It all
began when I was nine years and in a village far away called Kamusiliu. A girl
called Kamana would tease me, day in and day out for so many things, just
because I was the youngest in our class and spoke bad Kikamba. She would hold
my hands and remark how soft they were and then observe that a man should not
have such soft hands. I hated her at times, but loved her mostly because she
would always come to my defense when anyone else tried bullying me. That was in
1995, and we were only in class four.
She is
the only person I remember being close to throughout that year, which so to say
was my hardest in terms of school. I had transferred from St. Johns' Primary in
Marsabit and I found the going tough in Kamusiliu. My poor Kikamba was my
undoing and this wasn't helped by the fact that my mother was a teacher in that
school who insisted that the only way I could learn Kikamba was through the
constant bullying by my peers. And so I had to go through the bullying hoping that
Kamana would be there to protect me. After all she herself liked teasing me,
which I found myself enjoying most of the time.
As the
year dragged along so did our friendship blossom. Her laughter-filled eyes
always left me thrilled. I turned ten in November of that year and a few months
later my father came and carted us away back to Marsabit. I was back to my
familiar territory and to the waiting arms of my desk mate, one Karme Isaac.
Kamana was forgotten, but not forever. I had since discovered I could write and
I'd occasionally write childhood romance stories with Kamana and I as the main
characters. I can't recall the actual title of my first romantic piece but I
can clearly recall its opening line which went like this;
"She walked majestically on the dusty
footpaths of Kamusiliu teasing the little weaver birds that sang at the acacia
tree opposite Titi's shop. My heart went wild, and my lungs jumped joyfully to
kiss my heart. When I regained my breathe I mustered all the courage I could
afford and walked shyly towards her..."
I can't
tell what became of that story but I remember it was very popular in our class.
Karme, in a bid to annoy me, made it her business to publicize it in class. And
when those of us who thought could write organized a class writing context and
called our English teacher to judge our stories, my little love story was
disqualified for being "too adult" and our teacher reprimanded me for
wasting my talent writing stories that
were way beyond my age. It was in the year 1996 and I was only ten. She had a
point though, what business did a ten-year old have to do with romantic stories
at a time when reading "Mills n Boon" was considered a crime for
teenagers? For that reason and to my dismay, Ahmed walked away with the top prize,
which was a packet of sweets, for his story about some child-eating ogre that
had been killed by a brave boy in one of those villages scattered at the hedge
of Chalbi Desert. I concluded that the teacher wanted stories about bravery and
in the next round of the competition I entered a story called "Adventures
of Kamande" and sure enough it emerged tops.
I went
back to Kamusiliu Primary in 1998. I was twelve then and at threshold of
teenage hood. Kamana was there, in class seven. She had matured alot since I
last saw her way back in class four. My second coming was way much better than
the first one. I had matured too, and my Kikamba had improved alot. My hands
were still soft, but no one teased me about them. Even Kamana seemed to have
discovered the advantage of a man having soft hands. Hands were no longer used
to hold a panga and clear bushes for the woman to plant cowpeas'. But in the
darkness during night preps while the prefects worked on the pressure lamps
which we used as lighting, hands would find their new use. And it was only soft
hands like mine that did that work better.
Then
one Monday morning she didn't show up in school. Nobody paid attention to her
absence since absenteeism in Kamusiliu was never a big deal. But none of us
noticed that one shop at Kamusiliu centre remained conspicuously closed. And it
wasn't until Friday that news came filtering in that Kamana got married to one
of the local shopkeepers at the centre. We were left to speculate on the
reasons that made her choose that path. Nobody questioned that, not even the
school administration.
Thinking
about it much later I realized that there was very little anyone could have
done to reverse the situation. Every day pupils dropped out for one reason or
another. Nobody seemed to value education, especially that of the girl-child.
Women empowerment in Kamusiliu was still at its infancy stage. Girls didn't
seem to have anyone to motivate them to pursue education. There was only one
female teacher in Kamusiliu primary and she had been there since 1985. She was
in fact the first female teacher in the whole of Ngomeni Division as it was
then. Everyone called her "Misis", a corruption for "Mrs".
I can bet half of the school didn't know that "Misis or Mrs" was just
a title. My mother was to remain "Misis" until 2002 when another
female teacher got posted to Kamusiliu, more than seventeen years since the
first one had been posted there. Now she was no longer "Misis" but
Mrs. Mwalimu. One other reason why they called her Misis, as I later came to
learn, is because her husband who in this case is my father is called Mwalimu,
now instead of Mrs Mwalimu they just called her Misis. Today you'll still find
her former pupils, those she taught in the seventeen years she enjoyed the
monopoly of being the only female teacher, calling her "Misis". They
still do.
You see
when I came to Kamusiliu I found everyone calling her "Misis" which
to me was weird because where I came from we used to refer to our teachers as
teacher so n so, mostly by their English names. I found the usage of surnames a
new phenomena. All along I was Charles Mathuva and I only began using Mwalimu
when I came to Kamusiliu!
So
Kamana was gone. She was now someone's wife and with her went the teasing.
There was no one to pinch my hands and remind me how soft they were. Even
though there had been nothing romantic between us, I couldn't help but feel the
void that had been left by her departure. Very soon she was to be forgotten as
I turned my attention to other ventures. Adolescence was knocking and boys were
competing to outdo each other in matters of fornicating.
Growing
up in the village was more exciting than I had thought. Unlike in Marsabit
where we couldn't roam around the estate after dark, in the village we could
venture out at night. I had cousins who had spent their entire life in the
village and who were very willing to teach me a few tricks about village life.
We would sneak from home every Friday night after my mother had gone to bed to
go for keshas, not for spiritual nourishment but just to hang on the fence and
wait for girls in the dark. We were allergic to light and would keep dodging
any light that came our way. In most cases my cousins, who were members of
those churches, would organize with their girls to bring along with them a girl
for me. This was to induct me into the world of sex which I found fascinating.
At the end of the night they would sneak with theirs behind bushes for
what-only-gods knew while I'd be left with mine by the path fidgeting and
wondering where to begin. At the end of it all we would discuss how to write
good compositions and inshas. My cousins would later escort me home and brag
about their sexual exploits while laughing at me for my inability to have a
woman shed her panty for me!
I learnt how to weave "Ikenge" for
trapping quails and burn tires to get wires used to trap dik dik. During the
weekends we would sneak from home and join a band of boys from the village and
venture into the bushes to hunt dik dik. As a rule we didn't sell our catch but
would divide it and take home to our parents. Mother would buy the game meat
from us at a fair price which made us anticipate the next weekend with glee.
It
didn't take long for me to get absorbed to the culture of my people. I could
now sing the Kamba cultural songs and dance to their dances with a lesso tied
tightly around my waist and thrusting my torso about while performing the
famous PTT, pelvic thrust taunt, commonly known as musung'u. I'm no good dancer
and never was back then but there is nothing I enjoyed much than those kind of
dances that involved PTTs. We would form ourselves into a ring and two of us,
usually a boy and a girl would toss themselves in the middle while the rest of
did the singing. One of our older cousins, Kavindu, who had christened himself
Cleopatra the God's grandson was the lead soloist. With him in our ranks and
with his baritone voice piecing through the moon-light night we were assured of
having a hoard of village girls following our band.
Occasionally
one would throw himself into the middle of the ring and from there invite a
girl to dance with him. This invitation would be done in some bodily language
that involved dancing toward the lady in question who would in turn start her
moves, shaking her waist suggestively and thus she would end up in the middle
with you. Once in the middle the dance would gradually transform into a game of
wit with the man expected to thrust a Musung'u at the girl. Musung'u involved
dancing towards the girl and aim your
pelvic at her hoping to connect with her bosom. You would be met with cheers if
you aimed right or if the girl gave herself to you. I found this kind of dance
a bit errotic at first but with time I came to love them. I would do a PTT at
every opportunity I got. That, after all, was the closest I could come into
contact with the girl.
Back in
school, competition for the few eligible girls in our class was in top gear.
Out of the huge number that we had in class seven only 16 of us had made to
class 8, the highest number in recent years. We were even in number, 8 boys and
8 girls but the most eligible girls were only two. One was my distant aunt and thus out of the
equation. There only remained one who was up for grabs. My measure of
eligibility back then, and remains to date, was based on beauty and
intelligence.
