Memories of an African Childhood: The Initiates and Us

At least there is something new to break the humdrum: playing with the initiates. It has been two weeks since the last time we saw them, dancing their way into seclusion. How happy to interact with them once again. Unlike in their former lives, girls will be closer to us while the boys, our former playmates, cannot even let us get close. During this period, unless I am very careful, I might earn some strokes of the cane from mom by letting the fun befuddle my sense of duty. So I gotta watch out mates!

The last evening to their coming out is unusual, like the circumcision night, shouts break the eerie silence of pitch dark nights, loud and hoarse from the men and not to be outdone; shrill and sharp from the women. It is yet another day of rituals. Only circumcised people attend them, and they never let us know what goes on in there. There is no point sitting up the whole night listening to yells. We sleep.

In the morning, mom leaves for menjo with Rebecca. We follow them at a safe distance, hoping to catch a piece of the action. But what action! Near the fenced hedge of menjo , we spot all the women kneeling with their small pots before the initiator (motiriot) and the ‘blesser’of the initiates kipisio distributing mild beer  and distributing bouquets of  korosek to  them.  The initiator and the ‘blesser’ are dressed in skins and leather headgears.  Each with the mild beer and bouguets, they stand and leave for home, ululating along the way. We run ahead of them, out of view. It is chilly, I think it is 5 a.m.

Mom serves us with the mild beer -musarek. That was our breakfast for that day. Sour and a bit sugary with a little bit of a high. I wished it was real beer.

My brother nudges me and we run out of the house. Lo and behold, what are those things running along the edge of the forest?  Eiyeei kimarangojik!  (Look there! Male initiates!) Rung the chorus of small boys and girls all over the village.  Faces, legs and arms painted white with ochre and dressed in short cow skins, there they were looking like human gazelles. Jaunty, romping all over the field, hunting birds; each with a bow and arrows. We itched to join them but their handlers would obviously beat the daylight out of us.

Immediately we sprung into action. As they were sequestered in the previous two weeks, we were collecting eagle’s feathers and Sodom apples to give them in exchange for kweisisiek (hunting arrows). We knew that this would come, what with years and years of doing the same thing.

Each boy clutching his collections of feathers and Sodom apples, we evade the initiates as they went about their business: collecting firewood, water, cutting trees and hunting birds and ran to their hovel .Standing two hundred meters away we shouted obwan oib kororik- come pick some feathers.

An initiate’s hovel is often guarded by two initiates though no uncircumcised boy would dare go there even if there was nobody. (Heard there must always be somebody there to keep the fire burning, of which if gets extinguished, a goat would be slaughtered to cleanse the initiates. The fire stays burning till it is returned to the home it was taken from, upon their graduation)

We shout till something stirs in the hovel and by that we are sure to have attracted their attention. A blunt arrow is shot on our direction, we fight for it. Another and another till all of us have one each. We leave and they come collecting their side of the bargain: the apples and feathers.

We would make our own bows too and equip our armory with the arrows the initiates gave us. We start our own hunting, we can’t hunt with the initiates, they chased us away. They didn’t even speak amongst themselves as they hunt, they communicate by tapping a bow with an arrow. They were in a world of their own, not the friends we knew. Whenever they came close and recognized us, they rapped their leather clothes as a form of greeting. Us silly brats just waved in excitement.

Their form of communication really intrigued us, at lunch time; they sung their inimitable songs to remind the mother cooking for them it was time for lunch. Same thing for supper and breakfast too.  They  also sung after every meal, as a way of saying thank you to the mother who has cooked the food.

I dint know what they used the Sodom apples we gave them for. But for the girls, who were freer with us, I saw them dig a hole in the ground and build a small enclosure where they placed the apples and referred to them as ‘cows’. They ‘let’ them out in the morning and ‘drove’ them in in the evening. Haven’t known the significance of all these to date.

Ha haa! Oh my goodness! I almost forgot to tell you about the kind of miniature houses these girl initiates made. With soil, they molded small house-like-structures on the ground with boobs and bums just like girls and an entrance where the vagina would have been. They looked like weird caricatures of the pyramids of Egypt.  They made so many of them, with various sizes and heights.(Have heard claims that the Kipsigis people are descendants of the Pharaohs, remembering this lends more credence to these claims. Hey, we have the same name for gods to boot! Theirs is isis, ours is asis. Besides, our folk lore claims we came from misri, another name for Egypt.)

The girl initiates, who were being housed and fed by my grandma, were very friendly and conversational. After the two weeks, we were allowed to spend time with them. They were dressed in  beaded leather dresses with hoods that they covered their heads when walking around. Their clothes were oiled and their bodies too. I doubt whether they bathed. Think they just oiled themselves. They had bangles and necklaces on their hands and necks. They were all chubby and beautiful and happy all day. They smiled readily though they talked in low tones. Like school, any raised voice from them attracted the ire of my grandma. Hey, and my grandma is irascible even when not exerting any authority. A tough old girl that one!

Even they did not shake our hands too. They rap their leather cloths by the thighs to say hi. What a mysterious world theirs was again. Like menjo, my grandma’s house was out bounds to all boys and all uncircumcised girls of all ages. They build a makeshift shelter (kaptiriong) adjoining the house where we interacted with them. But for the first two weeks of their seclusion, no male, even a two year old ever stepped within a radius of 100 meters of that house. The women were very strict when it came to this.

There, they ruled with an iron fist, in fact, the men were a bit relaxed with theirs. If a man ever went close to that house, say even 50 meters, knowingly or unknowingly, he would pay a fine of a white heifer. That rule applied even to mad men. The women slaughtered and ate the heifer by themselves!  Or else the man in question is cast a spell to either die or run mad. A man entering the said house was unheard of but the rules stipulated that if it happened, he would undergo all the women rituals and henceforth cease to be a man, culturally and socially!

So we spent some time in kaptiriong­ with the friendly initiates. Talking, giggling and inquiring from us the tidings of the outside world, especially about their boyfriends.  They made us wooden neck chains-malingotiet, and beautiful walking staffs that were decorated with coal paintings. Behind the back of my grandma, they send with us letters and the beautiful staffs they made to their boyfriends. In return, the boyfriends send with us letters, bread and sodas that we smuggled to them.  Upon every complete transaction, we earned their confidence in return.

Sometimes when they were going to visit their fellow initiates in other homes, our grandma would send us to go with them. They never went by road; they followed the paths in the bushes. In case we met men on the way, the men gave way and the initiates would stop, staff in hand, head covered and bowed till they were out of sight. If the man was close and said hi, they just patted their cloths and that was it. The women we met on the way were greeted in the same way unless they were relations.

Evenings was where all the fun was. We would join them in singing the various incomprehensible songs that they sung after supper. I never ate their food because doing so earned one a derogatory label of cheptolong –crumb eater.

A horde of boys and girls in the village would join us to sing with the initiates every evening, save for the days they were going for rituals. The songs were varied but I have forgotten many with time, oh how time flies! Some songs though seem to have stuck with me and they are not showing any signs of getting obliterated.

 Seated on the floor with legs stretched we would sing, with them as soloists: (most of the words in the songs were meaningless or maybe unknown to me then and now. It is difficult procuring any explanation from women on anything to do with their rituals and ceremonies. I dare say impossible even with my own mom to date)

Soloist: Iyaoiya shesonderio , ae aeiya iyaoiya chesonderio keteche motiriot

Chorus: Iyaoiya shesonderio , motiriot chebobor, iya oiya chesonderio

Soloist: iyaoiya chesonderio, ae aeiya iyaoiya chesonderio kesole nandiekyok

Chorus: iyaoiya chesonderio, ae aeiya iyaoiya chesonderio nandiekyok tebenkoi

I have gone a bit rustic on this song and the worst thing is women never vouchsafe any information on songs either. Another favorite of us was another that went like this:

All: Masindanech kambot recho chebore nargagang( the home of Rachel cannot beat us because they are just blubbering ‘nargagang’)

Soloist: kesole nandiekyok (we praise our Nandis- a subtribe of our tribe)

Chorus: kebore nargagang (they just blubber ‘nargagang’)

Soloist: nandiekyok tebengoi ( our Nandis who sit upon stones)

Chorus: kebore nargagang

All: Masindanech kambot recho chebore nargagang

Soloist: keteche motiriot (we respect the initiator)

Chorus: chebore nargagang

Soloist: motitriot chebobor (initiator whose other name is Chebobor)

Chorus: chebore nargagang

All: Masindanech kambot recho kebore nargagang

Soloist: kesole taleltany (we praise the bright colored cow)

All: chebore nargagang

Soloist: toleltany kokeben (bright brown)

All: chebore nargagang

Perhaps their favorite song, because they sang it more often, was the next song.  You could walk the breadth and length of our village in the evening and hear this same song being repeated from one kaptiriong to the next. I guess it was sung just for the sake of it because I have failed all these years to discern what it means. Most of the words are mumbo-jumbo and must have been chosen for their phonetics rather than their semantics. But again you can’t know with women.

The best song of them all, of all time:

Chemareren chepsigisin oh, chemus mara litalitaro, yetwo kugonyon abanobano kimi turguin chelemindet oh. Yetwo kugonyon sira sira long’et  kimi turguin okwito kwito.

It is now 11 p.m. and we have sung ourselves to felicity. It is time for bed. We meet again tomorrow for more singing.