LIFE – Page 8 – PurplePretoria

Now that September has ended, we can go wake up the guys in Green day. They did tell us to wake them up when September ends. But as for the rest, maybe half of the world that was conceived during the festive seasons of Christmas and New Year’s (Americans call it ‘New Year’s eve’- but for most Ugandans its just New Years), we prefer to be awake during September because it is our birth month. This is the only time in the year that we are allowed to feel special or more special than others. It is that one day that you expect to be celebrated. In the ‘dot.com’ world today (as our parents and anyone over 50 calls it), it is the day that you are supposed to be ‘posted’ about, displayed like an advert.

To the best girl I know. Queen! (Hands up emoji) The most beautiful soul. Happiest birthday! Blessings upon Blessings.

And that, is why the birth day can be one of the most depressing days.

I had a birthday party for almost every birthday since I was three years old and until around age 13. Thereafter, the third term of school always began on my birthday. My 13th birthday found me dosing off in night prep in a dining hall that smelled of the soup of boiled dry beans. When I awoke from my dosing fit, I was trying hard to speak without getting caught so that the teacher on duty would not slap my head blank that night. It always started as scattered whispers and then a feverish din would engulf the entire hall until the sharp sound of a hot slap would get everyone quiet again. I had cut cake with my mother at home before I left, but it was not the same. Life had continued as if it was any other ordinary day.

My 17th birthday had some pomp and glamour but mainly it had a bit of drama. The kind where you choose whom to call, whom not to, and your friends from lower high school and your new high school tried to mix like oil and water. As we walked outside, I, surrounded, followed, listened to, coveted, covered on all sides, a tall dark figure came up behind us and gave me a present. There were shrieks of excitement and eyerolling and ‘I can’t keep this. Please take this back. I’m going to throw it away” because a boy had given me a present.

My 18th birthday was uneventful, it was the Sunday before school. It had been the year when the foundations I had placed my bets on had first caved in, leaving me falling into a steep spiraling black hole. I remember eating barbeque meat and watched the debris, as I hid behind the bright glare of the computer screen.

My 19th birthday resurrected life into the meaning of what I thought a birthday was to be. We were back on track. What did I want to do, what present did I want, where did I want to eat, what cake did I want. It was the birthday of beginnings. It was after all the beginning of the end of childhood.

In my first year of University, I had waited all day for someone to recognise my birthday. I got instead, what I felt, were a few half hearted messages from family. I had half whispered it to one of my classmates, a South African girl called Phangi, and she had said, “Ohhh shame, it’s your birthday. Happy birthday?” And she had moved on to the next topic.

In my right angle triangle residence room, I sat on top of the table (because I was being rebellious to the norm) and watched the grass. When I heard the Taiibos boys screaming in glee as they jumped into the pool outside, grabbing pale skinned girls and pushing them into the water, tears run down my eyes. It was my birthday and no one in the world knew.

I didn’t sit in the dark for a long time. It was 7.30 p.m. when my sister called me to come visit at her apartment. I said no. It was too late. The day had ended. She insisted. When I got there, the skin around my eyes was visibly dry and my mouth was so tight it could barely turn up into a smile. But she had bought me, a cake whose pristine taste I have never forgotten; peppermint, caramel with a silky cream in between moist crystals of baked chemistry.

On 2 birthdays (except one) that followed during my University years, it had become clear to me (usually after the occasion) that cake and a free meal had been the biggest decisive factor in acquiring the attendants’ presence.

After that, my birthday was always a mixture of excitement and disappointment. It took me years to realise that I did not have to wait for one day in the year to feel special. And I did not have to wait for anyone to make me feel special. Last year, after I realised what a heavy burden I had put on one day of the year to make me feel special, I receded my expectations, believing that everything would always fall short and so we should keep it simple.

But this year, when the birth day came around, I had come to understand that, there was nothing that anyone or any day could do to make me feel special if I did not, could not, allow myself to feel special on the other 365 days of the year. And so, this year, I hesitated on the ‘Yes’ when he said we were going away for a bit. Back down. Back down. I really wanted to say, “That’s not necessary. At all. What about…?” Shut up. Just accept it. I was seriously battling myself as the word came out that I could see the confusion that my inner conflict was causing, reflected on his face. Then I got ready. I got ready to feel the sand crushing under my feet, to hear the waves rushing back and forth against the shore all night, to be happy; secure that it was not in just this one day, or in the close or distant people acknowledging me, that I had to weigh my worth.

I did get the cake, and the singing, and dancing and a few heart warming messages and it was real and intimate and beautiful but I had already given myself the permission to be.

The first time we were on the lake, in its dark sky-blue expansiveness, we used a canoe. We floated on its roughly cut planks of wood finding a makeshift sitting place within its irregular inner structure. As we swooshed on into the water, it turned a dark green colour with strings of moss underneath. The canoe men who steered the boat, used cut outs of jerrycans to pour the water out of the boat when it sipped in. But even that did not scare me, the heart of a young girl would jump from a cliff into the vast deep if it was with the man she loves.

It was a four hour journey to the island and the lake was calm and joyful. The sun sparkled onto our faces and the silhouette of the islands faraway comforted us; but even when all we could see was lake all around us, I was certain that we would be safe. The water held us in its palm throughout and except for a sprinkling of water from the vibrating engine at the back of the boat, we were just two voices speaking in a bubble, in the backdrop of a 68,800 square metre water body.

The two lake-men had packed sachets of waragi for their journey but they agreed to resist them until we reached the shore. I had wondered out loud in disbelief as to why they had to dose themselves in alcohol and yet were relying on them to take us on a journey so far away. I had heard that the people of the lake were very superstitious, that they had seen things, that they made sacrifices to please the water. I scoffed at their naivety.

Seven years since we had been on that canoe, we came back to the lake, this time on a passenger speedboat; not just two people and two canoe men on a rough wood canoe with leaking holes and broken jerrycans. This boat had a powerful engine. It could accommodate up to 54 passengers, take us to our destination in one and a half hours, with a lavatory in the back, life jackets in the upper head shelves and an automatic inflatable raft at the top. The seats were covered in faux leather and there were windows; big enough for me to see the lake expand and contract, into a depth that only before seemed superficial; big enough for me to see a massive tide rush towards us, lift the boat atop it, push us off our linear path and drop us back into the deep.

The journey to the island had been lulling. I had slept through the last part of it and awakened to a uniform tall green forest curving against the soft dark blue. It was the start of the weekend that marked the end of a heavily loaded year as I climb out of my twenties.

On the day we left the island, unlike the day before, the clouds were grey and foreboding and it was drizzling. But we had been on the lake before, with no land in sight, on a smaller mode of transport, with two fishermen we had just met. BUT, water is deceptive. The drizzle that just barely kissed the surface of the water and the 54 passenger boat could both fit into the wide gaps that unexpectedly appeared in the water, swallowing it whole, leaving no footprint on it, as if we were never there.

As we settled into our seats, I pointed out how earlier in the morning, the water had been pulsing towards the shore and now it was rocking gently away in the opposite direction . As soon as we set off, a few happy travelers, some of whom we had made friends with over the weekend, requested to stand on the deck. With their party music on blast, we heard them shout, “One last round for the road!”

Not more than ten minutes later, one by one, they came back to their seats. The wind was unrelenting and the water it stirred up had left them drenched. The once soothing waves had become so high and violent and the farther we went, the more turbulent they became. Soon the waves came rushing towards us, pushing us away from our linear navigation, tossing us high upon its waves and letting us drop into its depressions. As we tumbled on, on our trek onto the mainland, unable to go backwards and unwise to stay still, I started to realise that even if we managed to float, the rushing large volume of water would first push us under long enough for us to swallow half our body weight in water.

I had underestimated it. Nalubaale. We were just a paper boat in the middle of an ocean and we had overestimated our power. As the lake expanded and its waves threatened to blanket the boat, I thought of the landscape underneath. Mountains? Vast stretches of sand that had covered those it had claimed before us? The people who had lived here centuries before, had personified the lake and as our powerful engine boat fought for balance I could see why the Nalubaale had taken up the natural characteristics of a human being. The lake could get happy or sad. The lake could get hungry or it could be asleep. In that moment, I could sense its fury.

As we continued to swing and fall, the music had stopped, and those still talking, were either praying, gasping or asking questions. You can tell how turbulent it is when you begin to ponder on the captain’s credentials. Your mind rummages within its contents and brings up thoughts of MV TEMPLAR and the last calls to ‘balance the boat’. And you look ahead saying, God, if I touch the ground again.

The family in front of us, a father, his veiled wife and five daughters, three of whom were also veiled sat un-moving. They did not hurdle together and if they prayed, they prayed in their hearts. There are some religions which fear hell more than they fear death. Even though I saw relief on the father’s face much later, I had not seen him as much as cast a glance towards even his wife.

The sound of the engine struggling to keep up was like complete nonsense in comparison to the heaving to the might of the water. Calm the sea. Calm the sea. Don’t you know that if you say to the storm… We held onto the jackets, knowing that that the bright orange covered foam and plastic life boat would no longer be enough to shield us from a lake that was eager to swallow everything that was moving a top it.

The feeling was familiar. It had hit me on the first flight I took after becoming a mother. Sitting next to the man I had leaned for years, the wheels of the metallic structure we had voluntarily boarded, started running against the tarmac and it attempted to lift itself and fly. It rose sharply to the sky, the sound of its old wings rattling against the wind, 243 people on board, two of whom had said quick goodbyes to their 8 month old baby (quick so as not to upset him), it fought against gravity and came out on top of the clouds. Somewhere in the white fluff, 10,000 metres above sea level, I realised that I had nothing else to hold me. I was only in the hands of the Spirit who made me, as I had always been. With no ground to hold me up, and, you know, the wind is not in the habit of catching people, there was nothing else to rely on but the Spirit who once moved upon the dark waters creating things. God, I don’t have the ground to hold me now. I have only You. But should my feet touch the ground again, I will be grateful.

Category: LIFE

September

Touching Ground