Bongolistically…
Mallam O.
They say you cannot pour from an empty pot. But here in Freetown, my pot is full of everything but what matters. This careful, curated, solitary Christmas has cracked my heart open, pouring out a vivid, aching memory of Warima. The disappointment here in Freetown has polished those days in Warima until they shine like a jewel in my mind.
The days before Christmas in Warima were a change in the very air that everyone breathed in the village. We children breathed in a delicious, almost unbearable anticipation that sweetened our blood. Sleep was a futile enterprise. Time itself stretched and yawned, making the dawn of Christmas Eve a mythical summit we longed to crest. The night before Christmas was always extraordinarily long!
Our true alarm that Christmas had finally come were Papa’s low, pre-dawn murmurs with the arriving men. By the time we tumbled into the compound, the world had already been claimed by purpose. The chosen cow was being transformed by veteran butchers whose knives moved with a respectful precision. This was like consecration.
Then the women’s ceremony! That began with Ya Mabinty. Her call would summon a parliament of women including her mates, my stepmothers, who descended upon our compound. They erected an empire of hearths for cooking. The great blackened pots were like caverns you could lose children in, hauled forth like ancient drums. These were the engines of joy.
“We must prepare for the multitude,” Mama would decree.
And her decree was the unwritten, unshakeable law of Warima Christmas: your door vanished. Your compound became a crossroads for every soul. Cousins materialized from forgotten footpaths. Neighbours arrived “just to greet” and were held hostage by generosity. The weary traveller was waved in from the road. The teacher, the distant uncle from the city, the friend-of-a-friend from the next village!
The preparation was captivating. Mountains of tomatoes, peppers (red, green, blazing orange) were ground on the stone thuk-thuk-thuk into a fragrant, eye-watering paste. Onions by the sack wept into the mix. And the beef! Oh Allah, the beef! This was cut into proud, generous chunks that spoke of a year’s patience. And the oil… golden, shimmering, the very medium of blessing.
We children were minor moons orbiting this fiery, fragrant sun. Our assigned tasks to fetch water and mind the fire were merely visas granting us access to the sacred site. Our true duty was to witness. To inhale the evolving aroma as it deepened from sharp and vegetal to something rich, complex, and solid. We would dare to sneak-taste when the queens of the kitchen turned their backs.
We watched the stews with beef, chicken, and fish bubble and reduce into glorious thickness. Mama’s critical taste, her judicious addition of pepper, salt, or time, was a high priestess’s ritual. And the jollof rice… oh, it cooked in a trance, each grain drinking deeply of the seasoned oil until the whole pot turned the deep, burnished colour of a Sierra Leonean sunset. Phew!
And then, as if the aromas had woven a net cast over the entire village, the people would arrive. They were simply claimants to this shared feast. We ate where we landed. These could be on benches, on mats, on the veranda steps, on a folded cloth. The adults’ talk and laughter created a particular music of communal satisfaction. And we children, with plates heaped with glistening, impossible-to-replicate jollof, would find our patch of earth, sitting in circles of pure, silent, focused joy.
Please, please, please… let me stop here. My heart cannot bridge the distance. How do I find such days in Freetown? How do I find the multitude in my sitting room? This city Christmas has everything Warima lacked, and lacks everything that made Warima everything.
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Well, it’s New Year! Back to work!!
Mallam O.
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