In fact, Mary had no idea who it was, only that he had a Scottish accent. All of a sudden a short, stocky man with a thick bushy beard and accompanied by a tall African man emerged from the jungle. Mary rushed forward to welcome them.
“Mr. Charles Ovens at your service, Miss Slessor,” said the man, smiling and holding out his hand to shake hers. “I believe you need a wee bit of help with some windows and doors?”
Mary laughed out loud. Her help had arrived—all the way from Scotland. By the sound of his accent, the man was from the Dundee area. Within hours, the two were on their way to becoming great friends. Charles Ovens had brought Mary a bundle of letters and several newspapers from home. In return, Mary told him all about the lives of the Africans in the Okoyong region. Charles also learned that Mary considered the new mud huts a temporary solution to her needs. What she dreamed of was a large house situated in the square formed by the huts. The house would have a kitchen and living room downstairs and bedrooms for herself and her children upstairs. Right there and then, Charles Ovens decided he would build Mary the house.
A few days later, Charles began to draw up plans for the house and made a list of the materials he would need to order from Duke Town. As he worked away, another crisis broke out in the village, and he was able to see firsthand just how this petite woman from Dundee handled herself with the locals.
It was midafternoon, and Mary had just begun grinding manioc to make flour to be used in the evening meal. As she worked, she heard a loud thud, like something heavy falling, followed by a series of loud groans. “Charles, someone’s hurt,” she yelled, grabbing her medical bag and running towards the sound. Charles followed along right behind her. Mary reached a clearing where King Edem’s oldest son Etim had been building himself a hut. In an instant, Mary could see what had happened. Etim had been trying to move a heavy support branch alone, and the branch had fallen, pinning him underneath it. Mary and Charles rushed to him and rolled the branch off.
“Move your legs,” urged Mary. “Show me that you can move your legs.”
An intense look of concentration came over Etim, but it was no use—his legs would not work.
“God help us all, he’s paralyzed,” muttered Mary in English for the benefit of Charles Ovens.
“Let’s get him into a hut,” Charles suggested, grabbing a couple of bamboo poles from a pile Etim had stacked in one corner. He pulled off his shirt and tied it to the two poles, forming a sling in the middle. “You take his arms, and I’ll take his legs. On the count of three,” he said. “One, two, three.”
With a loud groan, Etim was lifted onto the makeshift stretcher, and Mary and Charles began dragging him to Mary’s hut. The pain from the movement was too much for Etim, who lapsed into unconsciousness.
Along the way Mary changed her mind. “No, we had better get him straight to the chief. He looks like he could die any minute,” she said.
Before Mary and Charles got to the chief’s yard with Etim, the news was out. Terrified women stood shaking as they passed. Small children scurried away, and old men rattled the bones on their family shrines.
“Why does everyone look so afraid?” asked Charles Ovens.
“There’s no such thing as an accident in African religion,” Mary responded frantically. “If he dies, someone or everyone will be blamed for causing this to happen.”
Chief Edem met them at the door to his hut and helped carry his son inside. Mary and Charles Ovens did what they could to make Etim comfortable, but there seemed little hope he would live long. Mary stayed with him as the hours dragged into days and the days into weeks. Sometimes Etim was conscious, and sometimes he lapsed into unconsciousness. While Mary watched over him, she had plenty of time to think. Unless a miracle took place, she was convinced he would eventually die and then there would be massive bloodshed one way or another. What could she do to stop it? It was useless telling the local people that no one had caused the accident, that accidents can happen for no good reason. That was far too strange a concept for them to accept. There had to be another way. As she watched the long procession of people who paraded through the hut to show their respects, Mary came up with an idea. She realized it might not work, but it was the best idea she had.
After two weeks, Etim was near death. Despite her best efforts, Mary had not been able to coax him to eat anything since the accident, and his breathing had become shallow and irregular. Desperate efforts were made to revive him. The witch doctor rubbed hot pepper into Etim’s eyes and blew it up his nose. He propped Etim’s mouth open with twigs and blew smoke into his mouth and nostrils. Mary begged him to stop the torture, but he insisted on trying to draw the departing spirit back into Etim’s body. The rest of the family helped out, too. They yelled prayers to the young man’s spirit, begging it not to leave, but to no avail. Etim finally died.
Mary said a brief prayer for Etim and slipped out of the hut. She called one of Ma Eme’s slaves, gave him a letter, and told him not to stop until he had delivered it to the missionaries at Duke Town. Mary was sure Ma Eme would approve of her “borrowing” a slave in a crisis like this.
By the time Mary got back to her compound to tell Charles Ovens the bad news, he had already guessed it. The village was in an uproar with wailing and yelling everywhere. People were running aimlessly in all directions, and the men were carrying their spears, ready to avenge the death of the chief’s son.
Mary had anticipated the next move. The witch doctor was called to announce just who was responsible for the death of Etim. It took him only a few minutes of manipulating skull bones, blowing smoke, and examining Etim’s fingernails to be certain. He stood in the chief’s yard to make his announcement. “It is the people of Kuri who have killed this young man. Their spirits came in the night and waited to ambush him in the forest. We must avenge his death.”
Mary watched in horror as the men of the village raised their spears into the air and danced wildly in circles. The men kept it up until one of Chief Edem’s brothers arrived to lead them off down the trail to raid the village of Kuri.
Mary hurried back to Etim’s body, praying that the men would bring their captives back alive rather than killing them on the spot. Once again she realized how fickle the African view of cause and effect was. Next week a war party from another village could come and raid Ekenge because one of their men had slipped and fallen and died on a trail somewhere.
As she hurried along, Mary carried with her a pair of men’s pinstriped pants and a jacket that she had received in a box of clothes sent to her from Dundee. She also carried about twelve yards of green and yellow silk, which she had been saving to make dresses for the children. She hoped it would serve to make Etim look important, so important that the people of Ekenge would allow his spirit to enter the otherworld alone, without the spirits of those who would soon have to be killed to accompany him.
Inside the hut, Mary propped Etim’s body up against the wall and began to dress him. First she pulled on the pants and then the jacket. She wound the colorful silk around his chest and abdomen. Then she asked one of the chief’s slaves to fetch her some red and white paint, which she dabbed over Etim’s face in a circular pattern, trying to make him look regal. Finally, she pushed some cheap rings onto his fingers and popped a brown hat with peacock feathers pinned on it onto his head.
“Come and help me,” she yelled out the door of the hut.
Several men appeared.
“We must pay homage to a great man like Etim,” she announced. “Ask the chief for his chair and put it in the women’s yard. We must place Etim on it so everyone can see how splendid he looks.”
The men nodded and hurried off to do as the white ma had instructed. An hour later, Etim’s fully dressed corpse, except for shoes, was perched on the chief’s chair in the women’s yard. Chief Edem’s slaves took turns holding an umbrella over the body to keep it shaded. Mary placed a silver-handled whip in Etim’s right hand and propped a mirror in his left so that he could admire himself in the afterlife.
It was a strange sight to see the young black man’s body decked out in clothes for the first time. About twenty women, most holding babies or small children, sat nearby chanting songs designed to guide Etim’s spirit to a safe resting place.
No sooner had Mary finished “honoring” the corpse than the war party arrived back from Kuri, bringing twelve prisoners with them. Two women and three children were among the prisoners; the rest were young men about the same age as Etim.
Mary could see the terror in the prisoners’ eyes, and she knew it was well founded. Unless her plan worked, these prisoners from Kuri would be killed and thrown into the grave with Etim.
The village was in no hurry to bury Etim. There was much partying to be done before that would happen. Besides, the men told Mary it was good for the prisoners to suffer in this life as well as the next for killing Etim.
Mary decided right then that either she or Charles Ovens would stay with the prisoners every moment until the funeral was over. By doing so, she and Charles at least had some chance of preventing the prisoners from being killed. Mary took the night shift, willing herself to stay awake for three nights while the people of the village became increasingly drunk and wild. When Charles Ovens was not watching over the prisoners, he spent his time making a magnificent coffin for Etim.
Finally, after four days, Etim’s body, which had been the central decoration of the partying, began to smell in the humid African heat. Everyone agreed it was time to bury Etim. As the witch doctor and the three warriors guarding the prisoners made their plans, Mary moved in closer to them, hoping to hear what the prisoners’ fate would be.
“I have ground three handfuls,” said the witch doctor.
“So, it’s to be death by poison beans,” Mary mumbled under her breath.
The witch doctor looked over the prisoners. “Unchain this one,” he said pointing to one of the women.
Obediently one of the guards unlocked the woman’s chain, but the woman was too scared to move and had to be dragged into Chief Edem’s hut. Mary hated to leave the other eleven prisoners, not knowing what the guards might do to them, but the situation was desperate. She crept quietly into the chief’s hut. In the dim light, she could make out the witch doctor lifting a carved wooden cup to the woman prisoner’s lips. “Drink, you demon, drink,” he yelled as he pulled her head back.
Mary did not have a second to lose. She dashed forward and grabbed the woman’s hand. “Run!” she yelled. “Run!”
The witch doctor was so shocked he dropped the wooden cup to the floor, spilling its deadly contents. In the commotion that followed, Mary and the prisoner ran out the door and escaped to Mary’s new home.
Mary was thankful she had insisted that Chief Edem declare her house a safe haven and sanctuary, though she had doubts about whether he would honor his word in this case. Still, she shoved the woman through the door and hoped. “Charles, hide her quickly,” she yelled, and then she raced back out the door, slamming it shut behind her.
Mary ran back to the chief’s yard to try to protect the other prisoners. As she ran, she prayed that it wasn’t too late, that none of the other prisoners had been forced to drink the poisonous liquid. She arrived out of breath but in time. The other eleven prisoners were still alive.
Chief Edem was furious with Mary. How dare this foreigner interfere with the customs of the village? Yet he honored his word and did not send anyone into Mary’s house to retrieve the other prisoner. In the meantime, Mary stood her ground, threatening anyone who tried to take any of the other prisoners into the hut to be poisoned. The standoff dragged on for over a day. Charles Ovens marveled at Mary’s calm in the midst of it. He confided in her that his own nerves were so on edge he could hardly think straight.
