I enter the haze where my mind grows numb and a fog seems to rise up and make me lose sense of everything. The connection between my sorry excuse for a body and my mind becomes distant and I drift for a time which I cannot guess or even count reliably. It varies each time, sometimes short and other times long. From the accounts of those around me, the seizures seem like I am in pain, possessed or sick in the mind. Oddly enough I feel nothing except the pain from having fallen on my back or my head hitting something when I finally come out of the haze. In that barely lucid state I once again lament at my existence and wonder at the cruelty of the gods when they made me the way I am.
When the haze passes, I find myself lying on my cot in my sleeping hut where I had barely begun to rise for the day when I was greeted by such a rude awakening. It never happens so early and most times I can feel them coming upon me to at least lessen the risk of cracking my skull when I fall. I use my one hand to rub my eyes in frustration as I rise to look in the mirror beside my bed. The drool gives me a stab of shame and thankfulness that this happened away from the view of others. I grab a cloth hanging on the dish I use to wash my face and wipe it off. Its still early morning as the chickens are still crowing in the way that seems near and far away at the same time. My daily alarm to rise and start most of my chores before everyone is up and about.
I find it is best to do everything away from the scrutiny of others where it is safer because in the words of my cousin Tafara, 'I won't soil their good moods with my misfortune and ugliness.' He is a charming guy that Tafara, with all the wit and brains befitting one born so strong. Old man Nutu once jokingly remarked that Tafara and I are probably a cruel joke from the gods because we were born completely opposite with all the brains going to me while he got the good looks. Personally I think he got the better bargain.
It is always a struggle putting on my shirt with only one arm, back when I still did not understand the shame I was to my family I would have asked for help and then stood to take some abuse for my request. It is quite odd how easily cruelty comes from the people who beg for kindness from gods who are supposedly their betters in everything. The irony never fails to make me laugh bitterly when we have the monthly village sacrifices to their gods at the krawa. Despite that, I do love going to the krawa, it feels like I am standing at the center of the universe whenever I am there. Maybe it truly is holy ground as the village n'anga says but it also feels like he only says that to keep such a fertile piece of land under his control. I once said as much to old man Nutu and he slapped the back of my head and told me to stop blaspheming lest I incur another curse.
Once I am ready as always I rush to feed the chickens and check for eggs and dodge one of my nemeses. There's an old rooster there who I believe has it out for me. I call him Mpengo because of how crazy he gets whenever I am near him. The bastard always want to peck me and I am counting the days till the next monthly offering where I might get away with finally getting rid of him. I smile in cruel amusement as I think about finally getting even with the crazy chicken. I have bucket full of ground maize and chaff and I lug it with great effort over to the chicken coop and start scooping some through holes in the fencing with my hand. I consider skipping Mpengo but I know Aunt Tafa will know and I think a peck is better than her brand of cruelty.
By the time I am done with my other chores I can already hear my grandmother humming a tune she likes to hum when she cooks for everyone. Despite how old she is, grandmother Rufaro insists on cooking breakfast for everyone. I have a sneaking suspicion that she only started doing that because she realized if anyone else was in charge then I would probably starve. I will always love her for that despite her insistence on calling me 'mwana wemunyama'. I mean its one thing for most of the village to call you cursed but if family also joins in then you get no reprieve.
I sneak into my hut so I can hide out while the family eats their fill and I wait for them all to leave. I have learned it is better to be out of sight and out of mind when it comes to most people especially my family. The thing I like to do when I am alone like this everyday is tell myself stories of my own making to pass the time. I began this when I was younger and I stopped attending the stories from Rungano the village tale-spinner with the rest of the village. It broke my heart because attending them used to be my favourite thing in the world. He would talk of distant lands where there were pale men who sacrificed blood to their pale faced gods, of lands where women were seduced by immortals and led astray, of wars between the gods of our land with fair skinned gods from the east. The stories of how our people came to this land and my favourite, how the world was created.
All these beautiful stories always tickled my imagination and they gave me dreams of different places where someone like me could be treated like a normal person. I dreamed of leaving the village one day and finding a place I could truly call my own. The stories I told myself were always about greater destinies and finding meaning in a dangerous world. I has learned ways to survive already.
I realized a long time ago that people in this village were usually very simple creatures. They were either full of pride or full of self hatred. It was easier to determine how to act around each type once you determined which kind of person they were.
Those with too much pride were almost always narcissistic and were always too preoccupied with making everyone love and listen to them so all I had to do was bring the spotlight to them whenever I got stuck in an altercation with one them. On the other hand those with too much self hatred were tricky. They were a bunch of bullies who projected their own self hatred onto me because I was an easy target. This sadly is where most of the villagers were classified. Avoidance was the best method of dealing with such people. It was considered bad luck to interact too much with me but some of them were not above abusing me if the chance presented itself.
Finally the worst kind, the people with self hatred triggered by an inferiority complex which was an attack on their inherent narcissism. The assholes who hated me for ruining their social standing, the people who hated if I was better than them in any way, the people who hated me for making them seem inferior when they believed they were everyone's betters. The assholes I called family. My aunt and her entire group of psychopaths. Sometimes avoiding them was not even enough.
These were the people I was forced to endure and all the while I asked myself if there would ever be a way out of this life for me. Had the gods truly damned me to an existence that was more cage than anything else?