Memories of an African Childhood: Hunting Girls

I can’t remember anything that was more elusive in my childhood than winning a girl; even money was easier to come by. I am not sure whether it was societal values, coaching or sheer obduracy on the side of girls that denied us the much coveted flings then or what. Was it naivety, cowardice and inexperience that conspired against us? Either way, winning a girl was not a mean feat, I tell you.

It was every village boy’s dream to have sex or establish a relationship with a girl. Wherever we learned that sex was pleasurable and a relationship was in order for humans, I can’t tell now. All I know is: we fantasized sex no end.

In early years, it was repulsive to be associated with girls in school. The worst thing was to share a desk with a girl. It was almost an abomination to sit between two girls. You would be mocked by boys as a sissy. Aged around nine or ten years, things changed. A boy could boast having sat with a girl in class and pressed his leg closer to the girl’s. Most lied having achieved the feat and earned plaudits and admiration in no small measure.

But nothing compared with beeping into a girl’s panty. If any boy achieved it, it became the talk among the boys for a whole month, if not a whole term. Panties then were either red or pink in color. Of course with a small daisy flower drawn on the left thigh or a heart and an arrow. (I didn’t know, till college, the import of the heart and arrow: cupid’s arrow!) If a girl loved you in those days, she showed you her panty. Just that and you worshipped her your entire childhood.

It was such a rare pleasure to partake of a little girl’s panty. Oh how I wish I could see all these panties I am seeing now on TV then. Would it evoke the same delight now as it did then? Bet it would. Panty-worship legacy has been difficult to shake all these years; as a result, girls’ panties still awe me.

 Sometimes when school was about to close, girls staged a mellow version of a strip-tease that involved lifting their tunics up and down showing their panties. They would mock us in a song that went ‘here is my thing but silly boys won’t touch it.’ We just sat in a distance staring, drooling and fantasizing.

I remember an incident where a certain girl brought me roast maize from her home. I took it as a sign of affection. I told all the boys of the gesture and she was officially my girlfriend, at least in the boys’ fraternity. What to do after that, I never knew but before I could  make my next move, as ‘consummate’ our relationship or something of the sort, word reached her and she told me she would have shown me her panty but since I had proved to be a silly boy with a loose tongue, it was over.

 I begged her but she never forgave me. I hated myself and cried that night. That way I lost my first chance to see a panty. Chebet was her name and she was new in school. I missed some bragging rights by letting the boys know prematurely and I am sure some jealous competitor whispered it to her ear and added a little spin to it. I forgave myself just the other day for the blunder.

We wanted girls, girls resented us. I am sure their moms had warned them against doing ‘bad things’ with boys. It was a taboo to mention sexual organs and sex by its name then. It could not come out from the mouth of even the cheekiest of boys. And not a single girl ever mentioned it. Never. Not even one that I can remember.

So you could approach a girl and tell her you wanted something from her. She would ask you, pouting, WHAT? (With all the derision and hatred possible in the realms of humanity.)That would be the end of your advances. For you could neither say you wanted sex nor pussy. All your bravado would fizzle out and your rehearsals all come tumbling down when it got to that. And the way it took so many nights planning and rehearsing what to tell a girl!

The plot was like this: you time a girl from the mill, church or fetching water etc, pretending you have inadvertently pumped into her. You say hi. Often, you will pass her without gathering enough courage to look at her, leave alone say hullo. In consolation, to put a better act the next time.

Even if you said hi, you will do so and flee. If you mustered enough courage to shake her hand, you ended up tongue-tied and would not say anything further. That is if she condescended to extend her hand. Some declined to shake your hand, burst into tears, run home and tell her mom. If that happened, you knew you were in hot soup. For her mom will tell your mom. The next day your mom would give you a whacking you didn’t exactly comprehend where it came from. After the lashing, my mom always told me that all the mothers in the village were complaining that I beat their daughters on the road. And that I was a silly brat that she did not wish to be identified with. And that she would kill me if I dared repeat it again. (Of course I repeated it again and again and she never killed me)

 Even waving to a girl at a distance was taken as an offence by girls then. The timid cried and ran home to report you to their moms. The audacious lot harangued you at the top of their voices: ‘huh? You dare wave at me? I am not your sister or grandma, go and wave at them!’  In my mother tongue, there is a way one can make ‘sister’ and ‘grandma’ sound derogatory. So they insulted us and a fight always ensued after that. Some made a little act of derision, common with girls of those days, which symbolized utter contempt. They would pucker their lips, make a thumbs-up sign lifting both hands and pushing them behind their shoulders with their thumbs facing backwards, stumping one foot as they did so and finally uttering the word ‘striiit’ with such a sneer upon their faces.

There were also ‘good girls’ then. Whenever they were collecting firewood or gathering wild vegetables in the bush, they invited us boys to assist. After we had accomplished the task, we would play peek-a-boo. Later we would pair ourselves, build houses in the bush or maize farm and played mom and dad.  Safe in your ‘house’ with your ‘wife’, ‘night’ would fall and of course you did what moms and dads did at night.  These happened but only with some girls. Incest doesn’t exist as a word in our language but I dare say, we sometimes played ‘dad’ and ‘mom’ with our cousins. But then, we were kids. Next time my cousin is not a virgin, blame it on me.

 Sometimes moms did not condone this stuff. One girl we played ‘mom and dad’ with went to her home bleeding in her genitals. Her mom noticed it and the girl pointed fingers on me. Having dinner at home with dad, mom and my siblings, her mom came dragging her at the same time pinching her. The girl was crying while her mom was screaming my name at the top of her voice. ‘Where is this idiot that has deflowered my girl, I want him to marry her now or I kill him!’ the screams went.

It was such a quiet night; the whole village heard her shouts, made clearer by the fact that she was descending from her house in the hill. I slip out of our house and left her arguing with dad. My dad was telling her to ask her daughter why she parted her legs. It confounded me why dad, for the first time, stood by me. She left without further ado but after everybody in the village had known what had happened.

I was ashamed before my own parents but became a hero in school. My close friends queued to see how my dick was hurt with the business of breaking her virginity the following day. No further evidence was needed to prove my heroic act than the bruises in my little Willy.

Other days, we were not lucky to be offered sex on a silver platter. My childhood dream-date was a girl named Chepkorir, a close neighbor. That girl was so cute she was the dream of every village boy. It didn’t help matters that her dad was rich and had a big tractor with the largest trailer in the whole district. Chepkorir was so near to me yet so far. Getting her was as hard as winning an English princess. To compound the situation further, she was a tad older than me.

I worshipped her but I was devoid of means to get her. Whenever I was send to borrow mealy- meal from their home( in those days, in case you run short of sugar, tea leaves, salt etc, you borrow your neighbor and repay later), I fancied having her but lacked the courage to tell her so. There was a sign that you made by pushing your thumb between the index finger and the middle finger that symbolized sex. I always intended to do the sign when I was alone with her but courage always ebbed out of my body whenever I met her. Again, there were some bubbling sounds one could make with one’s mouth and tongue that symbolized sex acts, I intended to make them whenever I was alone with her but fear always stood on my way.

Chepkorir eluded me. Soon, she was a teenager and the next thing I witnessed their herds-boy making love to her in the maize farm. My heart was shattered. And there went my childhood dream girl! But not without reprisals. I didn’t take it lying down like she literally did in that maize field. I hit back!

I remember telling you that sex and names of the genitals were unheard of. But whenever a girl you loved rejected you, what you did was write her name and the word pussy all over the school. After Chepkorir was snatched from me, I told all my friends.

Next, we stole chalks and crayons and went on a graffiti campaign in school and all over the village to ridicule her. We wrote ‘Chepkorir’s Pussie’, in our native language Kipsigis, in the latrines, on the road, in the cattle dip, in the river and on trees that night. We wrote the same on the barks of trees along the road, on avocado trees in school and everywhere else. We also gouged out the same on sisals growing along the road. Finally we drew some captioned cartoons of her and the herds-boy having sex in all the chalkboards in the school. You should have seen the drawings; Playboy magazine would have hired us!  We even went as far as drawing one large picture of her pussie dripping with blood. We were a malicious lot. I tell you.

An investigation was launched into the authors of the maligning graffiti but nobody caught us. Chepkorir never reported back to school after the graffiti splurge. That year, she was circumcised and got married immediately. I am yet to tell her I was the mastermind of the campaign though I am not sure how she will react. Bet she will laugh it off as childhood madness.

When we mastered the art of writing, we wrote anonymous letters and placed them discreetly in girls’ school bags. Don’t remember the contents of the letters but I can recall we wrote them in Kipsigis, my native language. The reason why we made them anonymous was because you could not be sure how a girl would react. It could backfire badly if you appended your name to the little missive.  That landed you in trouble and many strokes of the canes.

We were always at hand to observe a girl’s reaction upon reading the love letter. If she tore it up madly and kept quiet, it was a tough but hopeful case. If she read it quietly, folded it neatly and kept it in her pocket; that was an obvious prey. If she bolted out of the classroom straight to the class teacher and the teacher came back with the letter and lashings rained on all the boys; that was a hopeless case.

Later, the anonymous conspirators would then meet in secrecy, profile the girls into the above categories and divide them amongst themselves. We would then write more letters to the promising lot, the last batch bearing names. If you got a reply, then you were in business. No reply? OK. It didn’t hurt trying another girl.

We could not construct whole sentences then. I can remember hazily that we just wrote words: love. Want. Marry. Meet. There were no flattering words like beautiful, smart or such adjectives. It worked sometimes, it failed sometimes but it was always worth the effort.

I ended my letters with my name: Alfred Kiprotich Barusei! Wish I had known how to write: WITH LOVE!