Chapter Two
My flight is announced. I carefully fold the articles and place them in my bag. The flight to Aruba is long but I intend to sleep.
As I wait to board, my mind reviews the island’s chronology. It is interesting that the age-old family of Lady Constance has been tinged with scandal and innuendo for so many years. Proposed horse breeding in the searing heat of the tropics, secretive construction, recruitment of Bagandan women, missing young men..., suddenly my thoughts jump! The Bagandas!
A cloudy portion of my memory begins to clear. Research from my masters’ thesis comes into focus. The African tribe is recalled.
The Bagandas were noted for stretching various parts of their anatomy. On females it was most common to stretch the inner labia since large, exposed lips were considered symbolic of a very highly sexed woman. On inferior males it was common to stretch the scrotal sac. A very long, low hanging scrotal sac was deemed humiliating, and recalcitrant tribe members were thus altered.
This tradition of stretching expanded over the centuries and the tribe developed exotic lotions and methods for slowly and systematically stretching the skin of nubile daughters so they could attract the best husbands and of young males to emasculate for behavior modification purposes. The sophisticated knowledge acquired by the Baganda, which remains as a tribal secret to this day, lies in stretching the flesh in such a manner so that no scar tissue forms, which would tend to desensitize and deform the stretched area. Thus, if the labia are stretched too far too fast, the female loses sensitivity and a degree of s****l desire. In the male, an abbreviated stretching process causes scarring, which would detract from the desired sensual view of smooth, pink flesh.
Another unusual facet of the Bagandan culture was their relationship with neighboring villages. Whereas the history of Africa is replete with countless wars and battles among bordering African cultures, the Bagandas were for the most part peaceful. There was little motivation to expand their territory, but when attacked, they were noted for their most brutal retaliations.
But what particularly demotivated opposing warriors was the treatment of prisoners by the Baganda. The possibility of being captured by the Baganda made potential attackers very reluctant to proceed, and eventually no opposing leader could muster the needed warriors to stage an attack. For it was well known that all prisoners were turned over to the Bagandan women, who, it was suggested by numerous accounts, practiced their stretching skills with zeal and without mercy. Also over the years, the younger women were trained by their elders to have a complete disdain for non-Bagandan males, which became ingrained into their psyche. I recalled reading descriptions provided by nineteenth century explorers who when encountering the tribal village deep in the African jungle, observed captured natives being treated as beasts of burden by the Bagandan women, pulling carts and plows, with various anatomical parts modified not only for amusement, but to facilitate restraint.
It is interesting that in the Time magazine article describing the Baroness’s African hiring excursion there was no mention of the curious skill of the Bagandan women, nor their attitude toward males.
My thoughts are interrupted by a search for my airplane seat and making myself comfortable. I find myself somnolent within minutes after reclining. But as I sleep, for some reason the reference to Dr. Emily Reinhold stirs my subconscious.