Chapter three

My plan as I told you earlier was stealing. Those yellow mangoes almost always laugh at us contemptuously when we pass by glorifying their immense beauty and grace, today, they will grace my stomach with their sweet trickling juices. As I walk with my stick in hand, I think of the plunder hanging there, just for the taking, their juices flowing through my dirty fingers and my thirsty mouth and…wait, I forgot about the dogs, and also to introduce my ‘beast’. I have a mutt that I call ‘taska’, and what I can tell you is that he does well for a dog of an indecipherable breed. He however is no match for the dogs at the Towet’s. they were the very animals I was going to face, rather trick but first, taska had to go home.

“kwera, kwera, enda kwenyu.

He was a potential time bomb and could bark when I’m up in the mango tree. He has done a lot for me but I have to be strict with him as of now. Despite his good track record, he had let me down quite a number of times, like when I had trusted him with some wayward cattle while we went for a dip in the Cheptum river, little did we know that he was the wayward one. The next thing I saw was my old man standing by with a whip on his hands. I didn’t dare run./ I walked towards him and lay down as I usually do. I think this softened his heart a bit and so he gave me only thirty lashes on my behind. As for the dog, I found him in the evening with his village crush, an ugly brown and black bitch known for its philandering ways though I think she had finally settled. Of course I gave both of them a kick. There was also another, worse than the first. We had a small hedge around our house where most hens came to pay tribute to the almighty cock, the conquerer of all hens, black and white, even red, he whose un-feathered neck shone in the evening sun, he whose powerful legs held even the most stubborn of hens whose meat and soup..,oh, scrap that. One of the hens, which i am sure wasn’t ours for we only had the cock ended up laying some eggs some short distance away. Were it not for taska whose hunting (read stealing) methods were unrivaled, I wouldn't have known of such a precious cache. To cut the long story short, I embarked on a boiling session which was highly successful, until the neighbour came in. I think he must have had an informer for I had just skinned four of them and about to eat them when he called out my mother’s name. I of course ran out to inform him of her absence. That’s about when the damn dog walked out with an egg in its mouth. When I tell you it ain’t to be trusted in some situations, know that I’ve had experience to last me almost forever. Aw, there is trouble upfront.The village's newest initiates, wearing trousers for the first time would taunt the hell out of me today. I have to turn back, too late.