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 The boy! .. reflection on a west African folktale
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The Boy
His name is Katoga, now he is twelve. He is the fifth child for his father. His two sisters got married and left with their husbands. His eldest brother is living in the village in a house of his own as he is married too and has his own family. His brother Isakha works in Kumasi the capital city of Ashanti people to them Katoga belongs. He enjoys the stories Isakha tells about the city especially when he tells about the colorful procession during the yam festival katoga misses every year as the five days of the festival are very critical for his family because they grow corn and sorghum in addition to the yam and they need to prepare their land before the autumn.
some time before the autumn, Katoga has to go the farm with his father every day, although its only three weeks but for Katoga it feels like a year because of the tiring work he needs to do to avoid upsetting his father. Preparing the land for getting a good harvest of corn and sorghum is difficult as Katoga always thinks. His father knows the exact times of doing things; when to plough, when to plant the seeds, the names of the different parts of the bull plough and the other things about people, language and religion. Katoga remembers what his father says when he complains about work or missing the yam festival days “we grow yam to eat it, we grow the corn and sorghum to use some of it and to sell the rest because we need money”. As he remembers that he decides not ask or to complain because he knows the reply he will get.
People in village help each other, that is why it’s very rare to see Katoga and his father by themselves working, they always have a company and most of the times his father gets very busy chatting with villagers who come to offer help. Sometimes his father asks him go to help people in nearby farms, in that occasion only Katoga might find one of his peers and he never misses the chance to complain about how boring work in the farm is. It seems his father knows how Katoga feels but he has nothing rather than more work to make him busy. When Katoga gets back home from the farm he finds his mother ready with her pleasing face and her delicious food; yam porridge and stew. Katoga likes sitting to his grandmother who lives with them, he loves her stories, the part he doesn’t like in what she says is when she talks about Nyame the Moon Goddess who gave birth to all men or the Sky God Father who made the world with his hands, because Katoga thinks religion is old people business but not his. He remembers what his grandma says when he tells her about people who don’t speak the Akan language, she says “poor people who are not seen by Nyame”. One time she told him Akan is the language of God, and it’s the tongue of Nyame. That time Katoga dreamed of being able to write the letters (the written version of Akan) or to draw them, he knows as anyone else writing is a secret that is given by Nyame to selected people like the elders and chiefs, then he learned to forget his dream about writing. Before he goes to bed he remembers all the difficult moment in the farm, the only way for him to escape that is to dream about setting traps to catch birds and to take them with their wings folded under their legs to his friend’s house to play. He dreams of swimming in the pond without being called by his father to go to work. Katoga wants a happy end for the life of a farmer son in a city like his brother Isakha.
taha
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طه جعفر
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست