Web hosting Custom Email SiteBuilder

MR. DEATH BECKONS
by Joseph Simiyu Wegesa
copyright, 1999

"Mr. Death beckons,"  old man, Musombi murmured.

"What did you say?"  His dear old lady, Nanguti asked, adding more wood to the fire.  The fresh fire cackled and hissed dispensing all fluid, from the recently cut twigs, in a steam.

"Oh, nothing."  Musombi scratched his bare, cracked foot and involuntarily kicked forward hitting his dear Nanguti in the shin.

"Ouch!" Nanguti cried in pain. "Will you stop jerking your legs.  You kick me in bed all night long and now you want to kick me during the day too?  You're becoming a nuisance in your old days."

"Mr. Death beckons," Musombi said.  "Soon I'll be gone then you'll have no one to nag."

"Oh, come on.  I'm only kidding," Nanguti said. "You're my old man and I love you very much.  Get your grandson, Wafula to remove those jiggers from your feet."

The jiggers ate into his toes and soles.  Most of the time they itched incessantly.  The rest of the time, they hurt like hell.  Especially after they had died and formed a puss-filled sore.

"Wafula doesn't want to remove them anymore,"  he scratched some more.

"He's a good boy.  He'll remove them.  Why, he removed some from my feet today."  Nanguti assured him.

"Shoosh!  Shoosh!  Cows are running through the freshly planted fields!  Shoosh!  Somebody get these cows out of the fields before they ruin the whole crop!"  Musombi suddenly shouted, staring wildly around and waving his arms in the air.

"There are no cows in the fields.  Calm down.  You're only imagining it.  You're right here in your house with your old lady."  Nanguti held him soothingly.  She was worried about him.  He had been having hallucinations lately.  She feared he would die soon.  That is what always happens to the elderly.  Once they start having hallucinations, their time is up.

"No cows?"  Musombi asked in a child-like voice.

"No cows,"  Nanguti replied caressing his cheek.

"Hold me like that with my head on your chest," he spoke softly. "When I was a child, the white men came with their machine guns and shot at everything in sight in our village.  People and animals were falling all over the place like flies.  Even  chicken could not escape bullets.  All our houses were burned down.  You took me in your arms, held me against your breast and ran to safety.  For days on end you could not find a thing to eat but you kept suckling me."

"That is very flattering, my dear old man.  Yes, very flattering indeed but it wasn't me who suckled you.  That was your mother.  I was not even born yet."

"You're right,"  Musombi raised his head as though in realization.  "It couldn't have been you, but I'm sure you could have done the same if you were my mother."

"Thank you."

Musombi stared out the wooden window that was held crack open by a pole.  Through the tree branches outside he could see the huge, red sun lazily sinking in the west like a balloon.

"The sun has done its job so now it goes to rest."  He thought out loud.

Birds began chirping noisily.  He could see them flapping wings between branches.  Each bird had its song.  With each song a story was told.  Stories of spouses abandoning one another, of children who left home, of loved ones who died.  Each song with its own story so that certain birds were associated with the mood of the story of their songs.

Wafula came in with food that his mother had prepared.  Ugali and Sukuma.  After the old man and Nanguti had washed their hands from a basin of warm water that Wafula had heated over the open fire, they ate in silence.  Afterwards, Wafula cleaned Musombi's feet in order to remove jiggers.

Jiggers start out smaller than fleas but when the females burrow under human skin, they form eggs and expand to a hundred times their original size.  They lay eggs one right after another  up to hundreds of them.  With a safety pin, Wafula punctured the skin around the jigger's head spreading it apart.  He then pulled out the intact jigger leaving a big, red hole in the toe.  He threw it in the fire.  Exploding eggs crackled like tiny machine guns going off.  Sometimes Nanguti squeezed them between thumb and index finger producing a plopping sound.

Later, after Wafula had left and the sun had gone down letting darkness descend upon the land, Musombi and Nanguti went to bed.  When he snuggled close, she gently pushed him away.  Old age, he thought, is laying next to your wife in bed and not doing much else.

He slept, disturbed by dreams of the dark figure who beckoned to him.

"Mr. Death beckons,"  Musombi murmured in his sleep.  He was terrified of Mr. Death.  He wanted to live.  He wanted to walk out in the warm sun right after a light rain and smell the damp earth as steam rose from the evaporating water into the warm air.  He wanted to be awakened early in the morning by the sounds of birds chirping and cocks crowing.  He wanted to make it with the young woman who lived nearby and waggled her behind on her way to the market.  Life was great.  Even nearing the nineties, he was not tired of it yet.  But Mr. Death beckoned and Musombi was afraid of him.

As days went by, Musombi grew weaker and weaker.  The hallucinations came more frequently.  Wafula, being out of school, spent more time with him.  He had never spent that much time with his grandfather before so this was his chance.

Sometimes, in his young foolish way, he would look at Musombi and wonder why people clung to a longer life.  To Wafula, Musombi was in a physical shape that was close to nothing but a bundle of lifeless bones.  His cheeks sucked in with cheekbones sticking out like grasshopper’s legs.  Bags of skin dropped below his chin.  His lower lip hang open letting saliva dribble as he spoke.  The eyes sank down his skull.  They appeared pale and lifeless, covered with a greyish film.

The little hair he still had was sparse and white.  The arms were as thin as sticks with drooping bags of what were once triceps.  The fingers were long, skeleton-like with dirty nails.  The legs were painfully thin with knee caps sticking out like door knobs.  The toes were disfigured from prolonged jigger infection.

Walking was a full time job for Musombi.  He would hold his cane before him, painfully pull himself to a crouching position then make tiny steps so laboured it was almost painful to watch.

Wafula was sitting outside under a shade reading and listening to music from a transistor radio when Musombi struggled out.  He wore a brown shirt that had once been white with unmatched buttons so that one tail was at his knee while the other was above his waist.  The pants were black and torn at the knees.  They were unbuttoned revealing his genitals.  The boy buttoned them up and straightened out the shirt.  Musombi had good clean clothes in his wooden box but refused to wear them insisting that he would only wear them on Sundays when he goes to church.

Musombi, with Wafula's help, sat under the tree's shade.  He went down groaning and complaining of aching bones.  Wafula realized that the Musombi was in constant pain.  Musombi wished he was as youthful Wafula.  He longed to walk briskly and even run.  He longed for an acheless body as strong and agile as the one he once had.  In his youth he had been muscular and athletic.  He now knew that youth was like a dream; you wake up one day and it is all gone.  Only a figment of a memory remains.  Life is a dilemma:  You want to live as long as you possibly can but then most of that time you are trapped in a lifeless body that can do no more than crawl around.  How many years does one live in a physically fit, disease-free body?  Forty?  Forty-five?  After that you enter the age of aches, pains and disease.  What a dilemma.

The woman, who was Musombi's dream girl, walked by on her way home from the market.

"Huh, huh,"  the Musombi grunted.  "Look at that.  Look at those boobs.  Look at her behind.  See how she wiggles it?   She knows I'm watching."

Wafula laughed lightly.  The woman, who was in her late thirties or early forties, was much too old for him to think of in an erotic manner.  She was too motherly.  He wondered if the Musombi could get it up, supposing his dream were realized.  But Wafula had heard stories about Musombi.  That he had been getting it on with another young woman.  So maybe he could get it up, and even use it.

"The old days were fine."  The Musombi said after the woman had long disappeared and gone from his mind.  "I remember when we were in Egypt working for pharaoh.  We worked hard everyday building pyramids for the kings.  But Moses came and said that the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob had spoken to him from a burning bush.  God had told him to tell pharaoh to let his people go.  Moses made a snake from a walking stick and turned water into blood.  He brought about hail stones and frogs.  When Death came and took pharaoh's son, we were let go

"Out of Egypt we were led by a white cloud by day and a red one by night.  When we reached the big sea, in close pursuit by pharaoh’s men on their horses, Moses waved his walking stick and the water parted leaving dry land in the middle on which we walked.  After we crossed, the water returned drowning pharaoh's men and horses.  We came to this land here.  The promised land.  The land of milk and honey.  The holy land given to us by God."

Wafula was amazed by Musombi's memory.  Here was a man who could not recall what had happened hours earlier yet he could recite passages from the Bible as though he had lived them.

A chameleon walked by.  Wafula had always been fascinated by chameleons.  For beginners there was the walk.  The hesitancy by which it moves one leg forward, moves it back, forward again, back again until it finally sets it down forward.  That slowness reminded the boy of the old man.  Then there was the colour change.  The boy watched it change from green to brown as it moved from grass to fresh earth.  But the eyes were what amazed the boy most.  They moved independently of each other so that the right eye could be facing the front while the left one faced back.  The chameleon must have a highly developed brain to figure out two different views at once.  In contrast to its slow moving speed was the lightening fast tongue which it uses to catch insects with.

As Wafula watched the chameleon, Musombi  rested in the shade dozing in and out while recalling his youth.  He remembered when he was seventeen and had to be circumcised in initiation into adulthood.  It had been a long, frightening initiation that began with practicing to ring bells.  The bells had slender iron cones that were clanged on metal bracelets worn on both wrists.  The clanging was achieved by flexing one's wrists.  Sometimes the bracelets bit into flesh drawing blood.  But pain was part of the initiation.  In fact pain, or rather its endurance, was the whole purpose of the initiation.

After months of practicing to ring the bells and dance to their beat, he had to go and call all his relatives telling them of the ceremony and when it would be held.  Sometimes he had to walk and jog up to thirty miles to reach some relatives.  All the while ringing those bells and blowing a whistle.  After he got there, women would taunt, slap and spit in his face.  He had to act as though nothing was happening to him.

Finally he went to his uncle's home where a bull was slaughtered for him.  Parts of its underbelly, including the testicles, were cut out and hung around his neck.  In some cases the meat could weigh over twenty-five pounds.  He walked home with that piece of meat around his neck and cow dung smeared all over his body while he rang those bells.  This was the eve of his circumcision.  The next day he would be a man.

When he got home, the heavy meat was removed from his neck only to be replaced by a piece of stomach from another cow.  More cow dung was smeared on his chest.  He went into the house and ate, despite the stench that he carried with him, he rested for a while before he got out to ring those bells for the last time in his life.   There was a large crowd of people who came to sing, shout obscenities, eat and drink.

They sang and lifted heavy wooden sticks especially carved out for the occasion.  Should he fear the initiation, they would use those sticks to beat him senseless.  Fearing meant the slightest movement like blinking an eye or twitching a muscle.  There would be people watching for any signs of fear.  Fearing also meant that the surgeons would leave him partially circumcised and return six to eight hours later when they would hold him down and finish the job.  That would now be worse because they would be cutting into an open wound.  It also meant shame in the entire community.  Those who fear the knife are throwaways, misfits.

By midnight, his eyes were bloodshot and so wide open he could not even blink.  His uncle, Lusweti came and stood before him.

"You’re not ready for circumcision, boy!" Lusweti shouted. "Look at you standing here like a little girl.  Do you think you’re ready for the knife?  Throw those bells away and put your shirt back on!"  He slapped him hard across the face.  Musombi did not even blink.  He had succumbed into a dazed state so that nothing mattered anymore.  He was ready to be cut.  He remained in that state until morning when he was led to a special place to the side of a river, five miles away.  There he removed his pants before his entire body was covered in clay.  A lump of clay was molded on top of his head with a blade of grass stuck in the middle.  Now that he had reached the point of no return, fearful thoughts crept into his mind.  What if something went wrong?   What if the surgeon slipped and made a mistake?  What if he hurried and cut wrong? A boy he knew had been circumcised a few days back.  Only the surgeon had been unqualified and cut half the boy's penis off.  He should not think of such matters at such a time.  The whole process was psychological.  He had to think positively or he could scare himself silly.

They began the journey back home.  About a quarter of a mile from home, the crowd sang the special song for the occasion.  A song so powerful it moved the stoniest of hearts.  A song so moving some people trembled violently they had to run over and touch him to be eased.  When he was close to home, in his nakedness, his penis shrunken and all the girls staring, they stopped singing.  His bells were taken away.  An unholy silence ensued.  He was quietly led to the designated place like a lamb to the slaughter.  This was it.  No turning back.  They were waiting for him.  Men with huge sticks.  Men with razor-sharp knives ready to cut him up.  And he wanted it too.  Yes, he wanted to be cut.

Lusweti  stood about four feet before him staring straight into his eyes unblinking.

"Keep your eyes right there!"  He yelled.  "They haven't done a thing yet.  When they circumcised me, " Lusweti went on. "they cut and cut until the sun went down.  They haven't started on you yet."  Meanwhile someone was butchering his penis.  Without anaesthesia, it felt like they were trying to cut the whole thing off with a blunt knife.  And it hurt.  The entire operation should last no longer than fifteen seconds.  The surgeon has an assistant. Once the patient is brought into the designated spot, the surgeon and his assistant rush over in crouched positions.  The assistant peels the foreskin back and pours fine dust on the glans.  The surgeon then pulls the foreskin back over the glans, pinches it and stretches it forward.  He then places the sharp blade over it and presses slightly.  The knife usually goes through the skin as though it were soft butter.  The assistant then holds the fatty tissue which the surgeon peels off the flesh with his knife like a child peeling a banana.  An expert surgeon can do it in less than six seconds.  A master can do it in three.  A master who can remove the foreskin and fatty tissue in one stroke can do it in two seconds flat.

"Keep your eyes right there," Lusweti repeated. "Nothing has happened yet."  By then they had already finished.  The surgeon blew his whistle and aunt Nekesa made a yodeling cry to signify a successful operation.  Musombi was relieved when some men searched for extra pieces of foreskin and found none.  It was over.  Songs of joy which went on for three hours were sang.  Gifts of all kinds were given to the boy and the song leader.  When Nekesa held Musombi by the waist to make him sit down, he refused until  he was offered a cow.

The operation had hurt but not as much as he had anticipated.  Pain was to come later.  Leaves from a special plant commonly known as Enguu were burned and ground into powder.  The powder was then placed on the wound.  That hurt beyond description.  Some boys screamed at the top of their voices.  Others laughed hysterically.  They had won the battle and were now allowed to.  Musombi managed to maintain silence even though he  could feel his skin crawl and the hairs on his head stand on end.  This was the true test of manhood.  Fortunately, the wound healed fast.  He was a man at last.

Musombi could remember all these events yet he could not recall what had happened that morning.  Time held no meaning to him.  The past and present all merged and got mixed up in his mind.  Mr. Death beckoned but Musombi feared him.  He wanted to live.

"Fire!"  Musombi suddenly screamed startling Wafula who was reading a James Hadley Chase  paperback.  He looked around but did not see any fire.
"Fire!  Oh, get branches and put it out before it burns up the granary.  Stop the fire!"  He struggled on the ground picking up anything before him and throwing them at his imaginary fire.  Wafula was scared.  What was he supposed to do?

"There's no fire," he assured him but Musombi did not pay attention.  He went on flapping his arms until he was exhausted.  Spent.  Wafula took him into the house and put him to bed where he slept peacefully.  Mr. Death did not beckon.

Nanguti woke him up at six in the evening when Wafula brought in supper.  The dear old lady said she was going to visit her children who lived about twenty miles away.  She would be gone for two weeks.  Would Wafula be willing to look after Musombi while she was gone?  He agreed.

Nanguti was a sturdy woman with remarkable strength.  She sometimes walked twenty or more miles to visit friends and relatives.  Though she was blind in one eye, she could find her way anywhere.

Custom dictated that she not be allowed to come in contact with her sons-in-law.  When in the same house, she would sit in a different room and the front door would always stay open.  When out in the open, the two had to be at least twelve feet apart.  The same applied to Musombi and his daughters-in-law.

On her way she met her son-in-law, who was married to her youngest daughter.  They met out on the road and he wanted to give her some money.  Since it was taboo to be in close quarters, he placed the money on the ground about six feet away from her then moved away and told her to pick it up.  Due to her partial blindness, she could not see it so he kept moving it to different spots and giving her instructions until she found it.

When Wafula heard about this, he found it all interesting and a little amusing.  So what if he just came close and handed it to her?  Nothing would happen.  But customs had to be adhered to.  Customs, not laws, are what kept the Wafula's  community together.  One had to respect one's elders - and keep away from in-laws of the opposite sex.

One day, the house was smelling funny so Wafula went out to check Musombi's bedroom.  He found cans of different sizes - about ten of them, all filled with urine.  The old man used cans instead of getting out of bed.  Wafula threw them out then removed some jiggers.  He was shocked when he examined Musombi and found that the jiggers had not only invaded his feet but also his legs, thighs, buttocks and back.  No wonder he was weak and in constant pain.  Wafula removed most of the jiggers.  It was amazing how many of them lived on him.

As the days dragged on, Musombi, now without his dear old lady to comfort him, and quickly losing strength due to malnutrition and loss of blood to the parasitic jiggers, began to rapidly deteriorate in health.  He could not move much now so Wafula had to carry him to wherever he wanted to go.  One time he found him laying beside his bed.  He had fallen off the bed and was unable to climb back.

Wafula was furious at the Musombi's children; Wafula's father, uncles and aunts.  They did not seem to care about their father.  Nobody visited him.  Nobody but Wafula knew how badly off Musombi was.  People did not believe him when he told them that the old man was seriously sick.

Musombi thought about his children too.  He had fourteen or was it fifteen, he could not remember.  But he had done the best he could for them.  That, he was certain of.  Had he not cared, fed and clothed them?  Had he not paid for their medicine when they were sick?  Had he not taken them to the best schools possible?  Had he not found suitable spouses for them?  Had he not always been there for them when they needed him?  Now where were they when he needed them most?  He wished they could come and talk to him.  If only to assure him that they were still around, that they still loved and cared for him.  To assure him that they appreciated what he had done for them all his life.  He wanted them to keep him company.

He did not want to be alone when Mr. Death came to claim him.  God, please, he did not want to be alone.  Why does one bear children anyway?  So they could keep him company.  He had never felt so lonely all his life.  Thank God for Wafula.  He was with him constantly.

Musombi could not walk to the pit latrine.  Even Wafula took him there, he could not hold himself up to use it on his own.  Wafula half-carried, half-dragged him to the shamba by the house.  He held him up and ignored the stench while he went about his business.  He did this daily.

One day, Wafula noticed a red patch on Musombi's hip.  Upon examination, he found that skin had peeled off both sides of Musombi's hips almost the size of Wafula’s palm.  It was open flesh.  Every time something touched, it hurt badly.   That complicated matters because Wafula feared that his patient could get infectious.

Nanguti returned with some of her children and grandchildren.  In two days, they would be celebrating the anniversary of one of her daughter's death.  Wafula could not understand why people needed to eat, drink and be merry on the anniversary of some loved one gone.  It did not make any sense.  Even worse, they all came to celebrate when they could not come to visit their sick father.

"Mr. Death beckons," Musombi told Nanguti. "I'm afraid of him."

"Shh.  Don't talk like that,"  she said.  "You're as strong as an ox.  You're as brave as a lion.  You're my hero."

"Mr. Death beckons," he murmured.

Nanguti knew that he would soon be gone.  People began to realize the Musombi's serious condition.  He could not talk anymore.  He just lay there drifting in and out of consciousness.

"He is a holy man,"  Nanguti told people.  "When he dies, he will go straight to heaven.  Like my sister.  After we buried her, and she was a pure soul, on the third day a huge, white figure rose from her grave and ascended to the heavens.  It was a holy sight to behold."

To Musombi, everything was in a haze.  Voices came and went in waves.  He could not see anything except for Mr. Death who was just a dark shadow.  He was coming closer each hour.  And he beckoned, a sly grin on his shadowy face.  He seemed to be saying, 'I've got you now old man.  You can't even get back to the other side anymore.'  The old man tried to get back to the other side, to his dear old lady, to his children, to Wafula.  Where was Wafula?  All he heard were mumbles.  All he saw were vague shapes.  Where was his brother Wanjala?  He wanted to see him so much.

Wanjala came to him the following day.  And, for a second or so, he saw through the haze.  Just one precious second.  His brother was indeed here with him.  The haze returned but he could hear his brother calling him.

Musombi tried to answer but he could not find his voice.  His mouth was dry and clamped shut.  If only he could find his voice so he could tell him how he loved him and how he appreciated all those years they spent together.  He had never told him that.  He wanted to do it now but where was his voice?  He recalled the times they went out to the fields to take care of  cattle.  How they watched all the bull fights.  He recalled when they used to dare each other as to who could climb highest on the trees.  How they got scratches from thorns while picking berries. He wanted to share all those memories with him but he could not find his voice.  And now he could not even see his brother's shape in the mist.

Suddenly, the mist cleared and Musombi was a little boy following his brother through green pastures.  The grass was so green, the sun so bright.  The air was fresher than he had ever breathed any other time.

"Come on," Wanjala called out to him.  "We'll be late.  You know what Dad will do if we don't get home on time."

Wanjala was running fast, his bare, small legs pumping like pistons.  Musombi felt serene.  He just wanted to fall in the grass and roll about in joy.  He ran after his brother feeling the soft grass on the soles of his feet and breathing in deeply.  Everything was perfect.  It would always be perfect forever.  Perfect.

   The lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
   He leadeth me through green pastures...
   And even though I walk through the shadows
   of the valley of death, I shall not fear
   for He is by my side.
                                                               Psalms 23.

In loving memory of Daniel Sapiri Namwetako.

back