Abyssinian Chronicles

by Moses Isegawa

  This was when the running games, or Olympic Games, as wags called them, began. During office hours, a report would suddenly circulate that the guerrillas were in the city, and people would stream out of offices and businesses and dash to their cars or to the bus and taxi parks. The pandemonium would be heightened by rumormongers who claimed that even as they spoke, a few suburban towns had already fallen. I was once caught in the wave. People poured out of the filthy Owino Market, Kikuubo, Nakasero Hill and everywhere, and made the taxi park tremble with the noise of their cries and the stamping of their feet. I got knocked in the back and spun around, but luckily got pushed upright by those behind me. Everybody was clearing out. Supercilious snake charmers, trapped in their flaccid dignity, saw their boxes kicked into the air, the reptiles ground into the asphalt. Rat poison merchants saw their goods flying all over the place. Hawkers ran with cardboard boxes on their heads. Van drivers made incredible turns, cutting through the masses before the doors could be ripped from their hinges. Lost shoes, torn bags, shirt buttons, roast maize, white bread, were all ground into the asphalt as people ran from the invisible enemy.

  Hordes of unemployed youths who paraded the bus and taxi parks quickly got the hang of the game. They would come to town ready to snatch bags and fun whenever possible. They would stand in little groups by the roadside and watch well-dressed women and men wobbling down the hills, blowing like cows chewing cud at the fireside. They concentrated on women who fled with high heels in their hands, burdened with vanity bags and sacks of clothing, tongues protruding out of parched mouths.

  “Lady,” they would chime. “Are you a sprinter or a marathon runner?”

  “She is a marathon runner.”

  “How long have you been training for this race?”

  “Every day, once, twice, thrice a week in bed?”

  “Are you going to be the first Ugandan woman to win Olympic gold?”

  “Take this, it is my lucky towel. It will help you come in first. I don’t really mind following you.”

  Like many times before and after, false alarms set the games rolling. At the back of most people’s minds was the feeling that there was really nowhere to run, but that they had to keep moving. In the Triangle, people fled toward the city. In the city, people could only flee toward their homes. These panic alarms went on for a few months, till people began to question them. Mission accomplished, they finally disappeared as quietly as they had started.

  It was during this time that the guerrillas were moving out of the Luwero Triangle to western Uganda, in the direction of Lake Albert. In the city, there were rumors that the guerrillas had given up and had cut a deal with the government. The army itself was confused: in the Triangle, the troops found only ghost towns and deserted villages loaded with the stench of the dead and the decay caused by aerial bombardment, mop-up operations and the elements. There was nobody to fight. The emptiness of their former hunting grounds was the last warning that they had lost both their prey and their grip on the situation. They had recurrent nightmares of getting ambushed and hit from the back. The eerie silence emphasized the fact that they had let “the bandits” escape to a place where they could hardly be reached. Already there were divisions in the army, and morale was dwindling rapidly. Many soldiers had not been paid for months and were tired of having to loot and kill in order to get money. The casualties—comrades who lay on their sickbeds knowing that somewhere in the Triangle their blown-off legs, arms, jaws, ears or balls were rotting—brought the desperation of the situation closer to those on the front line and those waiting to be dispatched to the war zone.

  It was not long before the guerrillas started attacking and taking over big towns in both the west and the south. Mubende, Hoima, Masaka and Mbarara fell. The guerrillas set up a provisional government. The country was now cut in two. For some time, Aunt was left without anchor. She started brooding, wrapping her worries in few words. She was very afraid that she might never see the brigadier again, for the possibility of a protracted confrontation with government forces looked imminent. She tried to look cheerful and hide her suffering. Then one day she told me that she was going to Masaka, deep in guerrilla territory. At this time it was still possible to go and return. Ostensibly, she was going to visit Uncle Kawayida. In reality, she was going to check on the brigadier. She was gone for a week. My fear was that she might get trapped on the other side. Government roadblocks were bad, but she survived them and came back. “It is peaceful on the other side. There is no shooting in the night. People leave their doors open. There is nothing to fear,” she said very excitedly. “As a matter of fact, I am going back.”

  I was both alarmed and angry. I told her that it was sheer madness. How could she push her luck like that? “I have been doing it all my life.” Off she went. This time, however, the guerrillas denied her permission to leave Masaka. They did not want their secrets betrayed to government forces, voluntarily or otherwise. They were highly suspicious of anyone coming and going. Aunt pleaded that her children needed her badly, but they countered that they badly needed her to organize women in the liberated areas. The brigadier, however, made a plan for her to escape. She went by boat and landed at a port near the city. She had picked up a fever, but she was so relieved to be back with her children that she never complained about it or the hardships on the way.

  There were upheavals in the army. A leading faction of the commanders wanted to negotiate with the guerrillas, end the fighting and form a coalition government. The smallest guerrilla groups, which had remained inside the Triangle on a knife’s edge, came out and handed over some guns and signed papers. The group in the west, half a country under its control, did not budge. There was a lot of political shadowboxing and jostling for power, which I ignored as I concentrated on Boom-boom Brewery and on Jo. Money was still coming in, and I could afford to seal myself off in my little cocoon.

  The war that dislodged the Obote II government and buried the remnants of the army in both northern Uganda and southern Sudan took the same route as the one that had ousted Idi Amin. The guerrillas followed Masaka Road. They pushed toward the city step by step, town by town. On many occasions, the army tried to use tanks to break through the advancing ranks and reoccupy the liberated areas, but to no avail. At best, they recaptured areas for a few weeks but were later driven out of them. Their hearts were no longer in it, and hardware alone never won a war.

  Pressured by powerful army officers, the government asked for negotiations. A cease-fire was called; both government and guerrillas took turns violating it. In the meantime, more civilians were getting killed in sporadic fighting. The triangle syndrome was spreading elsewhere. With bated breath, the nation watched the negotiations. When the fighting reached Aunt Kasawo’s little town, everyone knew that it was now or never. Twenty-five kilometers from the city was as near as the guerrillas had ever come to accomplishing their goal. Weeks of negotiations and accusations and counter-accusations of cease-fire violation followed.

  Finally, the agreement between the guerrillas and the government was signed. Within a matter of weeks, however, the fighting picked up steam, and the guerrillas captured Kampala on January 25, 1986. It was almost like a repeat of the 1979 show, with government soldiers fleeing both north and east and a new force in power. This time, though, the city had been captured by units with many child soldiers, little boys with uniforms too large for them. It was simply amazing to watch these often ragged units marching through the city, hard on the heels of the retreating army.

  Anticipating a repeat of the 1979 bonanza, the looters came out in full force. They were mistaken. Orders had been given that there would be no looting, no duplication of the lawlessness of the seventies. Brave looters got warning shots fired in the air above their heads. Those who persisted got shot. News spread that the guerrillas meant business. Everyone got the message, and the looters returned home wondering what government takeovers had come to.

  There was jubilation in the southern part of the country, a
lbeit a little overshadowed by what had happened in the Luwero Triangle. The celebrations were muted; there were no wild drinking parties and ceaseless drumming. Jo came to see me, and we spent the day talking, theorizing about what would happen next. What did the future hold for us? She was thinking about returning to the Triangle to survey the damage and see what she could salvage from the ruins. I was wondering whether Boom-boom Brewery would keep on growing.

  Aunt Lwandeka was overjoyed. She told me that she would never get involved with guerrillas again. She was happy that the victory had come when it had: she was tired of waiting and fearing for her life. “I have been reborn, son, given another chance. Nobody gets born thrice.” Recalling what had happened in 1971 and 1979, I became gripped by fear: What was I going to lose, or rather, whom was I going to lose, this time? Jo, Aunt Lwandeka or someone else? I could not face the idea of going to the Triangle: I didn’t want to know what had happened to the village. It felt better, at least for the time being, not to know. Already estimates put the death toll in the Triangle anywhere between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand. I preferred the dead to bury themselves.

  The most remarkable change regarded security: one could sleep at night without fear of getting killed by robbers, raiders, soldiers or unknown people. One could travel and stay out late. The roadblocks were tough but fair; there was no stealing or raping going on. The people gained confidence in the new government, and their expectations rose. At first, sleeping peacefully at night was enough. Now they found out that you cannot sleep peacefully on an empty stomach or without knowing what has happened to your home, your people, your history. Those who had come from the Triangle wanted to go back; those who had people there wanted to know what had happened to them. They all made excursions to their ghost towns and came back depressed. Their old homes had no roofs or windows or doors, and the dead lay where they had fallen. The shrines of their gods had been desecrated, and there was a big lacuna between the past they knew and the present that faced them.

  The task of reconstruction was enormous. The government promised to help devastated areas, but the help did not come quickly enough. People with money decided to go it alone. They bought building materials, transported them to the Triangle on rickety pickup vans and rebuilt their houses. Most waited, going there only to do a little work like digging and clearing the yards.

  I sponsored Jo’s journeys to the Triangle but refused to accompany her. After each visit, she would come back feeling sad. Her former school lay in ruins. She wanted to be part of the restoration process, but the government was finding it hard to provide the necessary materials. It bothered her a lot that so much had been destroyed. She could hardly understand or let it go. She would go on endless tirades about why it should not have happened, going back to Obote II, Amin, Obote I, up to the colonial government and its local agents. She blamed all Ugandans, all colonialists, all arms manufacturers and dealers and dumpers. She blamed the hatred and the indifference and the inequality that made all this possible, until I either ran out of the house or shouted at her to stop. The tirades helped her to jettison her frustration, but they ended up getting on my nerves and making me ponder things I preferred to leave frozen.

  Aunt was still waiting for her reward. She frequently went to the city to meet the brigadier, who was organizing the guerrilla forces into a regular army. He had promised to help her set up a business by recommending her for a low-interest loan from the bank. He asked her to marry him. She said that she would think about it; she had never thought about marriage after her adolescent fiasco with the veterinary officer. He gave her a ring. She at first wore it shyly, and her friends made jokes about it, but she took it in her stride. To start with, she was given the task of organizing women. She set up clubs and held meetings. She worked very hard, and she was as happy as I had ever seen her.

  All this time, I had been wondering where Lwendo was. It was months since the takeover. I went to the city and inquired at the cathedral whether he was still in the seminary. He had been expelled. When? At around the time when the country was cut in two. A month later, a military jeep came to SIMC while I was away, and a soldier asked to see me. He refused to leave a message. A week later, Lwendo came. He was clad in military fatigues. He was a second lieutenant now. We embraced. He had learned my whereabouts from a former schoolmate. There was so much catching up to do. The underlying question was, was it curiosity that had impelled Lwendo to come, or was there something else? It was more than curiosity. He wanted me to join him. In what capacity? As semi-spy, semi-ombudsman. I was shocked. It did not make much sense. I had left the seminary to escape dictatorship, and I was not going to get involved with military or security agency dictators. He reassured me that we would be working for an individual, a big boss in government whose task was to fight corruption. I detected clericalism, and sure enough, the man was an ex-priest. It was the reason he had been put in charge of rehabilitation and reconstruction: Catholics still had a reputation for honesty. But what about me, and my former mate Lwendo? I could detect the danger: What would the people whose corrupt plans we would be sabotaging do? Would they try to bribe us or attempt to pop us off? I rejected his offer. I had a good income. What reason had I to get involved in such dangerous stuff? I changed the subject of conversation. I wanted to hear his personal story.

  Lwendo was an orphan. He never knew his real parents. He had been brought up by a kind Catholic couple with a big family as one of their children. It was while he was in the seminary that he discovered that his benefactors were not his real parents. By then, they had mapped out his life for him: he had to become a priest, help the needy and repay God for what He had done for him. Lwendo had never liked the idea: his childhood dream had been to join the air force and fly planes. His benefactors could not entertain such un-Catholic vanity. His misbehavior in the seminary had been geared by his resentment of the choice his benefactors had made for him, and the feeling that he had no way out.

  After my departure, he had soldiered on. By the time guerrilla activity started, he was in the major seminary, but the regimen was harder than he had anticipated. He quickly got fed up with the place and the staff. He started playing truant and flirting with girls when he went out for pastoral work. He opposed priests in the open. He asked sharp questions about the existence of God and gave political speeches. To work everybody up properly, he supported the Uganda People’s Congress and the actions of the Obote II government in the Luwero Triangle. When asked about the killings, he quoted the old Biblical line: “All authority comes from God.” He also referred to the time of the Crusades, when the Church waged genocidal wars. The conclusion many priests drew was that he had no vocation. Others defended him, seeing his attitude as residual adolescent rebellion, which would wear off. He was warned to change his ways and pay respect to the fathers and stop political agitation. He refused. They set spies on him. He was caught returning late to campus one evening. He was expelled.

  At that point, Lwendo had two options: to go home, across Lake Victoria, or to stay in the liberated areas. Home: Where was his home? Would his benefactors receive him well? If so, what was he going to do in the troubled city? He had no job, no money, no immediate prospects. The theological education he had garnered could only land him on the sidelines of teacherdom or in some function related to religion, which he was not ready to countenance. Above all, the stories that trickled into the liberated areas from the city, with a dose of good old exaggeration, said that people were dying like flies at the hands of desperate government soldiers. Having tasted the relative peace and order reigning in the liberated areas, he was not ready to face whatever lay on the other side.

  He decided to stay and join the guerrillas. Already he knew the ex-priest called Major Padre or simply Padre by all, who was a prominent personality in the guerrilla movement in that area. He had visited the seminary twice, trying to sell guerrilla ideology to the priests and seminarians. In what to many seemed like a strange ideological turnaround, L
wendo had been the only seminarian to express interest in his message and to hail the guerrillas for fighting the murderous regime. The ex-priest had given him a faded visiting card, the only one he gave away on both occasions, because the others were uninterested. Not one to hold back, Lwendo used the card as his talisman, and boasted to fellow seminarians that he was the only one with vision.

  “You are a chameleon,” they said, “with no sense of loyalty or principle.”

  “I am a child of the darkness,” he countered. “I sense where the wind blows.” They laughed at him. He shouted guerrilla slogans on campus, alienating even the few priests who believed that he was only suffering from arrested adolescence. Not long after, he said that if he were the leader of the guerrillas, he would have closed the seminary and sent both the seminarians and the staff for military training. Before joining the guerrillas, he visited the padre and talked to him about his intentions. He got the green light: the padre needed people he could trust, and Lwendo, with his big mouth, looked like a perfect tool.

  Beset by transport problems, Lwendo entered the training camp at night and almost got shot at the quarter-guard. The soldiers on watch barked at him, ordered him to put his arms in the air and took him in for interrogation. The guerrillas were very wary of sneak attacks from the remnants of government forces they had driven from the town, and of infiltration by spies masquerading as aspiring fighters. Lwendo spent the night in a filthy room guarded by two soldiers, because the padre could not be disturbed at that late hour, not even by those bearing his talisman. Salvation arrived early the next morning. The padre vouched for him, and he was immediately sent for training. Afterward, he did guard duty and patrol, and twice his unit was dispatched to flush out government soldiers who had turned into highwaymen. After lying in ambush for a week, he and his comrades killed four of them. This did not go unnoticed. The padre was happy that his ward could get the job done and appreciated his communication skills, a far cry from those of most Triangle veterans, who only obeyed orders and spoke only when spoken to. Lwendo exaggerated the part he had played in the fight. “When the thugs started shooting, I thought I had been hit. Then I started shooting, and the sound of my gun charged me up and everything changed. It was the best feeling in the world. I wished there were fifty of them out there. I would have killed them all,” he told the padre, who had asked him to secretly report back to him. A shadow of doubt passed over the man’s face, but he said nothing about his ward’s declared interest in killing. He could always use a good story.