How To Kill With Flaccid Breasts.

Killing with flaccid breasts you ask? Yes, I mean exactly that, what you just read. It’s ridiculous, that I agree, but not to everyone. At least not with my tribe. I have heard this since I was old enough to  make sense out the the words that reached my ears. How true this assertion was I didn’t know, until few weeks ago. 

There are numerous taboos embedded within my tribe that seem control how people relate with one another. I remember when we were young, we were always warned not to look at female kids while they are passing urine. Let me make it clear to you that we never did look at them with ill intent, but mostly it was out of curiosity. We had a pipe with which urine jetted out, but they didn’t and our young minds found that fascinating, very fascinating.  But we had to stop, as we didn’t want mother lose her breast. We were also warned against crying or wailing at night, as evil spirits would pick up our voices and we would loose the ability to talk. 

In adulthood, existed more serious taboos, that lead to death. If someone, out of anger showed you his or her butt hole, you were done for. The only remedy is to whip that person’s butt instantly or show them yours too. Hahaha. Crazy, huh? Another bizarre incident is when a wife hits her husband with her panty, food or cooking stick ,this means death unless special intervention by elders were done immediately. How true this beliefs are, I can’t tell. Woe unto you if an irritated woman unleashed the the curse of breasts on you, by undressing and slapping them, or even her thighs. Death visited you immediately. It is this last one that I was set to prove after I witnessed it in play, a few weeks ago. 

It’s around 10:00am, and the market is just warming up for the day. It’s a fair weather and most people are busy setting up there wares of trade, so the market is relatively calm and quiet. The eerie silence is disrupted by Otieno, preaching at the top his voice. He stops it abruptly, just as he had began, and the serenity is restored. Now, Otieno is just the market lunat, the only twist is that he preaches the word of God. Wasonga, another of Otieno’s kind , runs and prances, and leaps across the market. He makes a sudden halt, then starts dancing to some imaginary tunes . These are normal occurrences that rarely draws peoples’ attention. 

I’m drawn to my work when I here someone wailing, a woman’s voice. It’s a mix of screams and words that at first are inaudible. The voice gets closer and the words are getting clearer. A look at the marketers and I realize their attention is trained to the source of the noice. 

‘Atieno, you have destroyed my house! ‘ the voice screams. ‘I’ve been quiet for so long! ‘

Finally, the source of the voice comes into view. A woman, noticably around 60 years of age, medium height and dark in complexion. She had no blouse or bra on, just her dark trunk with two loose pricariously hanging socks-like breasts, flapping like elephant ears on her chest. I stepped out of my shop and my eyes followed her to where she was headed. Then she stopped right in front of her, Atieno. Atieno is a maandazi vendor. She’s somewhere in her 30’s. She’s blessed herself with a light skin, thanks to the cheap bleaching lotions sold in every salon and beauty shop. She must have been accustomed to this kind of attacks from other women, because all this time she remained calm, handling her maandazis. Or it must be she was waiting for the old woman to dare touch her, she must have been confident the woman was no match. 
It is this calmness that irritated this woman more, she jumped slapping her grotesque breasts, unleashing curses, insults and threats at the sametime. I feared for Atieno. She was going to die, if the beliefs were true. Seeing that Atieno wasn’t shaken, she dared to undress and curse her with her womanhood. As she began lifting up her skirt, some two women rushed in to restrain her, offering a shawl to cover herself. They walked her away, calming her down and trying to keep the shawl in place. She had totally lost it, she was fighting for her husband. 

It’s almost a month since that last incident, and I have been watching Atieno closely, monitoring any change in body weight or business falling, but nothing. She seems to have won the battle. The other woman lost her dignity. The woman was justified in her course, but it was misguided by belief that she could cause someone’s death by embarrassing herself. Maybe there was another way of handling the whole issue without causing unnecessary loss of dignity on her part.