Two Moons by J. Raymond Ractliffe - Part Two- Chapter 4

Two Moons is a new novel by J. Raymond Ractliffe that explores the inner spirit life of Africa, her people and their powerful faith in the world of the Unseen.

The Rising of the Moons
Chapter 4

       Etona walked briskly out of the rounded doorway and onto the top landing of the landing stairs. He had made sure, he was the last one off the new 747; he wanted no one to push from behind their own urgencies as he inhaled the first fresh morning air of Africa. The flight had been long and bumpy, more than once the overhead lights had come on for passengers to return to their seats, to extinguish their cigarettes and to buckle up safely. More than one found it necessary to relieve themselves just at that time, a last fevered cigarette before being left to the will of God. Once he caught the weak smile locked on a new stewardess's face as the plane shuddered through another air pocket, her youth and inexperience no match for the rumbling sky that made low the strongest heart.

He looked out over the tarmac to the main airport terminal. Behind the tinted glass and steel, the waiting eyes of Gileni faithfully searched for him as he finally disembarked.

Already the morning air began to fill with the red silt that rained on them all as it came from over the hills and open grasslands to play in their hair. He could smell the morning wood smoke from a million sleepy fires as young hungry mouths signalled their awakening. For a moment the grey skies of London were forgotten, the heartbeat of his soul finding its place among the land of his Ancestors and the Land of his Dream Visions.

From behind his mind's eye, the visions that had come in the night played out yet again for him to see. Etona had come to Nairobi to fall once again into Gileni's arms and be smothered by her wild kisses and passionate tears. The long months of separation made the first hours and days together sweeter than wild honey and rarer than silk.

Since they had left the farm together after she had arrived from the mud walled compound, their arms had been linked even when the distance between them made their beds cold. New eager words were silenced in the dark night as bodies clung together through the dawn, gentle sleep ending a young woman's tears that had came to play in her joy.

Etona had stood beneath the limbs of a lone tree that had trembled before the laughter and final scream of a dying hyena and watched as the wind came to play in the mane of a proud lion that had taken Etona's father to his Ancestors. A grieving sandal turning the red earth gave up the ivory kudu horn found in the bloodied sand that he wore against his dark skin, a last link to his father.

A last link to the White Eyed Woman that stalked his dreams.

Etona and Gileni had both been sent to a missionary school outside Nairobi for a year, where outdoor classes and extra tutoring began Etona's climb up into the white man's world. The chalk letters on simple black boards letters came easily to Etona, quickly outstripping Gileni as she laboured over her words and signs. It was easier to find her wondering the surrounding fields searching for the herbs and leaves her Mother had taught her to gather. Her bunk room became filled with the healing salves and ointments of her days studying under the watchful Milk Eye of Majura.

In time, while her letters and numbers failed to mature beyond the classes of third or fourth graders, her simple proud signature became no more than a child's scribble.

From her bunk in the girl's dormitory, Gileni dispensed traditional remedies to those that came to her, the new local center for those in need. Her medicines healed fevered bodies and cleared unwelcome spirits that had come. Those medicines that healed the spirits, she hid from the missionaries. There was a limit that they had for accepting the ways of her People. Better to leave matters of the spirit to the Reverend or Priests. Only God and the Blood of the Lamb could heal a spirit wounded by life, or the jealous curses of an enemy.

At night, while the stars blinked above their secret meeting place, hands were held as they spoke of their dreams, the morning light separating their final kisses as they hastened back to their rooms before the scowling glances of their dormitory mothers hauled them out for rule violations.

Etona's eyes burned with a silent fury as a thin cane brought soft whimpers from the offices as Gileni was taught the ways of the white man's love. Her palms were beaten until the bruises finally yellowed in the sun. Etona was told to bend over a strong wooden chair. History had taught those that preached the Gospel, it allowed for a taught rear to receive the punishment with better results. His continued violations brought out the very best of his educators. The mandatory ceiling of six stokes was often forgotten. His legs and lower back often receiving the marks for his forgetfulness and of their devoted dedication.

Etona focused on the tasks ahead of him, the words of challenge that had brought him here never forgotten. While the whistling cane brought no change to his discipline, the new words of the white man came and flowed easily as he began to speak the language of power and shame. At the end of his first year, he had mastered the basics of numbers and calculation. Burns and Shakespearean sonnets were remembered easily by walking them side by side with the great poems and war songs of his People.

At the end of that year, he was sent to the same school in England as Jeremy's own son Grant had graduated.

Gileni was left behind to complete another year with the missionaries, but since she never developed anything past the frustrations of her educators, it was finally agreed her schooling had come to an end, and that she was free to go. The sisters were relieved that the fragrant aromas and incantations that they heard in the night, would be finally gone. They were sure the young innocence that smiled at them as she prayed with them in the sandstone chapel, housed the devil.

Gileni brought her ointments and salves to the old market place at the southern part of the local suburbs, where her simple wooden stand brought her new patients from every quarter. Her remedies became known far and wide as news travelled of a young Healer that had come.

In the quiet nights that followed Etona's departure, she would fill her night time by painting the colours of her People on the simple clay bowls and lids that housed her healing. Carefully painted lines and splashes of colour that marked her own feelings of loneliness created new textures and songs that remained bold in the day.

Brave tourists that had ventured out past the daily certainties of their guided excursions found a young smile perched behind a simple sun cloth, where the marking of her heart on simple clay blazed in the sun. Silver coins were quickly exchanged where these new creations disappeared beneath colourful travel bags and grateful smiles.

In time, love potions and dreams adorned her simple booth, child like inscriptions written on brown paper attached to each gourd or pot telling of its hidden mystery.

Other symbols of Africa's spirit world began to adorn her booth. Masks and statuettes from all over Kenya, carvings from the hill people of the north, to the far west, from Cameroon and its Bamoun peoples, to the small bronze Benin works from Nigeria, past the Congo and its Chockwe Peoples who had settled as far south as Angola, past all these lands she had never seen, their art works of their Spirit World found a place in her booth that the white visitors came to give their bright shillingi and their thank-you smiles. She developed a keen eye with the traders, waving away those pieces that had been carved for the tourists in remote villages, she selected only those that her hands could feel their energy that flowed from the sharp steel that had carved their stories, or the hands that had sculpted the clay and brought within it, the spirit of cleansing, or dark curse.

The migrations of the great clans and people had brought new artistry and cultures that Majura had revealed in the many night times around her sacred fire. Sometimes an ornament from her own hair from her life of travels through all the Peoples became the item of study. Each colour and style of carving spoke of the Spirit World revealed through the dreams and sacred smoke from the Ancestors and the God who walked in the stars, whatever her or his name. Many stories were told of the Dark Spirits that stalked the land waiting to catch the unsuspecting in the darkness and shadows, holding their minds and spirits captive until a cleansing incantation broke the curse that had come to destroy their lives.

The white man called such words prayers while he kneeled in the stone houses of his God. To him, the black man's words to the heavens were evil and offered only superstitions to the uneducated and primitive mind.

The eyes of the black skinned hopeful that followed the smoke to the heavens knew God walked in the different words of many cultures and tongues. It was foolish to think God belonging to one people and lived in only one book.

Like the glistening waters of a flowing river, God came with many voices to all the Peoples, where they came to drink from the Words revealed on hilltops and sacred fires and lived in the Light of the Great One.

Gileni learnt that tourists and patients loved the stories that came with the herbs, painted pots and carvings that came with the packets of herbs and ointments. A second booth was opened beside her where the healing salves were separated from the dour masks and carved figurines that stood ever watchful. Petty theft was rampant in all the marketplace of Africa, while her small collections were never touched. Monies left out in the open remained there until sunset. The power of the young Medicine Woman left unchallenged.

Returning at the end of Etona's first school year in England, he found a smiling Gileni standing in a sea of painted faces and statuettes, the aromas of her healing all around them.

The money that was sent every month from the farm for her maintenance began to look small while the money earnt by her salves and trading allowed them to buy their own wooden hut at the edge of the marketplace. Their first night there was spent walking together in their dreams, later, the air filled with the scent of their loving while new pride slept in his arms, a way for their future born through the healing touch of a single twin.

Etona had yet to grow to be a senior warrior, but already he had travelled further than any in his village could have imaged. The stars that shone beneath his windows at the old school could only be seen on the horizon here as young cattle herders watched over their cows while the night skies drifted away to the morning.

Etona had arrived in the cold January to begin his second year of schooling. In a few months his grade levels indicated his hours of late study with his tutor and firm determination, his seemingly amazing ability with multiple languages and mathematics, had paid off.

A young boy's open smirk challenging him to join him at his school never forgotten. It paved the steps before him, as surly as the paws of a lion marked the trail for the hunters to follow.

Here at the public school, the shower time laughter brought no invitations. His muscled body and smokey eyes met their sexual curiosity, and was left alone. Their white superiority left unchallenged, he was left to study his assignments while their lazy weekends were filled with rowing, cricket and weekend furloughs filled with the latest film blockbusters from Hollywood.

The Beatles still topped the charts along with The Rolling Stones and the Bee Gees. On weekends, local dance floors were filled under the bright lights and booming black amplifiers, from Liverpool to London as Carnaby Street became the centre of the English Invasion.

Etona returned in the New Year having learnt the seductive art of barter and trade from Gileni.

Find what your customers wanted, and supply them with as much as they could afford, or not afford. In doing so you would tally your profits and promised favours.

It was that simple.

He did not care for the drugs that were sweeping across all social levels, this, he deemed unworthy of the son of a chief. Only sacred cows were deemed worthy of bartering from a carved throne, to trade or purchase a wife. Etona chose the only form of barter in the white man's world that did both.

Young masters of the elite, whose erotic dreams flourished while the sexual revolution gathered momentum all around them, found bedding their female blue blood counterparts a little more difficult. Small glittering gifts that found the way to their ears and necks, silent promises of glories and riches yet to come, made short work of white blouses and ever-shorter skirts and panties.

While the long hair and psychedelic colours redesigned the world in fashion and the arts, such changes came slowly to the rich. Expensive cars remained humbly conservative, a few venturing out brightly coloured sports cars, they were the exception to the rule. The sexual revolution had made little headway through the front door of the old mansions and castles, even the old families of modest means saved the chastity of their daughters as rigidly as the Bank of England saved the remainder of their once proud holdings.

While at the end of his third year in England, from the hollow carved in the center that normally housed a soul or prayer to the spirit it was carved for, Etona poured out his first small uncut diamonds that the customs' X-Rays had not found in the Konde or Nkisi statues that Gileni had traded for in her marketplace. The nails and other metal objects that adorned the statue, each nail driven into the hard wood an appeal to the spirit it contained, hid the diamonds as preying eyes searched through the wooden crates filled with straw that protected the Spirit Statues during shipping. The sudden uneasiness of the custom agents faced with the visual world of the Demon and Spirit World added to the haste in which they were searched. Even here, the white man avoided the unknown Black Power that came from Africa's heart.

Close inspections ended early or were avoided altogether.

An Iranian student at the school whose father had managed to build his own financial empire in the heartland of English pride, found the contact Etona needed to walk through the back rooms of London's traders, until he had found the man he could trust was found. A homesick Angolan with a wide smile saw the natural strength of a young chief in Etona's eyes, a firm handshake made their dealings complete.

Through a series of intermediaries, contact was made where unpolished stones made their way to Gileni in her marketplace, where she carefully hid them in the bellies of carved wood and hand forged nails, then packed them in wooden crates and shipped them to Etona via the seaport in Mombassa. The dull stones poured out into Etona's steady palms which were in turn mailed to a new contact through the Royal Post, who never lost a package. Antwerp in Belgium returned the now polished glittering stones where the slender necks of English gentry warmed to their cool touch.

The war that Angola was fighting against her own people and South Africa had made the primitive diamond mines the cash cow for their armies. These uncut diamonds were finding their way to the leading diamond houses of the world. The unknown dead in the caved in mines and sloughs were not counted, only the carrots weight they had mined and what had been stolen from their crushed bodies was of any consideration.

His dormitory room became filled with carvings from around middle Africa. Some he gave away as barter for tuck, extra clothing, sport gear or a favour that might be needed in the future. Like a personal savings account, these were tallied at each terms end, and filed away.

A private bank account opened at Barkley's stored the future dreams Etona polished through his nights.

During a weekend furlough and a trip to London, where he walked and studied the endless miles of stores and apartments, while passing a dimly lit shop with a For Lease sign, where a mock collection of African art and culture was displayed to an unwary public, Etona realized there was a market here in London for the unique collection Gileni had so painstakingly collected in her small market booth on the outskirts of Nairobi.

While he was negotiating with a unshaven landlord that did not have any confidence in a tall young African fulfilling the lease contract, the entire first year's payment in cash cast aside his last objections, and a new art gallery was opened. Weekends painting and adding the extra touches to give it a more authentic feeling filled his loneliness as Gileni shipped the first crates directly to the gallery from Mombassa.

The end of the fourth year had come. He had graduated with distinction, the faculty smiling broadly with personal pride and satisfaction, having brought a backwoods African son to the seemingly equal education level and manner of an English young gentleman. He had completed the twelve years of education in a total of five, including the first year's education done under the open African skies, completing the last three years of high school in a single year.

Caps were touched with the scrolled certificates that hailed his accomplishments, the letters of introductions to the universities of their fathers.

After the back slaps of congratulations and smiles from fellow students after the graduation ceremony had faded in the afternoon sun, there were no invitations to country estates or white washed townhouses in central London. They were reserved for personal friends and family. Etona spent the rest of the day packing his dormitory room, sending the filled boxes ahead to the newly furnished apartment above the gallery.

Etona stepped out of the plane into the African sun; the rolled certificate with the golden ribbon in his hands the only hand luggage he had brought onto the plane. It had lain on his lap during the trembling flight, the storms in the air not able to dislodge it from his lap or dreams.

The years it had taken to earn the white man's certificate of praise belonged to the gentle eyes he sought behind the glittering glass and steel. She had given him the strength while the black nights faded under the wet skies of London, his night-light illuminating the thick open books that had paved his journey to this day. It was the courage she bore him and pride of her love scribbled like a child on the endless notes she had mailed to sustain him, that had made him the senior warrior that had now stepped off the polished 747 where the bright red blood of his Ancestors ran proudly in his veins.

He came not to visit once again the warm arms of his beloved Gileni at term's end. He was here to collect all her things in the wooden shack beside the marketplace and take her with him.

The Art Gallery in London waited for her while he was to continue his studies at Cambridge. His bed no longer under the watchful eyes of prefects or housemothers. The growing account at Barkley's made any further separation a thing of the past. Their love was now free to live in each other's hearts under the open stars that guided their destinies.

His eyes did not see the lone falcon feather that drifted past his face from the morning's bright skies above. He had shielded his eyes as he watched the new sun glittering off the tinted panes of glass. It was whisked away by a sudden breeze and was carried out over the open fields between the runways.

Etona coughed briefly as a distinctive fragrant dust enveloped him, his mind not registering the familiar echo from his Dream Visions.

Majura's Milk Eye watched his return home through the Crystal Waters in the blue mountains.

Another of Africa's Sons had returned.