Immortals: Sierra Leone

Kamba

In the heart of Freetown, where the bustling markets spill their vibrant colors onto the streets, there lived an enigmatic figure known to the locals as Kamba. His age was indeterminable, his origins shrouded in mystery, and his presence as constant as the sun that beat down upon the city's corrugated roofs.

Kamba often sat under the shade of a sprawling cotton tree, the ancient sentinel of the city, weaving tales for those who would listen. His stories were as captivating as they were improbable, for he spoke of times long before the elders' elders were born, of a world unrecognizable to the youth who hung on his every word.

"I hail from a time when the earth was young," Kamba began, his voice a gentle lull amidst the cacophony of city life. "A time when man first laid eyes upon the zebu, the humped beast that roamed the wilds of our nascent world. It was an era of discovery, of communion with nature's untamed spirits."

His audience would listen, rapt, as Kamba recounted his journey through the ages. He spoke of the first zebu he ever tamed, a majestic creature with eyes like polished obsidian and a temperament as fiery as the sun itself. "Her name was Sankofa," he said with a fond smile, "for she was the beginning of my endless path."

Kamba's tale wove through the tapestry of time, detailing the rise and fall of empires, the birth of civilizations, and the endless cycle of life and death that he alone seemed exempt from. "I have watched the world change, seen the birth of fire and the forging of steel, witnessed the power of words as they built kingdoms and razed them to the ground."

Yet, despite the grandeur of his experiences, Kamba's story was imbued with a profound sense of solitude. "Immortality is a lonesome gift," he confessed. "To love is to know loss, to befriend is to face abandonment. I am a constant in a world that thrives on change."

As the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the sky with strokes of orange and purple, Kamba's audience would disperse, each person carrying a piece of his story within them. They would return to their homes, to their families, to their mortal lives, while Kamba remained under the cotton tree, his gaze lost in the stars that had watched over him for millennia.

And so, Kamba, the immortal from the time of the zebu's domestication, continued to live in present-day Freetown, a bridge between the past and the present, a storyteller whose own story was as timeless as the land he called home.