I wiped my face with my hand when I came out of the water. I had been categorically told not to.
“Whatever you do, don’t wipe your face with your hand when you come out of the water. It will mean that Jesus hasn’t really washed your sins.”
You may be laughing but try coming from being immersed in water and not wipe your face with your hands. This is impossible. The fact that we had been going to baptism classes for close to one year did not help. Not wiping your face with your hand was not part of the curriculum. Nothing to do with water was part of the curriculum.
Crowds of people watching from the banks of the river laughed at those who wiped their faces with their hands. They knew that those people’s sins were not washed away. I had done this the previous year: laughed and heckled those who wiped their faces with their hands. Now I was on the other end of the stick. I had practiced immersing my head in a basin of water and upon lifting my head, I would count how many seconds it took before my hand involuntarily wiped my face. I was determined not to embarrass myself. The results were not impressive.
Baptism was a big deal here, it used to happen once a year. All churches in the area would gather at a river and all those who went through baptism classes for the previous year would come, dressed in white, ready to be baptized. Many people would come to witness this, because, well, when the village is at a standstill, there isn’t much else to do. Plus there was food afterward if you follow any one of the people who was being baptized. You didn’t even have to know them.
This year I was being baptized and left the water wiping my face with my hands.
Maybe that’s is why my friend and I, who was also baptized on the same day and wiped his face with his hand, followed a guy nicknamed ‘Bull’ to see where he used to hide his chang’aa , a lethal local brew. This was just a week after our baptism, we had observed him for a while though.
He was nicknamed Bull because of his short stature. His muscly bowed legs, with veins running around them, would tell you that this guy has been walking around a lot. His broad shoulders were not because of going to the gym but due to the fact that he used to carry forty liters of chang’aa up a hill to a place where he hid them before diluting and reselling to his faithful customers. Bull’s physique had everything to do with what he did on a daily basis but I for the life of me, I don’t know what to attribute his extremely wide face to.
“It’s because he puts a whole, still very hot, sweet potato in his mouth and chews it like groundnuts and thus expanding his cheeks.” My friend once told me when we were having this discussion.
It didn’t make sense but I just agreed so that we didn’t have to continue talking about Bull’s head and face.
Bull was the chief seller of chang’aa in the village. There were other people who also sold but Bull’s chang’aa was known for its quality. Even people from other villages with their own chang’aa sellers still used to come and taste Bull’s chang’aa.
We had studied his routine. Early in the morning, thrice a week he will go to a hidden part of a forest across the small stream that separated our village from the next, and he would come back loaded heavily. He would then hide the load not too far from his house from where he will be taking it in small quantities, diluting and selling it.
This was actually a brilliant idea because when the chief, who also happened to be one of his faithful customers, carried out those random raids, he would not get everything. As soon as the chief and his people left he would continue selling as if nothing happened. The chief could also come back in the evening and drink a glass on his way home.
So now we followed Bull and saw where he hid his load. He looked around to confirm that nobody has seen him. He didn’t see us, he didn’t know we were watching him. Bull was very clever and extremely cautious, he used to have a different hiding spot every time he brought a new supply. We waited until he disappeared, then went and took a five-liter jerrican of chang’aa and went and hid it at another place.
Did we have a plan for it? No. Were we smart enough to come up with a plan for it? Also, no.
We were now in this dance of living in fear that someone might discover where we hid it and take it so we used to go there after school every day to check on it. We would meet Bull, and he would look at us with those red eyes of his and we would think he already knew it was us who stole from him and he was just playing mind games with us. Every handshake with him always felt like a slap from his left hand, with fat fingers, was coming to meet my face. We were worried that people would know what we did and we would be paraded before the chief and they would be shouting ‘those are the boys who wiped their faces with their hands when they were baptized.’
After a week when none of this happened, we figured we’re in the clear. We sought counsel from an older boy and we went with him where we had hidden the chang’aa . He opened it, poured a little on the ground. “For the ancestors,” he said. He then filled the bottle top of the jerrican and poured it into his mouth. He folded his face, closed his eyes and made some quite horrifying sounds. He then told us to try and we did. And it was horrible.
Immediately the world started going round and round in circles. I wanted it to stop, but I didn’t want it to stop. The ground moved away from my feet and I was floating. My eyes were seeing too much, everything twice and then not seeing. My hands were numb, couldn’t feel anything. I could hear my heart beating.
It was in the middle of the afternoon, the sun was scorching hot. Even then, we knew when you drink when the sun is in the middle of the sky you get drunker.
Somehow I managed to get home. I do not know where the others went. I guess to their homes too because they say feet know their way home.
“I smell chang’aa, have you been drinking?”
My grandfather asked when we met as I entered our compound. In a flash second, all the consequences of drinking went through my mind. First, he will give me a beating, then go parade me at church (seeing as I was baptized less than a month ago), then to school and finally to the chief. But even here, I was more worried about his reputation than mine.
“No, Bull just passed here with his chang’aa, maybe that’s the smell.” I somehow managed to respond. He bought it. But maybe he knew. He must have known, surely.
Me sioni kitu .,… Niko maji kurrka
6:02?
Ni ya kuamkia leo au ni ya jana?
I don’t expect an answer anyway
Hehheh:D:D:D
Hekaya safi
you are good at this, write a book
Very nice hekaya wagithomo. Good flow and mastery of language. Pewa karingaringa moja kwa bill yangu
Hekaya timam
Hekaya on point.
Pombe ya kuiba ni mbaya sana.
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Uko maji at 6am?:D:D:D:D:D
You write very well. Endelea tu!