The Bite of the Mango (2 page)

Whenever we heard a rumor that the rebels were close, the chairman would order all of the villagers in Magborou to flee into the bush. The first time it happened, we abandoned our homes and took nothing with us, hiding in the bush for several days as we listened to our stomachs moan in hunger. After we’d returned safely to the village, Marie and Alie came up with a plan. They filled empty rice bags with dried vegetables and cassava. We all stuffed a change of clothes and some bedding into the bags too. From then on, whenever the chairman said the rebels were on their way again, we would grab our bags and walk into the bush in single file, following Alie.

After a while, the hiding began to seem normal. We would
spread our straw mats in a forest clearing and stay there, sometimes for as long as a month. I wasn’t really scared at first. We kids continued with the games we always played back in the village. We’d sing and call out to each other. Around the fire at night, we would tell stories or share what we had heard about the war. We would lie on our backs and stare up at the moon and stars. I remembered, though, that long ago my father had told me never to count the stars. “If you do, and you land on the star that is you, you will die,” he said. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but I knew I didn’t want to die!

As the rumors about the rebels grew more frequent, we had to keep quieter during our time in the bush. We stopped cooking our food so the rebels wouldn’t see the smoke from our fires, and sometimes all we ate for an entire day was raw cassava, which is very hard and dry and bland. Everybody talked in whispers. Chills ran through me whenever I’d hear a noise, such as a twig breaking in the bush behind the clearing. A few times I overheard the adults talking. They were saying that the rebels didn’t just kill people, they tortured them. I didn’t talk a lot in the forest after that. When we were in hiding, Ibrahim would often stay right beside me, making sure I was safe. During these times, I didn’t mind him being bossy.

When reports of the rebels came during the dry season of the next year, the chairman decided we should all go to another village, Manarma.

“There are lots of people in Manarma,” he told us when we had gathered to listen to his instructions. “We will be safer there than here or in the forest.”

The day my family left for Manarma seemed to be no
different from any other time we had fled the village. We would go back to our regular lives as soon as the chairman said it was safe to return.

But this time, things would not work out that way.

Palm oil is a vegetable oil that comes from the palm tree. It’s deep orange in color, and in Sierra Leone we use it to cook most of our food.

“Whenever you dream of palm oil,” my grandmother had told me when I was seven, “blood will spill by the end of the day.”

I dreamt a lot about palm oil when I was growing up. And sure enough, whenever I did, I’d cut myself playing tag with my friends or scrape my knee. But on our first night in Manarma, I had my worst dream ever about palm oil. I was standing in a big pit in the ground. It was full of palm oil, which came up to my knees. Beside the pit stood the tin drum we kept full of fresh lake water for the family. The wooden legs that held up the drum were on fire. The water inside was boiling; steam rose from the drum’s spouts into the clear blue sky. The wooden legs began to sway and the drum keeled over. As it fell, the drum turned into my head. In the dream, there was no water inside, only palm oil. And as my head fell to the ground, the thick oil coated my body from head to toe.

I woke up screaming. I had been sleeping on the floor on a straw mat beside Adamsay. There were about 15 of us in the room, including the family who owned the hut, Marie and Alie,
Adamsay, Mohamed, and Ibrahim. It was very early in the morning; the sun was just beginning to show through the window on the other side of the room. My scream woke Alie. As he glared at me, I began to shake. I knew he’d be angry at me for making a noise. We’d been told we’d know when the rebels were getting close because we’d hear gunshots; that’s why we had to be very quiet. I was afraid Alie would beat me because my scream had been so loud. Alie was a big man. When we kids didn’t do what he asked, he liked to show how strong he was by grabbing a tamalangba and beating us hard.

Marie slept soundly beside him as my uncle’s piercing brown eyes burned right into me. I worried I was about to get it. Then someone else in the room stirred.

“Try to be quiet,” Alie hissed. “You’ll get us all killed if you don’t.” He glared at me again, then laid his head back down on his mat.

I breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from my brow. The room was already getting hot. I rolled up my mat, smoothed out the cotton dress I slept in, and went outside to see who was awake.

I didn’t tell anybody about my bad dream, at least not right away. Once I’d had a look around, I followed a woman I didn’t know to the nearby river. After I washed my face, ran some water over my braided short hair, and brushed my teeth with a chewing stick, which was just a twig from a tree, I began helping her wash clothes. I was carrying a plastic jug of water back to the village when Alie approached me. I thought: “No! This is it. I’m in for my beating.” Instead, he said he needed me to go and get some food from Magborou.

I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly, so I politely asked, “What is it you want me to do?”

“I want you to go to Magborou with Adamsay, Ibrahim, and Mohamed and get some food from the storage bin,” he said.

I was shocked. I stood absolutely still as droplets of water from the jug on my head dripped down my face and back. “What kind of man sends children back to a village that rebels are about to attack?” I thought to myself.

“There are some others going with you,” Alie pressed on. “Some men from Manarma. You will be safe with them.”

The image from my dream flooded back. I did something children are never supposed to do in Sierra Leone: I looked Alie, an elder, straight in the eyes. I then went further and did something that was almost certain to result in a beating: I spoke back to him. With a confidence I didn’t know I had, I replied, “No! I don’t want to go.” I decided to lie and say I wasn’t feeling well.

“You’ve been washing clothes. I saw you by the river. And now you’re fetching water,” Alie said. “You’re not sick. You go to Magborou and get the food with your cousins.”

“I’m not going anywhere today,” I insisted. Shaking from head to toe, I told Alie about my dream and my grandmother’s prediction. “Something is going to happen today,” I said. “It will be bad. If you don’t believe me, I will go. But we might never see each other again.”

I thought he’d yell at me, but he chuckled. “Just go. I’m sure nothing is going to happen.”

I walked back to the house where we’d slept and set the water jug down beside Marie. I began to cry when she too told me I
must go. “There’s nothing to worry about,” she reassured me. “The rebels have never come yet. I’m beginning to think they’re not even real. So do what Alie has asked. Go to Magborou.”

I was still crying as I left Manarma with Adamsay, Ibrahim, and Mohamed. All I could think about was my dream—the palm oil, the burning water drum—and my grandmother’s words: “Whenever you dream of palm oil … blood will spill by the end of the day.”

We never reached Magborou. On the way, we had to pass through another village, and as soon as we entered it, we heard gunshots. A woman in the road said not to worry. According to her, the gunshots were likely from local soldiers, villagers who kept watch day and night for the rebels. “They’re just practicing their shooting,” the woman explained. But I could tell she was nervous. Her brown eyes were big as saucers, and she spoke in a hushed tone.

About 10 of us had set out for Magborou from Manarma. The older men in our group decided we should wait until the gunfire ended before continuing on. I grew quiet; I was certain something terrible was going to happen. I stood close to Mohamed and watched as a village woman made fu fu, a meal of boiled cassava. The woman invited us to eat some, but I couldn’t take more than a few bites. I was too afraid.

When we couldn’t hear gunshots anymore, the men announced they wanted to send Adamsay and me back to Manarma. “Just to be safe,” said a man I didn’t know.

A salesman who went from village to village selling cooking supplies like onions, pepper, fish, and oil came up to me.
He asked me to take some palm oil back to Manarma. I placed the yellow plastic jug on my head, and Adamsay and I set off. I dreaded every step.

When we reached the outskirts of Manarma, we paused underneath a mango tree near the soccer field, our hearts pounding. We couldn’t see or hear anybody, which was very unusual, but I tried to explain away the lack of village activity. The chairman of Magborou would put in place a curfew, at any time of the day or night, whenever he felt we were at risk. The curfew meant everyone had to stay indoors.

Then we saw them, coming out of one of the houses—soldiers of some sort, bare-chested, wearing khaki pants, with bullets wrapped around their muscled bodies. Adamsay began to run away. But a man came from nowhere and caught her by the waist. He carried her back and threw her down in the dust beside me. He wore a red bandana around his head and had several guns slung over his shoulders.

I froze. “This is it,” I thought. “Today is the day the rumors of the rebels prove to be true.”

The soldier ordered me to take the palm oil down from my head. Behind him, I could see why everything was still: the soldiers had taken over the village, and they were going in and out of all the houses, looting them of people’s possessions. They tossed most of the items onto a pile in the middle of the road.

Another soldier joined the first one, and the two pushed us into the village, to a spot by the side of a house. They ordered Adamsay and me to sit side by side on the ground. One of the men tied our hands behind our backs with a piece of scratchy rope. “Do you know who we are?” he asked with a toothy grin.

“No,” I said. “Are you the soldiers protecting the village?”

I knew they weren’t, and that was the wrong answer. He started yelling at me. “There are soldiers here? Where are the soldiers? We are the rebels, and we want to catch these soldiers. Tell us where they are!”

By now, many of the rebels were coming up to us. They poked their faces into ours and then walked away, wearing hideous smiles. Many were speaking to each other in Krio, the most common language in Sierra Leone, which I recognized but did not understand. The rebel who had tied my hands started interrogating me in my language, Temne. “Where do you come from? How old are you?”

Before I could answer, I spied the palm oil salesman. My mouth hung open. I had no idea why he had turned back toward Manarma, since he had been headed to Magborou. The rebel who spoke Temne turned to Adamsay and me and said, “Don’t close your eyes.”

We watched as the salesman ran down the dirt road, only to be shot in the stomach by a rebel who appeared in front of him. The rebel looked no older than I was. So the chairman had been right, I realized, when he had said some of the rebels were children. I started to cry. I had never seen anyone die before, let alone be killed. But the rebel said he would kill me if I didn’t stop crying. “Don’t be a baby,” he commanded. “I let big girls live.”

My cousin started begging him to let her go. Adamsay was always a talker. But I was shocked that even in the face of danger, she kept chattering.

“Just sit and watch everything,” the rebel spat, slapping her in the face, forcing her into silence. “If we set you free, we want you to tell other people about what you’ve seen here.”

Then everything began to happen fast. Too fast.

I heard voices coming from the house beside me. The rebels had blockaded the doors and windows with big wooden planks. Inside, one of the rebels told me, were about 20 people. A single voice stood out, that of my friend Mariatu. She was wailing, calling for help, trapped with the others.

My eyes darted away from the house to a terrifying sight. Two rebels were shoving Ibrahim and Mohamed up the road toward us. They were punching the boys in the back to get them to move faster. When my cousins were directly in front of us, the rebels grabbed them by the neck and pushed them down hard into the dirt. Using their gun barrels, the rebels nudged the boys until they were back to back. Then they tied Mohamed and Ibrahim together.

Next, the rebels forced the boys to stare up into the blinding noonday sun.

“Are you the soldiers watching the village?” one rebel yelled at them. “Are you the soldiers? Are you the soldiers?” he shouted over and over again. Mohamed and Ibrahim shook their heads, but the rebel wouldn’t relent.

The boys started crying. Ibrahim had wet his pants, and I watched the stain grow. I had to look away when the rebel began waving a knife around their bare backs and scalps.

I tried to find somewhere my eyes could rest, but the first place they landed was back on the house. Three young rebels, no older than me, were walking alongside it, brandishing torches that set the thatched roof on fire. Everyone inside
started to scream as the fire became an inferno. A woman with a baby tied on her back managed to punch through the wooden planks blocking one of the windows. The baby had curly black hair and big eyes that were looking all around. One of the young rebels threw down his torch and grabbed the machete slung on his back. In one violent swoop, he chopped off the woman’s head. The baby wailed as the woman’s body fell back into the house on top of him. Her head rolled onto the road toward me. I started to cry again, and my body convulsed. “Do you want to join them?” the rebel watching over me threatened. Part of me did.

After a while, the screams died down. Silence descended. All was quiet as the smoke from the fire in the house rose to the sky.

Rebels were now streaming out of the bushes, coming to join those who had taken over the village. There were so many—in front of me, beside me, in back of me—that I couldn’t count them all. If I had to guess, I’d say there were more than a hundred. Most of the late arrivals were kids. The older rebels shouted orders to the younger ones. The boys would stop and listen, then resume their pillaging of the remaining houses. Straw mats, baskets, rugs, wooden chairs, tables, and clothes were tossed onto the giant pile in the road. The same boys who had burned down the house with Mariatu inside waved their torches along the bottom of the pile, igniting a huge bonfire.

At first I didn’t recognize Salieu, the man who had wanted to marry me, as two young rebels pushed him toward an older one for instructions. Salieu’s face was bloody, his shirt torn. His hands were tied behind his back. I gasped when he looked over at me. The older rebel shouted something. The two younger
ones grabbed hold of Salieu’s arms and marched him forward. The rebel who spoke Temne shouted at me, “Do you recognize this man?”

“Y-y-yesss,” I stuttered, my eyes glued to Salieu.

“Good,” the rebel smiled. “This one is for you. Watch closely!”

The rebels stepped back, then shot Salieu in the head and stomach.

As the younger rebels dragged Salieu’s body away, a sound hit me with a jolt. Music. Loud music, but not the African music I was used to. I couldn’t understand the words to the songs, and the beat was very different. Some of the men were dancing to the music. Girls not much older than me passed around what looked like cigarettes. As the smoke from the long paper reefers floated toward me, though, I didn’t recognize the smell. The girls handed around cups full of palm wine, which the rebel men gulped down quickly, like water. As they drank and smoked, the men’s eyes became red and wild, darting back and forth, not really looking at anything. A couple of the men grabbed the girls’ waists and kissed them as they passed.

I had never heard of girl rebels before, but there they were. They wore the same combat pants and red bandanas as the boys and men, and a few of the girls carried guns and had bullets wrapped around their bodies in a similar fashion.

“Do you know these people?” the rebel by my side yelled as five boys pushed a woman and a man toward me. The woman and her husband were from Magborou. She was pregnant, days away from giving birth. The man was her husband.

The woman’s bare, mud-caked feet scraped along the
ground. Her face was ashen, and black circles lined her eyes. She was obviously exhausted; her body was hunched as if she were about to topple over. The boy rebels propped her up as she held her very large stomach with her hands.

“Don’t do this. Don’t do this,” the man cried out to the boy rebels. “I will give you anything I have. I will go with you and kill whoever you want. Just let my wife live.” But the boys ignored his pleas. “We don’t take people anymore,” one of them screamed at the man. “This is our last attack before Port Loko, so anyone we capture, we kill.”