We have a Destiny .............! (6)

  

 Leroy’s parents too heard many voices of which they seldom spoke except for Aunt Mo. who would frequently disclose the prophetic dreams she had or thoughts which became dreams after a nights rest. The household was governed by such dreams and occasionally nightmares. Aunt Mo’s rash behaviour and erratic ways were governed by prophetic dreams.
       Leroy over heard the conversations in the kitchen on Sunday mornings as he played in the passage. Stories about the power of the Mau Mau and how everybody was afraid of them, even white people known as “settlers” were afraid of these mysterious warriors. Leroy thought he would make a good Mau Mau, whatever that was he enjoyed the sound of the words. How unusual they were from ordinary words that were in his Janet and John books.
    There was also constant talk about riots and killings in South Africa, as the sweet smell of fried plantains wafted from the kitchen. They would talk in whispers about African revolutions; African starvation; The Biafra war and Colonel Njuku; The dying Africans of Ethiopia and how Africans won a war against Mussolini. Leroy could hear the chant through the kitchen door.   “Nations-rise-and-nations-fall; Nations-rise-and-nations-fall” his father chanted. There was a consenting hum of agreement as the sweet scent of
fried dumplings seeped through the kitchen door.   Leroy would be on his knees playing with his toys and using his toy cars to ram the tiny soldiers, Indian braves and assortment of small plastic moulded animals. He would plot his own rebellion against the ‘Imperialists’ and ‘colonial’ masters he had heard talk about from the kitchen. Leroy discovered a hatred for ‘propaganda’ another fine word he often heard repeated but could not understand the meaning.  He stood his mixed box of soldiers in a line. He had obtained these collectibles from the weekly three-penny- lucky-dip-bag that he bought.  With a flick of his wrist he would set all his figurines tumbling as thick cards of footballers and cricketers, -accessed from the bubble gum machine would spin on their axis and make their deft connection. Like tiny seeds discarded in autumn the voices of the household of adults, echoed in Leroy’s mind. Africa would reverberate through the child’s mind.

   The daily struggles of his parents in the face of indiscriminate abuse were a constant reality. One day Leroy’s father came home with spit down the back of his jacket.   As he washed it he cursed, that one day his time would come. Leroy never under stood what he meant. Leroy watched as his father sat with his jacket in his lap and wiped the white spittle, tears filled his father’s eyes but Leroy pretended not to notice in case he redirected his wrath towards him.
   “Time will tell! Time will tell!” that was his father’s response to racial injustice.
    “When they come for me, I will take one of them with me, just like in the American gangster films,” Leroy thought to himself.    The physical beatings from his parents and at school from his teachers liberated I, the spirit to always watch over Leroy Marriott when he was at risk of torturous abuse. We had an unwritten agreement. We also had an agreement to seek and find the source of African spirituality of oneness, beyond the screaming souls of the Atlantic middle passage. 

To Africa to see the “King Kong” (5)

  

 As an inducement and prize for getting his haircut his father had bought  a complete cowboy outfit complete with double holster  and spurs. Instead of showing excitement or pleasure Leroy cried an involuntary deep pain felt cry. The sort that starts off with a deep breath but instead of exhaling it 
becomes a sniff that becomes another sniff to then become a hick-up and the shoulders heave and there is no control. The tears flowed leaving a white track down his cheeks.

   Leroy had always identified himself in the “game” of cowboys and Indians as the Indian a warrior brave who would one day defend his nation and become chief of the Sou’s, Apache, Comanche.  Leroy was an Indian Brave not a singing cowboy, drunken cowboy or bank robber cowboy. The nearest Leroy ever got to being a cowboy was the father in “Bonanza”.
   This was yet another indication to his parents that Leroy was indeed backward. 
“Most boys want to be cowboys” said Aunt Mo. Coming in to appease the situation. With a sense of humour Ivan did an Indian dance around the room with two fingers as feathers and the other hand patting his mouth to represent the sound OOOHHH, OOOHHH, as he war danced.
  
   Leroy could not help but sniffle himself to silence and then to a smile. Leroy submitted to be scalped with his father’s brand new clippers. Kindness and understanding shown by Aunt Mo. Previously evaporated. 
She announces: “What a way him look like Bud Pinckney.”
   The heaven gates opened and Noah had prepared for the flood. Not Leroy involuntarily the tears washed his face. He stood in his full cowboy outfit. As his face was a washed by tears. Leroy felt the breeze he had not experienced for some time the coldness of a bald head. Aunt Mo’s words sunk in like an arrow he had made and shot a tiny bird whilst in the bush as a child. He stared at the Bud Pinckney still pink with clear wriggly lines for veins. The rear end covered in a downy feather and he Leroy had lit a fire and set up a spit and roasted the creature and ate it in the ashes of his fire. He placed himself in the place of the ill
fated hatch ling, with the scrawny neck. Leroy felt openly vulnerable of everything. He had no cover. He had been truly scalped. Ivan out of frustration shouted: Shut up Shut up “bwai” he shuffled around to find a strap, Leroy exited to the garden without another word and stood under the tree in Dead Wood City. As he watched the back of the house, waiting. He plucked a long stem of grass and chewed the stork
emitting a white sap.
   The psychological pain was too much for Leroy he was “a- mean- looking -bald- headed, bud Pinckney, Indian dressed as a cowboy.”Social reality 2.3
  
   His parents had cheated.  They had gone to somewhere very special together. The evenings preparations were the most elaborate he had ever seen. Aunt Mo. Took her time to prepare in front of the dresser in their
tiny room. She used her best perfume and carried her shiny plastic handbag.  He had suspected that they had gone to Africa without him.
   They came back late that night laughing and happy. Leroy screwed up his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Overcome by a presence standing over him in the bed Leroy peeped to see his father dressed in his silk lapel jacket and his frilly shirt complete with black bow tie. Ivan shook his head from side to side. 
   “Boy, you asleep?”
   “Yes.” Leroy could hear snippets of conversation “about “King Kong.” Leroy felt betrayed they had gone to Africa to see the “King Kong” and had   not taken him.  They were guilty. 

Leroy Walked in Whiteness (4)

Somehow Aunt Mo. was not as nice and as kind as the lovely warm white ladies at school or the beautiful white ladies that entered the living room and spoke in modulated feminine voices from the television
screen. She was a woman, but yet in a different class Aunt Mo was in a class of her own. Her smile was not welcoming and kind it was a battering sneering parting of trembling troubled lips, a woman in torment with
herself. Anger was anger something to enjoy and give full vent. Never holding back, not something to conceal and play with, as Leroy had learned to internalise his anger and suffer in eternal silence a living death. Anger and violence were to be enjoyed and savoured by aunt Mo.
   

The pain, the squirm the pleading were all part of the ritual...  Leroy was a bad child, his pain and screams were theatrical to Aunt Mo. Who became more encouraged the louder Leroy howled. What kind of man was this pathetic creature growing up to become she often wondered? A kind of man that would commit suicide at the first opportunity she concluded in her thoughts. On occasion she told him just that. The beating and torture seemed to have had a converse effect rather than rejecting Africa, blackness and all his bad-ways, Leroy Marriott became more welded to the images of his ancestors and the life he had left and was still longing for somewhere in his past life. Here the twist began, as a child Leroy became purposeful in his
intent to become an African neither was he perturbed about his behaviour. 

The beatings reinforced and encouraged him even more. Leroy held on to the memory of the daffodil bulb he was given at infant school. It was his and he had to grow it, not on the land of his fore parents
like yam in Jamaica, but on the tiny windowsill of their London room. Leroy had the responsibility of a tiny flowerpot and a dish in which to meet the challenge of the bulb’s growth.  Leroy planted the bulb in the pot with the assistance of his father; they labelled the pot “Leroy Marriott.”  Leroy recalled the story of Jack and the Beanstalk and waited patiently for his opportunity to escape, just as Jack had succeeded to do. He looked out of the window every day for the stalk climbing to the clouds, but it never happened, he watered the bulb so frequently it became a soggy mess, since he was left alone frequently while his father worked on the bus and Aunt Mo. worked as a nurse.  His parents were more concerned about Leroy’s
behaviour and conformity to Standards, than his past living ‘wild’ in the Jamaican countryside.

   Leroy’s family never discussed politics with him; to them he was just too young and stupid to understand the dynamics of the world around him.  They were probably right but the anxieties of the family filtered down to Leroy in over heard snippets of conversation.  His parents would often speak about him as though he wasn’t present. He would oblige. He stared blankly ahead of him.  iSangoma, the spirit of Leroy would wonder into their heads only to find a greater pain that they had suffered and were continuing to experience.
  
   Leroy walked in the whiteness. He lifted one foot then plunged it into the snow. Then the next and so the journey continued leaving distinct footprints in the virgin snow. Through the park he progressed into the woodland area towards the railway track. He followed the wire mesh fence parallel to the rail line.

You are not an African you are Hinglish (3)

CHAPTER 2: Not an African?

 “Leroy! You are not African,” the many voices said. 

  “You are a ‘Hinglish’ boy living in ‘Hingland’.”  Leroy recognised one of the screeching haunting voices as his guardian Aunt Mo’s. She had reminded Leroy constantly throughout his childhood. The diminutive figure of Aunt Mo. Was fixed at fifty. Her compact and neat persona was constantly on the move.  She was always able to look down on Leroy in spite of her height that was Aunt Mo’s magical gift. Aunt Mo had the ability to look down on all that were much taller than herself and reversed any possible intimidation factor.  He wide eyes questioned his own being in the presence of Aunt Mo. Leroy felt hollow as he tried to avert his eyes. Her eyes were full of purpose where as Leroy’s were void and opened  pierced by fear, but open. Leroy would retreat into a distant place in his mind, a place of safety and calm. One day he would physically make that much needed trip to the far off place in his heart. 

 To ensure he fully understood what he was told, he would be beaten with clothes hangers, pots, pans, shoe heels and broomsticks any thing that came to hand until they broke. Leroy never broke.  

 “Look at your nose how it broad, lord have mercy you have to do something about your nose. If it grows any broader you will certainly turn into an African. Its only African people have nose broad like that.”

   Aunt Mo's considered logic as a tirade of blows rained down on his body of eight years. Leroy stood in a zinc bathtub. Tepid water rippled around his ankles he shivered uncontrollably, the tub rattled across the lino floor, his thin black limbs danced the shimmy as his teeth chattered his eyes swivelled blankly searching for a point to which they could fix.
   “Stop the trembling! Stop the trembling!” Aunt Mo. Shouted. Leroy tensed his body in an attempt to stop only to “tremble” even more.
   “Are you afraid of me?”
   “No mama” Leroy said in self-defence.
   “Well stop the trembling,” She says hitting him with the cold wash-rag   It was during one such episode of beating that I the spirit left the body of Leroy Marriot to observe the situation from a safe distance.  

Watching I could see the frenzy of his guardian mother Aunt Mo. possessed with a maddening anger. The pain Leroy suffered was often disproportionate to his bawling and screams. It was his dramatic game plan in a vain attempt to lessen the blows. I watched over the pathetic couple entwined in pain.  Aunt Mo. was not to realise she was flogging a spirit less body. Time had stood still for the body of Leroy, only the background noise of television theme tune to ‘Panorama’ registered in his mind as a landmark to his suffering as I
danced to Peter and the Wolf by Prokefiev. The pain suffered by the child of eight years was incredible to bear it was safer viewing the episode from the ceiling. I shared the secret of our ability to separate with something deep down in the body’s empty shell. We had warning signals when the pain would be imminent. Total silence and a blank stare would indicate it’s time to split, (Out-of-here). 

   They were trying to beat the African from themselves, to dislodge and erase their very own ancestral memories. The Queen of England was loved in our house; she was spoken of with reverence and often mentioned in the same breath as God. Whenever the National Anthem was played there was silence until it ended, then the Test card would come on with a continuous tone and only then would the TV be switched off. Our patriotic English lifestyle was a contradiction in terms to our seeking for freedom from the imperialists. Leroy lived in a Royalist household of Aunt Mo. and his father Ivan Marriott. Aunt Mo’s face became as big as the television set as it bore down on Leroy. She was not real, but another powerful image from the outside world, imposing itself onto Leroy’s reality. Suddenly the face and her body became smaller and smaller until it appeared distant in the far corner of the living room. Leroy became dislocated from his own presence in the room. He found himself staring at the expanding and retracting figure. 

As he floated from the ground, yet was weighted by his experience. Leroy tried to escape his own gaze but yet he was transfixed to the spot. He felt light, then heavy, light then heavy and so it went on for what was an
eternity.

To Liberate the Soul (2)

  

 The audience shrieked and screamed in anticipation of an outrage they were unaware of, as though filled with the pain and agony of those carried away by slave ships. The screaming penetrated Leroy’s mind, breaking the tranquillity the hazy afternoon sun.  Leroy shut his eyes, green and blue-floating spots played on his retina.  His fingers out-stretched rested on pieces of broken glass. iSangoma hovered above to sight the charged particles of Leroy’s body. Leroy ceased his annunciations and swayed with his people. Connection was made. Leroy narrated his life:

   “Everywhere I went, others around were angry. Anger welled up inside like a blowtorch alive and hissing with a hollow escape of ignited gas. I glowed with the anger of others. A movement of the chin was a code of discontent. A flick of the lip was a sneer of unreasoned anger, and nonconformity to peace.” Leroy held out both arms as he addressed the audience.

   A man in the front row bit his lower lip and sucked while he stared beyond his nose - this gave an impression of a meditative state. He broke out of his contemplation as he stood involuntarily as he would at a Christian revivalist meeting.  

“That is like me, I needed help, but I did not know where to turn. I viewed all white people the media, films, the news, walking down the street as the enemy. I could not look a white person in the eye. I tried different jobs but could not get promotion or even recognition for my efforts by whites, I too was filled with hate...”  The man said.  iSangoma held up his arms just like the Messiah, just as the white missionaries had done before him. “You are the master in your own house, racism dies today,” Leroy tells the man. The man sat down as though cured of a terminal illness. Harsh voices played within Leroy.
  
  

British African Identity Another Story (1)

CHAPTER 1

  

 I, iSangoma of the lost African tribe, made my incantations to the relaxed crowd of people seated around my refined village hut.  I loosened the bright yellow-knotted string of the barrister’s kit bag, flanked by drummers, my audience sat on logs others sat on deck chairs awaiting my annunciations for the day. The South African, Giyani sunshine was intense,
irradiating the dazzling colour of the women’s traditional costumes and dress. The sky was a flawless intense turquoise blue.

“Today, I will show you my life, as to how we have all here come to be
one,” I said with prophetic confidence.  The purple silken sheet embroidered with crimson lay flat on the concrete dais before me. Beating drums swayed the crowd into a hypnotic trance.
The ominous rattle of the contents of the kit bag heightened the expectations and provided a lead to a child percussionist. The rattle of the bag ceased, I held it above my head and waved it to the entire crowd. The crowd hushed themselves to silence.  The hissing whispers   “Prophecy, prophecy filled the air. On cue, the small child began to shake a gourd full of seeds. It was an impromptu performance at an erratic pace. Not to be upstaged I turned to the child and smiled. The Gourd was laid to rest. The audience cooed at the innocence of my powers.  More people began to gather round from all corners of the large compound. Cars were still arriving until sunset. 
  
The bag was turned upside down, its contents disgorged onto the dais.  The items fell at random. The crowd murmured as they crooned their necks to identify the items: Handcuffs, syringe, pebbles, leaves, IC chip, keys, bullets, a skull, twigs, a pen, and seeds with the wig he had gained as a trophy. A mirror shattered as it hit the dais. Some in the audience gasped,
others pointed as they recognised the items. They all knew they were in for a dramatic adventure. A battered cymbal crashed! A drum roll intensified.
With one deep breath I let out with all my might in a dignified incantation the African Affirmation of the troubled souls of the lost tribes of the middle passage as, follows:

   As an African
   I believe in Africa, I believe in African people
   I swear by all that is sacred to return
   To my motherland
   To sleep under the African skies and
   To maintain communion with the ancestral spirits of Africa
   To eat and share the fruits of my labour.
   No more shall I be a slave for those of the deep blue,
   I will strive for my tribal rights and my African heritage
   I will enjoy my liberation through industry and
   The pleasures of my children.
  
   I will fight to the death against exploitation,
   Starvation and war until I rebuild the African gardens of
   Peace. Where, all tribes shall be united as one.
   I will protect my people and tell my story
   without hindrance or distortion!

      iSangoma ceased the chant. The Giyani audience fully understood the state of mind they were dealing with in their new iSangoma Leroy, from the Lost African Tribe.