The year my age-mates and I were born, while some of us were on our mothers’ breasts and the rest of us were spending our final days in the land of the unborn, an oil well exploded in Gardens. Our parents and grandparents told us that the explosion sent crude and smoke higher than the trees. It filled the air with soot, a sight everyone thought was an omen, never having seen the likes of it before. By our sixth year of life, though, after our parents had come to know the fullness of the curse that came from living on land beneath which oil sat, they’d realized that what they saw that day was no omen—it was merely a broken oil-well head, long overdue for replacement, but why should Pexton replace it when the cost of its negligence would be borne largely by us?
* * *
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One evening, when I am five, while sitting on the veranda with Papa, I ask him why the oil fields and surrounding dwellings for Pexton’s laborers are called Gardens though there’s not a single flower there. Papa thinks for a while, chuckles, and says, Well, Gardens is a different sort of garden, Pexton is a different sort of gardener; the oil is their flower. I ask Papa if the pipelines that begin in Gardens have an end—they seem to run on forever, wrapping around our village and passing over the big river, through our farms, and deep into the forest, the end nowhere in sight. Papa tells me that everything that has a beginning also has an end. In the case of the pipelines, they start at the oil wells and end in a faraway town many hours away by bus, a town near the ocean. There, Papa says, the oil is put into containers and sent overseas, to that place called America.
I ask Papa about America, if it has as many people as Kosawa, and he tells me that, from what he remembers in school, America has about seven thousand people, most of whom are tall men; the overseer at Gardens was from America. He and his friends came to Kosawa to get oil so that their other friends in America would have oil for their cars. Everyone in America has cars, Papa says, because the hours over there go by so fast that people need cars to get to places quickly and do everything before the sun goes down. I ask him if I can someday own a car and use some of our oil. Papa smiles at my question and says, Of course you can own a car, why not? Just make sure you buy a big one so you can use it to take me hunting; that way, I don’t tire my legs trekking to the forest every time. Being that I hate Pexton, I say, I wouldn’t want their oil in my car, so I’ll need to buy a car that does not use oil. Papa tells me that cars must use oil, but I insist mine will be different. Papa chuckles at my fantasy. Then he starts laughing. He laughs so hard that I start laughing too, because the delight in his eyes tickles my heart.
* * *
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Where is Papa? What did they do to him in Bézam? Could he still be alive?
In the early days after he did not return from his mission, I pictured myself sitting on the veranda, middle-aged and gray and weary, still waiting for my papa, waiting for an old man to show up and say, “Thula, it’s me: your father, Malabo Nangi. I came back so we could continue chatting and laughing on the veranda.” What will I say to that old man? What could ever make up for the loss of my dearest friend, my sweet papa, unlike all other papas in Kosawa, a papa who sat with his daughter at night and counted stars, who wondered with me if stalks of grass live in fear of the day they’d be trampled upon, who reminded me to never forget what it felt like to be a child when I grow up, never forget how it felt to be small and in need of protection, much of the suffering in the world was because of those who had forgotten that they too were once children.
* * *
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Papa wanted many children, but all he got was Juba and me.
I never asked him or Mama why Juba and I are six years apart, but I remember the womb doctor coming to visit Mama several times when I was four, and also when I was five, and Mama sobbing after the womb doctor left. I remember Papa coming to sit with me on the veranda at such times, while Yaya stayed in our bedroom to console Mama.
Papa would look in the distance and ask me if I wanted to tell him a story. I would say yes and tell him the only story I knew, the one every child in Kosawa knows, about how three brothers once went to check on their traps in the forest and found a leopard caught in one of them.
Please, free me, the leopard cried to the brothers; I need to return home to my children, I’ve been in this trap for days and they have no one to protect them.
The brothers debated at length what to do—leopards were rare, and taking one back to their village would have brought them great fortune, but the leopard’s pain was evident in her tears. Ultimately, the brothers decided to let her go home to her children. In gratitude, the leopard made a cut on her paw and asked the brothers to use their spears and make cuts on their fingers too. On this day, the leopard said as she forged a blood pact with each brother, I give you my blood: it will flow in your veins and the veins of your descendants until the sun ceases to rise. All who seek to destroy you will fail, for my power in you will cause you to prevail. Go forth now, and live as indomitable men.