To Kabale

Maama says there will be people trying to sell me everything: sizzled meat, roasted maize, bottled water, warm soda, gonja.

“Gonja. That is the only thing you should take. Don’t you take any other thing. People do everything to food. You take gonja. That is it.”

She tells me that, although the travelers are used to seeing foreigners, “they look for muzungus special,” as if this applies to me. “But you? They won’t know you are not African.”

“Unless I speak, Maama,” I remind her.

 “Yes. If you talk! They will know. Or maybe they will think you are one of those who was born here and left to study.”

And it is true: I am one of few African-Americans most Ugandans have encountered who have been dark enough to be mistaken as one of them. If I stay quiet, most will assume I am from up North, or Kenya, maybe Burundi. If I speak, they will think I am Muganda or Mukiga or maybe Acholi but have studied abroad, perhaps in the U.K. or States, and have now returned to visit family and friends. They cannot fathom that I am completely and utterly American because the brown of my skin runs too deep.

“Those are not true Black-Americans.” My host brother, one of Maama’s four sons, told me when I asked him about the American rappers they might have seen– the Lil Waynes, and 2Chainz and Rick Rosses. “Black-Americans look like Beyoncé,” he attested when I first arrived at their homestead a few years before, a second-year college student studying abroad in their country. They expected their student to be of honey and beehive brown with hair naturally straight or curly with large waves and soft edges. But instead, there was me, chocolate bar brown with hair closely shaved like the Ugandan schoolgirls. Maama and her family had been briefed about my arrival—a forewarning that I was Black-American because of the way a former Black student, much fairer, I’d heard, maybe even mixed-race, had a host family in the previous year that treated them like a servant and provided for them a small room tucked away in obscurity. The Ugandan host-parents and siblings of the student disappointed that they had not scored the study-abroad-student lottery of a blonde or brunette of Alabaster Beige to tout around town.

“Those rappers,” Mubeezi, the middle son of three, continued, “were not born in America. We know that they have come from Africa or Haiti or somewhere.” His certainty made me scoff.

“How disappointed you’d be to find all the untainted Blackness that has persisted over 400 years.”

Maama says to sit with my things, tuck money in my pants and pad the bottom of my socks with bills.

“Don’t use the computer phone. Only take the Nokia,” Maama continued, referring to the bulky, outdated cellular device that I borrowed upon arrival from the administrators I knew at the university’s study abroad office. “You don’t want to be flashy on the bus.”

“I should be plain then?”

“Noooo,” she scrunches up her face and waves her hands at me. “You put on your make-ups, your lipstick, what, what.” And with this she sweeps her fingers over her brows and eyelids, mimicking the way I unfold my face powder compact and apply mascara from my bed in the mornings, something for which she often chides me.

“What is all this, eh?” she says while sucking her teeth.

But tonight, with these beauty tips, she has coyly revealed to her admiration of my daily skincare regimen. I smile knowingly and tell her that I am going to start packing. She begins to talk in hushed tones while gathering up the gauzy white fabric of the oversized mosquito net that she tucks herself underneath to hibernate for the night. We officially welcomed the rainy season to Mukono this morning and Maama promptly added to her mattress an innumerable amount of blankets for what she calls the African winter.

Back in my room, I decide to bathe before packing. I disrobe in the corner near the shower stall, two jerricans of heated water prepared earlier in the evening await me, several degrees cooler by now. With one hand, I clumsily lift the larger jerrican above my head and empty its contents onto my shoulders, the other hand loosely holding a bar of soap and catching the waterfall, splashing them both against my body before the soapy water reaches the cement floor, forming a foamy mass atop the drain. I dry myself with the thin fabric wrapper hanging nearby, then fold it around me while I pack the last items for my trip.

Kabale, a village of hills south of Kampala, south of the Equator and close to bordering Rwanda, is considerably cooler than the predictable daily temps of 65-80 degrees in Mukono. Because it is the rainy season and at its coolest even here, it is right to expect an unwelcome chill when I get to my destination. I pack all the pants I carried, every long-sleeved shirt and an undershirt for each day; I pack the new wrapper from Maama, which I plan to use as a cover and scarf while on the road, and the only few pairs of socks I have; I throw in whatever other warm clothing I brought with me from Philadelphia where the July weather when I left deceived me into packing mostly summer garments. Forget about the wintry temps I have been warned about in Kabale, at some point I realized how ill-prepared I will be when returning to Philly in November.

I sleep fitful as I do when I have an early morning departure and wake promptly at 5am. Maama is already moving around just beyond my bedroom. She exits the house and fetches water from the rain-catching drum, her feet shuffling across the floor, her low humming, a gospel song she sings throughout the day, accompanies each of her movements. Maama arrives in my doorway with a cup of tea on a small saucer.

“Ah, Zenique. You take tea.”

“Good morning, Maama.” I smile at her while gingerly lifting the plate and cup from her hands. “Go on back to bed now, Maama. I’m fine.”

“Mmm,” she says while peeking over my shoulder into the room before retreating back to her bedroom.

My eldest host brother, Mulondo, will travel with me to town and help me catch a bus, so when I am dressed, I go to wake him. His room, a small studio-sized space on the edge of the dwelling’s compound, is a few yards from the main house. I step out into dawn, the sun still hanging low behind matooke trees and casting orange onto the still-green banana bunches, my feet bare on the pressed clay and damp grass of the grounds as I walk over to his side of the living quarters. When I knock on Mulondo’s door, he yells from the other side that he is almost ready.

“I’ll be in the living room,” I say before walking back to the main house.

Mere minutes pass before Mulondo enters to retrieve me.

“Sister! Good morning! How was the night?” His voice, always melodic, is also bright and boisterous for the hour.

“Mulondo, it was good. And yours?”

“Good, good. Veeerrrry good!” He says, grabbing my heaviest bag.

“We go?” Mulondo asks. I nod.

“I’m leaving, Maama!” I call out while hoisting my backpack onto my shoulder.

“Okaaay,” she says groggily. In her room, she is snug under her blankets and I must uncover her face from the mosquito net to plant a kiss on her temple.

“Ah, ah. Safe journey, eh. You call me when you have reached.”

Mulondo and I set out into the new light of morning for a matatu to Kampala and find one waiting on Jinja Road. We ride in silence mostly, watching people pile into the ten-plus passenger vehicle until it becomes so packed that we can barely move our bodies. The driver finally stops slowing down at every pedestrian so the boy with his head out the window can bark his “Kampala center!” incantations. A forty-minutes’ drive and we arrive at the taxi park, some passengers disembarking before the van fully stops.

It is near 8am in Kampala and villagers have just arrived in the city with akavera-wrapped bundles on their heads or strapped to boda-bodas looking for a place to park and peddle their packed goods: home-grown greens from their gardens; second and third hand clothes from countries beyond the borders of the continent; hand-picked perfumes and miscellaneous makeup and cosmetics chosen for the Westerner-wannabes who only ever manage to look like wannabes.

Mulondo clasps my hand and keeps me close to his side as we sway in and out of the growing crowds, dodging carts of heaping pineapple on the sidewalks and curtailing cars in the streets. It is barely morning and Kampala is alive, already smelling like a hot African afternoon with the choking smoke of passing utility vehicles and the acrid odor of the public latrines that, since the night before, haven’t had enough time to air out. We move between bodies and cut through whiffs of primal scents that I have yet to grow accustomed to until we reach the clearing where the mile-high coaches await passengers heading to all destinations south, west and east. Mulondo is immediately bombarded by fast-talking men speaking Luganda and grabbing for his free hand to lead him and his companion to the coach he needs to board even before they know where he is going. Mulondo murmurs his no’s and pushes past the steady stream of callers until he hears the right destination uttered from the lips of these solicitors.

Finally, one says “Kabale” which Mulondo repeats and the man then echoes with his eyes wide with pleasure, his pace quickening as he grabs Mulondo’s arm and leads us to one of the dingiest buses in the park. Mulondo is satisfied and points to the sign taped to the oversized windshield.

“Kabale!” he exclaims through a wide grin. I smile as big as he does.

We walk up to the bus attendant, a young woman, plump and darker than me wearing a yellow apron and a cap with no writing on it. Mulondo asks her a series of questions in Luganda before turning to me for the fare.

 “Zenique, it’s going to be 25,000.”

He watches me peel the bills from my purse, new paper shillings that were just dispersed from an ATM machine on the walk from the matatu to the coach park. I hand him 30,000 shillings and Mulondo gives it to the attendant who then looks directly into my face.

“I will write you receipt and bring your balance to you.” She is speaking English to me now.

“Okay,” I agree and watch her write in a little perforated box in her receipt book. She tears the little slip from its place and hands it to me without another word.

“Okay.” Mulondo glances past the woman. “Let’s go inside and get you a seat.”

Once inside, Mulondo frenetically moves around the front of the bus, peering over seats to inspect their condition and the views they offer. He quickly seems exasperated about the dismal seat selections in the old bus.

 “This is fine, Mulondo,” I concede. It is a window seat in the second row. I plop down, shifting in the space, trying to make him believe me. He is not impressed.

 “Are you sure? There is no view here.”

 “Sure it is!” I pull the worn green fabric away from the window. “This is enough for me.”

He looks out the window at the other buses and then looks towards the front once more before relenting and shoving my overnight satchel in the compartment above my head.

“You keep your pack near you. And your receipt. They will come for it,” he says while standing over me.

“What time does this bus leave?” I ask him.

“9:30.” He looks at his phone. “It’s almost 8:20 now, so in an hour.”

“Oh, okay. I have plenty of time.”

“Yes, yes. Okay. And I must leave you now, big sis, and head back to Mukono.”  

I rise to thank him with an embrace and he bids me one last “safe journey” and reminds me before he exits to call Maama when I have reached Kabale. I watch him through the oversized windshield until he disappears into the folds of the other God-painted people milling about beyond the tempered windows.

When Mulondo is completely out of sight, I turn back to the interior of my mode of transport and take a look around. This bus is old. Its cushions have softened and sunk into the frame, the upholstery dark and frayed. The headrests have plastic covers on them that were, perhaps, at once clear but have since yellowed and crackled over the years, or maybe even only months of use and I wonder if the plastic even serves its purpose anymore.

I return to my seat to organize my belongings when the attendant comes to hand me my change from earlier. I thank her in English and then immediately wish I had done so in Luganda. She smiles back and says, “you are welcome,” in the sincere way that women here do and I feel even guiltier for not trying my learned Lugandan phrases more often.

There is a lot of traffic coming and going on and off the bus: more passengers, some already looking spent from a long day of carrying loads or themselves to the park to travel home or for visits down south; men selling newspapers and airtime, folded sheet sets and bottled beverages; women with bright-colored jewelry hanging from a big board they hold close to their bodies; kids with baked buns or paper-wrapped cassava sticks in clear containers. My seat is right at the entrance, so the peddlers all ask me first by dangling their goods inches from my face. I decline by shaking my head or putting up my hand as I have learned from watching other women’s refusals. They push on but acknowledge me again when they come back around a second and third time.

Although the bus is scheduled to leave at 9:30, it sits in the parking lot until 11am. Somewhere in between that time, I am joined by a tall, dark, rough-looking man. He is wearing a green baseball cap and a denim jacket with a picture of the continent stitched on its back. His face is greasy and weathered with deep creases in his forehead and frown lines along the edges of his lips. On his left hand is a long scar that zigzags down from the top of his middle finger to his wrist. Peripherally I observe him first sitting pensively, looking me over and then looking around at the other seats to compare them to the one he has tentatively chosen. Silently I pray that he would choose another as I watch him through the reflection in the window. I feel the rise and fall of the seat when he gets up to place his bag in the overhead compartment across the aisle and then return to my row, more content than before and I think to myself that, as usual, God didn’t answer in the way I would have liked.

“Wasuze otya.” I hear him say and when I look up from the window, he is staring at me. I guess it is a greeting I am unfamiliar with and so I respond with a weak hello, barely audible even to myself, trying to conceal my accent.

“Ah haaaa,” he says, watching me longer than I appreciate. I turn to the window again and he leaves. As soon as he does, I follow him with my eyes and decide I want a picture of him in his jacket and cap. I steal a few snaps of his back before he returns with a soda, a Mirinda Fruity, in his hand.  He sits with his drink for a minute before finishing it in one long sip through a straw. He sits with the glass bottle in his hand for a moment. I feel him making furtive glances at me before he rises to exit the bus again. When he returns, he is eating some bread.

I realize then that I haven’t eaten breakfast, only the cup of tea Maama made for me this morning. The man’s bread reminds me of the buns that I like to eat back at the house. I should have gotten one this morning, I think to myself. I am hungry. And even though she didn’t mention it, I know that having a bun is fine on the short list of items Maama says I can eat while traveling. Through my window I search the lot for a peddler of buns to beckon and there is none. I wonder if I can briefly leave the bus for one of the little shops along the perimeter of the lot before I consider my load and the overnight bag I will have to leave behind. My anxiety overcomes my desire for bread and because it is 9:30 now anyway, I decide that I can wait since we should be on our way any minute.

This guy beside me has another soda now, Fanta Orange, this time in a plastic bottle, and he seems pretty restless.

“Ahhhh, ello,” he says to me now. I notice then that he grunts a lot and his voice is nasally and not-so-deep and sounds faintly slurred, however I am close enough to detect if he has been drinking alcohol and I cannot.

“Hi,” I say with an air of disinterest.

He answers with what seems like a whole conversation in Luganda. I stop him by placing my fingers on his arm.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand. English?”

“Ah haaaa. English? No Luganda?”

“No. I only understand English.”

“Ahhhhh. Kabale?”

“Am I going to Kabale? Yes. I am.”

“Ah haaaaa. Are you Bakiga?”

“No. I am not Bakiga. I am from Nigeria,” I lie. Kinda. I am just recently back in Uganda from visiting Nigeria.

“Uh huh. Ah,” he seems all of a sudden confused and I realize that he didn’t get what I said because he starts running down a litany of tribe names for me to associate myself with. I stop him again by placing my fingers on his arm.

“No, no, I am Yoruba. From Nigeria. West Africa.” Now I am completely lying and praying that there are no other traveling Yoruba people on the bus in earshot of my claim to challenge this by greeting me in their language.

I was thinking of my friend, Tolu, who I met in Lagos during my recent two-week stay there. Tolu was fashionable and funny, and smoked cigarettes in the parlor of the hotel with the married men who visited Lekki Island from around the world. She wasn’t their entertainment, though, she was their peer—a progressive journalist who challenged the nation’s political figures in her papers and demanded a good debate at the bar between her glasses of brandy and a smoke pressed between her fingers awaiting a light. While she embraced me, she wasn’t impressed by my Americanness, and neither did she hold any contempt for it. As such, I wondered if she would be flattered or pissed that I chose to be like her in my little white lie. I feel a slight pang of guilt at this, but when I said it, I was thinking I would feel less vulnerable if I claimed African heritage instead of my American one.

He buys it anyway and throws his head back, belting out a throaty exclaim in Luganda at the news. Then he starts telling me a whole story, still in Luganda, and I realize that this will be the nature of our communication if I allow him to talk to me during this 8-9 hour drive to Kabale. I nod, turn to the window, and turn to look at him, in this order, several times during this story and when he pauses, I shrug my shoulders, smile and say, yet again, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Ahhhhhh,” he says again and again, grinning back at me. A peddler of fruit plates stops at our row and, when she looks at me, I wave my hand dismissively. The man beside me looks tempted by the fruit and the woman understands this to be interest, although she doesn’t say anything, only lingers there with a plate in his face. I know from several minutes before, after he sat down with his Fanta Orange soda rearranging himself, that he has a huge wad of shillings in his sock. I didn’t give it much of my attention, but I noticed the bills were mostly made of browns and oranges, pastel purples and pinks, which translates into 10,000, 20,000 and 50,000 Ugandan shillings. However, when he decides on a fruit plate, he doesn’t reach for his ankle. Instead, he pulls out a messy bundle of bills from his shirt pocket and gives the girl a blue note of 5,000 shillings which she exchanges for the plate and his change of worn bills of 1,000 and a few gold and silver coins.

He sits with the plate and I try not to watch him or it, despite my growing hunger. I know I don’t want to have any fruit while traveling as I never know how it will behave in my belly. Besides, it doesn’t look appealing to me—jackfruit (which I had only a few weeks ago and it made my throat itch terribly), a few thin slices of watermelon, some orange rounds, and several small strips of sugarcane littered at the bottom of the plate. He unwraps it and starts mumbling words again, gobbling up the fruit pieces whole, with their rinds and all. He starts up another conversation with me, his mouth full of fruit juice and saliva, before his attention shifts to another vendor in front of us.

Over a span of fifteen minutes, I watch this guy buy a big bottle of water, two small sacks of roasted groundnuts, a fake gold chain with a dangling pendant of the Ugandan flag, the Bukedde newspaper, and another soda—this time a Coke—in addition to the promptly devoured fruit plate.

He probably would have purchased more, but we are finally leaving and people are piling on as the bus is pulling out of the driveway. We are joined by one more person, a woman, in our row, making it feel pretty cramped. She is an elder who complains about my bag on the seat next to me and so I move it to the floor, envisioning how much red dust will cover it when it is time to retrieve it later.

I put on my headphones and push the curtain all the way back from the window to see busy Kampala as we are passing out of the city. After a few stops where the driver picks up what seems to be packages of goods from passing pedestrians, loading them into the cargo area below us, we are finally on our way and stretches of countryside appear instantly. Uganda in its ubiquitous beauty: green over earth for miles across; near-naked, bright-eyed babies waving at the road; mommas bent at the waist over wash bins and wet clothes, some of the garments already hanging on lines strung from brown-brick houses to nearby banana trees; the endless markets of vegetables and fruits of reds and greens and yellows. There are basket weavers with their weaved fish carriages, the carpenters with their cedar coffins and glazed pine boxes, drum makers with drying calf skins laid out on the ground—all of them, out on the road, along our route, trying to make a living.

I am listening to Amos Lee and Solange, Lizz Wright and Rihanna, providing a soundtrack for the scenes, although it doesn’t distract me enough from my hunger, growing with each passing meter. I am now frustrated with Maama’s dietary restrictions and long for the sticks of mystery meat that are propped up on the window sill whenever the bus slows down when passing through a town. I tell the boys with their meat sticks that I am looking for gonja and some of them shrug at me and move on to the next window while a couple others humor me with a feeble call out to other peddlers. My stomach growls as we push on and I decide that I will go with anything familiar.

It is almost 2pm when we pull into a town with some gonja in it. I am perched in my seat high above the guy below my window who is selling me the newspaper-wrapped sweet bananas. The bus starts to move before I hand him the payment for my meal and he jogs alongside my window, barely catching the coins in his fingertips. There are five roasted sweet bananas in my lap, still warm. I offer two to my riding companions because five bananas in one sitting are way too much for me, no matter how hungry I am. They both oblige and I eat the remaining three, washing it down with water from my Nalgene and feeling satisfied.

After the snack, I doze off and am awakened by an urge to relieve myself pressing into my lower body. It is convenient timing as there are other women on the bus bemoaning their need to pee. There is only me and the Luganda-speaking man from earlier in our row now. He is alert and I wonder if he slept at all. I also wonder if he needs to relieve himself, remembering the many sodas he consumed several hours ago. The bus pulls over on the side of the road and everyone within the coach begins to stir. I ask my riding companion with my hands if I could pass by him and if he’d watch my items. He seems eager to please me and stands up quickly, offering his foreign words with agreeability. I acknowledge this with a smile and a nod. As I move out into the aisle, I notice the other women who have already exited the bus walking into an expanse of wild grass, their unfolded wrappers, blankets and large, fabric Ankara-print pieces catching the wind behind them and casting color against the sky. I turn around to grab my wrapper from the seat and, in a hurry, descend the stairs to follow behind them.

In the open field, several feet from the bus, the men standing around it with cigarettes and side conversation, I learn quickly, in a low, crouching position, how to balance the wrapper around me while holding up my skirt, pulling to the front of my knees the crotch of my panties while keeping a steady stream from going awry and sprinkling my feet and clothing. I manage to do it all well while also grabbing a tissue from my purse to wipe. As I walk back to the bus, my Luganda-speaking riding companion, who is now standing at the door outside the coach, smiles big when he sees me. I smile back just as generously. With my wrapper draped over my arm and walking in step with the others returning from the field, I feel like the African woman I claimed to be hours earlier. And I think, at this point, he believes I am too.

It isn’t long after our stop that we have passed the equator and are traveling through Mbarara, two and half hours from our destination. Lucky, my friend in Kabale, has sent a text to see where I am. When I tell her, she is surprised that we are still so far and becomes sympathetic to how much longer the ride is ahead. Without asking her or hinting at my hunger, Lucky assures me there will be food waiting, though she doesn’t let on to what kind of meal I should expect upon arrival.

In Mukono, daylight consistently surrounds us from 7am-7pm. Like clockwork, for twelve hours. It is the same even here and, just after 7pm, as dusk approaches and we are on narrow, poorly paved roads against hilly rock formations and short cliffs, the sun casts its myriad jewel-toned colors into the bus and onto our bodies, the last of its warmth hitting my skin. I feel the new coolness of the southern territory we’ve entered and I cover my shoulders with the wrapper before tucking my arms into my jacket and pulling its hood over my head. As darkness prevails, my riding companion seems to come alive with the night. I hear his voice, his foreign words, in my direction and I turn my face from the window to meet him, his eyes most piercing among his other features.

“I’m sorry, what?” I ask him, pointing an ear in his direction.

“Kabale?”

“Oh, well…yes.” I offer, confused about why he’s asking me again when it has already been established.

Promptly, he begins conversing with me in Luganda and uses the back of his hand to thump the top of my shoulder. I shudder a bit at his touch, just as befuddled as I was earlier, but in feeling a new kinship to him, I smile and nod, trying to be warmer than I was upon our initial interactions from earlier in the day. He continues ejecting foreign words in my direction, his hand on the seat between us inching its way towards the underside of my thigh. I start giggling, masking my disquiet the only way I know how. With some lightheartedness in my banter, some excusing my English and becoming increasingly bashful about it, I sense a tonal shift in his address. His voice grows louder and there appears to be other men around us who engage him in this tangent. My uncertainty grows as I cross my legs and shrink into the seat.

The bus is different now, I notice, just a few of us remaining, mostly men, in this last leg of the journey. A woman sitting in front of us turns her head and eyes me up and down, half smirking before returning to her position. I feel pangs of betrayal and vulnerability. For a moment, I wonder about my safety. The dimly lit bus all of a sudden feels full of people mocking me. I feel exposed, no longer African, but all-American in this space. I grasp for the safety this status affords me should something go awry.

As panic begins to surface in my body, I feel the vibration of my phone beside me. It is Mulondo.

“Zenique, hi. Maama is here. Have you reached?” Mulondo speaks hastily, as if concerned about his airtime.

“Not yet, Mulondo,” I say, turning my body to the window. “But we are close.”

“Mmmm.”

“Mulondo, can you speak to this guy next to me? He is asking me something and I can’t understand.”

“Zenique, who is this guy? Does it matter what he is asking?” Mulondo quips, an agitation, not directed at me, present in his voice.

“I don’t know. Or…it doesn’t matter. But could you talk to him?”

I measure my words, hoping to convey a sense of urgency, but with none of the fear and confusion I feel. In this small moment, I have a passing thought about those white-American and Canadian students I studied with a few years before and how they would never balk under this perceived pressure. I think about how being white must often mean being drunk off a cocktail of arrogance and oblivion that makes them feel completely immune to a danger, whether made-up or real, that their darker counterparts almost always feel looming. And in their many years of hosting students from the program, I am sure my host family has undoubtedly been exposed to muzungus and this false sense of fearlessness, which makes me embarrassed to show how vulnerable I feel now. Still, my host-brother detects the plea in my voice and tells me to put the Luganda-speaking man on the phone.

The man is still talking when I look over at him and extend my hand with my Nokia phone in it. I nod my head, asking him with my eyes to take it.

“Ello?…Wangi?…Ahhhaaaannn…Mmmm…Ahaaaaa,” his boisterous voice incrementally grows small until he eventually looks up at me sheepishly, passing me back my phone.

“Thank you,” I say, looking him in his face. He is all of a sudden somber. I return to the Nokia in my hand.

“Zenique, are you there?” It is Maama’s voice on the line now.

“I am.”

“Toka, Zenique. You get to Kabale and call me when you have reached, k?”

“Hi, Maama. Yes. I will.”

“And, Zenique, keep quiet the rest of the way, ehn? This one won’t bother you anymore.”

And it is true. We arrive in Kabale thirty minutes later and he hasn’t even looked my way, doesn’t bid me farewell as he disembarks, barely glances over at me and Lucky as we embrace, her very pregnant belly between us. I hop in the car with my friend, feeling like a proud African woman again, one with a whole tribe behind her.