You instinctively look at the feet... THESE are not human feet! The guy at the door must be a monster, you think.
And the memories of those who read the school foundation years' literature in the early 1980s would be taken back to the scary nights when they would remember Sankhambi, the half bird, half human monster of immeasurable strength that feasted on human beings. This is because Bhembe Mkuhlani's feet are nothing like human feet. The feet are so grotesquely misshaped that had he been born in the 17th Century his parents would have probably thrown him away, in the belief that he was a curse, or had been swapped by witches as soon as his mother delivered him, or while asleep or even that his progenitor was some supernatural being. Alternatively he would have been worshipped as some god. None of these things happened to Mkuhlani, but he grew up knowing he was different. Instead of 10 toes, the man has only two monstrously deformed toes that curl inwards to form together with the heel a horseshoe shape. The inwardly curled toes spring out of the foot like two poised scorpion tentacles, giving the man a strange, even crab-like bottom appearance. He does not know what the condition is called and would not care as he has come to accept his deformity. Nor does he care about people who attribute his deformity to birth by thokolosi -a mythical supernatural being - or magic.
