Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [77]
CHAPTER 31
As new men were permitted to do whenever there was no conflict with their duties, Kunta and others of his kafo would sit at the outermost edges of the formal sessions of the Council of Elders, which were held once each moon under Juffure’s ancient baobab. Sitting beneath it on cured hides very close together, the six senior elders seemed almost as old as the tree, Kunta thought, and to have been carved from the same wood, except that they were as black as ebony against the white of their long robes and round skullcaps. Seated facing them were those with troubles or disputes to be resolved. Behind the petitioners, in rows, according to their ages, sat junior elders such as Omoro, and behind them sat the new men of Kunta’s kafo. And behind them the village women could sit, though they rarely attended except when someone in their immediate family was involved in a matter to be heard. Once in a long while, all the women would be present—but only if a case held the promise of some juicy gossip.
No women at all attended when the Council met to discuss purely administrative affairs, such as Juffure’s relationship with other villages. On the day for matters of the people, however, the audience was large and noisy—but all settled quickly into silence when the most senior of the elders raised his stick, sewn with bright-colored beads, to strike out on the talking drum before him the name of the first person to be heard. This was done according to their ages, to serve the needs of the oldest first. Whoever it was would stand, stating his case, the senior elders all staring at the ground, listening until he finished and sat down. At this point, any of the elders might ask him questions.
If the matter involved a dispute, the second person now presented his side, followed by more questions, whereupon the elders turned around to present their backs as they huddled to discuss the matter, which could take a long time. One or more might turn with further questions. But all finally turned back around toward the front, one motioning the person or persons being heard to stand again, and the senior elder then spoke their decision, after which the next name was drumtalked.
Even for new men like Kunta, most of these hearings were routine matters. People with babies recently born asked for a bigger farm plot for the husband and an additional rice plot for the wife—requests that were almost always quickly granted, as were the first farming-land requests of unmarried men like Kunta and his mates. During man-training, the kintango had directed them never to miss any Council of Elders sessions unless they had to, as the witnessing of its decisions would broaden a man’s knowledge as his own rains increased until he too would be a senior elder. Attending his first session, Kunta had looked at Omoro seated ahead of him, wondering how many hundreds of decisions his father must have in his head, though he wasn’t even a senior elder yet.
At his first session, Kunta witnessed a land matter involving a dispute. Two men both claimed the fruit of some trees originally planted by the first man on land to which the second man now had the farming rights, since the first man’s family had decreased. The Council of Elders awarded the fruit to the first man, saying, “If he hadn’t planted the trees, that fruit wouldn’t be there.”
At later sessions, Kunta saw people frequently charged with breaking or losing something borrowed from an irate lender who claimed that the articles had been both valuable and brand-new. Unless the borrower had witnesses to disprove that, he was usually ordered to pay for or replace the article at the value of a new one. Kunta also saw furious people accusing others of inflicting bad fortune on them