Power – PurplePretoria

It is hard to fight a system. Everyone who has worked in a bureaucracy will tell you that the system is a Goliath only few can defeat. It is not just found in the highest forms of bureaucracy, say in a government office, it is in any form of organisation- in families and in companies, any group of people who have the same objective and are tied by purpose, gain, chance or birth to pursue it together and whose behaviour directly affects the wellbeing of the other.

So, while it might be hard to fight a system, it is even more difficult to fight a culture. A culture is usually unwritten but heavily entrenched. It is the go-to where there is a lacuna in the system. It fills in the answer when there is no one looking, no one auditing, no one caring. A culture is usually not what the mission and vision say, the principles recited or written on the notice board. It takes time to understand a culture when you are from the outside coming in. Usually, you either adopt it or become a misfit, a sour loser.

Who creates culture? Is it the top or the bottom, the leader mirroring people or people mirroring leader principle? Is it the first arrivals or the ones who silently adhere to what they find? A coerced approval or a tacit one. Is it the ones who sit with quiet power yielding the most damning pronouncements on others while yelling loud hellos or is it the ones who don their power like an extra-large clock sweeping with dust whoever queries or comments about anything concerning their use and misuse- the ones who use it to settle personal squabbles. Or, is it the ones who watch everyone, knowing everything and how it operates, whom it disadvantages and who it benefits* the most, and hold their peace knowing that they have the power to change things? Is it the threat of war or the peace of the status quo that keeps them voluntarily numb and mute?

In terms of the ordinary way of things changing, our country is changing too. We seem to be becoming more international, and not just on the streets of Kabalagala. I have been seeing white skinned people buying from our local shopping malls, Asian people at small takeaways by the roadside, a young Chinese girl on a scooter on a hot Sunday in Namugongo and a teenage white skinned boy and girl trekking the ‘un-white’ suburbs behind Bukoto. Until recently, there seemed to be an unspoken culture that some places were only for certain races, some clinics only for expatriates and only one hill selling all the meat, wine and cheese of that same community. [Is it the decreasing race-culture gap that TikTok and YouTube shorts have successfully influenced? We all seem to relate to each other’s jokes and childhood. And on that note, who will fix the childhood trauma that our parents carry and distribute in small doses?]

I reminisce and have written about my experience of finally coming face to face with the race equation and our very low place in the eco-pyramid. Before that, I had seen only very few white skinned people up-close (a few metres away)- one at a primary school assembly teaching us Christian songs while playing the guitar and another one in A-level, preaching to us about the biggest evil in the world- the idea of socialism. The others were the ones on the street in multicoloured clothing and slippers, but always, they were too different to be a part of our world as more than just anthropological observers. Now, we are about to bump into each at the Bank like we do with the Chinese who carry huge laptop bags of cash. I don’t know if anyone has told them that it is not safe to do that here.

The World Before

Besides the shirt-less Sezangakhona and the seduction by power and majesty in Dingiswayo formerly known as Godongwane, keeping the ways of the world before the first missionary and the first coloniser came, a strange mystery, the new MultiChoice series Shaka iLembe has led me into the intrigues of the culture and system of life in which our ancestors lived; a world where our biggest enemy was each other – the clan next door, the tribe with a different [but related] language. How we slaughtered each other! Happily, literally and with no need for a reason.

Some people view the past only with the lens of the present without allowing the passage of time, the knowledge and influence of other ways of life and the imposition of new things. One of those is that since the coming of the first missionary, a large group of Africans now find their names weird and are only going by their English names. [I thought the name Dingiswayo may have been made up by my ‘SouthAfrican History’ teacher] I heard that some of our names are connections to the spirit world, but then I heard the ‘English name’ of Johnny Depp’s Lawyer being Rottenborn, and he seems to be doing well for himself.

Was colonialism really our biggest setback or was it the thing that exposed our biggest weaknesses – our inability to be or live as a united front, our inability to allow enough peace to enable our minds to wander off and think about digging out large chunks of earth and replacing them with structures which we could walk upright in or maybe even think about creating atomic bombs that we could use to destroy the entire earth?

It seems to me that we had a culture of war, of miscommunication, mistrust, of greed, betrayal -but then again what were Elizabeth I and Queen Mary of Scots fighting about? Who was bloody Mary? Is it because they wore more clothing or that their names don’t need vowels in between that it is their story, culture and system that is more glorified? Or is it just plain simple, they are the conquerors and we are the conquered?

Either way, we may need to reorganise the smaller systems that we actually do influence. Possibly we could start with our minds- an honest candid internal monologue [Some people’s culture of only speaking behind turned backs might lead them to deceive and disparage their own selves].

I am here because someone related to me lived more than 1000 years ago. My lineage can be traced to the beginning of humanity.

I heard my 5 year old recently say that chicken come from eggs. I guess he has solved the chicken egg causality dilemma?

There are some people who have never actually walked on the streets of Kampala; literally ever walked on a street in Kampala. They are chauffeured to the door step of their every destination. There are others who know the ins and outs of Kamwokya dancing Kadodi on top of cars attracting massive acclaim from their peers.

Why does meat, according to The Food Network, have to fall off the bone and melt in the mouth? Don’t we have teeth?

Sometimes we expect friendship from colleagues, intimacy from friendships and loyalty from situational relationships. That is the definition of disappointment, expecting more from less and expecting more from people to whom you are less.

The term ‘we are pregnant’ is so misconceived, honestly! He brought the seed, it met with an egg, travelled to a uterus, through fallopian tubes, grew and somersaulted (my experience) from a dot to a baby. How is he pregnant too? You can both be having a baby but you definitely, are not both pregnant.

Ugandans and using the word ‘apparently’ inappropriately…”Apparently [meaning currently], I’m a photographer…” Are you or are you not? Or do you not know either? Don’t use the word.

*benefitting- is that an English word or is it like the word ‘paining’. Our Ugandan way of making nouns into verbs remains. Is ‘un-plaiting’ a real word?

Why don’t we use the word film anymore?

Where did I hear this? Or did I come up with it myself? That the children of a successful [or famous] man are usually unsuccessful. And I added the reason behind it being that they no longer have a cause to fight for.

A lack of scarcity leads to a scarcity of effort. A scarcity of effort, leads to poverty. Poverty leads to hard work and so the cycle continues. I saw a picture on the internet comparing the generation of people that went to war and their offspring today, too heavy to leave their seats due to obesity. It may have led me thinking about that, about what happens to the children of men who conquer the world, of men who change the world, of men who lead the world.

Is it true that there ever is a time or season when there is nothing to fight for?

For a long time now, I have been sitting in a season, where I suspect that some bees in my hive decided that it only makes sense that one can only shine domestically or professionally but never both. It disrupts the flow of the Universe and that apart from their regular duties, it is their job, within normal work hours, to maintain the status quo, by becoming a cause of disruption themselves.

I have been pushing back long before I even knew what I was pushing back on. How did I miss the portrait of concern when I could not come for weeks? Lately though, I feel the simmering jubilation, the slip-up of joys in what are supposed to be heartfelt observations.

It was in their express verification that I was out of the way in everything meaningful that was within their power. Power. Power. Power! It was the consistency with which someone could lead the band and play the drums disparaging your name with a wide helpful smile and a kind mouth, all the while, busy in the work of frustrating all progress tied to you. Many a Christian mannerism has deceived an unsuspecting heart. Yet, it is hard to hide a mastermind- a vortex of uninhibited slyness, darkness, bad expectations and an endless dredge of hand over mouth slander suppressed as girlish giggles, sucking in everything good in its path; a hand that is quick to blow up the ship, with everyone on it, if it makes their enemies look incompetent.

How someone truly feels about you is not usually a word of mouth expose. You can see it in their best friend, the people under their docket. You sometimes see it in their biggest moments. Sometimes you see it in their lowest moments. Some people say you can see it in how they treat you when they think they need you. Some people say you can see it in how they treat you when they think they don’t need you.

So, there is something to fight for…

When I was younger, I wished I could disappear, blend into the wall or curtains to escape danger. Later, I found that I could fly, in my dreams. I could fly over fences. I could float above the earth, low enough to keep a good watching distance but not high enough to hurt myself if I fell.

Not so long ago, I was reading Luvvie Ajayi’s The Fear Fighter Manual and she said that if she had one, her super power would be being “super-independent” and I shook my head immediately and just as I was about to think how different we were, it occurred to me that right now, I would not mind having that super power. In fact I no longer wished to shrink behind curtains and I no longer dream about flying but I could do with being superwoman. Maybe, I already try to be.

Between little fingers tugging at my clothes, sometimes for nights on end, seemingly months on end, years on end, sometimes with coughing, sometimes with noses blocked with flu, sometimes with a temperature that does not need a thermometer to tell, and driving to the place where the planes park on a pale grey evening to send my closest companion away for an endless amount of nights unknown, I have learned to do without feeling too much.

I have decided to feel again. Between when I started to write this and today, I have decided to feel again; and it hurts. But, I also feel a lot of the joy, a lot of gratefulness, a lot of the curiosity of recent entrants on to this spinning globe and I catch a lot of funny things- funny sentences, funny words and strange interpretations of things. Some nights I wake up between [brief, abrupt, short, unusually long] stretches of sleep, and find my older baby having a conversation with me as he stands next to our bed. Sometimes, he steals his little brother out of his crib, if he feels he has stayed in a second too long and then I hear the pattering of little footsteps stumbling around coming to find me.

***

I think all Bakiga should have ‘Mukiga’ as their last name since so many already love to hyphenate their identity with the word. The pretty Mukiga, Pink Mukiga, The Handsome Mukiga, The Romantic Mukiga, The Mukiga w’ekiniga, Shine Omukiga.

I have noticed that Ugandans feel free to enter into an official situation with shoes on, sometimes even with socks, and then take them off nonchalantly, politely, neatly, confidently, and set them to the side as soon as they sit down- at a church prayer meeting, at an IELTS exam, at a moot court session.

Whereas in English, one is only allowed to have one name, one complete static borrowed name, as in “My name is…”, it is appropriate when Africans to say ‘my names are’ because a child was named their own name, many names sometimes, and they all were independent names, gifted by different people sometimes, heralding different things, and easily changeable- rebelliously at youth or symbolically in war,, different when inside the homestead and different if you found yourself a foreigner far away from home.

I talked about Winnie Mandela sometime. I still believe in a drought of kisses, one becomes either a victim or a warrior, I would like to be a warrior. There is always a cause to fight for.

Kitt Kiarie and her mother were talking about life in general and on the topic of her mother’s over thirty year relationship [marriage] with her father, her mother said that, you need to make room for who he changes into over the years. He does not remain the same exact man and neither do you remain exactly the same woman.

Tag: Power

The System

THE ABILITY TO FLY