* * *
WE HAVE NOW BEGUN OUR entrance into the last decades of our lives.
It marvels us how much suffering we bore, our parents bore, our ancestors bore, so our children could own cars and forget Kosawa. They do not speak our language to their children. They speak to them only in English. They do not recognize our Spirit, a rejection that surely makes our ancestors weep. They go to churches, if they have any awareness of a Spirit at all. They believe in a Spirit in the sky when ours lives within them. Some of us had taken our families’ umbilical-cord bundles before we fled Kosawa, hoping to pass them on to our children, but they have no use for them. For births and deaths and marriages, they celebrate in the ways of our former masters. They dance to their music, as if ours was merely a relic to be admired. They have village meetings, occasionally, but it isn’t to talk about how to keep alive their ancestors’ spirits, or how to revive Kosawa in any form. No, their meetings are to plan dinner parties where they laugh about things we don’t understand. One day, we know, our world and our ways will vanish in totality.
All the seven villages now have electricity. Most of us live in brick houses. Many of us have cellphones and flat-screen televisions. In Lokunja you can use the thing called the Internet to read about our story, or see huts like the ones in which we were born.
* * *
—
It may be long dead, Kosawa, but we never forget it, the splendid piece of the earth it was. We can never forget it, for there our spirits were whole. Amid oil spills and gas flares, we looked behind us and saw green hills where twin mambas hissed in gaiety, where robust moles and porcupines zigzagged before falling prey to the hunter’s precision. We lived in a place where caterpillars took twice as long to renovate into heavy butterflies. Ours was a village where the sky sang thunderous songs in the dry season, songs that made us wrap our legs around our siblings in fright and in delight. There were dire rainy days, when the rivers threatened to take our possessions to their resting place, and parched days, when the ground in the hills cracked from thirst and the palm trees rejoiced. Through it all, Kosawa remained a singular place—if not for the beauty of our surroundings, then for the people who called it home. How could we not want to return to those full-moon nights when we danced in the square? Even as we began leaving childhood and started realizing how determined death was to never let us see our old age, we still laughed on verandas, and skipped over pipelines. We sat under the mango tree, lazed and gossiped as if tomorrow would always be ours, a luminous tomorrow. We hoped, we believed, that we would die where we were born.
Often, while visiting our children in Bézam, or America, or Europe, we sit on the couch, looking at the television but not seeing it. We’re there, but we’re not there. We’re somewhere else, thinking of Kosawa, thinking of Thula. We’re wondering if Thula would still be fighting if she were alive. It’s at such moments that the children of our children come to us and say, please, Yaya, please, Big Papa, tell us a story.
For my beautiful, beautiful children
Acknowledgments
My editor, the incomparable Andy Ward, and my late publisher, Susan Kamil （I miss you so much）， both believed I could tell this story; they nurtured me and nudged me, never once allowing me to indulge in self-doubt. I also thank Andy’s assistants, Chayenne Skeete and Marie Pantojan, and the brilliant team of Rachel Rokicki, Melissa Sanford, Katie Tull, Taylor Noel, Avideh Bashirrad, and Barbara Fillon for their hard work and dedication. Profound gratitude to my literary agent, Susan Golomb, and my speaking agent, Christie Hinrichs, both of whom represent me with utmost passion and vigor. My former editor, David Ebershoff, is the greatest mentor any writer could ask for, and I thank him for his kindness. Much gratitude to my production editor, Steve Messina, and my copyeditor, Terry Zaroff-Evans, who both did an outstanding job. Jaya Miceli designed another superb book cover and I thank her.
My friends Howard Shaw, Lloyd Cheu and Douglas Mintz, Mark Salzman, Warren Goldstein, Zadie Smith, and Christina Baker Kline all read full or partial drafts of my manuscript—this story wouldn’t be what it is without their dazzling critiques and I am indebted to them. The same goes for my countryman and fellow Anglophone Cameroonian writer Dibussi Tande, who, along with Joyce Ashuntantang, has been an incredible champion of my work. Many thanks also to Fiammetta Rocco for giving me advice when I needed it. For two summers, Mary Haft gave my family and me a lovely cottage in Nantucket where I could work near the ocean and I thank her for her generosity. I also thank Greyson Bryan and Bob Kohn for helping me understand elements of American corporate law. And huge thanks to my German team （Mona Lang, Eva Betzwieser, Maria Hummitzsch） et mon équipe fran?aise （Caroline Ast, Diane Du Perier, tout le monde à Belfond）。