This was not the end. There would be another day.

* * *

Babatunde died in the stall. Something he ate disagreed with him. For days, he vomited an orange-and-brown liquid substance, and the whites of his eyes turned yellow. Healers, the few young ones among us, did not know this malady and therefore could not cure it. They spoke to it, urging it to loose its destructive hold, since Babatunde had been good to us, but it would not relent. We’d spoken to illnesses back home and they had obeyed, but they knew us. They knew our tongue, our remedies. This disease belonged to another people and obviously obeyed only their tongue. It gripped Babatunde’s stomach and would not let go. We saw his spirit ascend in a cloudy ball just above his head and, within seconds, he took his final breath. We lay him aside, with hands folded over his heart, and we kneeled in a circle around him and clapped and prayed until that hazy, gray ball burst and disappeared into the air. When pale men found him, they tied his feet to the rear of a horse and dragged him away. We do not know where they buried him. Or if they buried him at all.

Others died in the stall, too, and we treated them likewise. Back home, earth that held our ancestors was sacred ground. Children did not play there. Farmers did not plant there. Warriors did not train there. It was divine space and we honored it as such. There was no known reprimand for one who would desecrate our sacred ground for, in our lifetime, no one ever did so. Fear of ancestors was very real and no one is his right mind would’ve welcomed their wrath. And, anyway, we loved our ancestors with a reverence hard to explain. They were our guides, our spiritual coverage, our invisible warriors, fighting for us in realms unseen. We could not live without them. Crops could not prosper without them. Healing could not occur without them. Wars could not be won without them. They were the cornerstones of our community. They sent signs of things and messages through our seers. They sang our praises before God, we believed, and thus garnered good fortune and health for us all. They were with us now. We knew that. They were simply unwilling to release us from a lesson we’d obviously failed at home. Whether we liked it or not, they were committed to our wisdom and spiritual insight—not our comfort.

We sighed heavily. It would take generations for this infraction to heal, for this breach of human trust to be reconciled. Would there come a day when African children, born here, would have no notion of home? No knowledge of the universe? No respect for elders? No desire for initiation? No concern for burial grounds? No commitment to rituals? No gatekeepers? No warrior tradition? No weavers of sacred cloth? No healers of the spirit? No belief in ancestors? Would there come a day? How would they survive? We prayed never to see that day. Yes, we’d been displaced, but we knew who we were. We were cast down, but not destroyed. We were angry and sullen, but we did not question God’s existence. The ability to question is proof enough.