By David Maillu
Published September 24, 2023
My heart picked up speed as my excitement intensified. The eastern sky had begun colouring the birth of that fateful morning. It was cold, pretty cold. Birds were retiring from their morning singing. I had been walking fast to beat the deadline time. But now my thighs frustrated the pace by starting a disturbing itch responding to the walking friction.
I was supposed to arrive at the home before sunrise, just before or when the bride was waking up. I wanted to be the first person to break her morning voice and smell her breath. My heart was pregnant with the blind love that, I was sure, was going to destroy her remaining resistance. There is nothing more important and exciting in the world than getting engaged to someone going to be your lifetime companion, with whom you’ll consummate the meaning of life.
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I had everything with which to surprise Wavinya. I was going to make her mine forever and I had the strength with which to bear the burden of her life. She was beautiful in body and soul. The only woman who killed me whenever I touched her… I halted the walk and took a stand to separate my itching thighs. So, this is the day, I felt the beat of my heart.
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The itch had acquired some kind of pain. It was the kind of itch that, if you tried to scratch, it would turn sour. I had been walking for more than an hour from the main road. Wavinya’s family lived up on the hill where there was no road and where, if anyone fell ill and had to be taken to the road for transport to a hospital, four men would be employed to carry the patient on the bed. That aid had also been given to women in difficult labour pain, where people feared for her life in childbirth…
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