There’s also a river here, running along the city’s east side and past its southern tip. On the riverbanks are tree-shaded benches on which sit men lacking homes and women hoping for husbands, and people like me, gazing at the water. It is to this river that I go when I long for the quietude one can only get from the place of one’s birth. It is where I’m sitting as I write this to you.
I must go back to my room now. The schoolwork here is harder than we had in Lokunja, but it’s good for me. In a class I’m taking we’re studying one of my uncle’s books that I loved, the one called The Wretched of the Earth. I’m rereading my old copy and finally understanding it, thanks to all the lectures and class discussions. What this man has to say about what people in our situation ought to do, I’m in awe of it—my friends and I spend hours dissecting his ideas. I hope all Kosawa children will one day read this book; it’s a whole new way of thinking. Tomorrow a friend is taking me to a meeting. It’s in a part of the city called the Village, but my friend says that this Village is nothing like Kosawa. I’m fine with that—to be in a place named for the sort of place I’m from is enough.
Thank you for continuing to take care of my mother and Juba and Yaya. I know you do it not for me but from the goodness of your hearts, but I thank you still. When you reply to this letter, please ask my mother if there’s anything she would like to say to me that she wouldn’t be comfortable dictating for the Cute One to write down. I don’t think she has anything to say to me that she can’t say to him, but I don’t want her to ever worry that she can’t tell me certain things. I know that you will relay to me honestly, and completely, all the news that I need to know.
Have there been any births since I left? Marriages? My welcome in this place has been good, and while I won’t stay here a day longer than I need to, I’m glad I’m here now. Every day I learn new things. I don’t know how, but I’m convinced this knowledge I’m acquiring will do something for our people.
I’ll always be one of us,
Thula
What gladness her letter brought us. We could see, even on paper, that America was changing her. She was using more words, allowing us into what was going on behind her eyes. Perhaps being surrounded by friends who were like her in ways we weren’t had set her free to talk about things she couldn’t in Kosawa. Perhaps living alone had created in her a longing to talk more. Whatever the case, she could no longer be the inscrutable Thula we knew if she hoped to survive the life of an outsider. No matter the cost, the time had come for her to let in the world if she hoped to return home with what she sought.
* * *
—
We didn’t have much to tell her in our response; little had changed for us.
We were still the seven of us, waiting for the rains to come and go, hunting antelopes and porcupines and taking them to the big market. We still got together in the village square and we attended death celebrations and birth celebrations and marriage celebrations, keeping our eyes on the girls we’d decided to marry, making sure they were still proving themselves worthy of our love and protection. The father of one of us had recently died, and we knew it wouldn’t be long before all of our fathers left to meet the ancestors and we’d have to bear children to fill up our huts, and then become our fathers, and someday our grandfathers, though the thought of that did not delight us.
The village still met with the Sweet One and the Cute One. They rarely had much to report except for the fact that things were moving, slowly but certainly. They claimed that as soon as discussions between the Restoration Movement and Pexton were completed, the pipelines would be fixed and the waste swept off the river and the gas flares reduced. For now, though, they said, it would be best if we focused on the fact that children were dying less often, thanks to the bottled water, and buses were taking boys to Lokunja to acquire knowledge. Before we knew it, Kosawa would be Kosawa again.
When we had asked them, at the last meeting, when they thought Pexton would leave, would it be years or decades, they had replied that, well, that was a tough question to answer. Our best option for now, they said, was to learn how to be good neighbors with the corporation. We told them that Pexton could never be our neighbor because the land wasn’t theirs. The land was our land. It would never be theirs, no matter how often they said so. The Sweet One responded that he understood and completely agreed with us, but the ownership of the land was now a matter of law, only the government could determine who owned what land. He told us that, the previous week, His Excellency had declared that just because our ancestors claimed the entire valley as theirs did not mean the valley was theirs and ours as a result. Which meant that the land belonged to all the people of the country; the government, as the servant of the people, had the authority to give some of the people’s land to Pexton so Pexton could use it to better the lives of all citizens.