Ama (8 page)

Nandzi smiled and, for the first time since her escape, Itsho's face appeared to her.

Ah,
she breathed,
Itsho. It is you who has been watching over me.

CHAPTER 5

“No work, today,” announced Damba.

“Today is a holiday. Not even the slaves will work. The King has proclaimed a grand durbar in the market square in honour of Nana Koranten Péte, Consul of the King of Asante. Nandzi, you will stay by my mother and serve her. Suba, you will be with me as usual.”

Nandzi rubbed her tongue gently against her palate. A few days before an aged woman had appeared in Damba's compound. Nandzi had not understood a word the toothless crone had said, but Damba's mother had explained that she had come on the orders of the King. She had made Nandzi open her mouth and bite on a piece of wood. Then she had used a razor to make a small incision in her tongue. She had applied medicinal ointment to stop the bleeding and had left some more, wrapped in a leaf, to be rubbed in until the wound had healed.

“They are doing the same to all the slaves in the compound,” Suba had told her.

“And you too?” she had asked him.

“No, it is only for those who will be travelling. Damba says it will be a long journey to Kumase and you may run short of food and water. The medicine they put on your tongue will stave off the hunger and the thirst.”

This festival, she thought, must be another sign that they were about to leave Yendi. For the first time since her audience with the King and the Consul, she allowed herself to contemplate escape. But for the life of her she could not devise a plan which seemed more likely to succeed than her first abortive attempt. And she knew that, having promised the Consul that she would not try again, he would surely have her killed if she should fail.

There is nothing for it
, she concluded.
I shall just have to make the best of it and see what the future holds.

* * *

That night Nandzi joined the family round the fire in the courtyard, as they told stories. The children, exhausted from the excitement of the day and gorged with the feasting which had followed, soon fell asleep. Nandzi helped to carry them to their sleeping mats.

“Nandzi, come and sit by me,” said Damba's mother.

Nandzi squatted on her heels in the posture of respect. She saw in her mind's eye a picture of herself as a little girl, squatting just so before Tigen and Tabitsha, her own father and mother.

“My child,” said Damba's mother, “you will be leaving us soon. I have become fond of you. I have tried to persuade Damba to keep you here, but he tells me that there is nothing he can do: it is a matter of politics. Politics! That is something that is the business of men and beyond the comprehension of an old woman like me. So we shall have to say our farewells. I shall remember you and I hope that you will not forget us.”

Nandzi bowed her head in silence.
There is nothing for me to say
, she thought.
It is true that they have been kind to me, but it is also true that but for them Itsho would still be alive and I would still be with my own people, rather than lonely and isolated, without family or friends to trust, and bound for who-knows-where?

“Mother, I thank you,” she said formally.

* * *

By the light of reed torches the guards roused the male slaves and led them out to the square.

There the blacksmiths manacled them in pairs, wrist to wrist, six pairs spaced a stride apart along a heavy chain. At dawn the female slaves brought two small bowls of gruel for each chain gang. Half the men had to eat with their left hands.

When they had finished eating, they were made to stand. The women brought the head loads which had been prepared for them: baskets of guinea corn and millet for the journey, bundles of cotton and silk cloth which were part of the tribute to be paid to Asante, a few tusks. After the loading the women and children were distributed amongst the gangs of men and the women took up their own head loads. Each gang was guarded by a horseman and two armed men on foot. The herds of cattle and sheep would follow, travelling at a slower pace, perhaps catching up with them at Kafaba. It was not until all was ready that Damba sent for Nandzi. She looked around her in amazement. The stationary caravan stretched around two sides of the market square. The free young lads who would herd the livestock flicked their whips and called their dogs, looking forward with excitement to the journey. All around them milled the townsfolk who had come to witness the departure of the slaves.

Nandzi was sent to join the leading group. She wore her own cloth and the one which Damba's mother had given her. That was the sum total of all her possessions. The other women in the group were all strangers to her. She greeted them. They responded without enthusiasm. Some wore scraps of torn and dirty cloth around their waists. Most wore only a girdle of leaves. They moved from one foot to another, adjusting their postures to the heavy head loads. A guard helped to load a basket of leaf-wrapped shea butter cones onto Nandzi's head.

“Aren't you the one who ran away?” asked a girl her own age.

“Yes,” Nandzi replied, not wishing to discuss the matter.

“What happened?”

“They caught me,” Nandzi replied.

There was a pause.

“My name is Minjendo,” said the girl, “I am from Zabzugu.”

Nandzi's reply was interrupted by the arrival of Koranten Péte and his party. They wore batakaris: one could not ride a horse wearing cloth. The Consul dismounted and Damba escorted him on an inspection. The slaves looked at him curiously, sensing that he was a person of importance.

“How many?” asked Koranten Péte.

“Three hundred,” replied Damba.

“I take your word,” said the Consul. “You remain fully responsible until we reach the river. There we shall take an inventory together. Now, if you are ready to move let the priests pour libation and let us be on our way; it is already getting hot.”

Damba gave the signal.

“Oh ancestors, you who watch over us day and night and who know all things. We greet you with this drink. Nana greets you with this drink. Take it, we beg you. We are about to leave Yendi on a great journey to the south. Guard us, we beseech you, from footpads and robbers and wild beasts. Let no evil person meet us on the way. Let the provisions we carry for the journey be sufficient. Let us find water when we need to drink. Protect us from fatigue and preserve us from disease. Let none of us die on the road.”

So sang out the priests, Dagomba and Asante, as they poured the liquor. The malam's formula was different but the sentiments were the same.

Then the drummers at the head of the caravan began the steady beat which would accompany them on their journey. The caravan moved off slowly between the walled compounds. Soon they had left the town.

“I am called Nandzi,” Nandzi told Minjendo.

* * *

They stopped in the heat of the day, scrambling for a patch of shade in the dry scrub.

“Woman, bring me water,” said one of the men to Minjendo when she had helped him to put down his head load. He was a handsome youth, barely her own age.

“Woman, bring me water,” she mimicked him. “Man, I am not
your
slave, you know.”

“We are all slaves now, my sister,” he said wearily, lifting his manacled hand and rattling the chain. “Please bring me water.”

“No talking, there,” called out one of their guards, nervous of rebellion in spite of the iron.

Nana Koranten Péte rode up to the front of the caravan with Damba.

Damba slowed his horse to a walking pace as they came opposite Nandzi. She studiously avoided looking at him, but she could not help hearing their conversation.

“I want you to meet me at Kafaba,” the Consul was saying.

He had not recognised Nandzi.

“I have some business in Kpembe with the Gonja king,” he continued. “I will take a small party and travel down the Daka river by canoe. The rest of my people will travel with you. My horses will meet me at Kpembe port.

“I shall need a few slaves as porters and cooks. That crazy young woman who tried to escape: can she cook? Then include her when you make your selection.”

* * *

Koranten Péte had hired three long dug-out canoes.

The season of floods had passed and the flow meandered sluggishly between sandbanks. Up on the high banks tall trees grew, like a row of giant spectators, watching the passing traffic. Each was different from its neighbour: one ablaze with red flowers; the next straight-boled with a head of dark green; and another top-heavy with enormous spreading branches.

The water was shallow. Soon the visible flow would stop completely and the river would turn into a series of ponds. The paddlers preferred to stand, one up front and one behind, and punt.

The sandbanks were infested with crocodiles. The only evidence of the presence of man was an occasional fishing weir, two rows of strong long funnel-shaped wicker baskets set in a frame supported by the trunk of a large tree which spanned the river.

Nandzi squatted half way along the second canoe, trailing a hand in the clear water. She could hardly remember when she had last been so idle; she had nothing to do but think. She wondered first about the trees, why no two seemed to be at all similar. Trees produced fruit and inside the fruit there were seeds. One might expect a parent tree to be surrounded by its children, but it was clearly not so. She could find no answer to that question and there was no one to ask for an explanation: the few words of Asante she had acquired were not adequate for such a complex inquiry.

Her mind turned to Itsho. Dear, dead Itsho. If only he could be sitting here with her in this canoe. He had often promised to take her on a trip like this down the Oti, to where it meets the great river she had heard talk of but had never seen. She looked up into the trees and there in the shadows she thought she could see his likeness. She waved to him.

The Asante freeman who was sitting behind her followed her gaze.

“Who are you waving to, woman?” he asked.

She turned round and smiled but she said nothing. She felt suffused with contentment. Not since Itsho's time had she felt so happy. At the back of her mind she knew that this mood could not last. All the more reason to enjoy it while it did. She would live for the present. The past, the past before her capture, held a rich store of memories, good memories, private memories to which she would return for solace in harsher times. As for the future, she refused to contemplate anything different from today's bliss.

It was late afternoon and the deep red-orange disc of the harmattan sun showed the trees in fantastic silhouette. In the leading canoe, Nana Koranten Péte was searching the banks anxiously for a site to make a bivouac for the night. The current carried his vessel into the first curve of a sharp reverse bend. Without warning, the front paddler thrust his paddle down into the river bed, bringing the vessel to a jolting halt, throwing the passengers forward. Then, almost in unison, they began to yell: “Elephants! Elephants!” The canoe had been swung round by the current and now they paddled furiously upstream, making for a mooring in the thick vegetation which grew along the bank. Nandzi's canoe, the paddlers adequately forewarned, approached slowly, soon followed by the last boat. They sat there, the three canoes alongside each other, tethered to an overhanging branch, catching their breath and watching the spectacle.

On the inside of the next meander there was a broad sandy beach. On this, and in the river itself, the mighty animals cavorted. They had been alerted by the human noises and a huge bull, with torn and punctured ears and one tusk shorter than the other, stood still, regarding them, head and trunk raised aggressively. The rest of the tribe continued their rolling and splashing in the water.

“No one knows,” philosophised the man behind her, “no one knows what the elephant ate to make it so big.”

Nandzi stored the words of the proverb away in her mind. She would consider its meaning later, but right now she was captivated by the sight of the calves at play. She had never seen a live elephant before.

“How I would love to have one of those babies,” she said excitedly.

Nana Koranten Péte, who was nearby, turned and smiled at her enthusiastic foolishness. There was something about this young woman that intrigued him.

“The tail of the elephant may be short,” he mused, recalling another proverb, “but it can still keep the flies away.”

“To work, to work,” he said aloud. “Soon it will be dark. You and you, bring cutlasses and cut a way so that we can climb the bank. We cannot pass by the elephants and we cannot wait until they decide to leave. We shall have to stop here for the night.”

“Nana, shall I take the bull?” begged one of the Asante guards, raising his flintlock.

“No way, young man!” replied his senior sternly. “Do you not know our customs at all? Only a foolhardy hunter starts an elephant hunt without making the proper ritual preparations.”

He shook his head wearily and said, to no one in particular, “The ignorance of our youth today! It makes me worry for the future of our people.”

* * *

It was dark by the time they had cut a ramp up the steep incline, made a small clearing in the undergrowth and fenced it with saplings.

The canoes were made fast and lashed together. Nana took his bath standing in the raft so made; and the other men followed. Nandzi and two older woman slaves busied themselves cooking a simple meal at the edge of the clearing while the men, freemen and slaves alike, sat round a roaring fire, waiting to be fed.

The forest enveloped them. A million fireflies danced in its mysterious darkness.

When the men had all been served, the women continued to hover around them, in case they were needed.

“Here,” laughed Nana Koranten Péte, handing Nandzi a flaming torch, “Go down to the river and take your bath. I know that you are not afraid of the bush in the dark, so you can take the lead.”