Patterns

Ruts in the dark red soil mark the patterns of life in West Africa. The walk to the well, the way to the forest for wood, share a sameness reflected in all daily tasks. An endless passage of feet and pounding of rain have driven a narrow groove deep into the earth, forcing the walker to place one foot directly in front of the other. At times the way channels so deep a man can stretch his arms and touch, at waist height, the level of the forest floor. For the African, life is the ceaseless ebb and flow of movement over the same place.

Spring brashly announces its arrival with rain. Sizzling barbs of lightning race ahead of the lumbering thunder giants. Both outpace the translucent green deluge which, driven by gusty thrashings, releases its rage upon the jungle. The largest trees, mahoganies and ebonies, sway over the quivering undergrowth of ferns and elephant ears. Chunks of soil and rock lunge down hillsides as though distancing themselves from a threatening sky.

Yet no matter how terrifying the storm, it is familiar. All know that the storm will come each afternoon just as they know the sun will shine again after its passing. The child of the drunken father expects the beating. It is the touch of kindness that he does not trust.

Winter brings dryness. The sun sucks moisture from streams and lakes leaving powder. From the air, the few roads that exist are cottony plumes of red peaking above the forest canopy. They stretch as an endless ribbon into the dust filled haze. Along roadsides, once verdant growth now takes on the appearance of delicate red lace sculpture. Smoke of burning fields mingles with the dust. A haze of lethargy chokes the air and the mind. People and animals move about as though each step requires immense effort and concentration. Paths to drinking water become longer, and the drop of the buckets steeper. The water that comes home in these buckets is dirty and brown with an oily surface and the taste of rancid earth. Black hair and white laundry when washed are now both brown. All eagerly await the return of rain. Each year the rains come again.

It is in darkness that the rhythms of life congeal in a rich sensuous mix. Sounds of the night; incessant whirring of insects, raspy- voiced choirs of frogs, imitative crooning of birds, rise and fall in cadence. Night noises hang on the trees in the damp African blackness. Woven amidst this cacophony come the constant pulsing of drums, the heartbeat of the jungle. These unnoticed sounds are strangely soothing, except in those stark moments of silence that the night sends like an omen. For in silence lies the terror of the unexpected.

On this particular night, Cofu Weah, stands frozen in both body and heart turning his ear to the sudden quiet. But not all is silent. From within the bush to his right comes a low moaning sound, the kind bush babies make when lost by their mothers. Cofu carefully steps from the path into the unknown. The moaning grows louder as he moves towards it and the sound begins to take on a human quality. Parting the bush gingerly to avoid the sting of sword-grass, he peers into a patchwork of moon-glow and shadow. The creature is not hard to spot. Its pale skin, the color of young gazelle hide, announces its presence beneath the banana tree against which it leans.

It is a white boy about five years old. Cofu has never seen a white child and at first mistakes him for an unfamiliar animal. The realization that he is looking at a human, similar to himself yet with color and features so different, confuses the young man. For an instant, it overcomes his tender personality.

The young child, though small for his age, was bold enough to stray into the dense jungle, but powerless to conquer the dread of its fearful night. He cowers beneath the drooping leaves of the tree, knees up, smudged arms shielding his face and his tears. His wispy blond air tousles with each sob.

Though just nineteen and not yet a father himself, Cofu possesses a natural skill and practiced experience in comforting children. His six brothers, four sisters, and in a manner, all the children of the village of Faroke, are part of his family. The village has few walls to separate people. To the child of Faroke, each house is his home, each father and mother his parents, and every other child his brother or his sister.

Stooping, Cofu’s muscular arms gather the young boy close to his chest. He clings to the man as though holding to a life preserver upon rough seas. Cofu carries the boy through the night to his village. In rhythm with the night sounds each feels the beat of the others heart against his own chest. One heart beats with used up fear, the other with spent energy. Each wonders at the sound and tries to understand the message. It is the one language they share in that dark night.

Village eyes peer from smoky doorways as they pass, watching the dance-like strides of man bearing boy. White on black, a fluid movement, caught in flickering firelight. Entering his mud home, weak and panting in the wet darkness, Cofu lays the boy upon his bed. A straw mattress sits in the corner of the round hut, covered with a mosaic of discarded fabric that had been carefully stitched into a cover. The straw feels soft. The boy is soon asleep.

But Cofu does not sleep. He sits and wonders at the pale-skinned child who tosses and turns, dreaming of a place far away that Cofu will never see. His breathing rises and falls, and at times his eyes open wide, as though seeing a ghost. Cofu softly speaks in his tribal language. The sounds soothe the child. He rubs the boy’s sweaty forehead and soon the eyes close and the breathing becomes regular again.

The night is long and Cofu has time to ponder the meaning of this event. Will this young child somehow change his life and the life of his village? Has the boy been sent by the gods? What should he do? He thinks of his mother. She knew answers, but she had died giving birth to his youngest brother almost six years ago. He remembers her face, her smile. "Cofu, you are very smart, but you think too much," she used to say to him when ridges wrinkled his forehead.

In the jungle there is a moment between night and day when the creatures of darkness transfer their tasks to the waking dawn. All grows still in expectation. Then morning calls of birds echo from tree to tree, signaling the change. The coolest hour of the day gently coaxes the water-drawers and wood-gathers from sleep.

On this morning, the jungle wakes earlier than usual because those who listen know that change is coming. As the morning curtain of fog parts, villagers see a man and woman dressed in heavy fabric of medium tan that covers much of their light skin. A long trail of load-bearers stand in a nervous circle behind them. The bearers have set down their loads; bundles in basins from which poke cans of food, bruised boxes tied with coarse twine, trunks stamped boldly REV. HAROLD CHRISTMAN, INLAND MISSIONS, MONROVIA, LIBERIA, FRAGILE.

The man standing in the clearing is taller than the African men with him. His eyes are piercing. The woman standing by him is fair of skin and seems small at his side. Yet, when he moves away from her, she seems to summon an inner energy. Those watching closely say at such times she grows taller. Quiet and ferocious, she is a woman of two faces. The man examines the eyes of the villagers that stare back at him. In the loud voice people use to address others who do not share their language he asks “ I am looking for a young boy. My son...about this high.” He holds out a hand level with his waist. “Have you seen him?”

Not grasping a word of the man’s speech, but knowing the message, hands point toward the hut of Cofu Weah at the far end of the village. Thin trails of smoke curl from its roof telling all that someone is inside and awake. Rev. Christman strides to the front of the hut, pushes aside the woven grass mat that serves as door, and steps in, not asking or waiting for permission to enter. The light inside is dim. It smells of burning wood, mud, and thatch. Cofu rises and stands in front of the resting boy, protectively. The man, confused by Cofu’s actions, and exhausted with worry, attempts to push Cofu aside. But Cofu, being stronger and younger, stands firm. The man yells: “You have my son. Move from my way. You have no right to him.” Cofu understands not the words, but only the angry sounds.

In the missionary’s eyes Cofu catches the resemblance shared by father and son. It is a look of desperate fear. He knows that it was not just the son who has missed his way, the father seems lost as well. It is that lostness that identifies their kinship even more that the pale skin or straight blond hair. At that moment Cofu does not understand what the fear he sees will mean, yet he knows that life in his village will not remain as it has been. For this fear not only binds the boy and the man to their futures, it binds Cofu to his as well.

As the silence of a dark night can bring fright to Cofu, so the strangeness of this land, its total other-ness from the plains and people of Mid America terrifies the white man. He will attempt to take the patterns of life and alter them into something he can understand, something that will make his fear subside. It will drive him make Faroke like his home.

Cofu steps aside. The man roughly lifts the boy from the bed and carries him out of the dimness. There is no gratefulness in his heart for the young African. When the Reverend Christman emerges from the hut and Mrs. Christman sees that he carries the young boy in his arms, she rushes to her son and takes him from her husband. She clings tightly to him, sobbing with relief. He is her life, the one she can pour love into and not reap hurt or disregard as reward. “Oh my baby,” she coos into his chest. “I was so afraid I would not see you again.”

“I must pray about what to do,” says Rev. Christman. He turns to the bearers and signals with his hands. He has trained them well. With one motion all drop to their knees, hands clasped. It is the pose of devotion taught to them. Mrs. Christman bows as well, still tightly clutching her son.

“We thank thee, oh God,” he begins. The tone is solemn as he speaks, a church voice. “Thou has seen fit to return to us our son. We had given him to you, as you gave your son to us. The world was cruel to your son, and he was a stranger, as we are in this place.”

As he speaks, broad accents of the American heartland warm his heart pushing out the scents and sounds about him. Eyes closed, his heart turned toward Heaven, Rev. Christman feels himself standing again among the warm wood and stained glass of his youth. He is home again, if but for a brief moment. For Harry Christman, the patterns and rhythms of life are all within his head. Like those rugged trenches in the African sod, his mind has tracked its course many times. That trail runs deep through catechisms, rights and wrongs, shoulds and shouldn’ts. Always it leads back to a small wind-swept prairie and the town that clings to it through dust, wind, and rain.

“But thou hast repaid us in your favor,” he continues. “We will therefore mark this place, and bring this place as a gift to you. It will become a place for sons and daughters that were lost, and are now found. In your gracious name we pray, Amen.”

The words echo against the damp fullness of the cool morning, caressing the jungle like a gentle wind across the plains, full of fertile soil and shimmering grain. The Reverend Christman rises and all knees and eyes rise with him. It is decided, as though the hand of God has marked this place. Faroke is to be the home of the Inland Mission. The rutted paths remain unchanged, but now over them pass strange new things. Tin sheets for roofing, block-making machinery, even a small pump organ all traverse the jungle ways, carried on the heads of strong young men who are eager to please.

These paths, which had once assured the sameness of their lives, now begin to sever them from their past forever. Each slow movement of load-bearers, like a worm consuming its way through the sand, digests a portion of what had been, and excretes a trail of what is to come. New patterns are being engraved upon the jungle, patterns etched with mortar, will, and fear. A mission home is built beside the banana tree where Cofu had once knelt to cuddle a frightened boy. It is made of block, with a broad porch and three locking doors. Beside the house, a small church covered with palm fronds is erected.

Cofu passes the home and church each day on his way to gather wood and draw water. Sometimes he sees the young boy, whose pale skin is now darkening in the sun. The boy plays games with children of the village.

On Sundays, he hears the Reverend Christman speaking and the Mrs. Christman playing the small pump organ. New patterns and rhythms float in the air, an uneasy medley of subdued plains memories and raucous jungle mornings. A few villagers gather on such mornings to listen to the sounds. All pray to find what they had lost.

But Cofu does not go in.