The Evil Forest.
By: Wilton Sankawulo
(Brought to you by "Liberia History and Culture"(S.Weah).If you see animal tracks around a Town without traps, it does not mean that the townsmen do not know how to set traps. If you see bachelors living with beautiful, single girls without proposing marriage to them, it does not mean that these men are not interested in marriage.
Once a young, beautiful woman went to a certain Town and walked straight to a small, round house before which a fine young man sat in a rattan chair. She told the young man, "I want to marry you".
The young man looked at the woman in utter amazement. A woman making a proposal to him was something he had never expected to experience in his lifetime. How did she know I was a single man anyway? thought he. He accepted the proposal out of curiosity rather than interest, for he wanted to study this young lady to know what sort of woman she was.
"Thank you for accepting my proposal ", the young woman said, growing relaxed and cheerful. The young man brought her a stool. They sat under the starry sky. "The last request I want to make", the woman continued, "is that in our marriage I play the man and you the woman."
"What are you talking about?" the young man asked, perplexed and highly disturbed.
"Don't let that bother you, young man," the woman replied.
"My dear lady," cried the young man, "I understand your situation. Women are human beings like men. They too have feelings! So you have the right to make a proposal to me. But to expect me to play the woman in our marriage is altogether unacceptable."
"Listen" the woman said. "When I grew up I planned on marrying a man to serve him. We women always feel that men ought to make our farms, hunt for us; fish for us; and build our houses. On behalf of womanhood I would rather do these things for a man. So don't worry. As this is the Dry-time, the first job I want to tackle is to start our farm. When I begin, cook for me each day, prepare my bath, sweep the house, make the bed, and bring my food at noon."
The same curiosity that had led the man to accept the marriage proposal persuaded him to agree to the second one. Let me do what the woman wants and see what happens, he thought,
During the week the woman had the blacksmith of the town make a big cutlass for her. It was a heavy cutlass with a sharp edge. Then she told her husband that she had seen some good farmland near the town for growing rice, and would not venture further. She would make a large farm; he should be prepared to work hard to plant all of it with rice, since that was a woman's share of the farm work. For several days the woman walked through the high forest around the town. To her delight she saw that the luxuriant forest on the western outskirts was fallow; she decided to use it. When she told her husband about her decision, he objected to it with horror.
"It's an Evil Forest" he cried, his eyes poking out in fear. Then he told her in a whisper: "Don't let anyone else hear that you wanted to make a farm in it. If you love me and yourself, listen to my advice".
"Remember I told you at the beginning that I would play the man and you the woman!" the woman said. "You are playing the woman very well. Women are by nature scared and soft-hearted. That's why they always want their husbands to be strong, brave and wise. And that is what I am. Don't worry. Leave everything to me."
"But you are a stranger in this town!"
"I said don't worry", the woman said curtly. "No more comment!"
"You know", the man said, trying to think of what to tell the woman to dissuade her from farming in the evil forest, "if you see animal tracks around a town without traps, it doesn't mean that the townsmen do not know how to set traps. The men of this town are good farmers. So don't think we naturally like to play the woman. I agreed to your proposal out of curiosity. If that forest could be made into a farm, you wouldn't have seen it fully grown. For your own sake, take my advice".
The woman still paid no attention; so he said no more.
One fine morning she took her cutlass and went into the evil forest. She saw no omen. Nothing convinced her that the forest was evil. So she started clearing the undergrowth. At noon the young man brought her some food. To his amazement she had cleared more than an acre of undergrowth. She ate sparingly and resumed working. In one day she cleared five acres.
The next morning, when she returned to the forest, she saw that more than twenty acres of undergrowth had been cleared in her absence. She shuddered with fear. "What is the cause of this?" she wondered. But she was brave enough to resume working. At noon the man brought her food.
"Don't you think the clearing is large enough now for one farm?" he suggested. The area cleared was as large as two normal farms combined.
"I think so", the woman said quickly and returned to work, thinking all the time about the strange incident. Who had helped to cut the bush in her absence?
The next day she returned to find more than fifty acres of undergrowth cleared. She trembled and started running back to town, but remembering what she had told the young man, she stopped and went back to work. At noon the young man set out with some food for her, but did not arrive until sundown, because the clearing had grown exceptionally wide and he had to walk almost the whole day before reaching her. The woman did not eat, but told him instead that they should go back to the town.
On reaching the town she went straight to bed in her sweat-drenched work clothes. All night she was restless in bed, thinking. The young man's advice began making sense to her, but she couldn't give up. That would make her a woman. A man must always complete any project he begins. The following day she took an axe to cut down the trees, for she realized that the clearing was large enough, in fact too large for one farm. At noon the man took some food to her and saw that she had cut down many trees. He startled with surprise at the amount of work the woman had already done; he couldn't do that much work in one day. She ate and then returned to the town. When she went back to the farm the next day she saw that all the trees had been cut in her absence. Utterly confused and sick with surprise, she returned home quietly and met the young man blowing on the fire under a rice pot.
"What happened?" asked he. "You left the farm early today!" "Nothing," she heaved a sigh, looking absently into the distance. Laying her axe down she went into the bedroom, undressed and went to bed.
"Are you sick?" the young man called to her, but she did not reply.
Thinking that something strange might have happened to her, he went into the room and opened the bamboo window. Rays of sunlight with dancing motes poured into the room. The woman had covered herself snugly with a blanket and was curled up on her side facing the wall.
"What happened?" the young man asked again, bending over her, his lips parted, his hands resting on his kneecaps to support his body. Turning her head backwards briefly and glancing at his face, she said, "I don't feel well today." There were streaks of tears on her fat cheeks. The young man went back to the cooking. When he had finished, he put a bowl of rice for her on a table in the bedroom and went out to the evil forest, where he discovered that all the trees had been cut down. He nodded several times and concluded that his wife had been awestruck by the strange incident. "Why didn't she listen?" he said to himself. "To turn back now will be just as dangerous as going forward."
His wife's shock developed into an illness and for several months he was forced to nurse her. One day, when she seemed to have recovered he told her:
"Let's burn the farm. It's dry now." "You think it's dry enough?" she asked. "You want to draw back?" the man said with severity.
"No, no;" she said with a sudden burst of excitement. She couldn't draw back and still be a man. If the unburned farm remained lying in waste, it would forever confront her as evidence of her laziness.
"Let's burn it, if you think it is ready for burning," she declared.
Towards the end of the dry-time they burned the farm, and it burned very well. When the rainy season began the man started planting the farm with rice, in keeping with a woman's share of farm work. He needed only to begin. When he went to the farm each morning, he saw that a great deal of it had been planted in his absence. He worked only four days on the farm and it was all planted with rice. Normally he wouldn't have been able to plant half of it with rice, however strenuously he might have worked throughout the planting season.
When the farm was all planted, they spent most of their time in town while the rice grew, for neither birds nor animals bothered it, and as the forest land was extremely fallow, they did not need to weed it.
At harvest time the king of the monkeys gathered together all his subjects, took them to the farm, and they consumed every bit of the rice. When the young man and his wife inspected the farm early one morning, they discovered to their dismay that all the rice was gone. They stood on the edge of the farm for a long time, speechless and terror stricken, staring at the empty farm and at each other. Then all of a sudden, they saw a herd of monkeys, their tails raised in the air, walking defiantly into the bush on the other side of the farm.
"I told you!" the man said to his wife. "You have caused us to make a farm in the evil forest and this is our reward! You see, the townspeople do not stop anyone making a farm here. After all, nobody wants to keep an evil forest. But anyone who makes a farm on this spot does so at his own risk. Our work has gone in vain and it is too late to make a new farm. I told you!" he cried. "I told you! I told you! We're going to starve! We will starve! You're a stubborn woman."
The gathering anger in the man's voice frightened the woman. Suddenly he started boxing the air with his clenched fists and howling curses at her. She defended herself with her arms and retreated, tripping over logs and rocks. Eventually he calmed down, sighed, and bowed his head.
"Don't worry", she said. "Those monkeys will pay for their mischief. They can't eat all our rice and go free. I'll set lifa behind the farm. Don't be disturbed. Rely on me."
Early the following morning the woman went to the bush to make the traps. The man refused to accompany her; he sat all day on his porch brooding over the misadventure. "Why did I allow her to go on with this sacrilegious affairs?" he muttered. "Infatuation! Yes, that's it! Allowing a woman to treat me like this!hat does it look like? Stupid! Senseless! A woman telling me to play the woman and me agreeing to it! I am a fool! Yes, I am a complete fool," the man cussed himself repeatedly. When he became tired of cussing, he went into the house, lied down awhile and then returned to the porch. He then walked around the house, down to the nearby river bank and back to the house again, talking to himself all the while.
Since the couple's actions were unheard of, no one came to console the man. After all, his condition was to be expected; so he was watched from a distance, like a disease. Since no medicine man could or would help him, the young man was left to wander alone and ponder on the stubbornness of women and his stupidity.
In the evening the woman returned from the bush in high spirits; she told the young man that she had made twelve lifa around the farm."Those monkeys are now in danger," she kept saying, bobbing her head vigorously. But her reassuring words only worsened the man's condition. She caressed and hugged him in an effort to cheer him up, but he remained unresponsive and lifeless. In desperation, she ran to the outskirts of the town, collected an assortment of herbs, and administered them without success. Sleep was the cure. They went to bed early that evening and woke up late in the morning, when a sudden burst of energy and well-being sprang up in the young man; he felt fresh and happy. This was not only because of the rest he had had. He had made a decision.
"You know," he told the woman forcefully, "look for another man. I don't want to be your man anymore." "What are you talking about?" the woman cried with astonishment. "You mean to say you'll leave your wife at the first sign of trouble? Don't let me believe that. Be faithful companion. Some men love a woman only, when she is well, young and pretty. Don't act like such men. Be a faithful companion."
"I say we are not married anymore!" the man said harshly. "Look for a different man."
"Well," the woman said, embarrassed, "let me check the traps tomorrow and share with you whatever I get. The you may go your way. All right?"
"I'll wait till tomorrow," the man said, walking away.
She went to the traps the next morning and brought back a dozen dead monkeys. The monkey corpses dangled from her shoulders as she walked proudly to the house. When the young man spied her, he ran to her eagerly and helped carry them into the house. That day they ate a lot of monkey meat and put the rest of it on a dryer suspended over the fireplace to dry.
"I told you,"the woman said smiling. "Those monkeys will not go free. We don't have rice but we will have all the meat we want. We can sell some of our meat and buy rice with the money."
"I've changed my mind", the man told her with a smile. "What?" she stared at him with warmth.
"There's a point to what you said. A very important point. It's not good for a man to leave his wife just because of trouble. If you promise me you won't make the same mistake again, we could remain married."
"A baby antelope can show it's mother a trap," the woman said soberly and bowed her head sadly. Pulling herself together continued in a quite voice: "You know, if you allow a starving man to help himself to your food, he'll eat all of it. I've always envied men the role they play in marriage. I thought it was kingly. To have someone wait on you, to have the power to make the last decisions on important issues, to walk about with confidence, these are some of the characteristics of men which I have always envied. Now I see that they are not so easy and delightful as they seem. If a woman tries to play a man's role in life, she'll end up overplaying it." Tears seeped out of her shiny eyes. She bowed her head remorsefully. The young man sidled to her and held her in his sinewy arms. "Now I know...I know.." she wept.
"Don't let that bother you", the man said, pressing her against his body. "When I agree to play the woman, I was not doing it only out of curiousity as I said. I myself have always envied women the role they play in life. The mere word "mother" carries so much meaning and affection. We even call the earth mother and all that. I thought women had the best of everything....Don't let us drag things out. I will not leave you no matter what happens."
"From now on I'll play the woman and you play the man", the woman promised.
"let's forget about who will play what", the man retorted sharply. "Do you think when you get sick I won't make hot water for your bath, cook for you, and take care of you just because I am a man? Let's be everything to each other."
His words had a soothing effect upon her. She stood up, wiped her face with the back of her hand, riffled in her wiry hair for a time, and grew relaxed as if a burden had descended from her head.
The next morning she visited her traps again and brought back eleven monkey corpses. The following day she brought ten. This went on from day to day, the number decreasing, until one morning when one of her traps caught only a big, red monkey, which had apparently fought fiercely to free itself and run away, as was shown by the loose thatch in the trap; the trap sticks which she had tied firmly together were now held only loosely by the piassava fibers. She gritted her teeth and looked grimly at the monkey. Then she took it down and set the trap again, her gaze still fixed on the creature.
''I'not dead yet", the monkey told her. "Take your cutlass and cut my head off."
The woman held her breath; her heart pounding her ribs furiously; she crouched to run away, but the monkey stood up with a stagger and said, "if you run I'll chase you. Wherever you go I'll go until I catch you. I told you what to do, and that you must do if you know what is good for you. Let me repeat: Take your cutlass and cut my head off."
In fear, confusion, and desperation the woman took her cutlass and hit the monkey with the blunt side many times until it lay on the ground dead and mangled in a pool of blood. She hadn't cut off the head. She picked up the monkey to carry home, but just before entered the town it told her.
"I'm not dead yet. Build a fire right here and burn the hair off my body."
"Well, then wait here let me go for fire," she said harshly, dropping the monkey to the ground with a thud.
"You may go," the monkey said, "I won't bother chasing you. But if you don't bring back the fire right away, you'll drop dead."
The woman ran to the blacksmith's shop which was located on the edge of the town. Fortunately she found the blacksmith at work and he gave her some live charcoals on a piece of zink with which she built a fire and burned the hair off the monkey. When she had finished; the monkey said:
"I'm not dead yet. Take your cutlass and cut me to pieces, and then get some fresh leaves and pack me in them. No more mistake this time. You didn't cut my head off as I told you before."
The woman cut the monkey to pieces; gathered some goa leaves and packed the meat in them. When she took the meat home, her husband was disappointed for she had a package in her hand rather than monkey corpses.
"An unlucky day, heh?" he said, grinning. "Well, a hunter can't be lucky everyday. Maybe the monkeys are getting to know the location of your traps.
The woman made no comment. Placing the package near the fireplace, she told the man to loosen it, wash the meat and put it on the dryer. Only one of her lifa had caught a monkey; not wishing to bring a lone monkey corpse to town, she had decided to make a package of it. Would he please loosen the package, wash the meat, and put it on the dryer?
"No, don't wash me and put put me on the dryer. Cook me," said the monkey meat. The man started and stared aghast at the package.
"The voice can't possibly come from the package," he whispered.
"Perhaps it's my wife speaking." In a loud voice he called to his wife, who had gone into the bedroom: "Were you talking to me?"
"Since when have you started hearing voices?" she asked, coming out of the bedroom with quickened steps. "Nobody talked to you! Loosen the package and put the meat on the dryer!" she told the man roughly and went back into the room.
The young man untied the package and washed the meat in a pan, but when he was about to place it on the dryer, it said: "No, I told you to cook me. Understand! Put me into a pot and cook me!"
"What--what is this, my people!" the man cried. "Come! Come and hear your meat talking! You ara terrible woman! he called as he scattered the meat all around.
"You people are not children, but full-grown adults," the monkey meat said. "So act sensibly. I'm not asking you to do anything unusual. Put me into a pot and cook me!"
"And you couldn't do something that simple?" the woman chided the man, staring at him reproachfully. Stunned, the man watched her with amazement, speechless.
The woman gathered the meat together in a pan, washed it, put it in a pot, added water, salt, pepper and oil and placed the pot on the fire; she nervously hitched firewood together under the pot and blew on the fire.
After the meat had boiled quite awhile, it said, " I'm done now. Take the pot down, put me into a pan, and eat me."
At this the man ran to the porch, shouting to the woman over his shoulder. "From today, I'm no longer your husband! You may have the house, and everything in the house, including your meat! If I follow you any further I'll loose my life!" He disappeared from the porch.
The woman took the pot down, emptied it in a pan, ate plenty of the meat and drank the soup until she was filled. She made an attempt to cover the rest of the soup and the meat with a plate until evening, but the monkey meat said:
"Eat all of me if you know what is good for you."
Fearfully she stuffed herself with all the meat. In the afternoon she roamed dejectedly about the town, crying and not knowing what to do. Her stomach bulged as if she was pregnant, and pained her severely. In the evening she felt like relieving herself and went into the bush, where she passed out the monkey!
"Take your cutlass and cut my head off", the monkey told her.
The woman ran with all her might to the town. But as she was about to enter the town, the monkey suddenly grabbed her by the breasts, swung her from side to side, and she began squealing and screaming excessively. She then cried hysterically, calling for help.
Luckily, the blacksmith who was still in his shop pounding a red-hot iron, heard her cry and ran to her immediately; he surprisingly saw the monkey hooked to the woman's breasts.
"What!" he cried. "You mean to say monkey wants to have a woman? I can't believe it! No I can't!"
He ran back to his shop and brought the long, red-hot iron he had been pounding and pierced the monkey in the ear with it. The iron went through the monkey's head and he fell to the ground with a heavy thud; wriggling in pain.
"Mr. Blacksmith," it said as the blacksmith pulled the iron out of his head. The blacksmith winced, but he was man enough not to run away. The woman, who was no longer surprised by the monkey's incredible behaviour, stood still and listened. "Mr. Blacksmith, you saved this woman," the monkey continued weakly. "It's unlawful to make a farm or set traps in the Evil Forest. This woman broke both laws. The spirit of the forest commanded us monkeys to eat her rice. I am the king of the monkeys. After we had eaten up all the rice, the spirit thought that would have scared the woman away; to mysteriously lose all the rice on such a large farm should frighten any sane person. Of course, she did very little of the work. The farm made itself! This sort of mystery did not put her off, however. When we had eaten the rice she went right back and made Lifa to catch us. By the time I took notice of the traps, too many monkeys had already been killed. I told the Spirit of the forest about the senseless killings, and he gave me the power of Speech to tell the woman to remove her traps. While I waited for her one of them caught me by accident. Since she wanted to kill, I thought I'd let her kill me for the rest of her life. I could keep coming back to life to give her the chance to kill again and again."
"King Monkey," said the blacksmith, "I'm not interested in long talks. Leave the woman alone and go back to the forest."
"No," said the monkey, "I'll die now, you have spoiled my plan." "What plan?" the blacksmith asked, a fearful look on his face. "The spirit of the forest told me that no one who makes traps for monkeys in the evil forest would ever succeed in killing them again. I forgot to have him protect us from all human beings. It looks as if human beings in general like to kill."
"What do you mean, king Monkey?" cried the blacksmith.
"You see," said the monkey, "this woman would have never succeeded in killing me. She could cut my head off, cut me to pieces, cook me, and even eat me, and still I would come back to life. These are the very things she has been doing to me all day. I could have escaped into the bush long ago, but I wanted her to have unlimited opportunities to kill, but now you have killed me, Mr. Black, because you have never set traps for monkeys in the Evil Forest. Thus, if you kill a monkey it cannot live again. Life is deserting me." Suddenly overcome with weakness, the monkey stirred uneasily, gasped, and died. "Bury me," were his last words to the blacksmith and the woman.
The woman and the blacksmith obediently dug a grave right there and then and buried the monkey.
***************END******************
(Brought to you by: Liberia History and Culture)October, 2012.
S. Weah
