One Day I Will Write About This Place (22 page)

For Bidudu, there was no end to Rwanda—he believed that Rwanda ended only where “the sky was held up by pillars.” Wherever one went, one kept one’s citizenship.

When Bidudu landed here, in Bufumbira, Nyabijana gave birth to a second son, Mbayiki.

Mbayiki and his wife Nyiramivumbi had twins: Sserubabaza, my great-grandfather, and Bujunjuri.

Mbayiki was poisoned and died a young man.

Their fifth child was Rwirahira.

As a child, Rwirahira was fond of mixing up his food on the plate. His family nicknamed him Binyavanga, which has something to do with mixing things up. The name stuck. He was the first in the family to be baptized and join the Catholic Church, the first to go to school. He became one of the first schoolteachers in this part of the country.

Binyavanga was thirty when he was baptized a Catholic. He took the name Cosma and was one of the first teachers in Kigezi District. In 1935 he married a woman of the Abagyesera clan named Modesta Kamondo from Bunagana in what is now Congo. Binyavanga and Modesta had twelve children.

Their daughter Rosemary, the beautiful one, was a traveler too. She married in Kenya. Her second son, according to her husband’s custom, is called Binyavanga, after his maternal grandfather. My grandfather is surprised that I am called Binyavanga. His people do not name that way. It is a strange idea to him—­that the son of his daughter carries his name. He does not know how mixed up that young man is.

Among us Gikuyu, your name is a kind of fate. You hear women call their sons Daddy, or call their daughters Mummy—­said enough times, you grow up seeing yourself in the image of the one you were named after. But I do not know my grandfather. I do not speak his language. Being Binyavanga is to me also exotic—­an imaginary Ugandan of some kind resides in me, one who lets me withhold myself from claiming, or being admitted into, without hesitation, an unquestioning Gikuyu belonging.

…

We are in Kisoro, the main town of the district, weaving down roads between people’s houses. We are heading toward Uncle Kagame’s house. I have a dizzy vision of a supernatural movie producer slowing down the action before the climax by examining tiny details instead of grand scenes. I see a narrator in the fifth dimension saying, “And now our Christmas movie: a touching story about the reunion of a family torn apart by civil war and the genocide in Rwanda. This movie is sponsored by Sobbex, hankies for every occasion” (repeated in Zulu).

My grandmother embraces me. She is very slender, and I feel she will break. Her elegance surrounds me and I feel a strong urge to burrow into her secrets, see with her eyes. She is a quiet woman, and unbending, even taciturn, and this gives her a powerful charisma. Things not said. Her resemblance to my mother is strong.

My grandfather is crying and laughing, exclaiming when he hears that Chiqy and I are named after him and his wife (Kamanzi and Binyavanga). We drink
rgwagwa,
banana wine laced with honey. It is delicious, smoky and dry.

Ciru and Chiqy are sitting next to my grandmother. Jim could not make it; he has a new job. I see why my grandfather was such a legendary schoolteacher.

At night, we split into our various age groups and start to bond with each other. Of the cousins, Manwelli, the eldest, is our unofficial leader. He works for the World Bank.

Aunt Rosaria and her family are the coup of the ceremony. They were feared dead during the war in Rwanda and hid for months in their basement, helped by a friend who provided food. They all survived; they walk around carrying an expression that is more common in children—­delight, sheer delight at life.

Auntie Rosaria’s three sons spend every minute bouncing about with the high of being alive. They dance at all hours, sometimes even when there is no music. In the evenings we squash onto the veranda, looking out as far as Congo, and they entertain us with their stand-­up routines in French and Kinyarwanda, the force of their humor carrying us all to laughter.

Manwelli translates one skit for me. They are imitating a vain Tutsi woman who is pregnant and is kneeling to make a plea to God. “Oh please, God, let my child have long fingers and a gap between the teeth; let her have a straight nose and be ta-­a-­all. Oh Lord, let her not have a nose like a Hutu. Oh please, I shall be your grateful servant.”

The biggest disappointment so far is that my aunt Christine has not yet arrived. She has lived with her family in New York since the early 1970s. We all feel her absence keenly, as it was she who urged us all years ago to gather for this occasion at any cost.

She, my aunt Rosaria, and Mum are the senior aunts, and they were very close when they were younger. They speak frequently on the phone and did so especially during the many months that Aunt Rosaria and her family were living in fear in their basement. The family has been through a lot over the years. Although they are very close, they haven’t been together since 1961. Visas, wars, closed borders, and a thousand triumphs of chaos have kept them apart. We are all looking forward to their reunion.

…

I have hardly spoken to my mother the past few days. I find her in my grandmother’s room, trying, without much success, to get my grandmother to relax and let her many daughters and granddaughters do the work.

I have been watching Mum from a distance. At first, she seemed a bit aloof from it all, but now she’s found fluency with everything and she seems far away from the Kenyan mother we know. I can’t get over the sight of her blushing as my grandmother machine-­guns instructions at her. How alike they are.

I want to talk with her more but decide not to be selfish, not to make it seem that I am trying to establish possession of her. We’ll have enough time on the way back. She seems vague lately, less emphatic than I have known her. She has lost weight and tires easily. I tell myself that she is aging.

I’ve been trying to pin down my grandfather, to ask him about our family’s history. He keeps giving me a bewildered look when I corner him, as if he were asking: Can’t you just relax and party? He must be wondering why this Kenyan grandson of his should be bothered. Last night, he toasted us all before dancing to a gospel rap song my cousin Laura brought from Kampala. He tried to get my grandmother to join him, but she ducked into her room and locked the door.

Gerald is getting quite concerned that when we are all gone, they will find it too quiet. We hurtle on toward Christmas. Booze flows, we pray, chat, and bond under the night rustle of banana leaves. I am filled with magic and I succumb to the masses. In two days, we feel like a family. In French, Swahili, English, Gikuyu, Kinyarwanda, Kiganda, and Ndebele, we sing one song, a multitude of passports in our luggage.

At dawn on December 24, I stand smoking in the banana plantation at the edge of my grandfather’s hill and watch the mists disappear. Uncle Chris saunters up to join me.

I ask, “Any news about Aunt Christine?”

“It looks like she might not make it. Manwelli has tried to get in contact with her and failed. Maybe she couldn’t get a flight out of New York. Apparently the weather is terrible there.”

The day is filled with hard work. My uncles have convinced my grandfather that we need to slaughter another bull as meat is running out. There is to be a church service in the sitting room of my grand­father’s house later in the day.

The service begins and I bolt from the living room, volunteering to peel potatoes outside. About halfway through the service, I see somebody staggering up the hill, suitcase in hand and muddy up to her ankles. It takes me an instant to guess. I run to her and mumble something. We hug. Aunt Christine is here.

The plot has taken me over now. Resolution is upon me. The poor woman is given no time to freshen up or get her bearings. In a minute, we have ushered her into the living room. She sits by the door, facing every­body’s back. Only my grandparents are facing her. My grandmother starts to cry.

Nothing is said; the service motors on. Everybody stands up to sing. Somebody whispers to my aunt Rosaria. She turns and gasps soundlessly. Others turn. We all sit down. Aunt Rosaria and Aunt Christine start to cry. Granddad is crying; he looks like he will break. He is ninety-­five. Mum is crying. Uncle Henry is trying not to. Aunt Rosaria’s mouth opens and closes in disbelief. Soon we are all crying. The priest motors on, fluently, unaware.

One day, I will write about this place.

I am back at the University of Transkei. It is January 1996.

My new confidence lasts exactly one week. When I attend my first Accounting 2 class, we are learning something called disclosures.

Accounting, they say in the textbook, is a perceptual framework. Debit line, credit line, debit line. That is the last class of any kind that I attend. I go out that night to Miles to drink and dance like a jack­rabbit. I get violently drunk. They kick me out of the club. I walk and walk. Then I am sitting by a stream. I do not know how I got here; it is more than two kilometers from my room. I am crying, my lungs are chafed, and I am dizzy with self-­pity and vomit. There is a cow blowing mist into the air, and I can smell dung.

After a month, my landlord kicks me out. He is not ready for another series of my locked-door adventures. I spend hours online in the campus computer labs. There are already hundreds of writers’ groups online. I meet a guy in a supernatural fiction writers’ group. His name is Charlie Sweet, and he lives in suburban California. Charlie survived the sixties, but believes the world is coming to an end at the millennium. He has bought land in Duckshoot, California. Meanwhile, he does something called multi­media. His wife is from Japan, and she is on his case a lot. She has just become an Amway distributor. Charlie is building a bunker in Duckshoot.

I am living in the house of a friend, Sylvia. I make a very delicate living typing biographical information into little boxes that are laminated for high school student cards. I get paid ten rand a page. I also babysit for Sylvia, who teaches at the university. I use her computer every night.

I don’t phone my parents or write to them. Ciru has gone back home, and is looking for a job there. I am on my own a lot. I am writing every day now. Sometimes I write through the night. No, no, says my self-­pity, I am not a spineless flibbertigibbet—­there must be some secret mission, something mystical. Maybe, maybe I am some sort of Ben Okri-­ish
abiku,
that spirit child in
The Famished Road.

Months fly past. Things are stable at Sylvia’s. I start to write a novel. In it, a tortured young man called Jango, who has an imagination like a helium balloon, finds out that the great brain stem of the world is growing, on the Internet, and he is part of its secret ancient code. At the end of the novel, the young man will meet his genetic mother, Lucy, on a Web site, and the circle will be complete. Digital drums are beating all over the throbbing Net, and Jango shows them, shows them all…

Fucking perceptual frameworks! Debits and credits.

I still can’t face my parents. I send e-mails to Ciru. Birthday messages and happy cheerful e-mails to everybody. I avoid details. Chiqy had a baby boy, Ciru tells me. Paul. She has left the house. Baba is still upset. I call them, and lie and tell them all is well. I do not ask for money, or fees. Charlie Sweet reads my… speculations, and I read his stories, which are semi­autobiographical and involve much sex and many chemical substances.

There is a new phrase around: black empowerment. All of a sudden, people I was in school with, who have now graduated, are landing in astonishing places. Like paragliding, black empowerment has the ability to lift you very high, on a front of warm air. One friend started a small design company, and before the paint was dry, the company was listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, and she was featured in a lifestyle magazine looking very aerodynamic in a business suit, going places.

One broke Saturday, I walk all over town, stopping by friends’ homes sorta kinda saying hello, and kind of sort of hoping for a good meal and some cold beer. Mrs. Baguma, whose fridge and hospitality are boundless, is not home. Damn. She is the best—­never asks you probing questions, just dishes out love and warm food.

I avoid my uncle Henry’s. He gave me a job once, easy stuff, helping him with some research, and I let him down badly. There are thousands of African immigrants in Umtata, which was the capital of Transkei, once an independent homeland and now part of the Eastern Cape Province. There are always baptisms and gatherings. We all know each other.

I cross the railway line, into town, and knock on Alice Bosa’s door. Alice is Ugandan, the granddaughter of a famous poet, Henry Barlow, whose poem “Building the Nation” we studied in school:

I find a friendly gathering: Alice, George Majola, an old friend who was a few years ahead of me studying commerce, and Alice’s nephew Kiwanuka, who it turns out now works for George. I assume it is something to do with George’s family, which is wealthy and well connected here in Umtata. There is beer and brandy, and meat is grilling on the stove. Outside, cars with many, many valves are grinning smugly at Umtata’s peeling paint and piss-­stained walls.

George now lives in Durban and owns an architectural firm. “Oh,” I say. “I didn’t know you did architecture?”

He shrugs.

“So what are you building?” I ask, reaching my finger out for a plump dripping rib.

“A convention center,” he says.

Oh. I am trying to think what a convention center is. In my head, it is a kind of community hall that contains badminton courts, anger-­management courses, table tennis, township youths carrying happyface satchels that open to release role models and awareness workshop folders and income-generating schemes and empowerment agendas, all of this air-­conditioned by sophisticated convention currents.