Kunta Kinte

Roots History

So how do you know just how vulnerable you are? Like to pain and its brothers? Mi I have a rough idea about my pain tolerance abilities. On the lower end there is zero pain – this is my zone mostly because I know hitting a toe against the table will ache even to the deep of your soul – then on the higher end the limit is at a thuraku biting on my man parts.

So, yea, that’s my range sort of. 

I know the later seems ridiculous but ants will make the bravest of warriors wriggle in pain just because they know where to bite. You’d be walking down a street with your boys beating your chest about sijui how last December you killed a nyoka back in ushago or how like my blogger friend Siloma you got stuck in the middle of nowhere when your car refused to perform its car duties like all good cars do and how you fixed it all by yourself although we know the mechanic was on loud speaker all the time and then as you keep beating your chest an ant along the street gutters will just decide you’re bragging about your heroism too much. It will get agitated. It will want to bite you. 

And because that ant will be a thuraku ninja warrior it will not bite sijui your zgwembe, nah that is the work of regular thuraku, instead, it will climb up your shoe and up your trouser and it will go on and bite one of your balls. And it will bite like it means it because the thuraku has been to the Thuraku defence forces training camp and you know it had its thuraku teeth checked during recruitment. It will probably be a high ranking operative in the thuraku ninja warrior army. 

The thuraku will haven proven to you that you and your tiny chest can go down as easily as drunk Nairobi drivers at an NTSA stop. With the thuraku biting your powerhouse you will squirm and your friends will laugh and you will rummage through your pants trying to rescue yourself from the kaninja warrior of thuraku army and it will be an awful experience because pain and embarrassment will befriend you in that moment. 

Now you see how high my pain tolerance is? 

reference.com

So what does pain do to you? Besides having you writhe around? Well, again, mi I (forgive my murder of English in this phrase) know what it does; it makes me defensive. I will walk a wire just not to feel the pain I have felt before. Like I will refuse to be friendly to any thuraku at all. Even the regular thuraku. (If you haven’t caught up already just know thuraku is Kuyu for ant). And because pain can make a good person who goes to church and prays and even doesn’t say fuck to other people when they walk slowly on the street (I get street – road - rage very easily) become a monster, I will kill thurakus whenever I see them. I will pledge my lifetime to making their lives miserable. 

I know you’re probably wondering where we are going with the thuraku thing. Right? Okay, so last week I killed many thurakus that were on a road trip (I think; they were carrying bread and stuff) and happened to pass near my window. Later I thought about it and felt a little bad. Why? Mostly because there are thurakus that I know live somewhere in our rooftop and I believe they have seen me as a good neighbour all along and because we have all minded our businesses for long since without much fuss. Now I can feel that they think I betrayed them and that is alright but again I think they are planning something big in retaliation. Like a biting ceremony at night where they will attack from all sides.

(Okay I have to confess I was going to write about kunta kinte but the thuraku story kind became fun).

Kunta kinte is a guy I was in a movie series a couple of months ago. I am not sure how real the story was but he was kinda legendary in the era of slavery and Negro manenos. Kunta was that one renegade guy that does not flow with the current. The guy that would rather have no toes that stay and milk white people cows at the farm – they cut off his toes for running away. He also refused to take a name that was not his. There is this white boss that lashed him for kedo forty minutes until he accepted a name that the guy’s wife thought was appropriate. They wanted him to be called Kinuthia but he refused and insisted he was Kunte. 

So how does Kinta Kunte and the thuraku escapade relate? It is simple. I thought Kunte is the only guy that would not squirm if that thuraku I told you about bit his ninii. Well, him and this guy called Okiya Omtatah. And maybe Boniface Mwangi. Although I think Boniface might hold protests against the thurakus. 

PS. Boniface Mwangi for president right?

Why do I think Kunta Kinte wouldn’t feel the pain?

I think of pain like a river of sorts. It will cut even the toughest of rocks. But in time, the rocks at the bedside figure out a way to derive serenity in the force of the water. The same force that eats into them. In time, Kunte figured out how to get above the white man’s pain. And – spoilers – he conquered slavery and lives on as a legend that is the whole point of the TV series.

So how does that make me feel? – the Kunta Kinte thing.

Good you asked. It makes me feel invincible. That next time a thuraku bites me I will not flinch even alilo. I will stand and think beyond the pain for as long as I can then crush the thuraku eventually. Showing it that I have outgrown its bites.

Feeling motivate yet? No? Well, the next time you face pain intense enough that standing still becomes impossible just know that in time you become refined. Hard. Like a rock. The same pain will not sink you again if you sail through it now.

Have a painless week. Won’t you?