Zakes Mda - Cion

We cross the Ohio River at Pomeroy. Exactly where Nicodemus and Abednego crossed, according to Orpah.

“Look down there,” she says. “You can see them gliding on ice in the opposite direction.”

I can only see the long barges laden with coal, sailing on the river so early in the morning. Orpah cannot contain her excitement. She almost hits a deer as soon as we cross the bridge. It is breeding season and the deer become blinded with lust. Although I am pretending to be calm I am excited too. I am looking forward to our search for mourning, and to the performances and exhibitions with which we’ll dazzle the bereaved. I know already that skeptics will dismiss us as New Age hustlers. To the true believers, however, we are enlightenment personified.

Before I came to Kilvert I lived only in the past and in the future. I therefore found the present a very lonely place to be. A very boring place. Orpah is a kindred spirit in this respect. Hopefully together we’ll discover how to live in the present. And we’ll do so without the aid of the sciolist. We have left him and his rambling narratives in Athens.

The sciolist is in the God business. And like all Gods he lives his life vicariously through his creations. Like all Gods he demands love from his creations. That’s why he creates them in the first place…so that they can shower him with love…so that they can worship him and praise him…so that they can bribe him with offerings. Creation is therefore a self-centered act.

I need my independence from him.

My gratitude to my friends: Jim Shirey, Spree MacDonald, Nakedi Ribane, Letsatsi Ribane, Elly Williams and my wife, Gugu Nkosi. Their invaluable feedback enriched my story. I am also grateful to my dearest friends and fellow writers Sello K. Duiker, Phaswane Mpe and Yvonne Vera, who continue to transmit to me buckets of inspiration from the world of the ancestors. More inspiration comes from all my children, old and new: Nduku, Thandi, Dini, Zukile, Zenzile, Luthando, Gcinile, Simphiwe and Nonkululeko.

Thanks also to Barbara Parsons and Irene Flowers of the Kilvert Community Center for the oral history; to Jean Cunningham for introducing me to these formidable women; to Terry Gilkey, who meticulously keeps cemetery records in Athens, Ohio; to the ghost hunter John Kachuba who took me to the Court Street Halloween block party in his ghostmobile; and to writers and historians: Keith P. Griffler ( Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley, University Press of Kentucky, Lexington: 2004), Jacqueline I. Tobin and Raymond G. Dobard ( Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad, Anchor Books, New York: 2001) and J. A. Rogers ( Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas, J. A. Rogers Historical Researches, New York: 1942).