Kenya- Twenty years ago
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Kinjia watched apprehensively the events around her. She was with six other girls she had not seen before, all dressed in clothes they had never owned before, with dazzling tribal jewelry that they had never worn before, and their hair braided in long dreadlocks.
Each of them had been taken away from their families a week earlier and during that time they had seen nothing but strange faces. In Kinjia's case the last thing she remembered from her family was the tear-stained face of her older sister. Her parents had ignored her questions about the purpose of the event.
All the girls were virgins between the ages of fourteen and sixteen and were the flowers of the Kikuyu village located in a remote corner of Baringo County, in a desert landscape where tribes could barely survive with the product of their lands in a context of widespread poverty.
Kinjia had never been outside the village since the girls were strictly controlled until they reached the age of marriage with their freedom restricted to the maximum, unlike the boys of their own age who accompanied their parents in their labors in the fields or hunting trips, which sometimes had deadly consequences for them.
Kinjia was fortunate because her family did not practice the savage rites of female mutilation in which the ablation of some genital organs, including the clitoris, was carried out to ensure the purity of the young women until marriage. As the ritual was carried out by healers in precarious health conditions using knives and sometimes even pieces of glass, the mortality of girls from infections was relatively high. For that reason her family did not carry it out as it endangered the life of the girls and with it the potential patrimonial increase of their parents.
What neither Kinjia nor any of the other six girls knew was that while they were kept standing in the middle of the desolate plain clothed in the manner described, in the village arduous negotiations were carried out between their parents and their future husbands, usually older men than the girls had never seen who usually had other wives of various ages and who sometimes had disgusting looks. The aim of the negotiations was to determine the gifts that the husbands would pay for the girls to their families, which were based on the beauty of the virgin. Kinjia was unaware then that his suitor had agreed to deliver twenty goats, a camel and two cows for her, a really exorbitant price for an ordinary villager, so his father was extremely pleased with the settled covenant.
Both forced marriage of girls and adolescents and ritual mutilation have been strictly prohibited in Kenya since the time of the English colony but tribal traditions have much more weight and command more obedience than the written law so they are still practiced today.
A couple of men in warlike outfits approached and took one of the girls by the arms but she began to scream and kick them trying to escape from her position of subjection as she was dragged towards the huts with the object- ignored by her- of being delivered to her husband and buyer.
The other girls began to shake and try to escape, but several men, equally dressed, took them in their arms and reduced them. Kinjia had remained mute and still in terror so that the man who approached her was confident that she would not resist, but when he was two steps away from the girl she unexpectedly moved, struck the man in the head with a kind of cane that had been given to her as part of the wedding garb and ran down the plateau with a speed that even the girl did not know she could attain.
The beaten man recovered from the blow and immediately went after Kinjia while several others joined him in the chase. At that moment all the tension accumulated by the rest of the girls exploded and each one tried to run away in different directions driven by terror. The men hesitated in front of the totally unexpected mess and tried to catch the girls in a completely bewildered action.
Kinjia ran as if her feet had become wings and soon left behind her pursuer, an elderly man until finally the pleasures of his dissipated life in the village took their toll and he fell exhausted on the ground ceasing in his pursuit.
The young girl continued her rapid race until, as she turned back, saw that no one was following her and only then she slowed down and contented herself with jogging for hours.
A feeling of joy at the unexpected liberation invaded her young chest, a sensation she experienced for the first time in her life and that would never abandon her, turning this memory into a refuge for the moments of anxiety that were to come.
After a while, another feeling joined the joy of newly won freedom. The barren and deserted plain was giving way to an increasingly compact shrub that gradually transformed into a closed tropical forest. Only then did Kinjia realize that she was lost in an environment in which she had never been and of which she as a child had heard horrible tales of angry beasts and wild men. Her head was spinning with fatigue and the adrenaline rush and she did not see the danger ahead of her, the tree roots hidden in the tall undergrowth. The girl stumbled and heavily fell on the ground; her head struck with the tree trunk and Kinjia lost consciousness, rolling until her small body slipped in a narrow and deep hollow. The shadows seized her mind; the girl did not feel the torrential rain that unleashed moments later filling partially the hole in which she was.
Kitwana continued to run despite his age. His fibrous body was light and his strong legs still held him. The Masai had been a tribe of swift runners for countless generations and Kitwana's trade required him to travel long distances every day; on the other hand, finding himself so far from his village in the Masai territory gave him an anxiety to return to his boma which redoubled his strength. The sudden fall of a torrential rain forced him to seek shelter in the nearby forest and ran up to a large tree, though he knew that doing so would increase the chances of being struck by lightning. In the darkness of the storm he suddenly slipped on the wet grass and rolled down a slope to the ground, splashing in the water at the bottom of the well. Suddenly, as he tried to stand up, his body brushed something that was not vegetable. Surprised, he took what looked like a human body and shuddered at the thought that he had hit a corpse. Distressed he lifted the
object in his arms and by its light weight he realized at once that it was the body of a young woman, almost a child. Slipping down the ravine he emerged from the pit and laid his load on the ground in a place protected from rain by the leafy branches of the tree. The aging man noticed with sadness that the body was frozen and that the girl had swallowed a lot of water from the bottom of the well, so he proceeded to rub her torso and oppress her chest trying to revive her. Kitwana thought for a moment that he could do nothing and that the girl was dead, but in one of the chest-compressive maneuvers the girl coughed and exhaled a mouthful of dirty water through her mouth. Suddenly hopeful Kitwana continued with the frictions until the woman opened her eyes and stared at him in the darkness. Suddenly several coughing accompanied by vomiting shook her body until the rhythm of her breathing regularized and then her eyes closed again. The Masai felt relieved as he realized that the girl was only asleep; he then removed the buffalo skin that covered his own body and covered the girl's slender anatomy with it.
The strong glow of a ray of sunlight that pierced the frond of the tree that covered her awakened Kinjia from her prolonged lethargy. Her body, frozen by the night's cold, thanked the warmth that began to invade her body with the progressive sun movement. It was some time before she gathered her strength to open her eyes and move her head. Slowly she lifted the trunk of her body resting it on her elbows. What she then saw bewildered her. Her body was covered with a thick buffalo hide that had obviously protected her during the night. She was under the top of a leafy tree, a place she did not know how she had arrived. A gentle whisper reached her ears which the girl readily discerned as a melody from which she could not understand the words. After a few moments of disorientation, Kinjia noticed that a human figure stood out on a glade near the grove where she was. The girl rubbed her eyes to clear the vision and only then could see a tall, thin man, quite old and somewhat stooped, covered with a cloth of red and white colors that enveloped his body. The man approached her and brought what looked like a bowl made with the shell of some large fruit that sprinkled fresh liquid by the edges. By physical appearance and clothing Kinjia quickly recognized a Masai, a tribe dwelling far away from her land and of which she had once seen a member exchanging trinkets with the villagers of her village. The man's face reassured her because it inspired confidence.
"You have awakened, my child?" The question, in fact a statement, had been made in Swahili, that sort of lingua franca with which many Africans understand themselves, above their tribal dialects.
"Who are you?" The still frightened young woman answered with another question.
"My name is Kitwana.”
"Are you Masai?"
“Yes, but do not be afraid. Although we have fame of warriors I am a man of peace.”
"You're not going to hurt me?"
By the question Kitwana understood that the girl had been through traumatic experiences that made her distrust of her fellow men. Patiently he set out to gain her confidence.
The old man and Kinjia had been crossing the Kenyan savannah for five days. Kitwana was on his way to his village and had offered the young woman to accompany him, assuring that she would be welcome in the boma by the tribal chief and his subjects. As the girl had no place to return to nor knew anyone else outside her family agreed to travel with him and put herself in his hands. The fact that he did not try to abuse her physically reassured her.
One afternoon they had camped near a stream and Kinjia had approached it to fetch water while the old man had gone away trying to hunt some birds or small rodents for dinner that night. The young woman was carrying the heavy bowl holding it with both hands and concentrating on it so she did not see Kitwana's bag on her way and stumbled with it spilling some of the liquid on the sack and on the ground. Alarmed she set the bowl down and bent down to dry the bag. At that moment she noticed that the bag had opened and several elements had rolled on the ground. Kinjia tried to pick them up quickly before the old man came back and realized her awkwardness. It was at that moment that she saw a strange object which was however vaguely familiar to her. It was a chain formed by eight seeds cut in half joined by a thread of natural fiber. The seeds were profusely painted with vivid colors using pigments also of natural origin. The girl immediately recognized an opale or divination artifact used by native shamans throughout the center of the African continent. Kinjia took the object in her hands and examined it with curiosity. She was concentrated in it when at a certain moment became aware that she was being observed. Indeed Kitwana looked at her silently as he held some birds hanging from a thread in his right hand.
Startled Kinjia dropped the artifact that fell on the ground and fell to her feet.
"I ... I did not want ... the bowl of water."
Kitwana came up with a smile and put a hand on her arm trying to calm her.
"Do not fear my child. You have discovered my little secret. No problem, I would have told you myself sooner or later. Are you interested? Do you want to know how it is used? If you are I will teach you.”
From that day Kitwana on started introducing the young woman into the secrets of African esotericism, both in divination arts and in the darkest techniques to heal or damage. He explained the use of opeles and other means of divination by means of animal bones as well as the selection of herbs and other elements for making healing or magic potions. The old man realized immediately that the girl was very curious, obvious sign of intelligence and with generosity progressively shared his ancestral knowledge with her.
They finally reached the village that was Kitwana's home. There the old man stepped forward and told her.
“Wait for me here. I am going to let them know that you are coming with me and that you are under my protection.”
Kitwana proved to be an influential person in the tribe. Kinjia was accepted without protest by the rest of the members of the village, who supposed that the shaman had chosen her as his successor and that in the future she would then have power by herself. As Kitwana had no relatives the girl was formally adopted by the family of tribal chief Nkwame Obonyo, which increased her prestige. The other girls at first felt jealous for the beautiful girl and realized that she was greedily gazed by the young warriors, but Kinjia showed no sign of being interested in them, so they assumed that, like her mentor mentor Kitwana, the Girl was homosexual so they stopped feeling jealous.
The sorcerer took her with him on his outings to attend patients and went into the woods and prairies to select healing herbs.
One day, upon returning from one of their excursions they noticed that there was a great stir in the village. As they entered the boma of logs, they saw that there was a vehicle and some white-skinned people inside. Kinjia had seen cars and trucks moving in the distance through the savannah but had never looked at one closely. She approached and slid her hand across the metal surface; when he raised her eyes the girl saw that the white man, dressed in shorts, thick shirt and socks, watched her smiling. The white woman located nearby followed the events with certain mistrust by a potential rival. The visiting family was completed with a boy of about four years, dressed as the man who evidently was his father since both had blue eyes and fair hair. Attracted by the novelty Kinjia approached the boy and brushed the skin of his face with her fingers, finding it soft and smooth. Then she slid her hand through his blond hair. The touch bewildered her and she stepped back a little frightened by the unknown.
While this was happening the somewhat alarmed mother had made a move to approach the kid but the man restrained her.
The boy in turn approached Kinjia and passed the small hand on the skin of the girl's arm and as she bent to stand at his height touched her curly hair. Obviously the boy had wanted to do that with other black people but he had not dared until Kinjia took the initiative. The contact with the white skin and the straight hair had activated certain hormones inside the girl that normally remained asleep.
After a long negotiation with the head of the village Nkwame the visitors withdrew. Kinjia later learned that they were missionaries, although it was not clear what that meant.
Once they were gone, Kitwana, who had carefully followed the whole scene, took her protégé's hand and led her to a grove where a baobab prevailed. They both sat on the tree roots.
"You like white men." Kitwana said suddenly and without preamble. The girl looked at him in dismay.
“What do you say? He's just a kid.”
"I do not mean the child, but the way you looked at the father and your reaction to their skin and hair. I have never seen you like this with the young people in the village who are always hanging around you.”
"I think you're making all this up from little evidence."
Without answering, the shaman extracted the necklace of varnished seeds that he used for his divinatory practices. Kinjia became tense because she believed in the predictive power of the device that nevertheless had never been used to shed light on aspects of her person.
The old man was a long time manipulating the accounts and paying particular attention to the way the beads fell. Finally he picked up the necklace and returned it to his backpack.
"Well?" Asked expectantly the girl.
Kitwana answered in a soft voice.
"You will marry a white man and have him at your mercy. But before and after that many things will happen that will put you on trial.”