Silencing the talking John

“Can you keep a secret?” asked the Chief while the rest formed a semi-circle scrutinizing me from head to toe. I nodded; a gesture that did not go well with him.

“Don’t you have a mouth lad?” asked he, narrowing his sharp eagle-eyes while his rosebud lips parted, revealing a crowded mouth with crooked teeth that had a buildup of nicotine, browning them at the base. One would be forgiven to think that he had them in double layers while his dark complexion exaggerated their whiteness from afar.

“Yes, yes…, I.. I can sir”, I stuttered in fear.

“What is your name? Everybody has one”, he asked.

“Kimani sir.”

“From today you are Mik. All of you are to use this name. Do you hear Tim? He asked pointing at Munyongi who looked so scared. If he was a dog his tail would have been between his legs. Everybody had a nickname. Munyongi was Tim while the others were Sin, Mug, Nail, Can and suchlike names

“Strip now!” I hesitated, thinking that I had not heard him right.

“Do you have wax in your ears boy? I say you strip and I never repeat something twice”, I must have mistaken his kindness and empathy the night before when Munyongi was the victim while I was treated like a prince. Being the youngest in the group, special treatment of being fed before everyone made me think that these grown men had sympathy but I was naïve. I stripped and felt the little dignity that my tattered clothes had always offered gone. One might sleep hungry for days and look ok because an empty stomach does not talk, but nakedness leaves you bare and dehumanized.

I undressed removing my threadbare layers one by one as the cold evening chills rushed for my skin. The Chief took a long stick and pointed at my penis sending a cold chill through my spine. My heart rate increased and my head throbbed giving me an instant mild headache.

“Doctor, this foreskin has to go. He cannot shut his mouth if this thing continues to hang here like an empty sack on this John,” they all laughed but quickly cut their laughter short when they saw his serious look. When they were quiet he continued still turning my John with his stick making me look like a specimen in a lab ready to be dissected.

“We all know that the removal of this thing will seal this mouth like pliers”, he said this shifting the stick upwards pointing at my lips. If I had not emptied my bladder before this meeting, it would have leaked for the fear that came upon me filled it quickly and the urge to pass urine developed instantly. My stomach rumbled like thunder and my bowel threatened to loosen up but I shut everything tightly and on the process,, my eyes involuntarily closed tight.

“And this has to be done tomorrow morning. Do you hear me, Doctor?”

“Yes, chief. I hear you. I will gladly do it just like Tim’s”, said the Doctor throwing a bar of soap and some new clothes in a black plastic bag, making me fall and loose balance in their midst, trying to catch it as it passed and flew, hitting Sin’s face. The man picked and kindly handed them to me as I hurriedly grabbed them.

“To the river I say! Run and wash off that grime on your stinking body. Take most of your time as you can for if you come with a stain of the old you, I will scrap it off with a knife”, shouted the Chief.

I had to run as fast as I could in order to relieve myself.

At a safe distance, I squatted and all that I had eaten two hours before, came out undigested, sending some mice that were in that bush scampering for safety. I had never seen anything like that. I thought I was under a spell. This could not be happening to me. I thought.

Feeling lighter from disposing of that body baggage, I followed the path as I had been directed leading me into a crystal clear stream that almost immediately relieved because it was about to wash my old life away. I drank a good amount of water before I immersed myself inside a pool the stream had formed amongst the rocks a few metres downstream before flowing down into a waterfall. Applying the soap on a rug that had previously served as my shirt, I scrubbed my body with it as if intending to wash beneath my skin. I felt happy to be here for the first time because there was a ray of hope.  

After getting washed and dressed in my new clothes, it felt like a baptism; a new beginning. I took the path and as soon as I arrived in the shack, everybody was gone apart from the doctor who was waiting for me.

“They return at dawn to see how we are doing before your initiation. You must not cry or whimper when getting circumcised. You are in safe hands because prior to this job, I used to work in a hospital as a nurse and my job was to nurse wounds. Do you understand?”

“Yes I do”, I said but wary of interpreting such a talk to be a friendly gesture because the unpredictable bipolar behavior of the Chief had alerted me to tread with care. I was a prince until my clothes were shed and saw another side of him.

Munyongi whom we street people referred to as Boss is now called Tim. He had come to fetch me from the streets after spending all his life there before disappearing without a warning. He had assumed a leadership position. He had weathered the storms of urchins like us; dodging bullets after grabbing valuables from unsuspecting citizens who never knew hunger the way we did.

We thought he was dead until I felt somebody grab my hand forcefully in my sleep that day, interrupting my sweet dream in which we were being served barbequed meat and chapatti by a Good Samaritan. I had just extended my bony hands and almost touched the plate of this steaming treat when he grabbed me as I resisted violently, shouting, asking him why he was pulling me away from my food.

When we picked a bus, people wanted to run away from me because I was stinking and dirty. They got curious when they saw me in the company of the Boss who by now looked clean and composed. Some discerning market women with large baskets started to gossip looking at us until one of them could not contain her curiosity anymore.

“Where are you taking that boy?” she asked her soprano voice musically attracting attention.  

“Folks, do you know how many people pass in front of us carrying modern-day slaves as we watch?” Everybody on the bus was alert with all the face on us but Boss outsmarted them.

“I respect you, mom, for your concern because people are evil. But this is different. I have been combing the streets for the last three years looking for him since his disappearance. He is my youngest brother and I cannot tell you how happy I am to be reunited with him”, he said this with glassy eyes shedding tears which he wiped with the sleeve of his shirt. Everybody was quiet, full of admiration, looking pleased with the Boss. After that, the bus was noisy with people talking to strangers discussing street boys. They kept on asking Boss how he had traced me and shocked me with his eloquent answers on this topic, telling them how I had run away to avoid school and that kind of nonsense and that he was just lucky to have stumbled on me that day which they easily swallowed.

We alighted and took a long walk towards the Ngong forest. The midday sun was hot and dehydrating when he passed me a can of coke and some groundnuts. It was at this juncture, seated on thick Kikuyu grass, surrounded by bushes when he disclosed to me the reason why he had come to fetch me.

“I have chosen you because you are a good and royal lad. You never cheated on me when I lived on the streets. Now you will receive the fruits of your faithfulness and trustworthiness. It is like this Kimani. I want to take you to my friends with whom I work and the hunger that makes you dream of food the way you did this morning when I stirred you from your sleep, will be history. You will be belching in your sleep instead”, he said looking at me with satisfaction because he knew the psyche of street kids and their stomachs. He had travelled to Nairobi that day, combing the alleys looking for me. We are a scared and scattered lot and a very vulnerable group with no permanent home.

“This is high energy food which we are supposed to consume in moderation to last us on this journey. Eat small doses so as to last us longer, just like medicine. Do you hear?”

“Yes, Boss?” I answered faster and with clarity because he was not an easy man. I had seen him beat other street children mercilessly especially those who thought they were smarter than him whenever they hid some money away from him every evening when we submitted all our ‘loot’ to him. If you brought in less than he wanted, you were in for a rude shock. 

“We are in need of a lad like you but we are not a bunch of monks in a monastery reciting rosaries and chanting Latin all day. We are a group of clever men who move fast making quick money to escape poverty. Don’t you see the way I have changed? Look at this shirt, this watch, these shoes and this….”, he said pointing at each one of his recently acquired decent clothes and accessories. Finally, he removed a ward of notes and flipped, counting them professionally. They were all new twenty notes in a thousand shillings denomination. Twenty thousand Kenyan shillings! I got angry at him but could not show it for fear of being thumped. With all that money he ought to have bought me fish and chips for a treat and not stupid groundnuts which he dished out like pills. He could see that he had already stirred my brain and was happy to take me to his group.

“Follow me”, he lifted his tall gigantic frame quickly and led me deeper into the woods. We walked through the labyrinth of different bushes and trees, going up hills and down the valleys, crossing rivers and streams until I got so scared, imagining that if he decided to kill me, no one would ever discover my body because wild animals would stumble at a feast while hyenas would scavenge on my bones.

Being in the wilderness for hours, we came to a shelter which reminded me of Hansel and Gretel, a story my grade three teacher had read to us with passion until we imagined that a house made from candy, chocolate, and biscuits existed. Nearing the house, I could hear deep voices of men talking loudly as if arguing or drunk or both. When they heard steps they all came out armed to teeth carrying weapons including a big gun. With all looking at me, I felt more unprotected than on the street and trembled with fear.

“Take it easy, easy young man. Don’t shit on your pants. We mean no harm,” a man in his forties or so I thought welcomed me like a father holding my shoulders and patting my back.

“Have you fed him?” he asked the Boss who hesitated before nodding.

“What were you fed on, mmh?” he asked facing me like a real father.

“Coke and groundnuts”, I answered timidly careful not to provoke the Boss because I knew what he was capable of if one stepped on his toes.

“What? Are you sure my boy that is what you had for lunch?” he asked taking two quick steps towards Munyongi while the rest watched in silence. He slapped him twice and spat on his face.

“Didn’t I buy you two kilos of ribs which you devoured in a minute together with rice and chapatti and as if that was not enough, you washed it down with two mugs of tea? And now here you are, a miser, forgetting how you felt when I picked you from a dustbin? Bring all the money that I gave you!”

He counted the money and at that moment, I knew he was not a man to play tricks on because the Boss gave it all. The Chief received and put in his breast pocket of his jacket.

He commanded another man who had a mouth shaped like an ‘O’ to prepare some meat whose aroma stirred and churned my stomach like acid. By the time I was handed my share, I cleared it all in a few minutes for I had not eaten a decent meal for months. They served themselves the rest after I was satisfied. I slept like a baby on the floor next to the Chief. Snores, and farts, and coughs like thunder woke me in the deep of the night but I went back to sleep in a minute. The full stomach and the luxury offered by the mattress that I slept on was soothing enough, unlike the pavements and cobblestones that I slept on when slumbers of hunger knocked me out on the streets.

“Wake up!” the voice of Doctor rudely woke me up. “Wake up! Time to go down the river!” I remembered Chief’s command about my talking John that had to be silenced. I was almost putting my shirt on when the Doctor hissed swinging his right index figure as if admonishing a naughty kid caught doing something weird.

“Strip and tie this sheet around you and walk down the river. Deep yourself in the pool where you got washed last night and put the sheet far. It should not get wet”, he instructed me in a croaked morning voice. The rest woke one by one rubbing their eyes but putting their clothes on. I had many questions but dared not to ask.

“You aren’t going anywhere. Remain here and make tea and meat for everyone”, commanded Chief to Tim. The seven men followed me down and by the time they got there, my body was numb from the morning frost and water.

“Come here lad and sit down on this log! No movements allowed here, stare at the top of that tree and no word by mouth – no ‘sshh’ or ‘woo’, just imagine you are a statue as we remove this talking thing. After this you will know what to say and when to say it for you will be a real man”, he instructed while the rest formed a semi-circle, watching me like a VIP taking an important oath.

It is as if my soul walked out of the body because I only felt a sensation when the knife touched my skin. I kept looking at the same spot, smelling surgical spirit until he bandaged my now silenced John. I dared not look at it because it would have given me nightmares, seeing my own body chopped like meat. I walked up to the shack with parted legs, some nerves begging to come to terms with the dissected silenced John. As I lay on the mattress that I had laid on in the night before, my loins were throbbing with pain. With the numbness fully gone, it felt as if some alien fire ants with peppered and poisonous fangs were attacking my John while the mattress turned into a bed of thorns, and shrapnel, and ballast. 

“The gone boy within was tough. You stayed still like a man. You are now one of us and ready to take arms and work but you must remain indoors for a month in order to heal, and eat, and metamorphose to look decent in the eyes of the public. That skeleton body must disappear. After two weeks, you will start to take light combat lessons. Understand!” summed up the Chief.

“Yes Chief.”

It has been two weeks now and I can frankly tell you that I was burning in hell on the first week of my initiation into manhood. With no painkillers in the wilderness, the pain was excruciating to a point where I was in a state of delirium for a day. My taste buds could not differentiate meat and chapatti from water.  With most of the pain gone, the second week was a respite with great appetite returning, taste buds resurrecting.

This third week is even much better because today I went through some introduction to weaponry while the most exciting was a pistol. They showed me how to disassemble, clean and reassemble. I felt very powerful when I held the final assembled pistol with Chief congratulating me for being a fast learner. Next week, we shall walk five miles into the wild jungle where the big five call home and learn how to use real big guns. Why I am so excited about this barbaric mission that is violently plunging me into the dark world of crime, I do not know. The job starts in a month and it is based here in the jungle and the objective is to supply hides, and tusks, and rhino horns to those who place great value in them. If I am lucky to survive the wild and the law of the land, I will give you another account of my life around this time next year.