Kepsteno Rotwo
By Julie Wheeler
Copyright Julie Wheeler
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Table of Contents
Kepsteno Rotwo
Author’s note
Kepsteno Rotwo (Abandon the Knife)
“Things are changing here,” my wife had said this morning, about nothing in particular. She leaves me uneasy and even afraid. She has spoken of what she calls, ‘the unstoppable momentum of change’, a great deal recently. I don’t want Pokot people to change. Survival is hard here, it always has been. We must remain strong, adhering to the ways the ancestors have taught us means life will continue to survive.
I push aside the curtain to my home, built using generations of knowledge the same way my father and grandfather and those before built theirs. We use mud, dung and straw. The sun I have always known comforts me in hot, all encompassing, embrace. It is seasonally at its peak now, no rain has quenched for some time. For a moment I rub the dry leaves, on the bush beside my abode, between thumb and forefinger. They crumble to dust. Sweat forms on the soles of my feet, gathering against the leather soles of my open shoes.
My cattle are gently lowing behind my home. My family have always been ‘cow people’. Even though two died last week due to the drought, I still have more cows than anyone in this village. They are a good herd and supply plenty of milk for us. I swapped one yesterday for a new table with six chairs! Plus a sack of maize and some pumpkin leaves. We shall not only eat well in the forthcoming weeks but also from upon sturdy metal furniture, only one of the chairs is plastic.
I see my father sitting in the shade of a brittle ziziphus tree. He shields his eyes but still squints as he surveys me across several yards of parched, brown earth. He jerks his head to summon me over. As I join him no breeze offers respite from the vest that begins to cling, nor lifts the frayed threads that dangle from my shorts. Father shares beer and news. He has found a marriage for my daughter. Thomas, he informs me, is prepared to offer a dowry of six cows for Matilda.
“Is she ready for marriage?” He asks.
“Yes, yes you know she is fourteen,” I say evasively.
“No!” He is impatient, “Is she ready?” Of course he is asking me whether she has been circumcised. The cutting season has begun. I could hear the chanting early this morning as the ceremony for several girls took place. One disgraced her family by screaming, the girls must not show pain either by noise or grimace. I wonder if any man will take her now she is branded a coward.
“Janet said this morning, ‘things are changing’, I’m sure she meant for Matilda,” I placate the old man. The knot of anxiety I feel does not complement the words I use but I fear telling him that we face an uncertain future. I gulp a mouthful of beer. The delicious nectar fleetingly eases the dry dustiness of my throat.
“Good,” Father says, “Because I already have three of the cows for you here now.”
Janet tells me this evening, as we eat at the new table, that two of the girls who were due at the ceremony this morning killed themselves rather than endure being cut. I am sorrowful for their fathers but ponder the improved chances of the screamer finding marriage. It is surely not as cowardly as suicide. My musings are halted as the words I’ve sensed and dreaded rip apart the air about my ears.
“Matilda is refusing to be cut,” says Janet. I grip the side of my bowl, hard. The blood rushes noisily to my head and settles into a rhythmic pulse in my ears and neck and it feels as though an angry swarm of bees’ torments the inside of my stomach. I quietly, firmly demand to know how, without a ceremony, can she leave girlhood and be recognised as a woman? How will she prove her ability to survive life and motherhood without enduring her cutting with dignified silence? Who on earth will marry an uncut girl? I look at my wife in her thick, check dress buttoned to the neck. She has paused in her eating, her large hand no longer travelling to her mouth. She waves a couple of flies away from her perspiring brow.
“Matilda doesn’t want marriage, she wants an education. She wants to be a doctor.”
“A girl, go to school?” I am stunned. “But we need her dowry to pay for her brothers’ education! If she doesn’t get cut she deprives this family of wealth. I already have half the dowry! We are committed. I won’t tell my father this nonsense.”
“I will. I offer no commitment.” Janet is firm. She goes on to tell me about her suffering caused, she says, by cutting. A local self-help group headed by some midwife want to send someone to talk to me about Matilda’s future and the risks of cutting. I get up and stride about the room, shaking my head, trying to grasp a thought that makes sense. I’m so confused; unable to believe what is happening. I will be a laughing stock, a wealthy man who cannot control his women. I will be excluded from enjoying the beers I was due to receive from potential groom, Thomas, along with all the other fathers. My temper flares again.
“If she disgraces this family she is banished and no daughter of mine!” I yell down into Janet’s face, we are nearly nose to nose and she stares defiant and unblinking up into my eyes, “and I divorce you,” I finally whisper. The gloom of the room seems to make her eyeballs glow. I shudder at the brief thought of her wielding strange feminine power, using witch-like abilities. I vigorously swish the curtain as I storm from my abode into the warm evening air.
I sit against the ziziphus tree and survey my world. As the fiery orange sun fades with delicate ripples it turns my home into a silhouette. I am contemplating our customs. They have been followed long before this tree even. They must be hundreds of years old. Who knows? Forever? They are the rites of passage we have all walked through; unquestioningly. I remember Matilda as a baby, I wept with joy to be blessed with such a beautiful flower. Unlike many Pokot fathers I did not see a girl-child as a burden but a blessing. She never strayed far from my side when she learnt to walk, always smiling, rarely crying. Dear hardworking Matilda, I think. I am so afraid of you denying the ancestors. I slowly rotate my fingertips against my temples and wonder where Matilda’s path will lead. I cannot allow my wife to turn Matilda against me with pipe dreams of becoming a doctor! We need cows and security. Eventually I realise I am sitting in the dark, my face damp with tears. Rustling sounds of the nocturnal suddenly sound worryingly close.
Early morning, even before the boys have left for school, Janet sets off on the long walk to fetch water. As she gathers the required containers her movements are hurried, her sizeable, usually capable, hands clumsy. She is silent with me, and I with her. It is so far to the water I know I’ll not see her again until the afternoon. I know as a man I am her ruler but I secretly fear her ability to show me I am lesser than her. Drawing back the curtain to watch Janet’s departing figure, I notice Matilda’s grinding stone bereft of her. I remember her Grandmother Nancy using it. Nancy lives the other side of the village now, in the mountainous territory.
Why is Matilda not grinding flour today? I ponder. I step back from the doorway and am about to drop the curtain when a bird unexpectedly swoops inside! Startled, I jump back from the cloth inadvertently trapping the confused creature within. It flaps around my head in a complete panic. The wings make a soft clapping sound and cause a tiny breeze about my face. It is one of those blue-headed birds that eat bees. I have a strong desire to gaze upon its beauty before I release it. It is so blue, gleaming, small yet magnificent. I want to hold it, examine it, momentarily possess, it. It settles, perching on one of the chairs. The iridescent feathers on its neck intermittently catch the light as its glance darts frantically around the room. I
am so close I can see it blinking. Slowly I outstretch my arms now yearning to hold the bird in my hands. The action reinvigorates the frenzied flapping. It is too scared. I give up my desire and swish aside the cloth. Light and heat beam in. The blue-headed bee-eater finds its way out with ease and clarity of judgement.
I venture outside, flies land on my face immediately. I flap them away, irritated. A woman is approaching, coming nearer and nearer with steady footfall on the uneven terrain. Despite the heat she radiates cool in a white headscarf and flowing pale-green dress. Her white sandals offer sharp relief against the dark skin of her small feet. Once she has locked my gaze, she doesn’t look away.
“Felix?”
I nod.
“I’m Gertrude. I’m from the Pokot self-help group. Can we talk inside?” Again I nod. We enter my abode. Even inside there are so many flies to be batted away. Gertrude takes it upon herself to pull up a chair, positioning it across the doorway. She sits, legs crossed, one hand placed on top of the other.
“Your wife gave Matilda to us before dawn. We provided transport to move her to her grandmother’s. She’s so frightened. She won’t return while threatened with mutilation,” she spoke distinctly yet quietly. The familiar throbbing pressure builds within my head until spots dance before my eyes.
“Mutilation? You call my ancestors, mutilated? You make my wife disobey me? You would steal the family of the wealthiest man in the village?” I kick a chair towards her; it hits the wall to her right. Her move to the left is barely perceptible. I pace the room with all the energy of a charging elephant and rant at her. I speak of the position of honour my family holds, tell her she is too late, I have half a dowry now and I will not humiliate my father. I want my beers with the other fathers. I question her right to challenge the elders.
“I am a midwife and when a mutilated girl is in labour – her grave is open.” Her words are quiet, her demeanour unchanging.
“My wife has borne four children,” I reply stubbornly.
“There are many menstrual and gynaecological prob...”
“I don’t know these things!” I interrupt with a wave of my hand. I resume my pacing again.
“If at the cutting ceremony just one girl has HIV that same knife will infect them all. Some girls bleed to death, some die simply because the pain is too great.” Gertrude remains composed but a line of moisture has gathered along her lower eyelid. I close my eyes and rub them with my palms. I am shocked as an image of Matilda reveals itself to my inner vision – she is lying dead in a sea of blood, flies all around, giant babies tearing out from her. I gasp and open my eyes.
“Give the dowry back,” she implores, “treat your girls and boys equally, cows can die, an education can be milked forever. Must Matilda grind stones like her forebears? This village is harsh, desolate and backward. Matilda is young.” She finishes. My eyes and head feel heavy. I stand up the overturned chair and sit on it. Gertrude squats beside me,
“Do not allow Matilda to be buried with all the sorrows of her female ancestors,” she whispers.
So my father disowned me. I allowed Matilda to attend an alternative, knife-free, ceremony to mark the transition from girl to woman. Nearly two-hundred girls took part. They sang songs and danced, made solemn speeches about embracing responsibility and education, not marriage. They waved banners emblazoned with the caption ‘Kepsteno Rotwo’. Well at least that’s what my wife told me. I was invited but I did not attend, I simply sat by the ziziphus tree and remembered the day I saw my sister lying dead after giving birth to my first nephew and wondered; had she not been cut would she be here today?
Author’s note
I wrote this story after watching this video simply to help spread the word of the plight of these poor young women. Please help to increase awareness. Many thanks for taking the time to read this.