Who am I?
My name is Benjamin King, my sister and I were the first of the King family not to have been born in Africa- the Gambia more specifically- and I have a PhD in Archaeology from the University of Oxford.
This all sounds rather like an introduction at an AA meeting, doesn’t it? It doesn’t really tell you anything about me that you can’t find on Wikipedia.
Who am I? Really?
Sometimes, I’m not even sure that I know the answer to that question.
In fact, I suppose you could say that my entire life has been dedicated to answering it . . . to little avail, I might add.
I do consider myself to be British, and proudly so. Yet, it is to my ancestral homeland that I find myself drawn. And, by that, I don’t even mean the Gambia, but Africa in general. The history of my people, passed down through oral tradition so that it is interpreted by many as nothing but folklore and superstition, has been a driving force in my life.
How then, if Africa is so important to me, did I come to be a graduate of Oxford University, that quintessentially English institution?
Blood
Following my grandfather’s ‘exemplary’ service to the British Crown in World War Two, he and his family, my father included, was given British citizenship and, believing he would be giving his descendants a better standard of living and greater opportunity to excel themselves, my grandfather moved to London in the early nineteen fifties.
My father, Reginald, however, insisted on teaching me and my sister about our roots.
Those roots suggested that our family was descended from the last survivors of the mythological Bouda, a relatively advanced civilisation that had one spanned much of the African continent.
However, when my father, himself an archaeologist, attempted to investigate the existence of the Bouda, he was met with ridicule and disdain by his predominantly white peers, who retained the opinion that Africans had never been ‘sophisticated’ enough to establish a civilisation of that nature. These were the same peers, I might add, who insisted, until fairly recently, that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, to give just a single racist example, must have been built by early Europeans.
As part of my father’s research, my family relocated, temporarily, to Lagos, Nigeria. But the endeavour was met with tragedy: my mother and sister were murdered before my eyes.
It happened during a violent political uprising by General Abaga Abuku, a fanatic who believed that my father’s work could endorse his campaign of terror. If the Bouda were in fact a continent-spanning civilisation, then proof of their existence, Abuku believed, validated his brutal eradication of non-ethnic Africans.
Africa for Africans, was his regime’s motto.
I’d be lying if I said I was over it. In truth, there is barely a night that goes by when I don’t see Abuku’s face glaring at me as he pressed the muzzle of his gun, still hot from the execution of my mum and sister, against my forehead.
I still have the scar. Physical and mental.
Sweat
As one might expect, my father and I became very close after this tragedy. He blamed himself for what happened and, as if to prove that his wife and daughter hadn’t died for nothing, he threw himself wholeheartedly into his quest to prove that the Bouda were real.
This quest led to me having an adventurous upbringing as, every few months, we would leave our home outside of London and travel to one African country after another, following clues as to the existence of the Bouda.
As I grew older, I too found myself drawn into my father’s world of archaeological mysteries. Together, we formulated our Progenitor Theory but, when I began studying at Oxford, I was urged to pursue a more orthodox research topic. Under the guidance of Professor Marc Duval, my dad’s closest friend and, in someways a second father to me, I earned my PhD and was on track to developing a very promising career.
However, just like my father, I couldn’t let go of the trail of evidence we had uncovered about the Bouda and the Progenitors and, thus, my mainstream career started to decline. Just like my father before me, I was met with ridicule and disdain by many of my peers and, if it wasn’t for the academic ‘protection’ of Duval, I would have been washed up far sooner than I was.
While my father became obsessed with finding what he called ‘The Lost City of the Bouda’, I focussed on an obscure reference to the Moon Mask. I thought that if I could even a single piece of the Moon Mask outside of Africa, it would prove but only that the Bouda legend was grounded in reality, but that the Progenitors did exist.
Tears
After many years of study, focusing largely on tracking down the so-called Black Death, an 18th century pirate whom I believe found several pieces of the Moon Mask, I finally hit a brick wall. My funding dried up, my credibility hit an all-time low, I was pennyless and all but a homeless.
Duval and my girlfriend, Sid, finally convinced me to start afresh. To rebuild my career. My reputation.
With no small amount of manipulation on Duval’s part, Sid and I managed to secure places as senior archaeologists on the UNESCO funded Sarisarinama Expedition.
The condition was that I give up my research into the Black Death, the Moon Mask, the Bouda and the Progenitors.
In short, that I betray everything I have ever worked for.
Worse, that I betray my own father.
It was the worst decision of my life.
At almost the exact same time as I was offered the Sarisarinama job, my father told me that he was mounting another expedition to find the Lost City of the Bouda and that he wanted me to accompany him.
I declined.
Two months after the resulting argument – one of the few I had ever had with my dad – I received a series of garbled text messages from him saying that his expedition had been attacked and he was mortally wounded.
No trace of my father or any of the expedition has since been found, despite several attempts by the authorities.
And so, this website and this blog was born. Everything that has happened to me since joining the Sarisarinama expedition can be found here, or in the trilogy of novels by James Richardson – The Xibalba Secret, The Black Death Legacy and The Moon Mask Revelation – which refresh the true story behind the so called ‘Moon Mask Incident’.
If you can’t find the answers you seek in these places, then follow me on social media @moonmask1209 or feel free to direct message me.