This is a beautiful piece, Karamba. You might consider writing and
collecting similar pieces, for a short stories anthology. This kind of
village perspective is a very rich ingridient, which can be skillfully used
in our literary works. For those of us attempting to write within a village
set up that is more diluted with all the trapping of modernity, we have to
use our imigination to create a semblance of the kind of village environment
you have so nicely elicited. I will give you a sample of such a writing.
*
The village arena, a wide expanse of sandy soil as exhausted as the dry
Harmattan wind, was almost the size of a football field. It was the place
where the village's cultural and social events took place. A seeming place, a
playground of compromise and unity, where the village's disputes had resolved
amicably. Such disputes always dissipated into thin air.
On this burning July evening, a fire of excitement engulfed the village,
as the arena started to teem with people. Men and women clad in light outfits
to beat the extreme hot temperature, darted to the arena like ants marching
to a royal dinner. They wanted to watch the much talked-about event of the
evening. It was a wrestling match between two selected youth groups,
recruited from the most robust, athlectic-looking young men in the village.
The moonlit night punctuated the joyful laughter of the people, like the
clattering of iron chains worn by grumpy convicts.
It was not quite often that the village organized wrestling matches.
Moreover, Christekunda had a very remote and gloomy surrounding. Most of the
villagers were always indoors long before midnight. Only those who found
solace in the eerie dark trekked the dusty and sandy streets to carry out
their nightly errands.
During this time also, in the rainy season, tall, thorny grasses
defiantly adorned almost every scrap of land; except, of course, the streets
and areas trodden constantly, and became as barren as the shinning bald on a
person's head.
During this time also, the mosquitoes and other insects, especially the
very tiny ones, became a terrible nightmare when the moon came out. The tiny
ones, the mbutubutu, forayed into the hair and nostril, a painful discomfort
on the helpless villagers who smoked them out. As the moon radiated its
brightness on the murky village, all the villagers came out to celebrate like
vultures hovering over a rotting carcass. The village suddenly enveloped in
smoke, as people alighted brushes of wood and wet grass everywhere to ward
off the small pestering insects.
The moonlit night, anticipated as eagerly as a groom waiting for his
bride, was always a happy occasion; especially, when there was an
accompanying gentle and chilling breeze that purged out the small annoying
insects.
Samba had recently moved to the village. He was a young, thoughtful,
dreamy lad who seemed to carry the world under his shoulders. He was acutely
aware of his youthful responsibilties, even at the tender age of sixteen, and
avoided making the mistakes that others had already committed, especially his
older siblings. He was very sensitive and emotive to the difficulties that
his family encountered, especially his mother. He remembered the numerous
times he locked himself inside his mother's bedroom, and cried his heart out
because he couldn't bear to see his mother suffer so much to provide for them.
He watched helplessly as his family wallowed in poverty, barely making
a living. He pained, distressed, and burnt himself with anger and reproach,
not being able to help mitigate the family circumstance. But he was young,
too young, hardly out of high school. One thing he knew for sure, though; he
had to be different. He had to succeed where his other siblings had failed.
He was now the only hope for his family. He matured in his thinking and was
always far ahead of his age. He knew every action had its consequences, and
one was always aware of the consequences before the action was perpetrated.
He, therefore, decided not to commit the action once he knew what the
consequences would be. Thus formed the basis of a fundamental principle that
guided his outlook. As such he avioded any meaningful relationship with women
beyond platonic affections.
He had also nurtured a visionary appeal in his consummate readings. He
was fascinated by the desire to gain more and more knowledge, and exposed
himself to reading as widely as he could. He like entering into debates with
his peers espousing the ideals and philosophies of great thinkers that he
hardly understood. However, he always tried to be original and creative. He
saw it as a moral responsibilty to involve himself in situations in which he
could have made a tremendous difference; he felt that he was socially and
morally obligated to improve the conditions of life of the people around him,
especially his family and his community. Thus formed the basis of family and
societal values that created the standards upon which he judged himself.
When Samba moved to the village, with the cunning of a fox, he had
immerse himself in the effort to animate it; a hollow and sullen-faced
crone, who wore her emptiness like a chain of sorrow. The penetrating
darkness was the village's only ally. He first broached the idea of the
wrestling contest, and contributed immensely in putting it together.
Wrestling contest, especially at night, had been a captivating
phenomenon in most villages in the provinces; it was usually organized
between villages. It served not only to bring the villages together, but also
secured the cultural and societal bonds that existed between the people.
There was drumming on both sides that accompanied such contest, and the host
village rallied with all sorts of gimmicks to support their wrestling team.
The atmosphere in the village was festive, and the communal spirit that
befogged the air quite rejuvenating.
Samba had intended to inject the same kind of communal spirit in the
village. The wrestling contest, however, couldn't be organize between
villages, since Christekunda was an isolated hamlet of mud houses nestled
between sprawling towns. He had attempted to turn the fountain of joy in this
dull village.
Within the span of a few years after he moved to the village,
Christekunda had transformed from a detached, sparsely populated village of
mud houses, to one that witnessed the forceful intusion of modernity. As if a
giant moster trampled angrily through the village, the mud houses had crushed
back into the dust from which they came. Like a young virgin deflowered at
her wedding night, the village grew from a contended child into a
sophisticated adult.
When Samba's parents moved from Banjul to Christekunda, rudimentary
farming was the basic stock of the village. With her thatched mud houses and
scanty corrugated iron roofs, glistening in the piercing sun like a
glittering armor, the village was untouched by the seeds of development. It
had taken firm root in the surrounding towns and villages.
However, Christekunda had developed so rapidly. It was difficult to
fathom the measure of progress achieved. The proximity of the village to
Banjul and its environs accentuated the rapid growth of the village, like the
burning of dry grass in the hot sun. The village enticingly spread her arms
of warmth and tranquility, as people moved away from the congestion of the
city to the relative serenity of the suburbs. Nonetheless, there was still no
electricity and water supply; the villagers fetched water from wells, and lit
their houses with hurricane lamps and candles.
Everywhere you turned around in the village, cement houses stood erected
as more and more plots of land demarcated for residential use. The need for
social amenities became extremely urgent. Samba helped energized most of the
youths who participated actively in development and community programs.
Through the communal efforts of the people, and with material assistance from
non-governmental agencies, the village built her her first self-help project;
a primary school.
The village basked in a sea of progress as gradual as the crested waves.
However, with the influx of people settling from diverse background,
tribalism and partisan politics, became more pronounced. They were the canker
worms that seeped strenuously into the very fiber of the village. The crafty
and egocentric politicians, who fed like blood sucking lice on the ignorance
and naivete of the people, came shamelessly marching in. They aroused the
tribal and political sentiments of the people that instilled distrust and
animosity. They only cared about being elected to public office. In the midst
of the political whirlwind that blew in the air, the village alkalo Diatta,
wittingly manipulated events to his advantage. Samba, however, determined to
change the political orientation of the people to counter this new
encroachment......
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