Joseph Lemasolai Lekuton by Facing the Lion: Growing Up Maasai on the African Savanna Read Free Book Online Page A

more years.
    Now, as the time of my circumcision approached, I was away at school. So I had to do a lot of the preparation there. I spent three or four months making up and learning songs for the elders, then I sang them when I was home for vacation. My brothers and my mother were able to make some of the other preparations for me—collecting sticks and gum for the arrows, collecting the rope to bind them with. That’s allowed. All the time I was preparing for my final exams that year, I was preoccupied with what was to come, with being ready.
     
    F INALLY THE DAY CAME . As I said, there were about 200 boys and young men in my group, all ready to be circumcised in one day. A special village—called an alorora —was created for the ceremony. Only the families of the boys being initiated were allowed to set up their huts in that village. The rest of the villagers were far away. Early in the morning, about six o’clock, the circumcision started. The best-known, most prominent family always goes first, then the second best-known and so on, down to the least known. My family, the Lekuton family, always goes first because it is huge and because many of my forefathers were leaders. Within the family it goes by seniority, so they started with my father’s older brothers’ children. My father was one of the youngest of the big Lekuton family, and I was the youngest of the boys in my father’s family, so they had to work all the way through my cousins and brothers before it was my turn. I had heard about this ceremony all my life, and then I watched my cousins and brothers, so I knew exactly what to expect. And then it was my turn.
    The hard thing is, while the ceremony is going on you’re not allowed to move your body an inch. You can’t twitch your finger or move your mouth. Even your eyelashes have to stay absolutely still. There were three people there to support me. I sat on a skin on the ground withmy legs spread out, and one man held my back up strong. The other two men gently held my legs steady.
    Not everything was gentle, though. My other mother was there with a club. My other mother loved me to pieces, but she stood ready to clobber me if I moved. That was her job, to make sure I wasn’t a coward. My mom was there, too, but she’s not as tough as my other mother. And the rest of my family was all around me, to show solidarity and to make sure I didn’t embarrass them.
    Then came the man with the knife. He danced in front of me, spitting and waving his knife in the air to scare me. This is one of the rituals. My family poured water mixed with milk—considered a blessing—in my face, and some bubbles settled right on my eyelashes. If those bubbles dropped, it would show that I’d twitched my eye. No blinking! For seven, eight, or ten minutes, or however long it takes, no blinking, no movement, my eyes open but as still as a rock. He took the knife, made the first cut, and it felt like my head was split down the middle. The pain was nowhere else, it was right in the middle of my head.
    It’s believed that if you survive the first three cuts, it will change your life. And there were my brothers, already circumcised, saying, “Don’t blink. Don’t move.Don’t bring embarrassment to our family. We’ve never been embarrassed before.” Meanwhile, the operation continued. Eight, nine minutes. It’s a complicated process, so how long it takes depends on how good the circumciser is. If he’s not so good, too bad for you, you have to go for ten minutes or more. If he makes a mistake, you have to wait for him to fix it—you have no choice, you cannot leave. As the initiation was going on, I could hear songs coming from every part of the village. Songs of bravery and brotherhood, songs of the clan.
    Finally, after probably seven or eight cuts, I heard my mother let out a loud breath—a sigh of relief. I could hear the other boys singing for me: “He’s done it. He is part of us now. He went through it.” My