WHEN I STEP OUTSIDE, after a week of hibernating, I feel like a traditional bride coming out of the honeymoon bedroom to start a new life. Every sense is attuned to the difference. A loud cockerel, goats bleating, someone chopping wood; I smell ripe jackfruit and my eyes search for the tree. A boda boda whizzes down the hill, raising a cloud of dust. The morning is cool but Ddembe, my older sister, and Mugabi, who has come to open the gate, are shivering. Manchester has hardened me. But then my lips twist. A long day lies ahead. Fifteen years away is not long enough to forget things, but it is long enough to yearn for a certain Britishness, like hyper-politeness, political correctness, queuing up and those tiny rights I’d learnt to demand—This is unacceptable; can I speak to the manager. You pull those tricks here, you suffer. They accuse you of bringing your luzunguzungu. And yet the lack of hurry in the air, the ntangawuzi chai and yellow bread with Blue Band spread I had for breakfast, then the morning bath in a plastic basin, say You’ll be alright, you’ll get back in the rhythm. Ddembe drives out first and I follow her in her second car.
Kampala city centre feels like a toddler learning to walk. There is exuberance despite the many falls. Manchester was middle-aged, around 220 years old. The thought of Kampala growing is at once optimistic and depressing. You want those kids off the streets, but the idea of that concrete used to build megacities sunk into these virginal hills of Kampala is almost sacrilegious. Sometimes, Manchester city centre felt like a steamed-up bus. As if someone was breathing too close to your nostrils. Kampala is dust. It makes the buildings look weather-beaten. It’s a waste of time getting irritated by boda bodas. They own the country now. Young people are skinny. So are most men. As if middle-aged women eat all the food. The build of the women’s bodies, their gaits, the hairstyles, the mannerisms, the colourful clothes. I never realised how good-looking Ugandans are until I left the country.
All but one of the messages I carried for Ugandans in Manchester have been collected by their loved ones. Two days after I arrived, I rang them and they collected their envelopes. Today, I’ll deliver Mikka’s, the last one. It’s for his parents: they are elderly and it’s a lot of money. Mikka and I were quite close, which is rare. Friendship among Ugandans in Britain is transient. People are too busy, too guarded, too jittery. You can’t expect someone who goes to bed not sure where she will be when the sun rises, or someone who had been betrayed back home, or people who walk on tiptoes because they fall in love the other way, to offer you firm friendships. But Mikka was always there, generous and quiet. We had to be careful, though: that nonsense that men and women can’t be best friends.
I am going to start by announcing myself to family. People take it personally if you don’t tell them that you’re back. You never know when you’ll need their help. Then they’ll click, Ktdo, she came back, didn’t even tell us, now she wants our help? I’ll start with Mother, then Nnakazaana, my grandmother, then lunch with my sisters, and finally I’ll go to Mikka’s parents’.
On second thoughts, I’ll start with Grandmother. Nnakazaana is mother, father, aunt, grandmother all in one. My parents are supplements. But Nnakazaana is not your typical melting grandmother; wait till you meet her. She is a tough girl. Even age is struggling to chew her. I so love my grandmother, there is not enough water in the Nalubaale, but if I find her arguing with someone, my heart will go out to the other person. In the late 1950s, she was a trailblazer. The first woman to do business in Kenya, or so she says. When other traders flocked to Kenya, she turned to Zaire. In the 1980s, she changed to Dubai and when other people flooded Dubai she went to Japan to import reconditioned cars, then Denmark for bitenge. She has always held a British passport. Her reasons? She was born in the British Empire and her father fought in World War II. She says that in those days saying I am British opened doors around the world. She had an address in London long before she set foot in Britain. Renewals of her passport were sent there. Because of the merchandise shop she set up in the sixties, then the famous Bunjo Boutique in Uganda House and finally, in the eighties, the Mobil petrol station that doubled as a reconditioned Nagoya car dealership, tongues that whipped women into domesticity lashed. You can feel the welts in her hoarse voice, the spikes in her temperament and in her confrontational attitude. Tongues said she made her money by selling herself—first in Mombasa, then Dubai, London and finally Amsterdam. But in Zaire she smuggled gold, they said. The rumours about Dubai were most hurtful. Apparently, Arabs made such African women fuck their dogs. Kids in primary school would shout at me Ki Kitone, is your grandmother still a malaya? Consequently, Nnakazaana grew thorns on her skin. But sometimes her thorns tear into loved ones. It’s best to get her out of the way first thing in the morning.
• • •
I get to Kawempe and stop to buy meat, matooke, cooking stuff, sugar, washing soap—the kind of things you take to old ones you’ve not visited in a long time. The butcher has sussed me out; he speaks English: ‘Ah, my Muzungu, come to me.’
I am still too black British to find the ‘compliment’ muzungu palatable. I take a breath: Calm down, Kitone, that’s what people call you before they overcharge you. I smile. ‘Have people in Kawempe abandoned Luganda entirely?’
‘Tsk’—he switches to Luganda—‘you kivebulayas pretend to have forgotten our language, speaking mangled Luganda. I was only helping you.’
I buy goat meat, two pieces—one for Mother, one for Nnakazaana. Then I cross the road to the fresh market and buy matooke, fresh beans, peas, greens and then carry on. Along the way, places that used to be bush, swamps, shambas or gardens are built-up. The crowds are along the road, even though it is still early in the morning. Matugga is now suburbia. I see my grandmother’s house long before I turn off Bombo Road.
Nnakazaana hurries out of the house. She’s in trousers. I smile and shake my head. At her age she’s expected to wear either a busuuti or long bitenge robes, not jeans. Back in the nineties, traders on Luwum Street used to call her Mukadde takadiwa because she was a grandmother but not acting it.
‘Jjajja.’
My grandmother is magical, beautiful, intelligent, regal, loving, but no one else sees it. She looks the same she did two years ago but has abandoned her trademark wigs. There is a softness to her when she wears her own hair. She had never put on that midriff weight that middle-aged women do. There was a time when she was prickly about her slender frame, but times have changed. Now she claims I watch my figure, rather than commend a bad-tempered metabolism. Had she put on weight, she would have claimed credit: Age does not look good skinny; it was time to put on some. Recently, she owned up to being seventy-eight rather than sixty-five. When I rang on her birthday, she spoke in the plural: ‘Yes, we’re seventy-eight: what are we hiding any more? We’ve devoured the years.’
As I reverse to park, she follows the car back and forth as if I might drive away. Most old people move out of large houses into smaller ones; Nnakazaana recently moved into this house. Dad built it in 1986, soon after I was born. A wing for his mother and one for himself when he visited. Apparently, he had hoped his mother would stop hustling in Kampala and move to the quiet of what was rural Matugga then. But Nnakazaana was not ready. She loved the city and thrived on hustling: ‘Who says a woman has to give up her life to bring up a child?’ She did not say this to Dad. She let him finish the house, said thank you very much and waited for him to fly back to Britain. Then she built another house, smaller, on the compound and rented the properties to a non-government organisation. Her rent was quoted in dollars. Then she informed her son that she had a new idea for the property. Recently, after her birthday, she said, ‘I am going to enjoy my son’s labours before I die,’ and moved into the property. When I told her I was returning she said, ‘Otyo! The half-mansion is vacant; it’s waiting for you.’
By the time I finish parking, she has made so much noise the neighbours have come to see. They greet me and withdraw. But not before Nnakazaana tells them that unlike the brainless lot who go to Britain and get stuck there, meaning Dad, I’ve returned.
First, she walks me around the bigger house to show me what she’s done with it. It has been decorated tastefully, professional work; but it’s overwhelmingly big. I suspect that she only moved in because she could not find worthy tenants. The whole left wing is unoccupied. After greetings, she asks, ‘So, you people really Brexited!’
I shrug. For someone who went into a semi-depression after the referendum, I am surprised by my indifference.
‘Jjajja, these nations are growing old and it has taken them by surprise. For the first time, they are worried by the youth, energy, optimism of younger nations. They’re afraid they’ll be devoured like they did us in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.’
‘But things were improving. The Europe of the seventies and eighties was a dark place, but now when I come, everyone is nice and polite. You even have African MPs.’
‘But then the economy shrank. On the one hand Britain had embroiled itself in two wars it couldn’t afford, while on the other machines took the jobs. What did they do? They blamed us. Liberalism was a luxury they indulged in when things were good.’
‘Oh well,’ she sighs, ‘who knew that Britain would one day claim an Independence Day? We saw it on TV and asked ourselves: did Europe colonise Britain?’
‘All this time I’ve been in Britain I saw a genuine attempt to eradicate prejudice.’
‘I hope our children also Brexit and come home.’
‘Oh, they will. Anyone who has a home to come back to is laying down plans. When we woke up that morning after the referendum, the clouds spelt Go home!’
‘Good, come home, all of you. Otherwise, how was everyone else?’
By ‘everyone else’ Nnakazaana means Bunjo, my father. There is no shielding her from the reality: Dad did not send a word. She and he don’t talk. Nnakazaana takes credit for the breakdown of Dad’s marriage. Just because she lived here while Bunjo’s wife, Melanie, was in Britain did not mean that Nnakazaana could not be the mother-in-law from hell. She had warned Bunjo against marrying European women who marry your son and swallow him, who are so possessive it’s unhealthy. The relationship between Nnakazaana and Melanie became so bad that Bunjo’s visits to Uganda stopped altogether. Nnakazaana blamed Melanie and would fly to Manchester to terrorise her. I’ve heard her say, ‘I asked Melanie, “Do you think our sons fall from trees that you pick one up and do as you please?” He left relations in Africa.’
I take a breath before I tell my grandmother that Dad is fine but did not send her a message.
‘Heh heeh.’ She does that contemptuous laugh old women do. ‘You know, Kitone’—she points at me as if I am my father—‘when I first ran away from Bunjo’s father, people talked: Eh, she has run away from her husband. Look, she’s burrowed with a child in a tiny hole like a rodent. Eh, she’ll have to slut herself. Eh, that boy will amount to nothing. But if that did not move me, why would Bunjo, a child I brought into the world just the other day?’
I shrug.
‘So next time you talk to your father, tell him that I’ve known more pain than he can inflict.’
I keep quiet. Nnakazaana’s contemptuous laugh was not contemptuous: it was a sob. Luckily her tough face is in place. If it slips, she will collapse into tears. I get up and hug her again. It’s not an I’m sorry hug—Nnakazaana does not do sympathy—it’s I’m so happy to see you again. Strong people are exoskeletal. One crack in the shell and they’re dead. Experience has taught me to reinforce Nnakazaana’s facade of strength before cracks appear.
‘But I think Dad pretends to hate you.’
‘You think so?’
‘He calls you my mother, very possessive. And he talks about you, your achievements, with pride. When you were sick, he paid the hospital bills. He was always on the phone with the doctors.’
Nnakazaana beams. ‘I know, the doctors asked me, “Who was that on the phone, is he a doctor?” Apparently, he asked medical questions. I said he’s my son. But he didn’t speak to me.’
‘He says you hate white people.’
‘How?’
‘I don’t know: maybe because of Melanie.’
‘That woman again.’ She pulls away to look in my eyes. ‘All I said to Bunjo was “Don’t marry Europeans.” White women come with too much power into a marriage with us. The relationship is lopsided against your son. Do you see?’
I nod because her hands are gesturing the imbalance.
‘Your son becomes the woman. They know how to emasculate African men. And for those they give visas to, ho.’ She claps horror. ‘The stories you hear. Your son does something trivial and she threatens him with deportation. But if I hate white people, why did I tell Bunjo to apply for the RAF scholarship? Ask him who told him, after his studies, to apply to international airlines? Why would I encourage him if I don’t like Europeans? Didn’t I tell you that I don’t mind you marrying a white man?’
‘You did. But Jjajja, not all European women are like that.’
‘What are you talking about, child? It’s their culture. I’ve heard a woman, with my very own ears, compliment another about her husband: “You trained him well.” I said, “twaffa dda, is he a dog?” In Britain, children belong to their mothers. You divorce your wife, she takes the children. The court gives you visitation rights! The woman uses those rights to strangle you. Only a few women realise that it’s child abuse to deny their children their fathers.’
Hmm is the only safe response when my grandmother starts on this topic.
‘Melanie told my son that she did not want children. And Bunjo, like the sheep he is, said, Okay, madam, no problem. I tell you, Kitone, your father followed Melanie like a trailer of an articulated lorry—blindly. But I said, “No way, I am going to be a grandmother, come what may!”’
‘But Jjajja, Dad and Melanie have been divorced twenty years now; Dad has not had any more children.’
‘How can he? He does long-haul flights which means he’s away for at least five days a week. Besides, once Melanie sowed that seed in his mind, that was it.’
This is not strictly true. In one of our candid conversations, Dad told me that if it had not been for his mother, he’d not have had a child. But I can’t say that to my grandmother’s face; I can’t keep contradicting her.
‘If it’s true that Bunjo does not want children, how come he worships you? Tell me he doesn’t love you.’
I smile and she knows she has won.
‘Kitone, people don’t sit down and ask themselves Do I want children? When the time is right to have children, children come. The only question is how many. Love for children is like breast milk; a child arrives, ba pa, you’re overwhelmed.’
‘Hmm.’
‘If I hadn’t fought to have you, I would be destitute right now.’
What Nnakazaana doesn’t know is that Bunjo can’t get enough of white women. The more she’s against them the more he wants them. Of all Dad’s girlfriends I’ve met, only Juana, a Mexican artist, and Lorena, a Brazilian student, were non-white. And to describe them as non-white is to stretch the fact: they were white. Once, when Dad was going on about his mother being prejudiced, I said: ‘But Dad, you don’t date black women either.’
Ho ho! It was as if I had opened his door by the hinges. He didn’t talk to me for days. It didn’t help that soon after he had a flight to Sydney and didn’t come back for a week. When he spoke to me again, he made it clear that he would not tolerate that kind of talk in his house. Then he relented and explained that black women, especially Africans, bring too much baggage into a relationship.
‘They come looking for stability,’ he said, ‘with plans to marry you, have children, and while you are at it, you must act married—Sports cars are for young men; you have to act your age—tight jeans?…nothing says bad boy like a leather jacket; and by the way, Why don’t you go to church? Oh, Mother rang, she’s asking about you, when will you visit them? I’ll never inflict my mother on another woman again but equally, I don’t want a family inflicted on me. Everyone must carry their stability in themselves. Don’t look to me to give it to you.’
Like mother like son, I had thought, but I kept quiet about his essentialising African women in case he sulked at me again.
After a cup of tea, I give Nnakazaana the stuff I brought for her from Britain. A pack of Chloe perfume and body lotion, shoes, Marks and Spencer bras and underwear—she insisted on them—a handbag, a watch and other toiletries. Then I give her the foodstuff I bought in Kawempe. We walk to the half-mansion—that’s what we call the smaller house Nnakazaana built on the premises—and look around the house I’ll be moving into once my containers arrive. The walls need a lick of paint. Nothing I can do about the small windows. I don’t like the red cement floor. I think I’ll carpet it all. That will give me something to do while I wait to start my job.
‘You know, Jjajja,’ I say, ‘because it needs a little bit of work, I’ll move in with you in a few days and start working on it.’
That puts a smile on her face. As we walk back to the main house she puts her hand on my shoulders. ‘You’re enough for me, Kitone,’ she whispers. ‘You’re me.’
‘Maybe I love you more, Jjajja.’
‘Maybe.’ Her smile is sceptical.
When time comes to leave, it’s a struggle to extricate myself. She thought I would spend the entire day with her. But when I explain that I am going to see Mother, she smiles because I visited her before my mother, especially as Mother lives in the city where I came from. To say that Nnakazaana and Nnazziwa, my mother, don’t get along is to say that Mr Lion and Little Miss Antelope don’t see eye to eye.
• • •
Mother lives in Wankulukuku, just after the stadium as you go towards Bunnamwaya. My mother doesn’t wrestle with life. What comes her way she accepts; what does not, is not hers. From rumours and whispers I’ve heard, I imagined Nnakazaana marching up to my mother soon after I was born and saying Where is my grandchild, plucking me out of her arms and handing her a cheque for her troubles—Thank you very much—then giving Mother terms of visitation. Mother could not fight back; she doesn’t know how to. Tradition was on Nnakazaana’s side, being Dad’s mother. Besides, Nnakazaana had a lot of resources at her disposal, but that does not mean that Mother did not hurt. Like today, when she finds out that I visited Nnakazaana first, she looks down to hide her pain. I had not planned to tell her, but she asked, ‘So how is Nnakazaana?’ and I was tempted to say Why ask me, who’s just arrived from Britain, but I said, ‘Same old Nnakazaana.’
If my mother was a car, my father clicked the central locking button and walked away. She’s still parked where he left her. I suspect I’m the result of a one-night stand. Probably a drunken night, because Mother’s not the kind of woman Dad would go for sober. Besides, there is no record of their relationship—no pictures, no stories, not even anecdotes. Some parents hear a song and sigh Oh, that song reminds of your father, or point to a place and say That’s where me and your father once lived, or kdto, we ate life in that club, me and your mother. The only record of their relationship is me. It makes me nervous, Mother not knowing Dad. When I started a relationship with Dad, I visited him once a year. Every time I came back from Britain, I brought pictures of him and Mother pored over them like an opportunity lost.
Mother has a tiny house. Smaller than the half-mansion. Word has it that she built it with the money Nnakazaana paid her for me. Mother is mumsy in a Ganda way. The kind of woman a Ganda husband would not lose whatever he did. The kind of wife who says I came to cook; I am not leaving, whatever he does. Their ability to endure marital abuse is the epitome of Ganda feminine strength. Mother is appropriately plump. She only wears kitenge gowns or busuuti. She still bleaches. Her hair is very long and worn in a straight perm. When I arrived, I saw her worried glance at my hair—short, natural and uncombed.
I only agree to have tea with her because it would be rude if I left her house without eating something. Thank god I am going to meet my sisters for lunch, thank god they’ve told her about it, otherwise I would have had lunch to compensate for seeing Nnakazaana first. I give Mother the bag containing all the stuff I brought for her from Britain. I always bring her more than I do for Nnakazaana. If Nnakazaana needs stuff from Britain she gives money to her friends who are travelling.
I pass on the pictures I printed off. In all of them, I am with Dad: I know it’s him she wants to see. For a moment, she is silent as she riffles through them. Then she sighs, ‘Yes, that’s him: those are the eyes.’ Then she looks up. ‘When did his head start cutting bald?’
I smile without replying.
Mother has always treated me like an indulgence. With her, I feel like an ornament. As a child, whenever she visited she brought presents—you don’t need presents from your mother every time you see her. When she picked me up for holidays, funerals, weddings or baptisms in her family, I was stared at. She never told me off. I imagine that relationships with parents come from moments of intense emotion. When they scream at you or spank you, when they praise you, or save you from danger and you see their fear, horror, or when they embarrass you, when you hate them, when you fear for them or miss them—it’s all those emotions, and more, that coalesce and congeal with the sensations of feeling their heart beat when they carry you, that form a bond. There is none of that in my relationship with Mother—only stares and smiles.
At her house, she treated me as if she dared not return me to Nnakazaana’s chipped or cracked. My sisters seemed unsure of what to do with me. They liked and resented me equally. Ddembe, the eldest, would pinch me for no reason and run. If I did not make a noise, she’d run back and dug a deeper pinch and twisted until I winced. She preferred to take me by surprise because I would jump. Now I know why I never complained. If our mother was going to pamper me, Ddembe was going to hurt me. Then we were equal.
One day she got a pair of scissors and shredded all my clothes. Mother bought me new ones before I went back home.
I don’t know when my sisters and I normalised. The change crept up on us like puberty. Later my sisters told me that whenever I was around Mother fed us sumptuously. They also said that once they started to come around to Nnakazaana’s house they understood Mother’s behaviour. But Mother never normalised. My conversation with her skims on the surface. Thus, Mother asking when Dad started going bald is skimming the surface. After all, ever since I first visited Dad—I was thirteen then—he’s been going bald. All the pictures I brought back since then have showed Dad at some stage of balding.
Dad does not feel paternal either. He loves me, but sometimes I suspect he would rather be my best friend. The first time I visited him back in 1999, he picked me up in a convertible sports car. Talked to me like a friend. He was too sleek, too well-groomed, too into his gym body, expensive clothes and his pleasure-seeking life to feel like a dad. His home was a bachelor pad. Two bedrooms and two bathrooms. The rest were spaces filled with gadgets, vinyl records, DVDs, PlayStation games, books. Every room had speakers inset into the ceiling. Coloured lights. When he introduced his girlfriend, it was clear from their body language that it was all about having a good time. What shocked me most was him telling me I didn’t have to call him Dad. After all, he said he had not been a dad so far. I snapped, ‘I’ll call you Dad.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what my mother has told you; I mean, about the circumstances of your birth.’
‘What’s there to tell? You’re here in Britain, I’m there in Uganda.’
‘Oh.’ He had stared at me for a while. Then he asked the weirdest thing: ‘Do you have a relationship with your birth mother?’
‘My birth mother, what does that even mean? Why wouldn’t I have a relationship with my mother?’
‘I just want to know.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I don’t live with her, but I see her all the time.’
At the time, Dad cleaned and washed up and did the laundry. At first, I thought he just didn’t want me to touch his gadgets. Then one time he had a long-haul flight and I asked him to show me how to use the washing machine and the drier. He said, ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m making you my servant.’
I was like What? I mean, how Zungucised is that? I said, ‘Am I your daughter or not?’
He was startled.
I said, ‘Let me put it this way: are you still a Muganda?’
‘Why?’
‘Because this Britishness is killing me, Dad. Back home, children do chores; it’s not child abuse.’
He laughed. ‘You take after my mother. She must be proud.’
I didn’t know whether it was a reprimand or amusement. I didn’t care. From that day, our relationship improved. One thing about Dad, he’s dutiful. Back then, I didn’t have to carry clothes when I travelled. I always found my wardrobe full of clothes. He bought them on his travels. I started wearing labels before I knew what they were. He took care of all my needs, from tampons, knickers, deodorant and perfume to going with me to Marks and Spencer to get my bust measured for bras. Even now, Dad books my visits to the dentist and GP for check-ups.
‘Is Bunjo still single?’ Mother asks.
‘No, he has a girlfriend.’
She laughs. ‘Only you young people have girlfriends. We have a man or a woman.’ She pauses. ‘White again?’
‘No, Kenyan.’
‘Hmm,’ she laughs. ‘He learnt his lesson!’
There it was again. Evil Melanie. Then again, why did I say Kenyan? To protect Mother from the suspicion that Dad rejected her because he prefers white women, which in her mind elevates white women above her? To protect my father from Mother’s suspicion that he’s an insecure African man on a trophy trip? I would like to believe that I don’t challenge my mother because I’m exhausted, but something far worse has happened to me. After America voted Trump I started to rationalise Uganda’s right-wing views. After all, liberalism is a by-product of prosperity.
I barely make it to lunch with my sisters, Nnannozi and Nnalule.
• • •
I am in a taxi to Ntinda after walking out on my sisters. My head is boiling.
People talk a bit too straight. And by the time I met my sisters my nerves were already frayed. Apparently, my failure to look right, like a kivebulaya, disconcerts them. I am too skinny and my hair looks like I’ve just walked into civilisation. ‘You’re even wearing lesbian shoes!’ Nnalule had moaned.
In the past when I visited, I played to the kivebulaya expectations—the latest fashion in Britain, outrageous accessories, going out every night. It was easy then because I visited for two weeks and returned to Britain. But I am back for good; I am older and no longer interested in wearing the First World on my body.
‘Look,’ I tried to explain, ‘Dad’s not buying me clothes any more and I’m not interested in labels.’
‘But still, Kitone, you try. People will think you were deported.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘Come on, like you’ve just returned but already are scraping the bottom? Have mercy on us.’
So it was not about me per se; it was about them. They’ve spent years constructing themselves through dress, associates, cars, jobs, boyfriends, houses and even areas they live. In my absence, I was co-opted into the masquerade. Now they needed me to perform kivebulaya.
‘You people, this keeping up of appearances is tragic. We’re in the developing world, for heaven’s sake.’
‘That’s exactly why,’ Nnalule said. ‘We poor people are embarrassed by poverty. We hide it. There’s no need to look at a person saying I’ve tried Britain and failed. Where is the hope for a dreamer?’
‘Looking poor while rich is a virtue in the West. Here you just look crude!’
‘Yeah, the West is so rich it performs poverty. Aspects of poverty have become fashionable. They started with faded jeans, then they frayed their jeans, now it’s gaping holes like they miss wearing rags.’
‘Look, Kitone, we know you’ve never been poor. We get it. You may even look down on us pretending to be rich. But this idea of I’m in the Third World and it’s vulgar to display wealth is just depressing.’
I ate quietly. Did not respond to what they said. Finally, they too fell silent. After eating I stood up, went to the counter and paid the bill even though it was their treat. I waved goodbye and walked out. I drove Ddembe’s car back to Mutungo and caught a taxi to Ntinda. Only one day in Kampala and already I’ve disappointed my mother and fallen out with two of my three sisters. I can already hear them saying Kitone came back, but she’s too white for life.
• • •
Mikka’s home is a grand old house, like the ones in Mmengo built back in history when architecture was still indulgent. Obviously, Mikka’s family owned the land in the village then. His parents must have sold to the new money clans in Kampala. The compound is too large for Naalya, an upscale village. It is well kept with high hedges. An old royal palm fell and lies in the compound as if still being mourned. The falawo trees are so tall and old you hear them sigh up above in the breeze. The house is square. Sprawling roof. Bland front. Two large windows on either side of the door. A huge veranda, wider than an extravagant corridor. The outdoor kitchen of perforated red bricks is annexed to the main house by a tunnel walkway. Mikka’s parents must have inherited this house.
I peer in before knocking. The front door opens into the sitting room, but there is no one around. On the walls, with wood panelling halfway up, are fading black-and-white pictures of former kings: Mwanga, Ccwa and Muteesa II in informal moments. I recognise Sir Apollo Kaggwa and Ham Mukasa. The decor is frozen in the 1970s. The floor is overlaid with a thin red carpet. On top of the carpet are mats spread in the spaces between the furniture.
‘Koodi abeeno?’
‘Karibu.’ A woman’s voice comes from further inside the house. ‘We’re home: come in.’
I don’t step in. Not until I see who is inviting me.
The door to the inner house squeaks as it is pulled back. Mikka’s mother steps out. He does not look like her, but there is that labelling that parents do to their children, like mannerisms. She is early seventies or late sixties. Her hair is dyed and relaxed in leisure curls. Her eyebrows are pencilled, lips glossed.
‘Is this Mr Mutaayi’s home?’ It’s unnecessary but I’ve got to start somewhere.
‘This is it, come in.’
‘Mikka sent me.’ I am still standing at the door.
‘Oh.’ The woman twirls and claps. ‘Bambi! You’re Mikka’s friend? What a good person to be our friend. Yii yii, come in, get out of the doorway, come in.’ She ushers me towards the chairs but common sense tells me to grab a mat. I sit with my legs neatly tucked under my bottom like I was brought up properly.
The greeting is lengthy—how are your people, is the sun as mean over there, what is the city saying? What lies is the world telling? I say what everyone usually says: ‘Life is like that, hard.’
‘Hardship is not illness,’ she says. ‘As long as there is peace, there is life. We too here are contemplating time. And Manchester, have you been there long?’
When I say that I am not going back, she leans in and shakes my hands. ‘Well done; your parents are lucky.’
‘You’ve got such lovely photographs here.’ I motion to the walls to change the subject.
‘Those?’ She looks up. ‘They’re old, ancient people the world has forgotten.’ But then she stands up and pulls down a family picture. There are other pictures on the wall behind me I had not seen from outside. They are in colour and of young families. The one she has pulled down is black-and-white and of a whole family. She points out Mikka as a boy. I peer at it. Mikka sucked his thumb. He was a lot younger than his siblings. As if his parents had already been finished. She points out each of Mikka’s siblings: ‘That one is in Germany, that one in California, this one was in Sweden but she passed away. That one is in Canada, he has no family yet.’
‘All Mikka’s siblings are abroad?’
‘All gone and lost,’ she sighs as she hangs back the picture before sitting down again. ‘We have no children, no grandchildren, not even in-laws to find fault with.’ She claps. ‘They went to study but never returned. Now all we get are phone calls telling us to expect money as if they’re paying us off.’
‘You could visit them.’
‘You get tired of begging for visas. And then it’s awkward when you get there. The houses are so tiny, there is no space to stretch your legs. And then you lock yourselves indoors all day like a prison. Ah, ah.’ She throws her arm out in refusal. ‘They should visit us, not the other way around. Why should we go guba-guba all the way to Bulaya where they’re scattered?’
‘Even Mikka does not visit?’
‘Especially Mikka. And when he comes, he doesn’t bring the children.’
‘Yii, yii? But in Manchester whenever I see him, he’s with his children.’
‘The wife confiscated the children’s passports.’
‘What? Tell him to apply for Ugandan passports.’
‘They would need visas to go back.’
I shake my head. I have no other suggestion. I ponder Mikka. The thing with quiet people. Mikka never talks about himself. I call him, complaining about this and that, but he never does the same. I look at his mother’s pain and decide to deliver the message and get the hell out of there. But then the grandfather clock, which has tick-tocked quietly up to that point, sets off the bell. She stands up. ‘Time to wake up my one otherwise he’ll not sleep tonight. You’d have gone without seeing him.’
The door protests as she opens and disappears. A long pause. The door creaks again. She steps out first and holds it. Mikka so took after his father now I know what he’ll look like when he is old. His father’s legs are not good but he has that well-preserved look of the upper-class. After greeting him, I pass Mikka’s envelope on to his mother. She passes it over to her husband without opening it. ‘You count it.’
‘But it was given to you.’
‘But I’ve given it to you.’
Wife and husband go back and forth like a lovable old couple until she wins with, ‘You know I have no eyes any more.’ The smile on her face says she’s used to getting her own way.
Mikka’s father counts the notes, licking his forefinger now and again, until he’s finished. He slips the notes back into the envelope. I notice that the wife has been staring at me rather than listening to the counting. The husband asks, ‘One thousand five hundred pounds?’
I nod.
‘Thanks for carrying it, child,’ Mikka’s mother says without interest. Then she leans forward. ‘But how was my boy really?’
I smile as I realise that Mikka is her boy. ‘He was well.’
‘What does well look like?’
‘Healthy, not struggling financially.’
‘How old are the children now?’
I remember taking photos with Mikka and his children just before leaving. And because Mikka always brought his children to the Ugandan community gatherings, I have a few others. His wife, however, is a different case. Like Dad, she’s never been to the Ugandan community gatherings. No one knows what she looks like. Mikka never talks about her. Mikka has never invited me to his house even though he walks into Dad’s house and mine easily, most times with his children. There are issues in his marriage, it is written all over him, but I’ve never asked. I suspect he is hanging on for the children’s sake. I get my phone and retrieve the pictures. ‘I have pictures of him and the children.’ I get up and kneel beside his mother. ‘Here, that’s Nnassali, the big girl, then Nnakabugo, the middle one, and that’s Kiggundu, the youngest. They were learning how to drum.’
‘They even learnt to play nsaasi.’
She claps in happy wonderment.
‘Here they’re learning kiganda dance.’ I scroll. ‘Here they’re singing the Buganda anthem. Mikka always talks to his children in Luganda.’
‘Really?’
‘He’s very keen. Everyone in the Ugandan community knows you don’t talk to Mikka’s children in English. Here, hold the phone and scroll down yourself.’
As soon as she’s got the phone, the anger melts and she gasps and giggles and exclaims. Her legs stretch out on the mat, her eyes shining as she pores over each frame. At one picture, she catches her breath, then looks at her husband. ‘Yii yii.’ She stands up and goes over to him. ‘Look at what you did, look how you gave this poor girl your wide feet?’
‘Oh, kitalo’—he holds his mouth in delighted mortification—‘my ugly feet.’
‘That nose is ours too: see how it is sat like luggage,’ she says, and they fall over each other giggling. For a long time Mikka’s parents are in their own world, looking for themselves in Mikka’s children. When their excitement wanes, she returns the phone. I promise to print off the pictures and bring them.
‘Are you married, child?’ Mikka’s mother takes me by surprise.
‘No.’
‘Yii yii, you’re alone, bwa namunigina like this.’ She wags a lone finger. ‘Surely there must be someone you have hopes in?’
‘No, not at the moment.’
I shake my head.
‘Would you like to have children?’
‘In the future, yes.’
She flashes a happy smile at her husband. Then she leans in and says, ‘You see all of this?’ She indicates the property. ‘It belongs to no one. Me and my one’—she points at her husband—‘we’re useless. We can’t develop it. Mikka’s children belong to England. They can’t come into our dust and flies.’ She strokes her lower lip in thought. ‘Ssali, Mikka’s older brother, has not married. We can’t even have the grandchildren in Sweden. When our daughter died, our son-in-law refused to bring her home for burial. We trudged all the way to Stockholm. Never seen a more desolate funeral; only a handful of mourners. Oh! The last we heard was that her Swede husband remarried and put the children in welfare because they don’t get on with his wife. Apparently they are uncontrollable.’
‘But they could have sent them to you!’
‘They are Swedish, you see.’
‘That’s the thing! They won’t let them come out here because all Africa is starving.’
‘It’s our fault. As parents, we lost our way. We—me and my one there—were the clever parents, quite trendy in our time. You educated your children, then sent them abroad to get international qualifications, widen their horizons. That was the trend in the 1980s.’
‘Hmm!’
I notice that Mikka’s quietness is the same as his father’s.
‘Now we’re the childless, grandchildless couple! People our age are grandparenting, but our hands are empty.’ She draws a huge breath and sighs, ‘Aha, the bitter aftertaste of success.’
‘Hmm.’
‘Sometimes we look at people coming to us pleading, You have a child in this country, can you help mine to go as well? Don’t we, wamma?’ She turns to her husband, who nods. ‘But if you tell them that to send your children abroad is to bury them they won’t believe you.’ Now she looks at me. ‘Tell me what’s wrong with our country? Look at us. Don’t we look well? Don’t we eat, don’t we sleep?’
‘You do.’
‘But what are children looking for abroad any more?’
‘Hmm.’
‘If there is nothing good about Uganda, why is everyone coming here—West Africans, South Africans, the Chinese, all of them; haven’t you seen them?’
‘We’re blind to what we have,’ the husband sighs.
‘Now, what our children do is send money. Money-money, money-money, money-money’—she swings her arm to the rhythm—‘as if money is life. If you go to our bank, all their money is sitting idle like this.’ She makes a sign of a heap. ‘But who said we don’t have our own money? Me and my one, we keep it in a foreign account. We don’t touch it. One day they’ll come to visit, when one of us is dying or dead, and we shall show them their heaps of money. But I digress.’ She leans forward, speaking in earnest. ‘What I meant to ask, child, is which clan are you?’
‘Mmamba. My clan name is Nnabunjo. Kitone Nnabunjo.’
‘Mmamba clan?’ She turns to her husband in an excited you see? Then back to me: ‘We’re of Monkey clan’—she recites some Monkey Clan names—‘We’re Kabugo and Nnakabugo, Ssali and Nnassali.’
I keep my face neutral.
‘What I am saying is, but really, I am just suggesting, because that is all it is, a suggestion because if you don’t ask you die in ignorance; what if you and Mikka get together and have a child or two? Don’t answer immediately, child.’ She flips her hand. ‘You see, a squirrel that failed to adapt to urbanisation died crossing the highway. If our children are lost in the world, we must come up with ways of making alternative grandchildren. I tell you, if we die now, everyone—our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren—will scatter because they have no anchor. Mikka and his siblings will come, sell off all of this and melt into the world. But this here is their centre. This is what will hold them together. Everyone, even fifty years from now, who is curious should be able to come here and say This is where I come from.’
‘Child’—the husband leans forward—‘new laws say that if you are non-Ugandan, you can’t own property here. All our children and their children have NATO passports.’
‘Do you see our problem now?’
‘Aah—’
‘As I said, don’t answer right away. Go home and think yourself through. You said you want to have children; didn’t you?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Do you have a job yet?’
‘Yes, but I don’t start until next month.’
‘Good, but with our proposal you don’t need a job. As soon as you get pregnant, ba ppa.’ She cracks a knuckle. ‘We prepare a house, we look after you. The child is born, we take him or her for a blood test, because you know girls these days can be clever…’
‘Kdto, they don’t joke,’ the husband laughs.
‘We don’t care whether she is a girl or a boy; we just want someone our own to take over after us. As soon as the child is confirmed ours, we write the will.’
‘Maama,’ Mikka’s father calls, but I don’t register that he could be addressing me like that. ‘Anzaala mukadde?’ I turn. He leans in with that respect old men bestow on daughters-in-law. ‘Will you think about it?’
I have no choice but to nod.
‘We’re not bad people and not the ugliest either,’ his wife says. ‘We promise love, thick, cordial love for the child. Meanwhile I’ll talk to Mikka. He’s going to call to see whether the money has arrived. And then I’ll say But isn’t Nnabunjo beautiful, have you noticed?’
• • •
A week later, I visit Mother. She rang to ask how I was settling in at Nnakazaana’s, but I knew it was to to gauge my attitude towards my sisters. I agreed to go for lunch. So far, neither she nor I have mentioned the bust-up with my sisters. I had expected them to join us, but they are not here. We are sitting outside on the veranda. Mother has been talking about an Indian soap on TV, some girl called Radhika and her exploits. I am struggling to stay awake when she remembers Mikka’s parents and asks whether I found them. I describe the house to her.
‘Oh, those Mutaayis. They’re old money.’
‘You won’t believe what they asked me.’ I explain everything.
‘Of all people, why ask you?’
I shrug.
‘What did you say?’
‘What could I say? They’re old people, why break their hearts? They told me to think about it.’
‘Tell me you’re not thinking about it.’
Instead of saying of course not I hear myself saying: ‘Well, these days, you don’t have to wait for a man to come along, weigh you up, decide you’re right for him, do the courtship dance, marry and then have children. These days you can find a man you share mutual like and respect with and say By the way, can you give me one or two children? No strings attached, no financial support. All I need are names, a clan and perhaps extended family for the children. That way a woman can have children on her own terms.’ Seeing the horror on her face I add, ‘Mother, for the first time a woman can own her children.’
Mother smiles. She even looks relieved. ‘You’re trying to scare me.’
‘Three of my friends here in Kampala have done it.’
Her face changes again. She does not respond, though. I smile. ‘Don’t worry, Mother, I might meet someone tomorrow and fall in love.’
She remains silent for a moment, then clicks in self-pity, ‘What you eat beautiful today will come back ugly tomorrow. That’s the truth.’
I don’t pay attention to her proverb because two of her sisters arrive and we have lunch. By the time I leave, the whole thing is forgotten. I visit another friend who I met in Manchester years ago and we go out. It’s past ten when I get home. Nnakazaana is up waiting even though I rang to say I was eating out. Before I even drop my bag she starts:
‘Your mother was here, hysterical.’
I frown.
‘Apparently you’re planning to have a child like yourself.’
‘A child like myself? What does she mean, like myself?’
‘No relationship between the parents.’
I laugh. ‘That’s most people I know. I was joking. Besides, if I ever do it, it would be artificially.’ But now I am really peeved. ‘What’s wrong with Mother? I told her it was a joke!’
‘She’s frightened because that’s what happened with you.’
‘What?’ I look at my grandmother.
She leans against the door frame, arms folded. Her stare does not negate my suspicion.
‘You mean Mother did not, I mean, never went with Dad?’
‘Nope.’ She walks to the sofa, pats the cushions. ‘It was artificial.’
‘What?’
‘I paid her for everything, including breastfeeding.’
‘You mean you sat down and negotiated the terms of my birth? I thought you paid her for giving me up.’
‘Don’t get angry with her, it was me, I approached her. Part of me hoped that when Bunjo met her he would fancy her. Nnazziwa was beautiful, well-mannered, the kind of girl you wished your son would marry. Unfortunately, she had had three children; no one married such women then. I sent Bunjo her pictures, he had separated from Melanie then, we discussed it over the phone. He came, I introduced them, I told Nnazziwa, “It’s now up to you to hook him.” They went out once, twice, thrice but in the end Bunjo said, “We’re doing it in a fertility clinic.” Poor Nnazziwa, she had fallen in love.’ She shrugs. ‘What we didn’t know was that at one point, Bunjo reconciled with Melanie. Apparently to get me off his back, Melanie agreed to go on with it. So Bunjo was not touching Nnazziwa whatsoever.’
‘Wow.’
‘I flew with her to Britain. But Bunjo didn’t come once to see us, forget inviting us to his house. She was with me all the time. I suspect Melanie supervised everything on his part. I was going to pay for the procedure, but your father would not let me. All I paid for was surrogacy. I looked after Nnazziwa for almost two years. To be fair, Bunjo visited when you were born and kept coming regularly until you were four or five.’
‘Hmm.’ I fail to look at her.
‘You’re angry with me.’ She comes towards me. ‘I’ve hurt you?’ When she holds me, I feel like I am a child again. When I have held my emotions in check, I pull away.
‘No, but it’s hurled me quite afar.’ There is silence. ‘In Britain, you go to a fertility clinic and pick a picture of a man you like, read up on him—his education and medical evaluation—and say, that one.’ I shrug. ‘But I have a father and a mother and all their relatives; it doesn’t matter how I happened. What has shocked me is that you and Mother and Father did this kind of thing back in the eighties.’
She holds me again. I hold her too. Relieved, she says, ‘If you want to have children the same way, go on. I won’t lie, I would love to see you walk down the aisle with someone, but I am not stupid. Besides, the Mutaayis are a decent family. Children don’t only inherit wealth but a family’s attitude to life too.’
I smile. ‘Let’s wait and see what life says.’
• • •
I’ve stayed so long in the bath the water has gone cold. It’s hard to come to terms with the fact that I was commissioned like a piece of art. No one ever thinks about their conception, but now that I’m forced to contemplate it, I would have liked to imagine myself the product of a bout of passion. That my parents’ love for me started with a strong attraction to each other. The image of your dad jerking off into a sterilised beaker. Why name me Kitone? Certainly I am not an unexpected gift. On the other hand, I couldn’t have been a mistake.
I didn’t need to know.
I miss Mikka. These are the kinds of things I would ring breathless to talk about. Crazy Dad. Crazier grandmother. Mother sold her egg. AI is for artificial insemination. But then I would laugh. Your parents have gone rogue, Mikka. You won’t believe their indecent proposal. His quiet laughter. His disbelief. I am a sucker for quiet men. Dad was suspicious: ‘Are you shagging a married man, Kitone?’ But at the time I was going out with Caryl, a Liberian guy. I like Mikka’s family. I like the look of his children. Marriage is a business transaction. Love is not blind; that’s why we don’t fall in love with vagabonds. Mikka has never attempted to cheat on his wife. Dad would love a grandchild.
I get out of the bath, unplug the water and scrub the bathtub. I wrap a towel around myself but instead of the bedroom, I tiptoe to the cabinet in the sitting room where I had seen Nnakazaana’s wines. I pick up a quarter-full Uganda Waragi and a liquor glass and slip into my bedroom. I toss back a swallow before I pick up the phone from where it was charging. I go to the box where I keep my passports, British bank cards, NI card and foreign currency. I retrieve the British phone and take both phones to the bed. I switch it on and while it plays its start-up images and tunes, I toss back more Uganda Waragi. I go into Contacts, scroll down until I come to Mikka. I write down his number, switch off the British phone and take it back to the box. It’s 10 p.m. in Britain. WhatsApp’s ringing is muted when you call. I start to rehearse what I am going to say but before the words form, there is crackling and Mikka’s quiet voice: ‘Hello, Kitone?’ I hold my breath. I’ve been poisoned. We’re no longer Mikka and Kitone, close friends. He’s Mikka with potential.