A. M. K

Everything was up in the air and what had mattered once did not seem to matter anymore.

In my last year of primary school, my parents had a sudden change of mind in their school of choice for our primary school. They had been part of the founding directors of the Parents’ school which broke away from a larger well known school in the 1990s and it seemed to me that because of this we had a certainty of permanence or loyalty, that they believed in its ability to deliver us to the best secondary schools in the country, as was and probably still is the main purpose of our primary school education. Of course, as a child, I also had not been privy to their conversations so I did not doubt their reason for having me take interviews in another school in my final year. They said it was just to see whether I could pass them.

I spent the next 300 or so days in a new school. A different uniform, ten minutes of break time, no more successive ringing of the three bells to signify its end- the first one meaning freeze, the second one- tie your belts, pull up your socks and the third one meaning run to class, I learnt over and over again that year what it meant to be an outsider, the new social qualifiers that applied; that it mattered where you lived, what your surname was and what your parents did. Things which I had not been important before then.

It was an abrupt end to the highly competitive “Inter-colour competitions” – the dancing, the solo and group instrumentals of xylophone, drums, harps and thumb piano and the end of Sports Days, where we matched, saluted and held our gun props which we called gogos, no less in sync than a real military parade.

In the new school, candidates did nothing other than the nationally examinable subjects. Miss Felicité and her interesting French class I never saw again; along with waving the compulsory hankies at the gate and my reputation of having been in the ‘A’ stream since P.3, the things which had so significantly defined my early school life did not matter anymore.

In spite of the avalanche of changes, the most difficult one was losing my friends and groups [of friends]. The social grooming and upbringing of my new classmates was vastly different from my own, their personalities as unsatisfying and shallow as the half buns and half doughnuts they gave us for break tea, wholly lacking in any foundational principles beyond their imaginations of being, at twelve years old, already rich, famous and affluent. Even a five year old can manage a full doughnut by himself, I wonder why under our intense training and taunting by poorly explained Mathematics workbooks of I will I can and secondary school textbooks of Introduction to Biology, we could not be fed properly.

There was a reinforced establishment of a hierarchy which worshiped ‘academic giants’ at the top and trampled on those at the bottom. It was difficult being a suspected nobody. Though, I imagine, it was also difficult for the enforcers of this pyramid, the teachers. They were the best examples of the bottom. At the beck and call of the headmistress for her bag, her shoes, her papers, her keys, she publicly and constantly ridiculed them, only falling short of shoving their heads with one finger for ‘mputtu‘.

My time there ended as it had began. They had warned us. No hair-weaved rebel was to infiltrate the bareheaded children at the farewell party, but my mother had thought it unreasonable and made sure I attended it. During the ‘party’, we were hunted down, driven to school and gathered into a small congregation as we waited for our parents to pick us up and take us back to our holidays. The message was clear and damning. The Headmistress’ daughter, going by the befitting confusing title of ‘The Rector’ condemned us to hell- the parents’ hell of secondary schools- an untraditional school. We would never make it in life, she said. A mammoth sentence for an ant’s crime.

Eventually, I again found myself in unfamiliar society, in a radically religious secondary school – traditional, in a sense, to some. This time, it was us against the administration, most of the time. I made friends again, camouflaged but united with others, in the peculiar world of boarding secondary school.

…

It’s been months since I last sat down to write.

How many moments in life create character? And how many moments in life shape who you become and what you believe?

…

Yesterday the new maid, gave me porridge which smelled quite strange. A quarter way through drinking it, I started gagging. This is not the first porridge incident I have had. I suppose porridge- being the biggest constant of my diet is the most obvious point of contact for any attempts at supernatural power and domination over me.

I am aware that having household servants is nearly a relic, except at home, and [rivaled by] the Middle East, where it is still seen as a necessity and almost part and parcel of having a household. In the Western world, only the words personal assistant, nanny, au pair and caretaker can be used without brewing memories of slavery or feudalism. For most families, internet, fast food, machines and sometimes a stay at home father or mother are enough to cater to the demanding, cyclical needs of a household and children.

Witchcraft, being one of many, and perhaps one of the oldest forms of humanities struggle for power, control and dominion which began on Adam’s day one, as a command, a principle.

…subdue and fill the earth, …have dominion over the fish in the sea and the birds in the air, the knowledge of all things…and the serpent shall strike her heel, and her offspring shall trample him underfoot…though she be punished during childbirth, yet still she shall desire her husband…Wives! Submit…

I have found so far, that the wielding of power and dominion is highest, not in organisations, not in the President’s office, but in the home; yet no where else is balance and equilibrium most necessary. Yes, wives were originally trained in art of scheming, charming and practising wizardry to overcome the nature of their physical, sexual, economic and social status. Today, education and the law makes things a little less delicate.

Balance and Equilibrium

It reminds me of the three legged race on Sports day in the primary school I liked. It was usually left for the parents at the end of the children’s games. Having been joined as one, two people with their left and right leg tied together to make three legs, had to run together and reach the finish line in a race against other combinations. They could either collaborate skillfully, intentionally and strategically, or look foolish, running in different directions and being forcefully snapped back together, stumbling and knocking each other down in the process or they could be completely defeated, unable to take even one step forward. They had to step forward with the same foot, run with the same rhythm, timing and in the same direction, in sync, until the finish line.

Perhaps, I have never understood what it means to have a deep sense of self or independence. For some, attachment is an anchor, is safety, for others it is just a chain. For one certainty is control, for another it is peace. For another stability is health and for another an off-putting inability to grow and adapt to change, for one co-dependence, is subjugation and for another it is a method of living. How do two become one, if in mind or in body or in soul if one is recklessly afraid of being submerged and another being hopelessly afraid of being separate.

I loved to ride a bicycle as a child. I still do, but this time, I was riding an invisible one, but nevertheless, real. Just when I had found my balance, I suddenly had more than one of me to carry. I dived into the cocoon. The cocoon that I had found the last time. The book had said that, if you feel overwhelmed, you can always enter the cocoon, where it is cool and sandy [I think this part was my own interpretation because of the beach] and yet warm and safe and you can hide in there for as long as you want.

I see it all through a glaze sometimes, unable to come out, peering through the sandy walls sometimes, trying to remember what it feels like to be unafraid, if ever; wondering if I had seen it all so clearly, once.

A three legged race.

WhatsApp is such a strange tool of communication. Statuses, sometimes just a rant to no one at all; messages, a powerful, destructive tool, where one line can destroy years of pleasantries and confusing conclusions, questions and anecdotes especially from those who love the tabloids but not the whole book.

When we began the descent to Entebbe, I finally understood why the pilot had said it was going to be a very cloudy journey. He had said it in a very nonchalant, almost casual way, “Please keep your seat belts on at all times. It is going to be cloudy.”

He had flown creatively over the blazing hot orange desert, unlike the standard straight way planes always flew. Instead, we were leaning sharply to the right against the rising landscape. The tilt of the land below reminded me of O’ Level Geography again, where they had taught us that Africa is tilted to the North. Though, because of the white flat-roofed blocks of evenly lined cities which popped up after long empty spaces, we were probably still on the Arab Peninsula at this time; this was where the huge labour migration of African workers was taking place.

When the pilot announced the descent, we were suddenly we hit by a thick almost impenetrable carpet of white clouds. The plane struggled through, jerking us about in our seats. I stared outside the window, breaking my gaze to bring to mind the image of us on the tarmac at the Entebbe’s deserted beach corners driving out of the airport zones which had come to mind about two days before. I looked down at the children who were deeply, restfully asleep as we pierced determinedly ahead, suddenly so small against the wind, machine against nature.

Just before you land in Entebbe, you see green hills, brown inroads and numerous metallic roofs shining as they reflect the sun, then just as the wings expand and the wheels come out, the lake appears before you, deep dark blue, but calming and assuring and just then, the racket hits as the plane touches down at a furious speed.

This time, nothing even showed that we were close to the ground, neither land nor Lake Victoria. We only knew we had touched down when we felt the wheels on the ground. My neighbour allowed himself to wake up. He was visibly relieved for someone who had been asleep since take off.

I braced myself for angry immigration officials as is the custom. Instead I got skipped through the line because of the children. After about forty minutes I requested for permission to take the children and collect my luggage after and it was granted without much fuss.

My father, whom you can count on for all the big important things, was waiting for me as soon as I came out, as he had said he would. Along with my sister, they received the children and I walked back into the airport building. Every airport official on duty I passed on the way shone with pride in the new arrivals expansion.

It was about two hours after we arrived when I finally got my suitcases. They were the last on the carousel. I was surprised to find that they seemed untampered with; maybe it was because they had gigantic children’s toys. I had been certain that the airport officials had broken into them again as they had in January so I made sure that the men with ‘special official’ badges who were helping the very un-official looking NAM delegates with their luggage heard me clearly. Thieves. Mediocrity. Why did we always do the worst we could? They must have known that help- less people have only words left for their defense because they ignored me completely.

At home, I fell back into an immediate dead end maid search again as I scampered for my bearings. The floor was so caked with dust that our footprints looked like we had not worn shoes in days. The air I let in from the outside was worse than the dust inside. It was heavy with burning things. It smelled like charcoal and polythene; dark, dense and stagnant.

I took down the curtains and nets the next day and the children slept better and began a time lag adjustment. On one day, the youngest child slept for an entire day. After that, for about a week they both woke up between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m. and slept again at 5. a.m. and then eventually 7. 30 a.m. At first, I was happy because I got to spend the days alone; sprawled on the chairs, waking up only when mosquitoes located me. Eventually, they aligned to the time quicker than I did. I was as tired as I could be; but you can only lie on the floor for so long, you still have to pick yourself up and find some food for everyone.

The maid culture today is roughly, get a stranger off the street, leave them with your children and trust that they will be okay. It seems that as long as the house is meticulously mopped, the children are vaselined and there is food on the stove, everything is okay. That may have worked in the 90s when we were growing up but as an adult and I suppose a young mother myself, it feels torturous.

Though, those days I think most of the maids [known as house girls, not house helps, maids or nannies], were related to us or had been recommended by one or two referees from the same village as our parents- where people knew each other’s families.

Still, my own mother was a stay at home mother in the 90s. The term then was housewife. I think she disliked the word. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew she was always in the vicinity somewhere. A generally happy childcare except for a few holidays when an older cousin bullied me and another cousin sometimes. Me, for being a spoiled child who reported everything to my mother and my other cousin for being ‘big-headed’.

What happened to the sun? It has been so grey for weeks since we came back that there has been no difference between morning and evening. It feels like a season called “rock bautumn“.

It did come out two days ago and its been blazing as if it never left. I wondered momentarily, if it was actually worse that we had been under an endless dull smoky haze, breathing through the mouth its warm stale air. I think the sun is better, if not for the skin, at least for the mind.

Author: A. M. K

The Three-legged Race

Cloudy Kampala