Saumu, Rachael and Asia are quite close to Joel, who seems to be a rather fatherly figure for them. After school they stop by the office and tell him stories from school, from past days at Stehmann house, and whatever issues are plaguing them. On Friday, Joel asked Saumu and Asia to tell him a story. Saumu began slowly talking about scary nights at the orphanage and the frightening things that happened in the night. Asia began to get excited, adding details to the story, and soon the two were rambling on too quickly for me to keep up. Joel was trying to conceal his laughter. I understood parts of the story - the who, where and when - but there were so many new words I didn’t recognize, so I began to write them down. Once the girls slowed down I asked Joel to translate the words I had written down:
Mapaka – crowds of cats
Timka – running away
Ogopa – fear
Mwanga/Wanga –vampire(s)
Damu – blood
Usiku - Night
Mchawi – witchcraft
Kunata – to bite
Sauti – Voices/Sounds
Kunywa – to Drink
Alfajiri – Twilight
I too was laughing once I looked at my list. What is it with pre-teen girls and vampires? Joel explained the story in greater detail: On some usiku (nights) at the orphanage, the girls could hear sauti (sounds) when they were lying in bed. They could hear the sounds of furniture moving in the night and they knew that it was Wanga (Vampires) waiting to kuwanata (bite them) and drink their damu (blood). There was nothing that they could do but lay in bed and listen to these noises with ogopa (fear). The following morning they discovered that the furniture had indeed moved during the night. Worst of all, they found handprints of blood smeared on the bathroom floor – prints from hands with very long fingers and long nails, like claws.
Asia began to describe another horrific night when the vampires visited the orphanage. This time, the girls could hear voices coming from the roof. When someone looked outside to the yard, there were huge crowds of cats waiting there. They suspected that vampires had come to practice some kind of machawi (witchcraft) because they couldn’t see anyone up on the roof at all and obviously the massive quantity of cats was highly unusual. All the girls were terrified, really, they insisted. Even the matron was scared – just ask her, they claimed.
The girls even had a friend who was nearly killed by a vampire. According to said friend, an old naked woman vampire came to his house at alfajiri (twilight) to kill the whole family and drink their blood. The children in this family were so terrified, they had no choice but to timka (run away). This old naked woman vampire was surely practicing machawi, and was a witch as well as a mwanga. Luckily for the family of Asia’s friend, the father in the family killed the mwanga by biting her, and then tearing her up into pieces.
After I stopped laughing, I explained to the girls how there are Vampires in Canada and America too – but they are very different. These Vampires, I explained, are good ones. Teenage girls love them. Some of them don’t even hurt people, but drink the blood of animals they hunt instead. They are very strong, fast, incredibly beautiful and can heal quickly if they get hurt. They live only in areas where there isn’t too much sunshine because when the sun shines on them you can see that their skin dazzles like diamonds (I obviously had to get help from Joel on explaining “dazzling” and “skin like diamonds”... not phrases I’d ever use in Kiswahili). I said that so many girls read all kinds of books about these good vampires, and many of them love these Americanized vampires so much that they wish for one as their boyfriend. Joel laughed. Asia and Saumu dropped their jaws almost in unison, totally shocked.
Kabisa?! Seriously?! Girls love the vampires?
Seriously.
I watched Saumu stare up into space to ponder this for a moment. She then turned up her nose in disgust, shook her head and clicked her tongue as if to say, “Your vampire story sucks.”
Watch out, Stephanie Meyer, from what I’ve heard, these girls have WAY better vampire stories than you do.
1 comment:
Hahahaha!!
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