The Stump

The Stump1

By2

Patrick La Bash3

On what are now the grounds of a school in Techiman, there once stood a tree, with its majestic limbs spread to give shade from the West African sun. There is now only a gnarled, rotting stump. It is the rusty, red color of the ground. In which it has sat for so many years. When it rains, it is hard to tell where the red clay like mud ends and the stump begins.4

Men had cut down the tree when the termites and wood rot had eaten away half of the bole of its trunk. Only three feet tall and half-rotted away the stump stands defiant of time and nature.5

Before the building of the school – even before Techiman was more than a small cluster of huts on the trail to Kumasi – the tree had stood majestic and strong. Many natives traveling to the distant Kumasi had camped beneath its protecting strength. They huddled together and built small campfires from its fallen branches and leaves. Squatting around the fire, they relied on their numbers, the fire, and the spirit of the tree to protect them from the very real dangers of the jungle night. Even then, the tree was old.6

It watched the people come and go, some were good men, and some lead others into slavery. The tree stood, and watched. Those who could hear the spirit of the tree heard it in the soft rustle of its leaves as it looked down on the people that camped beneath it. Those who were good, and knew of the spirits of living things could hear its soft laughter in the rustle of its leaves in the soft breezes. Those who were in the chains of bondage, said they could hear the spirit of the tree crying softly and offering them the comfort of its spirit. The good men that came to camp beneath its protection believed the tree’s spirit offered them its strength and gave its fruit as gifts. The others, bad men could not hear the spirit and so never gained from strength from the spirit of the tree.7

Time passed, year after year. The old tree felt the rending strike of lightning that left a large scar on its mighty trunk. Later it felt the searing burn of a wild fire that had roared through its glade. The fire had taken some of the smaller trees that had begun to cluster around the great one. Its spirit felt their loss, and when the rainy season came dropped more seeds to replace the ones lost to the fires.8

It watched the people who passed; they had changed through the years – few stopped now to tell the spirit of the tree thanks for the gifts it gave. However, it was not the lightning, the fires or the loss of the tie between the tree and the people that caused the tree’s spirit to wither – it was all of them put together with the time that was passing.9

Men now stripped the bark from the tree to kindle the fires they made from the limbs they had cut off. They no longer talked to the spirit of the tree, and it could not make them hear. With the bark gone, the inner wood exposed, and its life’s sap oozing from the severed stumps of its once mighty limbs, the tree began a rapid decline.10

When half of the bole of its trunk had been eaten away by the termites and wood rot and with men now cutting even more large branches to build their fires and make their huts stronger, its spirit faded fast – it was dying and it knew it. The spirit of the tree knew that it would not be long before men with axes would cut down what was left of its once mighty strength. The men came and the tree came down, leaving only a stump, half-rotten where once a mighty tree had grown, the spirit of the tree knew that it would not be long before even the stump would succumb to time and man. 11

But, before that final parting it had one last task to perform – it was to serve a final generation of children as a place to pile their clothes and sandals as they played games nearby. The children did not think of it as it used to be, strong tall and majestic. They saw it only as an old rotting stump. The spirit of the tree did not care, it listened to the happy laughing voices of the children at play and remembered when other children had climbed its great branches and celebrated life with the spirit of the tree.12

Now it sits and waits. It knows the day will soon come when men with axes and shovels will remove what is left of the tree. All it had left was its memories of times long past and the quiet sadness of its final days. It waited, a patient spirit knowing that soon – too soon – they would come and no more would the spirit of the tree know the laughter of the children that played where it once stood.13

Children walk around the slight depression in the ground where a mighty tree had once grown, and barely notice that the grass seems to be a bit thicker there than in other places near it. The spirit of the tree is still ready to give of itself to those who feel the spirit of living things and hold them in their hearts.14