The Mjango
This is one of those blogs where I know what I want to write about, but I don’t know how or where to start. I’m like a kid squatting by a pond, peering into the water with static energy building up for when he will lock his target on a tadpole. He strikes and misses, enough times now to just dump the strategy and launch aimless strikes with the hope of catching one small, slimy bastard.
The tadpole in my hand right now is this: there’s a time in a child’s life when they believe any association with the opposite gender is laughable and embarrassing. It’s the consciousness that kids either have or are instilled with (I can’t properly diagnose) at such a young age that makes them shy from things based on gender demarcations and social conditioning. I find it interesting really. But it’s not so mysterious anyway since our society has weaved these things into the tapestry of our existence. For instance, we shied away from holding the hand of a girl, even upon the teacher’s instruction during P.E. Or being assigned a female deskmate - because first, that’s a girl mahn, and secondly, we feared the ridicule. “Victor and Janet sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” was the likely song to follow. It’s how that made us feel and think that being seen with a girl was the start of romantic gestures, an enactment of the Telemundo soaps that aired every night at 8pm on popular TV channels.
Need I add that that was during our times, the cartoon network and fun factory kids. Because this new generation of coco melon kids? These ones seem not to know bounds. We knew the girls’ toilet was a no-go zone. I can speak for the brotherhood and say even mum taking us over there when we felt the need for a number two because there was no one around they could trust to usher us to the boys’ room – was a little daunting. “All these big girls seeing the chubby me in the secret place because little lad cannot take care of his own business.” And as far as my growing up is concerned, we even had zero idea how girls went about their natural relieving systems. It never crossed my mind. I can swear, in fact, bring that Bible. We had the innocence of puppies, never even having even the slightest imagination of how different their parts were from ours.
Perhaps I can thank God? That I personally never found myself in a situation that showed my baby eyes and mind otherwise, until we were taught at a time when our minds were kinda ready to be made aware of the wonder workings of God’s hands. That was in class 3. Our class teacher, God bless her life, gracefully put the lesson plan aside to unbaptize us from child oblivion, lest curiosity creeps in and kills the puppies. It was an uncomfortable class that’s for sure, but a worthy one because you know what guys? Now that I think about it, (some of) our parents would never have taught us about those things if teachers didn’t take it upon themselves. Teachers really are second parents. Same goes for the sex talk.
I said I thank God He protected my ways and eyes from beholding His private works? I was about to say that that’s not to mean those who happened to are pervs or turned out to be or something of the sort. But on second thought, on that subject, I stand on the side of what you don’t know doesn’t kill you. Because in my grown mind that is grown enough to be a parent, I have seen and understood why children need to be protected not just from physical assault, but also protected psychologically. I’m no shrink, but you can agree with me that the mind of kids is like a sponge, it will absorb just as long as moisture touches it. That means if you let kids be exposed to some things, there’s no telling how it will affect them in future. Furthermore, they will never forget.
(For your information, this blog is not going according to plan. The tadpole has fallen in the grass, the mission has therefore changed.)
I say this in light of some things I learnt in the recent past about how some parents are going about parenting. Sometime back, I read somewhere online about a famous lady admitting that she bathes with her son, who at the time was maybe between the ages of 7 and 10. Tufiakwa, right? And it’s how some people in the comments section were countering those who were against it saying it’s no big deal. Another time, someone else tells me of a time she visited her friend, and found her dressing in the presence of her 3 year old after a shower, “The kid is a girl too,” she’d claim, but sponge guys, sponge! My friend was arguing that regardless, there needs to be some respect between a parent and child. In her attempt to comprehend what she had seen, she tells me her own daughter knows, ‘When mum is taking a shower, make yourself scarce!’ Better yet, unlike some other fellow mothers who bathe first then call their kids in to wash them, she’d wash the kid first then send her away.
This is the reason why some kids end up portraying some behaviours beyond their age. In primary, class 4 or 5 thereabout, I can remember the shock I had when I saw a girl in pre-unit getting awfully face close to another boy’s face. Okay fine, she was going to kiss him. I can’t tell if she did because I knew I wasn’t going to unsee it if she did. That would have been a virus to my little mind. (By the way, I just remembered these days they use grades and PP1 and PP2. I can’t keep up with that sh...) It’s how I felt like I was witnessing an abomination.
Around the same time of my life, I witnessed people making out in real life for the first time. We were resting from an afternoon of playing with tyres, when my brother looked in a certain direction and exclaimed, “Jesus Christ that’s disgusting!” Extremely curious, I asked what was it he saw and he warned me not to look. It’s how I was dying to see and he washed his hands like pilate in the face of the Saviour he had just exclaimed with His name. In the distance was a certain girl in our plot, an adult yes, but was in her prime at the time. She and her sisters were known in the plot for - out of this world behaviours - and what I was witnessing was the scratch on the surface. Hand’s wrapped around a man’s neck as they went all French with their oral enzymes outside his car. It was their way of saying goodbye. So you see how I have never forgotten that?
Or maybe it’s because we are Africans and these things don’t sit well with us? Maybe I am as old school as our parents.
(I’ve caught the tadpole.)
Then came the sensei called time. He taught us new lessons, not to invalidate the old for old is forever gold. But to teach that there’s an age for everything. At that minor age, yes, let kids understand gender demarcations and let them not suffer exposure to the under-skirts of life. These same kids grew up now to fight to hold the hand of a girl. To hold a girl’s hand was once laughable, but now? Now it is enviable. Playing among and with girls was weird, but now just walking in the middle of them is cheered. Kalongolongo, the family pretend game kids play was just that, playing. You were effortlessly picked to be the pretend husband and father, and now you are anxious and struggling to just be called someone’s boyfriend.
I was one such teenage boy, especially since I realized that some of my friends were having it easier than I was. They seemed to have some skin in the game. They were a girls’ magnet. And you know how that can be esteem degrading. One such boy was my homeboy, Wes. Even before I had an interest in girls, he was candy in the eyes of older girls. By the time we became teenagers, he was everything I was not, and that is the man of the ladies. Class 8 was about to tap out and I had no game trophies in my cabin. In boarding school, I had interacted with girls, yes, but none of them in ways that would add coins to my adolescent boy bank.
In fact, I thought they found me weird. Funny story, I was always topping the class, but you’d think that would appeal to girls. Maybe their sapiosexual hormones hadn’t developed at the time. It was also the age that I discovered I could sing courtesy of Bruno Mars’, Grenade. They’d enjoy listening to me sing, but that still didn’t seem to be the tune that appeases the cobra to dance. I was also just learning how to pull up a swag, and on some days, I was convinced I had some of them on chokehold.
One time we had a boys band and we were just about to perform for the entire boarding school. Heaven bless my eldest brother for hand me downs because where and how else would I pull up some swags? We dressed up for the show and I was spotted with a fit in t-shirt, a pair of some skinny jeans with subtle shades and fades of colour – were a trend at the time, and a pair of black leather North Star shoes. This girl in our class who sat at the top of the food chain called me in a whisper just before our performance and said, “Swagga balaa!” That was a famous slang phrase at the time that means ‘dope swag’. Was she tripping? If so, it was never enough to sweep a girl like her nonetheless. For besides, I knew who she bit her lips to, my best friend at the time; another ladies’ magnet.
The entire boys club worshipped him for a myriad of reasons including being the lion king of the school; this is a class 7 boy who had scored a class 8 girl. The class 8 girl was also worshipped among her counterparts. As people came to me for maths lessons, I went to him for lessons on charming girls. The one that stuck the most was when he said, “Pia looks zinamatter.” This came after he thought I was about to settle for less after I had suffered multiple rejections from the first girl I ever locked an interest in and attempted a pursuit. Just to show you how my esteem was trampled on occasionally, one time some visiting guests brought us sweets from abroad. I didn’t eat mine but instead, gave them to her. Weeks later, on visiting day, I happened to open a pocket in my bag I never used and found them there all cosy and intact in their wrappers.
At some point, I thought maybe it was my acne condition. I tell people I once had acne and they say, no freaking way! I thought maybe I wasn’t cool enough. I thought maybe my loud laughter was too weird for girls, because boy I had no shame or decorum with the thunder God hid behind my laughter. Surprisingly, the boys loved it, they couldn’t wait for an opportunity to laugh with me.
So when Wes came and started talking about his lady friends, I asked him to share some hookups with a brother. He was more than happy to part with the numbers of any girl I wanted in the list he showed me. I chose the one name in the list that sounded like a beautiful lady, Cindy. The boy who had an uneventful adolescence so far was about to have his appointment with the fat lady - she was about to sing his way to his first relationship. This boy who was once running away from girls was now serenading himself to Bruno Mars’ – When I was Your Man - after that same girl dumped him via text. At that time he must have thought that maybe it’s best to keep running away from these ones he doesn’t seem to have any luck with.
Little did he know he was a year away from serenading another girl, a goddess this time – at the pews of an arena in a scouts camp. The boy who was once tailgating at other boys who he considered the men of the ladies was now having his boys, including senior ones – jubilating at his fine catch.
Time was really making him less and less of a virgin. What was once a disgusting scene to him was now his scene to play Alejandro in an Umoinner matatu one evening after spending an entire day with her roaming around Nairobi. He would see her off by taking her to her matatu stage and boarding the next empty matatu so they can have more time to exchange goodbyes. This time, the goodbye expected of him was different, but not so different because by now, he knew this is how lovers say hello and goodbye. Enyewe, there’s a first time for everything. And just like Adam, it took an Eve in an Umoinner to get a bite on the apple. He now knows how Adam must have felt in the moment.
Right about that stage of life, girls weren’t just other beings different in gender, they were a necessity! One needful in order to stay sane. We were slowly agreeing to the “What’s a world without women” sayings and Beyonce’s, “Who runs the world, girls!” I concur because I had now become the form one boy who got in trouble for trying to make his way to the hall in form one when our school was hosting a funkie. In short, girls had come to our school. That story is here. Much later at the start of form four, my Kabaa brothers will join me in remembering how we went almost an entire two months without any funkie. It felt like we were going to starve to death. We needed to at least see girls just to quench the thirsting of our souls, or loins, I guess. And the night just before the first funkie of that year, the opportunity we had all been waiting for, boys boycotted the usual githeri because school admins should know that we know. No paraffin formed against us was going to prosper.
(I think the tadpole is starting to grow legs. I have to let it go.)
After that, I got an ID. In the government’s eyes, that’s a license to do a number of things like drive, vote and travel alone. A license to show that you can fend for yourself. But in our eyes, it was a license to see, experience, sweat, beget, forget or regret – the private works of the maker.
Once again, thank God He protected me from His private works. Now that sensei has taught me things, now I know why He had to do that. And that’s because they are too beautiful, indeed fearfully and wonderfully made. Guy really is an artiste.
Look at me now mjango, no longer a boy – all grown up like most of you reading this. I’m sure I am not alone when I say before me now is a different class and a bigger desk; king size if you will. Now I want a fearfully and wonderfully made deskmate. I promise, I won’t be shy; as we hold hands and walk down the aisle, through to the class 3 lesson again. Then graduate to the class 6 one. Then form 3. And 4. Then first year medicine anatomy, perhaps?
