by Davina Philomena Kawuma Download pdf epub html
It has just occurred to me that, in all the time I’ve used taxis, and I’ve used taxis for a very long time, I’ve never sat in one in which a passenger has farted.
Remarkable, isn’t it?
It is not as if our Members of Parliament passed a law against farting in taxis. (And where there’s no law, there’s no transgression.) People fart everywhere else—in classrooms, in restaurants, while queuing in a bank, next to the photocopier—all the time. I expect them to fart in taxis, as well.
Consider this:
At any time T, I am probably thirty minutes away from my destination and there are thirteen people in the taxi with me (not counting the driver and his conductor). Still, no one farts. I’ve sat next to people whose mouths smell like sewers, whose armpits smell like fish out of water, who haven’t brushed or bathed in at least a month. I’ve sat in taxis that smell like abattoirs. However, I’m yet to sit next to someone who smells like intestinal gas.
Amazing!
If Sweetheart were older, I’d share my amazement with her, as discretely as possible, now-now. But she’s five, and touching everything—
The window, the worn fabric on the car seats, the spare tire on which she’s resting her shoes, the tips of her shoes, the smiley face on the 91.3 Capital FM sticker, the—
‘Don’t TOUCH that!’ I smack Sweetheart’s hand away from the empty yoghurt container on the floor. ‘What’s WRONG with you? Can’t you see how DIRTY that thing is?’
‘Oh man,’ Sweetheart says. ‘I mean “oh woman.”’
Under different circumstances, I’d have said ‘Hah! Only five but already politically correct. Brilliant!’ and applauded. Under thesecircumstances, I’m grabbing my bag and looking for the hand sanitizer I bought (two for the price of one; how could I resist?) from Mega Standard (the new supermarket in Aponye City Mall). Then I’m whipping out the small bottle, squirting sanitizer into Sweetheart’s tiny hands, asking her to rub, RUB—no, not like that! like this—her hands together. Above these circumstances, I’m thinking she probably heard that on TV and wondering if I should applaud unoriginality.
‘Smells.’ Sweetheart is sniffing the blobs of sanitizer on her hand. ‘Laik ba bo gam.’
Because this is what it comes down to for children, right?—the smell of bubble-gum?
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and will myself to find the patience, the goodwill, to get through this week of babysitting. I wonder if wanting to slap her, right now, makes me a bad relative.
‘RUB your hands. Like so.’
‘Laikso,’ Sweetheart says, and then giggles.
‘Do that until all the sanitizer disappears.’
‘Dotha tuntil ol thas anitaz these are pears.’
‘That’s not what I sound like.’
‘Tha snot watasound laik.’
‘That’s not what I said.’
‘Tha snot watasaid.’
‘Stop imitating me.’
‘Stopimi tetin me.’
‘You think this is funny?’
‘Youth ink thisis funny?’
—Why do children have to touch everything?—or make a game out of things one has no business making games out of? I’ll ask Becky. She’ll probably have the answers to those questions. Becky’s pharmacy is at least forty minutes away, if I adjust for the traffic jam at Queens Way and the time it’ll take this taxi to kujula. Meanwhile, I will entertain myself with mental lists.
List of things I haven’t yet seen in taxis (but which I always expect to see):
Cockroaches
Bedbugs
Lice
Fleas
Ticks
Curled-up millipedes
Lizards
List of unexpected things that have happened to me in taxis:
Been vomited on. Twice. (Too long a story to get into right now.)
Had a thirty minute discussion about the success of Zuma—the game, not the president—with a fourth year Makerere University software engineering student (subsequently been hit on by the same).
Been preached to by a man whose breath reeked of Uganda waragi.
Received a lecture, from a random elderly man, on why many couples of my generation will divorce after five years.
Been rained on (there was a hole in the roof)
Lost a sandal (there was a hole in the floor)—
Sweetheart cuts into my edutainment with, ‘Anti, weya ah we gowing?’
‘It’s a surprise,’ I say.
‘Watsa sup rice?’
‘SurpRISE. Something sudden and unexpected.’
Sweetheart opens her mouth to say something, but then closes it again. After a while, she reopens it. ‘Anti, I wanto susu.’
See? See why I dislike travelling with children? See how they always choose the most inopportune time to want to susu? When you tell them to susu, they are always too engaged in a world-changing activity (the proper burial of a dead sugar ant or the correct arrangement of a doll’s hair) to be bothered.
‘My dear, do you see a toilet here?’
‘I yam not mai deeya. I yam sweet hat.’
‘Whatever. Didn’t I tell you to susu before we left? Didn’t I?’
Sweetheart’s face falls. She turns away.
What was I thinking?—Urgh, I should never have brought her along. Now where am I supposed to find a child-friendly toilet? Someone needs to invent foldable and disposable toilets ASAP!
I take another deep breath, manage what I hope is a softening of my face, and nudge Sweetheart. ‘Let me think of where we can find a toilet, OK?’ I say.
Sweetheart nods.
Now, where to find a toilet?—where? The cleanest toilets I know are on the second floor of the building opposite Maria’s Galleria. The best thing is that the man who manages them doesn’t skimp on toilet paper. The first time I used his toilets, I blew close to five minutes on effusive compliments.
We’ve become something of friends, since then; sometimes, he lets me pay two hundred shillings (instead of three hundred shillings). Every time I’m in town and need to pee, I use his toilets. It usually takes five to ten minutes to walk there, from here. With Sweetheart, it’ll probably take thrice as long.
If we leave now, we’ll have to wait another thirty minutes or so for a different taxi to kujula. If you count the three teenagers at the front (who requested the driver to turn up the volume when Mafikizolo’s Khona started playing), the man (who has just sat down) and the woman (who entered about five minutes ago), there are now seven passengers in this taxi. (At this rate, it’ll take until midday for the fourteenth passenger to show up.)
One of the teenagers is wearing a fiercely colour-coordinated outfit. I wonder what she bought first. The shoes? The hairclip? The earrings? The belt? Perhaps she bought the shoes first and then scoured shops for everything else in the same colour (a rare shade of purple; the purple you see when someone says something that hurts the front of your brain). The man is reading a sheaf of papers with a title carved in bold:
MyChineseLanguage
My Chinese language, indeed! Ugandans are learning Chinese like a problem. David was telling me, the other day, that the university for which he works is (in partnership with the Chinese embassy) offering free Chinese language lessons to staff members. Heh! We might not have been around to witness the colonisation of Africa by Europe, but we are definitely set to witness the colonisation of Africa by China. Every single step-by-freaking-step of it.
The woman, seated on my left, has a baby. One of my favourite things to do in taxis, when mothers aren’t looking, is to make faces at their babies. Usually, the baby laughs or makes faces. This one, with her (I’m assuming it’s a she) sickle-shaped eyebrows, is a tough customer; all she’s done, despite my hard work, is stare at me. Sweetheart is dying, just dying, of laughter. I don’t know if she’s laughing at my failure to amuse the baby, or at the faces I’m making (or both).
The woman has no idea what’s happening, since I make faces at her baby only when she looks out the window. She hasn’t said anything to me, though she’s turned to look at me twice. Braids frame her proud forehead. Her eyes are soft, and there are freckles of sweat on her pudgy nose. She has the generic face of someone you’ve met before. It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that people regularly confuse her for someone else. I bet people frequently stop her on the street and say ‘Hi, Julie!’, even though she’s probably a Doreen, a Sarah or a Diana. I bet when they get close enough to realise that she isn’t Julie, offer an apologetic smile, say ‘Sorry, you look like someone I know’, she merely shrugs and walks away. It seems unlikely that she would fuss, stand with her arms akimbo, demand to know why you’ve mistaken her identity.
‘Stop laughing and look out the window,’ I say to Sweetheart, who wouldn’t let me have the window seat. The least she can do, after arm-stronging, I mean strong-arming me into the middle, is look out the window.
Sweetheart’s laughter eventually subsides into downslurred giggles. But she takes one look at me and her shoulders resume their violent up-and-down movement. I smile. Children! Who can understand them? They’ll laugh at anything. I could lay a skirt out in the dirt and Sweetheart will find a reason to laugh at that, too.
‘Are you done?’ I say, when she collapses against me. Her body is limp, as if laughing has drained her of all strength.
‘I yam not Dan. I yam sweet hat.’
That is the corniest thing I’ve heard in a long time; I’m not even going to honour that with a simulated yawn (or eye-rolling). ‘If you say so.’
Soon, Sweetheart is curling up and kneading her stomach. ‘Anti Roni. I yav ova laft. Naw mai stoma chis peyee neeng.’
I’m not going to say sorry, she brought this pain on herself, but I’m going to try and distract her. I roll my tongue. ‘Can you do this?’
‘Yes.’
I roll my tongue again. ‘Waaaaah!’
‘Anti, I can. Se ngwe.’
‘Ngwe.’
Sweetheart rolls her tongue. Then she crosses her arms in front of her chest and smiles.
Dammit! All this time, I thought I was the only Ssagalabayomba who had the tongue-rolling gene. Now it turns out there’s a five year-old who will share that spot-light. Un-freaking-believable! Is there nothing in the world I can claim for myself?
The woman’s head jerks. She turns, suddenly, and looks at me. (For a moment, I worry that she has extra-sensory perception—access to my thoughts! Is she going to answer my question?) She looks away just as suddenly, stares at her baby’s head with what seems, at least to me, to be wonder. I stare at her staring at her baby’s head and wonder if every woman is destined to do this—stare at her baby’s head as if she can’t believe something that big-headed came out from between her legs. She adjusts her baby’s head so that it’s now nestling between her large breasts. After a while, she looks out the window again (to think, presumably, about things only mothers think about).
‘Anti Roni. Anti Ronii. Anti Roniii.’
‘Speak.’
‘See!’ Sweetheart is squirming in her seat and gesturing wildly at something. ‘A camo. A camo!’
‘Calm down.’ I peek through the window. Well, well, well. There is, indeed, a camel on the other side of the road. A man is leading it by a rope tied loosely around its neck. The camel is walking (wait!—do camels merely walk?—or is there a special name for what their limbs do?) at a leisurely pace. On one of its humps is a multi-coloured blanket-ish thingie (the kind the Karimojong and Masai drape over their shoulders).
‘What is a camel doing in this part of town?’ I hear myself say.
‘It’s going to attend the Kampala Street festival,’ the woman says.
I’m so shocked to hear her speak that I almost ask if she’s talking to me. I don’t know if she’s being sarcastic or not, so I’m not sure what to say. I’m hovering between saying ‘I just found out that camels chew cud’ or ‘when does the festival start?’ or ‘desertification is a real and present danger’—trying to decide, from what I can remember reading in How To Make Friends And Influence People, which of the three is more neutral—when she says, ‘They say she’s bringing dancers all the way from Brazil, you know.’
‘Who is?’
‘The Earthquake.’
‘The Earthquake?’
‘Musisi. Jeniffer Musisi. The Mayor?’
‘Right. Of course.’
‘Musisi is Luganda for earthquake.’
‘No, I know that. I mean yes, I know that.’
The woman stares at me for a long time, during which I swear to myself that she’s wondering if I’m a worthy co-conversationalist. She decides against engaging me any further, surely, because she turns away and resumes her contemplation of the world beyond the window.
Well, that was weird! I think.
‘Anti, a camo! A camoooo!’
‘Yes. OK. Fine. Relax. What is a camel in Luganda?’
‘Engamiya!’ Sweetheart says.
I look at the woman through the corner of my eye, half-expecting her to turn—to show some interest in the Luganda-speaking child in my custody, but she doesn’t.
‘Good girl!’ I say.
Wow, Sweetheart knows the Luganda word for camel. (I didn’t know the Luganda word for camel until about a year ago!) Perhaps this thematic curriculum business is yielding fruit, after all. Perhaps her mother told her. Perhaps someone else told her. Whatever the case, however she learnt, I’m proud of her. (I should probably buy her ice-cream, for purposes of positive reinforcement and what-have-you.)
If she keeps this up, she will soon find out where the New Taxi Park is, will learn how to use a needle and thread to reattach a button, will cross a busy road without help. She will start to know things worth knowing—the capital city of every country in Africa; the name of the currency used in Papua New Guinea; that, if you regularly scrub your heels with a pumice stone, you won’t get enkyakya; that a woodpecker can peck twenty times a second; that, in some parts of the world, people eat camels.
‘Did you know,’ I say, ‘That, in some parts of the world, people eat camels?’
‘Wheech pee po?’
‘People like you.’
‘Chood ren?’
‘Children. Brothers. Sisters. Mothers. Fathers. Aunties. Uncles. Everyone.’
‘Wai do they eet camos?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Ah camos sweet?’
‘Who knows?’
‘Do they poot solt on camos wen they ah gowing to eet them?’
The putting of salt on the things people eat is, I have noticed, something to which Sweetheart attaches great importance. The other day, I spied her sprinkling salt on a slice of pineapple. I wonder if I should have mentioned this to the doctor.
‘I’m sure they do,’ I say.
Sweetheart turns to the window. ‘Anti, eez that man gowing to eet that camo?’
‘I wouldn’t know.’
She waves. ‘Bai camo.’
The camel does not wave back.
When she turns to me, I interpret this as a cue to continue our conversation. ‘People eat all sorts of things. Camels. Crocodiles. Dogs.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Sam pee po eet Gad?’
Guard, my dog, is the only dog in Sweetheart’s life.
‘Sadly, yes. Some people eat Guard.’
‘Wai? Ah dogs sweet?’
I ignore her question. ‘I’ve heard of people eating snails, and caterpillars.’
Sweetheart plugs her mouth with her fist. She looks fit to vomit.
Call me perverse, but I’m enjoying her horror. ‘Even rats,’ I say.
‘Oso you, Anti! Rats, they ah not fo eeteen!’
‘Aren’t they?’
‘Noooo. Rats ah fo kee peeng unda tha bed. They geeve you mani wen you geeve them teeth.’
‘I see. Though I can’t imagine why they’d want our teeth. Don’t they have teeth of their own?’
I can tell from the size of Sweetheart’s eyes that my question has caught her flat-footed. She bites her lip. ‘Anti, samov tha rats…’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Anti, samov tha rats…’
‘Ehe? Some of the rats, what?’
‘Anti, samov the rats, wen they growap…they wanto be taigaz…beeeg taigaz…so they need mo teeth.’
I suck my teeth. ‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
Sweetheart giggles. ‘Tha dazent mekene sens.’
‘Now, where were we? Ah, yes, weird things people eat. Grasshoppers are an excellent example. In Uganda, we eat grasshoppers.’
‘Grasso paz ah sweet! Laik chee ken.’
‘I agree. But I talked to a Kenyan who thinks eating grasshoppers is disgusting.’
‘Wats distgusing?’
‘Disgusting.’
Sweetheart lifts her eyebrows. ‘Dis gussing?’
‘Disgusting. Dis gus TING.’
‘Dis GUS ting.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Wats DIS gus ting?’
‘Remember when you had malaria, and you vomited on me on the way to the hospital?’
Sweetheart gives me her droopy-eyelid look.
‘Well, that was disgusting.’
‘Anti, grasso paz ah not dis GUS ting.’
‘Grasshoppers are the furthest thing from disgusting.’
Ah, I can’t wait for grasshoppers to be in season again. I’ll go to Nakasero Market and buy those fried-until-crispy ones. Then I’ll sprinkle chilli on them and eat them, in bed, while watching reruns of Gossip Girl. Oh, just thinking of that moment is making me salivate.
‘Anti, whata bout nswa?’
‘What about them?’
‘They ah oso sweet.’
‘White ants are OK, but I prefer grasshoppers.’
‘What’s to prefer?’
Soon, I will have to re-think my children-are-not-halfwits-so-talk-to-them-exactly-as-you’d-talk-to-an-adult policy; it costs more patience than I anticipated. ‘It means I like grasshoppers more than I like white ants.’
‘But Anti, nswa ah sweeter than nsenene.’
Freaking hell! How am I related to someone who thinks white ants taste better than grasshoppers? I can’t believe I’m about to launch into a debate about why white ants are inferior to grasshoppers (reminds me of those pitiful but well-intentioned ‘mother is better than father’ and ‘fire is better than water’ debates we used to organise in primary school).
‘Look here, grasshoppers taste better. Much, MUCH, better. Everybody knows this. It’s a no-brainer.’
‘Anti, wats a nob rainer?’
I’m tired of correcting her, so I just say, ‘Something that’s obvious.’
‘Ovyass stats weeth o.’
‘Yes.’
‘O eez fo oneeyons. V eez fo van. Ass eeza natha nem fo don kee!’
‘Hold it. How do you know ass is another name for donkey?’
‘O V YASS.’
‘Obvious. Straightforward. So easy, everyone should know it.’
‘Az eezee az eeteeng matooke.’
‘More or less.’
‘Mo roless.’
‘Yes. Now, as I was saying, people in different parts of the world eat different things. Here, we eat matooke. But, out there, somewhere in the world, some people eat other people.’
‘Anti, olimba!’
‘Ate ggwe oli matama.’
‘Siri matama.’ She giggles, and then pinches her cheeks. ‘Nze ndi sweet hat.’
I make growling and burping sounds. ‘If you’re sweet, I have no choice but to eat you!’ I nibble her earlobe and pretend-bite her cheek.
She pushes me away, covers her face, and squeals. ‘Anti, donteet me.’ She screams. ‘Donteeeeet me!’
‘Sshhh!’ I say, and then remind her that we are in a taxi.
She looks around, sidles towards me, and cups her hands around my ear. ‘Anti, ah pee po sweet?’
Valid question. But how would I know anything about that? Wait! I know! I read somewhere—I don’t know where I read these things, or how such books find me—that human flesh tastes like horse meat. Yet, for some reason, perhaps this is what I wish to believe, I tell Sweetheart that people taste like fish.
She scratches her head and curls her lower lip. ‘Laik mukene?’
I’m thinking Nile Perch, but, what the hell, let’s go with mukene. ‘Yes. Like mukene.’
I can tell from the way she continues to scratch her head that Sweetheart isn’t convinced. However, I don’t think the fish/people angle is a stretch.
No, hear me out.
Consider that time, in primary school, when my classmates and I swore off fish from Lake Victoria. Because we’d heard stories about the war. Because we knew Rwandese were killing each other, even though we weren’t entirely sure why. Because we understood the relationship between River Kagera and Lake Victoria—recognised its similarity to the relationships we had with our pen-pals (Ragnhild in Sweden; Alistair in Britain; Inez in Portugal); internalised the principal difference, which was that we didn’t send dead bodies to Ragnhild and Alistair and Inez (while, of course, River Kagera did). We were determined not to be the Ugandans who ate the fish that fed on Rwandese.
OK, I guess what I am trying to say is that it is entirely possible that people taste like fish. Rather that fish tastes like people. Is that why I’ve never liked Nile Perch?—because it tastes like the people it eats? I’m asking a silly question, based on a crackpot idea, I concede, but I’m feeling brave and whimsical—perhaps as brave and whimsical as Sweetheart, who is currently addressing herself in public.
‘Sweet hat, lis ten to me,’ she’s saying. ‘Anti sed sam peepo eet atha pee po. Sweet hat, ehe? Wat ah you se ying? That pee po test laik mukene. Mukene, mekene! Mekene, mukene. Ehe? Pee po test laik mekene. Sweet hat, don tok wen I yam to king. Ah, you lis ten. Lis ten! Sam pee po eet atha mukene mekene…sam pee po eet atha mekene mukene…’
‘Cannibals. People who eat other people are called cannibals.’
Sweetheart stops talking to herself. ‘Can eee boolls.’
‘Cannibals.’
‘Ca fo can. Nee fo nee leeng. Bo fo boolls.’
‘Yes.’
‘C fo crestet cren. E fo egg. B fo boolls.’
‘Everyone says b for balls. Dare to be different, honey.’
‘I yam not hani. I yam sweet hat!’
‘How about b for buffet?’
‘Anti, teecha sed b for boolls.’
‘If you insist. Me, I was just trying to save you from sounding common.’
‘C fo crestet cren. E fo egg. B fo boolls. C fo crestet cren. E fo egg. B fo boolls. C fo crestet cren. E fo egg. B fo boolls…. ’
This is getting irritating. ‘Cannibals, is where we were. Focus.’
Sweetheart looks down at her fingers and then appears, for a while, to be counting something off them. She looks up and pinches the tip of her nose. ‘Can eee boolls ah pee po hoo eet atha pee po!’
‘Precisely.’
‘Anti, do they eet weeth hands or do they uza fok?’
Does it matter what you use? Food is food, and how it gets into your mouth shouldn’t matter. Well, that’s MY opinion. I have friends who insist that cocoa drunk from a porcelain mug tastes better than cocoa drunk from a tumpeco. It’s not something that keeps me awake at night, so I haven’t given it much thought. I can see, though, how someone who prefers to drink porcelain-mugged-cocoa might insist that eating with hands ‘sweetens’ food. But, as I said, before, I haven’t given it much thought.
I come this close to telling Sweetheart about the cannibal (I think he was German)—the one I saw on National Geographic, or Crime and Investigation, or whichever channel it was; this close to discussing the possibility that the people he ate might have tasted different when he used his hands. I think better of discussing the German cannibal as soon as I realise that she will ask questions that’ll oblige me to explain why he killed people and kept their flesh in his fridge. I’ll have to explain necrophilia and other related philias to her. OK, I won’t have to, but I’ll want to. And I shouldn’t. Sweetheart is a child, dammit! I should let her enjoy her childhood.
OK, OK, it’s settled: I’m going to let sweetheart enjoy her childhood.
‘You look like a monkey,’ I say.
Sweetheart tries to protest. I tickle her. She nearly chocks on her laughter, but I don’t stop tickling her until she admits to resembling a monkey. After we establish which species of monkey she most closely resembles (the black-and-white colobus monkey; Anti, wat eez colo bus?—eez eet oso sweet?), she changes the topic back:
‘Anti, the pee po hoo eet atha pee po…do they cook them een soss pans?’
Dear heaven! I should never have said anything about cannibals. She’s never going to let this go, is she?
I saw a documentary, about a year ago, about Kony and some of the children he abducted (well, the ones escaped). A girl of about eight said she discovered her parents’ heads in a pot (LRA rebels beheaded her parents and then boiled their heads). Another child, a boy of about nine, said the rebels gave him a hoe and instructed him to behead his dad. The boy also discovered his dad’s head in a pot. They didn’t say what happened to the rest of their parent’s bodies, but it is possible that the rebels ate them.
I’ve heard stories about cannibals boiling human flesh in strong-bodied and heavy-lidded saucepans (there was a story about this in the papers, recently, although I can’t remember in which district this happened; we have so many new districts these days that it’s hard to keep track of all the names). I can’t say any of this to Sweetheart, of course—can’t compare earthenware and steel pans, as far as the suitability of cooking human flesh is concerned.
‘I think to cook anything, whether or not the thing in question is meat, you need a cooking utensil,’ I say.
I await Sweetheart’s reply in vain. She doesn’t even ask me what a utensil is. She’s staring at the woman who has appeared on the other side of her window, whose hair is hidden behind a scarf, and whose forehead is lined with dust. There are bottles of mineral water and soda in the green bucket she’s holding. Most of the ice in the bucket has melted. The bottles are sweating. The woman avoids my eyes. She reserves her tired, dry-lipped smile for Sweetheart.
‘Anti, I want Fanta.’
‘OK. But not now,’ I say.
The woman makes eye contact. She pleads with me to buy something from her, says she hasn’t sold anything this morning. I break eye contact and focus on the back of the head of the man whose Chinese language might soon become our national language.
‘Anti, I want Fanta.’
Well, we can’t always have what we want, when we want it, now, can we? I want to be Lewis Hamilton’s girlfriend. I want a boss who isn’t threatened by the fact that some of her subordinates’ smart phones are more expensive than hers. I want to lose two kilos without actually doing any exercise. But am I going to get all these things now, today, any time soon? Nope.
‘I said not now!’
The woman slinks away. A boy who can’t be older than ten approaches the window as soon as she leaves. He balances a kibo on his head. I’m so impressed by the thoughtful and intricate arrangement of the plastic packets of banana crisps in the kibo (if the packets were coloured, they would be florets on a sunflower!) that I buy three packets—two for Sweetheart, one for me.
As soon as I give Sweetheart one packet of banana crisps, she starts to bite a hole into the plastic.
‘Wait!’ I say. I squeeze sanitizer into Sweetheart’s hands. She spends more time sniffing the sanitizer than she does rubbing her hands together. ‘Eet smells laik choco let.’
First bubble-gum. Now chocolate. Whom is she trying to con? ‘No it doesn’t. Stop hallucinating.’
‘Wats hallucitating?’
‘I’ll tell you when you’re fifteen,’ I say, and then rub her hands together until the blob of sanitizer disappears. ‘OK. Now, you can eat.’
Sweetheart is not a noisy eater, but she has a peculiar habit of examining whatever she intends to put into her mouth. I want to joke about how Uganda is a banana-going-on-an-apple republic, but she won’t get it. I settle for, ‘You should apply for a position at the Uganda National Bureau of Standards.’
She doesn’t get the UNBS thing, either. She simply carries on with her investigation of every banana crisp that makes it out of the packet. I am just about to say ‘Stop that’ when my thigh starts vibrating.I extract my phone from my jeans-pocket and swipe the screen.
‘David.’
‘Mantrap.’
‘Yet another endearment. Yay.’
‘How was your night?’
‘Noisy.’
‘Lucky you. Didn’t get any. Had to work through the night.’
I don’t correct David; don’t tell him I wasn’t referring to that kind of noise. David has many erroneous ideas about me. Yet, for some reason, I never correct him. ‘Haven’t you heard of hand jobs?’
David laughs. ‘Heard of handsome.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Handsome.’
‘I’m lost.’
‘OK. Let’s count from threesome going down.’
‘Why?’
‘Do you want to know what handsome is or not?’
‘Okay. Threesome.’
‘Twosome.’
‘Uhm…onesome.’
David laughs. ‘You’re close.’
‘Close to what?’
‘…’
‘Oh. Oh! I get it now! Handsome. As in—’
‘—yup.’
‘Handsome? That’s really bright. I would never have—’
‘No, you’d never have. But yes.’
‘Wow! Can I borrow that word? I’ll return it after a month.’
‘Have peace.’
‘Handsome. Wow. I’m really impressed, David. That’s brilliant.’
‘That’s me. Impressive and brilliant. How’s Sweetheart?’
‘Better.’
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘Antibiotics. Then we see him after two weeks.’
‘And the sneezing?’
‘The sneezing. Hmn. He thinks she’s allergic to something. But we’ll know for sure after two weeks.’
‘Sawa, sawa. Called to ask how she was.’
‘She’s fine.’
‘Got your text, by the way. Would have called earlier but you know how things are.’
‘I know how things get.’
‘I said I was sorry.’
‘It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will I see you Saturday?’
‘I don’t think so.’
There’s a silence. Then, ‘Why not?’
‘Just.’
Another silence. Then, ‘You’re punishing me.’
Of course I’m punishing him—duh?—but I’m not about to tell him that he’s right. ‘Why would I punish you?’
A sigh. ‘Can I call you on Friday?’
‘If you want.’
‘Will you pick up?’
‘Maybe.
Another sigh. ‘Put Sweetheart on the phone.’
‘Sweetheart.’ I press the phone to her right ear. ‘Uncle David wants to talk to you.’
‘Halo Unco Deveed,’ Sweetheart says.
‘…’
‘I yam fayin.’
‘…’
‘Me, I dont no. Anti eez tha wan hoo noz.’
‘…’
‘Yes.’
‘…’
‘No.’
‘…’
‘Yes.’
‘…’
‘No. Me, I yam ah beeg gal. I don crai eneehawly.’
‘…’
‘Eh nee haw.’
‘…’
‘Choco let and icream and yo gat.’
‘…’
‘O ke, Unco Deveed.’
‘…’
Sweetheart says ‘Bai, Unco Deveed’ and then hands me the phone.
‘What did Uncle David say?’
‘Heez gowing to bai fo me icream—‘
‘Ice cream. You can’t have the cream without the ice. ICE cream. ’
‘—aiise cream and yo gat. And choco let.’
‘Eh, maama. Lucky you!’
‘Anti.’ Sweetheart cleans her mouth. ‘Wen ah we gowing to see Unco Deveed?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Wen ah we gowing to see Anti Biotics?’
I laugh and laugh and laugh. At first, Sweetheart laughs with me, because that’s what children do—they laugh with you, even when you’re laughing at them. After a while, though, she stops laughing and stares at me. She asks if I’m fine. I find a handkerchief and wipe tears from my eyes.
‘Sweetheart, Auntie Biotics isn’t a person. An AN TAI BIOTIC is medicine. For your cough. So you don’t get an infection.’
‘Medi seen. Fo yo cof. Soyoo don’t getaneen fection.’
‘No, not for my cough. For YOUR cough.’
‘Mai cof?’
‘Yes.’
Halfway through texting David about the ‘Auntie Biotics’ business, Sweetheart says, ‘Anti, mai colo-colo eez peyee neeng. I wanto susu.’
I have never understood why Sweetheart refers to her vagina as colo-colo. I don’t expect that I ever will. I must admit, though, that colo-colois extremely creative. I have friends, adult friends moreover, who can’t manage much more than ‘purse’, ‘State House’, ‘HQ’, and ‘Parliamentary Avenue.’
‘OKAY. Okay.’ I half-stand-half-bend, grab Sweetheart’s hand, push past the woman’s knees, and dismount the taxi. ‘We are going. See, this is us going. Just hold on a bit, okay?’
Outside-the-taxi is warm. The air is thick with the smell of—
OK, let’s say you contracted a Urinary Tract Infection, maybe from the men’s toilets at work, because whoever designed the building in which your office is located assumed, for whatever reason, that no women would ever access it. Let’s assume you did the right thing and bought antibiotics. You’ve noticed, throughout the week, that your urine smells like unchanged-by-your-liver ampicillin. Now, let’s say you’ve just peed, but haven’t flushed the toilet, and you’ve now covered the toilet bowl with a thick cotton jumper which you haven’t washed in three months. Imagine that that toilet bowl, along with its unwashed cotton jumper of a cover, is outside your house, fully exposed to the sun’s rays. Try to imagine that smell—
Because that’s what the air smells like today.
It’s as if the woman who tried to plough the sky this morning was interrupted by news of her favourite child’s sudden sickness. She dropped the hoe and rushed to attend to her child, leaving clods of greyish-brown clouds on one side of the sky.
Sweetheart-on-her-feet is slow, so I hoist her onto my hip. I dodge bonnets and bumpers, get out of the way when I hear ‘faaaaas, faaaaas!’, hold my breath when passenger service vans expel their versions of intestinal gas, look straight ahead when a man says ‘size yange’, skim what’s written on windshields and emergency doors:
Try Jesus
The Rich Also Cry
Allah yagera
God’s judgement
Man United
Rash Hour
Bismillah
Respect Your Job
Look before you act
Lusaka Buthery
Never lose hope
Kisa kya Maria
Tommalira budde
Don’t hunt what you can’t kill
Shida za duniya
Patiency pays
Merci Mon Dieu
Drivers-conductors interrupt their discussions of quarter panels, English premier league football, and the Jeniffer Musisi-Erias Lukwago standoff to ask where I’m going. They shout fares at me, touch me, attempt to convince me that I am going to ten different places at once (Mukono, Jinja, Iganga, Munyonyo, Nsimbiziwoome, Nalukolongo, Kibuye, Zzana, Rubaga, Makerere), and offer to carry Sweetheart.
Sweetheart-on-my-feet clings to me, presses her head against my chest, as we zigzag past hawkers selling everything there is to sell to people on their way to someplace else (The Seven Secrets Of Highly Effective People; vegetables; fruits; Super Max razor blades; simsim; chocolate biscuits; airtime recharge cards; bread; SIMCA ice-cream) and aproned women carrying plates of chips and fried eggs to their driver-conductor customers.
A man carrying a turkey on his shoulder bumps into us. He shoves Sweetheart-and-me towards the door of a van. Thankfully, I regain my balance just in time for my back (and not Sweetheart’s head) to hit the door. It takes me a while to recover from the shock of his stained teeth, earrings, and kavubuka. Drivers-conductors berate the ear-ringed man. They jeer, ask if he’s blind; can’t he see that I’m carrying a child? Is he a father? If so, what kind of father? They volley expletives over his head—suggest, in Luganda, that he go fuck his mother, because, apparently, this will make for better use of his time.
Drivers-conductors apologise on the ear-ringed man’s behalf, ask if Sweetheart is hurt. I smile my thanks and negotiate my exit from the Old Taxi Park. Because my bag is where I can see it (its handle is wrapped around Sweetheart’s neck) and the most expensive thing I’m carrying, which is my phone, is safely tucked into my pocket, I don’t worry when people press their bodies into mine for longer than they should.
Sweetheart must think I have forgotten how to cross a road, because she says, ‘Anti, look left, look rait, and look left agen.’
‘Thank you,’ I say. She’s at that age where she’s sarcasm-impaired, otherwise she might have appreciated what I say next (which is ‘That’s very helpful’).
As soon as we are on the other side of the road, Sweetheart asks, ‘Anti, ah we gowing to susu?’
‘We are,’ I say. ‘Don’t worry. There’s only one thing on my mind and that thing is your susu.’
Sometimes, I wonder if I live in this city. Because I’m looking at the names on the buildings that rise above the rest, buildings I pass by every day, and wondering why I’ve never looked up long enough to notice some of them. I’ve seen Majestic Plaza, Gazaland, Temuseo Mpoza Plaza and Park View Shopping Centre before. H&B Towers and Grand Corner House, I haven’t seen. As for ‘Astoria Hotel’, I have no words. For how long have we had an Astoria Hotel? Urgh, nobody tells me anything!
Billboards advertising DSTV packages, Warid Corporate Mega bonus, and Nokia Asha phones explode into the spaces between the buildings. One billboard asks me to test my love by taking an HIV test. I smile at the word play but decline to take the test. The largest billboard urges me to ‘Buy online!’ at ‘cheapest price’:
We sell cars from Japan to your home
Hands A possibility
Guaranteed through insurance coverage
If I don’t find another job, soon, I might never be able to afford a car sold from Japan to my home, much less ‘Hands A Possibility’ (whatever that means). I might have the fancy title (Dynamic Solutions Agent in charge of Direct Division Designing and National Quality Assistance), but I’m sure most shop attendants on this street, those selling fabric from India and phones from China, earn more than I do.
By ‘this street’, I mean Ben Kiwanuka Street (according to what I’ve read on several signposts). I wasn’t aware Ben Kiwanuka Street extended all the way down here. I can’t even remember what Ben Kiwanuka did (was he our first prime minister?—a regent of the Buganda Kingdom?—what?), why we named a street after him. I do know, though, that Ben is short for Benedicto. I also know that the building behind me is Mukwano Arcade.
I back up against an all-yellow MTN-Mobile-Money-Available-Here booth and question the city clock (whose time-telling is sponsored by AQUA Sipi, which means I can’t be sure that it’s really 11:06). Then I look down, at the girl in a green kapere dress, seated, about two feet away from where I am standing, on a stool. The toenails on her oversized feet are yellow. Spread out on a wooden table, in front of her, is a potpourri of articles—a purple John tontuga; a yellow Muzungu tapama; several pairs of leggings; wooden key holders; a handful of pens; several packets of Orbit; toy cars; used Nokia phone jackets; sparkly Miley Cyrus stickers; a plastic teenage mutant ninja turtle watch; 2011 diaries.
‘How broke does one have to be to sell 2011 diaries in 2014?’ I want to ask Sweetheart.
The girl dubs at her homely face with a lesu. She pours water from a plastic two-litre Coca-Cola bottle into an empty Nomi-Super-Foam container and washes her face. I am tempted to tell her that her cornrows, which are caked with dust, are in more need of water than her face is. Instead, I smile (because I don’t know who this girl is, or where she’s from. I don’t want to risk offending her. For all I know, her ancestors are witchdoctors. One wrong step and I might wake up to find my colo-coloon my forehead. Bw’oleka!) and look away.
‘Anti, susu eez peyee neeng me.’
Right! I’m supposed to be looking for a toilet. I quickly approach a bodaboda man idling on the sidewalk. I observe the usual protocol of pretending to be interested in how he slept (wasuze otya, ssebo?) and acknowledging him for whatever work he’s been doing before I showed up (gy’ebale ko, ssebo). Then I tell him I’m going to Hot Loaf Bakery.
‘Nkumi ssatu,’ he says.
I tell him I’m not paying three thousand shillings to Hot Loaf. He shrugs disinterestedly and continues reading his Bukedde newspaper. He doesn’t even bother to negotiate. The nerve! If Sweetheart didn’t have to susu in such a hurry, I’d have walked. But I need to find a toilet soon. Can I afford to be proud? No. But, still, three thousand to Hot Loaf is madness.
I consider my options. There’s a public toilet in the building behind Mukwano Arcade. I used it once—I was desperate—and contracted a Urinary Tract Infection in the process. There’s no way I’m taking Sweetheart there. The other option is for Sweetheart to susu on the sidewalk! She’s a child; people will let her get away with it. Or, at least, I hope they will.
I train my eyes on the road, but almost every bodaboda passing by is carrying a passenger. I am just about to give up and walk further up the street when Sweetheart says, ‘Anti, wats that?’
‘What’s what?’
Sweetheart makes a tiiiru, tiiiru sound.
I listen. ‘Oh, that? That’s a siren.’
‘Fo wat?’
‘Well, what it does is warn road users, so they can get out of the way in time.’
‘Get aut fo wat?’
I tell her about ambulances; explain that other road-users have to give way to ambulances because they carry sick or injured people to hospital. I resist the temptation to tell her that, these days, people, who have important nation-building meetings to attend on the other side of town (people like super-ministers, Super Members of Parliament, and tycoons), people who can’t afford to waste time in traffic jam, hire police cars with sirens to lead them through traffic jams. She doesn’t need that information. Not yet. Besides, nation builders don’t use this road or frequent this part of town.
‘Anti, I wanto susu.’
I try to keep my voice down when I say, ‘Kyana, relax. I’m working on it.’
Sure enough, and while I am still looking for a bodaboda rider that isn’t going to charge me three thousand shillings to Hot Loaf, an ambulance approaches Ben Kiwanuka Street at high speed. It halts in front of a static queue of passenger service vans. Then it wails and wails. (The person driving the ambulance must be a newbie; otherwise he’d have known not to use this road. The only time there’s no jam here is on public holidays.) Unfortunately, the driver-conductors can’t manoeuvre out of the queue, to make way for the ambulance, because there isn’t enough space between bonnets and bumpers. I hope, for the sake of whoever is in that ambulance, that the queue starts moving soon.
Sweetheart is bearing down on my hip like a sack of beans, but I am not putting her down. I am this close to giving up and conceding to paying three thousand to Hot Loaf when I hear a loud bang—the sickening and dizzying grind of metal against glass against metal.
Running commences commotion. Limbs fight other limbs for space. Fore and hind bodies of drivers-conductors, shop attendants, and passers-by surge towards the bang. Voices like shallow water sweep air into the middle of the road, until they become something that is as distinctly separate as it is distinctly one—the gravelly but non-metallic sound of a different kind of rain. I pull Sweetheart close to me, retreat into a mobile phone shop. By the time I manage to calm the beating of my heart, the sidewalk is empty and there’s no one to ask about what’s happening.
I shouldn’t follow them, the drivers-conductors, shop attendants, and passers-by, but I do. I can’t see what they’re looking at, so I look at them looking. I can’t find any music in the sounds they are making, so I try not to make a sound. It’s unlikely that I will get the correct version of events from the lady standing next to me, the one with one hand on her head, and the other over her mouth, but I ask anyway.
She says there’s been an accident. I say how can there have been an accident when the cars were stationary. She says the man driving the ambulance tried to reverse, and collided with a passenger service van in the process. Apparently, he was in such a hurry to leave that he didn’t follow routine procedure, like making sure there’s no car behind the car you’re reversing. I want to believe her version, I really do, but I can’t see how anyone would manage to have an accident on this road, here, now. The woman suggests that we leave before the police arrive. I tell her I’m not leaving until I know, for sure, what has happened.
Running commences commotion. Limbs give other limbs space. Fore and hind bodies shun the bang. Drivers-conductors, shop attendants, and passers-by appear with fish so small that at first I think it is mukene. I’m confused. What does fish have to do with any of this? Sweetheart is quiet, much too quiet, she hasn’t said anything about susu in a while, but I need to know what has happened.
I ask a boy, who is shoving fish into his pocket, where he got it.
‘From the ambulance,’ he says.
I laugh, because I think he’s joking. He squints at me, shrugs, and then runs away. I ask two adults where they got their fish. They say the same thing—‘From the ambulance.’ They tell me the ambulance wasn’t rushing a sick person to hospital, but fish to a market. I still think they are lying—fish in an ambulance?—ku ddiiru ki? This would never happen, not even in a movie. I instruct Sweetheart to hold on tight as I approach the bang.
It isn’t until I’m standing a few feet away from the bent-in back door of the ambulance, until I’m looking at hundreds, thousands, probably millions of mukene–sized fish crammed into the back of the ambulance, that I believe.
‘Oh my God, this is tragic,’ I say.
I expect Sweetheart to ask me what tragic means but she doesn’t. I say, ‘Sweetheart, look. There’s mukene.’
Sweetheart says nothing.
When I lift her face, I find that she is sobbing quietly. It takes me a while to realise that she has susued on me.
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Davina was born in Lusaka and grew up in Kampala. She has participated in the 2013 African Writers Trust Uganda International Writers Conference, the African Writers Trust Poetry Workshop, the FEMRITE/British Council Performance Poetry Workshop, the 2013 Caine Prize Workshop, the inaugural British Council/African Writers Trust Mentorship Programme, and the 2013 FEMRITE Regional Residency for African Women Writers. In her idea of a perfect world, she writes novellas during her lunch break and publishes them shortly before she goes to bed. She has written articles and features for African Woman Magazine.
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