Facing the knife

I looked at my fresh wound and felt sorry for myself. I sobbed and wailed at the same time. Tons and tons of tears rolled down my face uncontrollably. I could have done better. Surely, I could have. It now dawned on me that professional doctors could have shown some caution, care, and love. But being the believer I have always been, I had to be more sanguine in the powers of the Most High. "God will intervene," I thought as I coughed loud enough to scare demons out of a possessed man-I had seen a local pastor claim to scare out some stubborn ones out of an old woman in a nearby church the previous Sunday. The pain shall end.

There was a lot of haze in the room as smoke covered all parts of the round-shaped hut and I could hardly make out one thing or the other. The obscurity in the house was so prominent. The only things I was sure of were those that made up my bedding. I lay on a bedding made of a combination of a few sisal-made sacks and dry banana leaves. The sacks looked like they had been soaked in a soup of mud for a whole week before being let to dry under the sun for another week. The dry banana leaves were carefully laid on top of the mud-washed sacks to soften my bedding. However, the effect they made irritated me. Their crashing whenever I turned made my blood to experience an ice-cold sensation only comparable to that felt by one being run through by a machete. Once in a while, I had to force myself not to do anything else, including turning, swallowing saliva moving an eyelid or even breathing to ensure that Wafukho was not coming back to make another incision. Finally, I had been left alone. I did not believe it.

Outside, cocks crowed and hens cackled and cows mowed and children shouted as they played. They seemed to be running in all directions as their noises were not stationary. As I slept, I felt like I was carrying bundles of stress and regrets. I was lachrymose and haunted.

"What if I had run away on the eve of the cut?" I asked myself again and again. "What if I had gone to stay with my aunt in Uganda immediately my year started?"  I wondered what demons usually possess young boys my age during such years. They are usually the ones reminding their fathers to organize the ceremony for them instead of running away. I remembered how I had started preparations for this day even before any other person in our home had thought I was old enough. I imagined it would be a walk in the park since everyone does it. Sadly it was not.

"Many people have done it before," I had said to myself assuringly.

Herding cattle in the Kewa was entirely the responsibility of my age group. That's where we learnt everything, vicariously albeit. It was always a joy to look at each other's pin-sized penis and compare to one's own. No one could imagine that such could cause any harm to anyone in the future. It was like the proverbial king that could not be imagined to have suckled his mother's breasts. Anyhow, my peers taught me how to use a piece of string plucked straight from the tail of a cow to cut a vein on the lower part of the penis. Older boys tried to explain why that had to be done but I will be lying if I told you I know why I did it. Another of the things we had to do in preparation for the real thing and as a proof of readiness was pinching the foreskin with our nails. Here, I went overboard. My nail went deeper into the foreskin than everyone thought it should have. I wanted to prove to the rest that I was a real son of the soil who was more than ready. Later, I could not tell my friends that the wound took me a whole month to heal and that I always cried at night because of the excruciating pain it caused me. I carried the scar until I met Wafukho.

As I lay down facing the rafters, my wound throbbed with pain. I thought it would kill me. It reminded me of the story I had heard of a man who had done the unthinkable. They had walked all the way from the river headed home when he did it. No one had envisioned it. After all, not even the oldest man around had witnessed it. So, he took advantage of their unpreparedness. Upon seeing the circumcisor, he sprang up and took off at a speed that could only have left Usain Bolt fidgeting. The home was made of five round-shaped huts enclosed by a live lantana fence on an area of about fifty metres by forty. A frantic chase ensued. Machete-wielding men and boys carrying stones ran after him five times around the home. Stones were thrown; many missed the target and many hit it, cooking sticks, missiles from the hard earth, machetes and all forms of weaponry were also hurled at him but forward he went. Finally, his legs gave way to fatigue and countless hands gripped him. A myriad kicks fell on him squarely. The cut had to be done with his hands, head and legs held by fifty people each as he gasped for air while letting out gases through all available outlets.  Needless to mention is his bloodcurdling scream.

Such stories always made most of the candidates to postpone their circumcision for another two years while others decided to rid themselves of the fear of the unknown by simply walking into the nearest hospital and coming out as men. I had given the latter option consideration. What happened to me later that I went through a psychological metamorphosis, I don't know.

"Are you sure you want embalu?" I remained quiet and stood still, facing Sayuni as custom dictated.
"If your mother forced you to do it, sauryako," still quiet, and still.
"Wafukho does not only cut the skin but the intestines as well," my uncle went on.
"You have to stand still and let Wafukho do his job as we usually do around here. " He stopped and looked around as if to ask the crowd to confirm what he was saying.
The men around nodded agreement and went on sipping busa from the pot strategically positioned at the centre of the circle of men, mostly my uncle's agemates-those were the days when only men old enough would partake the sipping of busa. It was a large brown pot with crisscrossing patterns made around its neck. Droplets of busa covered it all over. This must have been as a result of the frequent splashing from the warm water some women were violently pouring in after every twenty minutes. You could hear its sizzling from as far as one kilometre away. From a distance, I could hear one of the men praising whoever had brewed it.

"This is work of someone that has done it for decades," he said, "it's so sweet."
"The last time I tested such busa was when Wambilianga was circumcising his son Wepukhulu."
I stood still. Only my heart beats and breathing could be heard. Winking or moving a toe was out of the question.

"If you will tremble upon seeing the circumcisor, then you will have taken after your father's people," he said with the finality of a man in authority.

Presently, I wondered whether what I had gone through was taking after my father's people or my mother's. I doubted whether any of them had gone through such. On the same day my uncle had told me about how fearless and manly my mother's people were, my father also boasted about his people being so bold when facing the knife that birds just decide to die and fall off trees whenever they are circumcised. He also castigated his in-laws for being timid and cowardly. So, in case I decided to take to my heels like the person in the story I told you, then I would have "followed" my mother. Now, of the two, who told me the truth? I was bewildered.

At the river, my uncle repeated the same old lecture he had given me the previous day. He slapped me hard on my right cheek. The slap left a red welt on my chick. A few teardrops freely fell from both my eyes. I had always been submissive to anything called authority all my life. The last time, I had quarreled with my parents had been when I had feasted on a chicken thigh illegally picked from the sufuria. This had been ten years before, when I was only four. Could that warrant this kind of beating? Customarily, chicky and hard-headed boys were the ones who were mistreated before circumcision. They are usually beaten up severely, insulted and taken back home from the river around 10 am, when the sun is up and scorching, in order to make them feel maximum pain. Good ones like myself were rewarded. In fact, legend has it that the founding father of circumcision among our people, Mango Maalule, was rewarded with a second wife, Nandutu, after circumcision because he had heroically murdered a flying snake that had killed many people as well as their animals.  So, I wondered why, Wanjusi, my maternal uncle slapped me severally as he smeared stinking cold mud everywhere on my body.

There surely must be something spiritual with this kind of circumcision. All the shame I always felt disappeared into thin air. I felt as if walking naked before a multitude of people singing strange songs was very normal. Glaring eyes didn't bother me anymore.

The day before, my uncle had reminded me that he had slaughtered his Tope and made me carry part of the meat, including testicles around my neck yet my father never gave him bride price for my mother. This did not bother me. I just kept quiet and transfixed on the ground staring into nothingness. I imagined how difficult it would be to get home. The journey from his home had been long and arduous considering that I was carrying close to twenty kilograms of meat around my neck. It has to be remembered that I was expected to dance, the size of my luggage notwithstanding.
"Why couldn't I simply have visited a doctor for the simple surgery?" I asked myself in disgust, "was all this suffering necessary?" These questions prodded my mind as I contemplated the futility of all the events that were happening with me at the very focal point.

"If Nanjekho your mother forced you to be circumcised so that she can have two men in her home, we shall know it today," his rusty hoarse voice cut the air as his electrifying slap on my right cheek reminded me that it was time to walk home and meet Wafukho.
"Will I manage to withstand the pain people have always talked about?" I tried to look around to see whether there was space for me to run away but what I saw created a cold chill inside me-men of all ages wielding machetes, clubs, pangas, mallets and many other tools walked on either side and others walked before and behind me, ready to make use of their armament if need arose. I shunned the idea.

"Death is death regardless of how you meet it," I muttered, "so I better face it in a dignified manner."

While dancing the previous night, I had imagined that the knife would be as enjoyable as the dance. At some point, I even thought the dance would last for eternity and the event would simply be about making merry. There were all forms of food. A bull was slaughtered and chapatis and mandazis were in plenty. The amount of ugali cooked could effortlessly barricade Thika Super Highway. Girls were also in plenty. I saw my Nangekhe and wished I were a free man. She could have known me that night. I envied those who had already gone through the event because they seemed to be having some really good moments. Wamalwa, particularly, must have been really lucky on that night. He stood aside all through just gazing at the singers, not bothering about joining the bands. Even when the singer sang "Nowima khundulo aba winyamba...(whoever stands aside instead of joining the singing and dancing is either farting or listening to the singers), he remained adamant and seemed to be psychologically miles away. Then, like an eagle that had seen a chick after starving for a week, he leapt into the band and left instantly. I did not immediately know which way he had gone. But I turned my neck to the right in time to see what looked like a woman on the back of a man disappear into the nearby maize plantation. Though the light was dim, at least I could make out Nasipwondi's blue-coloured plaits. How lucky.

An aisle was made in the maize plantation surrounding my mother's main hut. This was the time.

"Will it kill me or will I defecate on the surgeon as somebody once did in another story I was told?" I went on with my internal debate.

 As I appeared, I saw hundreds of people surrounding our hut. They only left a small area in front of the house, where maize flour had been sprinkled. My blood froze. Everyone scampered around for space so that they did not have to be told how everything went down. Bravery was very much valued that whoever cried, twitched an eyelid, moved a toe or did any other thing that exuded the lack of bravery would not be accepted by any girl in the community. I saw my father in a long khaki unbuttoned trench coat, a black pair of trousers fastened tightly at the high waist and a pair of black gumboots. He looked like one of the cowboys I had seen in a movie a few months before. His younger brother and a few of his bakokis stood with him near the white spot. They were all similarly dressed, only that the colours of their coats and trousers differed. Those were the days.

Everyone was talking but I could not pick out anything from their chattering. It was mere noise to me. Then a hush fell on the whole compound.

"This is it," I said to myself for the last time.

My mind quickly dashed to the story my grandfather had told me about a man who had seized the slightest of the opportunities he had and ran away. He had been asked to go to the bush in case he felt the urge. Once in the middle of the thicket, he had looked right, left, right again and when he realized that no one was in sight, he had run away, leaving the piece of matumbo he had worn around his neck next to his faeces. "That was brilliant," I thought. I wished I had jumped into the safety of the maize plantations that were all over the place. It was, however, too little too late. I had to face the present predicament like the man I had wanted to be. I regretted that I did not listen to Wafula and Chemusi when they advised me to accompany them to the hospital nearby and have it done. I wished I had listened.

The silence was so loud. You could hear the flight of a housefly five kilometres away. I stood still and ensured a firm grip of my feet on the ground. I didn't want to be labelled the village coward, neither did I want to be the first person from both my maternal and paternal bloodlines to take off upon seeing the circumcisor. My mind was now made up. I was determined to brave the pain. Twenty minutes later, the two guys working on my penis were still struggling with me. People began to bark at them. The two men seemed desperate for something. They looked stranded. They looked hither and thither for God knows what. The audience moved closer. They moved even closer. The process rarely took that long.

"We brought people who do not know their job?" my father bellowed angrily. "These guys have not made even a single cut."

"The child is just as he was."

Peopled jumped from all directions at the circumcisors with the agility of hungry lions that had spotted a hapless prey. The pain I was feeling was becoming too much to bear. In fact, I was at a loss when I pondered over what my father had just said. "How could it be?" I was filled with bewilderment. "What could be the source of the pain I was feeling if no cut had been made? Why was there blood on the white spot?" I had felt them cut my skin as if they were cutting a bull that was not ready to die.

"Any more cutting and I will be dead meat," I thought.

"It's not our fault," the lead circumcisor cried in agony, "we have a situation."
By the time my father and several other older men intervened, blows had landed like hailstorms on the two surgeons. Their explanation was that they had correctly made the cut ten times, but whenever they were ready to make their way out, the foreskin grew again and covered the whole place as it had been before the previous cut. How could such a thing be possible?

I felt like calling my father and asking him to postpone my circumcision till the next circumcision year but decided to hold back that thought. The pain was excruciating. It was cutting very deep into me. I wished I had been born a woman but remembered that women also have their share of pain during childbirth. I wanted to sit down but a voice from the crowd shouted at me, "Just continue standing and keep your eye where it is. Nothing has been done yet."

After an impromptu meeting that lasted about five minutes with his bakokis, my father asked all the circumcisors around to unwrap and put all their blades on the roof of our main hut. It was always believed that jealous circumcisers, especially those who wanted the job but were denied, often wrapped their blades with pieces of cloth and kept them in their pockets. Such an act usually led to wrong cuts or made the skin to completely refuse to leave the rest of the body. When Wafukho was then ordered to make another attempt at cutting me, the skin certainly fell on the ground and did not rejoin the body. I felt this pain more than any other pain I have ever felt in the world. I was sure childbirth is not half as painful as I felt.

So, here I am, left to myself after so much pain. Left to myself after a sleepless night dancing to vulgar songs. Left to myself after a whole night of watching people sleep with other people's daughters in maize plantations.  I wiped my tears on the corner of my blanket and pondered on what could have happened if I had convinced my father to take me to a doctor. The wound they had left me was abnormally big. It was red like a hot piece of coal. The dripping of blood was reducing slowly but the droplets of blood that had come out had been enough to form rivulets that were slowly drying up on the banana leaves I was sleeping on to form permanent red stains. Outside, children continued with their shouting and singing, cows their mowing, hens their cackling and cocks their crowing. I counted the rafters to a total of twenty of them fastened together with the help of a bent branch.