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CHAPTER TWO – MBOKU’S JOURNEY STARTS

  My name is Mboku. My story begins when I was young; at the time I was due to become a man. My father taught me many things and had prepared me well for the ritual I would have to endure that would end my boyhood years. When we said our farewells before I left the village he was not to know the path my life was to take. Nothing he had done could have readied me for what was to come.

  I remember the Great Cross shone brightly above, although the moon had long set so the path was barely lit. No matter, I could have navigated my way along this track blindfold. I had taken it so many times before as it lead to the scrubby flat land where I grazed my goats. I held my place in the line. All around the same age as me, we boys were young and fit, but terrified of what was to come, not that any of us showed it. I made jokes with the others as young boys do, about the size of our umthondos, our strength and of course ntombazane. That was one thing that I was so looking forward to after the coming trials. Back then I had no idea that those rewards were so far away. Then, I thought in a few days girls would look at me differently. They would see me as a man and not a boy anymore. Malinka, then my best friend, had told me of the glories of being with a girl. I didn’t believe he had actually done it though, or even really knew what he was talking about. Us boys had all dreamed of what it would be like and talked endlessly about the first time, about the softness of a girl’s skin, what her breasts would feel like and what it would feel like to put our assegais into the basket at last.

  Underlying the jokes and false bravado though, there was fear. Sweat trickled down my brow, despite the coolness of the night. I remember my hand shook as I reached up to brush away an overhanging branch. My legs were jelly and my stomach churned over and over as if a snake had got in there and was coiling and uncoiling in frantic attempts to escape. I broke wind loudly and the tension in all the boys dissolved for a few seconds into loud and raucous laughter. The hilarity stopped as soon as it had began though as monsters stepped from the bush at the side of the path. They had faces from hell on shoulders of great hairy animals, the like of which I had never seen. I knew these were men dressed to scare and test us but right then the knowledge didn’t mean a thing. Spears were stabbed at us and we were instantly surrounded. Some of the boys fell to the ground in terror and one boy started to cry, screaming for his mother. There was no laughing now. We all wanted our mothers and we all wanted to go home or anywhere as far from there as possible.

  The monsters gestured at us to leave the path; some moved in front of our line and others behind. They started to run through the bush faster and faster, leaves and branches tearing at us as we went, cutting our skin and bruising our faces. We couldn’t stop as the monsters formed a wall all around us. We tripped on roots and fell, instantly dragged to our feet by one of our tormentors and pushed ever onward. I had lost my bearings now; tears from pain, fear, and pure exhaustion blinded me. I tripped and my ankle immediately felt as if it had been beaten with a huge stick. I wanted to just lie there and die. All thoughts of soft breasts had long since fled my mind; I just wanted to stop. My arm was nearly wrenched from its socket as I was set on my way again; my ankle became the full focus of this nightmare as the pain increased with every step.

  It seemed like many hours, but I think in reality was less than half an hour before we eventually came to a halt in a clearing deep in the thick bush. I didn’t recognise this place at all, but shivered with a superstitious dread as our captors seemed to simply vanish into thin air. There was silence amongst the little group as we gasped and moaned, trying to recover from the ordeal. No one sat or lay down though. All remained standing as if by command, despite there being no one there to give any such instruction. A sudden chanting and rustling came from the deepest and darkest part of the bush to one side of our group and we stiffened and stood straight, all facing the source of the disturbance. A glow seemed to emanate from the tree line and then the glow solidified into the form of a face, although none the like of which I had seen before. It was at once as old as the ancient baobab trees on the plains, but with the energy of the leopard waiting to pounce. Its features were as beautiful as the young girls’ in the village, but as ugly as a warthog.

  I was fascinated and repulsed at the same time as I followed the beckoning finger of the witchdoctor into the shadows.