Yefon: The Red Necklace (15 page)

Although Kadoh was different, she always seemed out of it, in her own world, coming up with all these stories about people from faraway lands.

Approving glances were thrown in Pa’s direction, and he waved back in a natural manner at the eager spinsters. Pa was certainly a ladies’ man. He had this cultivated beauty about him, and his abundance obviously didn’t hurt his game. Some women turned their rumps in his direction, and he seemed to notice them for a bit.

All I kept thinking was “please no more wives.” I would literally kill myself if one more woman and her bunch of piglets came into my father’s house. None of these wives loved Pa the way Ma did. When Ma had married Pa, he was not wealthy. He was a young man hustling like the rest of the men in the village. I never gathered the strength to ask Pa why he married so many
women, but I hoped to one day understand.

It took us two dragging hours and by the time we arrived at
Kilum
, my feet were aching. My slippers had thinned so much that I could feel my cracked soles grappling against the cool mud. I liked the feeling even though Ma would not like it. I would normally get in trouble for dirtying myself, but I was sure she would be fine, at least, this once.

We passed by a road surrounded by two meadows. Guava seeds had been thrown around carelessly, and I tiptoed to avoid the messy paste under my feet. Pa offered me a wild guava to snack on and I chewed it as we passed through towering evergreens and eucalyptus trees, which bore a smell so strong that the whole path was dominated by their smell. A light hint of
khatikatih
was coming from a fireside somewhere close by.

A variety of different birds hovered over the trees, chirping sharply as we delved deeper. Their yellow tails twisted from left to right, almost in a melodious tune. Happy bees buzzed around. One flew over my head and I dodged it for I didn’t want to get stung. I could taste the honeydew in the air.

A group of Arab traders walked around us. I specifically remember seeing a short pregnant woman among them with firewood on her head. A log of wood fell from her bunch, and Pa urged me to help her. She blessed me, and after she had left, Pa patted me on the head and said,
“wirdze wir biy wir.”
This is a common wise saying among my people, which indicates that there is strength in numbers.

I didn’t wholly understand it’s meaning until much later in my life when I met some meaningful people like Kome, Nancy, and Father Tony, but I’ll cross that bridge later.

“This way,” Pa said, holding my hand as I jumped over a pool of muddy water. Before I could ask him where we were going, we were sliding down a windy mossy slide which took us to a meandering tunnel and then we were in the smelliest, darkest
mbve’
I had ever seen. The air was thick and heavy, and it smelled of dried country onions and sheep skin.

I heard the sound of a flickering match as Pa lit his lantern. The glow from the lamp revealed a murky habitat made of a million chipped stones. My sole touched something slimy. Carefully, with eyes squished at the thought of what it could be, I lifted my leg to reveal a flattened cockroach, its brownish juice
splattered all over my sole. I jumped into my Pa’s embrace yelping like a caveman. He chuckled fondly.

“Pa, what is this place?”

Looking around, prodding the
mbve’
walls to find an air crack, he said, “This is your birthday present.”

“But... I thought we were going hunting. What kind of animals would we find here?”

A giant rat mole skittered out from the wall and I screamed again, rushing for Pa’s trousers.

“It’s okay, wan. We will clean it, and make it look nice so that one day when you’re older, you will have a place where you can be alone.”

At the sound of those words, my eyes widened. I loved being alone! Anything, to be away from my demented family members! Just like all the other secret codes Pa was giving me, I didn’t fully understand what he meant, or wanted for or from me, but I loved him and trusted him along with everything that he had to offer. We spent the next few hours cleaning the place. We swept through what seemed like three thousand years of dead bugs and spider webs. An occasional spurt of wind blew through the
mbve’
as I swept close to a narrow opening.

Pa reached up and cleaned a narrow rock shelf. Old heavy square-shaped objects fell off the shelf causing me to sneeze. I had never seen these types of objects before, and my
sha
η
g
glowed brightly, causing me to smile.

“She likes them,” I said excitedly, sniffing one of them. The smell was so musty that I sneezed, but each of them had a different cover. Red. Brown. Blue.

My eyes couldn’t stop spinning as I opened one of them. Was this a type of leaf? But what kind of leaf had pictures on it? I flipped through the leaf-life object then my gaze met Pa’s kind brown eyes.

“What are these, Pa?”

Grinning widely, he replied, “Books,
wanle.”

“Books! What are they for?”

“Freedom. They bring you freedom,” he responded quietly. His eyes shone when he spoke.

“Freedom. From what, Pa?” I asked excitedly,

“Freedom for your mind,
wanle
,” he replied firmly.

Something about his answer resonated deep within me, even though I was not aware of the impact of these words on me, or how these words would one day become me and everything that I lived for.

“Can I touch them?” I looked at him excitedly.

“Yes, you can.”

I gazed upon these square objects for a long time. That was how my interest in books began. It was 1957, and this was the first time I had ever seen a book. I had just turned seventeen years old, and I had found my new obsession; One that my Pa had shown me, and my
sha
η
g
loved.

How can you know that you are missing out on something when you don’t even know that something is missing? I had never been to school. All these years, I walked past boys going to school while my sisters and I headed to the farm, and I had never given any thought to what was going on at the school. My interests had been hunting small rabbits and getting into trouble, now I was about to get into a new kind of trouble.

Pa laid out a goatskin, and grabbed one of the books. Then, he sat cross-legged with his back to the entrance of the
mbve’
. Without asking, I knew I had to sit by him, it only felt natural. Now what’s next? I wondered.

“Do you know why I became a trader?” he asked, after we had been sitting there for a few minutes.

I nodded my head rapidly.

Looking out, far ahead of us, he said, “Because I had a very difficult childhood, and I told myself that one day, I would be one of the wealthiest men in Shisong.” His jawline was rounding, but one could tell that it was once very chiseled.

I listened attentively as he spoke.

“Wanle
, you can be whatever you set your mind to, if you believe in it. Do you know that?”

I shrugged. “So I can be a termite if I wanted?”

Pa laughed, deeply as always. “Yefon, Yefon, my special child. You always have something smart to say, don’t you?” After a short pause, he asked, “Do you know how we got here?”

“Here? Yes, we walked from
Tiymenkan
, next thing I know we were down the tunnel wohoooooo….”

Pa cut me off with a serious look on his face so I became
more obliging.

“No, I mean this village. Do you know how the Nso people got here?”

“No, Pa, I do not know.”

Using a piece of chalk from the quarry in Shisong, he began drawing some images on the walls of the
mbve’
. He drew dutifully, as he spoke and I followed with interest.

“It was because of a woman called
Ngonnso,”
he first said.

Oh
Ngonnso
! I remembered that name. ”The owner of my
sha
η
g
?” I asked, touching the beads on my neck.

“And once upon a time, this
mbve’
,” Pa said smiling deeply. “They now both belong to you.”

Wow! Now, I really wanted to know more about this woman! It got darker outside as Pa told me the history of the Nso people.

“We came from a great civilization called the
Tikar. Princess Wou-Ten
of
Nganha
, at
Rifem
, founded it,” he explained.

“Wait, so you mean a woman built all of this?” I asked, secretly glad that somewhere women did exciting things. I wanted to be one of those women.

“Yes, Yento’. Exactly! This great nation was the brainchild of a woman,” Pa answered with eagerness in his eyes.

I was fascinated by this concept from the first time Pa uttered those words to me. How was that even possible? Did she have two heads? Was she an evil spirit? So many questions burned within me as I listened to Pa.

Downing a horn of
mbu
, Pa rinsed his mouth and spat out a choppy mess of kola nuts then smashed the glob with his shoe, covering it, by mixing it with some earth. He drew a stick figure on the wall of the
mbve’
.

“This guy is Tinki,” he pointed.

I nodded carefully, beckoning for him to continue.

“Tinki was the Fon of Tinkar. He died in 1387, and there was a very bloody battle for his throne. The throne was finally inherited by the rightful successor, Nchare yen, and eventually his half brother Mveing,” he said adding two stick figures.

I would never pass on my throne to my half sibling I plotted secretly, well except Kadoh. The rest were just…evil. The air grew thick with the smell of rotting wood in some parts of the
story and light like fluffy clouds in other parts. I wanted this moment to never end.

“Mveing wasn’t a good guy. Because of his blood thirsty attitude towards his perceived rivals, his own blood brothers, Mbe and Nchare Yen, decided to leave with their followers.”

“So where does
Ngonnso
come in?” I wailed, excitedly, but Pa was a good storyteller, he knew when to pause for a dramatic effect.

“
Ngonnso
was their older sister. When she tried to leave with them, they refused because she was a married woman, so Nchare Yen and Mbe left without her.”

Yes, I could believe that. Men would do that. “Did she stay behind? Did she go? What happened?” I asked.

Pa’s deep baritone laughter filled the
mbve’
, a familiar sense of love burned within me. “You see,
Ngonnso
was special! She didn’t just sit back and let fate be upon her. She started secretly to follow them with her apostles.”

I found myself thinking that I would have probably done the same thing.

“When her brothers found out, they cut the bridge over the Mape River, which is a tributary of Mbam.”

I gaped, hands on my mouth. How malevolent! How could they leave their own sister behind?

“So what happened, Pa?” I urged, with interest. How does this story end? I really wanted to know, I thought.

A low groan of wind blew through the
mbve’
. It blew out Pa’s bush lamp, and he relit it. His eyes shone like gold through the lantern, his hair like a roman god.

“
Ngonnso
was unable to cross the Mape, but she didn’t give up! You know what she did?”

“What?” I shouted, heart pounding fast, my
sha
η
g
scorching on my chest.

“She moved northwest along the banks of the river Mape and founded the Nso dynasty.
Ngonnso
was the mother of the Nso people, and that is how we got here”.

The sound of the wind seemed to become hollow and Pa heaved a tired sigh. Opening his bamboo
nkem
, he pulled out a small barrel of fresh palm wine, or
mbu
, and refilled his empty horn. He downed it, burped then refilled it again. He asked me if I
wanted to try a little, but I was too distracted to even be excited by that.

This story changed my life. A fire had already started to burn inside my teenage chest.

“She made it. Even after her brothers left her alone to die.” I muttered to myself over and over again.

Pa smiled at me and patted his belly. He studied me solidly for a short moment, before drawing one last stick figure on the wall. I craned my neck several times trying to see what he was drawing, and no matter how many times I asked which character in the story that was, he remained silent and focused until he was finished. Without further probing on my part, he began to speak again.

”When you were born, your crown was filled with hair and the midwives said you wouldn’t make it. Your mother was miserable and bleeding. We were all afraid, but when I carried you in my arms, you were so feisty. Your eyes were like two suns and you squirmed around in my arms, and I knew that you were the one.”

“The one to do what, Pa?” I squealed impatiently.

Pa cocked his head to one side making a funny shadow behind him. “One day, you’ll find out,” he responded casually. I stood up to examine the drawing on the wall. It was a young girl with a
sha
η
g
on her neck. Instinctively, my hands went up to feel mine, and then it hit me! I was the character on the wall—the last character in the story!

“Is that a picture of me, Pa?” I asked, my teenage brain twisting in all kinds of directions to decipher the puzzle before me. Pa only smiled, before responding.

“Create your own adventure, Yento, something positive. You are a fighter, like Ngonnso. Fighters are brave. Brave people stand up for what they believe in. They never give up.” Those were the last words Pa said to me that day.

Those words have never left me. That moment is with me every day as I go through life’s tribulations.

-8-

YENLA DZE NTOV

Ma had always favored Yenla more than the rest of us, but I hadn’t always known that she often neglected me in order to make her weaker child feel loved.

For a long time, I never understood why people whispered “ill omen” when Yenla and I went to play with other children in the evenings. Neither did I know why some of them would recoil if Yenla tried to touch them, as if she were a plague of some sort.