BORN TAO: The karate kid that wasn’t

As kids, my brothers and I watched The Karate Kid with growing fascination.

Back then, watching a movie was special, because it was communal affair for the boys, and we would talk about it for many days to come.

But I was one those who wanted to live the thrill in action packed movies.

I wanted to be among the first lad who step up a bare-knuckled challenge after watching the old karate master Miyagi teach the teenager Daniel the basics of karate: “Karate lies in the mind and heart and not in the hands.”

Armed with that secret, I saw no need to ask my supportive mother to enroll me in a karate school. After all, I had mastered the ancient art of fighting in my mind and heart.

The opportunity to put my skills into action finally came when mathee took us to visit shosh in ushago and well, being Born Tao I had vowed to put those shagz mudus in their rightful place through karate. 

I wore my favourite Sunday best outfit, a cool purple track suit laced with a white full neck, and white sports shoes. I looked really cool, I mean Straight Outa Tao, I felt entitled to win.

My shags mudu cousin Georgy loved fights too as long as he was a spectator.

We made a perfect collabo, we had a fighter and an agent, and we were looking for a worthy opponent.

After had lunch in his maskani, he announced that he had found a challenger from a nearby village. I was delighted. The match was booked in a banana plantation in my grandfather’s farm far away from the homestead.

We arrived at the banana plantation a few minutes later, where we were received by a jubilant group of teenage boys shouting in vernacular, “Fight, fight, fight!!”.

It was exciting as I walked between them escorted by my cousin, thinking of how they would carry me shoulder high praising my name across the hills when I won the fight.

I stepped into the manmade circle, still I had not yet seen the challenger, “Huyu msee ameogopa nini!” I called him out.

A four feet and a half inches a goliath teenager stepped into the circle, tore his dirty t-shirt apart, flexing his muscles ready to charge at me like a wounded bull. I started sweating profusely, I was a skinny Class Two pupil standing at about three feet tall.

Suddenly, the mind was willing but the body was weak, but it was too late to throw in the towel, “Hapa nikajipa moyo kimwanaume.”

To buy time, I placed a stone on my right hand and dared him to hit it. Goliath dropped it, pushing me backward. I then drew a line on the ground between us and dared him to cross it. It didn’t work.

“Thwack, thwack!”  he slapped me viciously two times.

“Auuuuuuuuu………iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii, uuuuuuuuuh uuuuuh, guuuuuuuuka, saidia, saidia,” I cried out in pain.

My grandfather was a man of totalitarian authority who was feared and admired in equal measure across the village. My opponent dashed into the banana plantation leaving me crying in pain as the other boys laughed their ribs dry.

My mental karate skills had proved worthless. I stood at the centre of the circle of the shags mudu boys, as the last man standing while nursing my burning hot cheeks expecting my challenger to come back, but he was nowhere in sight.

Georgy lifted my right hand up, I won the fight by screaming for help and standing my ground, Goliath had proven himself a coward by running away.

I demanded a rematch. It took place five years later.