How Beautiful We Were

The first chapter juxtaposes its first-person plural narrator, the children in Kosawa, with “them,” or anyone from Pexton, an oil company to which Kosawa’s land and water was sold three decades prior in 1980. Pexton has contaminated Kosawa’s environment to the point of killing children. Parents are constantly grieving. They try to get Pexton to see their plight and leave, but the company never does.

Three Pexton representatives, whom the children call the Round One, the Sick One, and the Leader, come to Kosawa for mandatory meetings with Woja Beki, the village head, who is detested by the villagers because he is on Pexton’s payroll. The four tell the villagers that they should be proud Pexton chose their land. The only person who does not attend the meetings is Konga, an outcast whose mental illness makes him taboo. Konga used to be a talented, desired man before voices started talking to him. The village medium told Konga that his body was taken over by an evil spirit to make up for the wrongdoing of his ancestor. The villagers believe that touching a possessed person causes death, so Konga lives in isolation.