The people of juffure gethered thickly about the old man, glancing at me as they talked in their mandinka tongue.
After a while, the old man turned, and walked briskly past my three interpreter , and right up to me and started to speak. He stared into my eyes , seeming to feel I should understand him mandinka then the translation came: we have been told by our forefathers that there are many of us from his place who are in exile in that place called American and in other places.
The old man sat down, facing me as the people hurriedly gethered behind him. The he began to recite from me in amazing details the ancestral history of the kinte clan, as it had been passed along orally across centuries from their forefathers time. The villagers listened silently after a sentence or teo, he leant back waiting for interpreter to translate.
