Tombstones and Banana Trees (7 page)

My plan was clear. I made a list of the people I would kill in order to avenge the death of my sister and the betrayal by our father. The list had nineteen names on it. All I needed was some time and a gun, and I would wipe them out.

As my younger classmates went off to high school, I stayed at home. For a whole year it was very difficult. I felt unloved, cheap, and small. I was dying every day, thinking about school all the time. It was as if the real me died that year. Slowly, through a thousand cuts, my empty life was locked into a cycle that served only to remind me of my father's brutality.

My self-esteem was completely crushed, the pain even more acute as the sight of schoolboys reminded me that I was not an academic failure but a financial one. I felt hated, rejected, useless, without purpose. I remembered all the things people had said about me and went into a deep depression. It caused me to drink heavily, but whenever I was sober I could see that the problems were just the same.

I developed a volcanic anger, such that anything small made me fly off into a rage. In a way I believe I lost my mind. At times I would become so distracted by my inner civil war that I would miss a particular turn I was meant to take and end up a mile or two away from where I wanted to be. I would talk to myself as I walked, ranting in particular about my father. Even later on in life I would have anniversaries of bitterness, and whenever a significant date came around, like Peninah's death or the time our father left us, I would go back into the depression.

I heard that my father and his wives and children celebrated my sister's funeral. My anger only increased. Two of my brothers, James and Robert, fell into such a depression after my sister's death that they became alcoholics and later died because of it; James died of liver cancer and Robert died of alimentary canal cancer. The story of the impact of my sister's brutal murder on my sisters and brothers would fill another book.

The pain did not stop. Some of my sisters were raped during this time, and it was devastating. I was enraged yet powerless. I knew the people in my village who were attacking them, but I could do nothing to stop it. They used my sisters as toilet paper. The Bakiga (my tribe) was a male-dominated society, fiercely patriarchal. The cultural laws favor and defend men while supporting the oppression of women. Women are treated as second class, and because a dowry is paid before marriage, many are treated like property. They are oppressed, enslaved, segregated, and treated as beasts of burden. They are sex machines without rights, not empowered financially, intellectually, or politically. They are vulnerable and exposed; domestic violence against women is so deep—even in Christian homes—that there is no political will to stop it. We would need another book to talk about that as well.

It was such a hard year in my life, and it set in motion the habits of a destructive lifestyle: drinking, being angry, shouting at people, not greeting them, killing people in my heart, seeing death all around, spending energy I had within me on vowing to kill.

My behavior began to have an impact on the rest of my family, so much so that eventually my mother devised an audacious plan to transform me. She would work even harder than she had been—as if that were possible—and raise the money to send me to school. She worked so hard, as did my sisters and brothers. They dug crops, they brewed alcohol, and they sold whatever they could to raise money. My sisters even prostituted themselves. I will never forget the sacrifice they made for my education.

They had nobody to defend them, and they were fighting to improve life for somebody else. They made so many sacrifices that invited such pain into their lives. I did what I could, raising money by trapping moles or burning charcoal. Within a year we had raised enough money to send me to school.

You cannot fight the sort of shame or humiliation that comes from prostitution. Some of my sisters became pregnant and some had abortions. Their actions showed me that I was not alone, but it also reinforced my understanding of the world as a place where pain, suffering, and abuse were as omnipresent as the hills that hemmed us in.

As for me, I was a powder keg. Later I gained a glimpse of my future. I met some soldiers fighting to support the exiled opponent of Idi Amin, a man called Milton Obote. I joined the youth wing of his party and was told that if I completed my studies, I could join the army, where I would be given my own gun. This was it, the key to my plan. Once I had a gun and a soldier's badge, I could work my way through my list, from one to nineteen. The blood would flow and justice would be done. This was how I would gain revenge.

Chapter Seven

If Only He Had Been Here Sooner

It is a long way from Rwanjogori to Rukungiri—sixty-five miles in all. From the ridge above the spring near our house, you have to scan the horizon and look to the hills in the west. Between two of the smaller peaks is a road that is invisible from home, but it is there. That road was where my walk to high school began.

My fellow travelers along the road were similar to those you might see today: mothers with children strapped to their backs; young men pushing bicycles loaded with impossibly heavy loads—from child-sized bunches of matoke balanced on long poles, to multiple jerricans of water with a weight of up to 220 pounds; old men in secondhand suits that must have lived such very different lives on the backs of their first wearers.

At times when I am with
muzungu
in western Uganda they ask how it is that we seem to know one another. Having lived in the United Kingdom I can give you a clear answer: We
seem
to know one another because we
do
know one another, and we know one another because we spend more time talking to one another than Westerners do.

When I was an adult I would often walk the eighteen miles from Kabale to our home in Rwanjogori. Halfway along is the hill that we call
mutagamba
—meaning “do not talk.” The hill is so steep that all your breath must be conserved to power legs and lungs, and the burning in your calves starts long before you can even think about looking for the summit. But once you reach the top the view is spectacular, and I would always stop there to drink some water and eat. There would be others there as well, and even if we did not immediately know one another we would shake hands and share what we had. It is hard to consider someone a stranger when you eat with him.

My journey to school was always on foot. Bare feet. I would carry all I needed for the term ahead: a few books, some clothes, water and food for the journey, and—twice a year—a mattress. It was a heavy load, and the walk would take a little over sixteen hours. It was mildly less exhausting to walk it at night. Less exhausting, perhaps, but not less dangerous. Once when I was walking home in the moonlight along with a group of friends, we came across a hippo. Fifteen of us, all too poor to get the bus, walking with our suitcases, and there was a hippo. If you have ever been on safari you will have heard how in Africa, most years hippos claim more lives than lions. They are mammoth beasts and will charge at anything that gets in between them and the water in which they wallow. We all dropped our bags and ran, only to return once it had gone.

Another time walking home I was foolish and grabbed a stick of sugar cane. I chewed it for miles, enjoying the sweetness that gave me a little extra energy. I forgot that sugar cane was a favorite place for female mosquitoes to lay their eggs. Without knowing it I was eating malarial eggs. Within a few days of arriving back at home I started feeling uneasy, then a little sick. Eventually I lost my senses and was at risk of contracting cerebral malaria, from which there is no full recovery. I came to and found my grandmother crying. She thought I had died.

The first time I walked to Makobore High School in Rukungiri my mother came along too. I had no mattress, no bedsheets, no shoes, no trousers—just a spare set of clothes and provisions for the journey—but I was happy. Most women in Uganda still wear a brightly colored cloth that has many uses—warmth, protection from the elements, carrying loads—and my mother used hers to make me a sort of mattress. It was like a sleeping bag, and when I reached school I could fill it with dry grass. At the end of the term I threw the grass out and took the bag home.

My mother joined me on that first journey so that we could talk. I remember only this of our conversation:

“Do not do anything to bring further shame on our family.”

“Yes, mother.”

I loved my mother so much. She died a few years ago, and I am glad to say that although I did not honor the promise I made to her that day, she and I were always close. When the time came for me to confess all the ways in which I had brought shame upon her, she was gracious, loving, and forgiving.

Once we arrived at the school on that first journey, she spoke with the head teacher, Mr. Stanley Munabi, who was a good man. She told him about the troubles we had been through as a family: Peninah's murder, my suicide attempts, the abandonment by my father, as well as how he had not even returned home when Peninah was buried.

She had raised enough money for the basic school fees but not enough for my board and lodging. She pleaded with him to take me in.

“Well,” said the headmaster, “if he is hardworking I will give him jobs. He can earn his keep that way.”

Like I said, the headmaster was a good man.

So I started. I turned my hand to whatever manual jobs needed doing. I would dig pit latrines and make temporary kitchens out of stones and iron grills; I would wash dishes, cut the grass, dig the gardens, wash the school truck. Some of these jobs I carried on throughout my years there. My mother would add in what money she could, and eventually one of my older sisters, Winnie, got married and moved to Rukungiri, just a few miles away from the school, so I would go there to eat and borrow money when I needed it. Winnie's husband and mother- and father-in-law were very helpful, and I count them as good friends today.

But I was not behaving well. At the same time I was making a good impression on the headmaster I also developed a second life that I kept hidden from him, and from my mother and family, too. I was drinking heavily. It would give me temporary happiness, but it soon turned to an addiction. And because addicts need others around them, I found others who also liked to drink. They were a group called the Kibanda Boys, a gang who were pretty rough. Together we were drinkers, but we were also dancers and fighters.

We would go to villages whenever there was a wedding and start a fight. We would take the same type of violent red peppers that the jigger hunters had used on my own agonized wounds and would crush them up to be thrown onto the floor where people danced. It would not take long before the dancers' feet mixed up the chili with the dust, rising to form a cloud which, when inhaled, was very painful. The dance would be ruined and we would be happy.

The gang had a terrible reputation. Before I joined, there was one fight with a village that had started when a woman was accused of bewitching a member of the school staff, who had died. The gang called up half the school to join in and led the mob to her house, where it was rumored that they beat her to death. There was also a story that they had stoned to death a member of the staff as well as killed a policeman who got caught up in a scuffle. I had not arrived at the school at this time, but I was there when we invaded a nearby girls' school—not just once, but more than three or four times. The girls were beaten and raped. Peer pressure is a big thing—you want to please people—so I would get a stick and join in the beating, though nothing more. At those times I may not have known why I was fighting, but I knew I needed to do it to keep my place.

All the boys in the gang shared the same background and the same passion for alcohol. They protected me from being bullied and helped me out when I did not have enough money to buy drink. And we would walk to our homes together—most of the nineteen of us. They were not as poor as I was, but they would far rather spend their money on alcohol than on a bus fare.

I had such anger and bitterness in my heart that it did not take much for me to start to become violent. Without even asking questions I would go and do what I was told. I was a drunken mess: wetting my bed, vomiting in my half sleep, and running up drinking debts that I had no means of ever paying. To get out of the worst of them I would steal books, plates, and spoons to go and sell.

We often raged against the school, but one time we fought with greater force than usual. We were angry because the bursar had been stealing from the pupils. He would deny having any knowledge of receiving payment for fees, and if you had lost your receipt you had little choice but to pay again. The food was also not good, and because it was nearing the end of term we had examinations fever. This was cause enough for us to unleash the full chaos of our violence. We smashed windows, set fire to the bursar's house, trashed other staff houses, and destroyed school property. It was a moment of pure violence, and we loved it.

And yet I was like an orphan there, being favored by the school, working hard for the headmaster, behaving in such an exemplary way while working for him that he never believed anyone who accused me of being involved. He stood by me. And yet, in secret, I was a thug.

I felt guilty, but it was not until I became a Christian that I knew quite how wrong my actions had been. The thing I most regret about the time in the gang was that riot. As well as the buildings we also attacked many people. We beat many younger students and stole their money; we also attacked nearby shops and looted money and property. Dozens of policemen came and we threw stones at them and they beat us and shot in the air and many students were arrested. We ran through nearby villages, vandalizing property, beating the residents, and looting shops and bars. We took all the beer we could find.

The headmaster feared the gang. He never brought it up with me, although after the riot he called me in.

“People are saying you were involved,” he asked. “Were you?”

My denial was dramatic; I lay on the ground, wept, and swore I had no involvement in any of it at all.

He defended me in front of the staff and board of governors, but it was not enough to get me off the charges completely. We were all sent home and forced to pay for the damages—three thousand Ugandan shillings, which was a lot of money in those days, more like two hundred dollars today. It will not surprise you to learn that I did not tell my mother about this.

In 1982, three years after Peninah's murder and two years after I started at Makobore High School, a Christian choir from Makerere University, Kampala, came to sing. They were called the Anglican Youth Fellowship choir, and they were more of a band than a simple choir. They had guitars and drums and keyboards and all the rest. Because we were a boys' school we were happy about any girls coming over to see us, and as a gang we agreed to go along to hear them perform and join in the dancing. But we also agreed that, if they preached, we would shout at the tops of our voices and unleash our chaos on them.

Our school was a notorious school with a culture of violence, and the staff told the choir our intentions. Understandably the choir decided that they would not preach but that they would simply introduce the songs. One of them, a young woman called Christine, started up:

“We are going to sing a song about love. But before we start we want to tell you that God loves you unconditionally. His love for you does not depend on who you are, where you come from, your background, what you have done. He just loves you the way you are, because He made you in His own image. He can be your security. Do you know that your source of true security is from God? Your father, your mother, your sisters, your brothers are not your security. Your education is not your source of security. Even politics is not your security. Idi Amin said he was president for life, but where is he now?”

Christine was a very beautiful girl, very confident as well. We used to think that only ugly, poor, frustrated, and troubled people became born-again Christians. I thought Christianity was dull, but these young people were excited and confident. We were listening.

“Some of you have been abandoned by your fathers, some of you are victims of domestic violence, but God's love for you is unconditional and it can be your source of security and self-worth. God can be the source of a sense of your own value; while you are students today, you may well be cabinet ministers, presidents, or major-generals tomorrow. God values you and you are precious to Him, and you have a purpose. You were born a boy not by accident. You have a purpose. God is the true source of your security, your self-worth, and your significance. Receive Him now. Believe in Him now. Trust your lives and destiny to Him now, and your lives will never be the same. Jesus saves, He keeps, and He satisfies. He is a good guy. God is a dependable, caring, close, and loving Father. Boys, I am telling you this: He will never let you down!”

It was as if she was speaking directly to me. Even down to that part about not being a boy by accident. I had never told anyone this, but at times in my life I had even wished I had been born a girl. At least then I could have taken a job as a maid and then married, so that someone would look after me.

I stood in the crowd in the yard in front of the school gates and wanted to disappear. I could have evaporated; I would have let my life be carried away on the breeze right then, in order to avoid the challenge inhabiting that moment.

But Christine had stopped talking, and in the silence that filled me I sensed a drop of love enter my heart. It was like that small sip of perfectly cold water on a hot day; not enough to quench, but enough to arrest discomfort, if only for a moment.

Soon there came a question within me: If she really was speaking the truth, and God really did love me as she said, why did God allow all this suffering to happen to me? Why?

But my heart felt another touch of warmth. The question faded in its importance. What mattered was another question that rose up as I looked in: Where was my security? My father? He had let me down. My sisters? One had been murdered and another had molested me. My uncles, aunts, and cousins? Most of them were not helpful at all, and I still feared that some of them wanted me dead. I felt that so many people had used and exploited me in different ways. I realized that, apart from my mother, I had no one around who loved me unconditionally. For the first time I doubted whether her love was enough. Look how I had treated her: After all she had done for me, after all the promises I had made to her, my life had become a rage and an embarrassment to her. I had let her down. What self-respect could I have if I treated the only one who truly cared for me like this?