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.’
…….
