Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [14]
Not daring to look up at the moon, the people hurried home and fearfully went to bed. But at intervals through the night, the talk of distant drums echoed the appeal of Juffure for a magic man in other villages as well. Shivering beneath his cowskin, Kunta guessed that their new moon was shrouded, too.
The next day, the men of Omoro’s age had to help the younger men of the village to guard their nearly ripened fields against the seasonal plague of hungry baboons and birds. The second-kafo boys were told to be especially vigilant as they grazed the goats, and the mothers and grandmothers hovered closer than they normally would over the toddlers and the babies. The first kafo’s biggest children, those the size of Kunta and Sitafa, were instructed to play a little way out past the village’s tall fence, where they could keep a sharp lookout for any stranger approaching the travelers’ tree, not far distant. They did, but none came that day.
He appeared on the second morning—a very old man, walking with the help of a wooden staff and bearing a large bundle on his bald head. Spotting him, the children raced shouting back through the village gate. Leaping up, old Nyo Boto hobbled over and began to beat on the big tobalo drum that brought the men rushing back to the village from their fields a moment before the magic man reached the gate and entered Juffure.
As the villagers gathered around him, he walked over to the baobab and set down his bundle carefully on the ground. Abruptly squatting, he then shook from a wrinkled goatskin bag a heap of dried objects—a small snake, a hyena’s jawbone, a monkey’s teeth, a pelican’s wingbone, various fowls’ feet, and strange roots. Glancing about, he gestured impatiently for the hushed crowd to give him more room; and the people moved back as he began to quiver all over—clearly being attacked by Juffure’s evil spirits.
The magic man’s body writhed, his face contorted, his eyes rolled wildly, as his trembling hands struggled to force his resisting wand into contact with the heap of mysterious objects. When the wand’s tip, with a supreme effort, finally touched, he fell over backward and lay as if struck by lightning. The people gasped. But then he slowly began to revive. The evil spirts had been driven out. As he struggled weakly to his knees, Juffure’s adults—exhausted but relieved—went running off to their huts and soon returned with gifts to press upon him. The magic man added these to his bundle, which was already large and heavy with gifts from previous villages, and soon he was on his way to answer the next call. In his mercy, Allah had seen fit to spare Juffure once again.
CHAPTER 9
Twelve moons had passed, and with the big rains ended once again, The Gambia’s season for travelers had begun. Along the network of walking paths between its villages came enough visitors—passing by or stopping off in Juffure—to keep Kunta and his playmates on the lookout almost every day. After alerting the village when a stranger appeared, they would rush back out to meet each visitor as he approached the travelers’ tree. Trooping boldly alongside him, they would chatter away inquisitively as their sharp eyes hunted for any signs of his mission or profession. If they found any, they would abruptly abandon the visitor and race back ahead to tell the grown-ups in that day’s hospitality hut. In accordance with ancient tradition, a different family in each village would be chosen every day to offer food and shelter to arriving visitors at no cost for as long as they wished to stay before continuing their journey.
Having been entrusted with the responsibility of serving as the village lookouts, Kunta, Sitafa, and their kafo mates began to feel and act older than their rains. Now after breakfast each morning, they would gather by the arafang’s schoolyard and kneel quietly to listen as he taught the older boys—those of the second kafo, just beyond Kunta’s age, five to nine rains old