Wilton Sankawulo

Leanya

Excerpted from the novel by Wilton Sankawulo, Birds Are Singing, The Amazing Journey of Sumowor Gbamokorli, published posthumously, Monrovia: Cotton Tree Press, 2010.

INTRODUCTION

In his third and last novel, Birds Are Singing, Wilton Sankawulo tells the story of Sumowor Gbamokorli, a young man who leaves village life in the Fuama Chiefdom and heads to Monrovia to escape persecution for an accidental killing.  Set in the 1960s during the administration of President William V.S. Tubman, Korli’s journey is full of adventure, strife, intrigue, and revelations about his country and the beliefs, ways, and attitudes of both rural and urban Liberians.

Throughout his travels, Korli encounters common villagers, tribal chiefs, powerful Zoes, Congo people in old settlements, and a mixture of colorful individuals in the capital city.  Among the characters that populate Sankawulo’s novel are women who, together, embody the strengths, weaknesses, and hopes of women not only of that place and time, but of women everywhere today. Surprisingly, in addition to their well-known traditional roles, most of them wield power and influence and enjoy a certain kind of respect in their societies.  Through the lives of Korli’s mother, Felenkpeh; his wife, Leanya; his mother-in-law, Ma Gbavor; his office co-worker, Marie; his Monrovia landlord, Mrs. Seton; and a host of other females, the reader learns about various customs and traditions involving women, and is privy to their ageless and timeless values and wisdom.

In the following excerpt from Birds Are Singing, Korli meets and interacts with Leanya, the woman who is to become his wife and accompany him through his journey of discovery. From the beginning, standing before him with bare breasts and giving him orders, she is a woman to be reckoned with.

- Elma Shaw, Publisher

The town was utterly quiet, everybody having gone to their farms except Korli and his caretaker who re­mained to see after his bath and breakfast. She’d have wakened him at daybreak to bathe and eat something but for the strain and stress of yesterday’s hefty activi­ties, which had kept him under pressure until dawn. She wanted him to get enough sleep and gather strength. When the sun reached over­head, however, loneli­ness and the quiet of the town un­nerved her. They were in danger! She especially! How would a sleeping man defend her and himself should soldiers come upon them? By the time he roused they would have killed, raped, or snatched her away. Checking Korli’s door the third time and finding it locked, Leanya knocked it as hard as she could. Getting no response, she accom­panied the knocks with the urgent cry, “Kpor! Kpor! Kpor!” Her voice strangely echoed through the town.

Korli bounced out of bed as from a bad dream. His heart shuddered when he saw tiny spears of sunrays with twirling motes pouring into the room through holes in the thatched roof. He was afraid day had broken long ago and he was alone in town. Surely his enemies had caught up with him, using a woman as bait. They’d have no problem spiriting him away. Dressing quickly and taking his cutlass to strike down at least one of them before his death, Korli heard several more knocks on the door accompanied by the feminine voice. He opened the door with force and was surprised to see a girl of mesmeric beauty, charm, and vitality standing on the threshold. She wore only a blue- and white-striped towel round her waist; her plump oiled body reflec­ted the noonday sun like a pearl; her bulging bare breasts, like large oranges, rose and fell with her breathing. Three plaits of shiny black hair matching her ebony color stretched from the top of her forehead to the nape of her neck. Bushy brows and long lashes half concealed her sparkling brown eyes. The wisp of a smile played on her russet lips under a pudgy nose. Indeed, if there ever was a goddess, Korli thought, this was she.

“Good morning,” she greeted him with a smile, exposing her even white teeth. Korli’s heart trembled as he stared speechlessly at the girl. Think­ing he still wandered about in a dream, she added loudly, “I didn’t want to wake you up. I knew yesterday’s troubles made you tired, but the sun has now passed overhead. You need to bathe and eat something for us to leave the town.”

Still spellbound, Korli gazed steadily at the girl, searching his memory. She seemed familiar but he couldn’t place her in a context. Exhaling a deep breath, he said Good Morning. Something in his lingering look must have communi­cated love to her, for she responded with coquettish gestures.

“Your bath is ready,” she said with a grin and posed to lead him to the bath fence.

“Thank you,” Korli said. “I’m sorry I over­slept. I normally wake up before dawn, but yes­ter­­­day’s trou­bles wore me out, as you said. Give me a moment; I’ll be with you.” In spite of himself, Korli did not move. He continued watching the girl with fascination, won­dering who she was. He recalled vaguely a girl fixing up his lodgings last night and bringing him food and water, but the day’s events had made him so over­wrought and sleepy that he hadn’t focused his eyes on her.

“What is your name?” he asked her.

“Leanya,” she said with a bright smile. “And yours?”

“Good name!” Korli said. In their language Leanya meant ‘Come near me.’ “The lucky man who marries you must keep you at his side always, or he’ll die of heartbreak. I’m Gbamo­korli. People pre­fer Korli, the short form.”

“Good name, too! Means you’re strong like a leopard,” Leanya said excitedly. Noti­cing that Korli couldn’t take his eyes off her, she said, “Do I look like a stranger? Don’t you know me? I prepared your bath and supper last night—kept your com­pany until you slept.”

“I thought I saw you last night, but it was too dark for me to make you out— I’m not brave, Leanya. They named me for my grand­­father who was leader of a leopard society and a warrior. They thought I’d follow his footsteps, but I don’t care for that society or warfare.”

“Nobody wants war, but when it comes, or when you’re put to it, you must defend yourself. You look brave— Hurry up; your bath is getting cold.”

Leanya’s words and the sidelong glance she cast at him sent a warm shudder through Korli from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He gazed at her with un­blink­ing eyes, longing for a rejoinder that could excite a similar response in her, but Leanya was restive. She kept looking at him and at the way to the bath fence, waiting for him to move.

Quickly shoving the gun and hunting bag in the zieh ceiling and taking his cutlass, Korli walked behind her towards the outskirts, feeling exulted. If only he could pronounce the three words “I love you” with grace and charm in her ear and get the desired reply, it’d amount to killing another buffalo—no, an ele­phant—but it’d be risky and premature to say such words now. They had just met. He’d be im­pos­ing on her kindness and possibly putting his reputation at risk. Suppose she had a husband? Kuntaa had received him with love and honor; if he didn’t behave himself, it might disgrace and expel him, his killing of a buffalo for the town notwith­standing. Even if she were single, what right had he, a man on traveling feet, to torment such innocent beauty with love?

Lea­nya saved him the anguish by saying with a chuckle: “You wisely carry a cutlass wherever you go. So I’m right! You are a warrior!”

Loosening up, Korli said casually, as if Lea­nya’s compli­ments had no more signi­­fi­cance than ordi­nary conversation, “All Poro men are warriors, ready for danger at all time.”

“Your wife is well secured and provided for,” Leanya said pensively. “Seeing those strong arms of yours, what man will mess with her? And you seem wise and hardworking.”

Korli did not hear the compliments as he slipped into the circu­lar thatched fence. Leanya hung a lappa at its narrow entrance and waited for him outside as he bathed—or flashed water on his skin to hasten out and continue the sweet conver­sation. Deeply stirred, his heart surged with love for Leanya despite his feeling that it was unfair and risky to fall in love with her.

After he had bathed, Leanya brought him a break­fast of boiled cassava and fish gravy spiced with hot pepper, sweet tomatoes, fever leaves, and kelen shoots. Desire having dulled his appetite, Korli ate only a piece of cassava he doused in the aromatic gravy. Though they often encouraged them to eat, he thought, girls usually despised men with big appetite. If he wanted to enjoy Leanya’s love and respect, he should control his eating.

“My stomach is full,” he told her.

“You only tasted the food!” Leanya said with a slight scowl. “At least eat the fish, Korli! I myself did the fishing.”

To give him appetite, she smiled broadly. Apparently, his strategy had mis­carried; Leanya expected him to eat to his fill. Per­haps her insistence that he eat was a test of his resolve, Korli surmised. If he failed it, she might not take seriously anything else he told her. He solved the dilemma with a distracting flatter he often used to assuage a girl’s anger:

“Your beauty has filled my stomach!” The state­ment was really true. Korli was not accustomed to eating until he had “thrown cutlass.” Early morning work always helped his appetite. Consi­dering it a compliment, Leanya laughed a lovely laugh that further stirred his throbbing heart. He felt like walking in a cloud or in the shadow of a forest in the afternoon of a dry season, enjoying the songs of birds rather than suffering­­ the painful restraint.

“I command you to eat,” Leanya said amiably. “If you faint or suffer defeat in a fight, they’ll say I failed to feed you.”

Korli regarded this command as a test Lea­nya had devised; obeying it would betray his man­hood. Think­ing of another distrac­tion, he said:

“Leanya, you’re spoiling me. Men don’t eat this early in the morning. It makes them weak and sleepy at the best time of day for work. Apart from that, when I go to the kwii world, who will make breakfast for me?”

This remark did not im­press Leanya although Korli had intended it as a credit to her kindness. She only sat like a statue in the chair, staring sullenly at the rejected food she had prepared with so much care.

Inha­ling the fragrance of the gravy, Korli said, “The soup smells delicious! Let me have some fish.”

An expression of contentment on her face, Leanya said, “Korli, enjoy any oppor­tunity you get and not worry about tomor­row. The memory of a good day can see you through bad ones. Father wants me to take you to the farm. It’s dan­gerous for one person to be in town during the day because soldiers, witches, and monsters prey on a single person they find in a town.” She gave him some fish and a piece of cassava on the cover of the soup bowl. After he had eaten and drunk some water, Leanya tied up the soup and cassava bowls in a headtie and told him, “You’ll eat when you’re hungry.”

“You made a good point,” Korli remin­­ded her. “It’s good to enjoy any oppor­tunity you get and not worry about tomor­row. But any man who hunts learns to be alone, Leanya. I can spend the day in town by myself with no fear. Soldiers, witches, and monsters mean nothing to me. But it’s better to be with you and your family on the farm. You’re friendly. I’m afraid—”

“Of what?” Leanya asked. She wrinkled her nose and stared in his face.

“Of you.”

“Why?” Leanya said with laughter as she stepped out to the porch with the bowls of food delicately balanced on her head. “I won’t bite you.”

Korli locked the door with a small padlock, stepped down with the gun on his shoulder and his cutlass in his hand. As he followed her towards the farm road, he said:

“Kpelle men are notoriously jealous over their wives. Your husband or boyfriend might—”

Leanya looked at him over her shoulder and said, “What man can beat a giant like you?”

“A man with a grievance is extremely dan­gerous, Leanya. He can kill a leopard!”

“I’m not married,” Leanya said. “What married woman will expose herself like this? How could the Chief have somebody’s wife care for a single man stranger? It’s your wife you’re afraid of, not me.”

“I’m not married,” Korli responded in kind.

After a long interval, Leanya turned her head round again and glanced at his face skeptically.

“I’m sure you have a steady girlfriend or trial wife,” she said. “You’re too hand­some for girls to spare. I haven’t seen a Kpelle man your age without a wife. So don’t lie to me.”

“Why should I lie to you? I could marry you even if I were married. Frankly, I don’t have any girlfriend or trial wife.”

Convinced that Leanya was in love with him, Korli told her of his terrible experience with Gwanya and Korpu to disabuse her of the belief that he was married. He ended the painful recollection by saying that he needed a powerful Zoe to cleanse him of the bad luck some witch or spirit had cast on him to stop him from marrying. Did she know of any?

“Are you sure someone is bewitching you?”

“Yes, I’m sure. They usually strike when I’m about to marry. I don’t mind being in a Zoe’s debt for life once he gets rid of them. I need a wife.”

“No witch or spirit is after you. You don’t have much expe­­rience with women. That’s your problem. Finding the right partner is like hunting. Some hunters are lucky to kill a quarry without problem as it happened in your case with the bushcow. But most hunters rove the forest for days or even weeks before getting their luck. Be patient and keep your eyes and ears open; your luck is coming.”

Korli admired Leanya’s round undu­lating hips, shapely calves, and balmy voice. She had all the desi­rable qualities of the wife he wanted: beauty, foresight, vivacity, and a heart of gold. Were he not on traveling feet, he’d win her at any cost and spend the rest of his life with her. When they climbed to the crest of a hillock, Leanya pointed at a misty forest in the distance and said:

“Our farm is right behind that forest.”

Korli stood enthralled, staring at the blue forest spewing spirals of mist into the sky. A flock of singing bluewings suddenly emerged from the mist, flew over them, and sat in a huge sorn within shooting distance. Korli watched them with interest.

“You won’t waste a cartridge on birds, will you?” Leanya asked.

“No,” Korli said. “I don’t kill birds. I’m enjoy­ing their song.” He heaved and resumed the trek with a weighty air.

“I love birds for their meat, not for their songs,” Leanya said. “Bird meat is not only delicious, it is medicinal. It heals many kinds of sickness. My brother Dieley knows how to trap them. When­ever he gets some, I’ll cook it for you.”

“Fong, bluewings, kpeyakpeya, pepper birds, wrens, and leopard birds are the best singers,” Korli re­marked. “Their songs have many meanings.”

“Some of the fruits and leaves birds eat are medicines. If you eat birds regularly, it’s hard for you to get sick. Most of the herbs my mother knows—she is a good herbalist—she learned from birds.”

“Birds tell you when to wake up in the morning, when to go to and from the farm, when strangers are coming to you, when your faraway relative dies, and when danger is near.”

“So birds communicate with you? You didn’t listen to them this morning,” Leanya said, grinning at Korli over her shoulder. When he made no response, she added, “That’s expected of a good hunter, of course. Birds tell hunters where to find herds of animals and how to make their way home when they’re lost in the forest.”

“You sound like a hunter yourself!” Korli said with a chuckle.

They met Chief Gbakayu dividing meat among the Deputy Chiefs of Kuntaa while his wives were busy cooking venison with kpaa and fever leaves. The sweet scent of the stew pervaded the tiny village. Every­one warmly wel­comed Korli with a smile and congratulated him for the exploit.

“You’ve put meat in our mouths again,” the Chiefs told him, snapping his fingers by turn. “May the ancestors bless your gun.”

Leanya commenced building a fire to cook for Korli and herself.

“Demilahn, take this seat,” Dieley told Korli and yielded his stool to him. Korli noted his striking resemblance to his sister.

“It’s too soon to call him Demilahn,” Leanya told him as she handed Korli a cup. Every­body laughed briefly, looking at Korli for a response.

As a diversion, Leanya’s elder bro­ther Zolu said, “Every single man is a potential Demilahn.”

Korli grinned, filled the cup to the brim and drained it.

“This is the kind of breakfast a man needs, Leanya,” he said. Leanya smiled plea­santly but made no comment. Turning his gaze from his unresponsive caretaker to Chief Gbakayu, he remarked, “We don’t make wine in Haindi for lack of piassava trees.”

“Welcome to Kuntaa,” said the Chief. “We have plenty here, full ones with strong wine! Deyn Gola is rich! Our forest is full of any species of animals you can imagine. Our traps and fish baskets are not catching anything these days because we have meat. In two markets, this village will overflow with meat and fish. The Deyn River and the creeks round here teem with all sorts of fish.”

“Brother, we’ll take you into the bush this afternoon,” Zolu told Korli. “We have plenty of palm trees and fallow farmlands. As Father said, herds of monkeys, boars, ante­lopes, ele­phants, and many other animals roam our forest.”

“Who told you the young man wants to live here?” asked Ma Gbavor. She was Dieley and Leanya’s mother and the Chief’s Head Wife. “He is on traveling feet!” She pursed her lips and looked at the white clouds over the forest.

“Before settling in an area, a man makes sure it has a means of support for his family such as fertile farm­­land, hunting ground, a river or creek with plenty of fish,” Zolu said.

“To me, what encourages a person to settle in a different land is the friendliness of its people,” Korli said. “You people are kind and friendly. I won’t mind living in Kuntaa for the rest of my life.”

“You’ll live here because you’re in trouble with me,” Nan­ Gwoi said with a chuckle. “Where is my gown? You’ve taken my wife from me!” Everybody laughed at the privileged badinage of Leanya’s aged maternal uncle.

“The man has just come, Nan Gwoi,” said Dieley in a loud voice because Nan Gwoi was hard of hearing. “He’ll give us cold water, cut the log, and gown us. Let’s be patient.”

“There’s no log to cut yet,” Leanya declared and burst out with laughter as she dished out the rice. Afraid that badgering Korli for money might put him on his guard, she added with slight annoyance, “Let him eat something before the plenty talks. He only tasted his breakfast this morning.”

“Korli has nothing to fear!” said Nan ­Gwoi, staring at Korli with sober eyes. “The boy who wanted Leanya ran away. He was too lazy, too thievish, and too talkative. The Bush Thing taught him a lesson one night. Since then we haven’t laid our eyes on him. We don’t even know his where­abouts.”

“That’s what happens when you force a woman on a man,” said Leanya. “You people wanted me to marry that boy against my will.” She gave Korli a bowl of rice and the gravy she had brought from town.

Korli invited the men to eat with him but they declined.

“Go ahead and eat, Brother,” Zolu said. “We’re mostly concerned about you the stranger. Our mothers are cooking plenty of food. The Deputy Chiefs will eat with their boss.”

“Why didn’t you cook meat for Korli?” Ma Gbavor chided Leanya when she noted that he was eating only fish. “With all the meat here, a man shouldn’t eat fish bones! Maybe that’s why his friends don’t want to eat with him.”

“I grew up by the river, Mother,” said Korli, grinning. “I’m used to eating fish rather than meat.”

“Gbavor,” said the Chief, “if Leanya gives that man dry rice and palm oil to eat, it’ll taste better in his mouth than the delicious meat stew you’re cooking. We were protecting you, Leanya,” the Chief returned to the previous conver­sation. “Young girls choose men by their looks, not know­ing that looks are deceiving—or by their possess­ions. We didn’t want you to make such a bad mistake.”

“It turned out to be a mistake, anyhow,” Lea­nya said. “I won’t let you people make another one. It’s men who choose women by their looks; women choose men by their character. Don’t worry, Data. When I find the right man, I’ll bring him to you myself and have him pay my dowry.” Leanya sounded jovial, but her father’s frowned face showed that he took exception to her straight talk.

Copyright © Wilton Sankawulo