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Excerpted Inspirations #215

  • Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
    Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
  • 10 hours ago
  • 0 min read
And in our bed, which Anatole calls the New Republic of Connubia, my husband tells me the history of the world. Usually we start with five hundred years ago, when the Portuguese came poking the nose of their little wooden ship into the mouth of the Congo River. Anatole peers from side to side, pantomiming Portuguese astonishment. “What did they see?” I always ask, though I already know. They saw Africans. Men and women black as night, strolling in bright sunshine along the riverbanks. But not naked – just the opposite! They wore hats, soft boots, and more layers of exotic skirts and tunics than would seem bearable in that climate. This is the truth. I’ve seen the drawings published by those first adventurers after they hurried home to Europe. They reported that the Africans lived like kings, even wearing the fabrics of royalty: velvet, damask, and brocade. Their report was only off by a hair; the Kongo people make remarkable textiles by beating the fibrous bark of certain trees, or weaving thread from the raffia palm. From mahogany and ebony they made sculptures and furnished their homes. They smelted and forged iron ore into weapons, ploughshares, flutes, and delicate jewelry. The Portuguese marveled at how efficiently the Kingdom of Kongo collected taxes and assembled its court and ministries. There was no written language, but an oral tradition so ardent that when the Catholic fathers fixed letters to the words of Kikongo, its poetry and stories poured into print with the force of a flood. The priests were dismayed to learn the Kongo already had their own Bible. They’d known it by heart for hundreds of years. Impressed as they were by the Kingdom of Kongo, the Europeans were dismayed to find no commodity agriculture here. All food was consumed very near to where it was grown. And so no cities, no giant plantations, and no roads necessary for transporting produce from the one to the other. The kingdom was held together by thousands of miles of footpaths crossing the forest, with suspension bridges of vines swinging quietly over the rivers. I picture it as Anatole describes it: men and women in tiers of velvet skirts, walking noiselessly on a forest path. Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (1998), pp. 519-520

 
 
 
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