Akata Witch

Anatov takes them to Zuma Rock, a place Sunny has visited before that turns out to be the Abuja Leopard headquarters. Anatov warns them that the scholars in Abuja are more concerned with luxury than in other places. The festival is crowded with people speaking many languages, playing music, and selling products, and Sunny feels overwhelmed. She pretends to go to the bathroom for a moment alone, but instead stands in a field and cries. A kind, tall man in yellow listens to her problems, comforts her, and gives her a yellow handkerchief.

Later, they attend the wrestling match and see other students there, including a boy named Yao who exchanges tense words with Chichi. The match begins, and the announcer Mballa introduces Sayé, a man from Burkina Faso who has mystical ghost arm abilities, and Miknikstic from Mali, who can see into the near future to guess what someone will do in a fight. Sunny recognizes Miknikstic as the man who comforted her before. The two men engage in a brutal fight, and although most of the crowd is excited by it, Sunny and her friends are disturbed. Sayé kills Miknikstic, and Miknikstic grows wings and flies into the sky. Mballa encourages everyone to clap for the new champion and the new guardian angel, Saint Miknikstic. Sunny, horrified, tells Anatov she hates this and wants to go home. She cries, and Orlu comforts her. When she sees Miknikstic’s wife, she shows her the handkerchief and tells her that she was grateful to her husband for talking to her. His wife gives her a blessing. Anatov returns and says the lesson is that “[when] things get bad, they don’t stop until you stop the badness—or die” (242).

The four friends, glum, drink palm wine at a booth at the festival. Chichi suggests they cheer up, as there is still much to do. Someone offers Orlu and Sasha the chance to sign up for the football match, but Sunny and Sasha sign up instead. They’re assigned to the green team, and Sunny worries whether they will let her play, but Chichi assures her Sasha will make them. Once they’re on the field, Sunny recognizes the boy in charge of their team, Godwin, as a good-looking boy she hit with a bag on the funky train. Godwin asks the boys on the green team, who are from different countries and speak different languages, to do soccer exercises to see what position they will play. When it’s Sunny’s turn, Godwin says she can’t play because she’s a girl, but Sasha insists they let her try, and Sunny impresses them. Godwin makes her center forward, an important position.

The other team, the white team, is much bigger and older. When the game starts, the commentator mentions that it’s been 15 years since a girl played in the Cup, and a girl has never played center forward. Members of the other team make cutting comments about Sunny. When the game starts, however, she uses the element of surprise to move the ball quickly, and the green team scores. Sunny plays well through the game, despite Ibou, the center forward from the white team, making jeering comments about girls playing soccer. In the end, the white team wins, but only by one point, and they earned less chittim for their efforts than the green team. Sunny and her team celebrate with a group hug.

That evening, the four friends attend a social for students inside a tent at the festival. The social features food from all over West Africa and a tree that magically rotates to the music. They encounter Yao, who exchanges competitive words with Chichi, but also asks her to dance, which annoys Sasha. Sunny asks Orlu to dance, too. As the evening progresses, they see Sasha surrounded by girls. Chichi, angry, goes over to speak with him, but is intercepted by Yao and the soccer player Ibou.

Yao challenges Chichi. He performs some juju that turns her clothing into a form-fitting gold dress, which impresses some of the onlookers. Chichi tells Yao and Ibou they are both “inferior.” She does juju as well, and it seems not to work, but when Yao happily comes to shake her hand, he realizes he is trapped in an invisible box. Chichi offers to call up a masquerade to definitively prove her superior juju abilities if he will never bother her again. It is risky juju, but Chichi and Sasha insist they know how as they have done it before, at Orlu’s house. Orlu begs Chichi not to do it, but she begins, as the whole tent watches.

Chichi draws a symbol and uses her juju knife, which brings up a termite mound, the way masquerades, or spirits, enter the physical world. She announces the charm came from Udide’s Book of Shadows, which Sasha got at the bookstore back in Leopard Knocks, and this frightens Yao and other students. A large cloth creature with four heads, each wearing a different expression, emerges from the mound. The creature is filled with stinging insects, which race out and attack the terrified students, swarming over their bodies. Orlu shouts for everyone to get down, and he undoes the masquerade by talking to the insects in Igbo, eventually making the mound descend.

Walking back to the hotel, Orlu is furious with Chichi for doing something so risky and relying on him to clean it up. Anatov is also angry, and he insists on consequences for Chichi. On the trip home on the funky train, Godwin comments to Sunny that everyone is talking about the four friends.