They went back to the car, took the bags out of the trunk, and entered the village of Ureca, made up of bamboo-roofed houses covered in palm leaves and surrounded by a green hedge, but built on stilts to protect them from the rain.
There were around thirty houses built along an earthen avenue bordered by trees and staked trunks from which hung monkey and antelope skulls and snake skeletons to ward away the evil spirits. If Jacobo and Kilian were there, they would probably feel they had gone back in time. It was nothing like either the capital or the northern part of the island.
At one end of the avenue, a larger building with no walls could be seen. At a certain distance, several people recognized Iniko and waved to him.
“What is that?” Clarence asked.
“It’s the village house. It is the most important place for us. It is used for meetings, to explain stories, to discuss day-to-day problems, and to sort out disputes. Everything I know about my people, I heard it here. By the way”—he signaled to the crowd coming over to greet them—“from now on, you also form part of the oral tradition of all the places we have visited.”
“Ah, really?” Clarence looked at him, intrigued. “For being white?”
“The whites don’t surprise us as much as you think. You’ll go down in history as Iniko’s girlfriend. Even if you leave in a few hours!” He smiled wryly. “There is nothing you can do now.”
He turned around and walked toward a group of neighbors. They greeted each other very warmly and exchanged a few words, and a woman pointed to one of the houses.
“Come, Clarence,” said Iniko. “We’ll leave our things in our hotel.”
Clarence raised her eyebrows, amused. On entering the house, she whistled in surprise.
The floor of the simple house was of beaten earth, and there was hardly any furniture, but the room could not have been more romantic and welcoming. In the center, there was a circle of stones with wood prepared to light a fire. Close to the rudimentary fire, there was a large bamboo cot raised off the floor like a bed. On a small table, someone had prepared a bowl of fruit that looked very appetizing.
“We will sleep here,” Iniko explained while he left the bags on the floor. “Now we have to accept the invitation of the chief. It’s time for dinner.”
Clarence felt butterflies in her stomach. She was going to meet the inhabitants of the village? What better occasion to ask about her father’s supposed friends?
Nervous and expectant, she followed Iniko to the village house, which was filling up with people.
The chief was called Dimas. He was small and sturdy, with curly gray hair. Two deep wrinkles marked his cheeks. From the way he greeted Iniko, with the same affection as the majority of the men, Clarence was able to judge that her friend was very well liked.
They sat on the ground in a wide circle. Clarence and Iniko were seated in a place of honor near Dimas. Some of the men gave curious looks to Iniko’s companion, and several children sat around them. It was inevitable that Clarence would be the center of attention that night. During the feast, consisting of fish, fried banana, yucca, and roasted bread-tree fruit, she answered many questions about life in Spain. The men remained comfortably seated, and the women came and went with bowls of food and drink—especially drink—trying to avoid the children who swarmed between the white woman and the dishes. When the inevitable subjects of snow and skiing came up, Clarence became infected by everyone else’s laughs.
Her eyes were filled with tears and her throat burned from the palm wine. “How do you make it so strong?” she wanted to know.
Beside the chief, a man so thin that you could see all his bones, who went by Gabriel and who seemed to be around the same age as Dimas, answered.
“We make it in the traditional way. We climb up the palm trees, helped by liana arcs and thin ropes. We cut the stems of the male flowers”—he gestured by moving his hand horizontally—“and we gather the liquid in a gourd or a container. Then we leave the liquid to settle for several days to let it ferment”—he stretched his hands with the palms facing the ground—“very, very slowly. Yes. It has to settle to gain strength.”
“Like the Bubis,” Iniko pointed out, and everyone laughed and nodded.
They finished their meal, and the chief took on a serious pose. Everyone became quiet, and Dimas began to narrate, in Spanish, the history of his people, which they had certainly heard hundreds of times before, thought Clarence, but nobody showed any signs of impatience. On the contrary, they often nodded as Dimas described how the Bubis had first arrived on the island, thousands of years before; the wars between the various tribes over the best land; the list of kings and their great deeds; Ureca’s fortunate location, which made it difficult to find at the time of slaving; the arrival of the first colonists and the conflicts with them; and life under the Spanish.
Dimas’s voice took on a grave tone when naming the kings.
“M?lambo, L?riíte, L?póa, M?adyabitá, S?paókó, M?ókata, A L?bari, óríityé . . .”
Clarence closed her eyes to listen to the history of the Bubi nation. Her mind traveled back to the time of slavery and the conflicts between Bubis and Spaniards that took place before the Bubis were completely pacified.
“The colonists removed the king,” murmured Iniko, “but we retained our national symbol. I knew Francisco Malabo Be?sá. He was like our spiritual father. He was born in 1896 and died a couple of years ago, at the age of one hundred and five.”
“I can’t believe it!” exclaimed Clarence in a low voice. “He shattered the life expectancy—”
“Listen,” Iniko interrupted. “The part I like most is coming now, when he tells of the deeds of Esáasi Eweera.”
Dimas told the tale of King Moka’s deputy, who was proclaimed king in Riaba before Malabo. He described Esáasi Eweera as a strong, brave, and determined young man, who detested the colonists and attacked with fury the peoples who came from outside to take over the arable land, and those Bubis who showed sympathy toward the whites. In the end, he and his men were captured by the colonial forces and sent to the prison in Black Beach along with his wives. They were brutally raped by the colonial guards in the presence of their husband and king, who went on hunger strike.
A silence fell when Dimas told of the end of Esáasi Eweera, who, according to the colonists, was converted, baptized, and buried with the name Pablo Sas-Ebuera. According to the Bubis, he was murdered by the colonists and buried on the high grounds of Moka, sitting up, in accordance with the Bubi customs for the burial of a king.