth knows and she will take you without warning. You may shed tears but the earth will take them too and quench her thirst with them.
The Giant’s Back
Behind the dunes the river runs to the White Lake. First it passes through the swamp where many birds used to be before they flew away with the white rain. Some parts of the river cannot be passed because there are thick reeds along the banks. In these parts the hippos and river dragons live. The hippos do not like the people and they will kill you if you swim there. You can see there foot prints on the mud and you know then that they are near. The river dragons do not bother the people because they are lazy and they only move to catch fish or birds. They do sometimes eat children if they are foolish enough to come too close.
In the dunes it is cold at night and we sleep under the bamboo with the skins of animals to keep us warm. At night you can hear the frogs croaking in the reeds and the ducks laughing in the dark. Sometimes I can hear the owl calling out to the Moon asking that he shine light on a water rat so the owl can catch him, or I hear the baboons playing and fighting.
Beyond the swamp is the Giant’s Back, which rises up to the stars and is so long that no person has ever found its end. The Giant lay down and went to sleep in the time before the people. His back rises black and straight towards the sky. When a great hunter dies, the other hunters take his body up to the Giant’s Back and climb to the top and they leave him there, placing stones around him to stop the vultures eating him.
The painted grandmother told me that the world beyond the Giant’s Back is a desert where nothing can live. She said that when she has had enough of this world she will find the crack in the ribs of the Giant’s Back and she will pass into the land of death. In that place the wind blows hot and the water is bitter to the taste and full of grit, and no plants or flowers grow. Everywhere you walk the stones burn your feet and are sharp and cruel. In that place the dead still live and, as the painted grandmother is so old, she says that all her family and all her dead lovers will be there waiting for her. ‘But first I will have to teach you what I know, for you are soon to be a woman. I will take my stick and I will mark your skin so that you can take my magic when I am gone.’
The painted grandmother keeps all her magic on her body, her arms, legs and face. There is no part of her that does not have its own quarter of the world and its many secrets. Secrets of the beasts she kept in her belly, of the birds and spiders in her chest, of the earth and demons in her feet, of the trees and plants in her legs, of the sea and rivers on her back, and the stars and sky on one arm and the Sun and Moon on the other, of the ancestors and the spirits on her face and neck. ‘Yes, before I die I will show you. It will take 50 moons to paint the secrets of the world on to you. Only the strongest woman can take the secrets of the painted grandmother.' I am strong enough, I said. 'Good, but first you must bring forth this child in your belly.’
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