Village Fights: Back to my village, Chepyoset, a village surrounded by beautiful hills. To her South-East are the pebbly Abosi and Kimananga hills, to her west is Mugenyi overlapping part of the smooth-looking Kimurgoi hill and adjacent to Mugenyi hill, on the right-side is the sloppy Meregito hill stretching all the way from Njipiship to Olchobosei shopping centre breaking away with Kimananga at a Mara River tributary. On the left side of Mugenyi is Lakwenyi hill and Kap-Tamason, another smooth hill stands defiantly to the south with her foot overlapped by the lowly Ndamama hill. To the north, Emurua Dikirr stretched lowly from Chemamit to Esoit Naibor at the outskirt of Masai Mara like a mini-escarpment. This is the village where ngetiik-uncircumcised boys, fights were rampant a couple of decades ago. Now, Geoffrey my childhood best friend was the first born in their family. His mother Juliana and my mother were great friends too, they did moriik-a merry go round for weeding maize, along with other village women. This created the best ambience for our friendship to drive well. Personally, I was known for winning almost all the village ‘ngétiik fights.’ On the contrary, my best friend Geopiri-this is how we called him, never won any fight, not even a simple friendly match between him and Chero-a frail village girl. One day I thought of imbibing his spirit by having him fight with a village girl, Chero. I was their referee but those days fight-referees were allowed to be partial, they had their preferred choice. The role of a referee in these village fights was to bring two parties with no prior intentions of fighting and asked them if they can weigh their might. They if they consented, you simply picked a leave and put it at the back of a stretched arm of one of the competitor and ask the other to wipe it away if he or she is brave enough. The result was a deafening slap and the fight would ensue. We would cheer our desired competitor the way we did to our bulls when fighting. In this particular one, I had placed uswet leaf on Cheros hand and asked Geopiri to wipe it away. My companions gave him courage by highlighting his village achievements: ”Geopiri, show her that you are the proud owner of seventeen bird-skulls: three segetet, two chepchubo, four masheleltet, three kipkositonik, two tete and three sororik.” Chenune told him. ”Show her that you killed your mother’s hen and ate it secretly.” Kansola added laughing. It seemed to work-or so I thought, Geopiri, swayed this way and that way while going round Chero then he charged and slapped the leave. Consequently, Chero swung swiftly and caught hold of his shirt bringing him down; she opened her mouth and in no time she sunk her teeth on Geopiris back while punching him all over. Geopiri tried to disengage himself making his opponent to sink her teeth farther. When all avenues to free himself were exhausted, the resultant reaction was a deafening cry by Geopiri: Waaaahi! Waaaahi! Tell her there are no back-bites I went and disentangled them. Geopiri got freed and took to his heel. We later saw him him collecting morongok-some medicinal herbs for massaging non-open injuries, perhaps to cool down the punches he got at the fight. Now, Geopiri is a respected lawyer in the city commanding respect in all fronts and so the Scottish saying goes: A timid or cowardly person may be raised against the most valuable and useful things.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 10:03:33 +0000