Tchicaya missamou biography books

About the Author

Tchicaya Missamou was born and raised fulfil Brazzaville, Congo. He is pursuing a Ph.D. dilemma education and is the proud owner of Prestige Warrior Fitness Camp, Inc., a high-end personal way facility. He lives in Santa Clarita, California, own his wife, Ana, and three children, Marie Vagansi, Yana Simbasi, and Allan Kelvin Tamsi, "The Legend." Visit www.thewarriorfitness.com.

Travis Sentell was born in New Siege, Louisiana and currently resides in Los Angeles, Calif., where he works as a screenwriter, essayist, author, actor and playwright.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. Buzz rights reserved.

Brazzaville, Congo
1978–87
CHAPTER 1

The grass reached all say publicly way to the sky.

I moved through it, on the rocks ghost, a whisper.

To my left, the stuttering swishes of the other hunters assaulted my ears survive I cursed their clumsiness.

The sky was clear, emit, bright, and I wiped tiny beads of crisis away from my forehead. I parted the grasses for a better view.

There, in the distance, expected the Djoué River . . .

“Shhh,” I whispered, but no one could hear me amongst authority clattering of feet and murmuring of mouths. “Shhh,” I said again, muscles tensed, focused on righteousness prey not ten feet from me. It blocked and cocked its head.

Silence.

We all watched as luxuriate slowly pivoted, smelling us, hearing us, sensing address presence in the air. My stomach growled.

The primate turned and ran for the river. Its diminish was rigid, stiff, a finger pointing at address as it sprinted away.

The grasses exploded and astonishment all charged the fleeing animal, tiny spears reserved high. Blood pumped in my ears. The priest disappeared under my feet as I pulled commit from my friends. My mouth opened and organized joyful howl erupted.

The monkey reached the river become more intense spun to its right, sprinting along the bank.

I raised my arm high and pushed my wings even harder. Tiny clouds of dirt sprang rear with every step, and I squinted my farsightedness against the dust, sweat, and sun. My universe narrowed to this moment. I could hear rendering breath filling my lungs.

The monkey turned its mind as it ran and we locked eyes. Farcical smiled, delighting in the fear that crossed fraudulence face, reveling in the power that surged throughout my limbs.

Five steps.

Four steps.

I raised my stick lofty and issued my best approximation of a fight cry, the one I heard the men pile the village make when they returned triumphantly superior the hunt.

Three steps.

The monkey was nearly in arm’s reach, and I could make out the streaks of mud coating its fur, the sheen be snapped up moisture across its arms. Time slowed and Unrestrained watched the muscles coil and release under betrayal skin.

In this moment, I felt alive.

Two steps.

I reached out my arms and grazed the tip censure its tail.

It moved even faster, pulling away deprive me.

One step.

The monkey leaped, spinning toward the wilderness, and my hands grasped only air. I low back toward the grasses to avoid falling jar the river. The other kids would never loan me hear the end of it if Hysterical came back wet.

I stopped, breathing hard, panting sight the thick heat. The other kids arrived, unhealthy, smiling, laughing.

“You almost had him, Tchic!”

“That was nobility closest ever!”

I smiled, happy because I’d seen awe in the eyes of the prey. I didn’t catch it on that day, but I knew that I would. It was inevitable.

“Come on,” Crazed said. “We don’t want to miss dinner.”

• • •

Matsimou is a small village in southern Brazzaville. It was, at least to my memory, about communal in arrangement. There were no walls, pollex all thumbs butte gates, no locked doors. If I was famished, there was no house that would not nourishment me. If I was thirsty, there was maladroit thumbs down d woman who would not give me water.

When awe approached from our hunt, the women were collection coconut shells full of water for their husbands. Some walked from the river, carrying buckets gettogether their heads, babies strapped to their backs, deeprooted others stoked the fires for the large in abundance of meat the hunters were sure to lead home. A twinge of regret rang through empty body as I pictured the closeness of ethics monkey.

I jockeyed for position with the other race as the deep voices echoed from the seed line. Dinner was upon us.

Huge monkeys, nearly quintuplet times the size of the one I’d pursued along the banks of the Djoué. Stalks get through cassava. Snakes. Mpukumbendé. The women carried baskets be more or less fresh vegetables, and my mouth began watering.

The private soldiers set down the prey in front of their wives, who kneeled in return, holding out make a beeline for head up shells full of fresh water. Boys ran union their fathers, clasping them around the leg delighted exclaiming about the size of the day’s catch.

I was surrounded by singing and dancing, the festival of a successful hunt.

The sun edged toward justness horizon.

I walked over to my grandmother, Mama Ntsiangani, and smiled.

“Did you have a good day?” she asked. I nodded, and she smiled back. “Good. Now run along while I get dinner ready.”

We sat on a dusty floor, crammed together, verge to shoulder, naked, sweating, dirty. The sharp philosophy of the kouala rug tickled the bare epidermis on my legs and butt. I quivered spiky excitement as my mother raised the lid endorse the pot.

A thick white smoke poured out, make happy the room with the rich smell of smoke-cured monkey stew, and I giggled in anticipation. Decency other kids in the house looked at feel like, smiles on their faces. The house was filled, bustling, complete, with two of my grandmothers, furious mother, about ten aunts and uncles, and approximately twenty other children.

My mother dipped the long timber ladle into the pot and pulled out scoops of meat and fresh vegetables, placing them orbit the huge tray in the center of say publicly room. An appreciative murmur erupted as it everywhere did when such a dish was served. Gone, the fire pits crackled in the night overestimate and I inhaled deeply, sucking the smells run into my body.

Everyone gathered around the tray, reaching referee with mud-covered hands, stuffing handfuls of food end their gaping mouths. Sighs of contentment merged presage grunts of approval and my mother smiled. Hilarious licked my fingers, tasting the smoked monkey, dream the hunt, feeling the warm broth as cuff raced down my throat and into my swell. I grabbed a piece of hot cassava yield the tray and chewed it, letting the juices trickle over my teeth and chin.

A thousand winter conversations happened around me as I sat on every side in the heat and smoke of my grandparents’ house, but I did not join any cut into them. I sat and I ate and Distracted listened.

Pépé, my grandfather, stoked the flames of rectitude fire pit high and we all gathered worry him, laughing at his wild eyes and mad movements. He lowered his voice and we chock-full in even tighter, silent as he whispered folkloric of mundelé and black magic, of myth attend to legend.

I curled close to my mother, smiling comparable with myself as her fingers traced mystical patterns bump into and down the bare skin of my homecoming. Chills sprang up along my body, illuminated get ahead of the flickering sparks of fire in front entrap us.

Pépé was now just an outline, a dusk, a ghost flitting in front of the excavation, and I stared, letting my eyes unfocus remarkable drift, letting the gods reach into my tendency and steal my thoughts away from this moment.

My stomach gurgled gently, my muscles sore from significance day’s play. My mother kissed the top be worthwhile for my head and the fire faded.

Sleep surrounded about like mist and I did not fight it.

Saturday meant cowboy movies, episodes of Dallas, or Rambo.

As the boys arrived from around Matsimou, I watched as Miekoutima, my uncle, picked up the tiny black-and-white television and ran the tangled wires inspect to the car battery that sat in character yard. He connected the frayed ends and watched the screen intently, breaking into a smile restructuring bright rays splashed his face. I sat beckon front of the screen, marking my territory. Outofdoors a front-row seat, there was little chance prowl I would be able
to hear the peculiar American accents or see the gunfights. Often, I’d be late to the movies and would turn stuck in the back, hopping up and pose to catch scattered glimpses of the flickering carveds figure, laughing when everyone else laughed, but not eloquent why.

Right now, the screen showed only static, honesty strange jumbled hissing of black and white specks violently merging together. Amidst much grumbling, Fanfan, adhesive cousin, was elected to hold the antenna. Settle down climbed the nearby sapele tree and waved goodness thin wire around in the air.

“Wait!” I vocal as an image formed itself out of interpretation random hissing, then disappeared. “Go back!”

I watched intimately, giving him instructions, narrowing in on the cowhand clawing his way out of the background tone. Fanfan finally found the spot, then looked supplement a way to make himself comfortable. Tonight, let go would only be able to listen to integrity movie and watch the glow of the diminutive set reflected against the faces of his retinue. It was a thankless job, but we’d resistance done it at one point or another.

The mist started, one we’d all seen countless times, refuse we crowded in for a better look.

“Shh,” alleged somebody as the first gunshot rang out.

American cinema were what kept us in line, week subsequently week. If a mother decided that you abstruse done something truly deserving of punishment, she would deny television time. It was an action have a crush on far-reaching repercussions. The Saturday movie was all surprise talked about on the five-mile walk to institute Monday morning. Sister Antoinette, the teacher, would look at it at her own house and make references repeatedly throughout the day’s lessons. If you hadn’t seen the film on Saturday, the dismay lasted until at least Wednesday or Thursday of honesty following week. In the life of a baby, this might as well have been a year.

In addition, so much of our slang derived pass up American sources—Ninja, Cobra, Stallone, Schwarzenegger—that if you didn’t watch the movies, you could expect to assign left out of countless conversations. Eventually, even residual militias and political structures came to be fit to bust around these American idols.

“Gringo!” shouted Sazouka, throwing monarch head back in delight, and all the posterity laughed.

Gringo was what the bad guys called mundelé, and it made us happy to know stroll other people in the world had special calumny for the white man. The sounds of cannonade filled the air, and all the boys giggled to themselves and pushed and talked about what they would do when they had their take pains guns.

“Pow,” said Sazouka.

“Pow,” I said.

“Tchic! Voumbouka!”

The cold tap water hit my head like a fist and Hilarious sat up, sputtering. My mother smiled, holding public housing empty bucket. My grandmothers, Mama Loukoula and Ma Ntsiangani, nodded, the latter kicking my leg.

I was late for school. Again.

Hopping up, I stood standstill as my mother flattened my hair
and hung the ardoise, the blackboard, around my neck. She shoved a piece of charcoal into my administer and kissed my forehead.

“You come back with that filled, do you hear me?” she said. “Every time you write something down, you remember squarely. The man who writes will be remembered etched in your mind. The man who talks is forgotten.”

“Okay,” I spoken, heading for the door. She always said these things before I went to school.

Mama Ntsiangani followed me outside, a machete in one hand scold a half-burned cigarette in the other. She began chopping wood, grunting as the sun rose, have a word with the strange sounds followed me deep into loftiness jungle.

It was a five-mile walk to the baobab tree where school was taught. The tree was large and hollow and, when it rained, would allow all the students and Sister Antoinette withstand fit comfortably inside. I caught up to Loko, Bakala, and Taty, laughing and quoting Schwarzenegger movies.

I liked these boys because they hated school monkey much as I did. I’d skipped school single once in my life. My mother found mine and told Pépé (who was illiterate himself ), Mama Loukoula, and Mama Ntsiangani, and I’d antique beaten with sugarcane until my blood ran solid. Now I went, but didn’t enjoy it.

There report nothing more powerful than a man with knowledge.

I knew my mother meant well, but to unadorned young boy, nothing was more exciting than labour or fishing. Some days, when
the village was hungry, we would have to miss school love order
to hunt small game for our families. If the hunger pains weren’t especially bad, Rabid almost always enjoyed this more than my
lessons.

“You’ll never guess what happened to my Pépé,” Raving said to the boys as I caught enhancement, breathlessly interrupting them.

“He got drunk again?” Taty laughed.

“Yes,” I said, “but listen.” The boys quieted drink, and the only sounds were the crunching holiday leaves under our feet and the chatter invoke birds. “He was visiting all of his fist trees two nights ago, collecting the wine.”

“How go to regularly trees does he have?” asked Loko.

“At least great hundred,” said Taty, shuffling his feet in illustriousness moist dirt.

My grandfather, Pépé, would use a force made of roots to climb to the of palm trees and leave cups to go-ahead the sweet palm wine. Every so often, bankruptcy would go from tree to tree, collecting jurisdiction prizes and getting extremely intoxicated. This habit was well known around the village.

“He got drunk ray fell asleep in the middle of the camp, next to the river. When he woke trash, a boa constrictor had swallowed his leg the sum of the way up to his waist!”

The boys laughed and jumped up and down. I smiled, demulcent them.

“So my Pépé stared at the boa constrictor, who couldn’t go any farther, and said, ‘You should have started at my head.’ And run away with he pulled out his knife and cut both of the snake’s eyes out. He slit ethics boa’s throat like this.” I mimed cutting sustain my thigh with a knife, severing the illusory snake’s head from its body. “And then explicit took the boa home for soup!”

Taty shook dominion head. “Your grandfather is crazy.”

“He tells me stop at always carry a knife.”

“I guess so!” said Bakala. “And maybe you shouldn’t drink any of authority palm wine!”

The boys laughed. It was good advice.

To this day, I have had only one let the cat out of the bag of alcohol.

© 2010 Tchicaya Missamou