Abyssinian Chronicles (65 page)

At the start of the eighties, guerrilla war began far away in the Luwero Triangle. Throughout this time, Uncle was having the best of three worlds: his wife’s, Naaka’s and Naaki’s too. He had little to complain about. His business was running, his wife had accepted herself and he was having children with the two young women.

Around 1985, the guerrillas came and assimilated the town into their sphere of influence. Peace and security reigned. Just like the Obote II soldiers, to whom he had also sold birds, the guerrillas never bothered him. He had long ago stopped going to Kyotera. The town was now in the grip of a bone-grinding nightmare. People were dying
of a mysterious disease, the so-called
muteego
—an incurable, evil spell which had the power to kill the perpetrator and his entire family. He was happy that he had not joined the cross-border smuggling frenzy, and that there was no chance that any Tanzanian would want to inflict the muteego spell on him.

It was too late for the town that used to remind Uncle of home. People were dying daily; there would be burials in several places in a single village. Nowadays burials were conducted quickly. Gone were the long eulogies of the past. Orphans were multiplying. Parents were burying their sons and daughters and mourning a looming lonely old age.

There was no one more worried than Uncle Kawayida. The gradual return of the Indians passed him by. It all began with Naaki’s third child. It came prematurely, very underweight, and died of diarrhea. At the burial, it looked like a baby rabbit and had a blue membrane that passed for its skin. Uncle had never seen anything more disgusting. Then Naaki, a woman in her twenty-second year, whom he loved as he had dreaded his mother’s buckteeth, started darkening, with very black patches marking her skin. The itchy patches began on her thighs, proceeded down her legs, climbed to her chest and back and then infested her arms. She resorted to wearing long-sleeved shirts and trousers, scratching herself and dousing her body in ointment. Every change in her appearance cut Uncle like a razor. Feeling for another had never been so costly to him. The affliction threatened to devalue all the great times they had had and to poison love with doubt, regret and terror. He watched the woman become a recluse, a hostage to her house and fears. The hide-and-seek games they had played in front of raging turkeys and feeding broilers haunted them with a vengeance. Naaki ate every concoction every witch doctor prescribed, but in vain. Each time she sank deeper into the morass of deterioration and etiolation. Six months later, she dried up and died.

Uncle’s brothers-in-law held him responsible for the death of their sister. They strongly believed that he had been dishonest in his dealings with Tanzanian customers, and had sold them sick turkeys and given the proceeds to their sister. They spread rumors that Uncle Kawayida had made his money from smuggling under the guise of raising birds. “Birds have never made anyone that prosperous. He
must have been smuggling gold on the side.” They barred him from attending the funeral. One threw a rotten pawpaw at him, cursing him for what he had done to their sister.

However, the disaster that struck the late Kavule’s family was bigger than anything Uncle’s mind could dream of immortalizing in story form. Within three years, twelve of the twenty-one unmarried beauties had succumbed to the slimming disease, making people wonder how many men had been ensnared in the fatal dragnet of doomed copulation. Four of the ten sons followed their sisters to the grave.

Uncle was devastated. The spotlight was firmly on him: When was he going? Was he sorry? Who was going to look after his children? He faced his trials like a man and went about his business as usual. He grew thinner than he had ever been. The demon of worry terrorized his home with diabolical abandon. His wife succumbed to its wiles. Naaka was still alive, but was she going to be the thirteenth female victim from the same family? His wife now believed that she had also been infected. How unfair it all seemed to her! The more Uncle thinned, the more weight she lost. People started saying that she was next in line. At night, when the lights went out, the demon of worry took over. Kawayida had no peace of mind: awake, death stared him in the face; asleep, the ghosts of the dead and the living dead snatched meaningful rest from his eyes.

To my amazement, years passed. The true nature of the disease became public knowledge. I began thinking that Uncle had a freak chance, some special gene. In reality, it was worry that had been torturing him, not the virus. Naaka was also still alive! Gradually, people realized that worry was as bad as the real thing. Now even the real victims survived longer by keeping the devil of worry at bay, but why did Naaka survive while Naaki died? How did the medical people explain Uncle’s survival? Was some other man involved in the tragedy? Or did some people have special resistance? Now I hoped that I, Aunt Lwandeka, Lwendo and all the people I knew had this special gift to survive the viral plague.

In the meantime, Uncle’s business had lost steam. He now encouraged people to eat his chicken because he was a survivor. Some people believed him, and he attracted others with discounts. People drowned his birds in cauldrons of soup, licked the last drop and
cracked the last bone, and they felt better. A new market had opened. They said it was chicken soup that had saved his family, and that it would save theirs too. His back became bent with overwork, his lungs clogged with the sawdust from the pens. He worked harder than ever before. His ambition now was to save Kyotera, the whole of Rakai and Masaka, the entire country. He built another house for his birds. He worked so hard that he barely had time to change his overalls. The doctor warned him that he was going to kill himself in no time. “A good soldier dies on the battlefield,” Kawayida replied, and smiled. He collapsed in the chicken pen one afternoon. Chickens gathered round their master to wake him up: the troughs were emptying fast. The birds were hurting their beaks by pecking at the wooden bottoms. They scratched and pecked at their master, who remained motionless, frozen in his ambition. They pecked out his eyes and burned his skin with the heat of their best shit, in vain. His wife did not miss him at first. She thought he was at Naaki’s looking after her children, who still loved him. Later she found him in the pen, drenched in chicken shit. Her lamentation almost drove the birds mad. She had become a sonless widow.

I missed the man terribly. I had visited him several times during his darkest hours. I was impressed by his courage and tough-mindedness.

“Humor is man’s best friend. It sleeps and wakes with him,” he told me when I marvelled at his capacity to shrug at the world.

“Why aren’t you defending yourself? Why let your in-laws treat you like that?”

“They lost their sister in addition to the many others. It is their right to be angry at whoever they want.”

“Maybe she had another man,” I suggested hotly.

“Never speak evil of the dead,” he cautioned. “I loved her dearly, like I love her two sisters. I am among the chosen few who find true love in three different women. I really enjoyed myself. Life is just balancing itself out, son.”

“If you insist,” I replied reluctantly.

“Son, do whatever you want in life,” he said, touching me on the shoulder, “but know when it is over. And never bicker about the price.”

Customers were waiting for him. He dismissed me. It was the last time I saw him. Nine months later he was dead.

Lwendo did what he had vowed to do: he resigned from the army. He bribed an army doctor who recommended that he be discharged for health reasons. We celebrated the occasion with a drinking party. For a month or so we roamed the city, enjoying the freedom of not having to look for work. We would meet toward midday, go to a favorite restaurant on Kampala Road, eat, drink and watch the city.

“I am going to open a carpentry workshop and hire a manager to run it. I can’t stay there all the time,” he said. “I have to hustle some money from these returning Indians. I need to do something intellectual.”

“How?”

“Well, they won’t find the necessary papers to reclaim their property waiting for them. It is a mess in those offices, and many Indians are afraid to go there. Many fear they will be attacked or robbed or exploited, which plays into my hands. They need people to chase their documents and contact people for them. I have the expertise.”

“Sounds like you will be working harder than at the Rehabilitation office.”

“I can pick and choose my clients,” he said smugly.

“Then what?”

“Look at the streets. What do you see? Haven’t you seen the hundreds of Development Aid Organization vehicles all over the place? They are like sharks following the smell of blood. Many come here but don’t know how to chase work permits. I can do it for them, as long as they are ready to pay.”

It was a brilliant idea, actually. Peace was indeed a bringer of foreigners: during Amin’s time, you hardly saw a white face on the street. During Obote II, whites started coming, tentatively. Now it was a wave: tourists with backpacks, white women in mini-skirts, men in shorts and boots, groups in tourist vans, Japanese men in business suits and more. The city was abuzz with American charismatic preachers who addressed frenzied crowds planted with preprogrammed fainters and swooners. They spiced the show up with spectacular miracles in which the lame broke their crutches, the blind ground their spectacles into the floorboards, and the deaf, who had nothing to destroy, shouted
like lunatics with ants up their assholes. Some preachers promised to cure the viral plague by the power of Jesus; others promised to eradicate every affliction from the face of the earth. For the first time, there were vigils where Pentecostals and Baptists congregated and prayed and sang all night long under the watchful eye of video cameras. The traditional churches found themselves in competition with lay preachers in expensive suits who jumped, danced and rolled on the floor for effect. The era of televangelism had dawned, and the old padres, stiff as arthritics, were worried because they had been caught snoring and left in the blocks.

Fortune hunters—seekers of gold, copper, diamonds, red mercury (illegally dug out of meteorological towers), animal hides, rhino horn, parrots from Sese Island; merchants of inferior goods; toxic waste dumpers; passport and dollar counterfeiters—all came disguised in one form or other. Africa was represented by the flamboyant Senegalese, who came dressed in gold-thread
boubous
with wide trousers and big watches. They bought legal and illegal merchandise, and exchanged both real and counterfeit dollars.

Lwendo was right: money was there to be made.

I did not play any part in his new plans. They were too peripatetic for my liking. I also knew the mess he was getting into. The story in most offices was the same. The filing system was horrible. Documents had been heaped on top of each other for years like tobacco leaves at a market. Everyone who touched them had to be offered something for his trouble. That was how the system worked. There was sense in it, too, since the salaries were horrible and everyone knew that the Indians had come to make money. If one did not want to pay, as some Indians did not at first, one could stay in one’s hotel for weeks without anything getting done; but once money changed hands, and somebody’s lunch and supper were assured, then the piles of dusty files and loose paper were ungummed for the first time in fifteen years, and one got what one wanted.

Lwendo fed me stories of his adventures with Indian returnees. He often accompanied them to inspect their property. Some were moved to tears. Others were angry that the edifices were run-down. Most were glad, because they already had a game plan. It had performed miracles for those who had arrived before them, and it still worked: renovation, rent-hiking and eviction. The city was slowly washing its face. The rust-streaked roofs got a gloss. The old pirate
haunts took on the look of cherished sea chests bursting with fresh consumer life. What had come on the wings of piracy was leaving by the same means.

In the meantime, the brigadier—who was actually a major in the new army, although friends addressed him by his old title—again, officially, proposed to Aunt Lwandeka. One evening, she asked me whether she should accept the proposal. What did she expect me to say? I told her to accept if she was happy with it.

“I have already accepted,” she said, beaming. For many weeks, our life was turned upside down. The impending wedding consumed all our time and energy. I was exhausted from travelling to buy a thousand and one things, to inform relatives and her friends, to do this and that.

The women in the area took over the cooking, cleaning and caring for her children. Everywhere one turned, there were people eating, drinking, singing, arguing, ironing, bringing in or carrying out things. We woke up early and went to bed late. The affair became bigger than it should have been because the women of the area decided to celebrate liberation from past oppression on the same day. In her joy, Aunt had allowed people to hijack her day and turn it into a community affair.

The couple got married at Christ the King Church in Kampala. Mbale, Padlock, Kasawo, Serenity and Tiida were all present. Aunt was as happy as I had ever seen her, radiant through her layers of tulle. The makeup and the occasion had made her look very young, her naturally very smooth skin glowing. I caught Aunt Kasawo saying, “Who would have thought!” The tone betrayed her—it was punctured by too much envy. She was digesting the fact that she was the only one of the trio of sisters who had never wed. She saw Pangaman and his successors as vampires who had sucked the life out of her without even honoring her with an official ceremony. She fantasized regularly about turning down a marriage proposal, but no man had ever put himself in the position to be rejected by her, and the one she was seeing currently had made it clear that marriage had never crossed his mind. “I would buy a pickup van or build a good house with the money people waste on weddings,” he always said. His reaction to this wedding had been no less cynical: “The government tells us that there is no money for reconstructing the country, yet soldiers are wedding every Sunday.” Kasawo felt that her love life had been a potholed plain with
one or two molehills but no real high points. She felt the hole at her center palpitate with unrequited ambition.