Summary
As a child, Laye often visits relatives in the town of Tindican, a two-hour walk from the city of Kouroussa. Laye’s uncle, a young man close to his own age, comes to pick him up and slows his pace to match Laye’s. The two-hour walk through the countryside takes four hours because of this. Laye marvels at the wild boars and birds they see in the countryside. He also loves to hear updates about the cattle herd his uncle oversees. A city boy, Laye is afraid to get close to the cattle alone, worried about their horns.
Upon arrival in Tindican, Laye’s grandmother greets him with affection and gentle reprimands for not having enough flesh on his bones. She jokingly asks if people in the city eat or not and insists he cannot leave until she has fed him enough to make him gain weight. She refers to him proudly as her “little husband.” It takes Laye two hours to walk two hundred meters because of all the women acquaintances of his grandmother with whom he must stop and catch up. Laye comments that the land in their concession is vast, with cattle, goats, and granaries full of rice and millet. His eldest uncle is in charge as the heir of his deceased grandfather, but he is rarely in Tindican, preferring to rove and adventure.
Laye stays in his grandmother’s hut, which is like his mother’s. She hangs corn high up to the roof above the fire; the smoke keeps termites off the corn. Laye’s grandmother wants him to start his visit clean, so she bathes him and then sends him off to meet his local playmates. They also comment on his thinness, then go to lookout platforms in the fields. From their vantage, the boys fire rocks from slingshots at the birds and monkeys threatening the crops. Laye comments that his country friends, clothed only in loose shorts, envy his school clothes. But Laye envies their freedom to play and get dirty. He must be careful not to tear or dirty his khaki shirt.
Laye always goes to Tindican in December, a dry and beautiful month, to be there for the rice harvest festival. The rice stalk–cutting ritual involves the beating of tom-toms as stripped-bare men march to the fields with their shining scythes. The head of each household makes the first cut, and then all the men quickly scythe away, bringing down stalks and tying them in bundles. Laye helps his uncle Lansana by stripping the leaves. He asks about being allowed to use the scythe, but his uncle tells him it will likely never be his job. Laye gets lost in a revery worrying about what his future will contain if he has no place in his father’s forge or as a farmhand. He wonders if he will become a rover, like his uncle Bo.
The harvest work is interrupted at noon by the arrival of women carrying large platters of steaming couscous and jars of fresh water. The men and boys eat and drink. For two hours the men nap in the shade while the boys go off and set snare traps for animals. Laye comments that the evening harvesting always goes faster, and before he knows it is five o’clock and time to return to the huts for the evening meal. The boys and men sing, pleased that the genii have blessed them with a day of work in which no snakes, dislodged from the fields, bit anyone.
Laye comments that in Kouroussa, he sleeps in his mother’s hut, while his younger siblings live in their maternal grandmother’s. Laye must share his bed with the youngest of his father’s apprentices—boys who have yet to be circumcised. Laye remembers Sidafa, one he took a shine to. Laye would stay up late chatting with Sidafa, provoking his mother to shout at them to go to sleep already.
In the mornings, Laye wakes to breakfast having already been prepared by his mother at dawn. Everyone eats together, and there are strict rules. While Laye’s father presides over the meal, it is Laye’s mother who is most strict. Laye is not allowed to speak while eating, or to look at anyone older than him. He must focus on his food, then thank his father at the end of the meal before telling his mother the food was good.
Laye comments that his mother, while authoritarian in attitude, is well-respected by all. Laye knows some readers will be skeptical, but she seems to have inexplicable powers. For instance, Laye recalls an occasion when a man came to ask her if she could use her powers on a stubborn horse. Calmly, she goes to the field to where the horse refuses to stand up. She tells the man not to strike the horse, for it will do no good. Instead, she speaks aloud, swearing on her chastity before marriage and her fidelity to her husband. She commands the horse to stand, and it does so immediately. Laye says he wouldn’t believe it had he not seen the event himself.
Laye speculates that his mother’s supernatural powers may have come from the fact that she was born the next child after twins. It is custom to think of twins as somewhat magical, and the child who follows—the sayon—is endowed with the responsibility of weighing in on matters of disagreement between the twins. Laye gives another example of his mother’s powers: sometimes she gets up in the morning, steps outside, and shouts, “If this business goes any further, I shall not hesitate to expose you. That’s my final word!” The shout is meant for the witch-doctor, whose nocturnal activities have somehow come to Laye’s mother’s attention in the night through her dreams. Somehow the witch-doctor hears this warning and stops whatever he is doing.
Laye comments that no one doubts his mother’s powers, and they also don’t fear she will use the powers for evil. Laye says she comes from the class of people usually chosen to become soothsayers and circumcisers. Her brothers chose to be farmers instead of following this path, but he believes she carries the soothsayer spirit of her caste. Laye relates another miracle: His mother inherited the totem of the crocodile from her father. As the possessor of this totem, she collects water from the Niger River even when it is flooded and there is an elevated risk that crocodiles will attack. She and everyone around know no harm can come to her. Laye comments that he too has a totem, but he still doesn’t know what it is.
Analysis
In contrast to his daily life with his parents in the city of Kouroussa, Laye makes regular visits to his grandmother and uncles in the countryside. Laye writes with unrestrained affection for the place and the people of Tindican, a rural town populated by farmers. The theme of respect for family arises when Laye describes his grandmother. Like his father, she is a pillar of her community. She also displays the pride and independence expected of Guinean women, continuing to farm her land despite her advanced age.
But woven into Laye’s respect for the people of Tindican are the more complicated emotions that come with uncertainty and colonialism’s influence. While L’s playmates wear only loose shorts that allow them to play and move freely through the fields, L’s only outfit is his French school uniform, which he must keep clean and free of tears. The difference in their outfits marks L as a Francophone Guinean student on a path to a more European lifestyle, whereas his playmates’ parents expect them to follow in their footsteps and become farmhands. Thus, they don’t have to attend school.
Uncertainty crops up when Laye is helping his uncle during the ritual rice harvest in December. Laye hopes to use the scythe like the elder farmhands, but Laye’s uncle insinuates that Laye will never be a farmer. This comment provokes a reverie in which Laye worries over his uncertain future, knowing he will not take over his father’s forge or become a farmhand. He will stay in school, a path that no one in his family has taken before him. This creates anxiety, as there is no example or tradition for Laye to follow.
Laye comments on the daily life in Kouroussa, which is likely unfamiliar to the Western readers he assumes are the audience for his French-language memoir. A polygamist, Laye’s father has at least two wives, and they sleep separately from him with their respective children. He also has several apprentices living on his property, and they are dispersed among the huts according to age. Laye sleeps in his mother’s hut, sharing a bed with young apprentices. Everyone eats together at one large table, and tradition dictates that Laye, as a child, never speak or even look at his elders while they are eating.
Laye also returns to the theme of supernaturalism when commenting on the mystical powers his mother possesses. Coming from a class of people who would usually become soothsayers (i.e. people who can see the future), Laye’s mother has a reputation in their community for using her powers for good. As with his father’s snake, Laye doesn’t doubt his mother’s magic, having seen her communicate to a stubborn horse and routinely take water from the Niger when the risk of crocodile attack is great enough to keep everyone else away.
Laye subtly returns to the theme of colonialism’s influence at the end of the fifth chapter, commenting on the fact he has a totem animal (as his father has the snake and his mother the crocodile) but he still doesn’t know what it is. Having pursued his Francophone education and moved away, Laye has become disconnected from this particular Malinke tradition.
