HER FORMER STUDENTS AND BUSLOADS of devotees came from across the country for her one-year death celebration, which we held in her big papa’s village. We’d stopped crying by then, but Sahel hadn’t, though she now cried for her new husband too—he’d died months after Thula, leaving Sahel alone in a big house. She yearned to return to her birth village now that she was entering her final years, she wanted to sit on verandas and laugh old-woman laughs with Lulu and Cocody. But Juba and Nubia wanted her in Bézam so they could do everything to make her happy, visit her often, and spend nights at her house, so Sahel could feed and bathe and sing to Malabo Bongo and his little sister, Victoria.
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Juba said Austin had written him a condolence letter in which he said Thula often talked about wishing everyone would wear yellow at her death celebration. So we all wore yellow. Flowing yellow dresses for the women, newly sewn for the occasion, along with yellow head-scarves and yellow earrings. Yellow trousers and yellow linen shirts for the men.
In the square where her big papa once sat in a corner, we beat the drums around a framed photo of Thula, taken by Austin, in which she’s wearing a white dress, walking the streets of New York. Her hair is at the top of her head in a bun; she’s smiling.
We felt her spirit around us as we sang and danced till the sun left us for a while. Before we dispersed, Juba thanked us for loving his sister. He told us that he would like to close the celebration by reading a poem Austin had written in honor of his princess.
We had learned from Thula that Austin had become a monk and was living in a neighboring country. He left America the year after Thula returned home, months after he buried his father. Thula told us he had described his new life as the most joyous form of existence he had ever known—having no possessions, living in stillness, daily tending to a garden to help feed children at a nearby orphanage. Even with no chance of a life together, the two of them shared love letters in which they professed that their spirits will be forever united, and that living their callings had freed them to love each other without conditions.
Holding a pregnant Nubia’s hand, his voice trembling, Juba read Austin’s poem:
farewell to the revolution, weep not, silence lasts for a night
rise children, get in formation, madness ignited, fists clench up
burn, burn, burn; lift every voice; alive and proud—or give us death
ten thousand systems, sipping on our souls, onward yet we fight, until when
long may we live to see that glorious morning, when the light shall emerge
when we’ll gather, at the river, in the village pure and clean
there’ll be no more crying, no more bleeding, no more sickness, only bliss
oh boundless love, we are weary, won’t you come forth, guide us home?
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Pexton created a scholarship in honor of the overseer and his wife, the Augustine and Evelyn Fish Memorial Peace and Prosperity Scholarship. The scholarship was for our children only. It would allow them to go to the best schools and someday become learned, like Thula. There was no land left to fight for, so Pexton had no fear that our children might grow up to wage a war against them. They’d already begun digging a new well in what used to be our village square when they announced the scholarship. They’d already uprooted what was left of the mango tree under which we’d played—whatever hadn’t turned to ashes.
Most of our children got the scholarships.
We paid nothing for their education; Pexton made sure of that. After finishing at the school in Lokunja, they moved to bigger towns or to Bézam, where they went to schools of higher learning, living and eating where they studied. Some of them got into the government leadership school, others into lesser places of advanced learning. Many traveled to Europe and America, to study on other scholarships, or to start new lives.
Today, in the year 2020, forty years since the night Konga told us to rise, our children have good jobs with our government, with corporations in Europe and America. They live in lovely houses. They drive new cars. They’ve given us grandchildren. Several of us have been to America. Our children buy us nice things to show their gratitude.
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Sometimes we ask our children about the cars they drive. The cars seem to be bigger than they’ve ever been, needing more oil. Do they think about it, about the children who will suffer as we once did just so they can have all the oil they want? Do they worry whether a day will come when there’ll be no more oil left under the earth? They chuckle at our questions. They tell us that oil is still a thousand years away from depletion, by then no one would need it. We nod; we agree that a thousand years is too far away for anyone to worry.