The circumcision

Start your story with someone admitting a secret and end it with someone telling a lie 

The circumcision

By Dumisani khumalo

"You can dance in a ring and suppose but the secret lies in the middle and knows" Austin recited words from his deep reasoning to quale the fear that caught him when he saw the crime happen.He admitted to keeping the secret over the meeting of the new initiates who had to be circumcised in the mountains.

An old custom,this initiation ceremony prepared young tenage boys for adulthood,and the women made their demands. They would not sleep with a uncircumcised man.

The mutilation and death of some of the boys was happening. Some of the boys were captured in secret and initiated and Austin was prepared to join the youth in their camping site up in the mountains where they would stay for a whole month .They were covered in ash to wade off evil spirits and the ash had antiseptic effects.

If Austin did not live among the Xhosa people who did these initiations ,he would have passed,but the pressure was on to him. He could not tell his parents,and he only told them his team of scouts were going out camping for a month.

He wanted to belong and the weird thing was how better than to get circumcised. The pride and demeanor of initiated boys was holding ,and who would not want to join them after the attentions they got from the girls ,the respect they commanded and order of things, whose hierachy pointed to age and the rites of initiation. 

They would even sing it in class, there in the field of play and games. 

"A man should be bold 

A man never gets old 

Women are wonderous

Isn't Woman half a man? 

What is a Woman to man 

But his helper?" and boys would join in song 

"A Woman is like a child

She is never satisfied

Even with beauty 

She is never Happy with it" 

In his conscience eye ,he began to see that love is stronger than sex ,truth better than lies as the mind is stronger than the heart. Things everyone is oblivious about in every day life.

There was also a promise of sex after the initiation he was told ,and he had wondered about it for hours on end ,and with who?

There were claims with older women ,some said with the most beautiful woman who came from the sky that is why initiations were done up in the mountains.

The boys he had seen initiations were changed with time,and head strong they were and so full of pride they came out .They were heroes and their language was mature and responsible for the whole,and he was going to be one of them.

There, like the ominous baobab tree, a phallus like looking tree on the horizon, was threatening, kegs of its fruit powder ground and eaten with. the milk, reminded him of smegma and the hygiene needed as they were taught. . 

He took his back pack in the morning and met his friends heading for the mountains .It was heart wrenching to imagine the knife cutting into his flesh and the blood but the real cock of the battle put all his fears to rest.

They took the trail into the high mountains and a group of other youth were already in tow,others up front as if beckoning them into the white plastic camp site.

White gowns were given to them and white ash mixed up and smeared all over their bodies.

The sport of squirts of urine to the fence was a test on their pressure tracts as the older men checked on them. 

The first lessons were about manhood,and family life. How women were to be treated and expectations about marriage,sex, love and the reasons behind their existence,and adulthood.

It was normally cold during initiations for the fast healing of wounds, and there was fresh water to bath and wash, bought in at a distance. 

The independence of the individual and unique character of person was to come out and unfurl like that desert flower ,and repeat it for countless times, as mock fights were taught, how to guard oneself is as good as to guard ones family. 

The evenings were spent around a fire as the elders spoke to them in no uncertain terms with instructions .What to do 

before circumcision and how to do things ,as how to fight .

Austin had heard the fore skin cut was mixed with some herbs and eaten ,all about the myth and curious tales of finding out the secret culture one did not know , and to gossip about it. Austin saw nothing of it said or done ,and just listened.

Myth about penile enlargement,consistency in erection and the herbs to make love last were never talked about until the day they were cut up in the early hours of morning,did he hear of hygiene,cleanliness ,being the lynching pin put to the facts put on their minds.

This would help curb the spread of HIV and AIDS,and was not that what Nelson Mandela had suggested?They were told it mattered to be aware of their bodies reactions as ash was smeared onto their bodies .The evenings were getting colder and no one was encouraged to stand very close to the fire.

Food supplies were maintained at a minimal and Austin loved the greens they were given ,lean meat and porridge in the morning.

Wounds were checked on each day and on the  fourteenth day ,everyone was to be released for the celebrations and village dance troupes came in to congratulate them .

Austins family was made to know before this ,and the surprise it had on them was not suspense alone but evidence of their boys maturity, who had been a fish out of water among the Xhosa people.

He did as they did .Do as the Romans do .

The truth was in everyone's eyes and samp ,ground maize ,goat meat and opaque beer made the rounds.The dancing and stick fights and skills taught from skinning animals ,herding them, were demonstrated.

Austin s parents had got the news on the day before the activities and they could do nothing to change their sons choice .Fly by night initiation ceremonies were taking place outside cultures to make money .These scared them.

They were at pains at first , especially for this ,his mother who wanted to visit her son to tell him it could be done in hospital or clinic ,saw the other reasoning , the ceremony.

Women were not allowed close to the camp,and it was when Austin was asked why he did join the initiation in class that he told them about the sex after the initiation.