Ink line drawing of Rafiki the mandrill seated cross-legged inside a circle of handwritten script, with blue and pink accents on the face.

Rafiki meditating within a handwritten quote circle

Lettering · Mixed · Flash

A line drawing of the mandrill Rafiki sitting cross-legged with his arms outstretched and his tail curling beneath him, labelled with the name Rafiki. A handwritten quote runs around the top and sides in a circle, reading that the past can hurt but you can either run from it or learn from it. The linework is brushed black ink on pale paper, with small areas of blue and pink on the face and chest.

Lettering Quote Script Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The herd boys had been sent to fetch the old mandrill down from the termite ridge, because the rains were late and the elders wanted an answer. Jomo found him where they always did, cross-legged on the flat grey stone above the dry river, his tail coiled beneath him like a rope left out to dry. Blue clay ran down his muzzle from the paint he had rubbed on that morning, and pink showed at his chin.

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Jomo held his stick in both hands and said the elders wanted rain. The mandrill did not open his eyes. He said the rain had been falling for years, only it was falling on the wrong ground. Jomo asked what he meant. The old one lifted one arm and pointed at the cracked riverbed, where a dead thorn tree leaned over a hole. 'Your uncle dug there after the cattle sickened,' he said. 'He found bones and put them back in the earth, and he has been angry at that hole ever since. Nothing grows over anger.'

Jomo said the hurt was old and nobody could run from it now. The mandrill laughed, a sound like a dry gourd rolling downhill. 'Then you may do the other thing. Sit with it until it tells you what it cost.' Jomo sat on the warm stone beside him with his knees drawn up and looked at the hole for a long time. A wind came up from the south smelling of wet ash.

When he walked back at dusk, his uncle was mending the fence by the kraal. Jomo took the spade from the shed without a word and began to dig around the roots of the thorn tree, lifting out the stones he had once been told to leave alone. Behind him the first clouds were stacking over the ridge.