My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

The woman gives the narrator earthly clothes and feeds him the same kind of food he received from the first ghosts he encountered. He asks her how she came to acquire this clothing, and she tells him that her father’s town of ghosts allows for “earthly witches” to have meetings on their land, which is where she got the clothes. Her father “is the most powerful wizard among all the wizards in both the Bush of Ghosts and in the earthly towns” (105), and he hosts many meetings with witches and wizards from towns of ghosts as well as earthly towns. She then tells the narrator a story of how her father and mother allowed an earthly witch to kill the son of someone who offended her. The woman was angry and spoke against her father’s decision. The woman also overheard her parents discuss how it was their turn to cook one of their children for the next meal for their meeting, which was the tradition among the group. Since they only have one child, they planned to cook their daughter. However, the woman’s grandmother gifted her the power of being a “Super-Lady” with the ability to change form whenever she pleases before her grandmother was imprisoned in “everlasting fire” by the king of the bush of ghosts. To save herself, the woman transforms into an invisible bird and flees to the nameless town, which “belongs only to women” (108).

The Super-Lady shows him her ability to transform into any creature, such as an antelope, a roaring lion, and a boa constrictor. He fears that her ability to transform herself places him in a dangerous position. The pair eats dinner together, and she shows him to a bedroom with many clothes for him to wear as well as a bed to sleep in. He also learns that she has the power to manipulate light. He struggles to sleep in the clean bedroom, wary of the comfortable bed and the woman’s intentions. As he watches her sleep, he decides she is not harmful. He claims this is his second marriage in the bush of ghosts. The next morning the Super-Lady wakes up the narrator and gives him soap to bathe himself. They spend their morning drinking tea, and she brings in two maids to help her with chores. She asks him to tell her his story, and he does so. They spend the rest of their day exploring the town and a neighboring village.

When the narrator explores the Nameless-town, he discovers that it is only inhabited by women who have “long brown moustaches.” The women also marry other women since there are not any men in their town. The super-lady reveals that the women have mustaches because their husbands betrayed them, and they are unable to marry another man. After living with the Super-Lady for eight months, the narrator asks to meet her parents and her grandmother, who is “a native of Hopeless-town” (113-4). They spend a week traveling to her father’s town, and the woman turns herself into a goat to keep her identity hidden from her parents. When they arrive at her father’s house, the narrator sees many people from his village, who are friends of his father, attending the meeting for wizards and witches. He hides from them, and he leaves with the super-lady to go to her grandmother’s town. The Super-Lady turns back into a woman, and she tells him about the magic of the wizards and witches. They can travel around the world “within a minute,” and their ability to “have power over everything” creates evil thoughts in their minds even if they worship “the heavenly God” (115).

When they arrive at Hopeless-town, the Super-Lady tells the narrator that he must only communicate by shrugging his shoulders and that he cannot raise his eyelids up and down or open his mouth. He meets many of her family members but not her grandmother, who is still imprisoned by the king. He notices that no one in this town speaks, and the animals do not make any noises either. Rather, all inhabitants of this town communicate through shrugging their shoulders. One day, the woman leaves the narrator behind in the town when she goes to visit her grandmother with her sister. He accidentally yells loudly, and those around him take the narrator to their king. This king sits on an idol made of yellow and red clay. The king, who asks the narrator questions by shrugging his shoulders, questions his identity, but the narrator does not understand what the king means. As he attempts to communicate with his shoulders, the narrator calls the king a bastard and raises his eyes at him, which, in Hopeless-town, means he shuns the king away. The king orders the narrator to be sent to purgatory, and the ghosts drag him down the road. The Super-Lady and her sister arrive before he enters purgatory, and the Super-Lady persuades the ghosts to let him go. The narrator and the Super-Lady leave Hopeless-town, and neither one of them is allowed to return. They take a different route back to Nameless-town.

On their way back to Nameless-town, they take a longer path and visit many other towns on their way. The first village is “near the 26th country of ghosts,” and these ghosts are always “in peace and in pleasure” (120). The ghosts in this village also do not harm any other ghost or earthly person, and they welcome the narrator and his wife, the Super-Lady, gladly into their village. The ghosts give them food and many gifts. After the narrator and the Super-Lady leave this village, they discover a river that crosses their path.

After crossing the river, they reach the “Lost or Gain Valley” and see a sign telling them they must remove their clothing before they can climb the valley. They ignore the sign and are unable to climb because the stick used to climb the valley is too small to support them if they are wearing clothes. The narrator learns that they must leave their clothes at the bottom of the valley for the people coming in the opposite direction of them to wear once they have crossed. As they continue to cross the valley, the narrator hopes they will see “a cloth-seller.” They stop to wait for one, but they only see a married couple pass by wearing the narrator and his wife’s clothes. The narrator, who is displeased to see the couple wearing his and the Super-Lady’s expensive clothing, discovers that the name of the valley indicates that they will either gain better clothing or lose their nice clothes. The narrator and his wife lose their expensive clothing and wear the animal skin clothing left on the other side of the valley. They also learn that the area consists of poor communities, and the ghosts that live here depend on this system to get clothes. They spend the next few days at the house of a friend of the Super-Lady before heading to Nameless-town. When they get back to their house, the maids tell the woman about news from the earthly villages.

After one year of marriage, the woman conceives a son, who is half earthly person and half ghost. The ghosts give him a traditional ceremony and name him, but the narrator cannot speak or write this name. He gives his son the name of “Okole-Bamidele,” which means “‘you cannot follow me to my home’” (126). The narrator’s son ages quickly, and the couple argues over how their son performs tasks. The woman wants him to only behave and act as ghosts do, whereas the narrator wishes the son to act according to earthly behaviors. However, their son uses half-ghost methods and half-earthly methods to perform his tasks, which causes both the narrator and the woman to hate their son and grow resentful of each other. After living with her for four years, the narrator annoys the Super-Lady by joking about earthly persons’ superiority to ghosts. She decides to go to her hiding place, where she hid the narrator’s clothes from him when they first met, and he follows her to this place. He steals his clothes back, which are clothes made from animal skin, and wears them around their house. The woman decides to ban the narrator from the town, and he is forced to leave.

After roaming the bush for five months, he stumbles upon another town. Many ghosts cannot tell he is an earthly person because he speaks most of their language and appears almost like a full ghost due to living in the bush for so long. In the town, he is thought to be a burglar, and a judge sentences him to seven years of hard labor. He must spend every day from five in the morning to seven at night working in an oven gathering coal for fire. The king of the town comes to the yard, where the narrator spends his sentence, and reveals that he is the narrator’s son. He tells the narrator that he knows the way to the narrator’s earthly village, but he will not tell him how to get there. The narrator promises to return and spend time with his son if he tells him how to get home. The narrator tells his son he will find his own way, though his son begs him not to leave him.

After spending eight months searching for his hometown, he finds the 4th town of ghosts, and he goes directly to their king to ask for directions to the earthly towns. The narrator must first give the king one of his arms for his new wife who lost her arm before they married, though this is against the town’s rules. The narrator creates an artificial arm with mud and uses juju to place it on the woman’s body, and the town cannot tell that her arm is fake. The king asks the narrator to stay with him for 15 years in case he needs him to create another arm, but he does not know that the narrator is an earthly person. The narrator sneaks out of this town in the middle of the night.