Now, I speak the English.
*****
Yacouba.
Yacouba, Senoufo...
Ancestral spirits, I offer futu, maqui, palm wine. Cooking in the village sweetens the air. Millet, maize, savory peanut sauce, peas, chicken braised with onions, dried cassava, yams. The summer sun casts long shadows as the day turns into night. I remember my mother preparing the grains in a huge wooden bowl. In my old age my parents return to mind.
Bamisa and his youngest son Bullah teach me a lesson: The same folk tale told in many parts of the world sometimes has a more optimistic and self respecting point of view when told by people from Côte d'Ivoire. I will tell you a story to show thus.
My peoples' history is rich with optimism despite its many terrible tragedies. Each has within it its opposite. It is up to us to choose.
Bamisa and his youngest son Bullah were traveling to market, practicing Dioula. They were going to sell a pony. Bamisa being a good father had his young son Bullah ride while he walked behind. A farmer passed saying to the son, "You are a wicked child, riding while your old father walks." Young Bullah dismounted and old Bamisa rode. No sooner had they made the switch, an old woman passed by saying "You selfish old man, you should let your little son ride!" A second old woman said "You both should ride!" Another farmer said "You are breaking the back if that pool little animal." So father and son carried the pony who struggled so much he fell into the river. When I read this story in another language the pony drowned, however when I
hear it in my own tongue, the pony swims to shore and gently returns to the father and son.
Bamisa turns to his youngest son Bullah and says, "There is much to be learned today. First we should prize and celebrate our pony not sell him. Second we must follow our own best judgement and not the casual advice of people who do not know the whole story. Third, we must not take personally the anger of other people. Realize how wonderful it is that we can learn from everyone and every situation. Fourth do not assume other people know more or are smarter than we are and by extension do not assume anything - expectations get in the way of what is actually occurring." And so Bamisa and his youngest son Bullah returned home where they founded a school of great wisdom and renown.
Yacouba, Senoufo...
There was a time when there were no stories on earth. They were all in the sky. Nyame, the sky god guarded them jealously. Anansi asked Nyame to share. Nyame said "If you bring me the longest cobra, the fiercest tiger and the bees who produce the sweetest honey, I will share stories with you and all the peoples of the earth."
Anansi went among the cobras. There in a dense patch of forest he heard talk of the longest cobra. He went to the wife of this cobra, making sure her husband was within earshot. He said "I have heard your husband is not really the longest of the king cobras." The husband slithered around hissing "Of course I am the longest. I will prove it to you." He attempted to straighten himself out on a fallen tree but since he could not, he told Anansi to tie him down to get a more accurate measurement. As soon as the king cobra was secured to the tree, Anansi spun a huge web and hoisted the arrogant cobra to the sky where Nyame eagerly devoured the snake for lunch.
Next Anansi sought out the fiercest tiger who had been terrorizing smaller animals. In its path, he rapidly dug a hole, covered it with grasses. When the tiger fell in, he offered to help him get out. Anansi spun a huge web lifting the tiger up to the ground. The tiger was grateful until he realized he was being lifted even higher than the ground... to the trees, above the trees - into the sky, where Nyame had him for dinner.
Anansi returned to earth seeking the bees who made the sweetest honey. He took a dried calabash filled with water and stood above their hive slowly pouring water into it. The bees thinking it was raining came out in a swarm. Anansi was waiting with a small web into which the bees unwittingly flew. With his third and final treasure secure, Anansi returned to Nyame who delightedly gave knowledge of all stories to Anansi who shared them with countless generations and on Mother Earth while Nyame ate honey to his hearts' delight.
****
Yacouba, Senoufo... Montagne -- nous parlons dans les montagnes-- Greetings, Oh land of hope.... in the mountains, in the savanna, in unity.... Senoufo, Yacouba. Yacoub... Yacou... Yac... ya... yaaaaa....
Yaaaaaaaaaaa... Yacouba, Senoufo, francophonie- Côte d'Ivoire... echoing ... resonating ... echoing... echo, ech- o- reverberating powerfully, resonating again and again through mountains and valleys.
Now, I speak the English.
My ancestors were of many peoples. They married, lived in harmony with one another and nature. My Baoule cousins had rectangular homes, my Senufo cousins built their homes in a circle around a courtyard. My Malinke uncle's mud-brick homes had cone-shaped straw roofs. My Dan cousins used red and white clay to paint murals on their mud-Mansions- yes other Western cultures have influenced us as well.
****
Below us are herds of elephants. Palm trees...
Yacouba, Senoufo, Baoulé... In the valleys, in the mountains... the names of these noble languages resonate, resound, gain power, resonance - echoing reverberations, amplified a thousandfold by nature's grandeur. I am a drop in the sea of green- a flicker of light caught in an instant of sunlight passing through a prism, reflected on a diaphanous lake. Oh my great ancestors. I thank you. I bow to your great deeds of self restraint.
This is not my story, oh great warriors and peacemakers of our past.
When I was a child not far from the bush, we always knew the narrator. We loved stories. I will tell you my story because I want that you should know the narrator. I will tell you my story in the voice given to me by my ancestors.
Yacouba, Senoufo, Baoulé... Betie... My voice is the legacy... of
ancestors who were African kings
Yacouba, Senoufo, Baoulé, Betie... their voices speak through me.
Now... I... speak.
Now is another time-- of course.
Now, I speak the English. Of course it is the English of a man from West Africa l, a big man who learned many languages before. Deliberately, giving each word it's due. I speak it in a measured voice not too dissimilar from my departed father's resonant, mellifluous bass.
Now, I speak the English.
The French, my mother tongue, I have spoken it almost exclusively in the forty years since I left Côte d'Ivoire. Of course my family also spoke Yacouba, Senoufo, Baoulé, Betie, Attie, Agni and when we traded in the market, Dioula. When I was young, I read voraciously in many languages.
****
Ancient weapons and bits of polished axes suggested people inhabited our country as early as the Upper Paleolithic (15,000 to 10,000 BC). It is possible my ancestors included some of those original peoples. - perhaps through intermarriage- though the people's who came latter, were the major forces of our land - the Ehotilé (Aboisso), Kotrowou (Fresco), Zéhiri (Grand Lahou), Ega and Diès (Divo).
My family has for a hundred generations told stories of caravan trade in salt and gold, tales of journeys through the Sahara and into the rain forest.
***
Adinkra symbol representing the omnipotence and omnipresence of Nyame
The Akan religion is called Akom from the twi word okom to mean hunger. The Akan people of Ghana and Ivory Coast consist of Ashanti people, Fante people and other ethnicities. Ashanti is the largest group and most influential among the Akans who have in common "social institutions and religious beliefs and rituals."[1]
The Akan believe in a Supreme Creator who takes on various names depending upon the region of worship. The deity is commonly referred to as Brekyirihunuade ("Almighty"). It is occasionally said that the Supreme god Nyame is a part of a triune deity or triad, which consists of Nyame, Nyankopon and Odmankoma.[2]
The Supreme Creator in the pantheon of the Ashanti is Nyame[3] (also Nyankopon), the omniscient, omnipotent sky father. His wife is Asase Yaa, also known as Mother Earth and considered second to God.[4] Together they brought forth two children: Bia and Tano.[5]
The Creator of the universe of the Ashanti is most often referred to as Odomankoma ("infinite inventor").[6] Other examples in the creation story include Oboadee ("creator") and Anansi Kokuroku ("the great designer" or "the great spider").[7]
The Ashanti believe abosom, or lower deities, more akin to spirits, assist humans on earth.
Anansi the Spider is a folk hero who is prominent in Ashanti folktales where he is depicted as a trickster. Abosom receive their power from the supreme creator and are most often connected to the world as it appears in its natural state. Priests serve individual abosom and act as mediators between the abosom and mankind. Many of those who believe in these traditions participate in daily prayer, which includes the pouring of libations as an offering to both the ancestors who are buried under the land and to the spirits who are everywhere.
Finally there are the Nsamanfo ("ancestors").
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivory_Coast
****
My parents' home near Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve was an Islamic village. It was peaceful, idyllic- until that terrible night. But of that more - later, in its own time.
Wikipedia says: "The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace is a Catholic minor basilica dedicated to Our Lady of Peace in Yamoussoukro, the administrative capital of Côte d'Ivoire." It is said to be the largest church in the world. Spacious, peaceful...
And peaceful it was - until. But I get ahead of myself.
Taï National Park where I took my sons one summer holiday has one of the few remaining rainforests in West Africa.
Another Wikipedia entry: "many families include Muslims and Christians living together. Religious tolerance is also part of government policy. The president personally contributes to the cost of building mosques and churches, and he encourages both Muslims and Christians to assist in projects undertaken by other religious communities. Religious practitioners have also earned substantial goodwill through the services they offer their communities, especially in health and education, and by their overall contribution to social harmony."
"living in harmony with the universe and that this harmony can be preserved by maintaining proper relationships with all beings."
****
In my youth I travelled a great deal, from the south coast of West Africa, where our country meets the North Atlantic to the borders with Liberia and Guinea on the west and Mali and Burkina Faso on the north and Ghana on the east. Being the youngest, my wanderlust was ignored and so benignly nurtured by my family.
I was fascinated by coastal lagoons in the southeast; the densely forested southwest and especially the savannah to the north.
I imbibed American hippie culture. My guitar accompanied me across cultural regions— Akan in the the southeast, Kru in the Atlantic West, Voltaic in the northeast and Mande in the northwest.
Abidjan, the administrative capital held less fascination for me. I felt similarly cool towards population centers Daloa and Man and Bouaké.
****
I wear a fez in my shop in Nice. My first fez was given to me by one of my wife's uncles, a man from Turkey. I wear it to honor other people's religions.
I live above the shop which I ran with my wife and two sons until they married and moved to Quebec.
My parents were school teachers. Their parents were farmers - good-- and lucky farmers - so we always had enough to eat.
I am nominally Christian. My wife Fatima was raised in Islam. Our sons were interested in Buddhism and married twin sisters - women who explored the ancient mysteries of the Toltec. In my family, it always seemed: the more remote a religion the greater the appeal. Not true for many people who prefer to go with the flow.
My earliest memory is of my parents on a Sunday afternoon, after Church, when all the chores were done, happily painting in oil on their twin canvases in their studio in our back yard. They were friends and colleagues at work, in raising our large family and in their hobbies. They were good managers- teaching each of us how to help the next younger child and how to do at least our share of chores. They were relaxed people or so it seemed. My father spoke quietly most times. The times he did not saw all those around transfixed by a booming bass voice emanating from a giant of a man. I inherited my father's size and power but not until recently have I known anything remotely resembling his self-assured restraint. It is no longer a mystery why I was, unlike my family, so angry.
My wife's father, Mustafa was on the autistic spectrum, today we might say mild Asperger syndrome. At an early age his parents recognized his organizational and mathematical gifts - perhaps genius. After teaching him all they could, young Mustafa managed the family accounts - they were traders of raw materials, initially of animal and plant origin. Later with the help of his own children he built the company into a medium sized publicly traded firm.
I would have liked to work in that company. I had a good head for business but their policy was to not hire anyone who had been a felon- even if the crime was committed as a teenager.
It made no sense: I had wonderful parents and family. Why did I steal a motorcycle? It's true I had thoughts to do a lot worse. And my companions, despite my vociferous objections were armed.
Why did I choose those friends? As the youngest of eight children you would think I would have absorbed all the good teaching of my parents, reinforced, distilled to its purest essence all the way down through my older siblings.
I startred having night terrors when I was an adolescent. No one wanted to hear about it. Psychology was not in vogue - Haaah...
It might have had to do with the brutal murder of our neighbor - something no child should witness. Something which should never have happened.
It was a beautiful summer night. We were playing outside as usual. My parents were away visiting my aunt who had recently given birth to her first child. My brothers and sisters were with them. I had a fever the day before so I was left home- to protect the newborn from infection. There was much discussion of this between my parents who knew the African tradition of exposing newborns to germs. They opted for what they thought was the safer Western approach. They rued the day.
I was happy to be on my own - the first time in my life.
So my fever- which had been only slight - was gone and I was playing with our neighbors' sons - a rough game of football. We also played rugby. My cousin made it to the Olympic team one year.
A peaceful, playful night. Until...
The blood curdling scream: We ran into the neighbor's house- what we saw was too terrible to describe. Yet I saw it over and over in my night terrors for the next five years. They stopped, when in prison I was lucky enough to meet a psychiatrist who "got it" - understood me, right away.
He was an American, African American, trained in a Detroit hospital who was interested not only in people, but it the origin of things. Robert Nelson Mugabe.
Dr. Mugabe did his undergraduate at Harvard - full scholarship so his parents need not have worked so hard to save for their only son's college education. His father belonged to the Nation of Islam and played alto saxophone in a band when he wasn't working his two jobs. His mother was a school teacher, like my parents. He had two sisters, nurse educators. Dr. Mugabe was an athlete, a gentleman and a scholar. More than anything he was a decent and caring human being.
This is not Dr. Mugabe's story. Nor is it the story of Africans in their diaspora. It is not the story of racism. It is however the story of how we become human- become human by transcending ourselves.
In prison, I started to paint. That's what my parents did. Painting helped me see my daemons and expedited my release from inner hell. It wasn't my medium though. I tried writing, drawing, singing, the guitar... mathematics. I wanted to build something like my father-in-law's company. So when I got out I opened a small shop selling painting supplies. I wanted to start with materials I knew something about. Soon I was selling the works of my customers. They bought supplies then I helped them sell their finished works. Then we started a gallery and a museum. We bought a famous - relatively famous painting to be our "draw." We produced videos about our artists, their lives - it was hard at times to not let myself become cynical. Human interest -human suffering the thing, perhaps the one thing that binds us all together. We all suffer in our own ways. Many people suffer subtly, endlessly through their entire lives. We wanted to alleviate at least a little of that pain. We created an interactive website for people to do their own art therapy. I sold the business for enough to fund my retirement, my children's and their children's college education and a few homes in various countries. I started a fund to help children who were traumatized by war and domestic violence and street crime. I got bored so I went back to Nice where I opened a little shop selling prints made by people who used our website - donating all the money to the fund - after paying royalties. Most of my customers speak English. So now, that is what I am doing.
Now, I speak the English.
************** The End. ***************