Girls at War Read Online Free PDF Page B

last is at rest.” Anyone hearing this name knew at once that its owner was either an only child or an only son. Chike was an only son. His parents had had five daughters before him.
    Like his sisters Chike was brought up “in the ways of the white man,” which meant the opposite of traditional. Amos had many years before bought a tiny bell with which he summoned his family to prayers and hymn-singing first thing in the morning and last thing at night. This was one of the ways of the white man. Sarah taught her children not to eat in their neighbours’ houses because “they offered their food to idols.” And thus she set herself against the age-old custom which regarded children as the common responsibility of all so that, no matter what therelationship between parents, their children played together and shared their food.
    One day a neighbour offered a piece of yam to Chike, who was only four years old. The boy shook his head haughtily and said, “We don’t eat heathen food.” The neighbour was full of rage, but she controlled herself and only muttered under her breath that even an
Osu
was full of pride nowadays, thanks to the white man.
    And she was right. In the past an
Osu
could not raise his shaggy head in the presence of the free-born. He was a slave to one of the many gods of the clan. He was a thing set apart, not to be venerated but to be despised and almost spat on. He could not marry a free-born, and he could not take any of the titles of his clan. When he died, he was buried by his kind in the Bad Bush.
    Now all that had changed, or had begun to change. So that an
Osu
child could even look down his nose at a free-born, and talk about heathen food! The white man had indeed accomplished many things.
    Chike’s father was not originally an
Osu
, but had gone and married an
Osu
woman in the name of Christianity. It was unheard of for a man to make himself
Osu
in that way, with his eyes wide open. But then Amos was nothing if not mad. The new religion had gone to his head. It was like palm-wine. Some people drank it and remained sensible. Others lost every sense in their stomach.
    The only person who supported Amos in his mad marriage venture was Mr. Brown, the white missionary, who lived in a thatch-roofed, red-earth-walled parsonage and was highly respected by the people, not because of his sermons, but because of a dispensary he ran in one of his rooms. Amos had emerged fromMr. Brown’s parsonage greatly fortified. A few days later he told his widowed mother, who had recently been converted to Christianity and had taken the name of Elizabeth. The shock nearly killed her. When she recovered, she went down on her knees and begged Amos not to do this thing. But he would not hear; his ears had been nailed up. At last, in desperation, Elizabeth went to consult the diviner.
    This diviner was a man of great power and wisdom. As he sat on the floor of his hut beating a tortoise shell, a coating of white chalk round his eyes, he saw not only the present, but also what had been and what was to be. He was called “the man of the four eyes.” As soon as old Elizabeth appeared, he cast his stringed cowries and told her what she had come to see him about. “Your son has joined the white man’s religion. And you too in your old age when you should know better. And do you wonder that he is stricken with insanity? Those who gather ant-infested faggots must be prepared for the visit of lizards.” He cast his cowries a number of times and wrote with a finger on a bowl of sand, and all the while his
nwifulu
, a talking calabash, chatted to itself. “Shut up!” he roared, and it immediately held its peace. The diviner then muttered a few incantations and rattled off a breathless reel of proverbs that followed one another like the cowries in his magic string.
    At last he pronounced the cure. The ancestors were angry and must be appeased with a goat. Old Elizabeth performed the rites, but her son remained insane and