The wood chopping man

A worn wood chopping man came by a few days back. I was sitting on our porch one day after school when a leathery old man walked through the gate into the court yard. Slung over his shoulder was the biggest axe I have ever seen. The blade itself was well over a foot long and looked more like the grim reapers … I forget the name of the grim reaper’s tool of choice but I think you know the one I’m talking about…anyways…the blade was huge. Opposite the cutting edge, the blade narrowed and was secured by piercing the thick end of the “handle.” I put “handle” in quotation marks because the handle must have been the femur of a horse – I suppose I’m in Africa so it very well could have been the femur of an elephant or giraffe. This think was at least one and half times longer than any other axe handle that I have ever seen. After I was able to take my eyes of the axe, I gazed upon a man who looked like he has seen a ton of life. If a black person could be tan, this guy was California beach bum bronzed. I doubt he weighed more than 140 pounds but I guarantee I wouldn’t stand a chance. He wasn’t muscular, just efficient. Every inch of his body was chiseled and defined, his biceps as much as his rib cage. I looked to my little sister and gave her a look that said, “who is this old guy with the huge axe!”

My little sister giggled and told me to greet this guy in Moore. “Ya zaabri yaa laafi” I said in what seemed an extremely boyish voice compared to the tiny burly man that stood before me. He responded with a raspy voice, a three-toothed smile, and beat-red squinted eyes from a lifetime of African sun and heat. After exchanging the usual greetings, my sister led him around the corner of the house, and my first thought was that I was going to see dinner killed right then and there. I had a mini panic as I was not in the mood to see this man go to town with an axe on some chickens or a goat. Fortunately, my sister pointed him to a pile of wood and it became clear to me that this man was here to chop wood. I immediately told my sister that I thought I could do it. She immediately responded with a smile and a finger shake that indicated she had little faith in my wood chopping ability. She was more in touch with reality than I was.

The wood they use here looks more like tan, sun-beat drift wood than the logs one would normally think of in America. It is long, narrow, and spirally. The wood must be cut lengthwise with the logs sitting on their sides. One must straddle a log with the goal to make narrower pieces of the same length. It is very hard wood and when the axe man took his first swing I realized why he needed such a big axe. The first time he raised the axe above his head and made the first swing, I half-expected the log to explode. His motion reminded me of a perfect golf swing in slow motion that is a perfect combination of art, finesse, and explosive power. It’s as if his back swing and the first half of his downswing was in super slow motion but went double time right before the blade hit the wood. As I said before, I expected the wood to explode on his first swing, but blade bounced off barely leaving a dent. It seemed as if some law of physics had been violated. It did not look natural. He didn’t hesitate to take another swing but with this time made a sound when he exhaled during the down swing that again made me feel twelve years old. I swear the sound came straight from deep inside his lungs. This time, a small piece kindling flew off with a crack. After ten or so similar strokes, the first log split in two. To end the story before it gets too long, after thirty minutes watching this now sweaty man labor in the heat, I looked to by little brother and said in English so that he wouldn’t understand, “Damn, that is why you stay in school.”