Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [58]
As the next moon of training began, drumtalk reached the jujuo telling of new visitors to be expected within the next two days. The excitement with which the news of any visitors would have been received, after so long since the fathers and brothers had come to see them, was doubled when the boys learned that the sender of the message was the drummer of Juffure’s champion wrestling team, which was coming to conduct special lessons for the trainees.
Late in the afternoon of the next day, the drums announced their arrival even earlier than expected. But the boys’ pleasure at seeing all the familiar faces again was forgotten when, without a word, the wrestlers grabbed them and began to flip them onto the ground harder than they had ever been thrown in their lives. And every boy was bruised and hurting when the wrestlers divided them into smaller groups to grapple one another, as the champions supervised. Kunta had never imagined there were so many wrestling holds, nor how effectively they could work, if used correctly. And the champions kept drumming into the boys’ ears that it was knowledge and expertness and not strength that made the difference between being an ordinary wrestler and a champion. Still, as they demonstrated the holds for their pupils, the boys couldn’t help admiring their bulging muscles as much as their skill in using them. Around the fire that night, the drummer from Juffure chanted the names and the feats of great Mandinka wrestling champions of even a hundred rains in the past, and when it was the boys’ time for bed, the wrestlers left the jujuo to return to Juffure.
Two days later came news of another visitor. This time the message was brought by a runner from Juffure—a young man of the fourth kafo whom Kunta and his mates knew well, though in his own new manhood, he acted as if he never had seen these third-kafo children. Without so much as a glance at them, he ran up to the kintango and announced, between deep breaths, that Kujali N’jai, a griot well known throughout The Gambia, would soon spend one full day at the jujuo.
In three days he arrived, accompanied by several young men of his family. He was much older than any of the griots Kunta had seen before—so old, in fact, that he made the kintango seem young. After gesturing for the boys to squat in a semicircle about him, the old man began to talk of how he became what he was. He told them how, over years of study from young manhood, every griot had buried deep in his mind the records of the ancestors. “How else could you know of the great deeds of the ancient kings, holy men, hunters, and warriors who came hundreds of rains before us? Have you met them?” asked the old man. “No! The history of our people is carried to the future in here.” And he tapped his gray head.
The question in the mind of every boy was answered by the old griot: Only the sons of griots could become griots. Indeed, it was their solemn duty to become griots. Upon finishing their manhood training, these boys—like those grandsons of his own who sat beside him here today—would begin studying and traveling with selected elders, hearing over and again the historical names and stories as they had been passed down. And in due time, each young man would know that special part of the forefathers’ history in the finest and fullest detail, just as it had been told to his father and his father’s father. And the day would come when that boy would become a man and have sons to whom he would tell