Long before I became a writer, I used to live in one of the most under developed village in central Kenya. It was a perfect place to live if you were in search of harmony with nature despite being restricted by customs and traditions the community had set. The peasants also lack the utilities and convenience a more developed area can offer. It was a village famed for many reasons in defiance of being located in a far, distant and isolated sphere as People from neighboring villages used to come over here for barter trade and cash trade. people would buy their food at teeming, chaotic open air food markets that would make many hygiene conscious beings squirm. The market was opened every Wednesdays as well as Saturdays and this was the only time you would see a vehicle in our village.it was a rusty green old lorry with a writing in its madflap that read, "old is gold" and it had a black stripe down one side which the villager rumour mongers and whisperers blabbed that it was a sign of devil worshipping.
The main economic activity of the gikuyu tribe being mixed farming,a system of farming which oftenly involves the growing of crops as well as the raising of livestocks, I spent most of my school holidays and weekends time looking after cows alongside river Gura, a river famed in history to be the fastest flowing water body in east and central Africa. occasionally, I would be toiling in our maize plantation farm from dawn till sunset in company of my parents a task I have lived to avoid to date. I am never industrious and laborious when it comes to working in the farm and this always landed me in the wrong side of my father who couldn't torrerate laziness in his home ground. He was atypical kikuyu man who at all costs believed that no one was obliged to put food in the mouth and munch if they did not sweat or work their finger to the bone.
Taking care of cows deep in the forest and river banks was my best ever task, this is because it neither restricted me from playing hide and seek games with my friends nor getting behind the bushes with girls from the other side of the river to play "cha baba, cha mama" games. The latter was my best game in my childhood days and however much the teachers in school and Sunday school made an effort to rebuke and chastise it, the more comfortable and secure I felt doing it.i was always given the father's character and this gave me access and freedom to exploring the features in a female body nonexistent in mine. I was a complete genius in it. It was not only fun as you may have thought but it also made me famous across the river boundaries and miles away from our village as every girl from the neighboring primary school ,which was ofcourse on the other side of the river, was obssesed with me. This was the era before girls developed the hard to get attitude and became the egomaniacs they have now molded to.
During one of our class seven holidays, the girls however started keeping away from us and avoiding playing the usual village kids games with us. Unlike other times when we would be glad to reunite after boring school sessions, they would make malicious talks in low tone when they saw one of us then walk away in different direction laughing out loudly as if they had seen david luiz trying to defend for arsenal. It did not take wrong before the truth dawned on us, there had been a story circulating amongst them that uncircumcised penises get smelly smegma and the uncircumcised lads are unable to clean under the foreskin unlike the circumcised guys. according to them, they stated that it leads to production of awful smell and can lead to infections if you come into contact with them. They had vowed not to interact,mingle or hang out with the unclipped lads or "ihee" ,as they refered to us on our absence, at all cost and Not even the angels in heaven nor the demons at the sea could make them change their mind .In my class, this new code only favoured one lad of the 31 of us. The guy was not even from my village, his name was mutua, a bully who had joined us in class six and claimed to have been circumcised as child as his kamba tribe dictated so. His tribe, unlike mine where you are only circumcised when you complete your primary school education, they get circumcised when they are very young, I envied him for it. This only limited us to remain hanging in the air and secluded from the chicks who were once ours and on that account we began adapting to other mechanisms of coping with "dryspell" and loneliness. The most common of this activities were fishing and swimming but none could however replace the joy of taking a belle to the back of a bush and having some lone meetings with her and her alone.
It was however during one of the usual customary days that a thought struck into my grey matter, paap! Just like that. We were lazily and unmindfully sunbathing on the green grass with our t-shirts off.our stories and accounts which were ofcourse compounded with 99% lies brought alot of excitement which overcame the itch that came from the grass. We lived the moment. We loved the 10 oclock sun from our school break time which was always cut short by the class time bell and always vowed to utilize it during our time in the bushes. That day we had been grazing our cows with my cousin Michael and my two childhood friends Sammy and kelvin. We were chewing canes which we had actually stolen from one of the peasant farmer in the village while whistling English songs which we only heard from kiss FM but could not pronounce a word from any of them. The songs made us look classy in the eyes of our crushes though.
"mike siunakumbuka ile mti inakuwanga kwa ile side ingine ya kichaka karibu na ile mtaro ya maji ..." I asked Michael grinning from ear to ear.
"mti gani bro, si hii msitu hukuwa na miti mingi sana" Michael replied unconcernedly.
"hapana, unaona mahali ulikuwa umepeleka purity ile siku ya harusi ya mama kevo"
"hiyo yenye inatoanga maziwa ukiikata"
"eeeeh bro, unajua niliskia akina brayo wakisema ati ukiimwagilia kwa hiyo kitu yako utakuwa umetahiriwa na pia si chungu" they all put what they were doing at a halt and faced me doubtfully at the mention of this statement, antagonism and wrangle ensued amongst us as a strong war of words due to difference in opinions heated the air. I was not ready to loose in it either.
It took me blood and life swearing and convincing the three boys that the plan would work perfectly well and not even any of our parents would become aware of it. I even created my own fictional stories about some guys who had done the process successfully and succeded and most of all reminded them of their girl crushes in school and how heroic and lion hearted it would make them amongst all the girls in school. somethings just require you to develop a trusting relationship, you will have a better shot at getting whatever you want from people even if you are not sure of the outcome of the project ahead. The touch on the girls retrieving back to us and branding us as the most voguish and most accepted kids in both the school and the village arouse them to get it done, I knew my plans were gonna work perfectly pretty. We remained composed , indulgent and held our horses up until the cows had taken the afternoon nap and settled in gigantic tree shades to chew cuds and set out for the adventurous journey of a life time to the tree at the middle of the bush.
We rushed across the grassy, labourious and thorny pathway barefootedly stopping occasionally to pull out the bushy tailed perennial thorns which grew naturally in the shrubs or to scratch our rich tanned skins when we came into contact with the stinging nettles. Soon we were feasting on the succulent red wild berries which grew just the least orbital distance from the in demand tree as you may think. There the tree stood, huge and embarrassingly ordinary as usual.
"bro uko sure hii kitu itawork" asked a terrified Sammy.
"we acha uoga , unaona kama wengine wanaogopa, unakaa kutuseti wewe."
After tackling and assuring him that the whole ball of wax would be alright, I set out running. Nobody was ready to be the specimen for the first trial and remaining with no other choice, I set up to lead by example.
"we tony sini idea yako siuanze" insisted an already jaded kelvin. Kelvin was crushing on betty, a girl whom I also admired and cherished behind the scenes too. She was arguably the most beautiful girl In the village and was the only girl in the whole class seven who had sunk deep into her adolescent advancements.she had breasts, firm, pointy and small. And kelvin had vowed to get her at all costs. That is probably the reason why he looked so impatient and wanted it done faster than anybody else.
I glanced at the tree and inspected it as though I was out for some havard university research project.i felt like I could just drop my idea and tell them it was all a bad fabrication. But wouldn't they label me as a coward? A namby pamby, would that mean that that would be the end of us, me and becky? I took a few step back then approached the tree with a higher pace than before, I hopped up and grabbed the freshest of the branches from a bunch of many others and put it on more gravity pressure than it could handle that it broke into two. The other three all surveyed my every action with their eyeballs wide open anticipating to see what I would execute thereafter. Nothing makes me feel heroic than when people feast their eyes on me doing something that they want to learn from me. I surveyed all round like the delmonte watch dogs In their watch tower and then lowered my trousers halfway. I never clothed in an inner wear when going for herding in the forest since the one I had was only fancied for Sunday school or during family gatherings. I took of my loose fitting, oversize PNU tshirt with a huge "kazi iendelee" writing on the front side and hanged it on my shoulders.
"bro hakuna masaa, finya hiyo maziwa itoke" kelvin was insisting.
I closed my eyes with the tree limb held firmly on my right hand. The other hand held the foreskin of the manhood which often covers the head of a penis of a uncircumcised man suspending it on the air and straightening it horiontally. The extract fluid from the wild tree, which looked creamy and milky like oozed and gashed on my manhood as I smeared, anointed and greased it passionately over it. i felt like a megastar or a knight. I once again had done what the other boys had dreaded to accomplish. Hardly had I put on my garmets back to where they belonged before kelvin had his on the ground. He was going to replicate the drill.
"ebu ngoja bro," I cried. Kelvin could percieve none of it. He has that one trait which he developed from our early days that if he wants to implement something, whatever the people in his circle tries to do to stop him all falls to deaf ears. The idiot cut a small branch from the tree and started smearing and rubbing all over his penis too.
"wacha bro, hii kitu ni poison" I cried holding my pim pim out. it was swollen and very painfull. i also felt my genitals itching and the tip of the cock was also swollen in a way that I could not even urinate more than a drop at a time. Sammy and Michael looked panic stricken and petrified, Sammy couldn't even talk.i saw mucus seep from his nose freely and every time it appeared he sent it back to the sender, a trait he had developed from our lower classes days when he was faced by any challenge.
"sasa tutafanya nini,tuende tuite babako awapeleke hospitalini" inquired a scared Michael.
The mention of my father made me frightened and paralyzed with fear. my father would have skinned me alive. It was better to die with pain, soreness and stich than drag my father into this. He was a no nonsense man who believed that at any cost one must take responsibility of his own faults and liabilities. He was not ready to carry my cross either.
"hapana bro, niko na five bob hapa nilipewa na aunty jana, siuende uniletee panadol pale kwa ile kiosk ya baba jose nipunguze uchungu atleast. Usijali nitakuwa tu sawa." I lied.
We had just finished learning about types of medicine in school and we had learnt the types of medicines which can be used to relieve pain. The teacher had called them painkillers. Michael was a fast runner, he had ran for our school since he was in class 5 and he was the fastest in class seven. He ran across the bushes and in seconds he had disappeared through the shrubs. The pain was becoming unbearable and intolerable, tears were forming deep inside me, my eyes were burning red hot and my cheeks had started to swell. I looked at kelvin and he was worse, the idiot had smeared the sap even on his balls. They were itchy as opposed to his painful swollen manhood. It was going to be a big day for us two who had gone for the services of the tree for circumcision purposes only to get away with swollen dicks and itchy balls. It is like we did not understand what circumcision was, or we were to ignorant to care about the outcomes of the process.
To cut the long story short, we got home very late that day that even the cows became fatigued of waiting for us and marched home on their own. This day we were caned and bullwhipped for playing in the forest and forgetting that we had been assigned a duty to take care of the cows. but Despite all this, we never spilt the beans out of the basket and disclosed the earlier turn of event. We {me and kelvin} limped, hobbled and had difficulties during the urination process for a whole week without the awareness of our parents until our cock returned to normal and vow never to repeat such a vacous, moronic proposal again. One day I am going to scribble a writing on a poster that reads "stay away from the forbidden tree" and nail it just under the tree.
