A Fool's Knot

by Philip Spires

  “Father John,” said John, still unused to referring to his mentor as ‘My Lord Bishop’. “I seem to be out of touch with the church’s teaching nowadays. Don’t misunderstand me,” he qualified quickly, “I have kept my belief and both my wife and daughter are believers. But what I want to ask is this. What is the church’s current teaching on circumcision?”

  A few of the priests laughed a little, while others grimaced at their snacks when John mentioned the word. A few comments passed back and forth, but for John O’Hara the only image that filled his mind was that of the young John Mwangangi, almost bleeding to death while his father almost dispassionately shaved a stick with his knife on the far side of the compound. “There is no written policy, John,” said O’Hara. “In my opinion – and opinion is all I can give – unless a boy is suffering medical problems, well ought to be left alone.”

  “But here,” interrupted Michael, “an uncircumcised boy grows up believing he can never have children. What’s more he is mocked by his peers – men and women alike. They call him a little boy, whatever his age.”

  “I know,” O’Hara replied. “That’s exactly the kind of idea that we in the church should be trying to challenge.”

  “I think,” offered Michael, “that too many time-honoured truths might be dying out as it is, dying out before any viable alternative has emerged.”

  “That is why the church sponsors the establishment of schools,” said Bishop O’Hara. “That, for instance, is one reason why we teach such things as biology in those schools, so that children will be exposed to some rational ideas that might dispel some of the myths.”

  “With respect,” said Michael, “I feel that what children profess to learn in school and what they do in their lives outside the school are two different things. I sincerely doubt whether any amount of reassurance in biology classes would make a boy think even twice about seeking circumcision and initiation. We know so little about customs such as this. We are still never allowed to witness the ceremony. In my opinion we ought to bring practices such as these into the church…”

  Before John O’Hara’s temper could burst upon Michael, Mwangangi interrupted forcefully. “My friends, I am afraid I have not been clear. You have rather missed my point.” Having paused a short while until assured of the group’s total attention he continued, “I was not referring to the practice of circumcising boys. What I meant – and I apologise for not making this clear – was the circumcision of girls.”

  The entire group was silent for a while. Then Bishop O’Hara spoke. “It’s a savage and barbaric custom. I have no reservations whatsoever in saying that, Mwangangi. I would not accept the custom as a young priest and, after all these years, I remain as firmly opposed to it as ever.” His voice was strong and, as was often the case with O’Hara, suggested anger. Too many times he had heard of young girls slipping off from school dormitories at night to be circumcised, because their headmistress had refused them the time off school. Some, having limped and stumbled a bloody way back to school, had developed infections and would possibly have died had they not come forward to seek treatment. And how many others bore scars stoically and without complaining, because that was what was expected of them? “What’s more,” he continued, speaking almost through gritted teeth, “a woman has to live with the scars. I have known many women ruined psychologically, rendered eternally guilty in marriage by this, its precondition. Some are so ashamed they will only speak of it during a blind confession.”

  Michael, who had remained silent as if listening intently, broke in to speak without interrupting. “I believe,” he said softly, “that, like male circumcision, female circumcision is a valuable, useful and perhaps essential part of the life of these people. To ignore that would be stupid. To condemn it might cause as many problems as it might solve. To condone it, therefore, is all we can do. It is part of people’s lives. It is important to them and we are not here to strip people of their culture, but to incorporate them as they are into our church. When we receive them, we receive their culture as well. It’s a single package. The enrichment of the association will work both ways.”

  Mwangangi, deep in thought, offered nothing. His question had been answered, but inconclusively.

  “Why do you ask, Mwangangi?” asked John O’Hara, who still spoke to the District Officer as if he were a child.

  “No reason,” he said. “I was just interested.”

  ***

  That day, almost two years ago, the chapel and its surroundings had buzzed with celebration and conversation. Today, Michael was alone in that place. The only sound was the howl of the wind across the summit ridges. The small church was deserted save for himself who had approached alone, like a private pilgrim revisiting a place whose associated memories he now wanted to forget. Kneeling before the altar, he recalled his exchange with Bishop O’Hara and John, and begged God to tell him what his future purpose might be. He had been a priest in this area for over six years and throughout he had done what he believed to be right, what he judged to be in the common interest of both the church and the people whom it tried to serve.

  Suddenly, the events of that week had brought everything into question. All he had done, all he had thought and all he had tried to accomplish, once so clear and thus passionately pursued, all of this was now in question. Looking back, all the clues to the tragedy were there. Why did he never see them? Why could he never interpret them? He had begun to see himself as a mere fool trying to untie another fool’s knot. He needed guidance, and the only place he could possibly search was within.

  Chapter Nineteen

  April 1976

  It was good that Bill could see the place like this. During the previous two weeks, when Bill had travelled with his hosts to the coast, the miraculous seasonal transformation of Migwani had again taken place. Rain had watered the earth and begun the cycle of life that for a month would rush ahead with great momentum until over the span of a few days it would come to an equally abrupt halt. Everything was suddenly green. Hard brown earth still showed through the carpet of short blades of grass, but the general impression obtained from a glance was now unquestionably green. Everything had suddenly begun to grow at great speed, as if knowing that time was precious and that life’s full cycle had to be compressed into a few short weeks.

  They arrived in Migwani at lunchtime, having opted to take a circuitous route from the coast so that Bill could see more of the country. Their timetable had been exhausting, spending no more than a few nights in each place and having visited game parks, beaches, coral reefs and all the other things that the investigative tourist could uncover. All four of the travellers were, in fact, tourists. The places John had chosen so carefully to form his perfectly planned itinerary had been as new to him as the others. John confessed to Bill that he had travelled through more of Europe than his own country. Before departing on their tour, Bill had received this with total disbelief, accrediting the statement to John’s eternal modesty and understatement. As the excursion progressed, however, it became obvious to all that John felt as much a foreigner with the Swahili or Somali people of the coast as Bill did. Even with the advantage of sharing a common language, John displayed a manifest apprehension at dealing with these people who, in Bill’s eyes at least, seemed a model of friendship and politeness. Most surprising of all for Bill was John’s absolute refusal to consider staying in local lodging houses, which seemed to fill the towns they visited. From Mombasa through Malindi and on to the island gem of Lamu, John had insisted on staying in the kind of hotel that catered for foreign tourists – primarily a multitude of loud Germans – at fifty times the price of the small, Swahili-owned counterparts.

  At first Bill wondered whether John might be so insistent on his behalf, as if to protect his European visitor from the discomfort of a crouching Arab toilet or the indignity of paying only seven shillings for a night’s lodging. But it did not take him long to realise that it was Les
ley Mwangangi who was making the rules. She seemed uncomfortable with anything other than Western-style hotels, food or facilities, so much so that he was prompted to ask her directly how she had ever coped with life in Mwingi. A self-conscious smile and change of subject was her clear answer.

  The oasis town of Garissa had provided the only problem since, isolated in the desert as the last outpost on the road to an unfriendly Somalia, it was well off the tourist run and possessed no accommodation John was willing to try. Here, however, he had taken the trouble to plan ahead having, some weeks beforehand, written to the District Officer in the area to request his assistance. John had frequent professional dealings with the man, a Mr Makau, a fellow Mukamba, whilst he had lived in Mwingi. Though separated by over a hundred miles, the two towns of Mwingi and Garissa were, by some stretch of the imagination, regarded as neighbours, and this necessitated much communication between civil servants based there. Bill found Makau, a man much older than John and a retired Chief of a town in Kitui District, quite distasteful. Bill was totally captivated by what he regarded as the unspoilt culture and tradition of the coast, especially in Lamu, where the monsoon winds had brought the timeless wooden dhows of Arab traders from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Around Garissa, he had photographed anonymous men, their heads and bodies covered in long white shrouds, as they rode camels to market. Makau, however, tried to douse this enthusiasm with his words of experience. Having lived in that place, he explained, for five years, he had come to regard the locals with extreme distrust, almost as enemies. Besides being ‘backward’ and unwilling to accept the changes which development necessitates, he criticized the Somali pastoralists for trying to assert their own identity on policies for the area, policies that had been handed down from the authority of central government. If these people had their way, Makau had explained in his forceful voice which implored agreement, they would separate their land from Kenya.

  Naively, Bill suggested that this might not be altogether a bad thing since the land historically was theirs and was only placed inside Kenya at the whim of the Berlin Conference. Possibly, Bill continued, they simply resented being governed by people they saw as foreigners. Makau, apparently interpreting this as a personal slight, replied in an insulting tone that a visitor to the country, especially an Englishman, whose ancestors had drawn the boundaries in the first place, should not even voice such an opinion, let alone to a servant of the government he criticised. Had John not rescued the situation with his characteristic conciliatory words they might all have been asked to leave there and then. A person is pregnant with his friend, he had said, smiling, thus transferring responsibility for Bill’s remarks to himself. Makau, now laughing, heartily slapped John hard on the back and the air was cleared. The evening then continued with the two men, John and Makau, discussing details of the various troubles between the two districts. Somalis and Kambas, it seemed, had repeatedly clashed near the banks of the Tana River and had fought a series of minor battles. Somali swords, they explained, had killed Kambas and cattle had been stolen as the spoils of war. The Kamba, in return, had secured interest on their loan to the Somalis by abducting a number of their women and so the skirmishes continued, until a detachment of Kenya police armed with rifles had been sent to the area to keep the peace. John in Mwingi and Kamau in Garissa had jointly directed the operation and things were much quieter now.

  So having politely and pragmatically cut short their stay in Garissa, they set off with another day to fill in the direction of Mwingi and ultimately, of course, Nairobi. Bill suggested that they should call in to see Janet in Migwani to thank her for the use of her house on their first night in Kenya. Back in Migwani, after their excursion to John’s ancestral home, they had waited until late afternoon before returning to Nairobi to rendezvous with Lesley and Anna. They had hoped to see Janet again, but they did not. It crossed neither Lesley’s nor Bill’s mind that the essential trip John had made back to Kitui in the middle of their stay in Mombasa had been for anything other than work. John, in fact, had seen Janet, and quite a lot of her, because that weekend trip to supervise a delivery of materials to his farm was mainly spent in a Kitui hotel room.

  John, of course, remembered Janet saying how much she liked to visit the town’s weekend dances at the Umoja. What he had also registered, after his recent stay in her house, was how much Father Michael’s departure had changed her outlook. She seemed much more vulnerable, somehow. And this was underlined by Solomon Musee’s appearance at her door. She had turned him away, but he would be back. He would be there at the dance, intent on publicly associating himself with her. And if she rejected him, he might react.

  John also knew Solomon Musee from his time as a magistrate in Mwingi. Solomon had come before the court on three separate occasions, each time with a different co-defendant, but each time on the same charge of threatening someone with a knife after a drinking session. Each time, the case was dropped by the accuser. John knew Solomon Musee, but Janet did not.

  And so he made the mammoth trip, leaving their Mombasa beach hotel early on Friday morning to drive to Nairobi to check on work, and then to Kitui that same afternoon, arriving after dark. He made it to the dance at the Umoja, though, and met Janet. Solomon was also there, but because John was around, he kept his distance. The distance between John Mwangangi and Janet Rowlandson, however, significantly narrowed that night. In fact, it shrank to an ecstatic zero several times. When they parted the next morning, they resolved to meet again in two weeks. John asked Janet if she would skip the next dance, because he could not be there, but he did not tell her about his suspicion of Solomon Musee. And so their weekends together took on the air of a regular commitment.

  In Migwani, in her own house, she now felt a new strangeness. It was just over a week since her night with John and, of course, the first time since then that she had met Lesley. This new strangeness emanated from the realisation of how easy it was to become devious, even duplicitous. She had never done anything like that before, and yet she was carrying it off like a pro. She and John had become lovers and were due to meet again in just a few days, and yet here she was socialising with his wife and daughter, as if nothing had changed. Having never learned to lie, she felt nervous, ill at ease. It never crossed her mind, of course, that she was not the only woman present practising the art.

  And so the travellers contrived the perfect farewell for Bill, who was to return to England the following day, so full of the stories of his holiday, that his new partner would become worried that he would overwhelm their dinner guests with boredom over the coming weeks. For once Anna was allowed to share the happiness and was not sent to bed at her usual time. Janet’s invitation to stay the night had been tempered by a warning that they would have to accept what was available, which was not very much. Having told her not to worry, they looked on with embarrassment as first her cook and then Janet herself made repeated excursions down to the town to buy the things their party would need. Migwani’s butcher was nearly sold out of meat and could provide only the stomach and intestines of a goat. With some hilarity, Daniel, Janet’s young cook, who had become more of a friend than a servant during her stay, seized the opportunity to cook a real meal for her guests. Stewed and served in a rich gravy with thick chapattis on the side, the offal made the perfect meal with which to end Bill’s stay in Kenya. “Authentically African” was Bill’s comment to Daniel as he collected the dishes. Lesley had found the prospect of eating such things distasteful and had picked at her meat, but had eaten enough beans and chapatti, both of which she found more familiar now, to feel full. The others, of course, had attacked their food with delight, despite the fact that John, having chewed a piece of particularly tasty intestine, had momentarily reduced all the others to helplessness by suggesting that the cook “might have left the shit in it.” Their shared hilarious revulsion, however, was only temporary and, aided by significant quantities of the bottled Tusker beer, they all ate well.

 
It was Daniel, the young man with the name, Nzoka, snake, who revealed the real surprise. Unknown to Janet he had made an excursion of his own to the bar near the teashop, whose trademark was bay leaves in its tea. For five shillings he had bought a large quantity of the locally brewed millet beer, mawa, which was brought for sale in Migwani from Thitani in large calabashes by the wives and daughters of the man who brewed it, whose family had been brewing beer for generations. When they had all finished eating the small stringy mangoes of which Migwani could always provide a multitude just after the rains, he announced his surprise by setting the beer on the table in a large aluminium cooking pot. Daniel, as he had predicted, found the scene very entertaining, with the sticky sweet mango juice still dripping from their fingers, lips and chins, the diners, Janet included, leaned over the pot and peered into it with expressions of profound disbelief and confusion lost in the expanse of their staring eyes.

  “What on earth is that?” asked Bill, breaking into laughter.

  Janet turned to look at Daniel, who was laughing very hard indeed. “I think that Bwana Mwangangi can tell you,” he said, thoroughly amused.

  As they all looked to John for enlightenment, he smiled at Daniel and said, “I’ve not seen any of this for quite a while. I thought that people had stopped making it.”

  “I bought it from the Maluki bar. They make it in Thitani and bring it here to sell,” explained Daniel, as John nodded his understanding. “Maluki’s bar in the market is the only one which can sell it. That is why there are so many old men around that place on market day.”

  “What is it?” asked Janet impatiently.