She was born of a person.
She came from a woman.
She belongs to a family.
She belongs to a village.
She is powerful.
She is deeply feared.
She holds the power of the waters and of the ancestral land.
She is the spirit of a people.
It is said that the day she came into the world,
The whole village was informed.
Her arrival stirred the village.
She cried from the moment of her birth, and her cries became eternal.
Every day, every night, from sunrise to sunset, the baby cried as if stung by invisible mosquitoes.
The ngangas (traditional healers), the mistresses of Tchikoumbi, the king’s advisors, and even the villagers concluded that this was a spirit-child, of the waters and the lagoons.
But her father, unable to bear his daughter’s crying, took his belongings and went to find another virgin, planning to start a new family in the neighboring village.
After the father’s departure, the mother endured her child’s cries through another rainy season.
Following the advice of the village council, a decision was made:
She had the right to abandon her child and bear another,
For this one was possessed by the spirits of the waters.
The decision, and the child’s constant crying, saddened the villagers.
The next day, in the silence of the village,
The women had gone to the fields,
The men to the hunt,
The children to the places of initiation
(The village was organized such that the women’s collective work in the fields redefined their role and importance in the community upon their return; likewise for the men, whose hunt served to organize responses for the village’s needs. In Loango, the children were by the lagoons or the sea to bring in other sources of protein.)
Alone in the village with the crying child,
The mother laid her down on the village refuse heap, not far from her hut, and said: