A. M. K

When I first began to write about 2020, it was before our national peak of Corona virus infections. During the lockdown, I had began to see the world for what it was, an oyster. Every day was the same. The sun rose and the sun set. Every day. It was what we chose to do with the time that mattered.

It had been predicted that November would be the month when infections surged and, they did. There was a collective trepidation when it was first reported that we had 1 infection and then 3 in the country. Between June and August, one newspaper had termed ‘Black Thursday’ a day when 14 people were reported to have died of Corona. The next day, it retracted the statement rectifying the terrible misinformation that all 14 had died on the same day. The nation breathed a sigh of relief. By November, we had over 20, 000 cases.

Perhaps this was one of the most distinguishing thing about this disease, a collective pain, a collective loss, a highlight to the lives that have been lost, different from the everyday lives killed by other shy diseases which lacked the diabolic infamy of the corona.

Fresh from the Presidential tea parties that had been somewhat numbing, we peeled ourselves from the domestic and into the capital. There were reports that the business community was being intentionally strangled by the closure of malls and arcades. There were rumours that the disease might not even exist. Then, people started getting sick and people started dying. The stigma was not half as deep as the HIV/AIDs stigma of the 90s, when it was believed that those who had it deserved to have it, that they were immorally complicit, but there was fear.

Contrary to African culture, vigils became smaller and funerals became virtual. People usually hurdled close to the bereaved families for long hours. This time, attending was a test of courage and solidarity with a soundtrack of ‘foolishness’ playing in the back of your head, saying that you were walking right into the devil’s trap. Yet, there was still space, a hollow drumming on of the loss of the vibrant personalities and unmistakable voices and laughs that had forever left our world. In the mind of a mourner, there are two things, fear for the lives of their loved ones that still breathe, and the pitch black image of what happens when the door closes. Do they stand besides their earthly container and watch the people they loved break down and get torn apart or do they just sit and laugh with God and say, ‘Owo, this was all part of the plan, wasn’t it? Ha Ha Ha.’ But, at least in your dreams, they should not talk, mother said. They are not supposed to. And they don’t eat either. If you invite them to eat, they will stop haunting you.

Suddenly, 2020 had become the bleak Armageddon of March when it was announced that the Wuhan virus was no longer in Wuhan.

When Ebola came, it was an African thing. it was the year 2000 and at our Primary School assembly we were advised to stop shaking hands, to just do the bonga like the street people. The symptoms were, bleeding out of every outlet, fever and eventual death. There was no cure. Dr. Lukwiya and his nurses died saving lives. The rest of the world was safe. It was just us, third worlders.

The end of the year has coincided with a history repeating itself. Civil unrest, blood on the hands, blood on cameras, blood on the streets, a once national ideology evolved into a personal ambition. How at peace, are those who sit powerful, above on thrones, knowing how it all began and how it will all end.

2020 did revive old dreams. It sparked new ways of thinking, changed the status quo. It threw off the best laid plans and it revealed our desperate yearning for an anchor.

I suppose, finally content with the fertile hilly soils, they decided to settle here. Colonialism found them here and in 1921, when the walls were going up, they were to realise that they were no longer just Bakongwe, Ba Mwisa Murengye, they would be Bakiga, but above all there would be forever be known as Ugandans. And with their taabes, and their anklets, their beads and animal skins, their gods too small, their names too singular, half dressed for the modern world, they entered the new era. There would be no more wars with their neighbours for loot and for women. It was time for school, for work, for nationality.

They were known for their strength and their stout figure, hardly unsurprising for a body built to climb steep altitudes. They are disparaged for their dialect- haughtily laughed up for speaking so crudely. Any deviation from the figure which has been cookie cut out for them is seen as mishap- not known for their beauty, for their soft spoken-ness or for their measured slow steps. No, that was not what their society hailed, then, it prized the strong, those who could cultivate and have dominion over the land and even the food they ate, was meant to build a machine.

But there was and is beauty in the culture and in the people, and once the comparisons end, it always begins. Skin colours appear, mystically, to range from shades of bright yellow to a warm black. But the tooth gap is no longer exaggerated by picks. There are no more heavy metal anklets worn up to the knees- those are for loose women. And so, even though, what was prized then, is no longer what is prized now, it is good to remember that, even the pharaohs were once great.

For a people who were well known for battle and dominance, the strive to keep the blood pure did not become one of the core values. They were not full – not of themselves- they- picked and mixed intonations and dialects of a similar language, pouring into and taking part of various ethnicities. Finally, the belittling and the complexes of others surrounding them have seeped into the genetics of the remainders- others have renounced the name, renounced the language for fear of being derided. Sweeping things under the carpet, calling spades big spoons, hiding behind the bush- these are new age tactics. They must be learnt. Every thing that doesn’t grow, will soon die. I guess. That is what they say.

If a factory is torn down but the rationality that built it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves. – Robert M Pirsig

The time has come for a nation and faced with enemies other than ourselves, stronger, more powerful, quicker and futuristic, we as Ugandans and Africans should have made ourselves as one, but we crumbled at first exposure.

We have given all excuses as to why we have not redesigned the future we hope for, the word colonialist, a stale taste in the mouth. We gained the independence to destroy what was left. Every election season since I could vote, I have shuddered at the little things- the first to go would be the natural hair community vlogs- what, with refugee status- how can one afford to think about what curl pattern they have. I have not allowed myself to think about the other more serious things- only in my dreams do they confront me- blood. loss. ashes.

It’s the African curse. Once built, always crumbles. Stealing from the generation to come, stifling their own chance to survive, always to fill the black hole of greed, with the shortsightedness of a drunkard – drunk with power who would commit their own kind to years of damnation, generations whose conversations will not be, of vaccines, rockets and skyscrapers but civil war, poverty, genocide, strife and military coups. Cry the beloved country.

Author: A. M. K

2020

Land of my ancestors