Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [12]
Afterward, for many days, Kunta hardly ate or slept, and he would not go anywhere with his kafo mates. So grieved was he that Omoro, one evening, took him to his own hut, and there beside his bed, speaking to his son more softly and gently than he ever had before, told him something that helped to ease his grief.
He said that three groups of people lived in every village. First were those you could see—walking around, eating, sleeping, and working. Second were the ancestors, whom Grandma Yaisa had now joined.
“And the third people—who are they?” asked Kunta.
“The third people,” said Omoro, “are those waiting to be born.”
CHAPTER 7
The rains had ended, and between the bright blue sky and the damp earth, the air was heavy with the fragrance of lush wild blooms and fruits. The early mornings echoed with the sound of the women’s mortars pounding millet and couscous and groundnuts—not from the main harvest, but from those early-growing seeds that the past year’s harvest had left living in the soil. The men hunted, bringing back fine, plump antelope, and after passing out the meat, they scraped and cured the hides. And the women busily collected the ripened reddish mangkano berries, shaking the bushes over cloths spread beneath, then drying the berries in the sun before pounding them to separate the delicious futo flour from the seeds. Nothing was wasted. Soaked and boiled with pounded millet, the seeds were cooked into a sweetish breakfast gruel that Kunta and everyone else welcomed as a seasonal change of diet from their usual morning meal of couscous porridge.
As food became more plentiful each day, new life flowed into Juffure in ways that could be seen and heard. The men began to walk more briskly to and from their farms, pridefully inspecting their bountiful crops, which would soon be ready for harvesting. With the flooded river now subsiding rapidly, the women were rowing daily to the faro and pulling out the last of the weeds from among the tall, green rows of rice.
And the village rang again with the yelling and laughing of the children back at play after the long hungry season. Bellies now filled with nourishing food, sores dried into scabs and falling away, they dashed and frolicked about as if possessed. One day they would capture some big scarab dung beetles, line them up for a race, and cheer the fastest to run outside a circle drawn in the dirt with a stick. Another day, Kunta and Sitafa Silla, his special friend, who lived in the hut next to Binta’s, would raid a tall earth mound to dig up the blind, wingless termites that lived inside, and watch them pour out by the thousands and scurry frantically to get away.
Sometimes the boys would rout out little ground squirrels and chase them into the bush. And they loved nothing better than to hurl stones and shouts at passing schools of small, brown, long-tailed monkeys, some of which would throw a stone back before swinging up to join their screeching brothers in the topmost branches of a tree. And every day the boys would wrestle, grabbing each other, sprawling down, grunting, scrambling and springing up to start all over again, each one dreaming of the day when he might become one of Juffure’s champion wrestlers and be chosen to wage mighty battles with the champions of other villages during the harvest festivals.
Adults passing anywhere near the children would solemnly pretend not to see nor hear as Sitafa, Kunta, and the rest of their kafo growled and roared like lions, trumpeted like elephants, and grunted like