Bundu Trap - Windward Community College
Bundu Trap - Windward Community College
Bundu Trap - Windward Community College
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ANNUAL EDITIONS<br />
“Can the hospitals perform the different<br />
ceremonies? Can they teach your<br />
daughters to fetch water from a well, to<br />
cook, to know when to talk, to know how<br />
to address elders? Can the hospitals prepare<br />
them for marriage? Can the hospitals<br />
find them husbands? Only a fool like<br />
you will put your daughters through all<br />
that pain without teaching them anything.<br />
Just move out of my way.”<br />
Everybody laughs again. One of the<br />
laughs from the mat is so loud that it startles<br />
Mami Sowe. She turns around and<br />
addresses the girls in a commanding<br />
tone. “Who laughed like that?” The girls<br />
on the mat look at one another and maintain<br />
a cold silence. “I want to know the<br />
person who laughed so loud just now. I<br />
want her to sell me some raw fish.” 11<br />
The silence is beginning to freeze.<br />
“If you all think you will leave my<br />
bush without good manners, then my<br />
name is not Mami Sowe.”<br />
Mami Sowe’s countenance has taken<br />
an even sterner look than the one it had<br />
when I first walked into the bush. She<br />
now looks like what I’d always imagined<br />
her to be—a heartless, merciless inflicter<br />
of pain on little girls. She pans the faces<br />
of her pupils from one end of the room to<br />
another. Auntie Mbalia cuts through the<br />
silence.<br />
“You have to learn to adjust your behavior<br />
in this bush. Whatever loose ways<br />
you have acquired during your lifetime,<br />
this is the place where you offload them<br />
and leave them on these mats.”<br />
Auntie Seray adjusts her head-tie to<br />
deliver her portion of the speech: “You<br />
must listen to instructions and learn to<br />
comport yourselves well in this bush.<br />
This is the beginning of your adult life,<br />
your life as a woman, a respectable<br />
woman in society. The skills you learn<br />
here will be with you for the rest of your<br />
lives. If you cannot own up to your responsibilities<br />
here, where else will you<br />
be able to do that?”<br />
Mami Sowe is now looking so<br />
pleased, I almost think the speeches were<br />
meant to please her and were not for the<br />
girls.<br />
Auntie Seray moves closely to her<br />
namesake and, rubbing her legs, whispers<br />
a few words into her ear.<br />
Seray adjusts herself on the mat.<br />
“OK, I was the one who laughed,” she<br />
says. Then, as if angered by her own confession,<br />
she tosses her chin up and adds,<br />
“What’s wrong with laughing, anyway?”<br />
Seray barely finishes her sentence before<br />
her mother in some magical way<br />
gets the stick from Granny’s hands and<br />
starts hitting Seray incessantly on the<br />
head.<br />
“What’s wrong with this child? She<br />
should have been circumcised long before<br />
this.”<br />
I wriggle my small body between<br />
Granny’s legs to hide my presence, lest<br />
they decide to have me circumcised before<br />
I become like Seray.<br />
I know one day I will be<br />
circumcised. But I also<br />
know that when the time<br />
comes, I will not surrender<br />
without a fight.<br />
Granny is crying and swaying her behind<br />
from side to side, unable to get up<br />
from her bench, and wanting everyone to<br />
see her distress. “All these witches walking<br />
around this bush ever since these<br />
children were brought here, trying to destroy<br />
my grandchildren, trying to distract<br />
them from the lessons they should be<br />
learning.” Then wiping her tears, she<br />
says decisively, “Tomorrow, first thing<br />
in the morning, I am sending for Pa<br />
Morlia 12 to drive out the bad spirits. I<br />
will put an end to this, or my name is not<br />
Yamakoro.”<br />
The attention of everyone now turns<br />
to calming down Granny. They remind<br />
her of her high blood pressure, ask her to<br />
look to God, assure her that Seray will<br />
change, show her examples of wild girls<br />
who changed and ended up getting good<br />
husbands. Mami Sowe is rubbing<br />
Granny’s back; a soft look now blankets<br />
her face.<br />
The conciliatory mood in the room is<br />
interrupted by the entrance of one of the<br />
women who were cutting meat outside.<br />
She walks over and kneels down beside<br />
Mami Sowe, then whispers something in<br />
her ear. Mami Sowe in turn whispers into<br />
Granny’s ear, and Granny straightens up,<br />
then makes a hand movement I do not<br />
5<br />
understand to Auntie Mbalia. The latter<br />
looks at me, then at Auntie Fanta, then<br />
back at me.<br />
“Granny, can I go to the bathroom?” I<br />
ask quietly.<br />
“Not yet,” she answers, then points to<br />
the meat-cutting woman. “Go with Auntie<br />
Zainab. She will take you home,” she<br />
says, and she continues whispering with<br />
Mami Sowe.<br />
Confused, I try to remember how I arrived<br />
here. I had told mother I didn’t<br />
know how to get to the <strong>Bundu</strong> bush, but<br />
that was only an excuse not to come. In<br />
fact, I had located the bush the very first<br />
week my sister and cousins started their<br />
confinement here, and I’d increased considerably<br />
my reasons for passing by<br />
Granny’s house during every errand I<br />
ran. While I usually give all <strong>Bundu</strong><br />
bushes a wide berth, it has been difficult<br />
to distance myself from this one holding<br />
Fanta and my cousins within. Sometimes,<br />
while standing in front of it, I was<br />
petrified and mesmerized at the same<br />
time. All the women in my family are<br />
<strong>Bundu</strong> women. I know that one day, with<br />
or without my consent, I will be circumcised.<br />
But I also know that when the time<br />
comes, I will not give in without a fight.<br />
My mother is sitting on the kitchen<br />
steps, her face in her hands. As soon as<br />
she sees me, she stands up.<br />
“If you didn’t want to take the food<br />
for me, you should have said so.”<br />
I do not believe my mother is talking<br />
like that. I cannot contest her now so I<br />
just let her talk while I catch my breath.<br />
“All that food I spent the whole day<br />
preparing; for you to go and throw it all<br />
away like that, in the blink of an eye.”<br />
“I was afraid,” I manage to add<br />
through breaths. “I thought.…”<br />
“I don’t want to know what you<br />
thought. I warned you to keep your<br />
hands on the tray. I don’t know why you<br />
think you can keep a tray on your head<br />
without your hands on it.”<br />
“I was holding it. I held it all the way<br />
to Granny’s house.”<br />
“And what were you standing in the<br />
bush for? What business did you have<br />
there when they wanted to start the ceremonies?”<br />
“Granny wanted a strange woman to<br />
take me away,” I reply.