CHAPTER ONE
In most cases, we tend to long for various things we have long left for time to bury. Well, in this case, I have many things I have tried to kill and bought caskets for, wore them in black suits of prayers and brought forth for time to bury, but instead memory tends to dig their graves everyday, making them resurrect back to me.
My name is Kubanja Samuel, but you can call me Kuba, just as everyone in my circle has adopted to call me. Talking about my name, I can sell my hands and feet for any other name but not the one my parents gave me. It’s as if they knew what my life would be like before naming me such a deplorable name. If I am to directly translate it to English, ‘kubanja’ is related to debts, since it is derived from the Luganda word ebbanja which means ‘a debt’. I am not writing some kind of article for name meanings so I’ll go back to the story.
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I’m now on my way to Entebbe airport, to make a life-changing journey to Dubai. Sounds great, right? Well, it does to me too but I wish my heart could be in the same accord with me. I want… No… I need to fly to Dubai for a two-year job which will yield enough money to make my life worth living. I’ll dig further into this later, for my eyes have been captured by the skyline I can see while on this Entebbe express highway.
Whenever I look at the beauty in Uganda, my mind births second and third thoughts of me staying in this heaven. The birds in the air seem free, and the blue skies, since they have been soaked in the golden rays of this early evening sun, look so clean and beautiful. I sometimes think colour also has an effect on the fate of all creatures—if I was blue and not black, perhaps I’d have such a vast heart and peace like this sky, but alas, I’m a typical Muganda man with melanin so dark, and a nose as big as the world and nostrils as wide as hell tunnels. The wind is pushing back the air I am exhaling! I think it, too, is trying to kill me!
I have given no chance for the wind to suffocate me—anyway I think this is a better way of saying it has been easier for me to close the car-window than to risk telling this Uber driver to slow a bit down.
130km/hr is a speed of a tortoise if you’re running from some people you think are following you, but nevertheless, I don’t trust this driver either, so I keep one eye in my book, and another on him. The driver’s mirror reported his once-over to me… Okay it’s not that I love being paranoid but I don’t have any other choice. What would you do if you’re being driven out of harmsway by a stranger with an overgrown beard? Okay, it is neat but still that doesn’t make it innocent. His stringy eyelashes can say that too. The balls in his eyes are dark and cloudy. They scare me but I pay them little attention. I think he is an alchemist like me, trying to build castles from dust. The only difference is that he hides the devil in him. I am sorry if I’m being judgemental but he doesn’t look religious. He’s even playing Hip Hop music, and if it wasn’t for me telling him to reduce the volume earlier on, I think the car would be open-roofed right now.
Hmm… If I am given a pen and paper, I can write about everything in the world, so I’ll stop my mumble-jumble about this boring journey and go into the reasons why I am heading to Dubai. I will not navigate all the unnecessary stories of my birth, childhood and all. I will begin with one queer evening that has won the award of most clear event in my memory. It feels like yesterday even after quite a lengthy time.
*
Bwaise town was, and still is, a water body. Allow me to refer to each building as an island, more so when it rains, like how it was about to do on that diabolical night. It was my first assignment in the field, after being the lady in the gang. The words and laughter of other members cut deep into my soul time and forth, until that day when I decided to go out with other two guys and be one of the hunters.
It was almost 10pm, and darkness had swallowed most things from sight. It was only our small touches that gave us sight for the stars and moon were also gone—the Stygian clouds were already at their fullest and would lick any minute from then. I followed behind my two tip-toing mates, Ronnie and Stone. They did everything with ease, but as for me, my heart was playing rock and roll inside my chest. I always made a wrong step each step I took.
If this was a movie, I would be the devoured one who would alert the rest to run out of danger, but since this is a true story, it was only my feet and trouser that got painted with the soily water carpeting the narrow corridors. Eh, forgive me, I had forgotten to tell you that we were barefooted, just to be able to make the minimum sound in our quest.
I was glad to see our prey run towards our direction, in an attempt to make it to her door that was just infront of the corridor we were. Any one would think she was trying to reach to us but, on the contrary, she was running from the rains that would start at any moment, into her haven—her hut.
I wish I could describe her at the moment, but the night didn’t allow me to. My eyes could only picture out a silhouette of a woman with a baby on her back—now this made my legs weak. I held Stone’s arm tight to try to communicate the unuttered pleadings of letting her be. He wasn’t moved by it, no.
The lady was now just infront of us, hurryingly picking something from a fold on her gomesi. She then planted the key inside the tiny padlock on her door and turned it open. As though he had been waiting for the unlocking, Ronnie literally jumped at the woman’s back, grabbed her neck, and onto the floor inside, they fell. Stone and I followed him and closed the door behind us. The woman fought within Ronnie’s engulfment but no word was able to come out of her—the latter had held her mouth tight. Her baby started crying.
“Get that thing off her back and keep it silent!” ordered Ronnie to any of us. Stone pulled the crying baby and pinned his head, face down, onto the bed that lay aside. I only stood there, uncertain of my importance except lighting the torch for them to get the job done. Ronnie pounded kilos of punches onto the fighting woman’s ribs until she stopped moving, sobbing. “Where is the money, woman?” Ronnie demanded as he let go of the woman’s mouth, but planting it onto her throat. She coughed, clearly gasping for air. Ronnie dug into her eye with his torch he’d been having in hand the whole time. The woman cried in agony.
“Ayi mama,” She cried in Luganda, which means ‘oh mother’. Tears could be seen join in the gush of blood and onto the floor, the stream flowed.
“Shut up,” Ronnie commanded rather with a whisper as he made deeper the hole he had created in her left eye.
“In the bag and under the mattress,” she confessed in a pool of tears and blood.
Ronnie turned to by direction as I stood there, frozen. “Check under the mattress,” he instructed as Stone removed the child off the mattress, silent and motionless. My heartbeat started to compete with the thunder rumbling outside.
I hesitantly checked under the mattress, with hands shaking and gaze jumping from Stone to Ronnie. My eyes melted when I saw the lake of folded notes and coins. Such plenty can lied if you’re talking about amount. To be honest, the amount didn’t seem much despite the number of notes and coins. Most of them were of one-thousand, five-hundred and less. The largest amount was of five-thousand, and as far as I could see, such notes didn’t count to five. I collected the money and planted it in my pockets until they weighed a ton.
“Hurry, hurry,” whispered Stone.
“I’m done, let’s go,” I whispered back.
Stone literally threw the baby away and led the way outside. I tapped Ronnie at the back as I followed behind Stone into the heavy rain.
What’s a “gomesi”?
And Stone’s heart is literally made of stone for throwing someone’s baby away.☹
Impressive writing, Pius!
Hope you had a nice read Nayomie… A gomesi is a traditional dress for Baganda women.