balafons—melodious instruments made of gourds tied beneath wooden blocks of various lengths that were struck with mallets—little crowds would gather around them to clap and listen. While they played, Kunta and Sitafa and their mates, back from their goatherding, would troop about blowing bamboo flutes, ringing bells, and rattling dried gourds.
Most men relaxed now, talking and squatting about in the shade of the baobab. Those of Omoro’s age and younger kept respectfully apart from the Council of Elders, who were making their annual prefestival decisions on important village business. Occasionally two or three of the younger men would rise, stretch themselves, and go ambling about the village with their small fingers linked loosely in the age-old yayo manner of African men.
But a few of the men spent long hours alone, patiently carving on pieces of wood of different sizes and shapes. Kunta and his friends would sometimes even put aside their slings just to stand watching as the carvers created terrifying and mysterious expressions on masks soon to be worn by festival dancers. Others carved human or animal figures with the arms and legs very close to the body, the feet flat, and the heads erect.
Binta and the other women snatched what little relaxation they could around the village’s new well, where they came every day for a cool drink and a few minutes of gossip. But with the festival now upon them, they still had much to do. Clothing had to be finished, huts to be cleaned, dried foods to be soaked, goats to be slaughtered for roasting. And above all, the women had to make themselves look their very best for the festival.
Kunta thought that the big tomboyish girls he had so often seen scampering up trees looked foolish now, the way they went
about acting coy and fluttery. They couldn’t even walk right. And he couldn’t see why the men would turn around to watch them—clumsy creatures who couldn’t even shoot a bow and arrow if they tried.
Some of these girls’ mouths, he noticed, were swelled up to the size of a fist, where the inner lips had been pricked with thorns and rubbed black with soot. Even Binta, along with every other female in the village over twelve rains old, was nightly boiling and then cooling a broth of freshly pounded fudano leaves in which she soaked her feet—and the pale palms of her hands—to an inky blackness. When Kunta asked his mother why, she told him to run along. So he asked his father, who told him, “The more blackness a woman has, the more beautiful she is.”
“But why?” asked Kunta.
“Someday,” said Omoro, “you will understand.”
CHAPTER 12
K unta leaped up when the tobalo sounded at dawn. Then he, Sitafa, and their mates were running among grown-ups to the silk-cotton tree, where the village drummers were already pounding on the drums, barking and shouting at them as if they were live things, their hands a blur against the taut goatskins. The gathering crowd of costumed villagers, one by one, soon began to respond with slow movements of their arms, legs, and bodies, then faster and faster, until almost everyone had joined the dancing.
Kunta had seen such ceremonies for many plantings and harvests, for men leaving to hunt, for weddings, births, and deaths, but the dancing had never moved him—in a way he neither understood nor was able to resist—as it did now. Every adult in the village seemed to be saying with his body something that was in his or her mind alone. Among the whirling, leaping, writhing people, some of them wearing masks, Kunta could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw tough old Nyo Boto suddenly shrieking wildly, jerking both of her hands before her face, then lurching backward in fear at some unseen terror. Snatching up an imaginary burden, she thrashed and kicked the air until she crumpled down.
Kunta turned this way and that, staring at different people he knew among the dancers. Under one of the horrifying masks, Kunta recognized the
Most men relaxed now, talking and squatting about in the shade of the baobab. Those of Omoro’s age and younger kept respectfully apart from the Council of Elders, who were making their annual prefestival decisions on important village business. Occasionally two or three of the younger men would rise, stretch themselves, and go ambling about the village with their small fingers linked loosely in the age-old yayo manner of African men.
But a few of the men spent long hours alone, patiently carving on pieces of wood of different sizes and shapes. Kunta and his friends would sometimes even put aside their slings just to stand watching as the carvers created terrifying and mysterious expressions on masks soon to be worn by festival dancers. Others carved human or animal figures with the arms and legs very close to the body, the feet flat, and the heads erect.
Binta and the other women snatched what little relaxation they could around the village’s new well, where they came every day for a cool drink and a few minutes of gossip. But with the festival now upon them, they still had much to do. Clothing had to be finished, huts to be cleaned, dried foods to be soaked, goats to be slaughtered for roasting. And above all, the women had to make themselves look their very best for the festival.
Kunta thought that the big tomboyish girls he had so often seen scampering up trees looked foolish now, the way they went
about acting coy and fluttery. They couldn’t even walk right. And he couldn’t see why the men would turn around to watch them—clumsy creatures who couldn’t even shoot a bow and arrow if they tried.
Some of these girls’ mouths, he noticed, were swelled up to the size of a fist, where the inner lips had been pricked with thorns and rubbed black with soot. Even Binta, along with every other female in the village over twelve rains old, was nightly boiling and then cooling a broth of freshly pounded fudano leaves in which she soaked her feet—and the pale palms of her hands—to an inky blackness. When Kunta asked his mother why, she told him to run along. So he asked his father, who told him, “The more blackness a woman has, the more beautiful she is.”
“But why?” asked Kunta.
“Someday,” said Omoro, “you will understand.”
CHAPTER 12
K unta leaped up when the tobalo sounded at dawn. Then he, Sitafa, and their mates were running among grown-ups to the silk-cotton tree, where the village drummers were already pounding on the drums, barking and shouting at them as if they were live things, their hands a blur against the taut goatskins. The gathering crowd of costumed villagers, one by one, soon began to respond with slow movements of their arms, legs, and bodies, then faster and faster, until almost everyone had joined the dancing.
Kunta had seen such ceremonies for many plantings and harvests, for men leaving to hunt, for weddings, births, and deaths, but the dancing had never moved him—in a way he neither understood nor was able to resist—as it did now. Every adult in the village seemed to be saying with his body something that was in his or her mind alone. Among the whirling, leaping, writhing people, some of them wearing masks, Kunta could scarcely believe his eyes when he saw tough old Nyo Boto suddenly shrieking wildly, jerking both of her hands before her face, then lurching backward in fear at some unseen terror. Snatching up an imaginary burden, she thrashed and kicked the air until she crumpled down.
Kunta turned this way and that, staring at different people he knew among the dancers. Under one of the horrifying masks, Kunta recognized the
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