Sapo Forest, Liberia 2030
At precisely four in the evening, a twenty-year-old young woman of remarkable beauty, adorned with African features, sat on a tree branch, leaned her back against the trunk, and watched the magical sunset in front of her. Black hair flying, eyes shining like the ocean, the inscriptions on the wooden chain indicate that her name is Naili. But she was distracted when she heard a girl's voice calling her, then she looked at her and said, "Yes, Irina, I'm going down now."
Coming down, Naili said, "Is the dance over so soon?"
Irina replied, "No, it took longer than ever, but you never feel the passage of time when you're up there."
Naili commented, "You are right, the view there is magical."
Then Irina went forward, giving Naili a hat of a distinct shape, and said, "Come, put on your hat, that we may go."
The two girls then walked through the large grassy field to reach their destination, feeling the grass and clay soil beneath their feet, as well as the sunset wind caressing their skin.
Until they approached a place that looked like a celebration from the colorful clothes worn by the dancers and the playing sounds emanating from drums made of animal skins and the wooden flute.
At that moment, Naili stopped and said to Irina in surprise, "What is this?
They haven't finished dancing yet, so why did you bring me?"
Irina replied, "Calm down; the dance will end after a while. Don't show people that you're such an introvert."
Naili commented, "I'm not an introvert, I'm an extrovert when needed, as will happen shortly, but I don't like to communicate with humans."
Irina laughed and said, "That's the definition of an introvert, but wait, do you consider me a cow or something?"
Naili's repeated laughter made her unable to respond, but she took a breath, tried to calm down, and said, "No, I see you as a cottonwood tree, precious and beautiful to me."
The moment the dance was over, the two girls continued on their way to the party location.
If you look at it from afar, you will see a group of people, colors covering part of their skin, obscuring few of their features, sitting on the grass, around a large diameter round hole that looks like a lake, but you can't see water, so you wonder about the depth of the hole and how it formed in the first place.
As you get closer, You will see women wearing relatively short dresses in a variety of colors, some light beige and some white. Beautified with a gather of colorful enrichments and many long white feathers, and in case you look closely, you may suspect that these dresses are made of leather blended with some fur.
Without a doubt, these dresses are carefully handmade from deerskin, and you may take note that underneath these dresses they are skirts made of White cloth, but you cannot decide its sort from a remote place.
Also, you won't miss the feathered headdress they wear, covering their hair from the front, but despite this, long braids fall out of this headdress, wrapped in ribbons and decorated with feathers.
If you look at the men, you will see that they are wearing the same clothes but instead of dresses, a rather long shirt and relatively long pants underneath, with a feathered hat on their head.
When you look closer and closer, you'll notice the African features of the women and men mixed with some Native American features as if they were making a movie about Native Americans but in Africa. So you wonder why they are here and why they are wearing these clothes. Is this a movie or something else?
The two girls reached the party location. Then, Irina called out to everyone, saying, "Come on, everyone, calm down. The story will begin."
So all the people sat down and Naili began to speak: "I know you heard this story last year, but we must remember our history."
Then she continued with clear confidence, "Our land was green, vast, and seemed endless. We moved a lot before, but circumstances made us live in that magical place, chase the white buffalo, and plant rice and corn until we had new people, whom we called palefaces or white settlers.
We at first thought they were people who wanted to live in the uninhabited lands, they helped us and gave us horses to expand our land and get food. But greed blinded their eyes and caused them to spread like fire through straw.
They wanted to loot everything. At first, they seized small parts of our land. We wanted to prove that we were the strongest, so we robbed what their passers-by were carrying while crossing our land, but that only made them more stubborn.
They lied and said they wanted to make the road safe for their passengers, so they put us in a special place where no one could communicate with us, or allow us to communicate with anyone.
They forced us to live in a part of our land they called the Sioux Reservation. Unexpectedly, we trusted them and thought that was the end of the story, but the madness of obtaining gold struck them, and since the one who puts the laws is the one who could break them, they began to seize the land that they made us live on for the gold sake.
We resisted, but thousands of us died, and we saw the neighboring tribes being forced to leave their lands and walk long distances to find a suitable place to live, where no one would chase them or seize their land, but the specter of death seized their souls on the way.
We didn't want to be like these tribes. Therefore, some of us stayed and signed agreements with the white settlers that allowed them to live on small plots of their land while the settlers would get the rest of it.
Other members of the tribe fled from North America across the Atlantic until they reached a small country that contained large areas of jungle called Liberia, and we are the descendants of those people, that is, we belong to the Lakota tribe from North America."
Then a little girl interrupted her and said, "Does that mean we don't own the land?"
Also, another child said, "If we are like that, what is the difference between us and the white settlers who took over our land?"
Naili smiled back, "The difference is, this is our land. Do you know how the Lakota tribes came here from across the Atlantic?!
They were on a boat with a group of Kru tribe members who were forced to go to America because of the slave trade, but they are from Liberia and own the land we live on now. We are also their descendants.
This means that there was interbreeding between members of the Lakota tribe and members of the Kru tribe, so we are their descendants, which is why we always combine both in our celebrations.
The colorful feather hats we wear today are a Lakota tradition, but these girls' short cotton skirts are a Kru tradition. Also, in terms of food, fish, and rice dishes are similar to the Kru tribe, while wasna food (dried buffalo meat) is similar to the Lakota tribe."
She stopped for a moment, caught her breath, and then continued saying happily, "Time passed, and I did not tell you the reason for our celebration on this particular day. On this day from many years ago when the members of the two tribes arrived in Liberia, they noticed small parts of a very bright object falling.
When they reached the place of their fall, the sky rained heavily, and they found plants growing around them, so they saw that this was a sign of habitation in this land. So we celebrate this day every year and remember our history as our ancestors told us before they died."
Then everyone clapped for her, but her thoughts were on the sudden disappearance of her father.
After that, she said: "Get ready for the Sun Dance, it begins in a short time."