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.