Let's Tell This Story Properly

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

  But I had become increasingly aware of the entrepreneurial nature of evangelical churches like Dad’s. Looking around at people way poorer than us parting with their money as offerings, hoping for blessings, money which I suspected ended up at our table, was distressing. I stopped mentioning that Dad was a church minister when I read that article about Ugandan pastors cruising around in Hummers, showing off their lavish lifestyles, ostensibly to demonstrate that they were true prophets because god had blessed them with wealth. Dad had numerous businesses, but it was not clear whether they were his businesses or church properties. Often I wondered whether to stop taking his money, but I was too weak.

  Still, even though I stood outside faith, the emotions in the air that first Sunday were tangible. Dad whipped them up. They rose and ebbed: now outrage, then sadness, now anger, then love, now fear, then triumph.

  ‘For ten years,’ he was saying, ‘three seats on this row’—he pointed to where we sat—‘have been empty, to remind me of what I did, amen?’

  ‘Amen!’

  ‘But today, two of them have been filled. Is god good?’

  ‘All the time!’

  ‘I said, is my god good?’

  The response almost broke my ears.

  He paused. Silence fell.

  ‘I am not saying that everything is back to normal—how? After what I did? When you break your skin, it will heal, but the scar is indelible. The skin is saying, this is what happens when you are careless with your body, amen?’

  ‘Amen.’

  ‘But today, though I stand here covered in scars, I look down there and I see my beautiful girls. Nnaava there reminds me of her mother when I first met her. Nnabakka is so tall she wants to touch the roof of this church. Then I ask myself, is god good or is god good?’

  ‘Aaaaall the tiiiime!’

  ‘They’ll be going back to Britain because Nnabakka is starting university in September, but today, right now, my family, all of it, is heeeeere in this rooooom and I—’

  The congregation did not wait for him to finish. We all stood up clapping, nodding at the goodness of god, Dad wiping away his tears, Nnaava sniffing, and even I allowed Dad’s pain to flow down my face. I could not glance at Mum. But I felt the static in the air around her. As if everyone was trying not to glance at her. I prayed that she had stood up, that she had at least sniffed. The congregation was loving Dad, it forgave him a long time ago, and Mum had better be receiving him too. Otherwise she would seem like a bitter woman.

  At the end of the sermon, we stepped outside and the brethren came to greet us. We had taken care to hide the fact that we were broke in Britain. We dared not look less than First World. People would laugh at Mum: She stole the children away from their father but they look worse than us Third Worlders! I wore a lace bodycon dress; Nnaava, being a bride-to-be, wore sheer silk. But once we stepped outside church, Birabwa, Aunt Ndagire’s eldest daughter, joined us. She pointed at my dress.

  ‘We have that fashion here already: you can get that dress for fifty thousand shillings in town.’

  ‘Oh really?’ That was about £15. I bought that dress for £80 in Debenhams.

  ‘Yeah, these days we don’t have to wait for hand-me-downs from the West four years after they’re out of fashion. As soon as your summer ranges are out, the Chinese duplicate them for us, and by Christmas we’re wearing them.’

  Birabwa must have seen the disbelief on my face because she added, ‘Obviously, it’s a cheaper imitation, but who cares?’

  ‘China my ass,’ Nnaava mumbled.

  • • •

  When Mum finally exploded, it was at Red Dragon Supermarket, near Kobil in Kawempe. It was not at Dad but at a Chinese woman working on the till. As soon as she saw her, Mum’s eyes darkened. By the time she finished paying, her mouth was so elongated it could have touched her nose. She grabbed her bags and, ignoring the woman’s thank you, stomped out. We had hardly stepped outside when she burst out: ‘You mean she wrote “cashier in a supermarket” on her visa application? Have we no cashiers here that we have to import them from China?’

  Mum was like that. She conveniently forgot that she was an immigrant in Britain. I was about to remind her but Nnaava beat me to it. As we got back into the car—the heat raging in the air, a coating of sweat and dust caking my skin and a man who reminded me of a hornbill screeching ‘Jesus is coming’ at us—Nnaava said: ‘But Mum, when you applied for your British visa, did you write “cleaner”?’

  Mum waited until she had sat down in the car and closed the door. Then she turned to us in the back seat, eyes blazing how dare.

  ‘There is a difference between me, an African from one of the poorest economies in the world going to Britain and becoming a cleaner, and a Chinese woman who has come to invest in my country ending up working on the till. These people are blinding us, building a stadium here and a road there. Soon they’ll have our economy in their hands!’

  ‘I don’t mind them running our economy,’ Kajja said as he started the car. ‘I’m fed up with the thieves. Uganda is not a cake that you cut a slice from and eat. A hundred years ago the British came and created a European-like economy to extract as much wealth as they could for themselves. Let the Chinese come too. Let’s see what model they have to offer. If we don’t like it, we’ll start a war and they’ll pack their bags. They know it: we know it.’

  ‘Listen to that!’ Mum waved her hands in despair. ‘So, you drive the lizards out and let the geckos in?’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘What? Do you know what’s happening to Ghana? Hordes and hordes of illegal Chinese immigra—’

  Kajja stepped on the brakes and hurled us forward. He had been reversing into the road when he almost backed into a boda boda with two Chinese men squeezed on the back.

  ‘Look at that.’ Mum’s voice was savage. ‘Did you see that? Two of them squeezed on the back of a motorcycle. They’re going to die here.’ She waved an angry hand at the disappearing boda boda.

  ‘Don’t worry about Chinese people,’ Kajja said, ‘They are like us. Some are even poorer. They live among us. They don’t even have servants. You never see them parading wealth like whites. Besides, they have no intention of staying here. They’ve been here how long now—fifteen, twenty years—but I’ve not seen a mixed-race child.’

  Mum’s mouth clamped tight.

  ‘Look at what happened after the Italians were evacuated from Abyssinia to Toro: was it in 1945?’ Kajja saw me look at Nnaava and explained, ‘Those Italians did not stay long but they left behind a legion of children called a Baitale, fatherless all their lives, but not the Chinese.’

  Still Mum did not join in. Her mouth remained fastened. Nnaava noticed and touched my hand like shut up.

  To me, immigration was something that Europe and the USA suffered. In Britain, the way they go on about it you feel as though the whole of Africa is in transit on boats, planes and foot, gunning for the UK. But then you returned home and Kampala was no longer the city you left behind. Areas that were just Sudanese. Little Mogadishu in Kisenyi. Nigerians were no longer a curiosity. Neither were Afrikaners. Yet Ugandans did not seem bothered. It was Mum who, ironically, was British.

  Later in the evening Nnaava told me about Mum’s brother Ssimbwa. He was finishing at Peking University. China had invited him to go. Then the Nanjing anti-African riots took place. Grandfather asked him to come home but he said the riots were far from where he was. Next, the Ugandan embassy rang to say that Ssimbwa had committed suicide, jumped out of a window. The body was repatriated with specific instructions not to open the coffin—the embalming chemicals were lethal if inhaled. They underestimated the Gandas’ relationship to their dead. Grandfather and his sons took axes to the coffin. You could bury all sorts among our dead. It was Uncle Ssimbwa alright. Sealed in a see-through plastic bag like a fish. No broken bones. Just torture marks, eyes gouged out. When he reported it to the embassy, Grandfather was told, ‘Go home and bury your son; you’re lucky you got him ba
ck.’

  • • •

  The weekend of Nnaava’s rituals arrived. Mum’s and Dad’s families came on Saturday evening to help with chores. Aunt Muwunde, Dad’s eldest sister, was chosen to be Nnaava’s official aunt for the rites and to oversee her marriage afterwards. Nnaava chose her because Muwunde had lived in the US back in the 1980s. She would understand the complexities of a diasporic marriage.

  I liked Aunt Muwunde but I had reservations. Firstly, while Nnaava and Mulumba were Saved, Aunt Muwunde was not. Secondly, Aunt Muwunde did not shy away from confrontation. On the eve of the rites, as we had supper, in the presence of all other relatives, she called Dad over.

  ‘Muwanga?’

  Dad had discarded that name. To him, Muwanga, a Ganda god, was heathen. Dad’s surname was Ssajjalyayesu. But Aunt Muwunde had rejected it because it had neither clan nor totem. But being older than Dad she could talk to him in any way she wished.

  ‘Where is our other child?’ she asked. ‘Eh, you did it, it’s done. Stop hiding him and let’s love our child.’

  Mum can be smooth when she’s ready. If her husband was to be flogged publicly, she would be the one to do it. She took the words out of Aunt Muwunde’s mouth and said rather softly:

  ‘Yes, Pastor, bring him to his sister’s rites. Let him wear his kanzu. He’s the muko.’

  Mum, uttering those words—He’s the muko, the head of the serpent which had been stalking us since we arrived—was cut off. She was not only acknowledging him, she was inviting him. But for me, the child, who for the last ten years had been nameless and faceless, took on a new significance. Brothers give away their sisters.

  He arrived quite late the following day, at 1.30 p.m., an hour before Mulumba’s clan arrived. When I saw mother and son, I groped for Nnaava, but she was not there to die with me. Here was Dad’s act personified. The physicality blew common sense out of me. Mum’s outrage became mine. This was no longer an accident but intentional. Where was Nnaava?

  I texted her: They’re here. Hurry, I am dying.

  And the boy’s mother? I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

  Where are you, Nnavs? You need to see for yourself.

  The mother wore an orange and blue Shanghai gown. It was clearly a ceremonial dress but in my anger I thought that she should have worn a busuuti if she wanted to blend in. And then from afar she looked ridiculously young: not much older than Nnaava.

  Mum must have seen me scowl, for she leaned forward and whispered, ‘She’s a teacher: teaches Mandarin.’

  ‘Mandarin, who needs Mandarin?’

  ‘People doing business in China. Now she has a Ugandan passport.’

  ‘What use is it to her?’

  ‘Free movement within East Africa and other African countries.’

  I looked at the woman again. She had brought a Ugandan friend, a woman. They were talking. The way she rubbed her back and cast her eyes on the ground, she knew we were watching. Mum crossed her legs aggressively. The left leg, on top, swung as if it would kick the woman out of the marquee.

  I turned my eyes to the boy. He was greeting everyone in the marquee, coming towards us. My pulse accelerated. Nnaava had not arrived.

  In some ways, he was a typical ten-year-old—big front teeth, legs too long for the rest of his body, perfect skin. But in other ways there was something about his Chinese-African look with a Huey Freeman afro that made you stare beyond politeness. His forehead was shaved and manicured Ganda-style. His hue was darker than mixed race. He was smiling, confident even. Very comfortable. Everyone stared, and Ugandans stare hard, but he was not bothered. I suspected he was enjoying it.

  Nnaava arrived, but there was no time to die of shock because the boy was upon us.

  I pointed with my mouth towards him: ‘That’s him!’

  Nnaava gasped. Her grip on my hand was all I needed.

  Aunt Muwunde must have been aunting that boy all along; the way she was familiar with him! She introduced us.

  ‘These are your sisters. Look at them properly.’ Then she asked, “Have you seen them, Bwema?’

  ‘Bwema?’ I blurted the name before I could stop myself.

  ‘Bwemage.’

  That shut me up. Mum’s mouth wriggled from side to side as if rinsing the warning in the name out of her mouth. I suspected Aunt Muwunde. She was the kind to name such a child Innocent.

  ‘Happy to see you, Nnaava,’ the boy mumbled, extending his hand, but Nnaava hugged him so I hugged him too. He moved on to greet other relatives. Before we could whisper anything to each other, a woman behind us made throaty clicks and whispered, ‘Our blood tends to pull children towards us, no matter the race they are born into, but he refused. All we got is hair and colour.’

  ‘Yes, the mother pulled him towards herself,’ another agreed.

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head because Ugandan tongues know no bounds! Nnaava slapped my back: Hold yourself together.

  But Mum replied—there was no doubt that she was responding to the woman even though she spoke to Dad: ‘You’ve done well to teach him his language, Pastor. Another person would have left him to float in the middle, speaking English only.’

  It was like a cue for everyone else to complement Dad on ‘our’ child speaking proper Luganda. But the women behind us were not going to let Mum and Dad play happy families.

  ‘Ah ha,’ one of them sighed. ‘China too has arrived.’

  ‘Bwoleka, in a special way, it came into this house: straight for the hearth.’

  I stood up, turned to the women. ‘Is that why you came?’

  ‘Yeah’—Nnaava joined me—‘to eat, to count the children in the family and to give them positions?’

  ‘That’s not what we meant.’ The women looked around as people shifted restlessly, sucking their teeth, clicking.

  ‘The girls are putting words in our mouths; it’s not what we meant.’

  Mum raised her voice. ‘Pastor, give Bwema his kanzu. He must get ready for his role. Has he been coached on what to say?’

  • • •

  We were in the middle of the rites. Nnaava and I sat on a mat facing Mulumba and his clan. Nnaava had changed into a different busuuti for this phase of the rites. Aunt Muwunde had done her part. As Nnaava’s mouthpiece, she had told Dad’s spokesman that she was old enough to leave home and start a home of her own, that she had found someone to do it with.

  Dad’s spokesman was reluctant to let her go, citing the bad ways of such random men as you meet on the road, besides, she was still too young, but Aunt Muwunde insisted that she was going with her man. Dad’s spokesman, heartbroken, agreed to let her go. He asked her to show the family the specific person she intended to make a home with.

  Now Aunt Muwunde put a garland around Mulumba’s neck and there was applause.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Dad’s spokesman brushed the clapping aside.

  Mulumba’s spokesman looked up, feigning worry.

  So far, the negotiations had been about language and wit. Mulumba’s spokesman had hitherto spoken beautifully, backing out of any corners Dad’s spokesman tried to put him in, without offence. But he was yet to convince our spokesman to let Mulumba be born into our house. Dad’s spokesman was focused on making it impossible for him to ask by humiliating him, stalling and pouring scorn on his words. And so, although the garland was draped around Mulumba’s neck, his request, to become part of our family, was yet to be accepted.

  ‘You can wear the garland,’ Dad’s spokesman said, ‘It’s nothing special: that’s how we treat our visitors. However, if you are serious about being born in our house, you must have talked to our son, who would be your muko.’

  The confusion on Mulumba’s face was priceless. His spokesman tried to hide his surprise behind a smile.

  Our side of the family stirred: Ahaa, we’ve got you!

  I looked at Nnaava like Didn’t you tell Mulumba about the boy? She closed her eyes: Oh my god. Bwemage was our family’s secret weapon.

  Mulumba�
��s spokesman asked for a moment to confer with the groom. It was embarrassing to ask for a timeout, in fact, humiliating to confer—a sign that Mulumba’s family had not done their homework—but under the circumstances, there was no way around it. For them to say that they did not know about a son would be deeply offensive: they could be thrown out of the marquee and told to go back and get their facts right. But to lie that they knew him was to walk into a trap.

  After conferring, Mulumba’s spokesman came back and claimed, ‘Of course we know our muko: how could we not?’ Perhaps he thought Dad’s spokesman was bluffing.

  There was silence at the blatant lie. I wondered how Mulumba’s spokesman would extricate himself, especially when he realised that there was an actual son. Dad’s spokesman stood up. He turned to our family and said, ‘He says he knows his muko even though he had to confer first,’ and there were derisive noises from our relations. He turned to Mulumba’s spokesman and said, ‘If you know him very well, what’s his name?’

  I stole a look at Mulumba and mouthed, ‘Bwemage.’

  Dad’s spokesman saw me and shouted, ‘Nnabakka: keep your eyes on the ground.’ To Mulumba’s spokesman he warned, ‘Be careful, we don’t give birth to liars in this house!’

  Nnaava’s hand was shaking. I put mine on top of it.

  For a moment, Mulumba’s spokesman was tongue-tied.

  Dad’s spokesman went in for the kill: ‘Do you still want our girl, or have you changed your mind? Look, we have crops to bring in from the fields and animals to collect from grazing ku ttale, we don’t have time to sit here and look at a suitor who doesn’t even know the name of the muko who will give him the woman he has come for. You can leave when you are ready. Children,’ Dad’s spokesman called like he was going back to running his house, ‘have you finished doing your homework? We need to—’