Boshori

Image: Canva

I could tell very early on that he was more comfortable in the presence of adults than he was with kids his own age and size. While the rest of the kids in the clinic licked the floor and poked each other in the eye, he sat sellotaped to his mum. Strangely, it didn’t matter how close to his mum he sat, he still looked somewhat alone. He sat with his head down, fidgeting his fingers and occasionally gnawing at the immature hangnail on his right index finger. It was a hot mid-morning, but he had on a boshori, or a balaclava as it’s known in other parts of the world that know no better. It was a proper boshori at that, maroon in colour, patterned repeatedly with a white reindeer hauling a sleigh, and flakes of snow. It even had a solitary white bobble at the top. I didn’t think it odd, our sweet African mothers have always been violently opposed to cold weather. Statistically, clothes account for 50% of the body weight of any fully dressed African child. You could leave the house without legs…but leave without a sweater? …You’re courting a beating son of the soil.

The little boy was next in line so I called him and his mother over. His mother walked purposefully towards me, she seemed impatient. I couldn’t blame her, government hospitals are a comprehensive examination of civic endurance. The little man trailed behind, he had one of those stuttering gaits. It was as though he had tripped forward and was constantly trying to gather his step with a desperate shuffle. He was dressed in his school uniform; an over-sized blue sweater with chewed up sleeves that over hang his tiny hand. Underneath the sweater he had a shirt with a lazy frayed off-white collar. His shorts sagged generously with the hem ending two thirds the way down his shin. His gray socks, crowned with a band of white and blue, fell to his ankles where they bunched up because the elastic was all worn out. His shoes were black, but were dusty with red soil from the school playground, the toe of his left shoe had split away from the welt with strands of dried grass caught in the crevice.

His mother sat first, and pulled him over to stand sandwiched between her thighs. He was 6 years old, and had that unmistakable look of curiosity about him. I said hi, and he immediately reached into my lab-coat to find out what treasures the strange bearded wizard in a brilliant white coat had hidden. In the split second before his mum slapped his wrist, he’d managed to pull out, an unused pair of clean gloves, an a old prescription and a receipt from my morning coffee binge.

The slap on the wrist appeared to settle and pacify the young man, and his mother got straight into it. She pulled of his snug boshori as he let out a little grunt of disapproval and there it was, a unilateral constricted ear.

Some science; Constricted ear falls under the general category of congenital ear deformities. Congenital, meaning the deviation from normal anatomy is as a result of problems in the child’s development in the womb. The reason this happens can be as a result of environmental factors that the pregnant mother is exposed to such as certain drugs and toxins, or there may be genetic problems that alter the course of normal development. Constricted ear specifically, results in a variation of the appearance of the ear that ranges in severity. The hallmark of this varied appearance is the top rim of the ear (helical rim) being either folded over, wrinkled, or tight. Depending on the severity, there are non-surgical and surgical remedies.

This little guy had a defect somewhere between moderate and severe and needed surgery. The natural architecture of the ear makes for an interesting and challenging surgical reconstruction. With a constricted ear you tend to have an excess of cartilage that almost makes the ear look like a halved umbrella, you also typically get an obliteration of the hills and valleys that aesthetically define the ear. It was the first time i’d seen a case like this as the defect isn’t very common.

He playfully tried covering his ear every time I tried to examine it. Children play by their own rules. They instinctively have very good agency over what they want and what they don’t, so it can take anywhere between 5mins and 5 weeks to clinically examine a child. Being able to ‘feel’ on demand also means that some times, the emotions that are bubbling under remain siloed or temporarily forgotten until put in that exact triggering situation again. So, it may be difficult for children to express what’s bothering them, if in that very moment you ask, there isn’t anything bothering them. That’s where mum came in…

She told the story of her once adventurous little boy who growing up had a healthy curiosity of everything, and fear of nothing. He picked up speech and languages quickly as a toddler and had that street smart that they don’t teach you in school. He didn’t begin to stammer until late on in nursery school about a year ago. He stopped making eye contact around the same time, like he didn’t want to be seen. He progressively kept more and more to himself, and never once mentioned a best friend and favorite teacher.

Many times she’d pick him up from school and find him by the gate, sitting next to the old watchman and his geriatric guard dog. One day she was late to pick him up and she found the watchman scolding the little boy for kicking his loyal dog in an angry fit of rage that was very uncharacteristic of the boy. The watchman narrated to the mother how the boy had been napping on the grass, when the old friendly dog affectionately licked his ear at which point the boy violently lashed out with a right hook that caught the poor dog right in it’s snout. Odd.

The school didn’t allow him to wear his boshori on campus, so when mum came to pick him up, she always had to carry it with her because it’s the first thing he’d ask for. He would throw a tantrum if she ever forgot it and proceed to pout and cry all the way home. Home was his solace. It was just him and mum. He never played much with the kids from his estate, and on the rare occasion that he did decide to, it was always with kids from a different school than his own.

School; he hated it there. His grades had steadily dipped over the past 2 years. He sat at the back of the classroom, a few metres behind the last row of students. He could barely hear or see what was being taught at the front. It’s the only way he could get through the day. He’d previously sat at the front, but when he did, they’d flick his ears whenever the teacher turned her back on the class. It hurt. They were red and tender by the end of the day. If they weren’t bruising his ears, they were bantering them — constantly comparing him all sorts of animals and cartoon characters. He used to like some of those cartoons, but not any more, he couldn’t even watch them when he got home. It hurt. When they teased him he’d have to smile along just so they would him leave him alone for fear that confrontation would just make them gang up and pull on his already sore ears.

Seeing a child insidiously stripped of their joy has to be one of the most heartbreaking human experiences to witness. Children have no business being cold, guarded, withdrawn and unfeeling. They have no business treating everyone they meet with suspicion and contempt. There’s a bounty of that to come in adulthood. The executioners of the bullying are just kids themselves too. It’s not an excuse, but they have a limited capacity to be insightful and self aware enough to understand the ramifications of their playful misdeeds. However, they do also have adults and parents. Senior citizens with a moral obligation to correct ugly behavior. Yes, I’ve heard the counter argument before and I disagree, bullying isn’t something you have to go through to ‘prepare you for the real world’. That’s an antiquated point of view that only serves to legitimize bullying and gaslight the bullied. Only bullies say that.

I had this conversation with a scrub nurse as I operated two and a half hours to correct the deformity. He swore to teach his child to bully before they ever got bullied. And there it is…bullies beget bullies. The executioners groom their heirs.

The Surgery was a success. He stopped wearing the boshori as soon as the stitches were out. There was life in him now and that abundant gift of unadulterated childhood joie de vivre had began filling up his heart again. I could see it in the way he walked without a stutter and how he confidently raised his head to look me square in the eye now. He’d been so happy after his surgery and so was his mum. I conjured up a little prayer asking for him the wisdom to use the thing between his ears to analyse life ills and remedy them with sobriety and not revenge. She told me he’d already picked out a new name to celebrate his rebirth. I remember thinking he shouldn’t have to in the first place. This hurt me.