Under African Skies Read Online Free PDF Page A

I reached home with the lady, I changed her to a lady as she was before and also myself changed to man as well. When her father saw that I brought his daughter back home, he was exceedingly glad and said thus: “You are the ‘Father of gods’ as you had told me before.”
    But as the lady was now at home, the cowrie on her neck did not stop making a terrible noise once, and she could not talk to anybody; she showed only that she was very glad she was at home. Now I had brought the lady but she could not talk, eat, or loose away the cowrie on her neck, because the terrible noise of the cowrie did not allow anybody to rest or sleep at all.
    THERE REMAIN GREATER TASKS AHEAD
    Now I began to cut the rope of the cowrie from her neck and to make her talk and eat, but all my efforts were in vain. At last I tried my best to cut off the rope of the cowrie; it only stopped the noise, but I was unable to loose it away from her neck.
    When her father saw all my trouble, he thanked me greatly and repeated again that as I called myself “Father of gods who could do anything in this world” I ought to do the rest of the work. But when he said so, I was very ashamed and thought within myself that if I return to the Skulls’ hole or house, they might kill me and the forest was very dangerous travel always, again I could not go directly to the Skulls in their hole and ask them how to loose away the cowrie which was tied on the lady’s neck and to make her talk and eat.
    BACK TO THE SKULL’S FAMILY’S HOUSE
    On the third day after I had brought the lady to her father’s house, I returned to the endless forest for further investigation. When there remained about one mile to reach the hole of these Skulls, there I saw the very Skull who the lady had followed from the market as a complete gentleman to the hole of Skull’s family’s house, and at the same time that I saw him like that, I changed into a lizard and climbed a tree which was near him.
    He stood before two plants, then he cut a single opposite leaf from the opposite plant; he held the leaf with his right hand and he was saying thus: “As this lady was taken from me, if this opposite leaf is not given her to eat, she will not talk forever.” After that he threw the leaf down on the ground. Then he cut another single compound leaf with his left hand and said that if this single compound is not given to this lady, to eat, the cowrie on her neck could not be loosened away forever and it would be making a terrible noise forever.
    After he said so, he threw the leaf down at the same spot, then he jumped away. So after he had jumped very far away (luckily, I was there when he was doing all these things, and I saw the place that he threw both leaves separately), then I changed myself to a man as before, I went to the place that he threw both leaves, then I picked them up and I went home at once.
    But at the same time that I reached home, I cooked both leaves separately and gave her to eat; to my surprise the lady began to talk at once. After that, I gave her the compound leaf to eat for the second time and immediately
she ate that too, the cowrie which was tied on her neck by the Skull loosened away by itself, but it disappeared at the same time. So when the father and mother saw the wonderful work which I had done for them, they brought fifty kegs of palm wine for me, they gave me the lady as wife and two rooms in that house in which to live with them. So I saved the lady from the complete gentleman in the market who was afterwards reduced to a Skull and the lady became my wife since that day. This was how I got a wife.
    Â 
    â€”1952

Camara Laye
    (1928—80) GUINEA
    On Tuesday, February 5, 1980, Léopold Sédar Senghor, the president of Senegal and one of the earliest proponents of négritude , announced over Radio Senegal that Camara Laye, the Guinean novelist, had died the day before. The fifty-two-year-old writer had