Mwana rushed along the way and finally caught up to Cheza. In the streets, Cheza looked extremely dashing and carefree as he walked around aimlessly. ‘Is this joker trying to steal my thunder on my Awakening Ceremony day?’ Cheza was wearing a purple and lavender Kitenge-style shirt that went down to his knees with black three-quarter pants and black sandals. The colors purple and lavender usually represented royalty in the Toro Kingdom. The edges of his clothes had fiery red and purple sun beads set in intricate patterns, while his sandals had white glowing beads.

Mwana had designed these clothes for Cheza and even personally hand-made them. However, seeing the latter in them, he could only think, ‘why does this bastard look better in them than I did? Is he trying to outshine me today? He didn’t even wear a shirt yesterday!’ In this case, Cheza was being wrongfully accused. After all, he couldn’t have predicted Mwana’s awakening would happen the previous night.

Mwana was about to call him out when he heard Cheza singing. He changed his mind deciding to stalk him silently.

Chorus

‘I will survive to the ends of time’

‘And I will thrive’

Pause

‘Whether you like it or not’

‘In the market you are just s’ not’

‘Tis me they calling hot’

‘They call you ****|with a face like an ****ot’

Mwana was speechless hearing these lyrics. ‘My God, he’s butchering it. How can such a heroic war song get turned into nonsense by this animal? He clearly made up the entire second part. This can’t go unpunished!’

Cheza continued unaware of the cheetah stalking him in the shadows. He was completely oblivious of his incoming ‘punishment.’

‘In your pocket you ain’t got a dot’

‘Let’s do this lets do this yeah yeah, Aaaargh cough cough’

Mwana had suddenly sped up from behind Cheza before hanging from his neck. “Wuuuuui,” Cheza exclaimed in an extremely dramatic manner in response to this attack.

“Watch the voice. You are ruining the version in my brain. Absolutely ruining it!”

“At least it is Anteaus Sang Poetry, not Petals of Blood otherwise I wouldn’t forgive you.” Mwana added while thinking about these two popular songs. They were composed by renowned generals in the Toro kingdom.

“Don’t blame me, I’m just an agent here,” As Mwana had Cheza bent backwards and locked behind his armpit with his stomach facing the sky, the latter could not resist at all as Mwana gave him few slogs to his exposed stomach. “This is for my third mother,” he said righteously, but in his head he is thinking, ‘I got scolded again for five whole minutes because of you, I won’t let you off easy.’

After letting him go, Cheza looked at him with grievance but Mwana already had a counter prepared, “Don’t look at me that way, I was forced to do this. Doing this hurt me more than it hurt you.” However, Cheza already knew Mwana was snickering inside.

“Mwas, I won’t forget this. A man knows to time his revenge.” Cheza said while harrumphing coldly but that only made his young face look extremely cute, far from being ‘a man’.

“Why were you singing like someone in pain?”

“Well I’m in pain now,” Cheza added while clutching his stomach.

Before the two could walk further, they saw another kid coming from the left side of the road. This boy had a big head with an even larger forehead while being a bit shorter than Cheza and Mwana. He was their friend, Jua Nyaga, the son of Jua Toboa and the older brother of Jua Mwanga.

“Joker, Son, you are here. Let’s go crush those bast…, I mean teach those fellows a lesson.” Nyaga said with a smile that was almost blinding when he reached the two of them. ‘Joker’ and ‘Son’ were his nicknames for Cheza and Mwana while everyone called him ‘Ostrich’.

After some light teasing between the three friends, Nyaga took out a huge calabash handing it out to both of them. It seemed he had left home early to get this extremely popular fruit drink in the village. People always lined up for hours for it. As they walked towards the Hookball playing field, Nyaga started narrating some rumors he had heard at the shop.

“Did you hear about Duma’s brother?”

“Yeah I heard some rumors.”

“No idea.”

“Out of the loop as always.” Cheza added with a smug look but Mwana wasn’t bothered, he was indeed out of the loop.

Nyaga excitedly continued, “He impregnated a girl then tried to get out of marrying her, but I hear he was forced to by both his family and the girl’s family.”

“What? How did I miss that? Duma’s brother, you mean Chui?” Mwana asked in shock. He was indeed interested in this gossip. Maybe he could use it later as argument ammunition against Duma who was another of their classmates.

“His own family, his sister and aunt were like, ‘He’s looking for consolation! We are not consoling you. Marry that one!’”

“Even his father said: ‘there must have been one part that attracted you to her even if it is one part of the nose.’”

“You didn’t think before you started eating???” Nyaga continued narrating the verbal attacks Chui received from his own family and his future in-laws.

“Indeed, every feast is accompanied by a big shit! He should have seen this coming, hahaha.” Cheza happily exclaimed. Although his words simply meant ‘actions have consequences’, it sounded extremely wrong. He was clearly taking joy in others’ misery.

“Yeah, I heard his father said pretty much the same thing: ‘now that the yams have already been planted, don’t embarrass my house. Go bring home my grandson’ or something like that. And then the future in laws also came over …”

Mwana was engrossed in this drama but Cheza suddenly interrupted with a sigh, “Ai, you don’t know the features of oral narratives?”

“What?”

Cheza answered while waving his arms around, “Dramatization!” Indeed Cheza was a superior story teller.

“Shut uuuuuuuup!” As Nyaga and Cheza argued in the background, the three finally arrived near the field.