OWONGO DISCOVERS RACISM

Racial intolerance, that bogey of human life, had to come from somewhere.

Back in the twilight years of time when the world was almost observably newer (almost, but possibly not quite, the world is a truly ancient place and measures its seasons in millions of years rather than the odd millennia) one of the noblest of people walking the shady meadows and climbing the craggy rocks was a distant relative of mine - Owongo.

How, you might ask, do I know that? How do I know that the DNA that is part and parcel of me contains an echo of him?

Well, the answer’s quite simple, really. Just as mathematically you, all of you, and I must have a branchlet of our ancestry that includes Julius Caesar (work it out, by the time you get back to the times of Caesar your ancestry outstrips the entire human race several times over and anyway nobody can be quite certain how many sprogs he had on one side or other of the blanket, so it would be weird indeed if his blood didn’t put an appearance in somewhere), then multiplying things out into more millennia than seems reasonable must mean that Owongo is a reality on both sides of yours and my parentage, possibly countless times over!

But all this is a digression.

As I said, Owongo, one of the noblest men around, was making his hominid way through a sunshine-heated valley when he became aware that he wasn’t alone. His instincts were finely tuned - they had to be in days when his only means of defence was a sharpened stick, which made avoiding danger a more sensible option than creating it - and he knew that it was neither a savage beast nor a wounded lion that was lurking hidden by the undergrowth, but another man. He couldn’t see him but his instincts were particularly finely tuned, hence his survival into his thirties, which was accounted a noble and elderly back then in that part of the world. It was another man, and a stranger too, of that he was certain.

“Who there?” he called out when it was clear to him that just as he knew of the presence of another so that other must be aware of his own presence.

There was a rustle, the sound of a breaking twig and a half-hissed curse, and a figure the like of which he’d never seen before edged out of his hiding and stood before Owongo.

Now I’d better describe the dramatis personae. Owongo was, of course, naked but long of lank hair. There was nothing particularly perverted about this, no implied sexuality, just the most common way his small tribe went about their business on balmy days, and as I have already inferred, this was a day such as that. So Owongo was naked and it didn’t strike him as being at all odd being totally unclad. The other, on the other hand, was darkly bronzed yet wearing a rather pestilent-infested fur around his middle, completely concealing his more personal parts, and a circlet of leather on his head with a single feather proudly attached to it. The contrast between the two was obvious. Owongo was at least one shade lighter despite his season-long exposure to sunlight, and his manhood and pair were swinging free. The other was partly clothed and had an absurd decoration to his head " absurd, that is, to Owongo’s eyes.

“Who you?” he asked, as politely as he could.

The other shook his head then pointed at himself and grunted “Pondoo”.

“You not from round here,” Owongo told him, knowing the lands along this valley floor and the mountains on either side as well as he knew the curvature of his woman Mirumda’s plump body.

The other shook his head again and then indicated his groin or where his groin would be if he wasn’t wearing an infested garment, and growled.

There is a universality about non-verbal sounds that emanate from a man’s mouth, and that growl conveyed to Owongo that the other was troubled by his nakedness. He would have preferred it if Owongo also wore a flea-infested loin-cloth, but to Owongo the notion was absurd. During the cooler months of winter he sometimes did wrap himself up, and more thoroughly than that, but now, in simmering summer there was, so far as he could tell, no point.

To Owongo the only point of wearing anything had to do with preservation from the cold even though some of the younger females back home did take to the odd becoming decorative piece of frippery - but that was women for you, and it added to their charms. But a man, a real man, was happy to go naked.

“What that feather on your head?” he asked when he felt that his perusal of the other’s clothing might become so protracted as to seem rude. He raised one hand and indicated his own forehead, and the other nodded, recognising the gesticulation.

“Mumbud,” he grated. And then he pointed to his decorative feather before stretching the arm out to apparently encompass the entire world with the gesture.

“Mumbud?” asked Owongo, and the other sunk to his knees and started gibbering. He placed both palms of his hands on the well-trodden ground and began quivering. Owongo had neither seen nor heard anything like it in his life. What did this fellow mean? And was he happy with lice dropping from his unhealthy-looking garment? Was he perhaps insane? There was such a thing as madness " Owongo had met the insane in his own tribe, not so many of them but they were best avoided.

“Really Pondoo...” he began. But the other leapt to his feet at the words and stared wildly at Owongo before racing off into the undergrowth from whence he had come. Owongo could hear him crashing around until the sounds were swallowed up by the distance.

“The fellow mad,” he muttered to himself, and slowly continued on his way.

He didn’t know, there was no way how he could have known, but the sound “really” meant something truly threatening to the unpleasantly fragrant darker man. But Owongo had meant no harm, had been about to bid him farewell and the world go well with him, but somehow had sown the first lousy seed of racial intolerance which was to come back to haunt him once the painted spearmen, living in a far valley, heard how he went around naked and unashamed, and in addition had cursed the noblest cleric of their kind for no good reason.

Owongo had inadvertently invented racism.

© Peter Rogerson 21.08.16

Author's Note

Everything had a beginning, even the stupid intolerances of the modern age, and I'm prepared to bet that they started for no sensible reason.