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By Root 1406 0

the time he remained as stern in manner as before, but now he talked to them not as bumbling little boys but as young men of his own village. Sometimes he spoke to them about the qualities of manhood—chief among which, after fearlessness, was total honesty in all things. And sometimes he spoke to them about the forefathers. Worshipful regard was a duty owed by the living to those who dwelled with Allah, he told them. He asked each boy to name the ancestor he remembered best; Kunta named his Grandma Yaisa, and the kintango said that each of the ancestors the boys had named—as was the way of ancestors—was petitioning Allah in the best interests of the living.

Another evening, the kintango told them how in one’s village, every person who lived there was equally important to that village; from the newest baby to the oldest elder. As new men, they must therefore learn to treat everyone with the same respect, and—as the foremost of their manhood duties—to protect the welfare of every man, woman, and child in Juffure as they would their own.

“When you return home,” said the kintango, “you will begin to serve Juffure as its eyes and ears. You will be expected to stand guard over the village—beyond the gates as lookouts for toubob and other savages, and in the fields as sentries to keep the crops safe from scavengers. You will also be charged with the responsibility of inspecting the women’s cooking pots—including those of your own mothers—to make sure they are kept clean, and you will be expected to reprimand them most severely if any dirt or insects are found inside.” The boys could hardly wait to begin their duties.

Though all but the oldest of them were still too young to dream of the responsibilities they would assume when they reached the fourth kafo, they knew that some day, as men of fifteen to nineteen rains, they would be appointed to the important job of carrying messages—like the young man who had brought them word of the moro’s visit—between Juffure and other villages. It would have been hard for Kunta’s kafo to imagine such a thing, but those old enough to be messengers longed for nothing more than to stop being messengers, when they reached the fifth kafo at twenty rains, they would graduate to really important work—assisting the village elders as emissaries and negotiators in all dealings with other villages. Men of Omoro’s age—over thirty—rose gradually in rank and responsibility with each passing rain until they themselves acquired the honored status of elders. Kunta had often proudly watched Omoro sitting on the edges of the Council of Elders, and looked forward to the day when his father would enter the inner circle of those who would inherit the mantle of office from such revered leaders as the kintango when they were called to Allah.

It was no longer easy for Kunta and the others to pay attention as they should to everything the kintango said. It seemed impossible to them that so much could have happened in the past four moons and that they were really about to become men. The past few days seemed to last longer than the moons that preceded them, but finally—with the fourth moon high and full in the heavens—the kintango’s assistants ordered the kafo to line up shortly after the evening meal.

Was this the moment for which they had waited? Kunta looked around for their fathers and brothers, who would surely be there for the ceremony. They were nowhere to be seen. And where was the kintango? His eyes searched the compound and found him—standing at the gate of the jujuo—just as he swung it open wide, turned to them, and called out: “Men of Juffure, return to your village!”

For a moment they stood rooted, then they rushed up whooping and grabbed and hugged their kintango and his assistants, who pretended to be offended by such impertinence. Four moons before, as the hood was being lifted from his head in this very compound, Kunta would have found it difficult to believe that he would be sorry to leave this place, or that he would come to love the stern old man who stood before them on that day, but he felt