A Date with a Wanga

I don’t own a television set. It’s not something I’m planning to buy soon. (Sorry Njeri. I hope it doesn’t ruin our plans.) I swear it has nothing to do with Baba losing the 2013 elections and thus associating TV with disappointment. See, thing is I do not have time to watch television. I do not spend my day looking forward to receiving words of wisdom from self-made armchair analysts like Miguna Miguna, Tony Gachoka and company spewing fresh insights on what UhuRuto will do next or what ‘THE’ website  means while swinging in their seats and completing the façade of being learned by stocking tones of books in the shelves behind. 

By the way, is there anything scientific about our political scientists in Kenya today?

So I didn’t catch the ‘wanga wa Homa Bay’ ‘expose’ on Citizen TV. And the story wasn’t in any way talking about Hon. Gladys Wanga, the good women representative of Homa Bay County. It was referring to night runners seeking recognition by law. They went ahead to say that they had over two million followers nationally. They even had a governor and a president!

The thing about being loud about where you come from is that people expect answers from you when something happens.  They, for example, expect you to be some authority on Wangas. Like you know them. Like you understand how they operate; that you’re probably a Wanga yourself. 

One of my friends even suggested that Homa bay needed that beautification thing more than Nyeri. Something that I won’t comment on.

Yes, am a proud man from Homa Bay County, and yes, the Wangas have for the longest of times lived amongst us. And no those people you saw on TV running around and jumping on trees aren’t the real jojuogi of Homa Bay County. Their art, compared to some I know, is amateurish and of the lowest grade. Real Wangas, the legends go, do not run alone, they have mustered the art of summoning even lake creatures like hippopotamuses in this important duty to society.

Allow me to tell you my story with the Wangas. 

The Wangas are not bad people. They simply derive their pleasure from your extreme displeasure.

There are worse night creatures in the name of thieves and people with evil eye. You know those people who look at you eat and you immediately contract cholera?

But sometimes hearing these stories isn’t the same as experiencing them.

Mr. Kangoma, my primary English teacher, is perhaps one of the best story tellers I have known my life. He was so good that he could tell a story for one year and never reach its end. In fact, when he left our primary school to join another, we followed him and enrolled in his new school just so that he could complete the story of Omen.

But that wasn’t his best story. He told us about his time as a teacher at Sossiot. How, at about 9 pm, the dark forces would reign havoc, kicking doors, throwing sand into the house for the better part of the night before howling off into the dark tea plantations. So one day he decided to close the door without fastening the bolt, merely squeezing a piece of paper to hold it in place.

As the Wanga representative came in for the night, he heavily banged the door expecting some resistance only for the light paper to give way and the door came tumbling in. Revealing the man of the hour in his natural fullness!

Apparently, the stern head teacher who terrorized them by day was the one who had been continuing his work anonymously at night. 

But that was just a story told and not experienced.

I remember my first interaction with a Wanga. It’s one of those moments that you can’t just forget. Like the day you lose your virginity. 

I was probably nine years old. Not when I lost my virginity you dirty mind.

My sisters had gone for a disco matanga and left me home alone. You know those kinds of discos where a boy buys a dance from your girlfriend for ten shillings and there’s nothing you can do about it? Yes, No? 

Okay. 

Anyway I had heard so many stories about this discos that my curiosity was naturally irked. I just had to see this dance for myself. And I know my good sisters would spare me some coins just enough to show off my dance skills with one lucky village sweetheart.

I didn’t my dance that night. I didn’t get to the dance at all.

I met a moving bush!!

You people think that thing God pulled with Moses and a burning bush was thorough? You haven’t seen a moving bush.

I have never been scared in my life. You literally freeze. Your limbs can’t move an iota. You can’t even make a sound. But you can pee. And to pee you do. The warm gliding movement of fluid cascading on your thighs is perhaps the only thing you feel other than the enormous dark fear.

As the bush moves closer, you make your last prayer to God asking for your life and if he can’t grant you that wish, at least let him put your name in the book of life. 

You hurriedly apologize for the sugar you secretly licked last week and the chicken soup you gurgled and put the blame on an innocent cat. 

The Wanga, having terrorized you to the core will disappear into the thick dark of the night, happy and content, waiting for another victim to make a meal out of. 

You so dumb stricken that you can’t move. Only a tap on your back wakes you from your stupor.

Thinking it’s another episode of trauma, you bow down in deep supplication and plead to be spared.

“An wuod aseda kokombo, asayi ng’uonna.”

“I am the son to Aseda, The son to Okombo. Please spare me”

You are genuinely grateful to God it is just your uncle returning from the matanga. 

My next experience with the Wangas would come later when I was slightly bigger.

This time I didn’t seek them, they sought me. The feeling of helplessness was still the same though.

My cousin and I were home alone when a huge rock hit me squarely on my head. I am a heavy sleeper so it must have been going on for quite a while. 

That night was perhaps the longest of nights. Comparably only to the night I attended some party in Ngong which am not going to mention for safety purposes. 

The following day we told that story to our tickled aunt who labelled us as cowards and rumour mongers.

The next day she came and slept on the seat waiting to disapprove the myths of jojuogi. 

She has never taken us less seriously ever again.

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