Ishmael Beah

Asu had left my grandfather.

She was the first of three wives in a village called Bandavulao.

And one morning, she decided that she was done.

She was just packed her stuff, took her children, including my mother, five of them, all women, and just left the town of Bandavulao to another place called Kabati,

where she would be able to do her business, but also she wanted to get away from the gossip and the inquisitiveness of all the other women.

Now, traditionally, no woman was doing this.

To do this required a lot of ceremony.

The eldest, mostly men, would agree to it.

They would sit down and they would talk the woman out of it, but not my grandmother.

She just left one day and said to my grandfather, if you want to be with me, you will come to where I'm living now if you want to see me.

And this meant my grandfather would have to walk from when the sun rose in the morning to when he was in the middle of the sky to be able to do so.

So she went there and started living there.

So she would travel, she would make soap, she would travel and buy fish.

She would paddle her own canoe and go to villages that were miles away.

Sometimes she would hire a motorboat and she would put all this palm oil that she would bring to sell at the market.

So every now and then while she was gone, a stranger would come and would exchange small talks with my grandfather and would say, well, I've seen your wife.

a week away from this village.

And my grandfather would, you know, he was a very nice man, soft spoken, really nice to my grandmother.

But my grandmother was just a very independent natured person and very just on her own thing.

She didn't care what anybody thought.