The Last Great Ape Page 16

  “The Achipawa let nobody in,” the pastor told me. “Brother Bulus Demena is the one nearest to their territory and he’s been there for years but cannot enter. No one can.”

  When I arrived in Bulus’s town, I grabbed my bag and walked up to the minivan driver to pay my fare.

  “It’s okay,” the driver said. “You don’t have to pay. Someone paid for you.”

  “Who?”

  “He already left. It’s to welcome you here.”

  Outside the church, I sat on my backpack and watched giggling boys inch closer and closer to me. One boy held a faded Christian pamphlet bearing the face of a blond child. The boy pointed to the blond kid in the picture and said in Hausa, “You!” Then burst into laughter and ran away.

  Bulus Demena was called from his farm and arrived with an English teacher named Elia Omaro. They led me to Bulus’s house in the corner of the church compound. Tall, thin Pastor Bulus was an older man with the everlasting smile of a boy. A poster of the year 2000 doomsday adorned his living room wall. The poster depicted drawings of a dozen city scenes and selected Nigerians sucked up into to heaven as angels in white. Those playing soccer, kissing, doing karate, or drinking in bars were not going up.

  Bulus didn’t understand English, and Elia pronounced his words in a way that made him sound as though he were choking. As Bulus listened to me talk, his moustache spread like a pair of wings over his gummy smile. Elia laughed when I said I wanted to meet the Achipawa. He translated for Bulus and they both laughed.

  “You don’t understand. You cannot go. They are gah-DING their secrets,” Elia said as though swallowing the word. “They are guarding their chief called god. No one enters. He is their god. He must not go down from the mountain, Karishen. They will not let you in. Don’t go there.”

  Bulus offered me a chair and brought a Pepsi and half a dozen pots, eggs and masa, meat stew, chicken, enough food for a family of five though all for me, the kind of feast I’d fantasized about on the Gibe River in Ethiopia.

  That night, I was about to go to sleep in Bulus’s room, which he’d vacated for me, when he appeared at the door. Through Elia, Bulus said, “Timothy Karishen is the first Achipawa Christian. Probably the only speaking English. Tomorrow you can get closer to him. The vee-Huck-el can take you.”

  I didn’t understand until he mimed vehicle with a steering wheel.

  The next morning, Bulus’s mouth dropped open when he saw me coming back from the market with a black billy goat; if I were going to meet god, I needed an offering. The animal and I squeezed into the back of a blue pickup and drove for hours, the road just tracks through the grass. The baby in the lap of the mother beside me had black eyes in which I could see the sky reflected.

  At the end of the road were four houses with tin roofs. The goat and I leapt out, and I stretched my jaw, which was tight after the long jarring ride. People were as stunned as Bulus had been to see a white man with a goat. They fired question after question at me, though my Hausa was no use at all.

  “Timothy Karishen,” I said as I got my bag.

  People kept speaking to me in Hausa.

  “Timothy Karishen,” I said, louder.

  The third time I mentioned the name, a man nodded and took my bag and pushed his bicycle as he led me across a pasture. We waded through a stream, through rice fields, the pink sunset shining on the water. A boatman steadied his canoe at the banks of a river as I climbed in, the goat behind me, then the bicycle, then the man, which brought to mind brainteasers my father loved, of how to get a wolf, sheep, elephant and turtle across a river without any of them killing each other. On the far banks, we followed a narrow path in the darkness to a village with an outer wall made of woven mats.

  “Welcome! Welcome!” It was Timothy. Word of guests traveled fast in the bush, and he’d known I was coming. He said, “I hear a lot of enjoyment from your visit.”

  A child took my bag and another took my goat, and food in calabashes and gourds was set down in front of me. Then I explained why I’d come.

  “I can lead you to the elders,” Timothy said. “And we see what they say. Eat, eat, there is more.”

  An older boy played a two-string gourd guitar.

  The village was called Angwan Hassan, and Hassan, himself, sat by a fire.

  “Popo,” I said, greeting him in Achipawa.

  “Popo,” he answered. Then through Timothy he said, “You are protected by the god of the Achipawa, the Womo. He knows you are here as he knows everything.”

  Timothy, like Hassan, was relegated to the periphery of Achipawa territory. Timothy’s father had taken him to live in a town as a boy and he lived now almost as an outcast because he’d seen the outside. His last name, Karishen, was the name of the Achipawa’s mountain; whether he’d been stripped of his father’s name I didn’t want to ask.

  “They allow me to be here,” Timothy said. “When I came four years ago, no one is knowing to read or write. They did not know Christianity. Now, I build churches and we always have many worshipers.”

  The next morning at Timothy’s church, which had a leaning mud pulpit and a mud cross, five people sang in a high, piercing octave, the sound like that of an ungifted cousin of mine warming up her saxophone. Timothy kept his parishioners for just two hymns, which would have been a warm-up for Bulus Demena, who’d been driven out of the territory after trying to build a large brick church.

  Timothy, the goat, and I set out one morning. We met a man ascending the mountain who wore animal skins. One of his two trussed chickens I took and carried upside-down for him, and the man led us across a swamp, through fields of corn towering over our heads, land so fertile it seemed seeds could just be sprinkled on the ground. We crossed a stream, trekked through grassland. Three hours from Timothy’s hut, we found Achipawa lining stones along the path. Tall and muscular young men, all wearing animal skins, stopped us, and Timothy had to explained my presence, explain that I’d come only as a friend. Other Achipawa were ascending the mountain slope, pulling goats and sheep, sacrifices for their god. Timothy motioned toward the highest point on the horizon, what seemed like a shrine of stacked boulders, like a totem of a giant bird. He said, “This is the Womo’s automobile.”

  The massive rocks looked as immovable as anything could be. “Automobile?”

  “It is our belief with this rock our Womo can go any place in the world in one second.”

  “But he can’t just walk?”

  “A Womo cannot leave his house his entire life.”

  We reached a tree where Timothy said we had to leave our shoes. As I unlaced my boots, I thought of what was told to Moses: Shuck your shoes from your feet for the place you stand is holy ground. We climbed for an hour on bedrock spotted with long leafy plants. Suddenly, at the top of a hill among trees, the first thatched roofs appeared. Bare-breasted women wore bouquets of green leaves between their legs. Men wore tight leather shorts secured with sticks. Strutting through the village were warriors who in wrestling matches would have pinned me in seconds.

  “These are their holiday clothes,” Timothy said. “For the Womo’s holiday.”

  A man came forward and Timothy hurried to explain that I was no threat. In the doorway of a hut, a woman was weaving bark or leaves. Another woman used rocks to grind grains, spices, or dyes. A goat was led toward a man with a spear. The children didn’t greet us. A young man waved us over, and we walked between huts to where four angry elders stood. Thin black lines around a man’s eyes gave him a piercing stare. He shoved a water-filled gourd into my hands, another into Timothy’s. I drank deeply. Mosquito larvae wiggled in the water. The elders eyed me with scorn.

  Through Timothy I said, “The powers of the Achipawa god are known from a great distance. I came to bring respect from a faraway land and to give the Achipawa god the gift of this goat. The Womo is all-powerful.”

  “Where do you come from?” an elder asked through Timothy.

  “Israeila,” I said, as it was referred to in nearby tow
ns by Hausa speakers.

  “We don’t know why you want to see the Womo.”

  The elders spoke to Timothy and then to each other. Though two of the men had not softened to my presence, Timothy said, “They allow us to continue to climb.”

  The bedrock, as we headed up the mountain, seemed to echo under our feet; Timothy said that Karishen was hollow, which I guessed was due to an aquifer or to air pockets sealed somehow by lava. We came upon shirtless ten-year-old boys working in a field, boys who had to labor for their future fathers-in-law for seven years.

  We climbed to another layer of huts where people gathered beneath trees. A man rushed forward and Timothy seemed to say we’d been permitted to come.

  “This is the blood ceremony,” Timothy said, hurrying me to the side. “This is a secret you cannot see.”

  Four elders rushed over. They wore full skins that hung from their shoulders. Standing with the men made me feel that we’d crossed a bridge into the past. And I was the one who didn’t seem real. Timothy pointed to the goat, and I gave my speech. Two men frowned and stomped in the dirt, but they waved us up the mountain. I sneaked a glance into the trees and saw a blood-filled gourd and a spear with blood on its blade.

  “Spirits of the people that died will take the blood from there,” Timothy said.

  We reach the Wedding Stone, a whitish stone that was round but flat on top. Timothy said, “If you want to marry, you need to do like this.” And he raised his hands overhead. I knelt, bent my knees, tried to lift the stone, but I could only make it wobble.

  “Did you lift this?” I said with Timothy’s help to a man standing near.

  “Yes, of course.”

  I laughed at the thought that the wombs of the Achipawa were not squandered on men as weak as I. Though I doubted anyone could actually lift the stone. We passed a section of ground strewn with pot shards, a holy place, Timothy said, but he didn’t explain. Then without warning we reached a plateau, the roof of the Achipawa’s world, which gave views of a hundred kilometers on all sides, a landscape endlessly green. The Womo’s strange automobile stood nearby. At least a kilometer beyond it was a steep cliff and another climb to the place of the Womo.

  Priests marched forward, furious, putting Timothy on the defensive. They wore hides beautiful in their simplicity. A man with a beard was upset, shaking his fist. I began my speech, but he cut me off and silenced Timothy. One man turned his back to us. The priests scolded Timothy as if he were a child, as if saying, What were you thinking? Then the priests turned and walked toward their huts.

  “There is a problem,” Timothy said.

  I repeated my monologue to him, urged him to approach the priests. A few minutes later, he summoned the courage to step forward, bowing as he walked. He pointed back at the goat.

  “Why don’t you give us the gift here?” barked the bearded man. The black makeup or tattoos around his eyes seemed to give him the power to see through me.

  “I want to take the goat to the Womo,” I said, keeping my head bowed and avoiding eye contact, “because I came to receive the blessings of the Womo.”

  “How did you hear about the Womo?”

  “His powers are known in places so far away, it is night there when here it is day.”

  “But why do you come?”

  I looked up at the man but with my head down, like a young Maasai. I said, “I am bringing the gift of my people.”

  The priests spoke to each other, then to Timothy. They said we could continue.

  The path up the cliff was arduous even for the goat. Wind hissed through spires of volcanic rock that marked the rim of a caldera. Below, in the grass, was a hut with a small closed door. Near a second smaller hut waited three elders—the Womo’s assistants. Pouches of sniffing tobacco hung over their arms. One man looked over and frowned. The other two ignored me. They led Timothy into the hut, leaving me outside with the goat. As I stood in the grassy caldera, alone for the first time in many days, I thought, if there were ever a place that could quench the need to travel, here it was, the center of a world strong enough to exist.

  Timothy emerged from the hut, smiling. He said, “They hear enjoyment from your visit.”

  The Womo’s helpers bent down at the waist-high door of the second hut and crawled through what felt like a secret passage. Timothy followed and I followed with the goat. I crawled through the dark tunnel and reached the end. When I looked up, I thought at first there was nothing inside. I was staring at a boulder, I finally realized, that was nearly half the size of the room. Light entered through a small window. The hut felt as cold as a cave. The Womo was hardly a shadow in the dark. One of his assistants moved the goat aside and then sat, like the other two assistants, with his back to a pole in the center of the hut. I trained my eyes on the floor while Timothy helped me to sit. Then I buried my head between my legs, so not to be thought to be trying to look god in the eyes.

  My pulse thumped in my ears.

  Timothy knelt and greeted the Womo while looking at the floor. When Timothy looked at me, I knelt as he had and said, hesitantly, “Popo,” not knowing whether it was a word meant merely for men.

  The Womo did not respond.

  One of the three helpers spoke to the Womo. Timothy looked at me, and there was silence, so I spoke. “I heard about the great powers of the Womo from very far. I come to pay my respects and to give the respect of my people. And I brought this goat as a gift.” Timothy translated to the assistants and one of them spoke to the Womo and the Womo did not respond.

  “Did you bring money?” one of the assistant priests said through Timothy.

  “I did not bring money,” I said. “Money can bring with it evil if it’s used badly. My gift can bring only good.”

  Timothy smiled and relayed the answer to the priests and they did not relay my answer to the Womo.

  The Womo spoke. His voice was hoarse, weak. Light shining through the window carved his faint silhouette. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see only that his arms were folded in his lap. When the Womo went silent, the assistants spoke to Timothy, repeating the Womo’s words, and Timothy spoke to me. “The Womo accepts your gift and he thanks you for your gift. And he hears a lot of enjoyment when he sees you,” Timothy said in his strange way.

  I waited in silence.

  The Womo spoke, a question, repeated to Timothy and then to me.

  “The Womo asks you to tell him something about the place you come from.”

  “I come from a far place called Israeila. We have three gods that may actually be one god. But this god is in the sky and people cannot meet him. That is why I feel a great honor of meeting god here on earth.”

  Timothy nodded as he translated.

  “The Achipawa are the first people to arrive to Nigeria,” the Womo said. “In all the wars, people arrived to the mountain of Karishen to look for shelter because they knew that here with the powers of the Womo they were protected. The mountain of Karishen is the center of Nigeria.”

  I asked him, “Are you the one who brings the rains?”

  “Yes.”

  The assistant priests added, “He controls the lightning and the thunder and the rising and setting of the sun. He decides who is born and who dies in all of Nigeria.”

  I could see now that the Womo wore clothes that were blue.

  “How does the Womo know what happens outside,” I said, “if he has to stay in his hut all his life?”

  Timothy had told me that he read the fire.

  “They are my ears,” the Womo said of his assistant priests.

  “The body of the Womo stays in the house,” one priest said, “but the Womo can be in many different places at the same time. You talk to him here inside the house but he can be now in any other place in the world or even in three different places. In one day the Womo can go to any place in the world and come back.”

  The Womo asked me to tell him more about Israeila.

  “There we do not let our cows go free to eat grass,” I s
aid. “We close them in small houses and it is the people who bring food to the cows.”

  “Cows in the house?” Timothy said to me. When the assistants heard Timothy’s translation, they talked to each other for a minute before relaying my words to the Womo. And the Womo did not respond.

  “Great Womo,” I said, “I want to know more about the Achipawa. I ask for the permission of the Great Womo to stay in your land for a short time to learn your traditions.”

  The Womo gave his permission and invited me to return in a week to be with the Achipawa on his holiday. But he said, “Some ceremonies are closed. You cannot hear all the secrets of the Achipawa.”

  I was directed back into the tunnel as thunder rumbled outside. Timothy climbed out behind me into the daylight, the priests following. Thunder echoed again through the clouds, from one side of the sky to the other. Timothy pointed upward and said, “God.”

  “The Achipawa are not circumcised,” Timothy told me a week later when we climbed back to the caldera’s rim. “Me and you that are circumcised, we cannot go down to the dancing. We can watch from up.”

  Timothy and I had swum in rivers during our long walks, and he’d seen me without clothes.

  “Would they check you?” I said.

  “If you lie it will be dangerous. My brother lied and said he was not circumcised just to participate in the mountain ceremony. When he came back home, the place he was keeping his corn was burned.”

  Below us was a spectacle of topless women dancing in leaf skirts, their hair worked into giant Afros. Men wore plumes of feathers on their heads and danced holding bamboo poles. People moved in two circles that rotated in opposite directions, the singers dancing inward toward the soloist who held a bamboo shaft perhaps three stories high. Thunder roared as the dancers rushed the center soloist and withdrew, answering his words with song. Thunder came from the south. I set up my camera to photograph the lightning, the purple light, the Womo’s rock automobile. But I felt it was not my right to photograph the ceremony, and part of me thought I shouldn’t have come at all. As thunderclouds neared from the west, priests came to greet me on the rim. God sat shadowed in the doorway of his tunnel.