Life is sweet at Kumansenu

                                                                       - Abioseh Nicol, Sierra Leone (1924-1994)

I. Literal Comprehension

            Context: This story is written by Abioseh Nicol, Sierra Leone (1924-1994), whose original name was Davidson Nicol. He was doctorate in medicine and biochemistry from Christ’s College, Cambridge.

            In a small African village, Kumansenu, with a few houses with thatched and corrugated zinc roofs, Bola, an old widow and her granddaughter, Asi, a seven-year-old girl lived. When she was a young woman, Bola gave birth to six boy children one after another regularly in every two years. However, none of them survived. Musa, the village magician, had advised her and her husband to break the bones of the corpse and to mangle it so that it couldn’t come back to torment them again, but she had refused it. She had secretly marked the corpse with a sharp pointed stick at the left buttock before it was buried. When her seventh son, Meji, was born, she checked the mark and found it at left buttock of the baby.

            Now, Meji was thirty years old and a second-class officer in a government office in the town ninety miles away. When he gave Bola and Asi a surprise visit, he was wearing short-sleeved, open necked white shirt and grey gabardine trousers, a gold wrist watch and brown suede shoes. He looked grayish brown in colour. He was wearing a red handkerchief around his neck, and his voice was hoarse.

            Bola cried with happiness at his visit. She wanted to call the villagers and organize a big party, but Meji didn’t want the villagers know about his arrival. He said he had returned just to share happy moment with his mother and his daughter, and he didn’t want to share it with others.

            Meji slept all afternoon till evening when Bola brought food into his room and took the empty basins away. Then, he again slept until the next morning.

            The next morning, Saturday morning, he took Asi for a long walk through a deserted path and up into the hills. He bought her delicious foods. While returning, Asi asked three questions: Why he hadn’t got shadow, why his watch had stopped at twelve o’clock, and why he was wearing a scarf round his neck. He answered all the questions jokingly so that Asi would be amused.

            In the late evening, Bola, Meji, and Asi went to Meji’s father’s grave to offer visit. She talked to the grave showing their son, a respectable government clerk, and offering wine to the dead soul. She threw four kola nuts into the air and they fell on the grave. Three fell with the flat face upwards and one with its flat face downwards. It meant the dead soul was not listening to her. She repeated the action many times, but all her attempts went in vain. Then, Meji performed the action successfully.

            That night, returning home, Bola discovered that Meji had thrown all the food cooked by her for him out of his room’s window. There was also a smell of decay in the room, but Meji said it might be the smell of a dead rat that he would clear away before going to bed.

            Bola woke up at midnight when she heard knocking. Meji wasn’t in his room. When she opened the door quickly, she found him standing on the veranda. Surprisingly, he was not wet in the heavy rain. He said he had to go away, and thanked Bola for giving him a chance to be born. He said that life was sweet and ran into the heavy rain.

            On Saturday afternoon, Mr Addai came to meet Bola. Some villagers also came to her house. They informed her of Meji’s death in town. Her daughter-in-law, Asi’s mother, said her son had died on Friday noon and had been buried on Saturday evening. Due to the hot season, they couldn’t bring the corpse to the village for performing funeral rites. When he was in the office, he pulled up the window to look out and call the messenger. Meanwhile, the sash broke and the window fell down breaking his neck and killing him at once.

            Asi’s mother gave her her father’s last gift, a small gold locket, bought only the previous week for Christmas. Asi said her father had already taught her how to open the locket. Even the village smith couldn’t open it, but Asi opened the locket with her name in it.

            Musa, the village magician, who had become old and weak now, scolded Bola whispering in her ear for not obeying him to crush the dead baby’s bones thirty-one years back. He blamed her of being naughty and stubborn.

            Bola protested him and said that she was happy to have given her son a chance to be reborn because life is sweet.

II. Interpretation

            This story might be a statement about the power of love. Despite the fact that the village magician advised her to break the bones of the dead body before burying it so that it wouldn’t haunt her as another baby, Bola didn’t do that. Instead, she marked at the left buttock and left it without any further harm. So, the spirit of her seventh son, Meji, was grateful to her for her kindness. After the death, Meji visited her in the spiritual form and thanked her for it. In another word, the story is also an example of the gratitude shown by children towards their parents.

III. Critical Thinking

            Though it is a heartrending story about the love and gratitude between parents and their children, there are many glimpses which present impossible events. How is it possible for a dead man to visit his mother and daughter? How can he talk and act like a living person? In fact, I don’t believe in the existence of the spirits. Therefore, it’s just a story for fun.

IV. Assimilation

            This story has given me an insight upon the power of love. If parents love their children with true heart and fulfill their duties, children remain grateful to them. They show their gratitude even after the death. Thus, I’ve known how much powerful love can be.