At first it appeared as though the liberators were too disciplined to mess with the girls. But some girls had fathers, brothers, and uncles in the army. There were not enough teachers to keep them from visiting their relations. Slowly, these girls started to take friends along, and soon too many girls had relatives among the wakomboozi. They came back excited: “They speak such beautiful Swahili; did you hear it?” They began to identify individual men: “The handsome one is Nen.” “Yaro has a kyeppe.” “Did you see the stones on Tumo’s fatigues?” “Topi is a dude.” “Ah, but Keno is dudest.”
When girls discovered that soldiers had chocolate in their food packs, boundaries between students and soldiers broke down entirely. An army officer would be patrolling, minding his own business, and would find himself accosted by a group of girls: Affande, thank you for liberating us. Yii, but you are very brave. Now, we were thinking, can we look at your military ration pack? Soon, tins started to arrive in dormitories. You buckled the lid with a coin and inside was a sesame bar, an oat bar, a fruit and seed bar, and three chocolate bars. Now girls flirted blatantly: Affande, what a big gun you have. Is it not too heavy? Can I touch it?
Soon, some girls’ gratitude became physical. Behind the art room. In the abandoned toilets. Behind the piggery. Down at the lagoon. Some girls were smuggled into the tents on the sports grounds. Bottles of Yves Saint Laurent’s Opium, Cacharel’s Anaïs Anaïs, and Christian Dior’s Diorella started to flash and psss-psss in the dorms. Bold girls went for hardcore treats—Marlboro and Embassy, Johnnie Walker and Napoleon brandy. It looked as though the nuns had lost control of the school, until one morning the hooter went off non-stop. Five girls had been caught in the sports grounds with army men. When they were interrogated, they sold out fifteen other girls. Each of the fifteen girls was told to write a list of five names of girls they went to see the wakomboozi with. Those who said they did not know any names were threatened with expulsion. Fifteen additional names were added with question marks. At assembly, twenty girls, who had been identified as the notorious offenders, were called. The girls stepped out and were made to stand in front of assembly. The commander said, “I told you girls that if any of my men was found talking to a girl they would be dealt with. Now, ladies”—he pointed at the twenty girls—“watch how we do it military style.”
Twenty soldiers had been arrested, including the handsome Yaro and Nen, and were frog-marched to assembly. Disarmed, without shoes, and stripped down to trousers, they were no longer liberator celebrities, just common thugs. The commander’s men flogged them. Twisted wires, torn skin, the men screaming. Sister Ambrose stopped it immediately and asked the commander to administer his idea of punishment elsewhere. The school secretary’s office was converted into a holding pen for offending officers. Sanity returned to St. Theresa’s.
•
Kampala fell four weeks after Zigoti. By then, Sister Ambrose and the other nuns were haggard. Still, she put announcements out on the radio that only girls collected by parents or guardians would be allowed to go home.
That end of term was like no other. Every girl, not just the ones from Masaka or those whose parents had been in government, was worried. Many were collected by relatives rather than parents. Often you saw girls crying, and you did not want any news of your own family to arrive. Some girls had to leave their luggage behind because parents’ cars had been taken by the fleeing army. As for Kirabo, her mind flew to her mother, then to Sio when she learned that everyone at home was okay. For some time, she toyed with the idea of asking Tom to put announcements out on the radio, not to ask her mother to come but to confirm she had survived. In the end, she let it go. Tom would not understand. She would continue with her posters.
More than a hundred girls were not collected. They were moved to Harriet Tubman House, closest to the convent, while the nuns started to make calls. For a week, the school drivers drove girls to their homes to find out what had happened to their parents. Many were brought back to school. During Amin’s regime, Sister Ambrose had tried to protect the girls whose fathers had disappeared; during the war she had protected everyone from the savagery of conflict, but even she had her limits. She could not protect girls from the realities of a changed regime. National revenge was instantaneous. Daughters of the former politicians and army officers descended into poverty. Aate, who had been due to sit her O levels in November, did not come back to St. Theresa’s. Girls said she worked in a market with her mother; her father’s house had been taken over by an army general. Some of these girls joined cheaper schools and changed their names. Some went into exile. Many found men and drifted on nature’s tide into motherhood. People said it was poetic justice; after all, some of the girls who had been orphaned by the regime had also drifted into motherhood. Now another kind of girl was brought to school in the large cars with smoked windows. They typically came from the south, and their ethnicity became the new object of national envy and hate. But Sister Ambrose remained the same, working towards a bright future for the girl child and towards that elusive first woman president of Uganda.
7
The day Kirabo saw Giibwa again was the day she showed Sio what a woman really looked like down there. It was just before Christmas 1979. Sio had passed his exams and had been accepted into the University of Dar es Salaam. Because of the war, he had sat his A levels in July. The results had come out in November. Since Tanzania had brought the war to Uganda, the University of Dar es Salaam had made provisions for Ugandan students to join a term late with remedial classes. Sio was travelling to Dar the following day. He would spend Christmas with his mother before starting his course in the new year. Kirabo would not see him again until next April.
As promised, Sio showed her his ssebukuule first.
They were in a lodge, the one on Clement Hill Road where men escaped to with pinched wives, where good girls lost their virginity. Such an air of depravity hung in the room that Kirabo could not help but feel a sense of guilt about all of the women in her life who had worked so hard to keep her safe from men. She thought of Grandmother and all the women in Nattetta, especially Widow Diba, Nsuuta, Aunt Abi, Aunt YA, and Sister Ambrose. They had no idea she was in a disreputable lodge with Kabuye’s son.
Sio sat her on the bed and then proceeded to peel off his clothes as if it was an art form. At first, Kirabo held her mouth in shock, giggling, unable to believe how much Sio enjoyed his own nakedness. You know that superb male bird of paradise doing a courtship dance? That was Sio.
Now that he was naked, save for his Caterpillar boots, he performed a military parade, whistling the police band tunes. From the wall across the room, quick march, quick march, to the end of the room, abouuuut turn. Then he came back doing the goose-step, singing, “Okello, talina mpale …” At the wall he stopped, stomped, and swivelled on his heel. He saluted, put an imaginary baton under his arm, and started the slow march. Kirabo fell back on the bed, ribs aching with laughter. When she sat up, Sio was kneeling at the side of the bed.
“Your turn.”
For some reason Kirabo’s confidence deserted her. Forget Aunt Abi’s assertion that the vagina was a flower bud unfolding, forget all the pride St. Theresa’s had given her in her body. At school, she was just another girl. She could walk about naked. In this room, Sio’s pale body reminded her that her breasts were not supposed to be charcoally, that her vagina was foul. If it was a flower, why did nature tuck it out of sight?
“I am not taking my clothes off to model boobs and bums.”
“Come on.”
“Hmm, hmm.”
“You promised …”
“To show you my flower.”
“But the flower does not come in isolation.”
“That is what you asked for.”
“Okay.” Sio gave in unhappily. “Take off your knickers.”
She pulled them off and lay back on the bed but kept her knees closed.
“You know what?” Sio pulled the pillow from under her head. “Cover your face
if you are nervous.”
Kirabo held the pillow over her face.
“Lift your legs, bend them at the knees.” He sighed, like a man in charge of a delicate operation. He prised her knees apart. A brief silence. Then, “Whwo, ho.”
She snapped her knees closed. “What, is it disgusting?”
“No, it is floral glory … Lie back, I need to see more.”
Kirabo lay back and opened her legs properly.
“You elongated your labia?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Nothing; lie back.”
This time, Sio touched something and Kirabo screamed. Sio backed away, laughing. He put a finger to his lips. “Shhhhh, you screamed.”
“What was that?”
He pulled a feather from behind his back. “One of my hens gave it to me this morning. She said, I understand Kirabo is going to unfold herself for you. Why not try one of my feathers to help her along? I can do it again, but don’t scream.”
Kirabo lay back. This time someone banged on the door. They fell silent. After a while, footsteps walked away. Sio whispered, “I am going to stop. You cannot scream like that.”
“I didn’t even realise. I won’t, I swear.”
“Take the pillow and bite into it, because this feather is rampant.”
Next thing she knew, Sio was holding her mouth. The banging on the door did not stop this time. They held their breath. Then Sio got off the bed and pulled on his trousers, his Bob Marley belt buckle chinking. He opened the door a crack and a middle-aged woman said, “Stop that noise.” She tried to peer past him into the room but Sio kept moving his head, blocking her view.
“What kind of children are you?”
“Give me back my fucking money and we’ll fucking leave your fucking room.” Sio spoke British English when he wanted to intimidate.
“But son, that girl is a child.”
“Did you birth me?” Kirabo called from the bed.
“Wangi? What did you say, child?”
Kirabo did not repeat it.
“Kdto.” The woman turned away. “Children of today, misege, misegula,” she clapped as she went.
Sio closed the door and they laughed soundlessly. Then he picked Kirabo’s knickers off the floor and tossed them to her. “Get dressed.”
“Why? You paid for the entire day.”
“Get dressed.”
Kirabo grabbed her knickers. “So you know, Sio, I cannot get pregnant from a feather.”
He finished getting dressed and stared at her. Kirabo, realising that playing with feathers was over, got off the bed and slipped into her knickers. As she brushed her hair in the mirror on the wall, Sio said, “Did you know there is a belief that when a man finds himself alone with a woman he is not related to, he is obliged to say a word to her?”
“A word?”
“Yes, to seduce her, to show he is a real man.”
Kirabo shot Sio a sharp look. “Now what kind of stupidity is that?”
“Apparently, women expect it. If you don’t, they lose respect for you.”
“That is not stupidity, Sio, it has no name.”
“And since all girls are supposed to say no, it is okay. After all, a girl can tell when a boy is serious.”
Kirabo deflated. “Sio, are you trying to tell me something?”
“No,” he sighed, “it is just … it puts pressure on us.”
Kirabo shrugged.
“Apparently, some girls, if you don’t say a word, they feel insulted, that they are ugly. Then they go around telling people that you are not a man, that you are dead in the pants. That is why boys hiss at any girl, often without interest.”
Kirabo sat down on the bed next to him. “Tell you what, Sio. Throughout time, men have created all sorts of myths about women. In the past, the belief was that if you looked deep down there, as you did mine, you would go blind. Some cultures even believed there were teeth down there which could bite your ssebukuule off. The idea that girls expect a word from a man to make them feel good about themselves is another myth, perhaps to justify men’s bad behaviour.”
Thinking she had answered his question, Kirabo suggested they go to find Giibwa. It was only midday, but they had nothing else to do.
Sio stood up irritably, went to the door, opened it, then closed it and came back. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Kirabo, but that thing, that … erm, elongation, is wrong. It is genital mutilation.”
“Genital what? Tsk, of all boys in the world I fell for a Zungu. Sio, we Africans do it. Mutilation is when they scoop out the bean, then cut the inner labia out, and when it is just a shell they sew everything like shut up. Bruhu,” she shuddered. “On the contrary, we enhance.”
“Same thing. And not all Africans do it.”
“Okay, Bantu Africans.”
“Not all Bantu.”
“Okay, Bantu Ugandans; what is your problem?”
“Not all of them. It does not contribute to pleasure.”
“Not yours, mine. Tsk! You men imagine that everything we do is for you. We elongate because some men do not know how to get a woman ready. Wait for your groom session, your uncles will teach you.”
“But that does not mean you disfigure your body.”
“Sometimes, Sio, you are so Zungu I don’t even know. Not all men borrow feathers from their chickens. Chances of marrying one of those are very high. Don’t worry, one day I will show you what to do with them.”
“As long as you don’t tell my daughters to… no one is going to tell my daughters to do that.”
Her hmm was cynical because she knew there would be no one to tell his daughters about this kind of thing. Fathers’ sisters prepared their nieces for sex. Sio had no one.
“As I said before,” Sio was saying, “I believe in mwenkanonkano. It is wrong to disfigure your genitals.”
The first time Sio had said he believed in mwenkanonkano, he had used the English word feminist. Kirabo ignored it because as far as she knew, feminism was for women in developed countries with first-world problems. But this time he had used the Luganda word, mwenkanonkano. She asked, “What makes you say you believe in our mwenkanonkano?”
“I know women have suffered throughout time. I would not want my daughter to go through that. I think it is time we stopped it. I try not to contribute to women’s suffering. Dad does too. He said I should treat women the way I would want to be treated. But Mum is too Christian. Apparently, God created Adam from earth, but Eve was made from Adam’s rib. To her, how can a rib be equal to a whole person?”
“Wow, you don’t realise how dangerous those myths are until you meet someone who believes them.”
“But what Mum does not realise is that mwenkanonkano would set us men free too.”
“Set men free, free from what—superiority?”
“Scoff all you like, but I want things to change. We pay too high a price for something superficial. And why? Just so women can kneel before us? Do you know how expensive dating is? On top of paying bills, girls expect you to give them your money, just like that, because you fancy them. And their entitlement is unbelievable. If you don’t give them money, they tell people He has glue in his hands …”
Kirabo was dying of hilarity. Since they had started dating, they were both always so broke they asked each other, “How much do you have?” on the phone before deciding to meet up. Often, Sio only had enough money to pay for one way. When Kirabo got money out of her father or aunt, she rang him to say, “Come, I have enough for your return journey.”
“What is so funny?”
“You tried to date another girl, didn’t you?”
“No, but I have seen it. A guy takes a girl out, spends his transport money on her, and walks miles and miles back home. Then after all of that, she dumps him. You know what some guys believe?” Kirabo shook her head. “That women pretend, that some perform inferiority to give us a false sense of superiority.”
“Sometimes it is safe for us to pretend to be inferior. So
me men love it. They hate clever women. We have learnt to make it pay for us. Perks of being inferior. Look, sometimes a man, instead of saying I fancy you, just gives you money. If you take it, it means yes; you don’t take it, it means no. But of course, some girls take it and say no anyway. Poor seduction skills are costly.”
“Then don’t complain when men treat you like property. You cannot have it both ways. If men invest money while dating, dress you, feed you, pay your rent, transport you, and then pay dowry on top, then after the wedding husbands are still called upon, time after time, to take care of financial problems in your families, then men own you the way you cannot own them. We can have affairs; we can throw you out of our houses, because we bought you.”
“But it is what you men want. Ganda men feel insulted when you attempt to split the bill.”
“We pretend to want it because we are expected to.” He opened the door. “Come on, let’s go and find Giibwa.”
Kirabo followed him out. She could not believe her luck. Where in Uganda do you find a man who believes in mwenkanonkano? She did not know what she had done to deserve Sio. If she had held anything of herself back from loving him up until then, she had now passed the point of no return. She reached for his hands, then wrapped her arms around him and kissed his ear and neck. She rubbed her nose on his cheek as she said, “I think you are intelligent about our mwenkanonkano.”
“It is just common sense.”
At the reception desk in the lobby sat the woman who had banged on the door, her eyes waiting to tell them off. But then she smiled as Sio handed her the key. When she saw Kirabo, she dry-spat on the side, but Kirabo was too happy to feel the insult. She had been transported on the lightness of a feather to a place beyond shame. She looked at the woman and felt sorry for her. She has no idea what she is missing. Her man would probably have a fit at the thought of mwenkanonkano. Reaching for Sio’s hand, she swung on it and skipped down the steps into the sunny courtyard. Sio stole a guilty glance at the woman and shook his head at Kirabo’s giddiness. All the way to Nakawa Market, where Giibwa’s aunt’s friend worked, Kirabo was giddy. Sio kept calming her down.
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 21