“She sits with me,” said Jack, grabbing my hand and pulling me back.
No other stool made an appearance and after a few beats, I realized that Jack really did mean for me to sit with him. Or rather, on him. And so I perched awkwardly on Jack’s lap, while the women and children laughed at me.
“Kasserian ingera.” Olonana didn’t use the familiar Swahili words for hello that I had grown accustomed to—habari or jambo.
“Sapati ingera,” replied Jack.
I wondered if anyone else greeted the chief this way—solemn and sincere, while balancing a squirming woman on his thigh.
They exchanged a few words. Then Olonana raised his whisk to a man whose bent, wizened form was barely discernible against the dark entrance of the hut. He was dressed in a long green cloth, but what stood out was the leather pouch hanging around his neck. It was adorned with white beads and cowrie shells, different from the ornaments that everyone else was wearing. He also had a necklace of crocodile teeth that rattled when he moved.
“That’s Lonyoki. The oloiboni,” Jack explained in a hushed voice. “I guess you could call him their spiritual leader. A vision seeker and medicine man. The oloiboni is charged with divining the future. He oversees their rituals and ceremonies.”
“So he’s like Rafiki.” I stopped shifting and decided to suck up my ridiculous lap-sitting stint as gracefully as possible.
Jack blinked before catching on. “You’re talking about the shaman in that movie, The Lion King. What’s with you and all The Lion King references?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were babbling about Mufasa last night.”
“What?” Oh God. “What did I say?”
“Something about him being the king of the jungle.”
I was glad that Rafiki, a.k.a Lonyoki, a.k.a. the medicine man, chose that moment to pound his club into the ground. It had a polished wooden shaft with a heavy knob at the top, carved in the shape of a serpent’s head. Puffs of red dirt stirred at his feet. Everyone turned their attention to the woman who rose from the crowd and disappeared into the hut.
“What’s going on?” I asked Jack, realizing that we had interrupted some kind of a village gathering.
“A coming of age ceremony,” he replied. “No matter what happens next, I want you to remain expressionless. Do not show any emotion. Do not look away. Do not flinch. You hear me?”
“Why? Wha—” I broke off as the shrill screams of a girl filled the air. It was coming from inside the hut. Whatever was happening to her was excruciating—painful and agonizing. And yet no one made a move to help her. They all waited, huddled outside, blank faces turned to the dark, open doorway. A chorus of women started humming, as if to drown out the sounds, or maybe to offer her comfort.
“Jack, what is going on?” I whispered.
“The transition from girlhood to womanhood. Female circumcision.” He clamped his arm around me as he said it, containing my burst of outrage. “Listen to me.” He leaned close and spoke slow and steady in my ear. “It happens, even though the government has banned it. It is a deeply rooted tradition, but Olonana and his people are moving away from it. What’s happening in there is symbolic. The girl is receiving a ritual nick on her thigh. It’s nothing compared to cutting out part of her genitalia. The screaming is important. She must scream loud enough for everyone outside to hear, or they won’t feel like she has earned the status being conferred on her. They circumcise the boys too, in their teens, except they are not allowed to make a single sound. Doing so would bring shame to them and their family.”
The whole thing was tough and harsh to take. When the girl’s cries stopped, I realized my fingers were squeezing tightly around Jack’s.
“Do you know them through Bahati?” I asked, letting go of him like I’d touched a hot stove. “Olonana and his people?”
“Olonana’s family saved my grandfather during the war when he was injured in hostile territory. They sheltered him until he recovered from his wounds. Goma and I always stop by and pay our respects whenever we’re in the area.”
“That’s why you took Bahati under your wing and taught him how to drive?”
“I didn’t know he was Olonana’s son at first. Most of his kids live out here, in the bomas.”
Everyone stood as the girl emerged from the hut, flanked by two women. One was the lady who had entered the hut earlier, probably to deliver the ritual cut, and the other, I assumed to be the girl’s mother. The girl was given traditional beads and a ring made from animal skin as a sign of her passage into womanhood. The oloiboni presented her to the village, ready for marriage, and all the responsibilities that went with it.
“She is so young,” I remarked.
“She is one of the lucky ones,” replied Jack. “A few years ago, she would not have been able to walk out of there for days.”
“So, what convinced them to do away with it? With female circumcision?”
“It’s not something that happened overnight. Eventually, it came down to persuading the men that sex with an uncircumcised woman is more pleasurable—that far from promoting promiscuity, having an intact clitoris makes a woman more receptive to their advances.”
“It’s a patriarchal society,” Jack continued, catching the expression on my face. “Their way of life may seem strange and harsh, but every culture evolves with its own set of values and practices that change with time and circumstance. The women are pushing back and becoming more independent. A lot of them have started working with overseas organizations, selling their bracelets and jewelry. They’re turning their traditional bead-working skills into something that generates an income.”