I was very popular among kids in the village whenever I was home, a fact that made the village bully really mad at me.
I was not a coward though he was bigger than me and that’s what earned me respect. I could stand my ground whatever the circumstances.
There’s a day we planned with my cousin to teach the bully a lesson to settle some scores.
There’s a place in the bushes where he had a swing. The swing itself was an old sisal rope with a small wooden plank for his butt. This is where the bully used to chill alone, it was a no go zone for children. The perfect place for our revenge mission.
Just below the swing was a small anthill and in front of it was a bush of thorns(kule home tunaziita matata).
We went up the tree where the swing was tied, loosened it and undid the knots which made it firm. After that tukaenda tukajificha in a millet farm at a safe distance to wait and watch the imminent drama.
Hapo kwa millet farm, we embarked on looking for ochondo(I don’t know how its called in another language). Ochondo is that millet head which turns black and unproductive, we used to hijack them before they matured and eat them raw, very sweet back then. We literally opened millet heads to inspect if the lump was ochondo or millet.
Finally the guy showed up bouncing, his shirt unbuttoned, smoking pawpaw leaves rolled in a newspaper with cotton as filter. We kept still ndio asituone, literally lying on our bellies. He went straight to his swing, stifled the nonsense he was smoking and put it back into his breast pocket. He mounted the swing, made himself comfortable and drew it back as far as standing on his toes, then swung forward. He launched himself forward with force so that the swing could gather momentum since there was no one to push him apige start.
He swung twice, gathering pace in each move.
He swung back further na swing ilipofika mwisho, it snapped on the forward move sending the guy into the bush of thorns with so much force hadi alipotelea ndani, leaving his shirt at the top of the bush.
We burst out laughing at our heroics. We shot up jumping and chest thumping, little did we know the damage we had inflicted on the poor fellow.
We went to inspect the damage only to hear him crying deep inside the bush, we couldn’t see him coz he was deep inside.
We couldn’t help so we ran home and alerted his elder brother. He came and looked at the situation then ran back home to bring a panga to clear the bush and more guys to help him.
When they finally got him, he was red all over, bleeding and limp.
We kept quiet knowing the consequences if anybody found out it was our mission. Instead, we were praised for raising the alarm coz bila hivo, he could’ve died there.
Heshima ilidumu kuanzia hiyo siku and nobody knew this story until it settled.