Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  The woman and Kamu lived in a two-roomed house on a terraced block in Bwaise, a swamp beneath Kampala’s backside. Kampala perches, precariously, on numerous hills. Bwaise and other wetlands are nature’s floodplains below the hills. But because of urban migrants like Kamu and his woman, the swamps are slums. In colonial times, educated Ugandans had lived on the floodplains while Europeans lived up in the hills. When the Europeans left, educated Ugandans climbed out of the swamps, slaked off the mud, and took to the hills and raw Ugandans flooded the swamps. Up in the hills, educated Ugandans assumed the same contempt as Europeans had for them. In any case, suspicion from up in the hills fell down into the swamps—all swamp dwellers were thieves.

  On her way to the inner room, the woman stumbled on rolled mats that had slid to the floor. She picked them up and saw, to her dismay, that the bright greens, reds, and purples had melted into messy patches, obliterating the intricate patterns her mother had weaved. In spite of the tons and tons of soil compacted to choke the swamp, Bwaise carried on as if its residents were still the fish, frogs, and yams of precolonial times. In the dry season, the floor in her house wept and the damp ate everything lying on it. In the rainy season, the woman carried everything of value on her head. Sometimes, however, it rained both from the sky and from the ground; then the house flooded. From the look of her mats, it had rained in the night.

  As she laid the discolored mats on top of the skinny Johnson sofa, she felt a film of dust on her smart white chair-backs. The culprit was the gleaming 5-CD Sonny stereo (a fake Sony model, made in Taiwan), squeezed into a corner. She glanced at it and pride flooded her heart. Since its arrival just before Christmas, Kamu blared music at full volume to the torment of their neighbors. The booming shook the fragile walls and scattered dust. The wooden box on which a tiny Pansonic TV (also made in Taiwan) sat was damp too. If the moisture got into the TV, there would be sparks. She thought of shifting the TV, but there was no space for its detached screen.

  The woman squeezed behind the sofa and went back into the inner room. Kamu was still asleep. She shook him gently. “Kamu, Kamu! Some men at the door want you.”

  Kamu got up. He was irritated but the woman didn’t know how to apologize for the men. He pulled on a T-shirt, which hung loose and wide on him. When he turned, “Chicago Bulls” had curved on his back. He then retrieved a pair of gray trousers off a nail in the wall and put them on. The woman handed him a cup of water. He washed his face and rinsed his mouth. When Kamu stepped out of the house, each man bid him good morning but avoided looking at him.

  “Come with us, Mr. Kintu. We need to ask you some questions,” one of the men said as they turned to leave.

  Kamu shrugged. He had recognized them as the Local Councillors for Bwaise Central. “LCs,” he whispered to his woman and they exchanged a knowing look. LCs tended to ask pointless questions to show that they are working hard.

  As he slipped on a pair of sandals, Kamu was seized by a bout of sneezing.

  “Maybe you need a jacket,” his woman suggested.

  “No, it’s morning hay fever. I’ll be all right.”

  Still sneezing, Kamu followed the men. He suspected that a debtor had perhaps taken matters too far and reported him to the local officials. They had ambushed him at dawn before the day swallowed him. It was envy for his new stereo and TV, no doubt.

  They walked down a small path, across a rubbish-choked stream, past an elevated latrine at the top of a flight of stairs. The grass was so soaked that it squished under their steps. To protect his trousers, Kamu held them up until they came to the wider murram road with a steady flow of walkers, cyclists, and cars.

  Here the councillors surrounded him and his hands were swiftly tied behind his back. Taken by surprise, Kamu asked, “Why are you tying me like a thief?”

  With those words Kamu sentenced himself. A boy—it could have been a girl—shouted, “Eh, eh, a thief. They’ve caught a thief!”

  Bwaise, which had been half-awake up to that point, sat up. Those whose jobs could wait a bit stopped to stare. Those who had no jobs at all crossed the road to take a better look. For those whose jobs came as rarely as a yam’s flower this was a chance to feel useful.

  The word thief started to bounce from here to there, first as a question then as a fact. It repeated itself over and over like an echo calling. The crowd grew: swelled by insomniacs, by men who had fled the hungry stares of their children, by homeless children who leapt out of the swamp like frogs, by women gesturing angrily, “Let him see it: thieves keep us awake all night,” and by youths who yelped, “We have him!”

  The councillors, now realizing what was happening, hurried to take Kamu out of harm’s way but instead their haste attracted anger. “Where are you taking him?” the crowd, now following them, wanted to know. The councillors registered too late that they were headed toward Bwaise Market. A multitude of vendors, who hate councillors, had already seen them and were coming. Before they had even arrived, one of them pointed at the councillors and shouted, “They’re going to let him go.”

  The idea of letting a thief go incensed the crowd so much that someone kicked Kamu’s legs. Kamu staggered. Youths jumped up and down, clapping and laughing. Growing bold, another kicked him in the ankles. “Amuwadde ‘ngwara!” the youths cheered. Then a loud fist landed on the back of his shoulder. Kamu turned to see who had hit him but then another fist landed on the other shoulder and he turned again and again until he could not keep up with the turning.

  “Stop it, people! Stop it now,” a councillor’s voice rose up but a stone flew over his head and he ducked.

  Now the crowd was in control. Everyone clamored to hit somewhere, anywhere but the head. A kid pushed through the throng, managed to land a kick on Kamu’s butt and ran back shouting feverishly to his friends, “I’ve given him a round kick like tyang!”

  Angry men just arriving asked, “Is it a thief?” because Kamu had ceased to be human.

  The word thief summed up the common enemy. Why there was no supper the previous night; why their children were not on their way to school. Thief was the president who arrived two and a half decades ago waving “democracy” at them, who had recently laughed, “Did I actually say democracy? I was so naive then.” Thief was tax collectors taking their money to redistribute it to the rich. Thief was God poised with a can of aerosol Africancide, his finger pressing hard on the button.

  Voices in the crowd swore they were sick of the police arresting thieves only to see them walk free the following day. No one asked what this thief had stolen apart from he looks like a proper thief, this one, and we’re fed up. Only the councillors knew that Kamu had been on his way to explain where he got the money to buy a gleaming 5-CD player and TV with a detached screen.

  As blows fell on his back, Kamu decided that he was dreaming. He was Kamu Kintu, human. It was them, bantu. Humans. He would wake up any minute. Then he would visit his father Misirayimu Kintu. Nightmares like this come from neglecting his old man. He did not realize that he had shrivelled, that the menacing Chicago Bull had been ripped off his back, that the gray trousers were dirty and one foot had lost its sandal, that the skin on his torso was darker and shiny in swollen parts, that his lips were puffed, that he bled through one nostril and in his mouth, that his left eye had closed and only the right eye stared. Kamu carried on dreaming.

  Just then, a man with fresh fury arrived with an axe. He had the impatient wrath of: You’re just caressing the rat. He swung and struck Kamu’s head with the back of the axe, kppau. Stunned, Kamu fell. He fell next to a pile of concrete blocks. The man heaved a block above his head, staggered under the weight and released the block. Kamu’s head burst and spilled gray porridge. The mob screamed and scattered in horror. The four councillors vanished.

  Kamu’s right eye stared.

  Kamu’s woman only found out about his death when a neighbor’s child, who had been on his way to school, ran back home and shouted, “Muka Kamu, Muka Kamu! Your man has been killed! Th
ey said that he is a thief!”

  The woman ran to the road. In the distance, she saw a body lying on the ground with a block on top of its head. She recognized the gray trousers and the sandal. She ran back to the house and locked the door. Then she trembled. Then she sat on the armchair. Then she stood up and held her arms on top of her head. She removed them from her head and beat her thighs whispering, “Maama, maama, maama,” as if her body were on fire. She sipped a long sustained breath of air to control her sobs but her lungs could not hold so much air for so long—it burst out in a sob. She shook her body as if she were lulling a crying baby on her back but in the end she gave up and tears flowed quietly. She refused to come out to the women who knocked on her door to soothe and cry with her. But solitary tears are such that they soon dry.

  The woman closed her eyes and looked at herself. She could stay in Bwaise and mourn him; running would imply guilt. But beyond that, what? Kamu was not coming back. She opened her eyes and saw the 5-CD player, the TV with the detached screen, the Johnson sofa set and the double bed. She asked herself, “Do you have his child? No. Has he introduced you to his family? No. And if you had died, would Kamu slip you between earth’s sheets and walk away? Yes.”

  The following morning, the two rooms Kamu and his woman had occupied were empty.

  Three months later, on Good Friday, the 9th of April 2004, Bwaise woke up to find the four councillors’ and six other men’s corpses—all involved in Kamu’s death—strewn along the main street. Bwaise, a callous town, shrugged its shoulders and said, “Their time was up.”

  But three people, two men and a woman, whose market stalls were held up by the slow removal of the corpses linked the massacre to Kamu’s death.

  “They raided a deadly colony of bees,” the first man said. “Some blood is sticky: you don’t just spill it and walk away like that.”

  But the second man was not sure; he blamed fate. “It was in the name,” he said. “Who would name his child first Kamu and then Kintu?”

  “Someone seeking to double the curse,” the first man sucked his teeth.

  But the woman, chewing on sugar cane, shook her head, “Uh uh.” She sucked long and noisily on the juice and then spat out the chaff. “Even then,” she pointed in the direction of the corpses with her mouth, “that is what happens to a race that fails to raise its value on the market.”

  BOOK ONE

  KINTU KIDDA

  1.

  BUDDU PROVINCE, BUGANDA:

  The Moon of Gatonya, 1750

  Midnight

  It was odd the relief Kintu felt as he stepped out of his house. A long and perilous journey lay ahead. At the end of the journey was a royal storm—the princes had been fighting for the throne again and weapons had not yet been put away. He could be carried back, his head severed from his shoulders—commoners tended to lose their heads when royals fought. Yet, Kintu Kidda, Ppookino of Buddu Province, was glad to step away from his home.

  It was Babirye, his other wife.

  Kintu had last seen her in the morning, taking the goats to feed on banana peels. Her eyes were angry and he had looked away. Kintu had never found respite in Babirye’s eyes, not even on their wedding day. He thought of the fabled men who unwittingly married spirits but then dismissed the thought. Babirye was not a demon, just a dreadful woman. He shooed her out of his mind. It would be unwise to carry the extra weight of a glowering wife on this journey.

  He paused at the threshold of Mayirika, his principal residence. The world was still. A spray of young stars streaked the sky on his right. On the left, a few lone ones, elderly, blinked tiredly. Around him, the midnight air was cold and calm. Darkness was thick. Fireflies tried to puncture it—on, off, on, off—in vain. Kintu was satisfied with the conditions. It was the reason why he and his men were setting off at midnight. They would make good distance before dawn broke and then there would be a short space when the sun was still lethargic. At midday when the sun started to bake the world, they would stop for the day and sleep until midnight when they would set off again.

  From where he stood, Kintu could hear Nnondo, his headman, briefing the men below the courtyard, at the gate. He could not see them but he felt the feverish excitement of the younger men, probably impatient to start the journey. The older men were good at masking their excitement. Kintu touched his short spear, which he kept in a sheath near his stomach. He adjusted his barkcloth and then the leopard skin on top. He stepped away from his threshold.

  As he walked across the vast courtyard, two figures scurried out of the older boys’ house. His sons, Kalema and Baale, were late and had missed the briefing. Kalema was going to find work in the capital while Baale wanted to accompany his brother until daybreak when he would return home. Kintu shook his head as they ran past.

  “You two should have been women.”

  As his men closed the outer reed gate, something made Kintu look back. The three main houses, now silhouettes, were silent. As instructed, everyone, including his twin wives Nnakato and Babirye, children, and servants, were in bed. Yet, he felt someone, something spying. He hesitated a moment then stepped into the journey.

  Kintu was on his way to Lubya to pay homage to Kyabaggu, the new kabaka. Kyabaggu had grabbed the throne and announced Lubya Hill the new capital, claiming that Namugala had abdicated. No one believed him. The ba kabaka did not give away their thrones like that. Until Namugala was pronounced dead, the kingdom stood on its toes with apprehension.

  Kintu was traveling with a modest entourage of twenty-five men chosen and led by his headman and trusted guard, Nnondo. All the men were warriors. Kintu did not know what to expect of Kyabaggu but taking a large group of bambowa was reckless. In any case, if Kyabaggu wanted to slay him, the men would not be able to protect him. As a new kabaka who had recently plucked the throne from his own brother, Kyabaggu would be jittery. Kintu was surprised that Kyabaggu had toppled his own mother’s child. Normally, the mother was a binding force among sons, but then again, royals were hardly normal. These were terrible times to be of royal birth. Kings and princes lived the shortest lives. Any prince could stake claim to the throne at any time. The victor often massacred his siblings and cousins. Clever women did not declare their sons princes. Cleverer women watched the throne and alerted their sons when it was ripe for seizure.

  In his service as Ppookino, Kintu had so far served five kings. He remembered Kagulu, the first kabaka he served. In his short reign, Kagulu had slaughtered more subjects than goats. In the quarterly lukiiko, the parliament sessions, governors watched their breath. Kagulu turned like the Nnalubaale Lake—now serene; now agitated; now deadly; now laughing. The gods deserted Kagulu after he put his half-brother, Musanje, to death for killing another brother, Luyenje, while wrestling. Fearing for their lives, Musanje’s brothers, the ones he shared a mother with, fled led by their elder sister Nnassolo, taking Musanje’s three little boys as well.

  When Kintu next came for the lukiiko, Kagulu’s palace at Bulizo was eerily silent. It was as if Kagulu was aware that his days were numbered. No one knew where Nnassolo and her siblings had fled. But everyone knew that she was a wrathful princess. Soon after Kintu returned to Buddu, news arrived that Bulizo was under siege. Nnassolo was back rumbling like Kiyira, the Nile. Kagulu fled and Nnassolo pursued him. Kagulu was as swift as a kob on a savannah but Nnassolo was relentless: she wanted his jawbone. For a time, Kagulu hid in ditches and caves in Buto region. When he was captured, Kagulu who had put masses to the spear, would not face his own death like a man. Mercifully, Nnassolo had him drowned.

  Nnassolo then installed the softly-softly older brother Kikulwe as kabaka. Kintu knew right away that Kikulwe would not last. History showed that kings who fought for the throne kept it longer than those who merely received it, and Kikulwe was naive. As if it would heal the kingdom, he brought music and merriment. He danced too far, too long from his throne and his brother Mawanda snatched it. Kintu laughed as he remembered Mawanda’s excuse: apparently, the gentle
Kikulwe had dug a staked pit to kill him.

  Mawanda’s reign, though longer and more prosperous, was dogged by rumors skeptical of his royal heritage. Eventually, Musanje’s three sons, the ones he and Nnassolo had fled with, deposed Mawanda. Kintu sucked his teeth. Mawanda had brought up the boys himself! Then the three vipers went on to succeed each other in madness. The eldest, Mwanga, lasted only nine days as ruler despite sacrificing a maternal cousin to guarantee a long reign. The cousin’s enraged father killed him before his buttocks warmed the throne. As Kintu set off to pay homage to Mwanga, Namugala, the second viper, was planning his own elaborate coronation at Naggalabi. During Namugala’s eight-year reign, there was peace and quiet. But Kyabaggu, the youngest viper, was restless. Now, he had pounced. Kintu sighed. Abdication indeed: the way the monarch took subjects for fools!

  Kintu put the instability of Buganda’s throne down to the women. Unlike commoners, a kabaka’s children took after their mother’s clan. Though this ensured the distribution of the kabakaship to the different clans in Buganda, the custom bestowed immense power to a king’s mother, the namasole. To protect their position, incumbent king mothers encouraged brothers to inherit the throne. The three vipers shared a mother, Nnabulya. Ruthlessly ambitious, Nnabulya had sowed yearning for the throne in all three young princes. Kintu saw her hand in the malicious slander questioning Mawanda’s royal lineage. But what had she gained? Mwanga was dead, Namugala was exiled, probably dead too, and Kyabaggu was bound to die the same way. Kintu suspected that Nnabulya, who had held rivalling courts during Namugala’s reign, had feared that half-brothers would easily depose her weak son and orchestrated the abdication story. In Kyabaggu, Nnabulya had a third chance to be king mother.