By E. C. Prince

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Chapter 1 - Scouting Days

I woke up on the elevated sand bed, right behind me was a big rock which served as a wall, tree trunks with the rock as a starting point held together by palm leaves and lined up in unignorably unequal intervals in a square manner which told me that I was in a kind of cage. I tried to lift my head, but I fell back with a sharp scream, I could feel very intense pain in my right eye, I reached for it and realized that it had been swollen. I tried to recall what had happened to me and how I got here but was interrupted by the tall buff man who stood in front of me facing the crowd, he walked quickly , with a stern look on his face, picked up a small branch from where it leaned on one the trunks, dashed towards me and began to hit me repeatedly on my arms which I used to protect my head injury. I began screaming loudly, forced myself up and scrambled for safety, I then realized that I had been accompanied by four other boys, one of them seemed lifeless with blood gushing from his injured ear, while the others sat in shock, now focused on me. The tall man turned away, replaced his stick in the same spot he picked it and went back to face the crowd. I felt wetness on the side my face, the dark blue liquid on my fingers from when I felt for my injury let me know I was bleeding. Just then a man from the crowd who I noticed had been staring at me all this while, reached for the ground, uprooted a handful of grass and still gazing at me jumped on the sand bed and ran towards the cages' entrance. I hadn't enough time to guess the essence of the grass, but since I was not especially ready for a second round, I made for the corner of the cage and intended to scale the branches, but seeing it was hopeless, I finally gave up, melted in the corner with my back resting on the rock and waited for my death. The man forced his way into the cage, still with the grass in his hand and the most curious look on his face, walked over the other boy towards me now being followed by the tall man. Like most on the men here, he had on a raggy animal skin that went round his waist
and covered his front side and left his backside partially open. He began to crouch slowly in front of me, and to keep his manhood out of sight, I had hoped he would stop sooner, but he kept going and eventually fed my eyes with a view that I knew would eventually wipe out whatever beautiful memories was left in my head. For this unsolicited pictorial presentation, I couldn't help but resent this man for reasons which are till this day quite unclear to me; could it be for not caring how young I was or that I was trying to recover from a head trauma, he just didn't seem to pay any attention to this uncanny event even though he was a major player and now I just wished he took the approach of my first assailant and ended me with the branch, but he just stared directly at me with his large eyes stuck under his thick eye brows that were plastered on his upwardly receding forehead which was mostly covered by his black dirty long hair. With his thick short fingers, he grabbed my jaw and tilted my head to the right, he began surveying my injury when he was questioned by the tall man who now joined our uneventful rendezvous. With the grass, he quickly wiped the blood off my face, stood up, said something to the tall man who I now understood to be a slave vendor and rushed out.
The vendor gave me a deep stir, and although I knew there was no way I could unsee what I'd seen, I still opted to thank him for ridding my eyes of this nightmare, but my attention was diverted by the small clique of middle aged men who had now trooped into the cage and began inspecting the other boys around the entrance. Like me, most of the boys were lying helpless which prompted the men to take the same approach as 'dirty hair' and gallantly, without warning geniflected to get a closer look at the boys. At this point it was too much for young me to bear, so I turned around, facing the rock, about to bang my head repeatedly to death when dirty hair came running back. He gave the vendor a clay bottle then turned towards me and gave me a hand signal to 'come'. I managed to stand and walk behind him while he led me out of the cage into the open.
I could now see the full expanse of the village but was still confused as to what had happened to me. Recognizing the language used by indigenes of this strange land, I asked him where we were. He turned to me, then looking upward and glancing at the tall palm trees which stood over the infinite palm frond structured huts surrounding a small swamp with a bigger palm frond hut stationed at the center, he pointed at a certain tree at the extreme which seemed to be the tallest. Somewhere close to the tip, a symbol in white chalk was drawn on the bark, it was a circle with strokes from it's circumference pointed outwards like a star and I knew without a shred of doubt that I had somehow found my way to Makazi settlement.