A Silent letter for Mutegi.....

It’s a late afternoon, the hot sun is too bored to leave, it shines above a bare patch of ground which acts as a football pitch for a local primary school, patches of dying green beg the running lads to spare their fading glory. The lads pay no attention, they play on, kicking the plastic bag made ball, finely knit by the group’s most creative mind. Its heavy when it rains, but as long as the sun shines, it’s light as the champions league final standard ball.

One side of the two opposing teams has nine players, the other side has ten. The lads were 19, and needed one more lad to make it even and easy to make two balanced teams. The side with fewer lads has the advantage of having two fine players, but still.. still they are weaker than the other side.

On the sidelines sit my imaginary friend Mutegi. Mutegi watches on behind the two worn out slippers acting as the goal posts for the team with the fewer lads, it’s the side he secretly wishes to win, and he is hoping that his good wishes act as the 10^th player. 

He is the only boy in class 4E who is not on the pitch playing football. The girls are a distance away playing ropes.

“Scoore.. scoreee… “ Mutegi screams as Gitaka almost puts ‘nine’ team ahead, but is unable to beat Gakuna who is a mean defender.

Mutegi’s shoulders droop. He knows he would have easily beaten Gakuna, it was always easy, they feared him, everyone had always wanted him on their team, but that was before they knew him. Mutegi had once famously single-handedly ran class 6H defenders ragged, hitting the net a record six times, but still, that was way back before they knew him.

Who is Mutegi?

Well, mutegi, my imaginary friend, is a child growing up with a medical condition.. Despite his confident posture for a young lad, and seemingly strong legs from running behind a football not so many months gone by, he has something eating him up, and somehow everyone knows about it.

For the sake of Mutegi's  innocence, I will not scream his condition, but according to a student nurse in a dispensary across the ridge from where Mutegi hails from, the condition is a serious one.

My friend is now an outcast, at the age bracket of roughly 6 years, lads are a wild lot, an innocently heartless lot. In Mutegi’s eyes, they hate him, the world doesn’t remember his six goals against big lads, even his classmates who carried him shoulder high. The only thing that has changed from then to now is them discovering his condition, otherwise he still can comfortably beat a bunch of bigger defenders. He is young but he knows to be stressed, he can’t show the hurt, so he fights the tears during the day and let them off in the dark of night, as he swallows a burden of pills. He is too young to pray, but has suffered enough already to know how to talk to a Deity in a way he knows little of.

This is a silent letter about Mutegi, well, that would be selfish… Its is a letter about all the kids growing up with terminal ailments, to kids who can no longer mask their problem, since everyone kind of knows, and it pisses them off. To those kids who feel okey but everyone treats them like some bird egg. A letter about those kids who everyone thinks are just a blink away from falling into convulsions or dying at the least provocation..

We get into Mutegi’s shoes.

In a nutshell, there are a zillion things our friend can’t do in an age which demands sugar-rush kinds of energy, Mutegi cannot get into a fight (though he knows he can easily kick almost all the lads in class 5), Mutegi cannot run around kicking a football (though he is the finest talent in lower primary), he also cannot get punished at school (It may sound like a lucky coin, but in the village there is an ounce of pride when you get punished for truancy).

When you are a village lad, there is so much satisfaction when you go up against another lad, same size or otherwise, you throw names at each other, it turns ugly, blows and kicks fly around and some teeth are lost, or a nail or two fly out of their sockets, or blood gashes out of a nose or noses. Mutegi doesn’t enjoy all that, when he gets into a war of words the other kid pulls out of the drama claiming ‘I don’t want to be the reason you are rushed to hospital’.

All the lads believe Mutegi is a scare away from death, they avoid him like plague.

Mutegi may be in class 4, but all his friends have started associating themselves with girls, weirdly calling them ‘girlfriends’. Some have been seen running behind the teacher’s toilets and behind the big black tank in pairs. Our friend always had a swarm of girls around him back in class 3E, when he was the football MVP, way before they knew him. In the present, the girls have dried like wells in the Kalahari. None of them hates Mutegi, they just fear being around him, legend has it that the female species prefers strong male companions for mates, best case scenario with lions. Mutegi happens to be that tiny thin outcast male cab, it’s still a lion, but no lioness thinks it’s capable of marking and keeping a territory.

At home, Mutegi is not spared either. Back to the punishment part, Mutegi’s parents are not strong enough to raise an arm at the boy, they tend to give him a special kind of treatment, and will mostly let him off after he goes in the wrong. Once again, as adults, there can be a lot of relief when a judge lets you go free when you get caught stealing chickens, BUT with kids, you get bragging rights when explaining to the other kids in school how your mother fixed your buttocks with a strong stick, which broke before you broke a tear.

“Ua … Ua…. !”

This is not a mob calling for the blood of a thief, with tires all around, it’s Mutegi’s age mates playing the famous ‘Chobo-Ua’ game. This is a game where you aim to put the ball between the other person’s legs, and the rest of the crowd falls unto them with blows and kicks. Yes, that shit is exciting to growing kids, whether you are the one landing the blows or receiving. Our Mutegi stands by and watches, they don’t want him in the game, and if they do allow him to take part, everyone will avoid putting the ball between his legs, and even if they put the ball there, everyone will avoid laying blows and kicks on him. He chooses to stand there and watch the excitement. He hates his life, he hates what it has become.

Mutegi represents a load of kids who have been plunged into a half-life by the combination of nature and fate. A load of kids whose mates think of as lesser, and not very fitting to engage, kids whose mates think can fall down and turn lifeless any minute…

Each evening Mutegi sits on a veranda outside their house and looks up, he knows a time will come and he will be great, he knows that all he needs to do is just sit there and wait on faith. He feels like quite the burden at home, so much money has been spent trying to make him better, but nothing works. His mother has turned to a zombie, she has to not sleep and listen incase Mutegi starts whizzing late at night.. He hates all of it, and most of the times he secretly wishes for the dark cover of death, but then his little heart remembers the faith bit, and he holds on. 

A moment of silence for kids living with terminal ailments, HIV, Cancer, Polio, Asthma, and many more…