MANTALK: Terror in the night

Biko recalls his experience with what could have been a night-runner during a recent visit to the village. PHOTO| FILE| NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Anyway, last week my siblings and I were in shags for a funeral. The girls – my sisters – slept in my father’s house.
  • Two of my brothers shared one simba, while I slept in my own simba. I hardly ever go back to the village because the ghost of my departed mother lives there, and so my simba isn’t in the prime shape it used to be.
  • It remains unused, gathering dust and cobwebs.

In my culture, when you turn into a man you have to build a small house in your father’s compound. The first son builds his on the right side of the compound near the gate, the second son on the left side, the third son to the right and so on. These houses are called simba. I don’t know the significance of this culture but I suspect that the boys were to be the first line of defense should outsiders with ill intentions decide to pay the boma a visit. The houses were where the lions lived. I also think that the simbas were meant to give the young men privacy as they went about, uhm, “wooing” young village women. You didn’t want your mother overhearing a shrill female voice giggling in the dead of the night as you, the amorous one, touched her in places your deacons and deaconesses would not have approved.

Anyway, last week my siblings and I were in shags for a funeral. The girls – my sisters – slept in my father’s house. Two of my brothers shared one simba, while I slept in my own simba. I hardly ever go back to the village because the ghost of my departed mother lives there, and so my simba isn’t in the prime shape it used to be. It remains unused, gathering dust and cobwebs. Bats hold court there. There is hardly anything in the two-roomed house; just an aged 3-by-6 bed, a bare mattress, a chair for hanging my clothes on and two battered sofas in the living room. My curtains are the colour of solitude. It’s a ghost house!

PITCH BLACK NIGHTS

Now, for some reason I don’t understand, nights in my village are pitch black, so black you can’t see your own hand held up in front of your face. Last Sunday, after prayers by the Old Man (they all find the church with old age), I made my way to my simba in the darkness, with the aid of the torch on my phone, then slipped into bed under the old mosquito net. Soon, I blacked out with an open copy of the The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins on my Kindle.

At some point in the deep of the dark night I was jolted awake. There was a sound of something or someone tapping the corrugated roof! It couldn’t have been a bird, surely; what kind of a bird perched on the roof at this time of the night? An owl? Never seen one in my village. Then I heard something rub itself against the living room wall, like a bulky animal scratching its back. I lay still in bed, staring into the darkness above, trying to place the sound. My heart was starting to gallop. My village is in a county that is known to be the headquarters of night-runners. (Allegedly, they hold meetings and keep minutes). Was this the night a night-runner finally visited me? Would he hurl himself at my door and stumble into my simba stark naked with a tongue spitting fire, his taut buttocks all white as chalk? Would I scream and embarrass myself in front of my younger brothers and sisters? What if the scream came out shrilly like a girl’s? Because surely, I can’t recall the last time I screamed and a good scream takes practice.

The noise persisted, a scratchy sound against my wall followed by slow moans, like someone or something breathing through its blocked nose. My heart was now beating faster – the sound of cowardice. Then it occurred to me that if I cleared my throat loudly, whoever was outside might run away ... or would that encourage them now that they had an audience? What if I decided to step outside, what’s the worst they could do to me? What happens when you look a night-runner in the eye?And what happened if they touched you? Would you grow hair on your hands and all over your back? Would Sam, my barber, agree to shave hair off my back? How much would he charge for that, anyway?

Suddenly there was a thud as a heavy mass leaned on my wall. I caught my breath. I didn’t have any weapon in the house, expect my sandals. I don’t suppose you would wave a sandal in a night-runner’s face to send him on his way. A sandal isn’t a deterrent, unless you are using it against a petulant three-year-old.

So I clicked loudly (like they do in Nigerian movies) and said loudly in a voice I wanted to believe didn’t betray my waning courage: “Just monkey around out there, but when I come out of this bed you will wish you had stayed in your own bed!”

It doesn’t sound as menacing in English, but I promise you that in my mother tongue it sounded real tough and intimidating. I sounded like I was mighty irritated and if I walked out of that house I would kick some major night-runner ass. That is manhood, right? Fearlessness. I deserved my place on that right hand side of the Old Man’s boma. I wasn’t going to scream in a girlie voice. The night-runner was going to have to recruit me before I screamed.

Silence settled over the darkness after my loud announcement. Nothing stirred ... well, except the loud sound of my heart pounding in my ears. So I slept. At dawn I woke up early to go take a leak in the thicket behind my simba (yeah, bite me) and then I went round to the source of the terrifying sound of the previous night and there lay a wide-eyed brown calf, probably one that had wandered from the cattle-shed. Or maybe it was a gift from the night-runner for my bravery (read, for not screaming), I thought to myself with a smile.