For You I Will Move This Mountain: Prologue

Mundu’s favorite color was green because Sera’s favorite color was green and Sera’s favorite color was green because it was the color of the grass and of the leaves after the rains as well as the color of the skin of raw mangoes before they abandoned their mothers, the trees and fell to the ground. Green was also the color of Sera’s favorite wrapper, the one her mother gave her, the one she wore when she felt sad and wanted to feel better. Or even at times when she just wanted to feel close to her. And because of these things, because Mundu was mindful of such things, green was also the color of the throng of beads that he wore, forming an ‘X’ across his chest as he dipped and weaved, wind milling his arms and stamping his feet and raising dust along with more than thirty possibly up to fifty other boys dancing towards their manhood.
Mundu was a dream when he danced. Covered in sweat and dust and bells his movements were pure music and Sera‘s eyes moved to his rhythm. And as Sera, wrapped in a sheath of green, watched the procession of the Musani form a semicircle, almost shoulder to shoulder, she found herself swaying from side to side as if a leaf in the breeze and even once or twice caught herself almost adding her own voice to the chants issuing from the mouths of the boys. And why wouldn’t Sera toss her voice in lot with theirs? She did know the words backwards and forwards after all. How? Well because she, just like every other able bodied member of the village, came and watched these ceremonies every single year. Even the cripples found a way to get from here to there so that they could watch it. It was Imbalu season.
And then suddenly, without any warning and with a very loud and very final thud-thud thud thud-thud the dancing came to an abrupt stop. No more drums meant no more movement and so all the boys stood stock still and erect, the only signs of life the heaving of their chests and the occasional twitch as fly landed on skin. The time had come and now only one thing remained; would Mundu stand well?