Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [43]
Finally, just as the sun began to turn crimson on the western horizon, Kunta spotted smoke rising from a village not far ahead. The wide, circular pattern of the smoke told Kunta that dried baobab hulls were being burned to drive away mosquitoes. That means the village was entertaining important visitors. He felt like cheering. They had arrived! Soon he began to hear the thunder of a big ceremonial tobalo drum—being pounded, he guessed, as each new personage entered between the village gates. Intermingling was the throb of smaller tan-tang drums and the shriekings of dancers. Then the trail made a turn, and there under the rising smoke was the village. And alongside a bushy growth they saw a man who caught sight of them at the same instant and began to point and wave as if he had been posted there to await an oncoming man with a boy. Omoro waved back at the man, who immediately squatted over his drum and announced on it: “Omoro Kinte and first son—”
Kunta’s feet scarcely felt the ground. The travelers’ tree, soon in sight, was festooned with cloth strips, and the original single-file trail had already been widened by many feet—evidence of an already popular and busy village. The pounding of the tan-tangs grew louder and louder, and suddenly the dancers appeared, grunting and shouting in their leaf-and-bark costumes, leaping and whirling and stamping out through the village gate ahead of everyone else, all of them rushing to meet the distinguished visitors. The village’s deep-voiced tobalo began to boom as two figures came running through the crowd. Ahead of Kunta, Omoro’s headbundle dropped suddenly to the ground, and Omoro was running toward them. Before he knew it, Kunta’s own headbundle had dropped and he was running too.
The two men and his father were hugging and pounding each other. “And this is our nephew?” Both men yanked Kunta off his feet and embraced him amid exclamations of joy. Sweeping them on to the village, the huge welcoming party cried out their greetings all around them, but Kunta saw and heard no one but his uncles. They certainly resembled Omoro, but he noticed that they were both somewhat shorter, stockier, and more muscular than his father. The older uncle Janneh’s eyes had a squinting way of seeming to look a long distance, and both men moved with an almost animal quickness. They also talked much more rapidly than his father as they plied him with questions about Juffure and about Binta.
Finally, Saloum thumped his fist on Kunta’s head. “Not since he got his name have we been together. And now look at him! How many rains have you, Kunta?”
“Eight, sir,” he answered politely.
“Nearly ready for manhood training!” exclaimed his uncle.
All around the village’s tall bamboo fence, dry thornbushes were piled up, and concealed among them were sharp-pointed stakes to cripple any marauding animal or human. But Kunta wasn’t noticing such things, and the few others of around his age who were there he saw only out of the corners of his eyes. He scarcely heard the racket of the parrots and monkeys above their heads, or the barking of the wuolo dogs underfoot, as the uncles took them on a tour of their beautiful new village. Every hut had its own private yard, said Saloum, and every woman’s dry-foods storehouse was mounted directly over her cooking fire, so the smoke would keep her rice, couscous, and millet free of bugs.
Kunta almost got dizzy jerking his head toward this or that exciting sight, smell, or sound. It was both fascinating and