After the Journey: July 17th: The OG of Luteete Primary School drops in for a visit

Thank you all for your feedback on the blogs. For many Ugandans, I know some of these do not "hit close to home" as the cliche goes, they hit home! I am inspired by the stories I hear back, keep them coming...after a couple more of these stories, I will update you with news of Susan and Akiror, plus a little more of Rose's Journey on television. In writing the blog, I hoped to draw everyone into the experiences of life as it happens in Uganda at least--the mundane parts, the not so glamorous bits, the ordinary ways in which people are inspired...to get up and get on with it, ways in which the road ends and then it starts, and hopefully ways in which each of us can find an anchor to face the storm...sometimes, may be more often than we think or experience, this is the way of life for many people. We journey through these together...

Six days after Rose’s Journey I get another call from my brother Juda. Juda calls me to say hi sometimes, but quite often, he is the bearer of bad news. I sense something is up as soon as I answer his call. He says to me after the greeting that Maama Muto has passed away. I am not shocked by the news, it is expected, and we have all been expecting it. Maama Muto has been sick for a while…sick with HIV/AIDS, just like our father, the man she had been married to at the time of his death. Maama Muto (the young mother) is what we called her to distinguish her from the rest of our fathers’ wives. True, she was the youngest—only six years older than I when she married my father; that was around 1988 I think, I was coming up to my sixteenth birthday and she was barely 22! The name stuck until she had her first son, my step brother Brian. She then became Maama Brian...

Her passing means there is only one left of the five wives my Father married, plus one other woman with whom he had four children, but never married…I know, hang with me...it is if confusing. Maama Muto is the 4th to die, and now only one woman (well plus one other—technically two women) remains before the history of my Father’s loves comes to an end. We have buried them all; starting with my mother who died in child birth many years earlier and at a very young age; She was barely 37 when she passed; followed by my step mother (the mother of 8 other children, one set of step siblings), and another step mother (mother to Fred and Frank and a sister I hardly know) and now Maama Muto ….ok, if you have gone through that section without sighing...bravo...

When Juda calls, I am in the middle of planning a trip to Bamunanika with my friend DJ who is still here after Rose’s Journey. DJ is the president of Narrow Road, an International NGO based in Breckenridge Colorado, and I am one of its board members. We are supposed to go to Bamunanika to film there—part of Rose’s Journey, the Documentary. The news delivered by Juda alters my plans for the day and the day after. How can I pass through the village, camera ready when my step mother lies dead a few kilometers away from Bamunanika? It would not look or feel right. After some soul searching and deliberations, DJ and I decide to go to Bamunanika and visit my former primary school—Luteete Mixed Primary School—and then stop at my sister Florence’s house for lunch. We do exactly that and manage to stay inconspicuous for the most part…

In the car and on the way to Bamunanika, my brother Tom (who offered to drive us) and I reminisce about the old days. He asks me if I remember bringing cow-dung to school for smearing the black boards. We both laugh, of course I remember. I remember that I (I notice I say so and so and I a lot--I never remember the correct grammar--sorry mother) would forget to collect it the day before and that I was always one of those pupils who would be ducking into somebody’s garden to get the required banana leaf, and then I would furiously look for cow-dung on the way to school—in a field, anywhere. Once located, there was always the trouble of scooping it up and nicely wrapping it up before finally and proudly presenting it to the teacher! Quite a saga…We talk about several other experiences weird experiences (I will spare you those) of growing up poor and in a village, and how we never even realized how very poor we were...how our poverty and tragedies seemed to be universal…

When we pass the former soccer field which looks un-kept, I remember that there used to be a cattle dip right opposite it. I tell Tom and DJ of the day I fell into this cattle-dip filled with tick-cide (what we called coopertox), and how my uniform stank so much I had to sit at the borehole while other children pumped water over me for hours. We thought this was a great intervention and that mother would probably not ‘smell me’ on return, we were wrong...

We arrive at the primary school at lunch time and when we get out of the car, I start pointing things out to DJ. Look, there are the pit latrines where I used to hide during PE time. I explain the reasons for hiding to DJ…he listens intently without interrupting. DJ is a thoughtful man; I never quite know what he is thinking. Sometimes, long after we have had a conversation about something, DJ will say…so Rose about that conversation...I have learned to wait for that “So, Rose…”

I point out class four (P.4) which barely exists now. A little bit of the old structure and its foundation still exists, however, the building itself, from the look of things, must have collapsed a few years ago. They have not managed to rebuild any of it; instead, they moved the old offices as well as classes, to another rundown structure across the road. I tell DJ and Tom that I spent a night here once, the day the family threw me out. I wrote on the backboard--thanks to all the cow-dung--"stay alive" as the first order of business...!

Tom shakes his head, he is sad to learn more of the truth now and although I have spared him and others the hurt I felt, I know that he knows the truth of that too. With Rose’s Journey, he has had discoveries of his own. So has Steven, my other brother who walked with me on July 11th. Both men (for they have grown up from the children we helped raise after mother’s death, into sensible men) have felt a little of what I felt, they have had memories of their own, and I hope that this is as important to them as it is to me. We journey together, we remember together. We try to be Ugandans who are making a difference. We each know that this…the retracing of our journeys…will not leave us the same…

Several children are out playing, most teachers are off to where ever they have their lunch break, and there is only one adult to talk to. The children point us in the direction of the new but run down office, which is where the only adult present is standing. He invites us inside. We enter a very crammed and dusty office and I ask the gentleman, as I squeeze myself between two tables to get to an empty chair, if it is ok for us to sit down. I get a rapid yes, and yes to the inquiry. I ask him if he is the headmaster and he tells me he is the head-teacher. I have forgotten what that means so I don’t ask for fear of appearing ignorant. His name is Frank. I introduce myself and tell Mr. Frank that I am actually an “Old Girl” of the school. To this he smiles knowingly as though he suddenly remembers who I am. He probably does—every child must look the same to the teachers. I look out the window and think…yeah I must have looked like any other child here, scrawny, shoeless, mug in hand for my breakfast, mute in classes just like I were expected to be, and only in trouble occasionally for forgetting to pickup cow-dung for the yearly blackboard smear, or failure to attend PE due to the embarrassing strings around my body…

We sign a guest book, which feels like I am doing something I am not supposed to do (like I am breaking a rule), and leave Mr. Frank to get on with his job. Outside, the children gather around DJ who is holding a camera. I, on the other hand, forget that I am an adult. I think I regress back to my childhood, which surprisingly, gives me much freedom now than it did then. I enjoy the company of these, my counterparts. I scoot down and start looking at their mugs to see if they are doing the same thing I did—mark it with my name. Although very territorial, it was not the reason we marked them--we just did not want anyone to steal the mug, most likely the only mug one had for use at home as well school—and sure enough I find what I am looking for. We chat about their life, what subjects they prefer in school...they shout them out one by one…Mathematics, English, Social Studies, Sciences, PE, Religious Education et cetera. I say to DJ. “They are the same, nothing has changed at all.” A group of girls edge closer to where we are and I spot a jump-rope made out of banana fibers. It is an absolute pleasure to join the game for a few minutes. When we leave the school, I cannot help but wonder how many of the kids I met will make it; and how many will specifically make it to a place like Yale…

We arrive at my sister’s house much later than we had anticipated. I am not worried, I am home and here, one frets less and less about time and the passing of it or there being less of it to waste. When the subject of Maama Muto comes up, which is fairly quickly after the greetings, we embark on a long discussion about our father’s wives and children. We all disagree as to how many he had. Tom has a different figure, so do I, and so do Steven (Florence’s’ husband) and Florence. I say, “Its 36,” and Tom says, “No its 37” and Steven says “I thought it was only 30,” to which we all exclaim “No No, that is too small a number, it is more like 40!” DJ is amused and sits quietly in the room observing all of us engage in a rather unusual family chitchat. My family makes an interesting case study, someone once said...they meant well! We finally start counting…wife one, these many children, wife two (my mother) 8, wife three and so on and so forth. When we get to Maama Muto, I say “Definitely two” and I get an evil eye from Florence who quickly corrects me, “Its four,” she says; “There is Brian, then Allen, plus Julius and Vincent.” I am flabbergasted, at what point did she have all these children? I remember then that I must have been away from home by that time…

On the way back to Kampala…my thoughts shift back to Luteete Primary School and the statistics of how many of those children will live beyond their pre-teen years, how many will go to college (Luteete, as dismal a place as it is, being a prep school for them as it were mine), how many will escape the cruel injustices planned against them by others around them, how many will have someone to sing, rejoice over them, and cheer them on, how many will have opportunities to be shaped into leaders of our beloved country…how many will have someone to say “we will hold on to you,” how many of their stories will be told around the country or the world, how many of their voices will be heard and not heard, and how many will later on smile as I do when I return to Luteete and I think, “I was once here, I am still here because you are, and I thank God Almighty I survived…you too will…hope comes alive...!”

I remember that on July 11th, we journeyed together—the children and others and me—believing in the healing of communities, one child at a time…

Note: Photos by friends. "She got to see her self" by Citizen Camera