A Walk into the Forbidden Forest (A true story)

By Jacob Conteh, Editor, Diaspora Dispatch News

My heart jumped out of its cage. My greasy knees danced in disunity, my lips quivered, my mouth dried up and my hair rose to the top of the trees. My forehead dripped with sweat and my sweaty palms trembled. My eyes refused to blink, and my lips quivered. There, a few feet in front of me, sat a killer python coiled up to the size of a huge tractor tire with eyes pointing at us and tongue salivating with hunger. I motioned to my little brother Donald and pointed my fingers to the monster. We tiptoed backwards for a minutes, turned around and ran for our lives.

My people, the Thaymnehs (Temnes), are a warrior tribe that reportedly emigrated from a region called Futa Jallon in present-day Guinea to Sierra Leone. My village, Patfu Mayawa, is a farming village of about 200 hundred inhabitants in central Sierra Leone. While most Thaymnehs are either Muslims or Christians, some Thaymnehs sometimes mix their religion with their traditional beliefs. Among those beliefs is that there are gods who dwell on forests and mountains. For the people of Patfu Mayawa, my hometown, they believe there are “devils” that dwell at Chainkafutu, a thick virgin forest hill that towers above the village.

Before each of the many celebrations at Patfu that signaled girls’ and boys’ initiation to adulthood – the Poro for boys and Bondo for girls - the village headman would walk the half a mile “street” that ran through the village and announce loudly that there would be a celebration on a certain day. Soon, one could see white sheets spread all over the rocks on the hill. Mother used to explain that those white sheets were the devils’ clothes for the celebration. According to Mother, one year, after one elaborate poro celebration to welcome the new boys into manhood, the people saw a strange man who looked like half a gorilla and half man with ants all over him sitting on one of the tree trunks. Noticing the strange man, and to avoid the wrath of the devils, the headman simply turned toward Chainkafutu and shouted “You have left one behind! In a flash the man disappeared! Such stories used to send fear to my weak spine.

Once every five years, the people Patfu had a huge celebration to appease the devils of Chainkafutu. A few days before the celebration, men would scale the hill, clear some brushes and make “benches” and build a huge fireplace for the women. On the day of the celebration, the whole village woke up very early. Men, women, children, and even the elderly would carry their pots, pans, goats, chicken and cooking ingredients for the huge cookout on the hill. In our days, the cookout was divided into two. All those who were born at Patfu went to the first camp with their children where they slaughtered their chicken, and goats, smeared the blood on the rock, cooked a big meal and ate while singing and dancing. For those born outside Patfu, they stayed at the bottom of the hill where they cooked their food and ate.

One story that fascinated me from year to year was that of the healer in our village, Pa Gbla. Each year, after the feast, he is reported to go inside a cave that was more than a mile long. He would go there and meet with the devils to talk to them about a good harvest, preventing disease or giving more rains in the following year. According to Mother who narrated the story to us as if she were there with Pa Gbla, many of the devils were in the form of pythons, cobras, giant turtles and lizards, but Pa Gbla understood their language and could speak to them. All these stories made Chainkafutu a sacred revered forest. No one went there to hunt, chop a tree or farm. One year, when we made a farm close to the forest, I was terrified one day when I saw a bunch of white chickens at the stream drinking. When I told Mother, she told me those chickens belonged to the devils, and we should not scare them away.

It was 1979. After graduating from high school at Yele Secondary School, they hired me to teach English, history and Bible to the junior classes. With lots of time on my hands I read many books. One day I read the Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I was thrilled with some of the things Tom did. Then an idea came to my teenage mind. I would convince my baby brother Donald to take a journey with me to Chainkafutu where we would discover for ourselves the things old Pa Gbla saw in the cave. It did not take long to get my brother on board. For our preparation, we bought some candles, notebooks, flashlights with batteries and some pens. We also had some sticks to help us on our journey. We would not tell anyone about the trip until after we returned.

It was a Wednesday. I left my teaching job early, and got Donald who was still in elementary school. We packed all our stuff including food and water on a sack and started the journey. As we got to the deep cool forest, we started hearing doors creaking. I turned back and looked Donald in the eye. We shook our heads and continued. The more we climbed, the more noises we heard, including what appeared to be people arguing. But we decided to press on. After more than two hours walking in more than ninety degree temperatures, our faces were dripping with sweat. Then without warning, like it fell from the sky, there stood that humongous python in front of us.

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When we got back to the village, we never told a soul about our adventure. Although we were both born at Patfu, going to the sacred forest without permission would have been a gross violation of the law. Besides, Mother, a widow with strong belief on the devils would have thrown a feat. However, when I went back to school the next day, I told my colleague, Jim Gibson, a biology teacher from California about our adventure. His eyes lit up. He would go back with me to that forest and try to catch the python. My brother was done. He would not return to that path of death. But he would plead the Fifth and remain silent.

Two days after my walk into the forbidden forest, I was back on my way with Jim and an unsuspecting colleague, Alpha. Jim carried a backpack with tons of materials in it. Soon we were on our way to the forest. After we started walking into the forest on that Thursday, something strange happened. I did not hear any of the creaking doors or other sounds Donald and I heard the previous day. When we got to the spot where we saw the python, he was gone. Jim climbed the different rocks and saw what look like a cave. He got in it, but it did not go far. After an hour of exploring, we were on our way back with disappointment written all over Jim’s face.

As I lay on my bed that night pondering on what had happened and the absence of the python and the sounds, my mind began to race all over. Could it be that there was really nothing sacred about Chainkafutu? How about those white chickens, the white sheets and Mother’s stories? Perhaps it was only our imagination that heard the voices. The python must have moved on to another spot. The white chicken came from years of sacrifices when they would leave some white chicken in the forest. As for white sheets, it might have been the sun’s reflection on the rock that created a mirage. Whatever it is, the people at Patfu, my people, still believe Chainkafutu is sacred, and nothing I say could convince them to change their belief. © 2013 By Jacob Conteh