landmines and missiles- Battlefield

BATTLE FIELD

The day began just like any other day. The crowing of the chief cockerel in the compound, the chirping the early birds and the sun streaking through the slit in my ‘bedroom’ curtain like a shy boy peeping at a girl bathing in a communal bathroom. Funny that I should think of communal bathrooms and the peeping tom habit, for it was a game at which I was most adept. I remember how as young boys we would create chinks in the walls of the communal bathrooms in our residential plot. Now, the game was to wait until the young girls whose shy breasts had just started pressing against the otherwise flawless contours of their chests went to have their evening bath. A message would quickly be passed to the boys and within a very short time, a gang of ‘watchers’ would assemble to bask in the glory of God’s wonders. However this is a story for another day

I woke up lazily as I was wont. Sat on the bed and started conjuring up a thousand reasons why  I should not wake up. Eyes half closed, I stood up and shuffled my sleepy feet towards the bathroom letting out one huge yawn after another.  I absent mindedly opened my zipper and tried to pee as I scratched my stubble. Unfortunately the peeing exercise was always a battle for me every morning. Dear john had a way of waking up every day and assuming a flag post position even before my brain had registered its passwords. It always took a lot of coaxing, cajoling and a million promises to John that I would make sure that, even if it killed me, I would ensure that I gifted him the night of his dreams that night. This, somehow always worked and  Dear John would release his stranglehold, a sigh of relief would sweep across the ‘apartment’, neighbors would  be showered with the peace of my relief and then a flash flood of salty water would gush out of the hose  with the violence of the ‘Budalangi floods.’

I prepared quickly and in a space of fifteen minutes I had walked out of the house. I had hardly closed the door when the ever present pungent, stifling, smothering and ever present stifling stink of the nearby dumpsite held me in its arms, embraced me like its long lost lover and kissed my nose and lips with relish and wild abandon. I had lived in this dump of a place for so long that I hardly ever noticed the stench. No matter how strong the reek was, I had got used to it and our relationship was just like a breaking marriage.  The couple would share a house and some lucky or fortunate days a bed but the romance would always be cold and distant only covered in the icing of past glory when pink butterflies fluttered as the embers of youthful romance razed on.

I was walking in my usual mechanical robotic manner, mulling over very serious matters of development like how to reduce the number of flying toilets in the neighborhood or perhaps how to develop a reliable canal –furrow irrigation scheme using the slimy, black stinky sewage containing a very healthy concoction of rotting foetus, human seed, urine, amniotic fluid and a healthy dose of diarrhea to farm award winning sukuma wiki (kales). A very inspired way of ensuring that our country was food secure. These were lofty thoughts that could be pegged as the pillars of an award winning campaign manifesto. It would be a manifesto that would celebrate slum life and endeavor to craft policies that ensured that slums multiplied tenfold.

I was still immersed in these thoughts when a blood curdling yell split the air. I assumed the normal numb state that had become an automatic reaction to such an occurrence. I walked on, concentrating of matters more serious than those heart breaking yelps of distress. I had more scary matters at hand like, how to avoid stepping on a paper full of fresh gushy human excrement. I had to skip from one spot to another while keeping my eyes peeled for any life threatening missile in form of a multicolored rocket launched from an open air battle field…sorry….er.. open  air toilet.

I was in the  process of executing a lifesaving manoeuvre , avoiding an air borne missile (flying toilet) and side stepping a landmine (those stinky bombs from human rectums) when a man clad in nothing but God’s glory appeared. Behind him was a platoon of panga wielding irate men baying for his blood. The man kept running and yelling while miraculously avoiding stepping on the slimy landmines. At this point I noticed something terribly amiss. As he ran, he grew continuously weaker as a trickle of blood gushed out of someplace between his thighs. As he drew closer and wheezed past me, I noticed that, in his hand, he held tightly, like a relay baton a huge chunk of his member. I looked at him and half smiled-half pitied him as I walked on avoiding more flying missiles and landmines.

Later on in the evening, I heard that the bloke had been caught red handed trying to rape a prostitute. As I mulled over the irony of the situation, terribly hurt and confused over who to pity most, the prostitute who was ravished or the man who lost his member, I knew deep down in my heart of hearts that, the experience left a permanent scar in my heart.

S.K. Kyenze

07/10/2016