by Robi, Carol
I decide against correcting his mistake however, and turn away from him, going back my way.
Picking my headdress from the ground, I throw it haphazardly over my head and run back towards the celebrations. I’d rather run errands all day than witness all that again.
Chapter 3
The day is here, the day I turn into a woman. The day I’ve dreaded since I was of an ability to think.
Me and my peers in my age group having reached our twelfth cycle, are to be initiated and made into women, and thereafter are to be termed as maidens until we are dutifully wed, and are thereby officially women of the Bakoria.
Mother has done all she can to prepare me, which really means she’s hugged me until I’m numb and limb. She hasn’t told me anything at all about the ceremony, as she’s not allowed to. It’s to be top secret until I experience it, then I too I’m to swear never to tell it to another uninitiated child until they’ve gone through it.
This morning mother does wake up at the crack of dawn with me. I’m surprised to find both my sisters in the kitchen too, having already prepared some breakfast for me. We four women eat silently together.
Right before we are done, I’m more surprised when my four elder brothers arrive, father with them, and step into the kitchen. It is a rare occasion to see Bakoria warriors, or muras, as we term them, in the kitchen. I therefore welcome their presence gratefully.
“I know you’ll do all of us proud,” father says enthusiastically, holding me tight to himself in an embrace before quickly releasing me, and each of my older brothers go ahead and do the same.
Their sentiments only move to weigh me down some more, and once again I pray to all the gods and spirits of our people to let me be a child again. The sombre mood of my family members only frightens me some more, as I ponder over what lies ahead for me.
The men do leave after sharing a calabash of porridge with us, and I follow with my sisters and mother to the pile of white clay behind mother’s house. My elder brothers had fetched the mud for me from the white clay pits commonly found in the Southern Forests of Wisu, and had gotten too much of it, as is clear.
They may be our half brothers, but they love us just as though we were born by the same mother. Their mother was dead ages before father married mother. Mother once confessed to me that father had been weighed down to marry her because his own mother died. She previously had the task of raising the boys, and upon her death, she’d left Wandui without anyone to care for him when he’d just been nine.
Mother also told me that theirs hadn’t been a marriage of love, but that her father had proposed her name upon hearing that the king of the Bagumbe was looking for a wife. Looking at how in love they are at the moment, I can’t imagine a more perfect match. If I ever have to marry though, of which it appears I must, I’d much rather marry someone I’d known over courtship or since childhood, than a stranger my parents have picked out for me, as was the case with father and mother.
I drop all my pieces of clothing on the ground before stepping forward, letting my mother and sisters in this dark morning wetten the mud and smear it in thick layers all over my body, covering everything but my eyes, with bright burning torches around us as our only source of light.
I hear the drums in the distance as mother is busy applying layers of mud over my smoothly shaven head. Last night she’d cut all hair from my head, and for the first time in my life I’d been as bald as an egg. It had felt so weird putting my hand on the top of my head and instead of finding tautly curled hair, it’s smooth skin that kissed my finger tips. It’s customary for children about to be initiated to be shaven clean, as a symbol of their casting away all their childhood endeavours and starting a new journey into adulthood.
Using a narrow rimmed calabash dipped into a mixture of charcoal and glue from tree barks to make a homogeneous mixture of dark paint, Matinde presses the rims against my face, just around my eyes, so as to form dark rings around them.
By this time the drums and music sound very loud and near, and though it’s still dark, most of the people in the kingstead are awake, which includes all my elder brothers, their wives and children, as well as my younger brothers, and they’ve all come to escort me to join up with the rest of my peers.
My eldest brother Chacha, the crown prince, walks up to me while holding a rope that’s tied around the goat I’ve been fattening up since the last long rains season. It’s to be my sacrificial goat to the gods and spirits of our people upon my initiation. He crouches lower to my height and presses his forehead to mine in an endearing gesture, before handing me the rope tied around the goat’s neck.
Mother quickly helps me into my loincloth over the dried mud on my body, and also ties the short snake skin skirt around my thin hips. When she’s done, my whole extended family sings praise songs as they lead me to the main entrance into the kingstead.
When my whole family stops and I’m forced to walk alone forward, I’m most grateful when father steps forward and walks in step with me. His slight wheezing is just barely audible as he attempts to muffle it. Father has always had a weak chest and heart since he was a boy, but contrary to everyone’s beliefs, he’d lived past his childhood, and even past his childrens’ childhoods. Most had expected him to die as a babe.
“I’m scared,” I whisper in confession over the low nuzzles from the fat goat beside me.
“As all are expected to be,” father says kindly.
“What if I cry?” I ask him.
“What if you do?” He surprises me by asking back with a shrug. I stop, ignoring the crowd of my peers and the elders of my tribe waiting for me ahead, and turn to my father, puzzling over his answer.
“I raised a great loving daughter,” he says, brushing his hand over the dried mud covering my cheekbones where a single tear has landed. “Not a daughter who can’t cry.” I lean my head in to his hand, letting him cup my face with his wide calloused hands.
“I’ll bring shame to the family..”
“Nonsense!” He retorts firmly.
“Matinde says I will..”
“Matinde is a silly girl. I’ve often told you to listen to Weigesa, not Matinde. Haven’t I?” I nod in answer.
“What if I have an attack?” I finally whisper so low that I’m surprised he’s heard me.
He’s heard me though. It’s the thing we all fear. Those closest to me, my brothers, my sisters and my parents, know that I tend to get the attacks. Attacks of nerves, my family calls them. I get so frightened at times, or anxious, that I’m unable to breathe, in the worst case scenario, or I’m just unable to chain simple words together, when lucky. My heart beats very fast in those moments, faster than the long tomba drums during the mating at a wedding, and my vision gets blurry, my thoughts incorrigible and my mind unable to think clear. It’s a well kept secret, as we fear to disclose it would lead to other people in the kingdom not wanting to marry into our family, as they would not wish for the madness to spread into their own family lines.
“Have you been feeling distressed of late?” He asks under his breath. I could chuckle at this if I didn’t care about worrying him so much. Have I been distressed of late? Isn’t this the first day of the most pivotal stage in my future? I’m very much distressed, worn down, filled with dread, fear and anxiety of the unknown..!
“No,” I lie. His other hand falls to squeeze mine lovingly. He knows I’m lying.
He crouches lower like Chacha had, so as to be in level with me, and presses my forehead to his, his welcomed embrace making me shut out the waiting group ahead of elderly men and women and the swarm of my peers covered in white mud.
“You are stronger than you think,” father tells me in a whisper that fans my face that is now so close to his. “But should you get an attack, I want you to know that your family will love you regardless,” he finishes, before drawing away and gently pushing me by my shoulders to walk on ahead.
It is with a great sense of dread that I walk in between the giant spears b
earing the heads of our spirit animal, behind me my loving family, and before me a crowd of white painted youth with dark rings around their eyes that are to be my friends and confidants, for the next stage of my life until I’m to be married.
And so we journey on, standing outside every homestead we pass by, as we wait for the girl or boy to be initiated to join our group, before walking on in silence again, with the drums behind us beating incessantly and the priests and priestesses with us singing and dancing as they lead us on.
It is nearly a full day’s walk before we get to the Holy Woods, located just before the shores of the great River Mara.
We are all exhausted by then, but reprieve is not to be ours. Once in the woods, we are promptly ordered to make a single file, and are led by the priests and priestesses toward the first mother’s cave in the middle of the Holy Woods.
It’s not the first I’ve set my eyes on it, but it will be the first time I’ll be going inside it. Only the Inchama, the special class of spiritual elders with us, may go inside it normally, as well as a newly ordained Bagumbe king, seeking to sacrifice to the gods so that they may be kind during his reign. Otherwise the rest of the kingdom only step in it twice, on the first day of their initiation to offer their sacrifice to the gods, and on their last day of initiation from which they emerge as maidens or warriors. Anyone that wishes to make a sacrifice to the gods does it outside the caves, and the inchama elders carry the offering in.
One by we are led in by the priests, and one by one a boy or a girl is led out, their white painted hands then bloody, the contrast painfully unmissable with the sun low but yet still bright enough.
I stand behind a thin boy- I suppose him a boy because I caught sight of his hanging member, who shakes slightly. His fear fans my courage, surprisingly so. For I’m glad that I’m not the only one whose hands can’t keep still, causing my goat to fidget and bleat in complaint.
Finally it is the boy’s turn, but when he steps forward, all semblance of fear is gone. It’s as though the waiting had been what had him anxious. Skinny and small as he is, he struts forward confidently, two male inchamas on either side of him to lead him forward.
It’s the moment I almost come undone, forcing all thoughts out of my head other than the loving and supporting faces of my mother and father, as I await my turn anxiously.
Then the boy steps out, his eyes burning bright in triumph, as he walks tall and proud away, now being led away by one of the inchama elders.
My turn.
Two inchama women step up to my side and walk forward with me. I feel as though a zombie, my body moving but my spirit detached.
The cave is dark, it’s entrance low but sufficiently high for me. The choking smoke and the bright burning fire ahead that has my body heat rising sharply to an uncomfortable level, being that we are in the middle of the dry summer season, is what I first struggle with.
Then my feet falter once my eyes fall on the skulls and bones hanging around me, menacing symbols and whole skeletons of what I make out to be elephants, lions, rhinos, a smaller but long wild cat’s body, other skeletons of animals I’m unable to identify. But most disturbing of all are the rows and rows of standing human skeletons. I stare at them terrified out of my mind, remembering the horror stories my elder brothers and sisters always narrated to me when I was younger about how the inchama perform a human sacrifice at least once every generation to appease the gods, for the Bakoria gods are cruel, and animal sacrifices are not always enough. Is that how they’d gotten the full human skeletons in here?
That’s a question I might never wish answered. The women on either side of me growl with impatience under their breaths, so I force my legs to step forward again. It’s with more confidence this time, as the fast beating in my heart is not stopping me from breathing. I’ll not be getting my anxiety attacks in here, It seems. Gods be thanked!
They lead me in deeper into the cave, and with each step, the heat from the fire only intensifies, and the smoke gets thicker and harder to swallow. My head is swimming from the smoke and and the heat when the elderly women drop to their knees before a red stained rock, the blood already dried even though the last boy that had been here had left just moments ago.
My eyes are weeping from the smoke as I drop to my knees between the women unbidden. No one told me to do that, but it’d be foolish for me to expect otherwise. If the priestesses are kneeling before the fire, of course I ought to too, being a mere child.
The knife that lies right before my knees is hot to touch, and my squirming goat that is seeking to escape the fire, bleating out frightfully, only makes the task more difficult.
“Gods of our fathers,” the two priestesses start chanting.
“Whose bones lie on these lands,” I promptly answer in a chant of my own. Once again they didn’t have to tell me what to answer. It’s a customary statement we make, we Bakoria people. Often the beginning of a prayer, or before a sacrifice during the Mbura, the planting festival, and during the Mereti, the harvest festival.
“We bring before you a child,” one of the priestess croons in a loud but raspy voice.
“Wishing to journey into womanhood,” the other priestess’ shrill voice fills the cave in answer.
“Accept her gift to you,” both women now chorus. “And bless her own!”
“And bless my own,” I repeat after them, as is customary to finish a prayer.
Now I know why mother has been letting me hack the necks of the chickens we’ve been eating these past few seasons. She’s been preparing me for this as best as she could. I’m sure she’d have let me sever a goat’s neck, if it were acceptable in our culture for a woman to do so. This is probably the only time a woman ever severs a goat’s neck in Bakorialand, and I’m glad to know I’m never to do it again.
You see goats are bigger and stronger than chickens, and they squirm more and fight harder. It takes all my strength, and both my arms, dropping the knife in my hands to the ground, just to wrestle the beast onto the hot rock.
I straddle it with my whole body onto the hot rock, the acrid smell of it’s burning hide tickling my nose, it’s wild screams reminding me that I ought to put it out of its misery already.
Using my hand and two legs and my body to pin down the beast, I reach out my other hand to search blindly for the knife until my fingers hold around it’s burning sharp end. I thank the spirits for the insulation that is the dried mud I’m encased in as I lift the knife and hugging the beast’s neck to my chest, I start the repetitive motion of running the sharp knife across its neck.
My goat is a fighter, my weak body not allowing him a fast death. Blood is spraying all over me, my head, face, chest, arms and legs as I continue hacking at it. When the goat finally goes limb my energy is spent, and I’m just struggling against falling forward into the fire.
I rise to my feet, still standing on the hot rock, and yet again unbidden throw the dead goat into the wild fires, the scent of burning flesh filling my nose, reminding me of major feasts held at our royal courtyard.
When I jump off the rock, the bright eyes of the two priestesses look at me almost impressed, and I know that though it was a struggle, my sacrifice was worthy indeed.
I hear the gasps from my waiting peers when I emerge outside, most of my body covered in blood, and I look at them almost proudly, and surprisingly bravely, for one as shy as I normally am. Here, anonymous, hidden behind my mask of clay, I feel almost invincible, confident and very sure of myself.
I then follow after one of the priestesses into the woods, leaving all behind, determined to be this woman society is hell bent on making me into.
We walk on for a while, the sun slipping lower, encased in silence, until we break out into a makeshift camp, where about seven other girls are waiting. As far as I can tell, there are no boys here, and the priests around are all female.
I move to stand beside my peers. One of them I recognise as my namesake, Nyangi Ngoti. Even without seeing her face, I’d know
Nyangi anywhere. At thirteen, she’s slightly taller than I am, and her body promises to be plush soft and round just as Bakoria men like. She’s already adorning small firm breasts at our age, her thighs plump and her hips widened. Hers is the body most Bakoria girls wish for, the body I know I’m never to get.
I’m a small girl, and chances are high that I’ll remain a small sized woman all my life. Matinde reminds me countless of times that I’ll never be wanted by any warrior.
“You’ll get married however,” she’d promptly add. “But only because you’re the daughter of a king, and men like the idea of marrying into royalty. He won’t love you though, and as soon as it’s deemed proper, he’ll marry another wife more to his liking.”
Her words had hit home hard, but I’d revelled in the fact that was I ever to get a co-wife, she’d take care of my husband’s needs, and I wouldn’t be forced to go through what I’d witnessed the prince of Nyabasi do to a girl at Wandui’s wedding.
When the final girl arrives, we help out with the fire in the middle of the camp, and make our meal of grilled Tilapia, roasted cassava and pigweed.
We eat quietly while listening to stories from the inchama. They entertain us with stories about previous initiates and their struggles with slaughtering goats. One girl once fell into the fire with her goat. We all gasped upon hearing this.
“She was fine,” one of the priestesses says after the dramatic pause that held us in suspense, and we all breathe out audibly with relief.
“Barely scarred too,” another adds. “Thank goodness for the thick layers of mud you’re all wearing. What else did you think it is for?” She finishes chuckling, and we relax as some of us chuckle too.
As per what I’ve learnt before in the classes we all take as children from the elders of society, painting our full bodies with clays is done for anonymity's sake, so as to build bonds of sisterhood that aren’t based on who we are or who we knew before. Fine enough for me, as I had no friends beyond my family, and my extreme shyness and nervous breakdowns had confined me to the perimeter fences of my home. Not any more, it seems. Here I’m to be forced to interact with my peers.