Chapter Four
It is true that grief brings its own unique kind of pain. To the person who mourns, the weight of tears can be overwhelming. But even in the midst of the deepest sorrow there is the potential for a certain distraction that comes with the rising sun. Even in the darkest moments, light can still shine. As life continues to advance, eventually grief begins to thaw, bringing with it the faintest glimmer of hope and rebirth.
Grief is painful. But there is no ache quite like the ache of extreme poverty. To wake up and know that today will hold the same hunger, the same sores, the same humiliations as yesterday is an ache that stands alone in its cruelty. To know that your life is closer to that of your animals, that you share their food in the day and their floor space at night robs you of dignity. You might find yourself hoping tomorrow will be better, but that hope eventually feels more like folly than truth.
For those living in poverty—aching poverty, extreme poverty, absolute poverty—life is flawed. Poverty brings its own darkness, beneath which it seems impossible to move. The lack of resources, whether they be a pot to cook in or a blanket to sleep under or some land to farm or seeds to sow, robs life of the oxygen of hope.
But that is not the whole story. There is always oxygen somewhere. There is always hope. There is always the potential for things to change. And they did, eventually, although not before every cell within my body knew what it was to ache.
In the middle of his depression Job understood that when a tree is cut down it is right to hope that it will sprout again (Job 14:7). Isaiah also said that from the stump of David’s family a shoot would come (Isa. 11:1). Winston Churchill defined success as moving from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm. Some of those who have suffered the most understand that tough times come and go but tough people stay. After storms there are always showers.
I have already told you about Uganda’s beauty. The area of the southwest has a character all its own. The land is dramatic, with the horizon defined by volcanoes lurking over the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Rwanda. I grew up in the hills and valleys that surround those jagged peaks, an area abundant in its fertility. Yet even though in many places the soil is red like the last rays of the evening sun, it can still be rocky on those mountain paths. Your feet get stronger, building their own leather that protects them from minor cuts, but they cannot escape the jiggers and they cannot protect you from a machete.
I was so often hungry in the years after my father abandoned us. When the pain got too bad, and I felt brave enough to risk it, I would climb banana trees like a monkey to eat the fruit at the very top that was ripe but eaten only by birds. Once I made the mistake of choosing the fruit at the top of one of my uncle’s trees. I must have been very hungry that day, for as I perched among the branches I did not hear him approach. I did not see him attach his machete to the long stick, and I did not see him take aim at my foot. But I felt the pain. The cut was deep, all the way through to the bone, and once I had fallen to the ground, I could see that it was bleeding profusely. He abandoned me on the ground right there, just like his brother, my father.
I am grateful that a woman saw me. She screamed and then bandaged me with cloth from her dress before taking me home. Though the cut was deep, the humiliation inflicted greater pain. It took me many years to forgive my uncle; after all, these bananas were only food for the birds. Why would he not let us eat them? If we had a father around, people would not have treated us like this.
We call the type of home we lived in “self-contained.” It sounds nice enough, but it really means that you share your living space with your livestock. Because we did not have a secure area out in our compound where our goats and chickens could be kept safely at night, they slept in with us. It was untidy and dirty, but the animals’ fleas were far from poor: Our bodies and blood provided them with an easy-access, open-all-hours banquet.
The danger outside was never far away. Hyenas, wolves, even lions were all known to have attacked at night, especially before the national parks were established throughout the 1970s. If we needed to relieve ourselves in the night we would have to go out to the forest; even though nothing bad ever happened to me, I never liked it. As soon as we had the money to buy a bucket, we used that instead.
After my father left we had nothing to sleep on or under. Gradually we began to acquire a few replacements for the possessions that were now doubtless being used by my father’s other wives. The first item of bedding my mother was able to bring home was a sack, the sort used for shipping beans. It was cold up in the hills at night, and so it was a welcome addition to our home. But it was hardly comfortable. For that luxury we had to wait until my mother somehow got hold of some old surplus coats from the German army. These long winter coats lasted for years and years; they could be a bedsheet and blanket at the same time. When your floor is nothing but compressed mud, lying on one of these coats is enough to make you feel like a king.
The goats’ urine put an end to those feelings. Somehow, no matter where we placed ourselves in the hut, their urine always trickled over to us while we slept. Eventually our mother made us a bed out of logs that raised us up off the floor, and the urine flowed freely underneath. Surprisingly, I do not remember the smell, so it was probably not too much of a problem.
What clothes we had were basic. I wore a shirt. That was it. No pants, no trousers, no underwear, no shoes. I was eight years old when I got my first underwear and twenty-one when I got my first shoes. Whenever we did get new clothes they were secondhand ones that our mother would buy from the trading post. These days you see poor children all over Africa wearing T-shirts advertising the Western products and sports teams of yesterday, but when we were children we were not like these odd-looking billboards. However, we did have some strange clothes; once one of my uncles gave me an overall, an all-in-one red work suit with a hood attached. I felt like a man and wore it pretty much every day for four years, from the early days as a ten-year-old when it draped over my feet and hands right up to the point when it began to burst across my back and shoulders.
Even though shoes were objects that had an almost mythical status, our feet were not always bare. The banana leaves made good sandals—good enough for a day, at least—and they prepared me for the time when, a few years before I married, I put on my first pair of real shoes that belonged to me. It was an odd moment, and I felt self-conscious as I flapped about. But I cannot deny that it felt good. Later I replaced these with a pair of rugabire—sandals made from car tires. They felt even better.
I was thirteen years old when I started to work for money or food. I would carry things for people, help others brew their alcohol, or spend the whole day digging. I was good at trapping moles, using just a bit of rope, a couple of sticks, and a bit of luck. They were good to eat. Very delicious. And they made a change from our usual diet.
My mother and sisters would work as well. They would dig or harvest for others, usually working from six in the morning to the same time at night, at the end of it receiving a bunch of matoke or whatever else they had been collecting during the day. If they worked every day for a month, apart from Sundays, and if we were not extravagant, we might be able to eat every day.
Did we know life was hard? Before my father left, there were other families in the village that were poorer than we were—quite a few of them, in fact. But once he left we were even worse off than they were. Other families ate millet; we had maize. Some had cows; we had goats. Some started their fires with matches; we used sticks and grass. I do remember that there were some people who lived up in the hills, and even though they had animals, they felt that they were poor. If you were measuring poverty on how they looked, then they were poorer than us. But they had cows and we did not, so we were poorer. Yes, we knew life was harder than it might otherwise have been. But there was not the time to spend fretting over it; there was work to be done.
It used to take us an hour to collect water. We would walk down the hill and poke the ground with our sticks until we freed the spring just below the muddy surface. When the water flowed out we would wait the twenty minutes it took to fill up our pot or our plastic jerrican, and then we would carry it back up the hill to home.
We would collect the water four times a day. Mostly it was just the children, but occasionally women would join in. But I never remember seeing any men at the spring. I stopped collecting water when I was twenty-nine and married Connie, for that was the time that I became a man. Even today when many houses have iron roofs and water collection tanks that meet some of their water needs, there are many, many families who have to collect their own water from a tap (a faucet) or from a protected spring away from their home. There are some men who do collect their own water if their wife is pregnant or ill, or if they are building something that needs a lot of water, but then they will do it only at night or early in the morning.
One day a mudslide sliced away the whole layer of soil that led down the hill to the place where the water came to the surface. This transformed our lives. Where there once had been pools of water that only seeped into our cans, now we had a clean, clear, fast-flowing stream that was easy to collect from, as well as bathe in and drink from. That mudslide was a gift to us, although it has to be said that it took away a large area of land from one of our neighbors.
Water was always our greatest problem. Whenever we were building, we did it by mixing mud with water to make a coating to cover the frame we made with sticks. On these construction days each child would have to carry as many as twenty jerricans weighing anything from ten to forty pounds when full. And since it would take as long as a week to build the house, these periods were exhausting. We would not have to do it often, though, as a house that was properly built would last for many years.
When I was a teenager we acquired some land and moved up out of the valley of maggots to the very top of one of the hills. It was steep—almost impossibly so—and that was a contributing factor in the land being cheap enough for us to buy it. It was also the area where cattle used to be quarantined when they were ill, and even though it had not been used for this purpose for many years, nobody else in the area thought it was a fit place to live.
I had chest pains as I carried the water up the hill while my mother mixed the mud together to insulate the walls. Later, as she and I carried up thick, long logs from the valley floor to support the roof, she slipped and dropped one of the logs. It fell on my shoulder and the pain was terrible. But what can you do? What option did I have but to carry on?
Occasionally when I was younger the day might start with a bowl of maize porridge. Others would be able to afford sorghum or millet, but we were stuck with maize, at least when we were doing well. I generally had only one meal a day, and that was more often served in the evening. During the day, while my mother and older sisters were out working I—together with my younger siblings—had to look for my own way of survival. For five and a half years I would spend the days scavenging for food. I learned to avoid the tops of banana trees and to steer clear of any of the jigger hunters who might see me and decide to hand out an extra lesson in the importance of good hygiene. Quickly I learned to look in dustbins to find food that had been thrown away. If we were lucky we might find a potato, but more likely the food would have excrement pasted over it and we would have to wash it clean at the spring before trying to cook it. My mother always boiled it up in her pot, unless it was a sweet potato, which we could eat raw. But if we found that someone had eaten meat or fish it was a different story altogether. We would take the bones or the fish head back and add it in. The water would taste delicious, and we would feel as though we had feasted on pure delicacies.
On the bad days, the ones when the hunger brought its own unique pain that tortured our insides, we had no choice other than to bring back whatever we found in the bins at the back of the trading post, no matter how rotten, moldy, or filthy. On good days we found good food and called it “a big catch.”
But it was always embarrassing, and everyone knew we were doing it. What made it worse was that we were the only ones, and if they saw us people would shout at us. There we were, sharing with goats, pigs, and dogs. The only thing that separated us from the animals was the fact that we had names.
Life in rural Uganda is communal. Even though we were the poorest family in the area, and even though we had assaulted our father and been publicly shamed by him, we were still a part of the community. We would try to have as little to do with our father’s siblings as we could, but there were others in the village who were not unkind to us. And when the whole village united for communal events, we would join in.
Funerals were the best—at least they were if you were hungry. The food would be free and often available to everyone in the village. People would let us come up and help ourselves to the leftovers. Some adults would take the scraps to the pigs or dogs, but we could often get in first. We would eat all we could, cramming our stomachs, cheeks, and pockets with as much matoke, Irish potatoes, and groundnut sauce as was possible, and make our way, unsteadily, back home to deal with the inevitable stomachache that descended as soon as we lay down. Eventually my mother made each of us a cloth bag into which we could load our spoils at these events, and it went some way to prevent this severe overloading of our stomachs.
Weddings were also good opportunities for a free feast, although the adults were typically more distracted at funerals. I found this out to my cost at one wedding when I was a child. One of my relatives was getting married, and even though we were not invited, I was there as I had not eaten for two days. I was hungry, and there was a lot of food on display.
My godfather was the head cook of the wedding, and he stood near the fire, spooning out the goat stew to the guests as they approached. I had jiggers and head lice at the time and felt as though I had no meaning in life. We would go a week without bathing and we did not need to listen to the taunts and shouts from others to know we were a disgrace. Our humiliation was deep, but our hunger was deeper. I approached my godfather and asked for some food.
I honestly thought he would say yes and reach in and deliver some tasty meat right into my bag. I honestly thought he would take pity on me. Years later, my godfather told me that as I stood in front of him, asking for some meat, he felt ashamed of me.
“Look at your feet,” he said, loud enough to catch the attention of those standing around us.
I looked at my feet. They were cracked, but so were everybody else’s. But mine were also covered in scabs and cuts. There was excrement on them, and flies were investigating an open sore. I looked back up at my godfather, and he carried on.
“They are as bad as those of a duck.”
This brought much laughter from the crowd.
“And your head,” he continued, “is like that of a pig. Will you ever be anybody?”
In our culture ducks and pigs are lowly creatures. To be compared to either is a horrendous slander. People laughed louder now and started to cheer as he reached into the pot and pulled out the largest bone he could find within it. I looked up. What was he going to do? Was he about to hand me something to eat? Were those words just a form of teasing before he finally showed me some pity?
He lifted the bone high and brought it down on my neck. I instinctively put my hand out to protect myself, but I was too slow. I fell over, blood leaking from the wound. I did not feel hungry anymore, but the pain was twice as bad as the ache that had been tormenting my stomach.
People were cheering and laughing, and my godfather sneered down at me. A lady called Margaret, one of the teachers at the school, pushed through the crowd, half carried me away, and administered some first aid. She wrapped her scarf around my neck and helped to carry me home. My mother was worried and crying when she saw me, and I was in tears at the sheer embarrassment of the whole thing. But Margaret told me, three times, “Your godfather has called you a duck and a pig, but one day, twenty or thirty years from now, you will surprise the whole world. I may or may not be there, but one day you will surprise the whole world.”
Those words have never left me. Whenever I have felt abandoned or rejected, when grief has held me down or sadness made me ache for the relief of death, those words have returned to me.
People may have wondered what I could possibly become, but I told them what Margaret told me: “One day,” I would say, “I will surprise you all.” I said it so often that Mr. One Day became yet another name people would call me.
Their doubts only served to inspire me more, to give me the zeal that I needed to keep going, to believe that life was not stuck in this state. Perhaps this was where hope began to take root within me. I do not know. But many years later I was delighted to be able to help Margaret a little. I had become the coordinator for education in the diocese of Kigezi, looking after 220 schools. Margaret was still teaching, and I was able to promote her to the role of headmistress. What better role model and teacher could you hope to find?
My uncles’ wives, Deborah and Agnes, who were born-again revival Christians, continued to look after us as well. They taught us Bible stories and would feed us when they could. Another aunt, Jane, gave us clothes and money from time to time. Later, as I progressed through primary and then high school, I was able to do so only because of the kindness of many good Samaritans. These people owed me nothing and they acted out of their compassion and of their own free will. I am sure God would have found a way to renew me had they not helped, but it is obvious to me today that their obedience to God’s Spirit was a very, very good thing. I am grateful to them all.
Not every Christian was a help to us. Our house was leaking and we needed grass to thatch the roof. It was only ever temporary, especially when we used sorghum, which we gathered from the bottom of the valley. One day we gathered up some stalks that had been chopped down and discarded on the land of one of our uncles. We placed them on our roof to give us shelter. But my uncle’s wife found out and came and forced us to remove them. This woman, who claimed to be a born-again Christian, said she wanted them back as she needed them to mulch her banana trees. We felt angry and bitter. It made us question Christianity—just like when my father left and the church did nothing to help us. When the people who claimed to follow God failed to take care of us, we questioned Christianity. When they did not help us with the fees needed to attend school, we questioned the faith of those Christians who ran it. When we were hungry, we asked questions. When people were throwing food away and we were naked and were sleeping in sacks and had no soap, we expected them to care and they did not.
Later on some of these people changed and started to care, but I had the feeling it was only because I had started making money and being somebody. Even today I wonder whether they genuinely love me or just want my money. But I never question the faith of people like Margaret, Deborah, Agnes, and others who fed, clothed, and nursed us when we were at our lowest points.
My mother suffered from depression, hypertension, ulcers, and all sorts of psychological troubles. She was constantly afraid, a worrier about even the smallest things. She never trusted men at all. I remember feeling the same way. It has taken me a long time to feel secure when I am in the company of men, and these years of hardship made me bend toward women, particularly as my mother became my confidante and my closest friend. It was only when I started out in leadership that I started to build any real trust in men.
There were exceptions along the way, and while it brought pain at times, school introduced me to two men who helped undo some of the damage done by my father, my uncles, and my godfather.
I was ten years old when I started primary school. I was seventeen when I finished. In those days O-level exams were typically taken at the age of sixteen, and A-levels at eighteen. I finished my O-levels when I was twenty-one, and then my A-levels at the age of twenty-four, going on to university at twenty-five. In every year I studied I was always the oldest in the class by far. At first the humiliation was to be found in sitting next to children half my age, repeating their nursery rhymes and spelling out simple sentences about cows and goats and the sun. Later, as I grew, the humiliation became even more obvious, as I would struggle to fit my legs beneath a desk constructed for children far smaller. Ugandan classrooms are overcrowded at the best of times, and the desks are long, built to accommodate four or five children at a time. When one of those pupils is the size of a grown man, and there are five or six other pupils trying to force their way onto the bench, studying becomes even harder.
Pupils picked on me a lot, and the teachers joined in. They all called me mzee, which means “old man.” It can be a sign of respect when delivered to someone who is advanced in years, but it was handed out to me with a sarcastic sneer.
Even though I was older than them all, I was still punished along with the little ones. The teachers would beat me all the same, using a stick most of the time. Legs, buttocks, hands—we did not get to choose. If we were lucky it was the buttocks, but there was no real way of telling what the teacher would decide. All we ever knew was that if we were late to school, we would be beaten. If we broke a rule, we would be beaten. If we failed to get a pass mark—beaten. One teacher used to cane us for every answer we got wrong. We learned quickly enough, but only through fear. It was not a good way to learn.
I was twenty-one when I last got beaten—because my school shirt was dirty. They often gave us the option: either be suspended or take the beating. I never wanted to let my mother down, so I always took the beating. One primary-school teacher used to beat me almost every week. We had no soap at home, and the white shirt uniform got very dirty very quickly. We used a certain type of fruit to wash our clothes but it never really got the shirt totally clean. And I only had one shirt so I had to wash it most nights, drying it in front of the fire while we were asleep. The smoke just made it dirty all over again, so my beatings would continue.
The teacher got so irate that it attracted the attention of other staff members. Margaret, the kind woman who had rescued me when my godfather had called me a duck and a pig, came to see my mother at home. “What soap do you use?” she asked.
My mother explained that we were too poor to buy soap. She explained that we were too poor to eat more than one meal a day. She explained that we were desperate and that the only way I was able to go to school was because my oldest sister, Peninah, had married a good man who had money. Margaret cried and cried and cried. She offered to do what she could to help and went away to ask another teacher if I could live with him as his houseboy. He agreed, and for two years I lived in his house, cooking and cleaning for him when I was not at school. It was not far from my own family, but it was a giant improvement in living. There was no shortage of soap there, and the food was regular and plentiful. He even had a hurricane lamp by which I would work in the evenings. He encouraged me to learn, and throughout the year that I lived at his house, my abilities as a student increased greatly. I was fourteen years old, and that year changed my life.
By the time I was nearing the end of primary school I realized I was clever. I was not the best in the class, but out of the forty pupils in the room I would always find myself receiving the second, third, or fourth best marks. It increased my self-esteem and brought a little closer the idea that one day I would surprise the world.
In 2000 I set up a primary school in Rwentobo, fifty miles from my village. Today it provides over four hundred children with an education and two meals a day. Many of the children are orphans, and many have experienced the type of poverty that I did. Some have been through worse than I have.
If you come to the school, turn off the busy road that is used by trucks coming up from Rwanda and on to Kampala, pass down through the layers of trading posts and over the potholed track that leads to our low buildings, and you will see many children, like me, finding hope in education.