Sali

Sali was born on October 28, 1460, in a Sisaala-speaking farming settlement in the West Sudanian savanna, south of the bend in the Volta River. The Sisaala lived in scattered compounds, each headed by an elder who kept the household shrine where ancestors received offerings of beer and flour. Traders sometimes passed through carrying salt from the north or kola nuts from the forests to the south, but the compound’s concerns were local: rain, grain, health, the goodwill of the dead.

His father, Bawa, cleared fields and planted millet and sorghum with the men of his father’s yard. His mother, Kpema, worked those fields too, then spent long afternoons processing food for sale. She cracked shea nuts, boiled them, skimmed the fat, and carried it to market with other women; at other times she brewed grain beer for gatherings and trade. Sali was her first child. She kept him close, tied on her back when she moved between hearth and storeroom, set down on a mat in the shade when she pounded grain.

Within the first week, Tenga, Bawa’s mother, directed the infant rites. She touched water to Sali’s lips, then poured beer onto the packed earth near the household shrine and spoke the names of ancestors. Naba, the old man of the compound, added flour to the offering. The rites asked the ancestors to recognize the child and keep illness away.

In late July 1462, after the heavy rains began, Sali took a sudden fever. His skin burned. Kpema cooled him with water, held him through the night, and sent Wari, Bawa’s brother, to fetch Dori, a healer who lived in a nearby settlement. Dori rubbed crushed leaves onto the child’s skin and tied a protective bundle at his waist, but the fever did not break. Sali stopped nursing. His breathing grew shallow.

On August 2, 1462, Sali died in Kpema’s arms. Bawa and Naba dug a small grave near the edge of the compound, and Tenga poured water and beer onto the earth before they covered it.