“Women and Girls MUST not eat chicken. And eggs!”: Mutesi’s days of old.

“Who determines the devil of the day?” I was asked. “Is it the state of affairs? God? Men of all inequities?” She continued to quest for an answer.

Mutesi might be living beyond her 80’s, even she isn’t sure. But one thing is certain. Like every human that has been graced with seemingly endless age, her evening hours are racing upon her. It was not always a bad thing to question the ways of life, why a prepubescent Mutesi made good of most house chores while her brothers, elderly and otherwise, lived akin to Kings. The questions were only but to take refuge in her mind, and distant from her mouth.

Across a small forest in Buyane County, lied a thick forest. It was amazing seeing the trees chant to the day while finding a way through. The night! The same cannot be said, for even the least sinister of sounds, sounded strange to even the bravest. Humans have been consistent in their relations to nature – they destroy. There are traces though, that Lusubwe Forest once existed here. The forest was crowned as such by Mutesi’s ancestors, to mean “the life giver and taker.” It seemed as just a conceit of trees during day, but the whispers that stuck on the lips of many gave off realities of those that never returned when they made realistic their declaration to go beyond the limits of a little stream that flowed peacefully in-between these green giants. It was said that only this stream, tamed Lusubwe Forest’s temper, and made cynical screams while it gently found its way to the far lands.

At the eastern edges is where Buyole village sat. There were other villages on the Western and Northern parts of Buyole, and it was rumored that beyond Lusubwe Forest existed villages filled with giant creatures who had red wings. It was said that they flew within the forest at night, to pick and take wandering humans that had lost their way during day. The story was told by the elderly Gaye who furiously narrated to all loosely, and without discrimination in detail of how he was the only survivor of the 17 boys who went into the forest around dusk to pick the evening white ants and never returned. If not for his pitiful outlook, he would easily have wrestled anyone who dared to protest his story. And so children grew knowing that Lusubwe Forest would have mercy at life, but steal it when it will.

Mutesi knew too well not to get close to Lusubwe. Even while she dreamt. She was the ninth Child to her mother, and the twenty first to her father. Prestige was measured at how far a man tested his waist’s strength to procreate with more than one wife. Mutesi had four mothers, but Mumile was the oldest on the stead. She was proud to have been born by the longest serving of the stead, and sometimes, she sneaked in the statement when she clashed with her not so old siblings. Just as her tribesmen and tribeswomen say, “the older bird teaches the younger bird how to fly,” she learnt a lot from her mother Mumile. She would not have refused to learn, because as a custom, the saying was to live.

So every morning she committed to take on family tasks, before the hours of play. The story had no choice to change, for even her female peers fell prey. They bragged about learning new skills from their mothers, and sometimes got into brawls on whose mother was better skilled.

The boys on the other hand, had their own life’s journey. On the Western outskirts of Buyole, was Buyole Christian School. You see, besides the tales of Lusubwe Forest and its red-winged eldritch creatures, there had appeared creatures with seemingly orange skins. The Bible wielding creatures had arrived during the ages of Mutesi’s great grand kinsmen and kinswomen from unknown lands of the West, but while it was narrated to her during her childhood that they came from lands unknown, it certainly wasn’t through Lusubwe Forest.

These creatures built structures on the land at which they settled. The boys had gradually added to the numbers of participants that attended to the sessions there. During the time Mutesi was sighting her puberty, it was clear that the old told initial resentment had gradually died among the locals. Mutesi’s brothers attended there. They spoke praises of the orange creatures. Mutesi saw two of them once when she was sent to take food to her brothers during one of their examination period. But curiosity never ceased in Mutesi’s mind, about what exactly happened in those long bamboo fences that enclaved the structures where her brothers along with others from all directions of, and in the vicinity of Buyole village converged.

She did not mind much because it would be strange risking her curiosity in finding out. “It is a place only to boys!” She said to herself. Every morning, the girls in the home had tasks that had to do with preparing proper send off to school, of their brothers. The next item of execution was leading the cattle to shrubs far off in the hills, until dusk when they made way to find home. She was not alone there. There were always a variety of girls, fetching firewood and grazing cattle. The boys? Rare. The jungle brings with it all dangers. So vigilance was always a priority, lest bad omen befell the village. There were occasional deaths, unexplained and otherwise, but death was one to loathe, except that of the elderly wise on which solace, was a good run in life.

Mutesi, made her way home with the other girls, and along the steep valley that separated Buyole village and Mwenye village, each took a path on some days for a lone sojourn. Night fell, darkness conquered, and then fire got lit. In preparation for supper, mothers tended to their daughters, while the men and their sons rest waiting for the late night food. Same routine, the boys were congratulated for the end of day, and girls reminded of the routes to avoid, while being scolded for the day’s mistakes. A good meal in Buyole village was one where meat or chicken was cooked. Mutesi did not eat chicken while young. She has never tasted it. Her mother wasn’t an exception. And her mother, and their mothers.

Supper gave way for round fire storytelling, and a lot was told. On a strange day, stories of the wild and scary creatures were told, and the children had a night of endless fear, only in immediate anticipation for a new day. Day conquered the night and the girls did the same routine of preparing the boys for their meetings with the orange creatures. The boys after some time would start to speak in an alien language. Some of the boys spoke just so well as the orange creatures that they were taken to the unknown lands from which the orange creatures came.

Before a boy was taken to the unknown lands, the village went on a feast. The only time such merry dominates faces of the inhabitants of Buyole village was when a girl was being married off to the man old enough to be their father. At an age when they had their breasts sprouting. In fact, Mutesi was living anticipating for the day she will finally be celebrated by the village. In fact, she got enough reminders from her family members of what destiny awaited her. Often than not, they were married off as third wives to these men, and it did not seem like the girls did not like it. Well, the truth is at least they did not have to go out in the wilderness grazing ever again.

Of the boys that had been taken to the unknown lands, Mutesi only knew of three that had ever returned during her youthfulness. However, during her earlier years, she remembers some of those that had not come back sending commodities to the village people, and she had tasted some of the things that in Mutesi’s words, “you young people now call sweets.” The first time she tasted it, it tasted so alien, like indeed it was from an unknown land. There was a small hut in the backyard where she was informed laid her ancestors’ spirits. Mutesi was convinced that if anything, she only had to fulfill her obligations to the community and her tribe so as to please her ancestors to be able to be peacefully welcomed to the next life in the communion of her ancestors, for it was believed that if one’s ancestors resented their spirit, they would roam in an endless abyss full of darkness and they would never know peace while there.

Mutesi was only aged about 15 years or thereabouts when rumors in the village markets spread in tones akin to a hissing snake. If only she knew it was her time to tend to the society’s call. But what could she have done! The ancestors were on high watch. So on a Saturday Morning while she prepared to take to grazing, she welcomed visitors to naivety of which, she was not aware they were there to negotiate her bride price. Her husband was to be 60 years old, and she would enter his homestead as the fourth wife. That is just how Mutesi entered marriage. She gave birth to two boys, before her husband departed to his ancestors. She has lived a life of an inquest since her boys growing, to interrogate if her boys should be tended to as kings as her brothers were.

“Ignorance my grandchild. Ignorance!” Mutesi said in her sobs. She later learnt towards her final age before crossing fifty years from her sons that whatever was done to her was because she was never aware that the caution for girls and women not eating chicken for they would become barren and never be able to bear the productivity of their ovaries, were all lies. If only she and the other girls had attended to the bamboo enclaved structures built by the orange creatures. “What change would it have made?” She inquired at a low tone. Three of her brothers later left for the unknown lands while she was in her marriage, while the rest became instructors in the compound of the orange creatures. She later learnt that the proper word for reference to them was ‘teacher’.

Mutesi has lived a life of a lame left leg, because when she was being sent off into marriage, she tried to resist the old man that was being introduced to be her husband. Her father took it as an indictment on his reputation and hit her with a big log that lay bored on the side of the veranda to the visitor’s shade. She entered marriage lame, and whereas she would have protested further, to whom! To the girls, such was life. Mutesi was shocked to even learn that I and a few other girls had attended to the similar structures like those that were constructed by the orange creatures. “You also eat chicken? How will you be able to give birth to children?” She asked several times.

Mutesi is still unconvinced even after letting her know that what her sons told her regarding eating chicken, and dispenses of them to be falsehoods. Mutesi, as seen struggling in her senile days, limping with her walking stick, has kept a safe memory of her youth. While some tales come off as joyous moments, the greater part are relived as regrettable for any girls of my age to live.

In her words, “the men of my time were the evil that the girls should have hated. Not the red- winged devils in Lusubwe Forest. By gone. Bye goons.” It would leave any men of the lands Buyole village in despair, if they lived in the old times. But the neighborhood looks new. So detached from what Mutesi lived for a life. To her, the devils were those with whom she lived.