by Maggie Downs
I have. But only as a guest for local talk shows. I don’t have any experience in radio production.
“Can you speak like a Southerner?” he says.
“Like, southern Ugandan?”
“No,” he says. “Like Garth Brooks.”
“Um,” I pause. “I guess so.”
When I pepper my speech with “y’all”s and a “bless yer heart,” Freddie asks me to exaggerate my words and make the Southern twang more pronounced. When I sound like an approximation of Dolly Parton, Freddie declares it perfect.
It turns out that in addition to running an organic farm, Freddie is also a popular radio DJ and controls afternoon programming at the biggest FM station in this region. I didn’t realize country music was so hot in Uganda, but Freddie quickly ticks off a list of performers: “Kenny Chesney, Shania Twain, Tim McGraw, Willie Nelson, Garth Brooks,” he says. “We love them all. Especially the Garth Brooks.”
The fact that many people in Mbale don’t speak English is not a problem, Freddie says. “The people very much enjoy the soft sounds of Southern talking.” And so he asks me to take on a different kind of volunteer task here—that of a country-western DJ at the radio station where he works.
The next day I receive a tour of the station, and Freddie’s co-workers walk me through the job. I record promotional spots—“Y’all have been listening to STEP-FM, where country music matters”—and introduce “new” songs from Nashville, which are actually old songs from Nashville. We play The Oak Ridge Boys and Alabama, topped off with cuts from Ultimate Clint Black.
I don’t know if anyone understands the words I am putting out into the air, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I imagine my voice filling strangers’ homes, and I like it. I picture the words as blue and silky, threading into someone else’s ear, weaving us together. My mother is squelched and silenced by a disease, but my community grows with each word I send out over the airwaves.
The radio station also gives me the opportunity to use my journalism skills. As one of my first assignments, I interview a man who won a motorbike in a soda company’s national contest. It sounds like a fluff story, something light that pads the real news. Then I meet the man.
He is young but unemployed and not by choice. When he does find work, it is poorly paid casual labor, never anything long-term. Now, with a motorbike, this man can start his own business by turning it into a boda-boda. Drivers are self-employed and usually make between seven and twenty dollars per day. This isn’t just a simple win for him—it is the opportunity to change his life.
As a woman who has been spoiled by taxis, buses, cars, and traffic laws, bodas are terrifying. Nobody wears a helmet in Uganda, and a ten-minute ride through the city makes for many close calls as the boda pushes through tangles of traffic, tears over potholed dirt roads, and weaves through unruly farm animals.
When I arrived in Uganda, I was told that most people in the hospital are there as a result of boda-boda accidents, so I promised myself that I would never take a boda. No way. It was too unsafe, too unpredictable.
I will not take a boda.
Except I had to go to town to get a new electrical converter for my plugs. And no other vehicles went to that section of town.
Okay, just this one time. But definitely not again.
But bodas are faster, cheaper, and more convenient than matatus, the minivan taxis. Not to mention that they’re a whole lot more comfortable. The matatus are licensed to carry fourteen people at a time, but they often squeeze in many more. Some of my rides have been uncomfortably hot and sticky, with twenty-six people and some fat goats.
Fine. I’ll take bodas, but not at night.
And then one evening, there was no other way to get where I was going.
Bodas it is.
Covering the story of this man’s motorbike win gives me a new appreciation for the workers who drive through the congested city, out to the overgrown coffee fields, and back again, circling the entire region many times a day to support their families.
MBALE IS SO FAR FROM HOME, SOMETIMES I DON’T THINK of it at all. Concerns about my mother, questions about my future, and longing for my husband all seem to disappear into grassy fields and brick-colored streets. The city is walkable and friendly, and the days are filled with yolk-yellow light and cloudless skies. The people I meet are kind and inquisitive, curious how I ended up in Mbale.
I’ve seen one other white person in town, a man from Sweden, but everybody seems to think we know each other. I am stopped on the street by people who say, “I saw your brother! He went that way,” and after a while I give up trying to explain that I don’t know this man.
One afternoon, on my walk to the radio station, I take an alternate path, cutting between two houses instead of walking around the entire block.
A woman, squatting next to her house and washing a pan in a bucket, watches me until I am almost past; then she shouts, “Stop!”
I do, even though I am afraid I’m going to get in trouble for trespassing. “What is your name, woman?” she says, but not unkindly.
“Maggie.”
She repeats my name slowly, letting it roll around on her tongue like warm gravy. “Maggie. Is that a shortcut for Margaret?”
I’m surprised she knows this, and I smile. “It is.”
“What a coincidence,” she says. Her face breaks into a grin too. “I could use a friend named Margaret.”
The woman yells for her family, all of whom come outside and collect in a line by the side of the house. She introduces me as her new friend, and everybody reaches out a hand to shake mine.
I am invited inside for soupy beans and posho, cornmeal cooked until it is thick and stiff; it’s like the ugali in South Africa, but with the addition of cassava flour. I can’t stay long—I am expected to be back at the radio station within an hour—but I also don’t want to be rude. It is so touching to be asked into someone’s home, a generous invitation I can’t refuse.
The woman’s house looks nothing like my aunt’s farmhouse in Indiana, but it smells just the same. Salt and broth and yeast and warm spices. The floor is cool, just compacted earth, and someone gives me a small mustard-yellow mat to sit on.
When the woman hands me a plate of food, I understand that I am supposed to eat the posho with my hands and use it to sop up the beans. With my left hand balancing the plate on my knees and my right hand sloppy with food, a lock of my hair falls into my face. A young girl, maybe ten years old, leans close to me. She brushes the hair from my forehead and tucks the curl behind my ear.
The tenderness of the gesture makes me want to cry. I could lie down here and fall asleep, happy and safe. I feel like a member of a family again.
It hits me for the first time that when my mom dies, I will be losing family in the way I’ve always known it. Though we will continue after she’s gone, our family will only be the remains of something that once was. We will always yearn to be whole again.
Before I leave, the woman rubs my cheek and gives me a kiss on the forehead. What a coincidence, I think as I leave—I have been looking for a new friend too.
JUST ONE WEEK INTO MY NEW JOB AT THE RADIO STATION, I’m given my biggest interview yet.
Freddie has arranged for me to interview Umukuka Wilson Wamimbi, the newly elected king of Masaaba. It is a win-win situation for both of us: Freddie’s station is proud to boast an American journalist. And I am on a king’s porch, notebook in hand, just a couple of days before his official coronation.
The home is modest but well crafted. A lanky and quick assistant pours hot tea into squat mugs, then steps away to wait under the shade of a tree.
While Uganda is primarily led by a president, there are kings who preside over each cultural region and preserve the traditions of the tribes. I have been staying in the Bamasaaba territory, which includes more than 5.5 million people in an area that extends from Eastern Uganda into Western Kenya.
We settle back onto a bench on the patio of his country home, located
among the sprawling coffee plantations on the outskirts of Mbale. He is dressed in a marine blue button-down shirt and a pair of khakis that look freshly laundered and pressed. His face is friendly, pleated with deep lines across his forehead. He folds his hands and waits for me to speak.
“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath before I launch into some warm-up questions. Then I ask if he’s always wanted to be king.
Wamimbi is reserved and insists that I call him a “traditional leader” rather than “king.”
“No. I never expected anything like this,” he says. “To be given the responsibility of leading people is a great honor. It is like becoming the mother of a large family.”
The job of a cultural king is an important one; Uganda is a country that clings to the past while striding into the future, a place where witch doctors have offices next to medical clinics. We have a long discussion about finding the delicate balance between those worlds, moving both of them forward together.
After about an hour of conversation, I have one last question.
“If you’re a king, will you wear a crown?” I ask.
“Only for very special occasions,” he laughs.
At his coronation a few days later, he does indeed don a crown, a tall cone stitched in leather and covered in pale cowry shells. Police in olive-colored uniforms patrol the gate of the wooden fence that lines the perimeter of the grounds of the celebration area. Those with invitations, including me, are welcomed inside to sit on plastic chairs under fabric circus tents. Those without invitations wedge themselves along the fence.
Wamimbi’s plain gray suit is covered by a shield made of animal skin to symbolize that he is the protector of his people. He also carries a spear to demonstrate his power. The crowd is silent as he makes vows of unity and promises to be a fair and kind leader.
During his speech, which is given in both English and Swahili, the two official languages of Uganda, Wamimbi stresses the importance of preserving cultural heritage.
“We’ve already lost too much of our traditions over time, so I will focus on restoring and preserving those,” he says. “Without our culture, we are nothing.”
This celebratory site is also home to another traditional Bamasaaba event—the male circumcision ritual, called imbalu, which takes place every other year during a three-day festival. As many as 40,000 teenage boys, smeared in a yeast-like porridge, receive their initiation into manhood from a traditional healer while the villagers dance and cheer.
That is acknowledged by one of the clan elders as he glances around the throng of thousands at the king’s coronation.
“Impressive crowd,” I say. “Many people.”
He leans over and whispers, “The circumcisions draw a bigger crowd.”
Now a tide of clan elders and dancers ebb and flow around Wamimbi as he circles the cultural grounds. Feet and homemade drums thunder like thousands of hooves pounding across the red dirt. Whooping noises shatter the thick, humid air.
I feel like part of a blended tribe myself, and the cultural display forces me to think about my heritage. I try to imagine what it must have been like for my mother when she married my father, the leap she made for love. She barely spoke English, and she had never traveled beyond Europe. As soon as they were wed, my dad was stationed to an air force base in New Mexico. Such a stark difference from the place where she grew up.
My mom quickly became pregnant with my older sister, but my dad’s work kept him busy, leaving her alone in a place she didn’t understand. It was a sparse landscape populated by dust storms and scrub brush. The open sky must have felt so isolating. She once told me she cried after every appointment with her obstetrician, because so much was happening with her body and she didn’t know how to communicate it.
My sister, Monica, was born in 1963. My brother, Mark, came along two years later. Then my dad was deployed to Vietnam for a year. He wrote letters to my mother every single day, an extended, one-sided conversation about sticky jungles and mess hall spaghetti. It’s hard for me to imagine how she navigated her loneliness, stuck in the arid land with two children, unable to drive, barely able to communicate.
I came along many years later, when my family was stationed in Georgia. There are thirteen years between my sister and me, eleven years’ difference with my brother. By that time, my mother’s English was impeccable. When she showed up at the hospital in labor to have me, she was initially turned away. There were no rooms. She was given the address of the bigger hospital across town and told to go there.
“I am having this baby, and I am having it here,” she said.
That is why I was born in a linen closet. Because my mom insisted on staying, and she was too much of a force to be reckoned with.
In Uganda I watch a group of younger dancers swirl into the mass of drummers and warriors. Their skirts are long and indigo, their white shirts untucked. Their belts and headbands look like strips of bark. They chant and holler, calling out the new king’s full title. The songs they perform tell stories of struggle, then triumph over trauma.
I let my mind wander back to when I was in my early twenties and learned about the other sibling. The one without a name.
This happened while I was living in a small town in Appalachia, about one year after my mom’s diagnosis. My dad asked me to come home for the weekend to take care of mom so he could attend his high school reunion in Indiana.
Though my mom was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, the disease was pronounced enough that she couldn’t be left alone. She could eat, dress herself, and use the toilet without any assistance, but she had to be told to do those things. A bold red stop sign posted on the inside of the front door reminded her that she shouldn’t leave the house. Her wrist was outfitted with an electronic bracelet that could be tracked by the sheriff’s department, in case she decided to wander anyway.
I didn’t want to go home that weekend, even though my dad needed my help. I was twenty-four and awful. It was a challenge for me to find compassion; I had a lot of anger. I resented the disease that had replaced my mom with somebody foreign. I felt like I had been abandoned by her and given only the memory of a woman. She had begun to smell acrid and old, like stale flowers and ammonia and lemon drops. I missed her perfume, the sharp one I once hated. Her new body revolted me, so pale and unfamiliar. I couldn’t bear to be around her.
How sad it is to know your mom for only twenty-four years. I was only just beginning to be a person. I needed her.
My life in those days was one poor choice after another and a readiness to escape my reality. I drank a lot, to the point where I thought it was normal to start every day by dry heaving. I was secretly dating a local politician and spent my weekends having sex with him in the back of the minivan he shared with his recently separated wife. My needs were simple, and I was easily fulfilled: I wanted to see him and fall asleep to a dizzy ceiling and forget my life. The last place I wanted to go was home.
I reluctantly agreed to take care of my mom anyway. That weekend, looking for a way to waste time, I brought her to a bookstore.
My mom was excruciatingly slow getting out of the car. I unbuckled her seat belt and helped her stand up. She took tiny steps across the parking lot. In front of the door, she snapped to a halt. People pushed by, grumbled. I was embarrassed. My mom turned to me and her eyes searched mine. It had been months since she had looked at my face like this, with some kind of recognition. It felt real, and it made me want to cry.
“There’s something you should know,” she said. She rocked her weight to her right foot, which meant she was completely blocking the door now. I tugged on her arm and pulled her to the side. She winced.
“There’s something you should know,” she said again, this time with greater urgency.
I sighed. “What is it, Mom?” I was irritated. I wanted to get inside this bookstore, where people wouldn’t stare at us.
She furrowed her brow. “You have another brother,” she said.
I sighed. How
many other things had she created in her mind? The disease eating away at her brain manifested some mighty fantasies. She thought there was a pattern in the red cars that passed by the house. She thought the planes overhead, landing at the nearby air force base, were sending signals to my father. She imagined the rooftops of our neighbors’ houses were used to communicate a secret code that somehow was being used by my father to get away with an elaborate affair. None of this was true.
Now I had another brother. Yeah, right.
I held my mother’s hand and walked her inside the bookstore. I sat her down in the section closest to the door. I did my best to collect myself, to be patient. This disease wasn’t her fault.
“Mom, I know you think I have another brother,” I said. “But you have a disease called Alzheimer’s.”
She looked at me with pity then, as if I were some kind of rube. She reached for her purse but couldn’t unzip it. I helped her open the bag. She retrieved her wallet, which she also couldn’t open. Again, I helped. The wallet was a mess of faded receipts, phone numbers, expired credit cards. She hadn’t used it in at least a couple of years, but she carried it out of habit.
Behind all the pockets and clear sleeves of photos, there was a secret compartment, where she used to hide layaway receipts for the clothes and purses she bought without telling my dad. From that compartment, she pulled out a tiny black-and-white photo.
It was a boy. Light hair and light eyes, just like my mom. Her distinctive, sloping nose. Same face shape. So familiar, and yet it was a boy I had never seen before.
“This is your other brother,” she said.
It made no sense. How could this boy look so much like my mom?
The words came quickly: “I was raped. I got pregnant. I gave the boy away, and he was adopted by an American family. This is the only photo I have. This is all I have. This is my boy.”
“That is not your boy,” I said. My brother Mark was her boy, not that light-haired kid. We weren’t a family with dark, unexplored closets and things left unsaid. My mother and I didn’t keep secrets.