Based on real facts

This story can hurt sensitivity

Losing yourself is the worst thing that can happen. But I am certain that if I don't lose myself, I will never be lost. The problem is knowing if my inner compass takes me to the right place.

I will be able to travel hundreds of kilometers, sleep under thousands of skies, breathe many different airs, but if I lose myself, I am lost. Although no one has ever told me I can't find my way. All roads lead to your destination. The problem lies in finding the fastest, simplest, sweetest.

I don't know at what point I misstepped. But they were smarter than me. He had a promising future. A beautiful idea of ​​life, even if it was humble, even if it had my mother, even if there was little to enjoy.

In Zimbabwe there were many who dressed in worse clothes than me, but also better. Some had a smartphone. They said that before they were called mobiles and that they were only used to make phone calls and instant messages. Technology advances more than the world. It will be that humanity has an evolution problem.

I don't know where I am in humanity. For some, I will be one more person, but I am many things: black, nigga, savage, border hopper, monkey, berry picker.

I have heard so many things that I have wondered if I am so different from others.

But I have seen whites. Tourists and volunteers. They were like me. I was like them. We only changed the color of the skin, the features, the hair, the customs...

But I played to imagine. And I puted me on the best: under the skin, there is only meat, blood, bones, organs... And that is the same color. Conclusion: we are all equal. If they ripped off my skin but left my soul clothed, you would not know if I am black, or I am white. And it is a pity that only a few can understand it. In the end, my heart can be yours too, or my lungs, or my blood... Poor white racist who is saved by the heart of a black... But how lucky his, to stay in life.

Trade in organs. Something strange, but that exists... They capture people, make them their own, give them to others and even sell their organs. Incredible, but real... As real like as, that before I got to all that, I ran away.

My wrong move was before... Damn my luck that, on a normal day, I ran into a demon on the way. It was very different from all the demon images I had in mind from the many times I had been told about monstrous demons. This was like me. Black, without many facilities in life, looking for his way. But he had another way of acting because, while I sought to improve through dreams and struggle, he tooked advantage of those who had less, with the promise of giving them more.

I was only sixteen years old. I returned home after walking many kilometers loaded with the purchase for my mother, who did not stop at the livestock, nor at the sewing factory, nor at home.

Labor exploitation. But that's another topic...

I saw him. I standed up. I continued on my way. I tried to leave him behind. But he followed me.

The purchase were on the floor, along with the desire to see Mom.

"If you don't accept, we'll find your family. I don't think I have to tell you what will happen then, do I?"

That was the last thing he said to me after all the attempts to dupe me. False promises of dreams in distant lands, of money to take home, of access to university, a good job thanks to my remarkable academic results... I refused everything. I just wanted my life. My illusions. Gradually I build my own future. And they broke me everything.

His hand gripped my scrawny arm, the soles of my old sneakers breaking on the floor as I was dragged by myself in an absurd attempt to stay anchored right there, my tears falling down my face, my sore throat from screaming and then, a strong blow, darkness, silence.

I woke up. Unknown faces were watching me. Women, children, the elderly. All crowded into a truck. I remember that moment as the most terrible of my life. We were just merchandise. Merchandise in the hands of terrifying beasts.

Compared to them, the kachipo or suri, the tribe with which I have been staying for days, does not seem so much to me. Although I was lucky not to get to the Donga moment...

This tribe is a semi-nomadic ethnic group residing in southwestern Ethiopia and in a redoubt in South Sudan. They have very old traditions and customs and have barely evolved. What scares me the most is that they carry kalashnikovs, a 7.62mm caliber Soviet assault rifle designed by Mikhail Kaláshnikov, a Russian fighter during World War II. It was the official rifle of the Soviet Union between 1951 and 1978. Better known as AK-47.

I know many tribes... And that's why I know that I would have preferred to find the Jie, the Murles or the Hamer. But I can not complain. As far as I know, they always use their kalashnikov to hunt down the animals they feed on. They have no cattle, unlike other tribes, but Boma is very rich in fauna and, among other animals, there are many white-eared cobos, an antelope similar to the impala. They also eat corn, millet, vegetables, bananas, mango and honey, as they are great gatherers and have great skill in climbing gigantic trees.

However, they are considered the fiercest tribe in the region. And I can't deny that I'm a little scared.

They are very closed to their customs, they speak their own language and I just want to leave. But here I have food, shelter and water. I thought I would have to feed on the nuts of those palm trees, but that suri who found me when I was chasing the leopard did not hesitate for a moment to take me with him.

"Subiri. Subiri! " I sayed him when he spoke fiercely to me in his language. But he didn't seem to understand Swahili and I decided to speak better in English. That made him stay quiet, gesturing nothing but with that fierce rictus on his face. He approached me and grabbed my arm:

"The big boss will decide whether to wait."

That got my whole animal instinct to work. I tried to get away from him and was grateful that he carried a spear and not an AK-47. I was surprised that he carried it, because it was not a Donga stick, since the wooden stick ended in an arrowhead. Formerly, they used rudimentary weapons for hunting and wars with other tribes but, since the civil war, they carry the AK-47. Perhaps some still retain a fascination with the earliest weapons... Although they are killing off wildlife.

The man who led me in solemn silence on the road was dressed in blue. His black skin also seemed bluish in contrast to daylight and his clothing was barely a tunic crossed over one shoulder. I noticed the paintings and scarifications that, the fabric fluffing through the air, allowed me to see in his body.

I was afraid. He understood me... I knew I shouldn't be there and I wanted the tribal chief to decide what to do for me. And I'm sick of them deciding for me like I'm just another prey...

The road seemed endless to me. The Jie settle on the plateaus, where they live on livestock in large towns surrounded by palisades... However, the Kachipo live in the mountains. Rugged mountains with no roads and no water... they are sedentary and farmers, growing millet, corn, squash, cabbage, tobacco and coffee. They raise goats and sheep, hunt and collect honey. They trade in leopard skins, giraffe tails, ivory, rifles, and ammunition, with the jiye and the murle. Before they lived on the banks of the Nile, where the Bor Dinka are now found. They speak the Suri language and are mostly animists*. They form six exogamous** clans , dominated by the Jufa.

I know all about them, but they didn't know anything about me.

We left kilometers and kilometers behind of a desert area, with all those palm trees full of fruits from which not one had been able to take, with the forest from which I left and where the leopard would manage to escape. I was exhausted and almost asleep while the landscape and the ecosystem changed around me, like the temperature and the light.

We went up the mountains, leaving the tall grasses of the valley to climb steep cold granite walls, until we reached a thick, leafy and humid forest full of trees that grow between ravines and, finally, at the top, a tropical forest. A radical change of landscape that turns the last part of the ascent into the journey of an incredible forest.

I no longer knew if I had any hands and feet left, if I had enough strength in the trembling legs, to stand. But I heard the vultures and looked at the sky. They flew in a circle, between light and dark clouds, a little further...

There were steep walls about 200 meters high where they had their nests and, soon after, I was carried between small huts scattered through the forest, until I found myself before the great chief, just as the kachipo said he would do.

I felt captive, imprisoned and out of place. For the umpteenth time in my life.

Boma is a fortress and I have no weapons.

He wore a blue tunic, exposing one of his shoulders. Gleaming gold earrings dangled from his ears, and colored stone necklaces contrasted the dark color of his skin. Wooden ball bracelets and gold-plated bangles, including a cloth ribbon, adorned his wrists. A grim gesture remained on his face as my captor spoke into his ear.

"Where you come from?" He then replied in fluent English with a strong accent of his language. I looked around, a few seconds after my raptor is out of his boss's command, before more kachipos enter the cabin. I looked at them uneasily.

"From Eritrea." I said, looking at how they might react to that.

I lied. I come from there, but I'm from Zimbabwe.

I was trying to take a deep breath, especially when I was surrounded by some of them, including only one woman. I realized then that they were members of the tribal council.

"You're hurt." I heard say then. And I quickly turned to where that voice came from.

It was the woman. The only one on the council. I nodded raising my hand to she saw the improvised bandage, and I looked down to raise my pants a little to they saw my wounds.

"I've been walking so long that I lost count of days." I said then prompting an unwanted question. It came from the boss's mouth.

"What are you running from?" They demanded of me.

I could tell him the truth: that I was running from the mafias, that I was running from horror... or I could tell him that I was escaping from a leopard, because that's how I found one of the members of your tribe. But I prefer to answer something more ambiguous so as not to give a clear answer and play with the benefit of the apparent sincerity. Frightened and doing everything possible not to appear, answer:

"From a beast."

"Nga Bilé is a healer." He said after a few long minutes of silence. I looked at that woman, who noticed my wounds. She smiled slightly at me. I think she wanted to inspire confidence in me.

"She will heal your wounds. Rest, water and food will be provided." The tribal chief ordered, and I thanked him for his hospitality with a smile. But he was looking at me in a strange way. I think he was paying too much attention to the color of my skin and my clothes.

"When you recover, you will dress like us, you will live like us and you will be like us."

The council members began to leave the hut. I think they were going to arrange everything. The healer stayed with me, I thanked the big boss with words and it was the woman who took me out of there.

The night thrown over the forest showed everything with little clarity. But the fires and lights were on. A boy with a white face painting was watching me with a penetrating curiosity from the door of a cabin. I let myself be led by that stranger to one of the huts, inside which there was a kitchen and a small dining room.

Inside, a family and, behind a curtain hanging from the ceiling, a single bed, freshly prepared. It was there that they led me. And it was there that I stayed for three days without moving just because, according to the healer, the only way to become vital again is to quietly replace everything we lose by moving.

It's been seven days since I ran into that man. Maybe the leopard did me a favor by taking me to a place where I would have food and shelter. Perhaps I also did it to him when he fled and that he left the path known to the kachipo who was willing to hunt him down.

Now, I am one more kachipo, but they know that I am not.

I am thankful that the Suri have no initiation rites... Being cut with a sharp blade all over the body; not sleeping, eating or drinking for four days, or denting women's teeth until they have a shark smile, are some of the rituals still in force today for some of the aboriginal*** tribes of our planet. To form a tower between 20 and 30 meters high with branches and vines from the environment, from which they rush as a symbol of faith and to guarantee the good harvest of that year. It goes without saying that more than one (and two) open their heads in the process, but most only experience intense ankle pain for several days. Be to cut on the back, chest and buttocks following defined patterns so that the resulting eschar mimic the skin of a crocodile. The process is long, painful, and bloody. Young people undergoing it often need help even to go to the bathroom and eat.

The Mandan Indians of North Dakota test the physical endurance of their warriors. The 'Okipa' ritual begin with the applicant without eating, drinking or sleeping for four days in a row. Then they to cut the skin on his back, shoulders, to nail his limbs to wooden pikes and suspend him with weights tied to his legs in front of the men of the town until the young warrior lost consciousness. At that moment they would lower it again and wait for it to recover; if so, he had shown his strength and the approval of the spirits. Finally, the dying man had to cut off his little fingers and go through the center of the village a set number of times. The Abakwetha, or would-be men, in South Africa are shaved and entertained with a party in their honor. They are then led to a secluded hut in the mountains, which has previously been built by his family. It is that moment when the shaman proceeds to circumcise the boy, cutting the foreskin with a ritual razor. You will not be able to eat, drink, or leave the hut until the wound has healed. In fact, the risk of infection is high, not counting the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases, since the blade that cuts the penis is used the same by all the boys in the village.

In the Sabini of Uganda, female ablation is the common ritual for the women of the tribe to demonstrate their strength. For this, if a woman demonstrates the fortitude necessary to bear the partial or total loss of the clitoris, then she will be able to bear the future tests imposed on her by life. It is also supposed to serve to keep her faithful to her husband and to keep her from promiscuity. Unfortunately, the risk of infection and the percentage of deaths after the process is quite high.

Or they could be the Matausa in which, for a child to become a man and a warrior, he must first pass the blood ritual and free himself from any feminine influence. To do this, first to induce vomiting repeatedly by inserting thin reeds into your throat. Later, similar ones will enter through your nostrils. Lastly, you will receive numerous stab wounds on your tongue. When the rite ends, the aspirant has lost a fair amount of blood and earned the right to be considered a man.

But I have found the kachipo, and I am not in Australia, nor in Brazil, nor in India, nor in Uganda... And, although they are among the wildest and most closed, they are not so extreme.

They have allowed me not to shave my hair, as almost all women wear it since only the youngest make curious hairstyles, although not too much. They have allowed me to dress in clothes that were kept from the passage of some white tourists through their lands, so that I donnot get cold.

One of the girls has combed my hair, they have taken off my old tracksuit and my broken sneakers and they have dressed me. I knew that they would do that kind of thing to me and also that they would propose what one of the women of the house in which I am living does now:

"You've been here long enough to highlight your beauty."

I am eating, crouched by the fire. I look at her as I chew, seeing that she has a blade in his fingers and a thin, sharp wooden stick. It is what I was working on so far without my realizing it was for me. I laugh and shake my head.

"I don't want scarifications *****..."

I say and keep eating. But her face is not to accept denials. And I understand it, because I have refused many things. So I stop chewing, watching her with the food in her mouth as she gets closer. What I don't want is for me to crack with a blade that can transmit a disease.

"It won't hurt. Beauty is worth more."

She says then and I lean back, looking at the blade and the straw in her fingers when she stops next to me, standing.

I swallow all the food in one fell swoop, feeling my breathing catch. And I make a decision.

"Draw me points." I ask that she, for that she only use the wood and not the blade. She seems to like that, because she smiles at me. And I decide to lift the fabric of my clothes, by the thigh.

"On the buttocks?"

I lean back against the old stump I was sitting on, keeping my leg on it, turned and grabbing my trunk with my arms.

"Only in one." I ask preparing myself for pain. But I have felt worse pain. I do not like scarifications and I do not consider it beauty, but in the ass I will not see it. The woman does not need anything else to start sticking that stick in my buttock and, when it does, intense pain runs through my entire body, making me tense my muscles and forcefully close my eyes. A pain that reminds me of other terrible pains. But I don't scream. I just want it to be over soon.

Sometimes, to survive, you have to succumb first.

*Animists: follower of animism, a belief that attributes soul life to all beings. That is, the existence of spirits that give life to all things.

**Exogamos: that they practice the rule or custom of contracting marriage with a spouse of a different tribe or ancestry, or coming from another locality or region. Crossing between individuals of different race, community or population, leading to an increasingly heterogeneous descent.

****Aborigines: Aboriginal concept refers to someone or something originating from the soil in which they live. In this sense, you can name both a person (an Aboriginal tribe), an animal or a plant. It is used to name the primitive inhabitant of a territory, so it is opposed to those who later settled in the region. The notion of aboriginal is used as a synonym for indigenous or native settlers. However, in its most specific sense, an indigenous person is a man belonging to an ethnic group that preserves traditional non-European culture. Generally, an indigenous person belongs to an organizational tradition prior to the emergence of the modern state. It is used to name the primitive inhabitant of a territory, so it is opposed to those who later settled in the region.

The notion of aboriginal is used as a synonym for indigenous or native settlers. However, in its most specific sense, an indigenous person is one who belongs to an ethnic group that preserves traditional non-European culture. Generally, an indigenous person belongs to an organizational tradition prior to the emergence of the modern state.

*****Scarifications: Tattoos made based on cuts and eschar on the skin through the application of superficial or deep incisions. The resulting eschar or granulations are small crusts that form as a consequence in the dermis. These wounds are generally dark in color as a result of the death of Tejidi. As it is a body modification, the incisions are usually made in a controlled way so as not to compromise the person's health and obtain a drawing that, in most cases, is aesthetic.

This automation technique is also practiced in western culture for decorative purposes, as a form of body modification.

The word scarify comes from late Latin 'scarificāre' which means "to make incisions in the body" and is considered an extreme bodily modification. It is also known as "the sacrifice mark" and is illegal in several countries.