The Three-legged Race

July 28, 2024 A. M. KLeave a comment

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.

America

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024 A. M. KLeave a comment

To whom does this land belong?

…

It’s the year 2037, we are 45. You have registered to go with the first batch of people migrating to other planets.

“I thought you said this was the last time,” I say, exasperated, forcing my voice to go lower.

“It will be good for the kids,” he says, looking away as he does when he has already made up his mind about something yet introducing it as new.

“The kids are adults, or at least about to be,” I respond, halfway already defeated.

“The Universities are good on Mars. Trust me.”

…

I had driven, on the highway that evening, the duskiest I had ever seen, a deep grey in the distance, clouds coming down halfway, a layer of orange light separating the grey and the brown hazy uneven structures on the earth. We did not talk much. Surprised I did not cry, he had asked me if I would. I had laughed in reply, the tears in my eyes retreating.

I didn’t cry for maybe the next eight months. When I did, it was because a huge anchor had again broken off my ship and I was left terrified, finally truly alone, as I drifted slowly away, towards the unforgiving sea.

America, is a place which only existed in an alternative world. A place where the people on my podcasts lived, where women with block heels and long colourful nails angrily splashed champagne onto their men’s faces at parties, where people spoke with a strange twang or a reconstructed English. It was also a place where Black Lives didn’t matter and guns were an everyday accessory to anyone who cared to buy.

I was okay if I never reached this part of the world. It has never been my dream to travel the world. It comes constantly as a nightmare, a shiver of fear as I am shot up in the sky in a metallic machine, 40,000 feet, floating in the sky with three hundred other strangers, unseen and unheard except by the last goodbye, with a strained and tested hope of one day returning to earth.

Now, I was to do it with my other halves, the children who have filled my life with amusement, joy, laughter and company, both wanted and exhaustingly unwanted many times.

I stopped breathing. I do that sometimes. The veins on my neck raised, stiff, in an inhale that never lets out, a self preservation skill. It is said in the Evolution Theory that animals either adjusted to extreme climatic changes or went extinct; adapt or be left behind, forgotten.

I had been looking at the time over and over again and it turned out that I was doing this every thirty and twenty minutes. I’m surprised that nobody drops into a sweating, muttering, haggard nervous mess from claustrophobia or a fear of heights. Most people seem to fall easily into a deep trusting sleep, head back, mouth open, bodies limp with abandon, for hours.

My most welcome breaks are for food, which distracts me for maybe an hour. Since I had two young children with me this time, it was a worthy occupation, making sure no one threw their food on to the floor, swung it off the tray or poured water on top of their head and into the seat. This I preferred over toilet duty in an excessively dirty, tiny space which my five year old kept running to, the two of us, sometimes three inside, barely able to turn, each episode worse than the last.

I was relieved when we finally made it across the Atlantic Ocean. I thought about the black skinned people who had made this journey in months which I had made in 8 hours. As we approached, I was convinced that we were flying over the rocky mountains in Canada, holding onto something familiar because of O Level Geography. The relief was vast, rocky and unoccupied, just red mountain and nothing, no human establishments. It remained this way for a long time.

To whom does this land belong?

We touched down in San Francisco about four hours later. A sandwich I had accepted a few minutes before touchdown, led to my entire pack of suitcases being re-checked and thrown open at Passport Control. The airhostess who given me the sandwich had started off with a disapproving, knowing look and even advised me to have something else, when I had asked for sparkling wine first thing and then when her prejudice had been unsatisfied, she had shifted to a more than necessary check-in on me and the children with a plastered pained smile.

‘Millet flour’. The Asian looking Passport Control official read out loud. He seemed disappointed that there wasn’t more. He turned away with a self-consoling ‘I just got myself lunch!’ to which his fellow young colleagues loudly approved as he held, triumphantly, the sandwich, which I had accepted only to be polite.

I was determined to speak in as African a way as I could so that I would not be mistaken for a rebellious local and therefore be easily forgiven for whatever official or cultural indiscretion I made, not that I was good at imitating accents.

Strangely, I did not stand out even half as much as I had stood out in my South African house of residence. There were so many people of brown to yellow shades, no one speaking, ‘purely’ without ethnic influence.

I struggled through the winding immigration lines. I was tempted more than once to place down my baby and set up camp on the ground. My baby, disturbed by the unusual and extremely tiring mode of sleep insisted on lying flat as though he was in a bed yet I had only my hip and weary burning shoulder to offer; a shoulder which I had disfigured to hold him up.

My other baby, had been working hard since our first check in at the airport at home, pushing suitcases, making sure nothing was left behind. He finally gave in at the end and bravely admitted that he had enough. ‘Mummy, I’m tired’. This then became a song as it becomes whenever I do not act immediately upon his request. They both had done more than I could have asked and for him, all while dealing with occasional sharp rebukes about what he had done wrong. I thanked him for his help after.

A quarter way through our journey, in Doha, we had received access to an exclusive lounge where we had met an Irish family. There were astonished by my older son’s ‘very good English’ and almost visibly shocked by his not abnormal youthful vigour, excitement and confidence and then when his little brother starting humming, what they thought was the alphabet, what his father thinks is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and what I suspect could be either, they began to ask some questions, not knowing how to act stereotypically and then immediately acting stereotypically.

The very welcome food and rest held me up a lot longer and filled my mind with philosophical thoughts on race, class and colonialism which was a welcome break from the dreary exhaustion of my journey.

The first difference between America and home was that, there was no visible surveillance anywhere, not one soldier in sight. On the contrary, I was afraid of the Mexican looking bad guys at the mall, who had stood leaning against their car, four men against one car, puffed jackets, staring fiercely at anyone who dared to look their way, definitely armed, I had thought. I had worried about where the police was. I had also woken up one night to check if the house was fully locked. I think it made me uneasy that there was no burglar proof iron bars at the door. There were no keys either and when I opened the door and it went all the way, my body went weak. I hadn’t known that the door was closed only from the outside but as soon I opened it from the inside, it would always open.

When I first saw my closest friend of fifteen years outside the Arrival doors, he was as he had been, ever brisk with emotions, barely looking up, greeting me with an unconfident touch on my shoulder. He had decided to park the car and send his friend whom I had never met to meet me and the children. I had, barely been able to manage a grimace which I usually would. I am conditioned, since about the age of eight, to prove kindness with my actions or facial features. It began when my over seriousness in primary school was branded by a popular girl as ‘mean’, in her exact words. She had seen my inability to interact with boys easily and my being a stickler for the rules as an assault to her own aversion to rules and intense curiosity towards boys and their reaction towards seeing the outline of her tiny legs through her uniform. I have over the years received more psychological thrashing for continuing to be too serious, from classmates, colleagues, and relatives close and far, eventually, melting into a pleasing, personable still not so approved bearing.

I may have managed to raise an eyebrow at the stranger talking to me, calling me Maama so and so. Even though, I finally feel old and tired enough to put my hair into locs, a reference to me as Maama by someone who is not my child is like a veil thrown across my face immediately covering my true identity. I may have flinched, but I followed him outside unable to say one more word.

For the next two days, I remained on my feet, as if I had travelled from Namugongo to Kampala even though I had travelled across more than one day and night.

On the third day, I failed. The youngest refused to stop screaming. I run away from them both and called my backup who had gone to run an errand. He is always half-amused when I show any sign of weakness when it comes to domestic issues. I make a good superwoman, on the outside. I fell across our bed and slept from midmorning until late afternoon. I woke up guilty, daring myself to be better.

Ever since I became a mother, I learned quickly that I was mostly alone. Somewhere in my identity crisis, I also faced the existential crisis of what it means to be a mother in general. Is the child of a mother promised everlasting love? What makes one offspring more deserving of love than another? What did I have to do to be loved? To let my guard down, to be loved when I cannot get up, to be loved when I have nothing to give back. Neither lowliness, a hopeful expectation of future strife nor beauty, grace or successfulness had been enough.

My guard had been up long. I found it hard to smile easily at first. Live in this moment, I thought I heard a voice say. Then I spoke up. Me, what about me, think about me, too. Suddenly, we were a family. It was us, it was him, it was me.

Slowly, the muscles on the left side of my face let go. I exhaled. I woke up one morning totally happy.

Thank you for the time of my life.

What I have seen about life, is that you have to run most miles with a stone in your shoe.

“Zennn, you can’t open the door when childrens are susuling.”

*

“Mummy, the clouds look like posho.”

*

“This duck tastes like roasted socks.”

“Mummy, I saw God crying, ” he says.

“Where did you see God? People have been looking for him.”

“When we were going to the airport… I saw God crying.”

“Why was God crying?”

“Because He doesn’t have friends.”

“Aunty Karungi, Zedd said I am a bad boy chicken”
“Zedd, did you say that?”
Whispering, “Suka say I am a bad boy chicken?
“Zedd is a bad boy chicken!”
“Mummy, Suka said I’m a bad boy chicken.”
I laugh. They sit gleefully, quiet and contented.”