For a long time, the Muluka had harboured a deep contempt for Luutu and how he championed someone else’s culture, but now, seeing how Luutu was devouring all sorts of powers, the Muluka decided that if his sons wanted to be in the race for the next Muluka or Ssaza, they had all better speak English. He gave the master permission to put Nsuuta up for the scholarship. Then he took all his younger children and poured them into Nattetta Native.
•
Because Nsuuta was still in school, the catechist was reluctant to withdraw Alikisa. When he asked her, “Is it not time you started thinking about marriage?” Alikisa would shake her head. Once, when he seemed to waver because a promising catechist had come along, Alikisa argued, “But Nsuuta is carrying on with her studies even though her family does not know the value of education,” at which her father sighed at the suitor, “Times are changing. Who rushes a daughter into marriage any more? Luutu’s Nsangi, who is way older than my Alikisa, is still at Gayaza. Muluka’s Nsuuta is also still in school. Everywhere in Entebbe and Kampala, girls are being educated. It is we in the rural areas who are being left behind.”
The truth was that Alikisa was waiting to see who Nsuuta would marry before making a decision. She was not curious about the world; she was not ambitious. For her, a single door opened into the future: marriage. Inside marriage were two doors. One opened into the kitchen, the other into motherhood—her realms. She had two dreams. One was having a European wedding—church, ring, tiara, and white gown. But now that she was going to marry Nsuuta’s man, she would pass on that. The other dream was to deliver her children in a proper hospital rather than that backward, traditional way that women did, with midwives shouting Hold on to the kitooke tight, now push.
It was about this time that the girls became aware of the differences in their dreams for the future. In reality, these differences had been there all along. When they were younger, Alikisa always suggested they play mothers—cooking, cleaning, breastfeeding while telling off her children—Stop playing in the dust … But why is this child so clingy?—and tucking them in to bed. Nsuuta always suggested they play nurses. She had started when Luutu brought three Indian nurses to their school to immunise pupils. That day even children who did not study came to school to be immunised. Later, a mobile clinic started to come on Wednesdays and Fridays and camped in the church compound. After classes, Alikisa and Nsuuta would go over and watch. Nsuuta stared at the important airs on the nurses’ faces as they taught women things and a Ganda man interpreted. She wanted those airs. She wanted the white-and-red uniform of Mmengo Hospital, and the cap that looked to her like a wedding crown. Thus at play, when they had tucked their children in to sleep, Nsuuta would roll the long leaves of elephant grass into a halo for a nurse’s cap, cover it with cotton, and put it on her head, transforming herself into an Indian nurse, while Alikisa would become a Ganda mother, fretting, “Musawo, my child is dying.”
“Calm down, calm down: How am I supposed to work in these conditions?” Nsuuta, the Indian nurse, would rebuke. “Is your child a boy or girl?”
“Girl.”
Nsuuta would check the baby everywhere. “Does she eat properly, has she vomited, does her stomach run?”
And if Alikisa shook her head at all of that, Nsuuta would deploy her killer question, “Did you immunise your child?”
“But Musawo, I have heard that children die after immunisation. Me, I am not putting my child’s life in danger: Did Buganda not thrive before immunisation came?”
Nsuuta would lose her patience. “But these people, when will you come out of your backwardness? You are killing your own children.” Shaking her head, she would inject the baby in the arm with a thorn and then on the buttocks. She would then squeeze drops from a red berry into the baby’s mouth, before getting the white seeds off a dry maize cob, counting out thirty, and rolling them in a leaf. “Break each tablet into a half. Crush it on a teaspoon until it is powder, add a bit of water, hold the baby’s cheeks like this so she opens her mouth, and pour down the medicine as far as possible. Give her one half, do you hear me?” She would raise her voice: “One half only. Not whole. One half in the morning, one half in the night.” Then she would write an invisible ½ × 2 on the leaf and hand over the tablets. As Alikisa walked away, Nsuuta would call with authority, “And even when your child seems to be getting better, don’t stop. Keep giving her the medicine until she has finished the fuulu doozi.”
“Yes, Musawo. Thank you, Musawo.”
“And don’t go sharing that medicine with your neighbours who have sick children just because Eh, Musawo gave me a lot of tablets, eh, why walk all the long way to hospital when we can share?” At that point the girls would collapse into laughter, forgetting they were a professional Indian nurse and a stupid backward Ganda mother.
For a long time, the girls synchronised their play of mothers and nurses so well that they did not notice the difference in their aspirations. And because Nsuuta had not expected to stay long in school, she never brought up her nursing dreams. But now, in Primary Five, with one year to go, the idea of becoming a nurse had become a possibility.
When she told Alikisa about it, though, Alikisa was perplexed. “Study nursing? And do what with nursing?”
“Can you imagine wearing that uniform? We would be smart, working in the city; we would be high up there.”
“High up where? You are already high up there. Your father is a Muluka, your grandfather is a Ssaza, what more height do you want?”
“But those are not my heights. You don’t understand; if your father is something it does not mean you are too. Besides, this time we will be high up there together, me and you. We will heal people, everyone crying for our help—Musawo, I don’t understand my health, check me—and we will feel important.” Now Nsuuta whispered, “We will make grown-ups lift their tunics, showing us their buttocks, and we will prick them.”
“And what if it is your father’s buttocks?”
“Then you ask someone else to prick him.”
“And listen to all that pain that goes on in hospitals—children burnt by porridge, men with broken legs, women giving birth, people dying and their relatives howling—because of a nursing cap and peeking at buttocks?”
“But we shall get away from here, see the world, heal the sick, and people will give us respect. Can you imagine travelling in the mobile clinic every day to some new place? Everyone will know us. They will tell our parents, Eh, I know your daughter—she is nursing people’s health very well.”
“And when do we get married? We shall soon become leftovers.”
“I don’t mind being a leftover nurse in Mmengo or Entebbe.”
Alikisa did not take this seriously because Nsuuta was still around. As long as she was around, she would come up with a way.
7
1940 was knocking on the door, but most Ugandans were unaware. Somnolent villages in far-flung regions, many miles from the capital, were yet to give this European idea of time more space to control their lives. Most were oblivious to the European markers of time anyway. Those who were aware thought that if they ignored the European calendar, it would go away. In schools, children were taught to forget the equal times of day and night in their reality and imagine the improbable notion of day starting at midnight. The children laughed. It was impossible to ignore the consistent rhythms of day and night around them. They were also taught about the equator, a natural line that passed through Uganda. “Yes, it passes through Masaka,” the master said, “but no, you cannot see it.” In school exams Nsuuta and Alikisa told the time as they were taught, but at home the day still started with dawn and night with dusk.
However, the Ganda week had been disrupted. The British had reduced the weekend from three days to two, forcing people selling cash crops and pupils going to school to wake up early on Balaza, which they now called Monday. For a while, children born on Balaza were named Mande to mark the disruption. When a person wished for the impossible, people would encourage them:
Don’t lose hope. With these Europeans coming to our world now, the sun could rise at midnight. Ganda months, which had been transient, coming and going depending on the moods of the seasons, were being replaced by the static European calendar. There was no waiting for the moon or the season to come any more. Months could no longer be late or early, brief or outstay their welcome.
But not everyone decried this disruption of Ganda time. Rich people became even more powerful. They were the ones who could afford to buy time and fasten it on their wrists after the British took the natural clock out of the sky and chopped the day into twenty-four segments. Children were now seen running up and down the road to go to the rich and ask for the time. Even when the Ganda eventually accepted the hour as a marker of time, they counted from one hour with daybreak and started again when night fell. Twelve hours of day, twelve hours of night. However, the Ganda totally rejected the idea of “keeping time.” They carried on with their lives as if there was no hour, no minute. After all, the world would be around the following day.
•
The girls had finished primary school. Nsuuta’s letter of admission to Gayaza High was in the hands of the Muluka. Alikisa was in limbo. She had had enough of studying. Her breasts had settled on her chest and her mother fretted, “Stop playing with time, Alikisa. Time hates women.” Sometimes, when she allowed herself, Alikisa regretted the pact. She knew she would sooner make the river Kiyira flow backwards than marry the rich, handsome husband who Nsuuta could return to when she finished at Gayaza. Everything seemed in jeopardy when Miiro, Luutu’s second son, stated his intentions towards Nsuuta. Alikisa’s hopes rose. Nsuuta would not go to Gayaza High if Miiro proposed. Now Alikisa would marry the next catechist to come along and then plan when to run away from him.
Miiro did not ask his father to approach Nsuuta’s father like normal people. He approached Nsuuta himself. People who were getting European education in the city often came home with mad ideas, just to be contrary—still, this was wild contrariness. Yet there was something about Miiro talking to Nsuuta himself that both girls liked. It put Nsuuta in control of their future rather than some old aunt.
It was after service at church. The girls were outside enjoying the cool air on the hilltop. Alikisa’s parents were talking to parishioners when Nsuuta felt someone poke her arm. She turned. A boy pointed to under the mugavu tree and said, “He wants to talk to you.”
Nsuuta frowned. Miiro, dressed in white shirt and long white trousers, leaned against the tree. He waved.
“But only you,” the boy said.
Nsuuta stared wide-eyed at Alikisa.
The boy insisted, “He told me not to leave until you go.”
“Aahh.” Alikisa clapped dramatically. “I am not surprised.” But her smile said she was shocked. She was as excited as if Miiro had asked to see her.
Nsuuta hesitated, overcome by self-consciousness.
“Go, go.” Alikisa shoved her. “Go get us a man.”
As she walked towards Miiro, Nsuuta tried to conceal her self-consciousness. She looked back; Alikisa was awash with anticipation. But as she approached Miiro, Nsuuta became alert to the fact that she was doing the walking. Miiro, who wanted to talk, should have come over to see her. Does a monkey summon the forest? she asked herself. This is how he starts to rule you from the beginning. By the time she reached the mugavu where Miiro stood, she wore a severe face. “You are calling me?”
He smiled at her direct manner. Yes, he sent the boy because it would look wrong if he walked up to her and said he wanted to talk.
“Oh.”
He asked about her people. Then he explained that he had been watching her for some time now and was satisfied that she was a good girl. He had also heard that she worked hard in school to better herself.
“Can I talk to you?”
“You are talking to me.”
“Not like this.”
“Like how?”
“You know what I mean.”
Silence.
“I have been thinking about you. Very seriously. I think you are the girl I deserve. I would like to know you better.” He paused and looked at her. “Would you like to know me and see if we can … maybe start a love on which to build a home?”
Nsuuta raised her eyebrows, but Miiro continued, “I did not ask my father to talk to your father because I want us to make our own decision. I don’t want to take home a stranger and then later discover this or that. Not so?”
Nsuuta tried to maintain a severe face, one that said she was not the kind of girl who was easily won over, even by common-sense words.
“How have you heard my words?”
“I have heard them.”
“Are they good? Will you think about them?”
“I will think about them,” she said. She walked away, but her legs were not fast enough. When she got to Alikisa she clapped “Ha,” and rolled her eyes. “He says I have devoured his heart, ha!” She threw back her head. “Tells me I should think about it, ha! ‘See if we can build a love,’ ha!”
“Oh, this is it.” Alikisa was animated. “Oh, he is the one, I swear; the very one. Miiro is the man I want for you.”
Nsuuta was still breathless from the shock of it.
“He is more than I had dreamt of for you, Nsuuta. You will marry into wealth just. From privilege to privilege. Do you know Miiro’s baptism name is Toofa? Kristoofa. Next time you see him, say Aallo Toofa, in English. And he should reply Aallo Bibiyana. Oh,” Alikisa gasped. “Ask for a European wedding—kadaali crown, church, choir singing as you walk in swaying, ring and everything. Luutu will do it.”
For a while, the girls celebrated their luck. Then Nsuuta remembered. “Alikisa, what about the pact?”
“What about it?”
“It is Luutu’s son; the I am so civilised I marry only one wife Luutu. The Where I sit my wife sits Luutu, the Where I go my wife goes Luutu. How can his son sit between two wives in church?”
“But who says his son is like him? Marry him and when we have him in our hands, we will think of a new plan.”
“I am worried a bit. It may not work and then you will say I broke the pact.”
“No, I will not think that. I will run away from my …” Alikisa hesitated and whispered, “catechist.”
However, the girls were no longer ten years old. Running away from a husband to be with Miiro would involve not only her family but Luutu’s and Nsuuta’s. Alikisa refused to think about the implications, or the possibility Miiro might not have her; Nsuuta would take care of it.
Nsuuta kept quiet. She too was thinking about a childhood moment of rashness returning to kill her future.
“Don’t worry.” Alikisa had confidence. “We shall do it somehow. Which Ganda man does not want two wives?”
“Kdto, your fa—”
“Father and Luutu don’t count,” Alikisa interrupted. “Christianity killed them a long time ago.”
•
At first, when Nsuuta’s father got wind of Miiro’s interest in his daughter, he felt slighted. Typical of Luutu’s family to throw away age-old ways of securing marriage and copy Europeans. It was only when Nsuuta explained that Miiro had not told his father either that he relented. However, in a county meeting of Miluka chiefs which Luutu attended as a British representative, Nsuuta’s father remarked casually, “Have you heard about the children?”
“Kdto, don’t mention it. Apparently, they do not want us meddling.”
“I said to myself, ‘Fine, let’s see how far you will go without us.’”
“Children are children; today they like this one, tomorrow they are not sure.”
“Exactly what I thought.”
Nsuuta’s father walked away, satisfied that he had not looked desperate, while Luutu wore the confidence of a father whose son could get any girl he wished.
From that moment, right through the first three weeks of December 1939, Miiro collected Nsuuta from her home to go for walks. The couple were followed at a distan
ce by an uncomfortable-looking aunt. Chaperoning a niece was not part of her traditional role, and courtship walkabouts were not Ganda tradition. However, Nsuuta had been indulged since the aunt would make Miiro pay for her inconvenience. She expected nothing less than that new fashion, a boodingi, and might even ask for a goat. Nsuuta’s mother, fretting as if she was already mother of the bride, would tell her to get ready earlier. Miiro would arrive dressed in white and lead Nsuuta away. Everyone smiled upon them the way people smile at young love. Youths marvelled at the novel courtship. Girls envied Nsuuta openly, the way they had coveted her beauty all along. “Maama, this is a new phenomenon,” they marvelled, because this new kind of courtship ushered in by Miiro and Nsuuta was the future. Old folks, sensing that the young were moving in to elbow them out of the marriage-securing processes, snorted, “What if Miiro changes his mind after parading her so publicly? Will Nsuuta not be stigmatised as a cursed bride? Will she not lose value? The early processes of finding a spouse are discreet for a reason.” But rash residents were already rubbing their hands together. A wedding between the Muluka and Luutu houses meant feasting for days. They would try to outdo each other on the pre-wedding celebrations.
A Girl is a Body of Water Page 27