The palm-wine tappers’ place sat away from the more respectable rhythm of village life, usually beneath a cluster of palms at the edge of the settlement, where the day’s work could gradually turn into evening conversation. Men gathered there to drink and talk. The older men might sit for hours, sharing news, arguing about farming, politics, marriages, the weather and the price of groundnuts. Younger men came out of curiosity, bravado and boredom. It was one of the few places in the village where a young man could sit among older men and feel, however briefly, that he had crossed into adulthood.
For Kornyaji, however, the place offered something more than palm wine.
It offered people who did not immediately tell him that he was wrong.
Kornyaji had grown up differently from the other boys in Farato. He was the alkalo’s only surviving son, and in a village where the boy child was often regarded as the continuation of the family name, that distinction carried enormous weight. His parents had buried six children before him. Some had died during childbirth; others had lived only long enough for their parents to become attached to their small voices, their first steps and their little personalities before illness or misfortune took them away.
By the time Kornyaji was born, his parents had already known the particular cruelty of loving children whom they could not keep.
So when he survived infancy, every cough frightened them.
Every fever became an emergency.
Every scrape on his knee was treated as though it were a wound of war.
And because he was the boy who remained, the boy who would one day carry his father’s name, the boy who might inherit responsibilities and property, he was treated differently from almost every other child in Farato.
He was not merely loved.
He was protected from consequences.
When Kornyaji was small and another child complained that he had taken something that did not belong to him, his mother would often find a way to soften the matter.
“Let the children play,” she would say. “They are children.”
If he broke someone’s toy, the other child’s parents were encouraged to forgive him.
If he pushed another boy during a game, someone would eventually say that boys fought.
If he came home with a torn shirt after a quarrel, his mother asked who had started it.
Kornyaji always had an answer.
“He did.”
And because he was the Alkali’s son, that answer carried more weight than it should have.
His father was a respected man. People came to him to settle disputes, seek advice and resolve disagreements that threatened to divide families. Few villagers wanted to be the person who challenged him openly over a child.
So the lesson Kornyaji learned was not that his parents loved him.
He learned something much more dangerous.
He learned that he was rarely wrong.
If there was a fight, someone else had started it.
If he was angry, someone else had provoked him.
If he broke something, somebody else had distracted him.
If he failed to complete something, there was always another explanation.
As he grew older, the distinction between being loved and being indulged became almost impossible to see.
And there was another part of Kornyaji that nobody understood.
From childhood, he had displayed behaviours that today might have prompted parents and teachers to seek an assessment for autism or another developmental difference. He had difficulty remaining focused for long periods. He could become intensely absorbed in something that interested him and completely indifferent to something everyone else considered important. He often missed social cues that other children seemed to understand naturally. He could say things at inappropriate moments without understanding why people were offended. He struggled to anticipate consequences.
But in rural Gambia in the early 1970s, there was little practical understanding of autism in the way it is discussed today, and certainly little access to the kind of assessment or support that might have helped a child like Kornyaji. His behaviour was interpreted through the language available to the people around him.
He was stubborn.
He was troublesome.
He was spoiled.
He was difficult.
Sometimes they said he was simply a boy who needed discipline.
Nobody understood that some of the things he struggled with might not have been matters of deliberate disobedience at all. Nobody taught him how to recognize his own difficulties. Nobody taught him how to stop, think and ask himself what might happen after his actions. And because his parents were constantly protecting him from the consequences of his behaviour, he never learned those lessons naturally either. The two problems fed each other. His developmental difficulties made certain social situations harder for him, while his upbringing ensured that he was never required to learn how to navigate those difficulties. The village saw only the result.
Kornyaji was becoming unbearable. The other boys began avoiding him. At first, he did not notice. He would walk towards a group playing football and expect them to make room. They sometimes did. But gradually, they began finding reasons to leave. If Kornyaji joined a wrestling match, someone was likely to end up angry. If they played a game involving teams, arguments followed. If someone teased him, even lightly, Kornyaji might respond with disproportionate anger. And when he fought, he fought as though the matter had become a question of honour.
Later, when someone complained to his parents, the story would change. “He insulted me first.”
“He took my ball.”
“He pushed me.”
“He was laughing at me.”
There was always a reason. And the reason was always somebody else. Eventually the children learned that the safest thing was to stay away. Parents began quietly instructing their children.
“Do not quarrel with Kornyaji.”
“If he comes, leave him.”
“Do not take his things.”
“Do not answer him.”
It was not hatred at first.
It was caution. But caution, repeated often enough, becomes isolation. Kornyaji could feel the change even if he could not understand it. The boys no longer called for him. The younger children scattered when they saw him approaching. Girls avoided sitting near him. Adults lowered their voices when he passed. He began to believe that everyone was against him. And because nobody around him knew how to help him understand his part in these conflicts, his conclusion was never challenged.
“They are jealous of me.”
“They do not like me because my father is important.”
“They are afraid of me.”
Sometimes he would return home angry and tell his mother about some disagreement. She would listen.
“What did they do to you?”
“They started fighting me.”
“And what did you do?”
“I defended myself.”
She would sigh.
“My son, people are difficult.”
That was enough. The matter ended there.
His father was more demanding, particularly as Kornyaji became a teenager, but even the Alkali’s discipline was inconsistent. He could tolerate things when his son was young that became intolerable when the boy grew tall enough to challenge him physically. The village noticed the contradiction. The same father who had once excused the boy’s behaviour now expected a young man to behave with restraint. But Kornyaji had not been taught restraint. He had been taught that love meant someone would rescue him from the consequences of his actions. Now his father was asking him to become responsible without having given him the tools to understand responsibility. The result was resentment.
Kornyaji began spending more time away from home. At first, he wandered. Then he discovered the palm-wine tappers. There, nobody treated him as the Alkali’s son. At least not in the way people did at home. The older men might tease him, but they also allowed him to sit. They laughed at his stories. They listened when he spoke. And when he drank, the awkwardness inside him seemed to loosen. Palm wine did something to his mind that he interpreted as freedom. It slowed the thoughts that raced unpredictably through his head. It made conversation easier. It gave him confidence. It made him laugh. Most importantly, it gave him somewhere to go where his loneliness did not feel like loneliness.
The first time his father heard that Kornyaji had been drinking palm wine, he was furious.
“You will not go there again.” Kornyaji stared at him.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
“Other men go there.”
“You are not other men.”
That answer became the problem.
Kornyaji heard only control. He did not hear concern. He did not understand why the same father who had protected him from everything now wanted to control where he went and whom he sat with. So he went again. The Alkali warned him. Then he threatened him. Then, after seeing that threats accomplished nothing, he begged him. But Kornyaji continued.
The more his friends avoided him, the more he relied on the palm-wine tappers. The more isolated he became, the more he drank. And the more he drank, the more unpredictable he became. It was a circle from which neither Kornyaji nor his parents knew how to escape. Then came the night that turned village gossip into scandal. Kornyaji returned home drunk. Not slightly unsteady. Not merely smelling of palm wine. Drunk to the point where he could barely walk straight. His clothes were dirty, one side of his shirt hanging loose from his shoulder. His eyes were red, and he was laughing at something that nobody else could see as funny. The Alkali was waiting.
“Where have you been?”
Kornyaji looked at him and laughed.
“Outside.”
“Where?”
“With people.”
“Which people?”
Kornyaji shrugged.
The Alkali’s face hardened.
“I have told you never to go to that place again.”
“And I went.”
The words were simple. But they landed like a challenge. His father stepped closer.
“You think you can speak to me like that?”
Kornyaji laughed again. That laughter finished the alkalo. What followed was not discipline. It was rage. The father beat his son brutally. By the time the neighbours heard the commotion and came running, Kornyaji had been beaten to the point where he could barely stand. Some said he had deserved punishment. Others said the alkalo had gone too far. But beneath the argument was a deeper tragedy. Kornyaji had spent his childhood being told, in a hundred different ways, that he could do no wrong. Now the man who had helped create that belief was beating him because he had become impossible to control. The boy had not suddenly become troublesome. The village had simply reached the point where the consequences of years of indulgence could no longer be hidden. And perhaps the saddest part was that Kornyaji himself did not understand why everyone seemed so angry with him. He knew only that he was hurting. He knew that people avoided him. He knew that his father was angry. He knew that the palm-wine tappers welcomed him. And somewhere beneath all his anger and bravado was a lonely boy who had been loved deeply, but never taught how to live with the world beyond the walls of his parents’ protection.