HOLE IN THE SOUL

The Lure: provocation can be a carrot or a stick

KIBI  MARHARBAN     of the Masai Clan     Kenya Africa                                 circa 1960s         

I am furious, mainly with myself.  Certain things cry to be told aloud but cultural protocol says no. I record this so you may at least read of them.  I am educated, I write well for a black man trained by missionaries. My teachers say I am bright, even brilliant, but Auntie Wiccah says it is no fault of mine: My genes, not me, are intelligent. I write political speeches for my friends Maka and Onawa.  I write insightful social commentary for my professors, two of which were published with their names affixed.  Literary certificates abound, attached to my official résumé, lending authenticity to the words I write. But I decide never to inscribe the phrase child molestation except in satire or for you — since it is reputed not to exist. 

 I am angry about the pain I witness in and around Masai villages.  I am angry at the hypocrisy and divisiveness of my clan leaders.  I am especially angry with Shantzu our Mugana, a much “respected” Masai medicine man.  Early on he lays claim to my loyalty and I give it freely.  Some believe that the intersection between sex and perversion happens only in some alien district or among the lower born of the Kikuyu clans.   Not so.

Leaning out the door of my mud and stick cloistered cell of Masai tradition— to feel the breeze wisp by my secret place of refuge—I see the distant dry plateaus and the receding trails to the higher mountains.  This is my hidden place, on a back trail away from the squabbles of trading, away from social and sexual interplay.  A remote place— where without attracting attention— I can be quit of my feelings, and other mind-roaming monsters. It is a space where I retreat for a week or two when I break down.  My one hundred kilometer runs along the Mau escarpment are cleansing.  Out on the Mara plains, far from the usual trails —even in the broiling heat, when my sweat fills my shoes —running is refreshing. The raw naturalness of it all draws me.  Nature in all its horror and beauty becomes my discomfiture and my pleasure.

Writing about these flights from myself saves me from what you might call my unnatural existence.

It starts when the white light of a hot afternoon pours through the high slit he calls his window to the mysteries.  I am barely four, but I remember. Accch, I remember.  The Mugana’s dwelling near the center of the village is a part of a strip of unhappy huts, left to die after his chanting and reputation for providing abortions drive away most of the more stable and industrious inhabitants. 

There are two other children, both boys. Both older than I.  Onawa has a weasel face and the small skinny body of the hungry rats that inhabit the straw roofs above. One day he will be a politician. The other, Ngussi is round and hefty.  He wears polyester hand-me-down shorts, from some missionary’s ragbag no doubt. His shaved head, and scars, evidence of recent ringworm, make him look like a small caricature of the snail bedecked Buddha figure. 

First Shantzu flatters us with kind words, gentle pats and small waxed cells filled with honey; then shows us his pictures and small figures of what is obviously cock-sucking and butt-fucking.  We giggle at each other as he fondles each one of us in turn.  Until this moment I have avoided remembering how he touches me.  Then, one at a time, he ushers us past a heap of dirty bowls festering on a small wooden table and into to his sleeping area where his oleaginous pallet awaits.  While we watch from what we think is a safe distance the unthinkable becomes normal for all of us.