Free Feather Woman of the Jungle by Amos Tutuola Page B

we did not know of tomorrow.
    Then I left my village that bright day and I was going to the north this time. Having travelled for several days, I came to a town. This town was very big and famous. It was near a very wide and deep river. Immediately I entered the town, I was greatly shocked first with fear when I saw the terrible appearances of the people or the inhabitants. Every one of them was so leaned that he had no more muscle on his body. Every one of them was as thin as a dried stick. The legs and arms were just like sticks. The eyes were seeing faintly in the skull except the head which was so big that the thin neck could not even carry it. Both upper and lower jaws had already dried up like a roasted meat. The stomach was no more seen except the breast and exposed ribs.
    When I first saw them in that appearances, I thought within myself and cried out unnoticed: “Ah, how people were created so terribly like this?” Because in the first instance I did not know that they were in famine and that they were starved until when they had leaned to that state. And they were so starved that the breasts of the women had dried up. The king too was so bitterly starved that he was unable to put on his crown whenever he went out. And it was a great pity that the hunger had forced the people of the town not to respect the king or chiefs again except one who brought food to them.
    But according to the custom of that town, I was first taken to the king and when he approved of my staying there, then I lodged in the house of the paramount chief which was almost next to the palace of the king. When it was night I tried to sleep but I was unable to fall asleep because of hunger. So hardly in the morning when I went to the king and told him: “Please king, I am badly hungry, will you give me something to eat now?” But he said at the same time: “Is that so? Sorry, we are in great famine since past few years, therefore, I have no food to give you except cold water which is our main food in this town at present!”
    Then I went back to my room, I sat and I was expecting that the paramount chief would soon send food to me as the king had failed to give it to me. Having waited for many hours and yet he did not send anything to me. Then I sold my shame and I went to him. Without shame, I told him that I wanted to eat. But he said that their main food was cold water. He said furthermore that the famine was so serious that they had money but it was useless. They had plenty of costly clothes but the hunger did not let them wear them and even the clothes were oversized them because they had leaned too much. And again, this paramount chief advised me that I should be drinking the cold water.
    Having heard like that as well from him, then without hesitation, I started to drink the cold water. But when it was not yet daybreak when I was woken by hunger in the following morning. I hardly got up when I went to the king’s attendants, I complained to them again that since I had come to the town I had nothing to eat except cold water which I was drinking. I complained to them perhaps they might help me. But I was very surprised that they did not allow me to tell them all of my complaints when they interrupted immediately they heard the word “hunger” from me. They naked themselves and told me to look how every one of them was leaned. They told me further that I too would soon become bones if I kept longer in that town.
    Having failed again to get food from the attendants, I shook my head with surprise before I left them. When I returned to my room, I sat down quietly and I began to think how to get food by all means. I first thought to go back to my village to be bringing the food stuffs to this town for sale. But I remembered that my village was too far away from there and again, there was no real road on which to be travelled always.
    As I was still suggesting within myself of what to do, it came to my mind to go to the big river which was near