Music wafts from a distance, its melody waves through my vein as I nod my head in a sequential move. There is the sound of drumming and footsteps thudding in the ground in a repeated pattern of patapata patapata….patapata…. patapata….patapata. A whistle is blown and loud ululations can be heard, followed by a tambourine. By now am on my feet twirling in the music, buried in the drum beats and my body has been seized by an obsession. I throw my hands in the air as if to catch the winds then I stop suddenly and look beyond the hills and chant incoherently, in a sequence as if in response to the music. I sing with a dramatic tone, a demeanour that belongs to someone else; my essence has clearly taken flight.
The footsteps can be heard again in the same repetitive pattern of patapata… patapata…. patapata…. patapata. This time it’s followed by drum beats. I move in musical steps towards the direction of the sound chanting in unison to unknown music. I am totally unaware of the events that surround my change of behavior at the moment. The sounds lead me to the shores of mulwakupa, the great river that separates the Wanga people from the Marama. No one has ever had a clear explanation of its existence other than centuries of narratives of the power of the mutarakwa trees that have found home on its shores. The level of the river has since reduced but the mutarakwas are still lined up on both sides, standing at attention, like police officers during an inspection, waving their leaves and branches in the air with such confidence and hope that one time the river will flow as much as it used to twenty years earlier. They refuse change and are holding into the soil intent, with no intentions of ever disappearing. Stories have been told over glaring bone fires of how the trees have saved the land from looming poverty, but the continued increase in land laying fallow and unattended does not seem to share in the same sentiments. The trees stand morose as if they know something about injerekha that villagers know nothing about. In spite of this, no one is bold enough to make the first move to bring the trees down. Indeche, the village hunch back, was the only man to try and pull a stunt about not fearing the trees and went about trying to bring them down. His became a tragic history that compelled everyone into frenzy as they buried the blood stained axe he had gone to use. The only evidence that he was there since his body could not be traced even several years after the incident. Rumors wove around the village that he must have drowned in the rivers and ended up in the big sea.
The music stops as soon as I reach the edge of the wooden bridge. The same place where you fell down and broke kukhu’s precious pot. There is silence as dead as the graveyards and I can hear the sound of water from the stream on the other side of the river. It pours with mighty strengths and thrusts that split into two on the surface of the stones that makes the waters clear. You loved to stand on this stones in your innocent skin. Your breasts had just started to show and they stood out lustfully and teasingly in the face of my ignorance. Sometimes you would lie on these stones and let the waters thrust on your buttocks. The feeling of the water splashing onto my face from your buttocks was exciting. On a good day you would let me stroke the tips of your breasts as you lay spread on the stones, your feet up in the air and your face down towards the rivulet that joined the mulwakupa. You smelled like ripened bananas in the early hours of the morning and when your hand slipped and touched my face, it felt supple, like finely ground nuts ready to be used for soup. I worshipped the air that you breathed because it was eternal and I adored the sound of your voice because I thought the ancestors made you just for me.
The sound of footsteps again patapata...patapata....patapata...patapata. This time they seem to be coming from different directions. I stand right in the middle of the wooden bridge and a shadow forms under it. The moon is high in the sky, it is the honey season and lots of bee farmers are harvesting by this time of the night. I look back where I am coming from and I see bouts of smoke in the sky. The shadow moves towards the mutarakwa and stops under one tree. I take a deep breath and pull my trousers to the knee so I can wade through the shallow waters to the shadow. My heart beat is faster than the drum beats during the circumcision period but I must face my fears if I want to conquer my desires. The shadow is at the same spot where they picked you years ago. This is the same spot where I fought tooth and nail trying to save you from them. Tears are slowly welling in my eyes as the water makes swishing sound as I approach the shadow. I almost fall into the waters when a branch traps my leg. The shadow does not move till I draw closer to it and it all becomes clear to me.....
The clouds were gathering in the sky in the eastern horizon and the winds were beating through our ears. It would begin to fall any minute. You stood at the edge of the stream and told me to see how beautiful the sky was in its grey colour and how the red colour struck once in a while. From a distance there was the sound of an owl, a great cause of alarm in the community. I never really saw anything beautiful about the rains. When it was thunderous like that it meant something bad was about to happen and when an owl sound followed it meant someone had to be sacrificed. You never really seemed to be bothered about these things. You raised your hand in the air and pulled your head towards the angry winds and closed your eyes in a calm collected manner. Kukhu always said you were a special creature and I believed her. While people gathered their earthen pots and ran home before they became sacrificial lambs you stood there and faced the gods of the land with an iron heart. I did not admire your resilience much as it sounded rather foolish to me.
“Ifula yetsanga!” (It is coming to rain)
I screamed at the top of my voice amidst the winds but the words seemed to have been flown to another direction. Your legs were now a little raised and you seemed like one in a trance. I was beginning to get scared of the darkness as my home was far away beyond the new church at the edge of the forest. Your home was equally not near. Noticing that you would not budge I walked up to you and pulled your hand: You almost fell into the rivulet but you hanged in my grip.
“Khutsye ingo Petronila ifula yetsanga” (Lets go home Petronila the rains are coming)
You smiled coyly and grudgingly lifted the earthen pot to your head and we began the journey home. Darkness was curving in like a blanket and I had to hold your hand. The ground was wet and slippery and our footsteps kept making some sloshing sound. You stopped suddenly when we reached the wooden bridge and looked into my eyes and opened your mouth as if to tell me something but stopped and turned your face to the bridge. I thought you wanted to be naughty so I insisted that we keep going. You did not move even an inch but turned to look even deeper into my eyes. Then I heard the sound, at first people talking in low tones then sounds of patapata....patapata.... patapata, movements of gigantic creatures coming from injerekha. Hurriedly we began walking on the wooden bridge to the other side of the mulwakupa and then pu! The fall was sudden with no alarm and the pot strewn in a certain pattern in the mud. You were still holding the ingara in your hands in the mud but your face showed no flicker of an emotion apart from a surprised looked. I craned my neck towards the sugar cane plantations that climb uphill towards injerekha but it is all quite, just the sound of the rain landing softly on the leaves and its droplets hitting the surface of mulwakupa. I could feel blood racing from my head to toes in hot torrents, like when a molten volcano suddenly erupts exposing its contents down the mountains. Beads of perspiration gathered in my under arms making them greasy, sticky and itchy. The showers began to fall and we could not go home anymore. I picked you up slowly and dragged you under the mutarakwa. That is the only shelter I could find. It was dead silence apart from the mulwakupa roaring and threatening to busts at its seams due to the heavy down pour. I lifted my head to the sky and the let the waters fall on my visage then skilfully, the drops mix up with the tears forming at the edge of my eyes and the whole mixture rolled down.
You raised your head and searched for my eyes in the rain. With your tongue you tried to wipe the tears that were now flowing in controllably. The rains had stuck your clothes to your skin. The yellow dress that had been hanging loosely on your body was now glued to your skin forming artistic patterns of the huge waves of a sea when on a high tide. It revealed your sexuality in blue print, the reality that haunted my existence and which I had totally failed to succumb to. I folded myself in a ball like a scared mice and turned my face to the side but your breasts were pressed against my bare chest and your slender legs twirled in an angle with mine. Your tender and full lips managed to find mine and I devoured each piece of their fullness like it is the last I will see them. You did not relent but equally subdued me with your hands, moving them into my trousers and playfully sized my genitals. I held my breath and tried to find your eyes. You did not look disturbed but consumed in your own clandestine world. My mouth ran your body and found the tip of the breasts, round and intent. They had the assurance of the rains, that when it comes down we shall harvest. Yet still they appeared cunning, almost warning me of an impending danger, the bitter endings of something that had suddenly began to be good. I steal a glance at the mutarakwa and they still wave their leaves in the same direction, as forceful as the strength of the wind trying to convince us that there was no shelter under the covers of these trees.
A sharp pain at the back of my head stopped my illusions all at once. I stared at you blankly as another creature dragged you towards the shores of the mulwakupa. You tried to hold onto my arm but there was not enough strength in me to hold you. A trigger was pulled, an AK47, and then the colt and a gunshot aimed in the air. The rains stopped in milliseconds then fell all at once like they had been summoned by some super powers. The high branches in the mutarakwa trees suddenly stopped shaking as well and looked into heaven searching for some kind of instruction then they began to swing even wilder. Your dress was ripped in two, from the seam to the hem, exposing your whole body to the rain. He then ran the nozzle down your body and laughed heinously. In the blurriness of the rains I saw you trembling, your eyes gushed out in white and your tears drying at the edges of your mouth. You held yourself in a tight grip as the water dripped from the hem of your dress to your feet. I lay face down, not courageous enough to see what I looked like in your disparity. I had failed you and failed myself.
“Olangwa wina mkhana?” (What is your name lady), the voice was thunderous and assertive. It could be heard from the rumbling and fumbling of the thickets that surrounded the river.
“Pet...Pet...Petronila” you responded amidst your shaking and trembling.
“Uno ni omtsatsa uo?” (Is this your husband), he asked again but this time you nodded your head in acceptance. The guy looked at his colleague and they all joined in crude laughter, the kind that is laced in a murderous tone. He then pushed you to the ground and asked you not to open your mouth. The other guy reached for my trousers and exposed my manhood to the rains. He handed me a stick, the size of a young sugar cane, and told me to ‘play’ with it in you. My heart must have missed a bit and my world suddenly became grim. I could see how teary your eyes were as you lay there, begging me to fight for you. I saw how your heart willed for me to be a man and fight for us. A heavy blow landed on my left rib and I toppled over. They placed the twig in my hand, and forcedly pushed the stick inside you. A writhing pain in my spine caused me to stop all at once, immobile and wasted. Your screams in the rain as you writhed in pain is a nightmare I can never get rid of. My hands were filled with warm blood from your body and it dripped to the ground and got mixed with the rains. I watched as you became weaker and wearier, and your eyes were turned pale almost purple and then you collapsed at my feet.
“Petti bhukha....Petti...Pet...” (Petti wake up....Petti....Pet)
You did not stir. Your body was stiff and cold. Our assailants stood aside watching and rolling their eyes, beaming with unadulterated joy. I tried to swallow my saliva but it was like a heavy cotton ball had suddenly stuck in my throat. The mound of your body laying on the ground right before me in a curled ball and the face of a hero who had died fighting for her own life. They grabbed your body and swung it once into the river and they let me watch as you floated away, into bigger streams, maybe you would end up in the Mediterranean Sea, the same place where Indeche went. Then they fled. Yes just like that they left. For a moment my body was stuck on the ground and the Mutarakwa trees seemed to be nodding at me, cursing me for not heeding the warning that the trees did not provide any shade in the rains. They seemed to be accusing me for failing to be a man. A heavy wind jolted me from the ground and I ran all the way home and sat at the edge of my isimba. I trembled like a leaf and hugged myself tightly like someone who is possessed......
The music I was dancing to begins to waft in the air again. I am exhausted and almost out of breathe. My whole visage is covered with sweat and on my chest the sweat trickles down in thin strands of water. A clear cloud forms in my vision and you are standing at the edge of the river; your hands soaring in the air in the same way you did at the stream and your eyes shut, facing the direction the wind is coming from and you begin to fly like you always do. You begin to hum sweet melodies as the winds beat your dress and make it flatter in the air. You turn around to face me and I notice a piece of the broken earthen ware in your hands. There are no more footsteps. You beckon me to draw closer till you can hold my hand. You smile coyly and tell me not to be afraid. You then show me a deer that stands at the edges of the injerekha thickets. Its brown skin shines brightly in the evening moonlight and its horns stand tall in the air. Beside it, a baby deer presses to its side and looks our direction. Thus I discover the spear still in my hands and the veins that have formed on my chest from chasing the deer. Vapour escapes my heavy breathes and forms thin layers of cloudy like effects in the chilly breeze. The deer makes a sound then takes off into the thicket in the same sound of patapata....patapata...patapata...patapata.
The rains have stopped now and the air is fresh again. You kiss the palm of my hands and I touch the strands of your hair, stroking them back and forth. You beauty surpasses the understanding of a common man. Your eyes stand out boldly like torches, shinning into the night with protection. The perfection of your body is the reflection of hours of discussion between the ancestors and the gods of the land just to create you to serve your purpose. Your strength puts me to shame when I see how you command such a great force like the wind. I was lost in my own illusions and obsessions of your existence that I did not see you fall into the river and swim to the trees that protect the generations borne in our land. I did not realize how fast my feet could carry me from my isimba. Your smile puts the world to a halt; the rivers stop and topple over its waves and the trees suddenly do not swing in the same swishing sound. Your legs are covered with mud from wading at the edges of the river to get to the trees. Your spirit does not fear anything in the world yet you drop yourself at my feet hopping I will walk you into your liberation. You hold my hand and let me walk you home. We will tell kukhu the pot was a mistake.
