Sins of gods, of saints and of the gutter E-Book

Peter Aringo-Bizimaana

• Herausgeber: Europa Edizioni
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

On the background of a country torn apart by corruption, carnage and power struggles, Father Austin returns to this homeland after a long stay abroad. He soon discovers that things are worse than before he left. A new order of Cribism, a religion-political set up of a trinity of rulers to safeguard the nation and their regime, is simply an evil ideology masked in superstition. It is during this time that the Austin-Anne love relationship comes to life harking back to an unintended child born of their earlier childish liaison. This story, on the ridge between personal and collective experience, shows also how sin can become a source of redemption and how suffering can be a means to lead us to joy.

Peter Aringo was born in Uganda in 1947. He has taught both at Secondary and University levels. He has authored various publications ranging from literary to historical-political subjects. He contributed to compilation of The Integrated English Syllabus for Uganda Schools (Books 1-4) & a Teachers’ Guide. He has also worked as Chief Examiner for the National Examinations Board. His interest now is continued research into the use of Literature to approach Linguistics teaching in Language Teacher Education.

Leseprobe

BUILD

UNIVERSES

Peter Aringo-Bizimaana

Sins of Gods, of Saints

and of the Gutter

© 2024 Europe Books| London

www.europebooks.co.uk | [email protected]

ISBN 9791220147439

First edition: February 2024

Sins of Gods, of Saints

and of the Gutter

To the sturdy branch of a new

family generation

symbolized’n the fresh fruits,

Bryson’n Gabriella’n Ethan

toddler seeds

of immense potential

sprouting shoots

t’ extend latent

progeny potentials

mustard seed like…

the Perennial River’v

LIFE!

Be blessed indeed

Ad maiorem Dei Gloriam!

Chapter One

“I am No 45, madam,” standing in the aisle smiling, indicating his seat with an open hand.

“Oh… I am sorry, Rev Father,” moving into the aisle herself to let him pass to sit near the window and placing his handbag on his laps.

“I am actually a nun; Sister Goody Melbourne Leslie,” extending a hand to greet him.

“And I am Rev Fr Dr Baba’- Twineo Austin,” shaking hands, both all smiles. He added: “I could never place you in a convent with your veil off and no distinguishing habit. Sorry about the banal address I used…”

“No no no no… Really, we are madams, but the vocational anointment adds a title that does interfere somehow with bland Madam. Our Congregation does not over-emphasize uniforms and veils but adherence to vows. Usually, the common floral splendor of many religious habits hardly constitutes the true soul of devotion in a religious vocation.”

“Very true indeed. It is the holy bond that counts more. So, you are heading to… Africa?”

“Yes, to my new country, Uganda.”

“Oh, my God. My motherland!”

“Really! What a coincidence, a blessing travelling with a countryman! I love your country. So many loving and God-fearing people despite the turbulence there. I run two Charitable Institutions: an Orphanage School and a budding Community Hospital. I am sure you have heard of St John the Baptist Hospital Complex…?”

“Oh, yes! St John the Baptist and St Aloysius Complex,” looking at her with a new understanding. “Now I remember you; you were in your vestments at the ceremony of opening that hospital officially by the Cardinal together with four Bishops. I was there as Diocesan Secretary for Education. The school and hospital must be growing fast now.”

“Yes, they are,” looking at him critically. “I now recognize you, too…; but you have put on weight and a new complexion. As for our complex, it is growing, thanks to a very dedicated team who are not after money but keep dedicated to our motto: “We Serve to Build His Kingdom”. They have really taken over most of the tough assignments. I have, for instance a most motherly lady called Natalie Rweerero. She is the Headmistress of the school whose handling of teachers, workers and the orphans is exceptional. So much flood of love and parental care in a single soul!”

“I do remember her very well. The Cardinal called her ‘A Light of Benevolence’ after you had introduced her and her good deeds to the congregation. I recall, a week later, presenting to her the Church’s gift, at Rubaga Cathedral, for her industry as Bishops had recommended. Truly, she has a very rare quality. We need more of that kind to avoid what is developing in our nation – the continuing fanning of evil and civil strife since Independence.”

“That is the evil in the Politics of Eating in many countries, the would-be responsible leaders taking sides to compete for dirty morsels of profiteering…”

A moment of silence followed. Then, to keep their company lively again, he said:

“Talking of our Politics, do you remember the unforgettable Brother Mayer La Bonte?”

“Oh, God! Who can forget that inimitable soul of dedication to God and work! He loved the nation, the people, his work…”

“And yet, a monster cut his life short because he refused to ‘sanctify’ him, his palace and his rule with a holy sculpture…”

“From the week he was cut down to date, I cannot recall his figure and good deeds without associating him with his MISERICORDIA statue at St Paul’s Cathedral. Every morning and evening I was at the front of the Cathedral when I still lived there, I never could help glancing at it and sometimes stopping to re-examine it over and over for its inexhaustible mysteries.”

“He captured the mysteries of our Redemption in just … just strokes of his hammer, chisels and brushes… He engraved himself in our hearts. He was in the process of erecting a similar statue at Christ the King church in the city when the hand of Lucipher struck.”

“Terrible… Truly tragic, maddening.”

Two airhostesses in their very smart KLM uniform turned up with trays of dinner and drinks. The people of God chose their preferences and prepared themselves for enjoyment of First-Class treatment. They recited the Prayer for God’s Nourishing Gifts and fell to. Later, their talk ended with his sincere promise to visit her institutions as part of his pastoral duties. It was, after all, his duty indeed to make reports for the Bishop about how well or badly such Church-based institutions were being run. She promised him a very warm welcome.

That afternoon, Fr Austin was excited to be back home at his residence at Nsambya. Before supper, he wanted to arrange his wardrobe well to have his suits, shirts and soutanes well-spaced and arranged to prioritize his best choices. The rest would be placed in another huge wardrobe in the visitors’ room. As he placed his right arm inside the wardrobe to begin taking out the suits first, his whole arm, chest and face were rudely bathed in a thick cobweb mesh that momentarily almost suffocated him.

He withdrew at once, violently shaking his arms and body and spluttering invectives. Grabbing a small towel, he started scraping away the nuisance as he now audibly cursed: spider trap and nuisance in my absence! He switched on the bedroom light to hunt for the causes of that attack on a man of God. At once he saw the multi-legged monster resting on a shirt, wriggling its legs and mandibles as if irritated by the destruction of her trap-house. Surprisingly, it terrified him more as he carefully examined its big size thinking also of its potential to inject poison! He panicked as he looked around for the best tool to use to strike it dead. He picked a short broom. He cautiously approached the wardrobe again, raised the weapon and struck out. The monster landed almost on his foot; he stamped about in fear, avoiding to land any foot on the nuisance. He stood aside and watched it writhe for the last breath… He got a piece of toilet tissue, lifted the thing into the toilet bowel and then flashed the monster down the sewage system.

The scare forced him to remove all the clothes before cleaning up the whole wardrobe. He later instructed one of their house-helps, Christopher, to do thorough cleaning of the other rooms the following day and then apply two cans of insecticide when he would be away at Rubaga Cathedral. From then on, he felt comfortable in a clean residence, free from any other possible rude welcome.

Four days later, after being feasted to welcome him back, Fr Austin began work in earnest. He waited for his assistant editor, Sr Geraldine, to brief him on how far they had gone with publications of the Church Newsletters, ‘Vox Populi Vox Dei and Spiritus Mundi’ in his absence.

Examining the various files with articles to peruse, a file he himself had marked ‘For Later’ caught his attention. Oh, what had he left in it? Opening it, he saw a draft of an article he had wanted to write but had not had time to complete. His writing interest was rekindled as he thought of recent developments in his country. Then he remembered to ring his cousin, Captain Damiano, a Principal Personal Secretary to the Prime Minister, and an Acting Minister for the Presidency, to make a meeting appointment. He was powerfully placed to give him updates on the State’s Publishing Prohibitions to help his publishing work. He took the marked file to Nsambya where his second office was.

He perused the article after evening tea. He needed moments of inspiration to add meat to the main points he had drafted. After dinner, his mind persuaded him to take a walk down the road from the residence to Gaba Road junction. He walked leisurely, breathing in and enjoying volumes of fresh evening air. Streetlights were now bright enough to see the flow of traffic and the hustling of late weary workers to their homes. He stopped at a fallen tree and sat on its huge drying bole. His eyes roamed to Nsambya Police Barracks, to the Railway Station, then beyond high rise buildings hiding the Kampala-Jinja Road. From the din there, he surmised traffic must be intense. That suddenly set his mind into the past and he was now watching a remarkable spectacle of years back on that very road.

With closed eyes now, he recalled then returning from Parish duty in Matugga. He had found himself hemmed in by a throng of dancing and shouting citizens along the Bombo Road beginning to celebrate the expected entry of liberators into the city. He soon noticed how city roads had turned into rivers of singing and dancing people heading to City Square to welcome the third coup that ushered a new Savior into State House. He was forced to drive at snail-pace with people shouting at him: ‘Father, get out and join us!’. He was soon forced to park at Equatorial Hotel. His journalistic mind told him he had landed on a story to write about.

He now recalled he went out of the car and stood in the verandah of the Hotel. A cool breeze from the South bathed him all over. That freshness made him recall the cool weather witnessed in the four days before and how the weather had suddenly changed on the fifth day. The wind had intensified its speed and ruthlessness, blowing away old, rusty roofs especially in slums. The womenfolk had the worst experience, forcibly walking with hands on their dresses and skirts for fear of being denuded by gusts of wind. People were seen everywhere laughing, making lewd jokes about dirty and old thighs and wrinkled bottoms of even young women. Then, in the evening, gusts of dust had filled people’s ears, eyes, clothes, homes, shops and offices. People said it was occasioned by convoys of army vehicles, tanks and stomping feet as liberators were converging on the city from the hinterland.

But calmness had returned with a gentle wind. Offices and shops were re-opened and cleaned. Shopkeepers returned some of their merchandize on the verandahs, and mannequins again displayed latest fashions. But that calm did not last. On the sixth day, in the middle of the night, stormy winds battered earth. Stories from lake-shore dwellers later told of how the lakes had turned into mad-like rolls of water spilling meters away into people’s gardens, resulting in massive loss of especially ripening crops. People and carrion creatures feasted on fish tossed on land. But, all day, the sun had disappeared behind ominous cumuli. Later, these electrical monsters released a stormy deluge, cascading down in fearsome torrents amid rumbling-grumbling thunder and cracking lightning.

People had begun to fear when the sky turned a livid ferment of babbling and boiling terror and fireworks. The din of wind, rain, and thunder had made earth tremble, echoing deep into earth’s bowels. Towards morning of the seventh day, huge hailstones had joined in the pounding of earth. The hail stones holed roofs in many parts of the country. It had added to the tattering and shredding of flora; it finished off very many ill-housed birds and animals. Rivers and rivulets swelled, overflowed their banks, surged ruthlessly out of course, sought out settlements about a hundred meters from their courses and flattened everything in their paths. Stories spread later that some people and animals had been swept along and corpses were seen later floating towards the Sudan boarder. Crocodiles had a field-day. These deaths had added to those caused by gigantic landslides, with houses, humans, animals and crops swept down hills to form mass mounds. It had been a week of erosion and destruction everywhere…

But survivors knew how to reinvent themselves; soon news of liberators entering the city had brought out of settlements every person that could walk. Even the weather had normalized as if to give people a chance to celebrate. Now, Fr Austin remembered that mass of Makerere students and many of their lecturers streaming through Bombo Road flanked by hordes of dancing and singing slum women and kids. Kikoni, Kivulu and Katanga slums had belched out all their prostitutes and the underworld that accompanied these red-gowned intellectuals to welcome the new Saviors. More and more crowds had streamed from every city suburb and the hinterland. The women of the infamous Honey Combs had made the occasion even more colorful: they had conspired to welcome the Saviors in style; they all wore red micro-mini skirts and red brassieres. The marching and dancing and shoving crowds streamed to City Square.

Fr Austin now recalled how a terrifying flow of metallic power made a slow entry into the City Square. All roads leading into it brought monster-looking tanks, APCs, army green lorries carrying grim-looking faces, Jeeps full of commanders of various ranks, and then a red Benz. It must have been intended to shock people into noticing what they would soon deal with. For, the Chief Savior, in glittering epaulets, actually sat right on top of the Benz; soon, he stood up with incredible agility like a practiced gymnast! He was waving back to his madly waving and shouting crowds. He wore a wide smile of an elated Jesus pleased with Jerusalem crowds. The Benz entered the Square; the Chief ascended the dais.

A wigged Chief Justice took a microphone. There were no speeches, he said. The most important item of a very short agenda was to swear in the new President. And he proceeded to do so. The last item on the agenda was to listen to a short speech by ‘our Beloved Leader’. There was total silence; everybody longed to hear the saving words from that paragon! A man who had overthrown the ‘King of all African Presidents’! The crowd heard a roar of a voice! There was no doubting the power and omnipotence of the owner!

“Arro arro! Deary shitjens,” with a huge grin and waving a huge arm. “Am humbly savant fo you. I only rule a year and hend at dismalclasy. Now selibrason sud began! Go! Go!”

Wild clapping and shouting had acknowledged the great speech! Hail Caesar! Hosanna! Our man! Savior...! Then metallic power and civilian frenzy had streamed after the leading Jeeps and the Benz along Jinja Road. Buses, lorries and cars full of cheering crowds followed. Then the beggars, the crippled, the scum of the underworld, pimps and prostitutes, pupils and students and their learned educators, some clergy, a handful of whites mesmerized by people’s show of love for their new Chief… The nation was showing foreigners how very welcoming Africans are! Then Fr Austin had noticed one special mode of adoration: on Jinja Road, enthusiastic shop owners had spread roles of cloth along the tarmac for the Chief to drive over! Miles and miles of cloth up to Nakawa! Oh, what a saving moment for the people!

Indeed, the Chief had set off a whole month’s celebrative mood whereby even city beggars received more alms than before. People had turned kind, generous, and full of new grace. Even the Honey Combs prostitutes asked for half the usual fee so that young men experimenting with their virility could also get a chance to graduate into manhood, despite resultant severe cases of gonorrhea and syphilis. Fr Austin recalled an advertisement at some hotel abroad: the splendid beauty of cat-spots, the graceful and majestic spring of a leopard on the fly after an impala. The azure blue sky allowed glorious sunshine to bathe the expanse of lush parkland. Then a warning: ‘While in this park, please, keep strictly near your guides’.

But now, an idea slowly began to creep into his mind: had any journalist ever written something about that event before that ‘Chitjen King’ was deposed, too? He tried to remember articles he had read about the past regimes and the present. The idea now materialized into a demand to fulfil: write an article; title it “The Joy in Tragic Laughter”.

A madly hooting vehicle brought him out of his reverie. He looked at the speeding car that was sending pedestrians scampering away from the walkway. He stood up to watch. That’s when he recalled a similar mad-like driving on that very road that almost claimed the driver; he, too, was at that time enjoying a welcoming drive for another new Savior, the present godhead. His eyes sought the spot where the car had smashed into an embankment. And there it was! In the semi darkness, he could see some heap of something sitting on the very spot. He decided to walk there, careful to avoid impatient and drunk drivers.

It was no longer the beautiful red sports car with flashy seats and a creamy interior. It was now a heavily mutilated car-chassis. He recalled it had stood on that roadside spot since that time of the latest liberation jubilations, waiting for the owner to tow it to repairers. It now looked like a skeleton of a once cherished martyr long forgotten by worshippers. His inquisitive mind would soon learn from one of their Parish house-helps that during the day, gutter-snipes converged on the relic and fought over its mastery for the idolized feel of a raving ride to some heard of legendary Lands of plenty – Nairobi, Dar-es-Salaam, Cape Town, New York, London… The beautiful seats had disappeared long ago to grace some desperado’s sitting room. The doors, the bonnet and boot-door had gone, too. The onslaught of mechanics had spared nothing valuable, leaving only a thin rusty frame outline. The dirty, ugly, gaping remains of some cozy life in the past now squatted on rusty, cracked rims; the rubber parts had disappeared to make the highly prized sandals for the poor.

“At least someone should have also taken the chassis,” talking about that relic to one of the cooks, Christopher, the following day.

“Ah, Father, what would a chassis do with a chassis? We’re all chasses these days.”

He had looked at him, puzzled. He would ask him later to explain that pithy statement. But luckily, the explanation came his way that afternoon.

Chapter Two

1

Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing

that has happened … (Lk 2: 14)

The following day in the afternoon, Sr Geraldine brought Fr Austin an article by a Nathan Odwori titled “Scarcity Creates Geniuses, New Terrors Control Minds”. She thought it had a few controversial points to edit out for the sake of their safety. He began to peruse it. Soon, he noticed he would not give it due concentration for it was getting late and he seriously felt he wanted to rest before dinner. He took it to Nsambya to re-read it after dinner. It went:

Inside each one of us is a roaring voice of pain, a muted protest against those hurting riches our saviors are flaunting around us… People are making jokes about the millions of mothers filling cooking pots with tears and agony as other mothers complain of no more space in stuffed pantries and fridges. Scarcity now controls thinking and morals. Necessity is sharpening invention; inventing survival tricks has become a religion. You listen to its god very faithfully. The poor and the hustling want also to own forms of modern riches seen in showy displays of Migs, of thousands of various makes of Benzes and of other sleek limousines, some owned by yesterday’s paupers. The gods that control rich imports for shops, hotels and bars and for personal monstrous constructions such as The Crystals are beckoning to the envious poor to also find equivalent imitations, even for merely emotional satisfaction.

Now, school furniture, library and textbooks, and laboratory equipment disappear from institutions and are found being hawked for money or for food. The speed of disappearing bedding, cutlery, tables and chairs from hotels is equally alarming. Drugs, chairs, tables and bedding disappear in similar manner from hospitals and dispensaries. A peasant deep in the village now knows what to do with complex steel contraptions called maternity and ICU beds; he even owns an X-ray machine and microscopes and very dangerous laboratory chemicals. In such remote villages, far from any power connection or roads, we find also fridges, freezers, washing machines and TVs in crumbling mud and wattle shacks. Showing off does give one some satisfaction that you are also like them. Paid, underpaid and self-paying heads of institution and department, commissioners, and many VIP also decry Scarcity; so, they help themselves to what they control. There is no more such a thing as shame; it got lost in Scarcity, in competing to be Somebody. Even the Security Teams have graduated into making guns and ammunition walk away from barracks and armories to the many brigands willing to buy to intensify their war against Scarcity. In fact the craze of owning a gun among the gutter for survival is overwhelming.

Religions, too, are mushrooming with similar cut-throat speed to beat Scarcity. Prophets and gods foretell the fast-approaching Judgment Day. The new Bible is called “Beat Scarcity to Enter Heaven”. Its founders advise followers to sell all their property and follow the prophets. ‘Little to eat or even nothing at all is important in these lean days, my dear followers, because good followers of their Faith must know entering Heaven needs very slim figures. The entrance is so painfully narrow that fat followers must shed their excess baggage if they have to stand a chance of entry at all! So, please, bring all that you own and we offer it to the Lord to buy our way into Heaven…’! And desperation drives many to handover even the last chicken in the homestead; for, heaven is very expensive today and, paradoxically, the only way to also escape Scarcity! Then people begin to marvel at the prophets’ new acquisitions: mansions, bungalows, hotels, supermarkets, numerous land titles, limousines, etc. Followers watch (as some support) cut-throat competition of candidates for bishopric. Fists and canes and even poison are exchanged as clans and tribes compete to have their relative the chosen prophet. We need to enjoy the prestige to have our clan/tribe prophet parading his expensive mansion and limousine-gifts from followers and political leaders. A prophet is a huge asset for millions of ballots! Rewards are immense especially after political elections. Dear prophet, rub my back and I will rub or even scrub yours later! In politics, you cannot blame the prophets for divisions of the flock because factions began in heaven with the creation of the Right Hand of the Father and then the Left Hand, too, for the favorites; and then relegating the remaining multitudes in the backyard to scramble for any comfortable nook one grabs.

So, with our new bible, we aim to create fat leaders. Blame it on God, perhaps, for confusion, but our bible insists that fat followers may never enter that narrow opening but plump prophets slither through straight into God’s arms and on to the Right-Hand side, their fat wives on the Left. Moreover, surely, a needy preacher would not impart the word of the gods properly because, to preach well, you need a full or a pot belly, a good store of rich victuals managed by a beautiful fat woman to replenish the husband’s body overworked with a lot of shouting and preaching and visiting the sick and soliciting funds for making a prophet fat. ‘A prophet, dear followers, is an overworked donkey of God; feed it with increased gusto! ...’

If you doubt these biblical truths, examine slim preachers: how presentable are they with their skinny figures, cheap and tattered dressing and thin wives? Very miserable indeed. Luckily, they are too few to bother us and are hardly appreciated anywhere. This is why a reasonable prophet must discard those thin and ugly wives that diminish chances of God’s help to the prophet. And this is why also offertory time is a very crucial moment in a prophet’s life; his timid acolyte is hustled and even abused for lingering in the aisle too long: ‘You, phlegmatic thing, go to those…those Misses and Mrses, the My Cars, and their fat political benefactors… Pester them! How many times am I to remind you to size up people’s pockets and then force purses and pockets open! Go, idiot, baboon head..!’ And the Holy Bowl traverses pews; the now fully open wicked eyes of an acolyte beg, blame, taunt, curse… ‘How can you drop in only coins? Have you not heard the prophet’s constant admonition about evil in coins! Put in a note, you stingy… F-your nose! …’ The Holy Bowl traverses paths of rites and sacraments, too: Host tax, holy copulation tax, holy thanks tax, visit tax, holy divorce tax, linen tax, holy water tax, food tax, nun tax, sick tax, priest tax… People, appreciate religion as a Holy Struggle, Holy Witchcraft…

A reasonable prophet has also learnt the immense value of Non-Governmental Organizations and the New White Churches of Redemption. He knows what they organize and for what; they are the extended purses for prophets’ emancipation, an imperative aid to get our fat prophets through the Narrow Way. All it needs these days is a well packaged story to carry to those Dollar Churches of America and Europe, the Founders of God and Faith, the sources of sure God’s blessings. Surely no new Church can stand without Dollar intervention! God and Dollar are one in Faith, Hope and Love. No wonder some beggar prophets who ignore this are constantly harvested by Security Teams for their underhand means of survival. Like the now infamous Pastor Mufere Kisale who was nabbed in his follower’s banana plantation carrying away two bunches to feed his starving family! Recall the drama when a Security Team was leading him into custody, with some of his few adherents crying variously to their fellow follower to forgive their prophet and have him released: forgive our god, Nikodemo; it’s the devil and hunger which stole; they over-attempted him; Nikodemo, please, we shall contribute to pay double what you demand from him; Nikodemo, please, remember the virtue of forgiveness; Nikodemo, don’t tempt Heaven to punish you for shaming His prophet…! In vain.

Then a thug overpowered the Security Team and clubbed Kisale dead, thereby opening up the pastor’s hidden history: he deserved death, detractors revealed. He had started as a guard to some Indian trader whose disappearance was traced to the guards, Kisale and Sibo. Both were guarding him as he carried millions of shillings to the bank. But mysteriously, the car carrying them was discovered with the Indian’s and the driver’s decomposing bodies in River Nile. The guards had miraculously escaped the drowning! And the Security Team investigators had believed this escape story after the guards had ensured they did. It is unclear what caused the murder of Sibo immediately after inquiries were closed. But it is thereafter that Kisule founded ‘The Church of an Enlightened Man of God’ and turned into a terrific preacher that drew crowds from even other established but tottering Churches.

But his sticky hands led him back into destitution: he took a trader’s Benz on loan and failed to pay the debt. Court gave back the Benz to the trader plus millions Kisale had to pay in damages. He used all the savings from foreign beneficiaries to settle the court burden, which reduced him to a pauper. He lost very many followers and church collections dwindled to a trickle. He had begun to preach to his few followers about the blessings of God in accepting poverty as the Lord enjoins, emphasizing that it is another path to the Right Hand of the Father. Many followers found that Biblical version of God’s Blessing-in-poverty a self-curse. It was also said that at his burial, a skeletal follower turned up with four marasmus kids he had secretly sired with her. Few committed followers of his took this as a good example of obedience to God’s orders to humans to use their co-creation talents for the Great Good of His Kingdom. As to what Hannah, his official wife, did thereafter, she, too, became inventive as her late husband: she ended up in Honey Combs at first to keep herself and the children alive. Later, she used her talents and savings to put up a sprawling mud and wattle building that housed her Charity Organization called “Talents in Practice”. She became a very zealous helper of needy and orphan girls she trained on how to use their talents to beat Scarcity. Very many city dwellers even today still praise her for helping to decongest the city of street vermin! They say she has accomplished what the State has failed to do!

For some of these street menaces, especially boys, they have invented another mode of survival using force and shrewdness to extort generosity. They approach you suavely; they want to wash your car…

“F-off! My car is washed,” making the first error.

“You, too, f-off! F…your mother…sisters…aunts…daughters…nieces…!”

The long list of your incest-mates lengthens as the scamps yell insults back at you, wriggling and making all manner of contorted movements to show you how to go about desecrating all those apportioned relatives. Crowds of bystanders watch; some clap and goad on the scamps to throw more insults, everyone enjoying the capers and antics of a dead generation. And if you thought they had stopped at mere capers, you were grossly mistaken: returning from where you had gone, you find lights and side-mirrors gone. Then, to teach you how to use a clean tongue, you find tires slashed, a windscreen and some windows shattered. This is also retribution for meanness. How could a fat thing like you with millions in banks and investments, moreover stolen from government coffers, fail to give a few coins to starving waifs and strays? So, society has whelped. Thousands and thousands of snarling, growling, tearing predators extending their menaces and growing numbers even deep into villages.

Then we have predator terror; it is best proved by a new mode of burying our dead. Even the little ones in or out of schools have learnt why people are burying clothes and shoes instead of the real dead bodies: they have learnt that when the rampaging animals eat the people, inedible clothes and shoes remain and people bury those. It all started with the unforgettable ‘burial’ of Dr Mukulu, the Managing Director of the National Bank. All speakers emphasized why the bereft and their relatives and friends were burying his rotting clothes and shoes since his body had been offered to crocodiles and fish.

Among school going kids, this belief is imprinted in them at school at assemblies that emphasize how predators attack and devour people to leave only the inedible stuff. And parents worsen the kids’ fear by threatening to punish with throwing out of the house at night any disobedient child for predators to snatch and carry away to devour. So, kids exchange the scary stories and add their own embellishments and examples of people who were stripped naked, devoured and clothes left at scenes of ravaging. Now the kids also associate even army uniform and those green-colored vehicles with ubiquitous predators. They are not quite sure yet who hunts the other, but they know those guns are used in some form of prey hunting. This is reinforced by their own games of using sticks and canes as guns to ‘hunt and shoot’ one another. Our children now believe also in a related horror they are yet to fully comprehend: they believe in the tales about roadblocks where especially women are known to suffer all forms of pain and death. They hear stories narrating how ‘those manning roadblocks eat women; they chew them…’ It is common for kids to cry when they are at a roadblock and soldiers are barking at parents, relatives and other travelers to line up for checking amid beatings and insults. A kid’s mind is on the sure what-next: a parent or relative being carried off with her child to be devoured in bush!

So, this is our new world, one of a growing steely fear of multiple terrors: of Scarcity, of rabid Youth, of State cannibals… It is a new religion teaching us to even avoid owning much because the heavenly predator will begrudge you Salvation and one with a gun will come for you and what you own! Often now it is a blessing not to be rich, unless you belong to gun owners…

Fr Austin put the article down before finishing it. Already there were many details that could attract attention of the new political prophets. It was a very good, frank piece but he would have to discuss the article with his cousin first. There were also other political-social issues he wanted to see him about.

2

He went to Captain’s favorite Hacienda Grill Bar, Restaurant & Lodge. It was one of those very popular rendezvous for civil servants and businesspeople comprising mainly the New Breed called liberators who wanted to splash their money on good food, expensive drinks and orgies. Fr Austin ordered for a soft drink; his main bother now was a publication problem. Having had their Newsletters banned during the last two regimes, Fr Austin wanted to be sure what the new masters thought of the two Newsletters. Sr Geraldine had told him there had been a threat that even the new regime wanted them in abeyance since their articles tended to be ‘too critical of rulers as perennial sinners’. But Fr Austin loved to publish well researched material. To him, therefore, Captain was a new sure source of advice: a graduate of Economics and Political Science, he loved analysis of issues. Fr Austin had already learnt that the Captain (and another close confidant, Professor Alfred) hated the present fabrications, falsifications and outright lies the Crib Party stalwarts were beginning to churn out to the citizens. Both stuck to the original promise of the Party in their motto adopted in exile: ‘We shall lead only and only with truth and by example’.

Fr Austin had also learnt that Professor Alfred was the Minister in charge of Presidential Affairs and Advisors, Chairman of the Ministerial Appointments Committee and the Coordinator of Diaspora Affairs. He was an uncle to H.E, a hard-to-oppose confidant of the President and he was feared by many ministers who could have wanted to front to H.E their selfish agendas. He knew, too, that the close friendship between Professor and Captain was of vital political significance: digging out the ultimate motive of a very secretive ritual government had conducted purposely ‘to call upon H.E’s gods for blessings to protect him and his rule’. Only the most pliant and trusted Yes-men had been invited to the secret do. But bits of information had filtered to the public such as the process of securing one of the items to use during that ritual. It was a huge Christmas Crib, with ‘an African flavor’, imported from London. It was framed in easily assembled plywood material and its contents were in plastic material ready for use during that special and secret Naming Ceremony that would precede the National Manna-Day Celebration.

Captain and Professor came to know also that it was during that secret ceremony that H.E became the ‘Godhead of the Trinity’ and where the practice of acquiring long names and titles had begun and spread even among some minor civil servants! The two officials found out, too, that, before all this, few die-hard Criblets, a secret inner circle of H.E, rallied by the PM, had whispered with H.E, to share a ‘historical Biblical fact’ that became privileged information. It centered on how Yahweh’s hold on His creation had its firm foundation in Heavenly blessings He always cemented in name-calling. That is why Yahweh had insisted on Abram changing his name to Abraham, the Hebrew for ‘the ancestor of many nations’, with many descendants who would automatically be rulers forever!

He had also enjoined His son, the Word, to assume the earthly name of Jesus meaning ‘indispensable savior of the father’s kingdom’. He again had instructed the Son to name the first disciple Rocky Petrus to symbolize indestructibility of State power and structures! And, immediately thereafter, Yahweh had created a fiery soldier-spirit called the ‘Holy Ghost Spitting Fire’ to burn any recalcitrant heart rebelling against the Yahweh-Abraham kingdom formation! The knot of conspirators had concluded that that was the way Yahweh must have formed a trinity, the core of Heavenly powers! Unanimously, they endorsed the resolution that H.E, too, must form a core of rulers, the trinity, and appropriate those owe-inspiring names to secure their rule and a powerful progeny of rulers!

So, His Excellency became Alex Abraham Lodwarathe d’ibaale, the Minister for Finance and Minister for Foreign Affairs. The Honorable PM Jonathan became Rock Petrus Libromathe bwa Mkondo, the Prime Minister, Minister of Internal Affairs and First State Minister for Finance. Brigadier General (BG) became Holy Ghost-Fire Samson Jeroboam Bahore Lambert d’Macmohon, the Honorable Minister for Defense and The Second State Minister for Finance. Thus, this trinity formed the almightiness which dared anyone to rebel, commit heresy, and reap the wrath of an angry, jealous god!

Fr Austin looked at his watch; he was beginning to feel desperate. Then, the cousin arrived in a hurry.

“Very sorry, cousin,” the Captain said, almost breathless, as he slumped in a sofa near him.

“You needn’t apologize. I can figure out what it means to tear yourself away from a beehive of a PM’s office and the demands of the Presidency…”

“Hectic, I assure you. There was a meeting since eight a.m.; it closed just now; we took a working lunch. Typical of demanding gods, His Excellency and the PM would not allow postponement.”

But Fr Austin was eager to know about those mysteries of the trinity and H.E’s marriage to ‘a goddess for protective powers’. Captain steered him away to a quieter corner within the Restaurant where light was dim. They talked as they ate.

“If we were to talk about the whole conception and execution of the political-religious significance of this Crib thing and his marriage, we would take days. But simply, it was the PM’s idea sold to a gullible and superstitious President. Now you cannot separate the Party, the trinity, their form of religion and H.E’s ‘sacred marriage’ from Cribism as their ideology. Confusing, but there it is! A punch of confused things as Professor calls it. I think, deep down, there is a pagan in each one of us, except, perhaps, in you religious people…”

“Ha ha ha…! Don’t be too sure, Dami” (the short form he preferred to call him).

“There is certainly a superstitious corner in our minds that makes us oscillate from one god to another. You are aware of the rituals we perform to bid goodbye but also, paradoxically, to make a blood pact with our dead. Christianity has enjoined us to eschew the practices, in vain. You know, among our people, there is a god that resides in each household. Its protective armor is a colossal religious anchor you never can uproot; it lives in household property, in walls, in roof materials…in every nook. The foreign God is still too, too far. So, you see, H.E needed a union to marry him to a goddess protected by the grace of his type of the nearest and Highest Being; so the bride he took that day was the cementing of a political-religious marriage with the protective powers she is said to symbolize. Still confusing, eh?”

“Well, I begin to figure out what the punch is all about to him. But surely H.E should know she is a woman like all others…”

“No! You are seeing it all with your Catholic and priestly squint again. Look at that virgin in the solemnized marriage as a gift his personal god gave him; the witchdoctor who solemnized the ritual was sent by the gods; to this priest and to H.E, the girl is a goddess. This is why she must keep indoors or hidden to be more potent, like the kept god in each of our households.”

“By the way, is she pregnant yet?”

“Hei, Father, ha ha ha…” enjoying a mirthful moment. “You are not supposed to use such a language to refer to a goddess. A goddess never gets pregnant.”

“Ha ha ha ha ha…! Then, pray, what do you call this…this…?”

“Co-creating.”

“Dami, that is a quibble. Every woman is a co-creator of God…”

“Ours is not co-creating with your God, but with our gods…”

“Yours, I … well… I give up; she is your mystery.”

“You have it at last! A mystery cannot get pregnant.”

“Okay. But when is the delivery time? Surely, she must give us an heir…”

“Another mystery. Let’s wait... After all, she was taken out of the country and is hidden in England in some secret location even we Chief Advisors are not allowed to know. Now, look at this picture… This is the godhead’s official ‘Earthly Wife’. The two brides are for different purposes. This new one was sought for attending public ceremonies with him. I am told the godhead instructed Search Teams to respect his choice of color, beauty, size and shape to reflect the power of His Majesty, whatever that meant!”

“My god! This... this…”

“Please, please! Lower your voice! Keep the photograph. Examine it when you reach home. Will it attract you away from your calling…?”, chuckling. Father Austin, too, laughed.

“How about that mystery of The Crystals? Is it a joint company?”

“That is one of the touchiest topics, in fact, a fatal attraction for any gossiping journalist. You hadn’t returned but I hope you already know that that topic caused the disappearance of two newly chosen cabinet members and two MPs. You are lucky your Newsletters never got involved in the gossip; your fellow editor of our government Daily, Mr Ongothem, and Blasio of “Scrutiny”, the daredevil Daily of the Parasol Party, paid dearly for publishing heresy.”

“Yes. A fellow priest told me that is the very word the Opposition criticized when protesting the disappearance of the two editors.”

“As for the writing on The Crystals, those chaps were too direct well knowing why the trinity share heading the Finance Portfolio.”

The bon-homie went on for another hour. Till Captain excused himself to leave.

On reaching home, Fr Austin was itching to examine that photograph of that second bride of the godhead. So, he held the photograph. At the moment he did not know he was looking at a creature gossip had recreated into an inscrutable monster. As gossip went, no male or female looked at her without staring, mesmerized by the very image so much sought after by very many of her kind, in vain. She and only she had reached nearest to that sought-after pinnacle of yellow ripeness. So many images had been produced to effect it, or at least to get to the reddish-and-yellow, or even to the pink-and-yellow glow. So much experimenting in shades of ripeness had been attempted that beauticians were running short of ideas. Especially in the city, dabs of yellow mixed with some pink ripeness had characterized faces, arms and legs, leaving clothes to hide pitch dark parts: the torsos and upper thighs! Such victims of poor bleaching looked like poor industrial manufacturing of white mannequins; all they managed was multicolored, patched up things as if they were from different experiment-factories. Artistic pastiches of amateur plagiarizing! But it was the mode, the painful attempt of a modern woman to climb and reach the other-ness, the passport to Mount Money. Thousands and thousands of tons of imported and smuggled in cartons of bleaches to soak in and color femininity to the desired testament of living with and for the times.

But Oliva’s yellowness was spectacular, and it soon became infectious. It gripped hearts and communicated better class, the true feminine touch. It removed racial and tribal prejudices, and that abominable inferiority of blackness. It eschewed even the possibility of exact race placement. So, it produced a peculiar, singular race: an ingenious dab of pink, of almost Indo-Chinese color; yet, something near to the Euro-blanched whiteness. What was crucial was that the new creation detached itself from the black color and turned into some subtle yellowish shimmer. Whispers and gossip of the uninformed fought to get a perfect way to describe that color, in vain.

She is albino… no; a mulatta… no; chocolata… no; Indo-Chinesish… no; Causasianish… no; Eskimoidsh… No word at all of color-description had as yet been found in any dictionary to capture the kernel of the new creation. For such shameful, hurting dearth of the apt word, the only and best alternative remained Yellowred.

Hence gossip adjusted it to YellowOliva; then to YellredOliva… PinkellowOliva… ShinyellowOliva… It was very attractive to listen to the alliterative-assonantal glides, to the softness and its sweetness, to the eulogy of the exotic… It produced some kind of intellectual masturbation; it was like delving into and feeling for her carnal rhythms, especially given her own peculiar Locomotional Gyrations she had assumed. She was no more the hurried, village-baked woman striding and shuffling. She glided and slithered on city roads and on pavements, in offices and on house floors. Forcibly, her Luganda accent underwent delicate surgery, making her talk baby-like, trilling and lilting in unhurried, refined execution of articulation. A little coloring of Luganda with some crammed English words added to her exoticness and musical-ness. When it came to the hair, so multi-colored with stripes of jet black and patches of yellow, pink etc, the graceful head looked like a mold veiled in a prism of revised rainbow colors. The huge silvery (and sometimes golden) earrings added more sparkle. Then, to put the last touch of finesse, a golden ringlet dangled on one nostril, so ingeniously placed as to avoid any gross suggestion of pedigree-branding as found on a dairy farm.

The godhead’s Search Teams knew she lived in Honey Combs, but it had become very hard to find her there. Scouting all over hotels, bars, restaurants, and city parties, they at last, one evening, landed on her at Hacienda Grill dining with a dandy Liberator. She was bundled away at once to the godhead and the liberator was strongly warned not to squeak in protest.

Fr Austin shook his head, wondering: ‘Did these Search Teams and adoring liberators really know she is one of the great labels of Honey Combs, the now booming and sprawling mini-city-cum whore center?’ And she is really a grandmother! But some of these so-called Liberators among the Search Teams had also found the place irresistible. Honey Combs Soul had long ago begun to gradually recruit into itself the mixed up tastes of Security Teams and machinations of Cribism. But the greatest achievement was that excellent gift Honey Combs gave to the illustrious in-law, H.E. And that was part of the trinity’s needed Africanizing crusade!

Fr Austin placed the photograph on his reading table thinking: ‘Blasio could not have survived with his snippets about the “Bride of a Century”’. He proceeded to read an extract from another article Blasio had written with details of the death of Dr Mukulu, the National Bank Managing Director, titled “The Mystery behind Dollar Printing”.

… Citizens came to know that a few months after the army takeover, the new government decided to print more money ‘to help citizens have something in the pockets for buying the still rare and precious commodities’. The PM undertook to head a delegation to London to arrange for the printing. Dr Mukulu disclosed to journalists the government needed the millions for also certain infrastructural undertakings: repairs on the National Assembly, renovation of some hospitals and of key city roads, etc. However, later on, a Radio broadcast issued the shocking news: the printed millions had disappeared on a London–Nairobi-Entebbe cargo plane. Government asked everyone to avoid loose talk about this small national inconvenience and leave Security and Search Teams to do their work.

But, Dr Mukulu was nowhere to be found. Government said he had been sent to London to do a background check about the disappearance of the money, but family and friends in London and Nairobi said flight lists examined there showed no name of such a VIP. Shockingly, the clothes and shoes Dr Mukulu was wearing that very day he was supposed to have left for London were discovered by some fishermen trapped and rotting in lake reeds on a lake shore. News had spread that someone must have been killed and his body dumped naked in Lake Victoria. Family members of Dr Mukulu had quickly hurried to claim the clothes. Security Teams demanded to have them to ascertain they indeed belonged to ‘their officer’. The family and relatives refused completely. The PM ordered a Security Team to find and interrogate the fishermen and some of Dr Mukulu’s family members. The fishermen were taken into custody to help in the investigations, to date. Indeed, revealing truth can be tragic! …

Chapter Three

The prince must nonetheless make himself feared…[he]

must understand how to make use of the beast

and the man…to know how to act like a beast, he

must learn from the fox and the lion…one must

be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion

to frighten off wolves…

[The Prince. Machiavelli]

Fr Austin was interested to know what an Editorial of the Parasol Party Paper, “The Scrutiny”, had written about The Crystals. So, he began to read…