This small patch of forest I show you was haunted. People believed that if you stepped even two feet inside, you would never be able to find your way out. Maybe this was true for Lambs. Superstitions are like stereotypes in a lot of ways. Not only are they based on fear and ignorance, they are also blended with fact. This place was the physical mundane world and the wilderness all in one. This was why these baboons loved it, for they were Leopard People, too. And for centuries, generation after generation, they made this place their home. Here they were safe and here they could speak with their ancestors, spirits, and other creatures of the wilderness.

You can smell the purity in the air, can’t you? Stop and touch the leaves on this bush. Run your hand over them. They whisper, and if you look closely, you’ll see that that brown cricket with the long antennae just walked through the leaf. You will not find it again. Spirits who do not like to be seen become unseen when they are accidently seen.

That is me, sitting with those four baboons. They told me that when I tell my story I should leave their names out of it. The baboons have names but not in the sense that we have names. Their names are not just their identities; they carry bloodline. Unlike with human beings, their names are the same as their spirit faces. So they don’t share their names so freely. See the large one with the matted fur; he likes to swim in the ocean often, and the salt mats his hair and makes him smell like the sea. Many were sure he was close with Mami Wata. He taught me my first juju, which was how to open a coconut without losing the water. My first jujus were with Nsibidi, not powder or a knife.

The one with the patch of red fur near her eye hated me from the moment she saw me. She tried to tear me apart, but the others would not let her. She taught me how to climb trees by letting me fall. Then, impressed that I didn’t die, she taught me how to climb the highest tree in the forest. It led to a place in the sky where you could walk because it was also the wilderness. Strange fruits grew there that only she and I enjoyed eating. The small one with the mangled leg was my best friend. We slept in the same nest until the day I was taken to live with humans.

And the fourth one with the white-gray fur is an elder. He is the oldest of the entire clan. No one knows how old he is, but his memory of Nsibidi is unmatched. Some say that his great skill with the language and storytelling is why he lives so far beyond everyone else. He moves slowly and only eats the softened fruits, but he could make the entire clan disappear if in danger. He is known throughout the wilderness. He speaks regularly with masquerades, and these powerful spirits love him because he can drop into the wilderness completely and return to the living world as if he were a ghost. As a matter of fact, that is his nickname, “Ghost.” I know his true name and that used to make several of the others jealous, for only I and his companion, an old baboon elder who rarely left her nest, knew his true name.