Tales from the Great Marsh

By Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali

Inspired by the author’s childhood experience in the deep countryside of his native country, the Republic of the Congo, Tales from the Great Marsh represents a collection of short stories which illustrate a complex picture of life in a contemporary African society still rooted in its traditional beliefs and practices.

Through short fictional stories, the author explores the complexity of social, cultural as well as religious, and spiritual experiences of a Bantu rural society when confronted with the challenges posed by specific existential situations such as death and modern politics, as well as the challenges posed by the encounter with the otherness.

These fictional stories which marry myth and reality, are deployed towards producing knowledge that takes into account the surviving cultural aspects of old African societies formerly considered minor in studies of the continent’s past and present.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Nov 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9781685622855

Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali

Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali is professor of African history at Howard University in Washington, DC, since 2002. He was born and raised in the Republic of the Congo-Brazzaville and holds a Ph.D. degree in History from the University Paris VII Denis-Diderot, France, and MA in African Studies from the University of Bordeaux, France. Essayist, specialist in Angolan and Congolese Social and Political Modern History, he is the author of numerous publications on contemporary Angola and Congo. He is also the author of novels, published in France.

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About the Author

Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali is professor of African history at Howard University in Washington, DC, since 2002. He was born and raised in the Republic of the Congo-Brazzaville and holds a Ph.D. degree in History from the University Paris VII Denis-Diderot, France, and MA in African Studies from the University of Bordeaux, France. Essayist, specialist in Angolan and Congolese Social and Political Modern History, he is the author of numerous publications on contemporary Angola and Congo. He is also the author of novels, published in France.

Dedication

To Jill MacDougall, who did her best to the last moment of her life to translate with enthusiasm this book of Tales from Congo Basin she knew well for having lived there in her youth years.

In Memoriam

And

To the people of Mokabongo, otherwise known as Moscow-on-the Libenga, peoples of little means and big hearts.

Gifted with a raucous sense of humor.

Iyo suwah!

Copyright Information ©

Jean-Michel Mabeko-Tali 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Mabeko-Tali, Jean-Michel

Tales from the Great Marsh

ISBN 9781685622848 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781685622855 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023917044

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

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The Great Marsh

When Essewu, the goddess of the dry season, moved into our lands, over there, deep in the great forest, we would go fishing for tilapia and hunt for turtle eggs in the Great Marsh. It began with milodjas, fires lit deliberately in selected areas that would open large expanses through the marshes. When Essewu swallowed all the water, the Great Marsh appeared in its full splendor, revealing a bounty long hidden. No need for a boat to fish when you could just walk across! In the following days, we would dive into the river and easily swim through the dark and violent current of the Libenga to Nsena on the other side. There, where the Great Marsh began, we would throw ourselves into competitive games and treasure hunting among the reeds and the mud flats.

When I recall those times, I get shivers. I break into a cold sweat just thinking about what could have happened to us: drowning, crocodile attacks, snake bites, or smothering by a python. None of these possibilities ever occurred to us then. We were of this land and of this landscape. We were sons and grandsons, legitimate descendants of fishermen and the spirits of the Great Marsh. Ndjendjé, the king of the spirits, who lived far under the river, was our god and protector. As long as we behaved and didn’t commit any social transgression or outrageous immoral act, we were safe.

Today, of course, I wouldn’t dream of doing what we did then. Crossing the furious and unpredictable currents of the Libenga? Not for all the money in the world! Time, certainly, but also, unfortunately, ‘common sense’ have created a deep and wide crevice between my past when I was the carefree child of Ndjendjé and my present as a global drifter and urban dweller. I think it’s the city that has turned me into a coward. Or rather knocked some sense into me. Or both, it depends on how you look at it. Let’s say I was subjected to the ‘dialectics of life’, as my old friend, Jacques Nyobo, would phrase it.

He declared himself ‘Marxist-Leninist-Internationalist’ when he returned from a stint with the Soviets, where he had followed political training classes at the Leninist Komsomol. Before that, he had been a devout Christian who regularly attended Sunday mass and shouted Massiya ho! to express his joy or his rage. But after his return from Moscow, he would always swear by the beard of the Great Lenin whenever he felt angry or happy to be alive. When reminded of having been part of the faithful flock in his past life, of having sworn by the ‘Great Invisible Procreator’ or G.I.P. as we called the god of the Christians, he would respond, Only idiots never change.

Before the installation of the G.I.P. or of the Marxist’s god, our land was known as the country of the Kapa. These are the bravest of the brave, the ferocious ancestors our old bards still brag about in song (always in song in our oral tradition) as having slit the throats and smoked the flesh of the first Europeans who arrived with their firearms and their stench of walking cadavers, who thought to ‘civilize’ them with their guns and their whips, with their quota of rubber, their rape of the land and of women. The invaders who dared disturb the real and only people.

Our village, Mokabongo, sits on an axis along the banks of the Libenga. It is divided between the people from the north or up the river, the behi likolo, and the people from the south or down the river, the behi ndjele. Determined by the river, north and south were the only cardinal directions we knew, and our location determined the essence of our identity. A competitive animosity existed between the behi likolo and the behi ndjele. Who made the best mpeké [liquor made from the raffia palm]? Where were the gardens more flourishing, the fish more abundant? Where did the women have the widest hips, the finest calves? What about the caliber of the men’s chests? Muscular or anemic? And the women’s breasts, plump and rising to the sun or shrinking,