If you were in Nshungerezi, Ankole, southwestern Uganda, in the early 1960s, then you know Padiri Leonardo Rubumbira. And if you know our dear Father Rubumbira, then like me, I am sure, you have always wondered: if the Catholic Church is a serious institution and it rewards its cadres fairly, then why hasn’t Father Rubumbira been made a pope? For, looking at Father Rubumbira while he conducted mass, you could see a man made for sainthood. That is why we all craved to be like him, and it was the ambition of many a Catholic boy of our time. Unfortunately, I missed the ambition of my life, and it was because of two things: working for food in the Ankole banana plantations, and studying under trees as classrooms. The reasons may sound silly to you, but that is because you did not go through these experiences.
In the refugee camps of Nshungerezi we used to walk some fifteen, twenty kilometres to go and work for food, and so waking up at 04.00 a.m. was commonplace. That won’t sound too early until you remember that Uganda is one time zone ahead of us, which means that we used to wake up at 03.00 a. m. our time. This is exactly when animals of all types are out hunting, so all of us young scoundrels used to rendezvous at the edge of the camp and go in a group. Then all the groups from the different camps would converge and form a group that would have put Habyarimana’s Inzirabwoba army to flight. It was advised to make a lot of noise as we walked, which was not difficult, considering our big number. The noise and sound of our feet kept the animals at bay, so that they did not attack us. Usually, an animal will attack you only when it feels threatened. You are safe when you do not surprise it, because it will keep its peace.
Of course, mosquitoes and tsetse flies are another thing: they will cling on you even when you are sounding the kalinga (royal) drums! But snakes, wolves, jackals, warthogs, leopards, lions, buffaloes, elephants and hippos will keep their distance. And talking about animals, I hate to remember the nightmares we suffered at the hands (or paws?) of crocodiles. Luckily, not at night on our way to Ngarama or Burumba banana plantations, but during the day at River Akagera. For instance, we have gone to the river to fetch water and do the weekend general cleaning. Because we could never carry enough water to the house, we always did our bathing and washing at the shore of Akagera River. After washing the clothes, you would usually hang them on branches and logs to dry. Then you would play so as to gather sweat, before plunging in the water to take a bath. It is when you tried to sit on a dead log in the sun to dry that you realised to your horror that it was not a log. As soon as it felt your weight, what you took to be a log turned out to be a crocodile when it lifted its lizard head and opened its mouth. The mouth looked like rows of chisels, and few of us were swift enough to escape these teeth!
However, at night on our way to work for bananas, what posed the greatest danger was the porcupine because of its mode of escape. Faced with danger, a porcupine retires to its hole, which is its natural abode. Because it knows that it is covered with long spikes that it can unleash on an enemy at will, the porcupine only makes sure the head is safe by pushing it into the hole, leaving the rest of its body abroad. When it sensed that you were close, it just shook its body and sent a shower of the missiles flying in your direction. The spikes had poisoned heads and could be fatal if they pierced you in great number. As they say, however, every cloud has a silver lining, and this came in the form of the beast’s foolishness. When you saw the first of its spikes, you could dodge and run lightly to its front. With its head buried in the earth, it could not tell that its missiles were being wasted on harmless trees and grass. Until it grew another crop of the spikes, which would be after months, it was left as defenceless as Saddam Hussein of Iraq, in his spider hole. You could grab it with your bare hands and, if you had been to the Congo, like we had been, you would laugh all the way to your outhouse kitchen!
There was an animal that did not attack you physically, but which was even more lethal! When the polecat, or skunk, agasamunyiga, sensed your approach, it let off a smell so offensive that it could literally knock you down! So, man-eaters were a dime a dozen. Whenever you reached the Banyankole fields you would heave a sigh of relief, because you had escaped with your life, which all these beasts were competing to dine on! Quite often, though, this solace was very short-lived. Because, for instance, you are squatting in a field to relieve yourself, only to realise that red ants have already covered your whole body. Just thinking about it covers me with goose pimples! By the time you reached a homestead to ask for a job, you had done running battles with practically every living thing! When you got the job, it meant toiling the whole day to remove the weeds from the banana plantations, clearing what the Munyankole called a ‘yard’. That yard, in reality, was an area measuring as much as a mile in length, by a half in width!
In the evening when you finished the work, your wages were a bunch of bananas, two if you were good at driving a hard bargain. After which you laboured your way home, under the forbidding weight of the matoke, again to do running battles with uncountable creatures. But that was plain sailing, if you imagine other situations. There are times you could demand your wages after your back-breaking work, and the Munyankole says: “Ingaha!” He explained that when you came early in the morning, you asked: “Mwine omurimo?” In his twisted logic, he explained to you that you asked if there was work, not if there was food. So he gave you work but has no matoke for you! Indeed that happened to me once, and I took the logical step that anybody in my situation would take. I called all my comrades and we set upon the chap with kicks, sticks, stones, etc. to the point where we left him writhing in agony. Luckily, he lived alone and when he called out, “Empungi zanyita!” no one came to his rescue.
It is thus that I went to Father Rubumbira to confess that I had almost committed murder. He understood when I explained but, understandably, he could not recommend me for priesthood after that. That is one reason why I missed the chance of my life. I would, now as we speak, be resplendent in priestly robes, looking like your next saint, and as celibate as a stone! However, even without considering my second reason, maybe Father Rubumbira would not have recommended me anyway. Priestly life would not have been a bed of roses, taking into account the fact that it meant living under the harsh hand of Father Kamugeni. In case you do not remember, this is the priest who hated the Banyarwanda so much that he compared their children to cassava. He wished they could be eliminated but, unfortunately for him, “They always germinated, like cassava, wherever you threw them!” His boss, Bishop Gakubi, hated them even more, and would gladly have joined Habyarimana’s angels of death. Their reason for this strong hatred of a people they hardly knew still baffles me. When you consider what happened in the churches in the Rwanda genocide of 1994, you begin to question the impact of these religious teachings.
But as I was saying, when I confessed my second sin to Father Rubumbira, my fate as a heretic was sealed; he could not forgive me. In your ‘classroom’, which was a shade under a tree, maybe your neighbour, a fellow pupil, was not particularly bright and always asked you for assistance in spelling. Acceding to this request was a sin, and matters were not improved by the fact that we used to write on thighs as exercise books – and sometimes your dense neighbour was a female pupil!
