Prime
The circumcisers’ spirit falls upon me
Prof Timothy Wangusa
What you need to know:
- I had indeed heard that Kisyaŋani Wabuyi my mother’s father, deceased before I was born, was famed to have been a deft circumciser of speed and precision, and that his nephew Uncle Yakobo Munaŋanda, my mother’s elder first cousin, was a contemporary model circumciser.
I had just turned 12 in 1954 – and thus on the threshold of teenage – when the spirit of the circumcisers’ craft suddenly took possession of me! By mid morning on that singular day, my initiator had fully inducted me into the Masaabaland profession of using the mystical knife to instantly convert boys into men. And all this was without any prior warning or hint as to what dramatically awaited me that unforgettable day.
Clearly, this spirit of the knife had no respect for my being a modern schoolboy currently reading books and learning modern things in P5, with just one more year to the end of Primary School and possible acquisition of the coveted Primary Leaving Certificate.
Neither was it deterred by the fact that only two years back, when I was in P3, I had become a child of the Cross – in an act of abrupt baptism, followed by instant supernatural dispelling of my excruciating cerebral malaria together with its nightmarish hallucinations.
That day the most exciting and greatest event of the year was going to take place in my father’s compound at sunrise– and all of a sudden I had to miss it! Yes, my two immediately older brothers were going to be cut into men at sunrise; and in ecstatic anticipation of this, my age-mate brother and son of our mother the older and I had woken up with the singing birds to await the spectacular event. But, as if struck by lightning out of a cloudless sky– I caught a fever within a twinkling and went limp in every limb!
It was my mother who immediately noticed there was something seriously the matter with me, and looked concerned but not worried. So after uncle Yakobo Munaŋanda was done with circumcising my brother Musyambo, our mother the older’s son (since Uncle could not circumcise his nephew, Welyangaba, my elder brother and also son of our same mother the younger), he came into the house to where I was lying on the floor on a mat woven out of dry banana-leaf ribs. After I sat up on a foldable wooden musesa chair, he diagnosed me as having a painless but weakening fever, which he attributed to the spirit of circumcision!
Then placing his circumcision knife into my right hand, he intoned some enchanted words of prayer for me. Next, he looked straight into my eyes and made a startling announcement. “The spirit of circumcisers,” he declaimed, “which inhabits your mother’s clan, has today taken possession of you. It is the spirit of Kisyaŋani Wabuyi your grandfather and my father’s brother.” Uncle Yakobo could see I was agape with consternation and confusion.
I had indeed heard that Kisyaŋani Wabuyi my mother’s father, deceased before I was born, was famed to have been a deft circumciser of speed and precision, and that his nephew Uncle Yakobo Munaŋanda, my mother’s elder first cousin, was a contemporary model circumciser.
“The knife that is in your hands,” he went on, “now sets you apart and designates you a circumciser of boys into men. I declare that you grow up to take up this calling.”
With that, he exited the house to go running to the next homestead that had a candidate for the knife. And no sooner had he left than I started feeling strength coming back to my joints and muscles. My painless but weakening condition was gone!
It was the second time I was experiencing supernatural healing in a minimum of time – and being left in a frame of wonderment and awareness of being spiritually and culturally beckoned in the direction of the source of the healing.
Aged only 12 at the time, I was not yet able to conjecture if my future lay with the profession of rain-dispersing, or the circumciser’s craft, or even perhaps with the cult of initiating learners into the world of books.
Prof Wangusa is a poet and novelist.
