Fast and Furious Feet

"This is Mihigo," said the teacher, placing his hands paternally on the shoulders of Mihigo. Then, the teacher moved on. The butterfly teaching style had dropped Boris off at his first station.

"So what do you know, Mihigo?"

"Nothing, Boris! I'm a lost cause."

"Why don't we start with the unit circle."

Boris started drawing a circle and lines in his notebook. Then he started labeling the angles. He did notice that Mihigo's right foot was tapping. The more he added to the unit circle while mumbling what he was adding, the faster the foot started tapping. The foot tapping achieved an almost machine gun speed. Boris sensed that something was amiss and stopped. He paused and looked at Mihigo. His face was angry and dense like a dark, foreboding.

Stunned for a moment, Boris tried to change the subject, "Why is she so proud to be a virgin?" And he looked over at the young woman with the coke bottle.

"Who says that she is a virgin," Mihigo had forgotten about math and gave Boris a sneer like Boris was an idiot.

"Well, I learned that if you drink a soft drink here, you are a virgin," explained Boris.

Mihigo laughed. There was such levity and ease in the laughter that Boris joined him without knowing what they were laughing about. He called over to Keza in Kinyarwanda a sentence that contained "cola." Keza broke out laughing so hard that she snorted cola out of her nose. She wiped the bubbles of snot and cola all over her hands but couldn't stop laughing. Boris figured that he probably lost his social standing, but Mihigo seemed at ease like they were best friends.

"Boris, you drink Fanta when you are a virgin. When you had sex, you drink cola the next day. You are as dumb about the meaning of drinks as I am about math. That's why I love you!" explained Mihigo. Mihigo cuddled Boris from the side. "Maybe, one day you'll get lucky with Keza. She has a big appetite. Now tell me about this alpha."

"Well, maybe, think of alpha as fanta and beta as cola..." explained Boris.

"...oh and gamma is like milk," interrupted Mihigo.

"What does milk mean?" asked Boris.

"You know nothing, my little brother! If a woman wants to seduce someone, she drinks milk to become beautiful. If you see a woman drinking milk, look around, you can probably spot the guy she wants to seduce. Everybody knows this!" explained Mihigo.

"Okay. Now that we know what fanta, cola, and milk is, we can start doing something. It's kind of like the rules of an orgie what I'm going to tell you!" continued Boris, wondering where this unchartered territory was taking him.

"I love you! Do you know why?" asked Mihigo.

"Because I'm as stupid as you are?" guessed Boris confused.

"No, no, not that kind of love. I mean why I truly love you with my heart, not talking," rejected Mihigo.

"I have no idea. I'm so lost," replied Boris.

"You are the first math tutor that I haven't beaten up. I don't know why, but I always beat them up within two minutes. And here I am still laughing and talking with you!" explained Mihigo. Boris didn't feel reassured at all that making it past the two minute mark alive was a sign from heaven.

"Because you give me this great gift of teaching me math, I'll take you to the race after school," offered Mihigo congenially.

The teacher dropped the box of chalks with the ten year olds abruptly and whisked his feet over to Boris and Mihigo. "Boris, do not go to the race. They are very dangerous. He'll take you out to the tribal land. You can't possibly know the danger coming from such a beautiful Western country as you did."

Mihigo leaned back like he was at ease. He pointed at Keza and said, "Keza goes. If Boris wants to become a man, someone has to take him."

The teacher said "Don't go" firmly and walked away to call the kids with the ball back into the classroom. Their recess was over. The brevity and firmness of that last warning held more gravity than a lot of words would have. It sounded like a warning to someone in America to not walk across a six lane freeway. It was so evident and matter of fact that no explanation was needed and that no sane person would attempt it.

Mihigo looked at Boris with tempting eyes that said that it was Boris' choice.

"I'll go," said Boris. He felt that his social standing cache had been regained. Even Keza raised an eyebrow at his response before she loudly air sucked on her cola again.

"Let's do a Pytagoras problem," said Boris to move on with the trigonometry lesson.

Mihigo placed his hand on the paper ready to write. Boris noticed a dollar coin sized tattoo on the fleshy part of the space between the hand and the thumb. The design was a turtle. It was a simply drawn turtle: A big circle for the shell, four little circles for the feet, and a smiling, cute face. It was imperceptible what made the simple line drawing have such a charming smile. The edges of the lines were blurred as if it were hand drawn by a novice.

"That's a pretty tattoo!" complimented Boris.

"You probably don't know either what those mean, little brother," asked Mihigo.

"They make you look more beautiful? They are old and wise," offered Boris.

"No," Mihigo waved those ideas away with a loving way that expressed that Boris was talking nonsense. "When a woman has sex so good that she reaches god consciousness, she leaves a mark on the man. This mark is from Mukobwajana. Don't say her name around Keza. They are arch enemies. This is a good point to have a tattoo. The point is called two rivers. Whenever you are trapped in a race, a second river or path will open to let you move out of the trap."

"Is there a woman that uses a deer tattoo as her mark?" asked Boris.

"How did you know? That's Keza's mark," said the astonished Mihigo.

Boris tried to see more details in Keza's shape. He tried to recall his dreams, but the memory was too hazy. If only he could see her nipples, he'd be able to tell for sure. Mihigo looked closer at Boris as if Mihigo was trying to reevaluate who Boris was.

"Who knows! Maybe, you'll race tonight," said Mihigo before they went back to trigonometry.

When the teacher ended school, Boris sent Mikhail a quick text that he was going to hang out with a new friend and would be home late. Then Mihigo and Boris set off. There was a faint footpath behind the school that led up the hill in an S shape. Rain had carved a trove into the path and big jagged rocks were revealed by it. When they reached the hilltop, Boris could see to the East more houses and a haze that hinted of air pollution over Kigali. To the West were towering mountains. Everywhere else in between seemed to be one hill after the next into every direction.

Mihigo led Boris back down the hill on the other side and up the next hill. They meandered up and down until they came to a little wooden shack. The wood wasn't even treated. There were quarter sized holes in the sun bleached wood. Boris could tell where the wood planks were hammered with nails to studs. Smoke came out of a tin can as a chimney on the roof. The smell of banana caramelizing over heat tingled their noses.

Mihigo opened the door and called something out in Kinyarwanda. Then he introduced Boris and his aunt. She was steering a big flat metal plate with a paste from which she separated a few darkened slops and placed them on plates for Mihigo and Boris. "Matoke" is what Mihigo called it. The recipe seemed to be mainly banana with some vegetables for flavor. It wasn't too bad. Mihigo had to translate everything because his aunt only spoke Kinyarwanda. She kept rubbing Mihigos head right on top with much cheer. Mihigo explained that his name meant little insect. That's why his aunt was so fond of treating him like a cute little grasshopper. Boris thought it funny to watch that rough looking and big man fondled by that little old lady with age folds deeply carved into her face as if he were a young boy, and he smiled back at her directly absorbing his role.

After only a quick snack, they moved on. The hills, hilltops, trees, and dirt path started looking all the same. Boris wasn't sure if he'd find his way home. It seemed that in every direction, there was the same for miles. Only a local would have memorized exactly what a certain tree looked like and where the tree had to stand to identify a particular hilltop.

Right as Boris was puzzled about his situation, Mihigo grabbed Boris' hand. It was a full on hand-holding thing. Boris first reaction was that Mihigo was gay and that there had been a misunderstanding. Why else would Mihigo have said so often how much Mihigo loved Boris? But Mihigo's demeanor didn't change. Boris knew how gay guys had come onto him, very desperate, very slopp, very much all over him. Mihigo was holding his hand like it was normal. They were simply slinging their hand back and forth together. Boris had seen guys hold hands in Kigali. Maybe, this was simply a Rwandan thing that guys hold hands like girls do. He wondered if they'd be going to the restroom together to chat as well.

They came back onto an actual dirt road. The dirt road led up a hill that was twice as tall as the other hills. The road was carefully placed to make the gradient either. That's why it had to curve back and forth up the hill. Right after the first serpentine turn, Mihigo pointed at a house beneath the road: "That's my house." The house had a big yard. There was a pile of tortured red branches about six feet long each. There was a neatly stacked pile of blond wood boards. A ramshackle pile of tree roots was rotting in a corner. A big saw was out in the open. The front of the house had no walls. It seemed to house a big wood working shop. This was a lumber yard, not like an American lumber yard with fork lifts buzzing around. It was a collection of scrap wood that he repurposed into useful timber.

"I'll show you," said Mihingo and descended from the dirt road to the front part of his house. There was a half finished turtle carving on a bench. The turtle looked a lot like his tattoo. Mihingo's biggest pride seemed to be a closet that was in progress. Clamps held together pieces that he seemed to have glued recently. He pointed at the fine woodworking that he had done to create the framing for the door and the inset of the shelving. On an IKEA level, it was pretty primitive. However, for standing out here in nature with only simple tools and no math skills, it was pretty impressive.

"I'm going to teach you how to build a honeycomb shelf," offered Boris.

"What's that?" asked Mihingo.

"It's a shelve made of six cornered shapes. It's very stable and strong. It's pretty as well. We can practice a lot of trigonometry getting the shapes right. If you bring some boards, saw, measuring tape, and glue to school tomorrow, we can do some hands-on trig," explained Boris.

"Are you going to make an orgie with fanta and cola on my wood boards?" asked Mihingo.

"Yes, full-on," said Boris with pride. He finally found a place where he meant something.

Mihingo disappeared into his house for a moment and came back with a neon pink and neon green headband. He placed the neon pink headband on himself and the green one on the reluctant Boris. "We are going to look good for the ladies!" explained Mihingo. Next Mihingo dipped all his fingertips into a jar of white. Mihingo let his fingertips run down the length of Boris' arms to the wrists while undulating side to side to create lanes of waves. Boris felt a little uneasy about the paint.

They walked on as the sun set. The light dimmed. The hills became taller. They started having rock outcroppings - occasionally an actual rock face that plants clung to with roots exposed. Right when the light was so low that it felt like night but the sky was still lit with a deep blue before turning black, Mihingo pointed at a hyena ahead of them. The hyena looked back at them. As the eyes caught the moonlight, the eyes lit up golden. "Golden eyes is an omen. It's not here to eat us. They only light up golden when they look directly at our eyes. If it were here to hunt us, it would look at our neck instead. But never be fooled once it has delivered it's omen, it might still want to eat you," educated Mihingo.

"What is the omen," asked Boris.

"Well, I'm not a voodoo man. I'm a wood man. It might be a guardian because we are about to cross over to the ceremony land for the race. Do you see that hill ahead? The party is on top," explained Mihingo.

Like a guardian, the hyena passed out of their way as they got closer. It slowly walked away like a guardian opening a gate. And once the gate was unblocked, it ran off with lofty bounces like it's assignment had been completed. The hill was the steepest that they had climbed yet. Boris was sliding backwards on the thin, loose top layer of red dirt. He was panting hard. The sweat in his neck was thick. He was really curious what this party was like. He could hear the bass from a distance - the low droning of a big drum. Lights were flickering over the trees that turned into a thick canopy of about 20 foot tall trees that were a lot more ball shaped then the low lying trees. As they got closer, he could hear singing and people yelling loudly. There was a lot of energy in the party.

When the turned the last corner and came around a tree with a trunk as wide as Boris could reach, he couldn't believe his eyes. He saw three girls dancing with drinks in their hand and what seemed to be tight mini skirts and bras. They were dressed like at a very sexy rave party. Their bodies were trim and taught - long sinewy arms and svelte legs - all bare skin. A pickup truck with a sound system was actually playing drum'n'base from London. All the restraint and conservatism that he had seen in Kigali was put upside down.

"You like?" asked Mihingo as he caught Boris staring at the ass of a dancer - the butt was so perfectly round and bulbous that it was the definition of juice. And it was only packaged with a green, sheen fabric that was wrapped in such a way that it really hugged the curve and slipped between her butt cheeks with ruffles. Another hottie let her hips circle around to show of her belly button with a taut belly. "There is no polisi here in tribal land. We celebrate freedom."

The guys were squatting in a way that made it seem as if they were showing off their bodies. The chests were enormous. The muscles were big. The men didn't wear tops but had white paint patterns painted on their bodies. They seemed to pose their muscle flex with all their brown, strong muscles revealed to the onlookers. One particularly big guy had a short, stubby girl massaging oil on his skin to give him a glow. Both men and women were showing off their bodies to each other in this staging. It felt like at a race where the drivers show off their cars with the hood popped open to let anyone inspect the engine. Boris got so many eye fulls of a haughty sexy body here, a cute and small one there, big overwhelming boobs, smart and little ones.

Yet over them all, about eight feet above the ground, right in the tree, there was a woman tied up and hanging. She seemed to be in a pigeon pose with her front legs shin sideways and her back leg with the foot raised high to tie her backfoot to her braided hair to create an arch. Her mouth bit on a white cloth that silenced her. Slowly in the moonlight she spun in a circle from some momentum that the tying person had given her and that dissipated only very slowly. With the turn, the moon light lit up different parts of her body. Boris could take in her body piece by piece, the tensed thighs, the scared, wide open eyes, the strain in her neck from being pulled into an uncomfortable position, the helplessness of her arms tied behind her back.

"What is she doing," asked Boris.

Mihigo shook his head to signal that he wasn't going to entertain what was going on there. "That's deep voodoo shit. You don't want to get involved," explained Mihigo. "We are only here for the race. Sometimes, people from deep in the tribal land come out here to the edge. They do way insane things. You don't even want to look. Ignore it like it doesn't happen. Believe me that if our teacher knew that some of that deep voodoo shit were happening here, he'd crap his pants. Just ignore it. Don't look! Let me give you a tour of the place."

Putting his hands on Boris' back, Mihigo walked Boris away from the party to an overlook that was doused in pale white moonlight. From up here, one could feel the height because a creek had carved a cliff between this hill and the hill opposite to the creek. The usually smooth hillsides were carved deeply by the creek to reveal rock faces. Gently Mihigo grabbed Boris' jawbones from behind to guide Boris' gaze to the opposite hillside where there was a similar clearing. Boris had odd feelings about the touchy nature of Mihigo, but all his touches felt good and warm.

"The race goes down to the creek, across the creek, and back up that hill. The racers have to each light a lantern on the other side as proof for making it to the turnaround point while everyone watches from here. Then the race comes back here. The first person back wins a dance with Mukobwajana. The hands and mouth can touch her all over for the length of a dance," explained Mihigo.

"Tonight's race is very safe. If you go deeper into the tribal land, the prizes become more worthy and the danger higher," while he stroked the turtle tattoo in the crook of his thumb and index finger to imply that he won sex with her.

Mihigo led Boris back in a round circle. Mihigo pointed out a short, black woman on top of a VW bus. Her skin was blacker than any that he had seen. It was like her skin absorbed light itself. But the skin was also shiny. It reflected all the colorful disco lights of the dancers in the distance back. There was something so alluring about her skin that Boris wanted to touch it to feel it. He wanted to taste it. He had never felt so attracted to a skin color. It wasn't the color black itself. It was much more how the skin interacted with light, how it absorbed it and at the same time threw a reflection back like a mirror. She seemed to be made of shiny, black steel. Her shoes had lace bands that she tied up all the way around her legs to the midthigh. The pants that she was wearing were more underwear that let her butt cheeks peek out and taunt the onlookers. And she was being admired. A small crowd surrounded the VW bus and marveled up at her. She fully enjoyed the attention and presented her body to be admired, to be yearned for, and to instill deep jealousy. She was the prize tonight that the race was about.

Taking a little side tour, a different sound entered Boris' ears. It was a sharper, much faster, much more energetic, and much more repetitive sound. It had a driving and hypnotic quality to it. The thuds had a little skip beat followed by a fast speed up double beat that kept repeating. Boris couldn't see because bushes created a corral. Only when Mihingo pushed the final bush branches out of the way, he saw a group of fifteen women in a feverish, raving dance. They threw their limbs wildly around themselves. They twerked. They jumped into the air. They ran side to side. Boris had never seen anyone go that nuts to music. And their nearly bare naked bodies showed thick glistening skin. Boris even got a few sweat drops flying to his face that were flung by a woman that threw her head side to side in a horse stance to send her long hair flying. The big heavy sneakers provided an oddly contrasting visual weight to their skimpy clothing.

"These are the soul guardians," explained Mihingo. "They are going through their ritual. When they are ready the race starts. Each runner gets a soul guardian. The soul guardian sucks the soul out of the runner and keeps it until the race is over. Then she places the soul into a regal sunbird. The runner has 24 hours to find the regal sunbird and to retrieve the soul. The body without the soul will die within 24 hours. It's dangerous. That's why most of the guys only show off their bodies here. There are probably a hundred people of our age around here. But so far, I've counted only five runners. When you come to these races, you'll start to recognize a certain look in their eyes."