Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  There was silence as the elders digested this information.

  “We’re not discouraging you,” another councillor broke the silence. “You’re welcome to explore both Nnakato’s forest and her hill. After all, if you are impostors, Nnakato can look after herself.”

  For Miisi, listening to the councillors, it was amazing how the Kintu story had mutated over the centuries. Kintu Kidda, the essence of everything, had been erased from Kiyiika’s memory while Nnakato had flourished to divine proportions. When he asked the councillors what they knew about Nnakato’s legend one of them explained, “Nnakato was a powerful matriarch who gave birth to twins only, apart from her last and favorite son, Baale. But then her family suffered a great tragedy in which family members died, including Baale. Nnakato is said to have taken her life afterwards.”

  “Some say that Babirye, Nnakato’s twin, killed Baale inadvertently and she disappeared: that is where the whole tragedy started,” another councillor interjected.

  “What we’re sure of is that Nnakato is still searching: some say for Babirye, others say it is Baale she seeks.”

  According to the villagers, the presence of Nnakato the spirit came with emizizo—dos and don’ts. It was taboo to cut trees or collect firewood in her forest.

  “When you harvest anything—fruit, vegetables, or honey—leave half behind for her.”

  When a resident was caught by rain in Nnakato’s forest, it was advisable to run because she strolled in the rain. At night, if one heard footsteps behind them, it was best not to look back: it could be Nnakato.

  “She has a pet leopard, you see.”

  The elders sat up.

  “It’s harmless.” The eldest councillor waved their fears away. “You’ll be lucky to see it. But if you do, pretend not to have seen it. All it means is that Nnakato is close by.”

  “Don’t keep fire burning in the night.”

  Pressed by Miisi, the councilors confessed that none of them had actually ever sighted Nnakato the spirit themselves.

  “Some people have seen her hanging like a bat on a tree.”

  “Didn’t old Nnabayego see her at high noon bathing in that gorge?”

  “There is a gorge?” Miisi asked.

  “Yes, it watered the family in Nnakato’s time.”

  The elders exchanged looks. Miisi was bewitched. Here was an ancient story kept alive by the breath of belief. And he, Misirayimu Kintu, was at the center of it. It did not matter that he did not believe the spiritual aspect of it: what mattered was that for some reason, tradition had preserved the history of his ancestry.

  “If Nnakato has been calling then this is us answering,” Bweeza stated extravagantly.

  The councilors still looked skeptical. Miisi expounded on their plans and gave the councillors the schedule for the family reunion. “We will hold the homecoming rites during the Easter weekend—from Good Friday the ninth to Easter Monday the twelfth of April. However, some cousins might arrive earlier and some might leave later. Before then, we shall return to tour both Nnakato’s hill and the little forest. There will also be other family members coming to prepare the place. However, any cousins that come will report to you first and inform you of their intentions.”

  The councillors were happy with this.

  “As you can see,” Bweeza added, “We are ignorant where Nnakato the spirit is concerned. Could you guide us on how to behave when we’re on her land?”

  “That we shall do,” the councillors promised.

  Before leaving, Miisi asked the councillors how far away the border with Tanzania was.

  “Get to the top of Nnakato’s hill and roll down the other end. At the bottom you’ll be in Tanzania.”

  Miisi whistled. “That’s what the British call a close shave. A slight wavering in the colonial pen and Nnakato would be Tanzanian.”

  “Would the Tanzanians let us claim our heritage?”

  “Ask Idi Amin what happened when he tried.”

  The journey back to Kampala was easier. The elders arrived in o Lwera at about six thirty. Men displayed fresh fish and other foodstuffs by the roadside. Miisi reflected on the terrors o Lwera once held for travelers. Sayings and proverbs suggested that it was a daunting endless desert. Now, with the modern Masaka Road cutting across its center, o Lwera was just a harmless stretch of moorland. He looked through the window to the right; Lake Victoria was a gray line on the horizon.

  “You know,” Miisi said aloud, “Sometimes I wonder who would name this lake Victoria and call Lutanzige, a tiny one with no relation to Nnalubaale, Albert.”

  “They pissed on every landmark, these guys,” Kitooke said.

  “I still can’t get over the councillors’ trust though,” Bweeza changed the subject. “They’ve handed over hundreds of acres of land and community heritage to us just like that.”

  “They have not,” Kityo clicked his tongue. “Go build a private house on it and see.”

  “We must put back something in the community,” Miisi said quietly. “We could rebuild the kitawuluzi or contribute to their schools.”

  “There you go now thinking that they need our help,” Bweeza snapped. “That is how people start feeling inadequate. Soon Kiyiika will be begging. As long as they are not starving or sick I suggest we leave them alone.”

  The car fell silent.

  2.

  Good Friday, April 9, 2004

  Kanani woke up tired. He had not yet recovered from the journey to Kiyiika. The uneven ground he had slept on did not help: every inch of his body ached. As he became conscious, he remembered that today was the beginning of the biggest crusade of his life yet Faisi, his indefatigable fighter, was not by his side. He sat up and knelt on his sleeping bag to pray. He asked God to abide by him all weekend as he clashed with the Devil in his clan.

  He reached into his bag and retrieved his little wonder, a tiny camping radio/torch/alarm. It was sheathed in a brown leather wallet. He pulled the segmented antenna out to half a meter long and turned on the radio. After a few moments of static jarring as he searched the waves for a clear channel, the news in Luganda came on. There had been a massacre in Bwaise: four local councillors and six other residents had been murdered. Kanani sucked his teeth at how easy yet effective the Devil’s work was while he struggled to make even a tiny impact. This made him more determined than ever to save as many souls as he could this weekend. When the news ended, he turned off the radio, unzipped the entrance to his tent, bent his head, and stepped outside.

  The morning was still cold because the sun took time to filter through the canopy. In the clearing nearby were four massive open tents. Further in the wooded area, numerous traditional tents made out of sticks and dried banana leaves hung around trees. Kanani guessed that there were at least two hundred cousins camping so far. Apparently, a large group had arrived from Tanzania and they spoke Luganda proper. Looking around, the clan was clearly deep in a spiritual jungle. Kanani saw himself at the forefront of clearing the bush to let “the light” in but fatigue overwhelmed him. There was so much work to do, too little time to do it, and too few people willing to join in. But then, if he failed, the Bible said that stones would preach, spreading the word of God. He dared not fail.

  To his left, further clearing had been done up the hill. At the center of the new clearing, the construction of a shrine was underway. Kanani’s heart lurched. The elders had assured him that they would be constructing a house on the site: a hostel for descendants who would come in search of their roots. But this was no hostel; the circular architecture of the structure and thatch were suspicious. The framework, including the roof, was already in place. Some men weaved reeds between poles to create spaces that would be filled with the mud to form the walls. On one side of the structure, bales of hay lay ready for the roof. On the other, men kneaded mud-dough with their feet. Kanani turned away in repugnance.

  He caught sight of Miisi and stopped. Though dressed traditionally, Cousin Miisi’s posture—the way he held his head,
the unrelenting humility and friendliness—reminded Kanani of the British missionaries that came to Namirembe Cathedral from time to time. There was no English intrusion in Miisi’s speech, but the way he weaved his sentences and his gestures betrayed a distinct Western influence. It is this exoticism that has won him adulation in the clan, Kanani thought contemptuously. Yet if the Devil had taken human form, it was Miisi. To Kanani, despite his professed atheism, Miisi was a more potent weapon for evil than the openly heathen cousins. In the presence of Miisi, Kanani felt he was in the cold and calculating presence of Lucifer. For all his disbelief in the supernatural, Miisi was the so-called chosen one, the one whom the evil spirits spoke through. Yet he had constantly insisted, “My mind is overactive. I must have heard the story of Kintu Kidda as a child before my family died. It must have lain dormant somewhere in the back of my mind.”

  As for the family curse, Miisi argued that it was a documented fact that in Buganda mental health problems such as depression, schizophrenia, and psychosis ran not only in families but in clans—the so-called ebyekika, clan ailings.

  Looking at him now, Kanani decided that Miisi was disturbing. That seamless marriage of heathenism and intellectuality was unnatural. Westernisation erased heathenism in Africans; the humility that Miisi possessed came only with Christ’s saving grace. Only the Great Deceiver could combine the two. Kanani remembered the first elders’ council meeting where he had first met Miisi. Miisi had been hostile right from the start. Kanani had suggested that they open the meeting with a word of prayer when Miisi asked whether any of them knew a traditional prayer.

  “We were rescued from our darkness. We now pray to God the Most High through Jesus Christ,” Kanani had answered.

  “The Most High is a title for the god of the most powerful. Had we conquered Europe and taken our “light” to them, Europeans would be throwing themselves about in trances in the name of Ddunda. Christ would be a pagan god.”

  “But the Romans—”

  “Let’s start,” Kitooke had interrupted and prayer was abandoned.

  Resistance to prayer was a pertinent sign that Cousin Miisi was not innocently misguided but intentionally satanic. Throughout that meeting, Kanani could not keep away the image of Europeans, with their intelligence and poise, throwing themselves about in trances. He had felt sick.

  Kanani turned back to his tent. He squeezed toothpaste onto his toothbrush, picked up a mug of water, and went behind the tent to wash up. Then he set off down the hill toward the kitawuluzi where cars had been parked.

  Paulo, who had slept in the car, was already awake. Despite instructions to keep non-clan members away from the campsite, Kanani asked Paulo to come with him to his tent and to help prepare a place of worship. They laid mats outside Kanani’s tent with Bibles and hymnals. By the time they finished, cousins working on the shrine had halted to have breakfast. Kanani asked Paulo to sit outside the tent while he went out to call people to prayer.

  He approached a small group first. He greeted them and introduced himself as Kanani Kintu, an elder of the clan who was a Saved Christian. “If anyone cares to reflect on the death of Christ this Good Friday, they can come over there to my tent,” he pointed to where Paulo sat.

  At first, Kanani’s invitations were met with polite smiles. No one accepted but no one refused outright until he came upon the group where Bweeza camped. Bweeza promptly launched at him. “What are you doing, Kanani?”

  “Inviting my cousins to morning prayers and to vespers later.”

  “If we wanted to pray to that god we would have invited a proper bishop. As it is, we hired a medium because we want to reach out to the ancestors.”

  “We were set free, Magda. We now have a choice to either go to church or to the shrine. I am only offering an alternative.”

  “Church-going cousins stayed at home. Cardinal Matia Kintu is a brother but he explained that his is a jealous god who can’t stand other gods.” Now Bweeza’s voice rose. “But some Christians are vultures. They stand by as you organize your party. The next thing you know they are waving Bibles at your crowd. Why don’t you organize your own reunion, invite the clan at Namirembe, and give us your version of salvation? As it is, Kanani, you are farting in our reunion.”

  “The cardinal is a cousin?”

  “Are you joking?” Bweeza turned to the voice. “We’ve been up and down this country looking for our blood. But if a whole cardinal did not pontificate, who are you, Kanani?”

  “Kintu is my ancestor too. I came here to acknowledge that. But I am also a child of God. Today, I remember how he sacrificed his only Son for my sins.”

  “Anyone else would be ashamed of human sacrifice, but not you, Kanani.”

  “Christ was not human.”

  Despite Bweeza’s attack, Kanani kept a cheerful face and carried on inviting cousins to prayer. Bweeza was tireless. She had so far attempted to usurp him on the elders’ council. Thankfully, not even heathens would make a woman an elder. Thwarted, Bweeza had lamented, “Our branch of the clan is headed by a fool just because he’s a man.”

  Miisi had told her that he would sooner forget custom and install her as the elder but the rest of the elders had refused, no, no, no, that’s not done; it does not work!

  When Kanani returned to his tent, he was heartened to see two cousins sitting with Paulo. First, they recited the Lord’s Prayer, then there was a reading from the Scriptures followed by a hymn. Kanani talked about God’s love as it manifested on the cross and they sang another hymn. He rounded up the prayer with the Grace.

  As he and Paulo rolled the mats and put the Bibles away, Kanani felt lifted: legions of angels were on his side. He would dismantle the curse and crash the Devil. This reunion was crop, his job was to bring in the harvest. He looked at Paulo putting things away. Lately he had felt haunted by his grandson. Was this a sign that he, Kanani, was losing his faith? For example, in the past, he would have brought Faisi to the reunion, regardless of what the clan said. They would have overrun this place with the word of God, giving the Devil a bloody nose. Yet, here he was asking people whether they wanted to pray!

  “I’ll go back to the car park,” Paulo said.

  As Paulo walked down the hill, Kanani dismissed his anxiety about bringing him along. All would be well.

  3.

  Saturday, April 10, 2004

  Isaac took off his shoes to lie down. It was only four o’clock but he had returned to the tent to catch some sleep. He had been on the go since the start of the week and was exhausted. Kizza was out with the other children playing and would not be back to the tent until after supper, to sleep. He lay down on a mat and propped his head on his bag for a pillow. He rolled onto his back and tried to sleep. Then he opened his eyes and stared at the army-green converse of the tent above. Thoughts had started to plague him. He refused to think about the future. Instead he reflected on how life had led him to this place. In terms of relations, he was now rich. It was interesting listening to relatives talk about their mental disorders or other problems with pride as if it were a badge confirming Kintu as their ancestor. Brothers who did not have a problem to complain about—to Isaac the clan was made up of brothers, sisters, and elders—seemed to lack the conviction that they were true descendants of Kintu.

  Before meeting the elders on the council, Isaac had been dismissive of his father’s family’s claim of a family curse. After all, every family—in a bid to make their roots seem deep and profound—claim some kind of spiritual inheritance. Isaac had never met a mental health sufferer who accepted his mental condition as just that—people always claimed that it had to be supernatural. Then he met the council of elders, all of them more educated than he was but believing, except Elder Miisi who was skeptical. Now, here he was with hundreds of relations, many with stories of their lives, or stories of relatives they had known to suffer the curse. It felt as if all his life he had been walking on a road leading here. He was home.

  “Uncle Isaac,” a boy broke into his r
everie.

  Isaac sat up.

  “Elder Miisi says that the medium has arrived and you are needed at the shrine.”

  Isaac stood up, put his fatigue aside, slipped on his shoes, and walked out of the tent.

  The shrine was completed.

  As Isaac walked toward it, he was overcome by emotion. Did Mayirika occupy this same spot? Did Baale and Kalema play about here? Does the ground remember Kintu’s feet? The ground has a memory he was sure: it was beyond comprehension, beyond sight, and beyond touch but he knew it. Otherwise, how else could he explain the hundreds of Kintu’s descendants gathered now in this place?

  At the threshold, an organic scent from the hay that carpeted the shrine greeted him. It was of the morning earth—open fields and dew. Isaac took his shoes off and walked in. The hay tickled his feet. The stillness and partial darkness inside created an ambience of reverence, as if the ancients hovered. Elder Miisi sat awkwardly on the floor. Next to him, two men sat on a mat. When Isaac sat down, Elder Miisi made the introductions. “Isaac, this is Muganda, the medium. The gentleman next to him is Nsimbi, his assistant.” Miisi turned to Muganda and said, “Isaac is our son: he represents his father who cannot be with us. However, Isaac is one of those sons you can rely on as much as an elder.”

  “Isn’t it wonderful to meet such young men?” Muganda shook Isaac’s trembling hand.

  Muganda took Isaac by surprise. First of all, he was not much older than him. Secondly, Muganda wore slacks and a polo shirt. The strap of his TAG Heuer watch was thick and wide. His hair and beard were manicured to sharp edges and he spoke in soft tones. Isaac was confused. He had expected an old man, tired from carrying the weight of spirits on his head, with hair in matted dreadlocks because the spirits would not allow him to cut it.

  “Muganda and I met at Cambridge a long time ago,” Miisi was saying. “Before you came, Isaac, I was asking him whether he completed his course.” Now Miisi turned to Muganda, “You arrived just before I finished my research.”