Booty Plundering

There is a small community of Somalian refugees living near the GP private practice where I'm currently performing my locums.

One of them is a 16 year old boy.

He spoke to me in a mash-up of English and Afrikaans.

(What I like to call Englikaans.)

As he entered the room, I couldn't help but be aware of the evidence of recent injury: antalgic gait, periorbital ecchymoses on the left, healing laceration right cheek. (i.e. limping, with a black eye and a scarface, you non-medic!).

My sharply honed diagnostic doctoring skills (and a year spent on the Cape Flats) immediately concluded that some-one had succeeded in beating the shit out of this guy.

"Salaam Dokter, haal af these things in my kop" he demanded.

(Salaam Dr, take out these things in my head)

"Hang on there a second Somalian, what happened to your 'kop'?" I asked him, knowing instinctively what his answer would be.

"Ya-Allah, these other guys hulle beat vir my kop. But I beat them back! The Dr put stitches in, long time, six weeks now, ya-Allah! You take it out.You take it out now!"

There was something lovable about this skinny beaten up boy sitting opposite me.
Something to do with him displaying all the bravado of a young man going through puberty.
I found it adorable.

Normally, I get annoyed by young men giving me orders, but this guy, with his staccato tempo'd instructions only succeeded in me wanting to take him home and feed him.

And that was not intended as a joke about hungry Somalians.

So I did what I usually do with people I have an affinity for, I play with them by engaging in a little teasing.

"You must have been very brave to fight off all those men! Tell me, what was so very important to you, my son, that you ended up getting klapped for it?"

I prepared myself for the standard response I've heard hundreds of times: "Vokol doc, I was beaten for nah-ting!"

However his answer suprised, and touched me.

"For Love, sister, it was for Love." He said. And with this, he hung his 16 year old head wearily, as if the cumulative weight of the world's tragic love stories was resident on his skinny little shoulders.

"You mean you took a beating because you were in Love? She must have been an incredibly beautiful girl, no?"

"Yes," he said, and his black and bruised eye began to twinkle.
"She was bootiful. She is too bootiful!"

"How beautiful?" I asked him.

"Ah, not like you,sister, not like you. Sy was lekker vet. Lekker vet with a beeg bum om my warm te hou in the night... Ya'Allah that is a mooi kind!"

I'm going to ignore the multitude of comments I could make about a boy from a country ravaged with famine, who finds himself in love with a well-fed fat-bottomed woman big enough to be like a blanket that keeps him warm at night.

"So what happened?" I encouraged him

"I took her from her house, and she come with me! For two nights we sleep together, but then her brothers come to fetch her and they beat me."

Which is when I realised that I was sitting opposite our very own Somalian Love Pirate of Passion! One who had invaded another's territory in the name of Amour, and then succeeded in plundering the big booty of his beloved.

Utterly intrigued, I asked him "Was she really that worth it? Was she worth getting your face smashed in for?"

Suddenly his demeanour changed, and his swollen, cut lips cracked into an enraptured grin.

"Ooooh yes, sister, oooh yes, It was the best two nights of my life, I will never forget it!"

I fell in love with that Somalian child right then and there.

And as I lovingly eeked each suture free from the purulent foul-smelling laceration in his scalp, I pondered on Love and the Laws of Attraction.

So many of my female friends were obsessed with the imagined gargantuan size of their gluteii.

Listen up, ladies!

Here was a man who liked big butts and he could not lie.

In fact, he liked big butts so much that he was willing to take a beating for them!

These are the type of men you should be dating!

In his mind, this woman was beautiful because she was booty-full!

*drum roll*