THE MANSA (THE KING)_ BY BISHOP SAHR ISAAC PETERSON

The dust rose in slow, red spirals along the footpath that led into Koidu, and the late afternoon sun hung low, thick, and orange over the roofs of zinc, thatch, and clay. Somewhere a mortar pounded, thud-thud-thud, and the smell of cassava leaves, palm oil, and woodsmoke curled through the air and settled on the mango trees. Children ran barefoot, their laughter sharp as the cry of weaver birds, while old men sat under the cotton tree, chewing kola, their voices low, heavy, and measured.  

This was Kono land.  

"Peter! Eh, my son, don’t go!" Mama Sia’s voice cracked like dry firewood. She stood at the door of the mud house, her lappa dusted with flour, her eyes wet. She pulled him close and the smell of smoke and shea butter was strong on her wrapper.  

"Ndeey, mbee tartiawah," Peter said, his bag already on his shoulder. _Mbee tartiawah_ — in native Kono it means "Mama, I will go."

"Chee, Mbee na tiwa yo Mansa," he added softly. _Chee, Mbee na tiwa yo Mansa_ — "I will come back as a king."

Bondu(who happens to be the 5th child and perhaps rare to reach in childbirth of female children), his younger sister, grabbed his shirt and would not let go. Tears cut clean lines down her dusty cheeks. "Na Udat go set traps with mi inside d bush again? Udat go teach mi the hw 4 pick mango?" 

Gbama, the other sister, stood behind her, arms folded, crying quietly. "You always enter bush and come late," she whispered, "well, wi go vex, but wi go keep food 4 yu."

Sahr, his elder brother, could only nod. The chickens scattered at their feet, the well rope creaked, and the whole compound smelled of rain that had not yet fallen. 

 

"We hold to our names here," Sahr told him. "The firstborn is Sahr. The second, Tamba. The Aiah, Peter. Names are not small things among us. They are maps. They are prayers."

Mama Sia pressed a piece of kola into his palm, "When the road is hard, chew this. When you miss home, remember the river."

Our people, the Konos, have always been children of the earth. They were farmers first, with hands stained black from rich soil, and hunters next, who could read the bend of a twig and the print of a duiker in the damp ground. Then the rivers gave them another name. Diamonds. Bright stones that slept in the gravel of the Sewa, the Baia, the Woyie. For years the world called them "the land of minerals," and strangers came with trucks, with promises, with guns. The ground shook, not just from digging, but from war.  

Thenceforth, the story came to Peter.  

In their land, Mansa, according to meaning, probes one to an unimaginable height of a KING. The air feels challenging when one wishes to sit on that throne. Different clans come together for this occasion, the elders in their white gowns, the women in lappa tied tight at the waist, the drummers with calloused hands, and the young men who stand tall, watching. To be chosen is not to be liked. It is to be tested.  

He left the red dust for another dust. He crossed water and sky until he reached another nation of different brains and cultures, Nigeria, loud with traffic, bright with screens, and heavy with dreams. They did not know the taste of Kono water, or the weight of Kono stories. But they came to know him.  

They called him Nollywood Peter. Aiah Amos Komba.  

As days turned into week, week into month, the camera lights grew hot on his skin, the makeup smelled faintly of powder and sweat, and the script pages grew soft at the edges from his fingers. He spoke, and people listened. He walked into rooms, and the room changed. Without askance, he was airlifted from the land of gravel and rivers into a land of billboards and applause. A Kono man, taking a royalty role. A blessed soul.  

Did he remember how hard the land was? The rainy season when the roofs leaked and the roads became rivers of mud. The dry season when the wind carried dust into their eyes, and the wells ran low. They planted rice, and sometimes the birds took it. They mined, and sometimes the pits collapsed. They prayed, and sometimes the answer came years later.  

But greatness, they were taught, is not given in easy seasons.  

He was the third child of the land. Sahr, according to the culture of their lands, was his elder. Sahr was the firstborn. Two children came before Peter was born. That is why they say a name carries weight. _Peter_ is SON. Add _son_ to _Peter_, and you get Peterson. Peterson is equally a big name of the Konos in Sierra Leone. It means "the son of the rock," and rocks do not move easily.  

The district was very happy with him. The chiefdom was prouder than people think. When his face appeared on the television in the bar at Tankoro, men stood up. Women ululated. The boys who sell sachets of water shouted his name. For once, the news from Kono was not about struggle. It was about shine.  

Being Mansa is not about the crown alone. It is about carrying. Carrying the stories of those who could not leave. Carrying the memory of the farms they lost, the schools that closed, the brothers who did not return. Carrying the smell of rain on dry earth, and the sound of the djembe at night.  

He wore the crown now, but not the kind made of gold. His was made of responsibility, of representation, of being the face that says "Kono is here" in a place where no one expected them.  

Sahr thought of their grandfather, who could tell the time by the shadow of the palm tree. He never left the village, but he knew the world was big. He would say, "The river does not ask permission to reach the sea." Peter was that river.  

Nigeria was far, but not too far for the ancestors to see. The kola had been broken for him. The white chalk had been drawn on the ground. The elders had spoken his name three times into the wind so that it travels.  

They were meant for greatness. Not the loud kind that forgets where it came from, but the quiet kind that plants trees it will never sit under. The kind that sends money home for roof sheets, that mentions Kono in interviews, that teaches children in Lagos to pronounce "Koidu" correctly.  

The night there was cool. Crickets sang, and the moon sat like a polished stone above the hills. Somewhere, a generator coughed to life, and somewhere else, a baby cried. Life continued, difficult, beautiful, and stubborn.  

So he wore the crown well. They saw in him the miner’s endurance, the farmer’s patience, the storyteller’s voice. They tasted, in his work, the palm oil and pepper of their soup. They heard, in his accent, the river.  

He left as Peter. He arrived as Mansa. And in both names, he was Peterson. Son of this soil, son of this struggle, son of this hope.  

© Bishop Sahr Isaac Peterson  

Sons of the Forefathers

Kono District

- Sierra Leone