Up to the moment Nnaava made the announcement that she and Mulumba were getting engaged traditionally, returning to Uganda had not crossed my mind. Uganda had become extended family, cousins you played with as a child but had drifted away from. Occasionally, you remember them when something happens – a death, a marriage or a birth – and ask your mum, Mpozi, who was that? But when I realised that we had to go home for Nnaava’s rituals, memories started to pop up – City Parents’, my former school; church; kamunye taxis; the dust; power cuts; and the pesky boda boda. But these were general recollections. Then the date for the rituals was set and we bought the tickets. That was when details returned.
First were my grandparents. I dreaded that first contact, especially with Dad’s parents, when they would look at me like Even you? To abandon us like that?
Then there was Dad. Let’s put Dad aside.
Then our home. For some reason, it was the outdoors that I remembered best. The compound, especially in the morning under a languid sun before the shadows folded, the ripened guavas, the jackfruit tree laden with browned nduli and long oval pawpaws hanging down the neck of the tree. In the garden by the hedge, Mum had two matooke shrubs and a few stalks of maize and vegetables. The mango tree near the gate was young then. Avocados so big the fruit cracked when they fell. Their skin turned purple when they softened. I could even hear our neighbour, Maama Night, sweeping her yard. But for some reason the inside was hazy. I remembered my bed when I got up and ran to the window to look outside, I remembered the darkness when I woke up thirsty in the night and went to the fridge, I remembered running through the corridor to Mum and Dad’s bedroom and throwing myself on their bed. We walked barefoot indoors; we left our shoes and slippers by the door.
To tell the truth, I didn’t want to go back. Not after the way we left. I would have gladly stayed in Britain and pretended that Uganda did not exist. But Nnaava, ever the dutiful elder daughter to whom rebellion was sheer selfishness, was going to introduce her fiancé. Dad and the wider family had to be present with all the trappings of kwanjula rites. I had to be there.
As for Mum, God help us. Our mother was very Ugandan when it came to marriage. For her, getting hitched to a man was a coup, far greater than graduating. She would revel in people saying Well done on getting your eldest married! then turn to me: ‘You’re next, Nnabakka; don’t let us down.’ What bothered me most was the way Nnaava’s marriage seemed to have erased the scandal. It was as if we had never fled.
In June 2013, we flew back.
Immigrations at Entebbe did not disappoint. It’s a tiny airport, one terminal handling a few flights a day, but the chaos was unbelievable. There was only one queue for all passengers even though there were four desks – two marked Ugandan Passports, one marked East African Passports and one for International Passports. People jumped out of the queue and walked past you like you were dumb to line up. There were no instructions on the tannoy to guide passengers, no gangway, no staff at the gate to give you directions, no signposts for different queues. We were home. I was beginning to embrace it when we came to the Immigrations desk and had to pay for our visas. We were not Ugandan in Uganda the way we were in Britain. The lady, though she had recognised our names, reminded us not to outstay our visitor visas. That was it. I said, tapping every word on her desk, ‘Excuse me, madam; Nze Nnabakka. Ndi Muganda. My totem is Ffumbe, A kabiro Kikere. My sister’s name is Nnaava. That means our mother is a royal.’ All the Luganda came rushing back. ‘Tuli baana ba ngoma, ba kungozi’ – I had no idea what that meant – ‘ba nvuma. Baganda wawu!’ I walked away.
After collecting our bags, I did not realise that I was walking ahead of Mum and Nnaava until I stepped outside Arrivals and a man leapt out of the waiting crowd yelping, ‘Nnabakka?’ I looked back for Mum; she was not there. I looked at the man again. ‘Dad?’
He had wilted: shorter, skinny, dry. His eyes were old. He held me quietly as if savouring the moment. Then he shrieked, ‘Nnaava’, let go of me and ran to my sister. Then he was back. ‘God, Nnabakka: where are you going with this tallness?’ Then back to Nnaava: ‘Yii, yii, you’re getting married!’ Back to me: ‘At least I still have you…’ Then Mum arrived and Dad deflated.
There was no pretending things away any more. Luckily, Mum smiled and Dad rushed to her. They hugged as if he had knocked into her and was steadying her. Then he grabbed her trolley and channelled the rest of his emotions into pushing it. A man stepped out of the waiting crowd and took my trolley. I frowned at Dad. He explained, ‘That’s Kajja, the driver.’
We followed Dad and Kajja through a tunnel-like walkway until we came to the car park.
Someone clicked a car lock and the lights of two large vans came on. As I started towards the vans, a group of Chinese men and women rushed past, got into the vans and, without lingering, drove off. Kajja, the driver, saw me staring and laughed, ‘Ah, the Chinese: Ugandans abandon this country like it’s a desert, but to them it’s an oasis.’
I felt the sting in ‘abandon’ and gave Nnaava a what has it got to do with him? look. Kajja wheeled our luggage towards a car while Dad steered Mum’s to another. Nnaava frowned at me then glanced in Mum and Dad’s direction. I looked. Nnaava squeezed my hand. As Kajja put our luggage in the boot, we got in the back of the car and Nnaava whispered, ‘I’m glad we’re not travelling with them; can you imagine?’
Before I replied, Kajja got into the car and our awareness of what was going on in Mum and Dad’s car intensified. It was like hearing moans from your parents’ bedroom. And Kajja, like an older sibling distracting the younger ones from their parents’ moment, launched into telling us about the development that had taken place in the country since we left. But as we drove from the airport, I couldn’t help glancing back at Mum and Dad’s car. It followed ours like a bad reputation.
Kajja enjoyed our surprise at the good roads.
‘The tender for road maintenance was given to a Chinese company. They repair road surfaces every other year. China has injected life into our economy.’
We wowed. There were new buildings everywhere along Entebbe Road.
‘You know that your European countries no longer allow our corrupt officials to put their money in your banks?’
We exchanged looks.
‘Eh eh! These days they pack the money in suitcases and buy land and build flats and shopping malls and things like that.’
I contemplated the possibility that development had come to Uganda partly because ‘our’ European countries had finally banned ‘his’ corrupt Ugandan officials from banking with them and partly because China had injected life into the economy. Kajja did not realise that it takes more than holding a British passport to make you British. Clearly, he knew what had happened and had taken Dad’s side.
‘The owner of that building committed suicide,’ he was saying. ‘Tsk, he was stupid! Anti-corruption caught him and was forcing him to regurgitate the money he ate. He hanged himself, poor guy.’
Mum and Dad’s car made to overtake ours. Dad drew level. He hooted to indicate that Kajja was driving too cautiously. I smiled. I had forgotten what a speed junkie Dad was. Kajja stepped on the pedal, but the distance between ours and their car was great.
‘That building is empty. No one can afford to rent it. It was built for the CHOGM when your queen came for the Commonwealth.’
A huge neon sign, Xhing Xhing, glowing red atop a high building, welcomed us into Greater Kampala. But in Katwe, shanty structures still stood defiant as if testimony to a hidden truth. We applauded Katwe’s heroism but knew it was desperation.
‘Katwe is still Katwe.’ Kajja was apologetic. It will be the grandchildren of our great-grandchildren who will eradicate it.
The cityscape had changed so much we kept reminding ourselves of what had been. ‘That used to be…There was a market there…’ turning to the right, to the left, looking for familiar features. Had I been on my own, I would have missed the turning to our house. Huang Fei luxury flats stood where the road used to be.
‘What happened to the old woman who lived here?’
‘Yeah, her guavas were pink inside and sweet rather than salty.’
‘Development swept her away.’
‘But she looked after her family graveyard; it used to be—’
‘Yes, it used to be around here. She kept it neat with flowers; was it removed?’
‘I’m telling you, her children were negotiating with buyers even as she gasped her last breath.’
Mum and Dad were getting out of their car when we arrived. There were huge security lights on every side of the house, but the compound was asleep. Still, I could see that the mango and guava trees were so tall they came to window level on the first floor. Even the hedge was higher. The trees had eaten up so much space the compound looked smaller. The pawpaw tree was gone.
It was close to two in the morning but instead of heading for the door, I retraced my steps along the veranda like I used to, swinging and skipping, to the back of the house. Everything – the outdoor toilet and bathroom, the outdoor kitchen, the kennel, the clothes lines – was still the same. I walked back to the front. It was then, as I got to the front door, that I realised that something was wrong. Dad was unlocking the door rather than someone opening it from inside.
‘Dad lives alone?’
Don’t ask me, Nnaava shrugged.
There is a knowledge that returns to you the minute you arrive home. It is not just unusual, it is downright suspicious for a man Dad’s age and stature to live alone in a big house. It makes people uncomfortable. They whisper, ‘What does he get up to in that house on his own?’ They even ask you, smiling, ‘But why are you hermiting yourself like that? Living alone is not good for your mind.’
I stopped at the doorstep, leant forward and peered inside.
The house was bare.
Only one sofa of the old set stood in a corner of the sitting room. No carpet, no coffee table, no TV, no bookshelves, no curtains. The wedding pictures, our photographs, batiks, even the banner, Christ is the Centre of our Home, were all gone. I turned to Dad. He tried to conceal his pleasure at my confusion. I looked at Mum: her face was stone. Nnaava anticipated my reaction and looked away before I turned to her. Why was I the only one shocked?
I stepped in. I felt like a ghost returning home after decades of being dead. It was our house, but not the home I had left behind. The emptiness made the rooms large. It made our crumpled flat in Stockport seem like a matchbox. I wanted to laugh at the lone chair at the small dining table. What happened to the glass dining table we had?
No fridge? The security lights outside illuminated the rooms eerily.
I opened the door to the kitchen and turned on the light. An earthen sigiri without any ash squatted on the floor.
Stains of the grime the cooker had made on the floor where it once stood were indelible. A pan, a plate, a cup, a spoon, a fork. They had not been used in a long time. The cupboards were empty. Someone had cleaned hastily.
As I walked back to the sitting room, Nnaava came down the stairs saying, ‘All the bedrooms are empty except theirs.’
‘This is how you left the house.’ Dad came towards us, his voice apologetic. I turned to Mum but Dad, perhaps to spare her, added, ‘What you left behind for me was enough. Tonight, and for the three weeks you’re going to be around, we can bring mattresses. On the other hand, we can furnish the house, even tomorrow if you want, provided that you’re coming back to use it.’
Silence fell and then stretched.
The question of coming back had arisen too soon. We needed to sit down, catch our breath and recover from the ten years. Then consider thinking about it.
‘Can we get mattresses for tonight?’
It was right that Mum should say that. After all, she stole us away while Dad was on a pastors’ retreat in the US. Nostalgia is a bitch. I had missed home after all. I was not just confused, I was hurt that my home had been gutted so ruthlessly, that Dad looked as abandoned as the house.
‘The girls will be in a better position to take that decision after they have rested.’ Mum distanced herself from any decision of coming back.
Dad stepped out of the house and told Kajja, who sat in the car, to bring the mattresses.
Within no time, Kajja arrived with two new foam mattresses. He dropped them on the floor in the sitting room. We looked at him like there are three of us, where is the third?
‘That’s it,’ he said.
Silence came again.
‘Take one of them to a spare bedroom for me,’ Mum said. ‘The girls will share.’
Awkwardness hissed. There is nothing more excruciating than watching your father make a fool of himself trying to get your stony mother into his bed. We had just arrived after a decade of separation and so far he had made two clumsy passes at her. I wished I were a toddler.
Kajja heaved one of the mattresses above his head and walked towards the stairs. Dad, humiliated in front of his man, closed his face. But it did not last.
‘Okay.’ He clapped, then rubbed his hands. Looking at me and Nnaava he asked, ‘Do you wish to eat first or take baths?’
We looked at each other.
‘Will the food be brought here?’ I asked. ‘There are no plates or cutlery.’
‘As I said before, you swept the house clean when you left.’ He smiled at me even though he was talking to Mum. ‘We could go to Fang Fang: you like Chinese?’
‘I’m too tired to go out again.’ Mum was irritable. ‘Besides, I didn’t come home to eat Chinese.’
I threw myself on the remaining mattress and Nnaava joined me. Mum and Dad remained standing. Tension tightened around the lone chair: Mum’s injured anger and Dad’s desperate guilt. Mum had declined the chair. Nnaava and I maintained our neutrality as if unaware. To break the silence, Nnaava said that we would bathe while Dad went to look for food. As soon as Dad and Kajja left, Nnaava and I wheeled our suitcases to the bedrooms.
God knows where Dad found Ugandan food at that time of the night. He and Kajja came back with two women. They had everything – plates, cutlery and all the Ugandan food I had forgotten. I was starving. Dad must have booked them in advance.
Later, as I slipped onto the mattress next to Nnaava, I asked how we had ‘swept the house clean’. Nnaava was fifteen when Mum stole us away, I was eight. Nnaava was bound to know.
‘Mum, partly out of anger and partly to raise the money for our flight, pawned everything in the house, save for a single item for him…Who knew he would leave everything the way we left it for ten years?’
I remembered the day we left. Mum woke us up very early in the morning – she was with her militant sister, Aunt Ndagire – and told us to get dressed: ‘We’re leaving.’ We ate breakfast hastily. I did not read much into ‘leaving’ even though we spent three days at Aunt Ndagire’s before flying out. At the time, I thought we were going abroad for a visit. Mum and Dad travelled a lot. Abroad was a place you visited and did a lot of shopping for family. I didn’t see Mum strip the house. I didn’t find out that we had left Dad for good until two months later in Manchester, when, after I had been badgering her about Dad and when we would go home, Mum said, ‘We’re not going back to your father: we’re on our own now.’
I didn’t ask why. It was the way she said your father as if she were no longer related to him. I first got suspicious when we were enrolled in school and joined a surgery. But I dismissed my suspicions because you trust your mother. Looking back, I should have realised when we left Uganda during term time. But that’s being young for you.
Then Mum stopped speaking in muted tones on the phone to Aunt Ndagire and I heard that Pastor – Mum called Dad Pastor – had almost collapsed when he returned from the retreat to an empty house. Apparently, he went around Mum’s relatives and friends asking for information about us. None of them knew where we were except Aunt Ndagire, who would not talk to him. He begged, prayed and fasted for a telephone number, but God was mute. I heard Mum say, ‘Let that woman cook also.’
It tore flesh to hear it. It hurt that Mum had told Aunt Ndagire about it. It should have been a family secret. Parents ought to know that children are awfully protective of their family. That while they’ve fallen out with each other, we haven’t. Why humiliate each other within our hearing? It hurts in unspeakable ways to hear them say horrible things about each other. It doesn’t matter what the other parent has done, children are slow, even reluctant, to apportion blame.
And so, through Mum’s conversation on the phone, I found out that we had fled Uganda amidst a scandal. My father, a whole pastor, had fathered a child on the side. Mum, unable to take the scandal (a pastor’s wife patched with another woman, as if she were not enough), had fled to Britain. I refused to think about it. I did not think about the child either. But it hurt daily that we were in a strange country, that Mum was struggling to make ends meet. For a long time, I hated Mum for bringing us to Britain.
Now I asked Nnaava why we weren’t staying at Aunt Ndagire’s: ‘Why come back to a house we stripped and fled?’
‘Dad paid for our tickets.’
‘Do you think she’ll forgive him?’
‘Who knows? Ten years ago she couldn’t bear to hear his voice; today she’s sleeping in the same house as him. Maybe she’s tired of the poverty in Britain.’
‘Maybe it’s for your engagement rites: we have to put on a show of togetherness. Besides, she has to prepare the house to receive Mulumba’s family.’
‘You know what a reconciliation between Mum and Dad means? You come back with Mum!’
I put my head down. That question again. I lifted my head and said, ‘I’m about to start university: there’s no way I’m coming back before I finish.’
‘Kdt,’ Nnaava clicked. Mum’s decision would not affect her. She had a job and would be moving in with Mulumba after the wedding.
‘You can’t undo ten years of living in Britain just like that!’
‘Maybe they won’t reconcile.’ Nnaava did not seem to care either way.
I wanted them to get back together. I liked the sound of ‘Mum and Dad’, I liked the idea of coming home to them, them growing old together, of bringing grandchildren to them in the same house.
The fact that Mum had not asked for a divorce in the last ten years was hope.
‘Look’ – I sat up – ‘Mum’s resistance is weakening. I mean, why is she sleeping in a separate bedroom? It’s an invitation to Dad to sneak in with her while we sleep. If she really wanted to send him a clear message, she would have slept here with us.’
Nnaava giggled, ‘Ten years without Dad: she’s as horny as a nun!’
Dad walked in and I jumped. I heard myself say, ‘Dad, can you bring back my chair and bed and plate and cup?’
He stopped, smiled and shook his head in disbelief. ‘Come here.’ He hugged me.
Then he looked at Nnaava expectantly and she was obliged to say, ‘Mine too.’ Then she added matter-of-factly, ‘We need to furnish the house before Mulumba’s clan arrives.’
I had spoken too soon. Perhaps it was because I resented Mum for using me and Nnaava as a whip to flog Dad. I should have been allowed to gather my own anger against him. I should have been asked if I wanted to leave him, especially as it was such a drastic departure.
Surprisingly, Nnaava was the one that sneaked, after three years in Britain, and rang Dad. She had started university and was broke. For a long time, I thought she had got a boyfriend until one day the phone rang while she was in the bathroom and I saw the Ugandan area code. I answered it. I too agreed not to tell Mum that we were in touch with him. Dad was forthright about his infidelity. He had accepted the punishment God had imposed on him – that of losing his family. He would never marry as long as Mum was single, but he would look after the child he had fathered. He rang twice a week and sent me and Nnaava money regularly. Though I felt that I deserved my father and Mum had neither the right to deprive me of him nor to inflict a life of poverty in Britain on me, I still felt guilty going behind her back.
That first Sunday at Dad’s church.
We were guided to the front row to our former seats set aside for the pastor’s family. The three chairs were empty. Nnaava and I sat down on the sides leaving the middle seat for Mum like we used to. I looked back, wondering where she had gone. Mum sat on the row behind us. Her chair, empty between Nnaava and me, formed a gap that told the whole church things that I would rather have kept private. I was tempted to sit on it and gag it, but it was too loud.
Nnaava leant across and whispered, ‘Looks like Mum’s legs are still crossed.’
I did not laugh.
But Dad was unruffled. Our presence had energised him. He did not look so desiccated any more. He wore one of the suits Nnaava and I had bought for him. When he stood up to go to the pulpit, he walked tall. He opened his sermon, entitled ‘Hope in a Hopeless World’, with: ‘Is God good?’
‘All the time.’
‘All the time?’
‘God is good.’
I had forgotten how it felt to be part of Dad’s congregation. Because I was born into it, it had been a routine, unquestioned, expected; it was life. Now I stood outside, a spectator. The thing is, it’s easy to lose your faith in Britain, where everything is under scrutiny. You can’t live life without questioning it. And when it comes to Christianity and faith, British scrutiny is vicious. I still went to church in Manchester, but for Mum’s sake. Church had become theatre. I enjoyed dressing up, meeting up with friends, the performance and the music. Mum felt it was the safe place to meet future husbands and I could see her conniving with other mothers to make introductions between sons and daughters.
But I had become increasingly aware of the entrepreneurial nature of evangelical churches like Dad’s. Looking around at people way poorer than us parting with their money as offerings, hoping for blessings, money which I suspected ended up at our table, was distressing. I stopped mentioning that Dad was a church minister when I read that article about Ugandan pastors cruising around in Hummers, showing off their lavish lifestyles, ostensibly to demonstrate that they were true prophets because God had blessed them with wealth. Dad had numerous businesses, but it was not clear whether they were his businesses or church properties. Often I wondered whether to stop taking his money, but I was too weak.
Still, even though I stood outside faith, the emotions in the air that first Sunday were tangible. Dad whipped them up. They rose and ebbed: now outrage, then sadness, now anger, then love, now fear, then triumph.
‘For ten years,’ he was saying, ‘three seats on this row’ – he pointed to where we sat – ‘have been empty, to remind me of what I did, amen?’
‘Amen!’
‘But today, two of them have been filled. Is God good?’
‘All the time!’
‘I said, is my God good?’
The response almost broke my ears.
He paused. Silence fell.
‘I am not saying that everything is back to normal – how? After what I did? When you break your skin, it will heal, but the scar is indelible. The skin is saying, This is what happens when you are careless with your body, amen?’
‘Amen.’
‘But today, though I stand here covered in scars, I look down there and I see my beautiful girls. Nnaava there reminds me of her mother when I first met her. Nnabakka is so tall she wants to touch the roof of this church. Then I ask myself, is God good or is God good?’
‘Aaaaall the tiiiime!’
‘They’ll be going back to Britain because Nnabakka is starting university in September, but today, right now, my family, all of it, is heeeeere in this rooooom and I—’
The congregation did not wait for him to finish. We all stood up clapping, nodding at the goodness of God, Dad wiping away his tears, Nnaava sniffing, and even I allowed Dad’s pain to flow down my face. I could not glance at Mum. But I felt the static in the air around her. As if everyone was trying not to glance at her. I prayed that she had stood up, that she had at least sniffed. The congregation was loving Dad, it forgave him a long time ago, and Mum had better be receiving him too. Otherwise she would seem like a bitter woman.
At the end of the sermon, we stepped outside and the brethren came to greet us. We had taken care to hide the fact that we were broke in Britain. We dared not look less than First World. People would laugh at Mum: She stole the children away from their father but they look worse than us Third Worlders! I wore a lace bodycon dress; Nnaava, being a bride-to-be, wore sheer silk. But once we stepped outside church, Birabwa, Aunt Ndagire’s eldest daughter, joined us. She pointed at my dress.
‘We have that fashion here already: you can get that dress for fifty thousand shillings in town.’
‘Oh really?’ That was about £15. I bought that dress for £80 in Debenhams.
‘Yeah, these days we don’t have to wait for hand-me-downs from the West four years after they’re out of fashion. As soon as your summer ranges are out, the Chinese duplicate them for us, and by Christmas we’re wearing them.’
Birabwa must have seen the disbelief on my face because she added, ‘Obviously, it’s a cheaper imitation, but who cares?’
‘China my ass,’ Nnaava mumbled.
When Mum finally exploded, it was at Red Dragon Supermarket, near Kobil in Kawempe. It was not at Dad but at a Chinese woman working on the till. As soon as she saw her, Mum’s eyes darkened. By the time she finished paying, her mouth was so elongated it could have touched her nose. She grabbed her bags and, ignoring the woman’s ‘thank you’, stomped out. We had hardly stepped outside when she burst out: ‘You mean she wrote cashier in a supermarket on her visa application? Have we no cashiers here that we have to import them from China?’
Mum was like that. She conveniently forgot that she was an immigrant in Britain. I was about to remind her but Nnaava beat me to it. As we got back into the car – the heat raging in the air, a coating of sweat and dust caking my skin, and a man who reminded me of a hornbill screeching, ‘Jesus is coming’ at us – Nnaava said: ‘But Mum, when you applied for your British visa, did you write cleaner?’
Mum waited until she had sat down in the car and closed the door. Then she turned to us in the back seat, eyes blazing how dare.
‘There is a difference between me, an African from one of the poorest economies in the world going to Britain and becoming a cleaner, and a Chinese woman who has come to invest in my country ending up working on the till. These people are blinding us, building a stadium here and a road there. Soon they’ll have our economy in their hands!’
‘I don’t mind them running our economy,’ Kajja said as he started the car. ‘I’m fed up with the thieves. Uganda is not a cake that you cut a slice from and eat. A hundred years ago the British came and created a European-like economy to extract as much wealth as they could for themselves. Let the Chinese come too. Let’s see what model they have to offer. If we don’t like it, we’ll start a war and they’ll pack their bags. They know it; we know it.’
‘Listen to that!’ Mum waved her hands in despair. ‘So, you drive the lizards out and let the geckos in?’
‘Mum!’
‘What? Do you know what’s happening to Ghana? Hordes and hordes of illegal Chinese immigra—’
Kajja stepped on the brakes and hurled us forward. He had been reversing into the road when he almost backed into a boda boda with two Chinese men squeezed on the back.
‘Look at that.’ Mum’s voice was savage. ‘Did you see that? Two of them squeezed on the back of a motorcycle. They’re going to die here.’ She waved an angry hand at the disappearing boda boda.
‘Don’t worry about Chinese people,’ Kajja said, ‘They are like us. Some are even poorer. They live among us. They don’t even have servants. You never see them parading wealth like whites. Besides, they have no intention of staying here. They’ve been here how long now – fifteen, twenty years – but I’ve not seen a mixed-race child.’
Mum’s mouth clamped tight.
‘Look at what happened after the Italians were evacuated from Abyssinia to Toro – was it in 1945?’ Kajja saw me look at Nnaava and explained, ‘Those Italians did not stay long but they left behind a legion of children called a Baitale, fatherless all their lives – but not the Chinese.’
Still Mum did not join in. Her mouth remained fastened. Nnaava noticed and touched my hand like shut up.
To me, immigration was something that Europe and the USA suffered. In Britain, the way they go on about it you feel as though the whole of Africa is in transit on boats, planes and foot, gunning for the UK. But then you returned home and Kampala was no longer the city you left behind. Areas that were just Sudanese. Little Mogadishu in Kisenyi. Nigerians were no longer a curiosity. Neither were Afrikaners. Yet Ugandans did not seem bothered. It was Mum who, ironically, was British.
Later in the evening Nnaava told me about Mum’s brother Ssimbwa. He was finishing at Peking University. China had invited him to go. Then the Nanjing anti-African riots took place. Grandfather asked him to come home but he said the riots were far from where he was. Next, the Ugandan embassy rang to say that Ssimbwa had committed suicide, jumped out of a window. The body was repatriated with specific instructions not to open the coffin – the embalming chemicals were lethal if inhaled. They underestimated the Gandas’ relationship to their dead. Grandfather and his sons took axes to the coffin. You could bury all sorts among our dead. It was Uncle Ssimbwa alright. Sealed in a see-through plastic bag like a fish. No broken bones. Just torture marks, eyes gouged out. When he reported it to the embassy, Grandfather was told, ‘Go home and bury your son; you’re lucky you got him back.’
The weekend of Nnaava’s rituals arrived. Mum’s and Dad’s families came on Saturday evening to help with chores. Aunt Muwunde, Dad’s eldest sister, was chosen to be Nnaava’s official aunt for the rites and to oversee her marriage afterwards. Nnaava chose her because Muwunde had lived in the US back in the 1980s. She would understand the complexities of a diasporic marriage.
I liked Aunt Muwunde but I had reservations. Firstly, while Nnaava and Mulumba were Saved, Aunt Muwunde was not. Secondly, Aunt Muwunde did not shy away from confrontation. On the eve of the rites, as we had supper, in the presence of all other relatives, she called Dad over.
‘Muwanga?’
Dad had discarded that name. To him, Muwanga, a Ganda God, was heathen. Dad’s surname was Ssajjalyayesu. But Aunt Muwunde had rejected it because it had neither clan nor totem. But being older than Dad she could talk to him in any way she wished.
‘Where is our other child?’ she asked. ‘Eh, you did it, it’s done. Stop hiding him and let’s love our child.’
Mum can be smooth when she’s ready. If her husband was to be flogged publicly, she would be the one to do it. She took the words out of Aunt Muwunde’s mouth and said rather softly: ‘Yes, Pastor, bring him to his sister’s rites. Let him wear his kanzu. He’s the muko.’
Mum, uttering those words – He’s the muko – cut off the head of the serpent that had been stalking us since we arrived. She was not only acknowledging him, she was inviting him. But for me, the child, who for the last ten years had been nameless and faceless, took on a new significance. Brothers give away their sisters.
He arrived quite late the following day, at 1.30 p.m., an hour before Mulumba’s clan arrived. When I saw mother and son, I groped for Nnaava, but she was not there to die with me. Here was Dad’s act personified. The physicality blew common sense out of me. Mum’s outrage became mine. This was no longer an accident but intentional. Where was Nnaava?
I texted her: They’re here. Hurry, I am dying.
And the boy’s mother? I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Where are you, Nnavs? You need to see for yourself.
The mother wore an orange and blue Shanghai gown. It was clearly a ceremonial dress but in my anger I thought that she should have worn a busuuti if she wanted to blend in. And then from afar she looked ridiculously young: not much older than Nnaava.
Mum must have seen me scowl, for she leant forward and whispered, ‘She’s a teacher: teaches Mandarin.’
‘Mandarin, who needs Mandarin?’
‘People doing business in China. Now she has a Ugandan passport.’
‘What use is it to her?’
‘Free movement within East Africa and other African countries.’
I looked at the woman again. She had brought a Ugandan friend, a woman. They were talking. The way she rubbed her back and cast her eyes on the ground, she knew we were watching. Mum crossed her legs aggressively. The left leg, on top, swung as if it would kick the woman out of the marquee.
I turned my eyes to the boy. He was greeting everyone in the marquee, coming towards us. My pulse accelerated. Nnaava had not arrived.
In some ways, he was a typical ten-year-old – big front teeth, legs too long for the rest of his body, perfect skin. But in other ways there was something about his Chinese-African look with a Huey Freeman afro that made you stare beyond politeness. His forehead was shaved and manicured Ganda-style. His hue was darker than mixed race. He was smiling, confident even. Very comfortable. Everyone stared, and Ugandans stare hard, but he was not bothered. I suspected he was enjoying it.
Nnaava arrived, but there was no time to die of shock because the boy was upon us.
I pointed with my mouth towards him: ‘That’s him!’
Nnaava gasped. Her grip on my hand was all I needed.
Aunt Muwunde must have been aunting that boy all along; the way she was familiar with him! She introduced us.
‘These are your sisters. Look at them properly.’ Then she asked, ‘Have you seen them, Bwema?’
‘Bwema?’ I blurted the name before I could stop myself.
‘Bwemage.’
That shut me up. Mum’s mouth wriggled from side to side as if rinsing the warning in the name out of her mouth. I suspected Aunt Muwunde. She was the kind to name such a child Innocent.
‘Happy to see you, Nnaava,’ the boy mumbled, extending his hand, but Nnaava hugged him so I hugged him too. He moved on to greet other relatives.
Before we could whisper anything to each other, a woman behind us made throaty clicks and whispered, ‘Our blood tends to pull children towards us, no matter the race they are born into, but he refused. All we got is hair and colour.’
‘Yes, the mother pulled him towards herself,’ another agreed.
I closed my eyes and dropped my head because Ugandan tongues know no bounds! Nnaava slapped my back: Hold yourself together.
But Mum replied – there was no doubt that she was responding to the woman even though she spoke to Dad: ‘You’ve done well to teach him his language, Pastor. Another person would have left him to float in the middle, speaking English only.’
It was like a cue for everyone else to compliment Dad on ‘our’ child speaking proper Luganda. But the women behind us were not going to let Mum and Dad play happy families.
‘Aha,’ one of them sighed. ‘China too has arrived.’
‘Bwoleka, in a special way, it came into this house: straight for the hearth.’
I stood up, turned to the women. ‘Is that why you came?’
‘Yeah’ – Nnaava joined me – ‘to eat, to count the children in the family and to give them positions?’
‘That’s not what we meant.’ The women looked around as people shifted restlessly, sucking their teeth, clicking.
‘The girls are putting words in our mouths; it’s not what we meant.’
Mum raised her voice. ‘Pastor, give Bwema his kanzu. He must get ready for his role. Has he been coached on what to say?’
We were in the middle of the rites. Nnaava and I sat on a mat facing Mulumba and his clan. Nnaava had changed into a different busuuti for this phase of the rites. Aunt Muwunde had done her part. As Nnaava’s mouthpiece, she had told Dad’s spokesman that she was old enough to leave home and start a home of her own, that she had found someone to do it with.
Dad’s spokesman was reluctant to let her go, citing the bad ways of such random men as you meet on the road, besides, she was still too young, but Aunt Muwunde insisted that she was going with her man. Dad’s spokesman, heartbroken, agreed to let her go. He asked her to show the family the specific person she intended to make a home with.
Now Aunt Muwunde put a garland around Mulumba’s neck and there was applause.
‘Wait a minute.’ Dad’s spokesman brushed the clapping aside.
Mulumba’s spokesman looked up, feigning worry.
So far, the negotiations had been about language and wit. Mulumba’s spokesman had hitherto spoken beautifully, backing out of any corners Dad’s spokesman tried to put him in, without offence. But he was yet to convince our spokesman to let Mulumba be born into our house. Dad’s spokesman was focused on making it impossible for him to ask by humiliating him, stalling and pouring scorn on his words. And so, although the garland was draped around Mulumba’s neck, his request, to become part of our family, was yet to be accepted.
‘You can wear the garland,’ Dad’s spokesman said, ‘It’s nothing special: that’s how we treat our visitors. However, if you are serious about being born in our house, you must have talked to our son, who would be your muko.’
The confusion on Mulumba’s face was priceless. His spokesman tried to hide his surprise behind a smile.
Our side of the family stirred: Ahaa, we’ve got you!
I looked at Nnaava like Didn’t you tell Mulumba about the boy? She closed her eyes: Oh my God. Bwemage was our family’s secret weapon.
Mulumba’s spokesman asked for a moment to confer with the groom. It was embarrassing to ask for a timeout, in fact, humiliating to confer – a sign that Mulumba’s family had not done their homework – but under the circumstances, there was no way around it. For them to say that they did not know about a son would be deeply offensive: they could be thrown out of the marquee and told to go back and get their facts right. But to lie that they knew him was to walk into a trap.
After conferring, Mulumba’s spokesman came back and claimed, ‘Of course we know our muko: how could we not?’ Perhaps he thought Dad’s spokesman was bluffing.
There was silence at the blatant lie. I wondered how Mulumba’s spokesman would extricate himself, especially when he realised that there was an actual son. Dad’s spokesman stood up. He turned to our family and said, ‘He says he knows his muko even though he had to confer first’, and there were derisive noises from our relations. He turned to Mulumba’s spokesman and said, ‘If you know him very well, what’s his name?’
I stole a look at Mulumba and mouthed, ‘Bwemage.’
Dad’s spokesman saw me and shouted, ‘Nnabakka: keep your eyes on the ground.’ To Mulumba’s spokesman he warned, ‘Be careful, we don’t give birth to liars in this house!’
Nnaava’s hand was shaking. I put mine on top of it.
For a moment, Mulumba’s spokesman was tongue-tied.
Dad’s spokesman went in for the kill: ‘Do you still want our girl, or have you changed your mind? Look, we have crops to bring in from the fields and animals to collect from grazing ku ttale – we don’t have time to sit here and look at a suitor who doesn’t even know the name of the muko who will give him the woman he has come for. You can leave when you are ready. Children,’ Dad’s spokesman called like he was going back to running his house, ‘have you finished doing your homework? We need to—’
‘Of course we know his name.’ Mulumba’s spokesman was fraught. ‘But sir, you know we don’t articulate important people’s names, faa, like that!’
Dad’s spokesman paused: he had not anticipated this recovery.
‘What name do you call him when you meet?’
‘I refer to him by his office – muko. I say, Muko-muko! And he asks, “But you Mulumba, when are you bringing my cockerel? If you’re not careful, I’ll give my sister away.” So today I said to myself, “Mulumba, why don’t you take muko’s cockerel before he gives your lovely away?”’
Nnaava stole a relieved glance at me.
‘What if I bring him out here and he says that he doesn’t know you?’
‘Go ahead, sir: bring him. As soon as he sees me, we’ll be hugging: you’ll see.’
Mulumba’s spokesman was doing well: you’d rather have a muko in the marquee saying that he doesn’t know you than one hiding away in the house where you can’t appeal to him.
‘Bring my son,’ Dad’s spokesman called to the people in the house. He turned to Mulumba’s spokesman and said, ‘If he doesn’t know you, you see the gate over there? Take a walk!’
Bwemage stepped out of the house. He wore a kanzu and a coat on top like all the men. Mulumba’s spokesman looked the boy over, took in the fact that he was not only very young but mixed race and decided that there was nothing to be afraid of. In fact, there was a stir of relief in Mulumba’s clan, a sense that the negotiations were done.
Bwemage went and stood next to Dad’s spokesman. The man put a loving hand around his shoulders.
‘Son, these people say they’re your friends.’
‘Which ones? Them?’ Bwemage pointed at Mulumba’s clan, his face saying How can I be friends with them? ‘Never seen them before.’ He did not even bother to look at them again.
Mulumba’s clan froze not just at Bwema’s crisp Luganda but at his confident voice and the belligerent attitude. Realising that the boy was trouble, Mulumba sneaked a fat envelope to his spokesman. Dad’s spokesman was saying, ‘That’s all I needed, son. Go back and play.’
‘Wait’ – Mulumba’s spokesman grabbed Bwemage’s hand deferentially – ‘Muko, yii, vvawo nawe, Muko! You, my very own, to forget me like this in my moment of need?’
‘Who are you?’
‘It’s me, your very best friend.’ Mulumba’s spokesman draped a loving hand around Bwema’s shoulders and pulled him towards himself while he slipped the envelope into Bwemage’s hand. ‘How could you forget me so soon?’
Bribery is traditionally Ganda, I swear! Bwemage grabbed the envelope and hid it behind his back and flashed a toothy smile at Mulumba’s spokesman. ‘Oh, it’s you, tsk. For a moment there I didn’t recognise you. Finally, you’ve come. You’re lucky you’re in time. I was about to give my sister away.’ He turned to Dad’s spokesman. ‘I know him. He’s a good person.’
Mulumba’s clan broke out ululating.
Dad’s spokesman was suspicious. ‘Where is he from?’
‘Yii yii, Mulumba was born in Kabowa but his father and grandfather and grandfather twice over come from Kiboga. I know them very well. They’re of the Musu clan.’
Mulumba’s clan ululated again. His spokesman did a dance and twirled.
Everyone stared at a boy of ten addressing a gathering of no fewer than a hundred people with such audacity.
‘So, are you going to give them your sister?’
‘Of course.’
Mulumba’s clan applauded again. Our side deflated. Bwemage had sold out too easily.
‘Just like that?’
‘On one condition.’
Dad’s spokesman perked up. ‘What condition, son?’
‘You know, Father, that Nnaava is my favourite sister.’ Dad’s spokesman nodded as if he had known all along. ‘She understands me. The thought of losing her makes me sad.’ Bwemage, hand on heart, closed his eyes. ‘But of course, Mulumba promised that if I gave her up he would replace her with something equally precious.’
‘Do you know what this precious thing is?’
‘No, I am waiting to see what he thinks can replace my sister, because as you know I have everything I need.’
‘Go back to your games, son! You have spoken so well I’ve got nothing to add.’
The little monkey was beginning to walk away when he added: ‘Oh, Father, I’ve remembered.’
‘What is it?’
‘For the last three weeks, I’ve not leaked on an ounce of sleep.’
‘Why, son?’
‘All sorts of men bothering me – waiting in the house, calling on my phone and waylaying me on the road.’
‘What do they want?’
‘What else? To marry my sister. Can you imagine, one offered me a car? I said, “I am just a boy: I can’t drive a car.” He said, “I’ll give you a driver to take you wherever you want”, but I said no. Then another one gave me a whole house. But when I told him that I have a home, he said that I would need it when I grow up. I told him that I don’t take bribes.’ The imp looked at the fat envelope in his hands and smirked. ‘Even just now, as I was coming out of the house, this man grabbed my hand and I think he had been to see a wizard who broke into my dreams.’
‘He did not!’
‘He must have! This man was holding one of my dreams in his hands.’
‘No! Which one?’
Everyone leant forward to hear what this boy’s dream could possibly be. He whispered in the microphone.
‘A ticket to Disney World – Orlando!’
Everyone was laughing and clapping as Bwemage walked back to the house. Our side of the family cheered because Mulumba’s spokesman had run out of words. Even his clan was clapping.
Soon after, Nnaava and I were asked to leave the marquee as Dad’s spokesman considered taking pity on Mulumba and accepting his request to be born in our house. When we got back to the house, Nnaava ran up to Bwema and lifted him, shrieking, ‘You, you, you, I could eat you.’ She put him down. ‘You went beyond! Just beyond. At first, I was worried that I didn’t tell Mulumba about you but now I am glad I didn’t. You’ve made the whole negotiations seem so real and entertaining!’
The women coming into the house to get the food ready hugged Bwema, pinched his cheeks and told him how he had done us proud, and he was very happy. I smiled at him from a distance. Through the window, I saw his mother and her friend come to the backyard. They held large dishes with Chinese patterns. I wanted to nudge Nnaava to tell her that Bwema’s mother had brought food, that she had come to help the women with lunch, but just then Dad’s spokesman came and said that the final rite – when Bwema would receive Nnaava’s fiancé into the house, give him a tour and then serve him his first meal as part of the family – was about to begin. Nnaava and I, because we were daughters, were asked to step outside.
As I walked out of our house I glanced back. Bwema stood alone in the sitting room, filling it with his presence. There was not a shred of unease about him. As if he had grown in that sitting room all his life. I marched to where Mum sat and whispered, ‘Mum, you’re not coming back to Britain with us.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You’re staying behind to—’
‘You can’t tell me what—’
‘You’re not hearing me, Mum.’ I was shaking. ‘Sort things out. Find out for real if, when all the anger is done, you still don’t want to be with Dad. I deserve to know that if something happened to Dad, this house is still my home.’
I walked away before people heard us.