the first time I felt like un-outsider.

Memior
draft /2005 original date






At end of 1994 in December right after school let out. Things began to come together once again for me. Mom’s death was part of my past and I had moved on. Deo and I began to hangout together almost everyday after school. We never went a day without going to Lubya Hill and looking for trouble all over Kasubi. Deo began to refer to himself as Major General. General Deo and a lot of our playing were centered around playing with wooden guns and cheesing other boys all over the city. That December we draw a plan out of cutting and selling Christmas Trees for money and we also began to plan how we were going to celebrate the upcoming New Year. Under the leadership of General Deo our group was now bigger than when I left. We had more boys in the group and two girls. I don’t remember why but the girls never liked me and I hated both of them. School was out I hated being at home with my cousins because I never felt that I belonged there it was hard for me not to show it and Deo was the only person that I cared about that I wasn’t related to.

One late night I came home from Deo’s house and I could see a car drive away from our house on the long dirt road that lead me home every day. As the car drove away I had no clue who was in the car and to why it was leaving my house. When I got home Uncle John had a weird sense of excitement on his face. “Where have you been all day, he asked me. I looked at him for a sec before I asked him. “Didn’t you know I was playing at Deo’s house all day?” He went on a quick mad rant preaching to me about how a question should never be answered by another question rather I direct answer. So then standing firm and erect with my shoulders up and arms straight down like a soldier and I looked him in the eyes and told him that I was playing at Deo’s house all day. Before I finished answering him I had already worked passed him.

“Your father had been here all evening waiting on you,” he said to me. I turned around and looked him to judge his honesty about what he was saying. Sometimes my uncles thought it would be funny to tell me thing like this. It wasn’t the first uncle John would say such things to me and to my judgment it was just another day of games since my butt had been gone all day. “You just missed him just by seconds, he just drove away.’ When he told me this I began to think about the car that I had seen drive off but I didn’t think of it as if my father was then person in that car. Ever since Dad went to America he had developed a habit of coming home to visit Uganda around holiday times. It been years since my eyes had caught a glance of my father’s face. Last time we both seen each other was at the airport back in 92 right after Jajja’s death. Every now them Dad would write us a letter by time it got to us however, it was opened and read by each hand that touched it before it got us. Dad used to send me post cards of multiple skylines building especially Houston and every so often he would include pictures of him and his friends in the envelope.  

 Uncle John wasn’t messing with me this time but my heart fell to trust that fact Dad had come to visit me. America, where Dad lived was a place so far away beyond the horizon of my imagination that it was impossible for me to believe that a person like my father who lived in a place so far would come to visit me and left without seeing me. Thoughts of my father coming to my rescue after Mom’s Death came to my mind every so often. But these thought were far, perhaps unreachable in all form. Seven month had passed since Mom died now and never have my ears had any news about my father coming to visit me until today. In the few weeks after we buried Mom I would wait to see if Dad would come and get me but even moonlight that feel my father wasn’t in sight so my heart got weary and gave up on the idea that my father even knew I existed.  My family wasn’t the only family that had a relative oversea. Lots of other families did. The norm usually was that people like my father that left Uganda to go better themselves elsewhere in countries that only existed in our geography classes would never come back to help the ones they left home.

Uncle John still went off about my father. He had such great admiration for a person I was taught to hate and stay away from all my life. He wouldn’t stop talking about him for minutes to come. He liked his smell, gold watch, shoes and his bold fed hair cut. I was hungry for food and not in the mood to talk about my father whom I really had no clue of how he looked or smelled. For all I knew my father had no clue of how I looked, we could even have passed each other at the side walk in the market as strangers from different villages. Years back when kids were kidnapped. Some members of my family believe that Dad was behind some of the early kidnapping plots with a goal of taking me away from my mother. For this Mom made it clear to me that I wasn’t allowed to talk to my father if she wasn’t their but now she gone and I can do whatever my heart desired.

At times my mind went and dreamed about a day my father would come to get from Kasubi. I had seen it in all in a perfect picture drawn at the back of my mind. He was going to come with a big suitcase full of close and dress me like an American in white converse shoes, a Rolex gold watch like his. But after wish and dreaming and seeing now answer to my prayers it was true all the things I was told about my father during my childhood. He was not coming back to get me and all I could make out of Uncle John’s words wasn’t anything new to my ears. He was messing with me as he had done yesterday, and the day before that. My father was dead to me the minute no news came from him after we buried my mother.   

Aunt Florence was trying her best to be good to me, she was the best person to me but I was stubborn to accept that she loved me. I was always in fights with her. She hated that I did not do any chores around the house and that I spent all my free time with friends since school ended. One morning she refused me to eat breakfast until I talked to her. I was always scared to talk around her and she eventually caught on. “What’s wrong with your mouth when I’m around?” I had no answer for her. Silence around her wasn’t something that I controlled, it happened naturally. My mouth would just go shut when she entered the room. She would always tire to cheer me up but I was so bitter that no matter how hard she tried to make me smile I didn’t. That morning she told me that I was not allowed to leave the house anymore until I learn how to talk to my family and to play with my cousins. It was hard to believe that she was actually doing this to me. I was ten years old now. Grown enough to pick my playmates and I never remember my Mom telling me who to play with.

I didn’t like being around my cousins for a couple of reasons. At times there were only nice to me when Aunt Florence was present. When she wasn’t around they never cared for me. Nelson was alright but he was younger than me and at times not as fun to play with as kids my own age. He wouldn’t climb trees or go up to Lubya hill to hut from wild animals like the black dotted leopards that Deo and I went after almost every morning. Winfred and Innocent I couldn’t stand. They always had a lot of friends over and all they did was to play house with white dolls. Not liking dolls since birth I did not want to hang around and play father of these dolls. If anything in my perfect world girls just didn’t know how to play just as us boys.

 Aunt Florence left that morning to go to work. I even though she told me to say at home, it was the holiday and all I wanted to do was to play. Deo and I played all day that day and when I returned home from playing my cousins were getting ready to go spend part of the Christmas Holiday with another relative. I wasn’t invited or even told about the trip.  

For the first time I felt like un-outsider. My face was burning with rage as I watched them get ready for their trip. They were all happy and looking forward to spending time with other relatives in the family and in a world so small. None of them seemed to cared that my black face was in the same room as them.  I looked on as they all got ready and I had nothing to say. But in that very minute I became bitter against the world I was living in so I ran off back to Deo’s house crying with a sharp pain in my chest. Mad as hell when I saw Deo I told him that I was running away to Bomma’s House. I didn’t where it was, I had only been there once long time ago but I could clearly remember the name of the village and all I needed was money to get me to the taxi park to catch a taxi that went to Sinda Village where Bomma lived.

Deo helpful as always, he was loaded with great ideas and I expected him to come through with one of his money making ideas and Deo did just that. He had heard from the older boys around the neighborhood that most local business were seeking old car tires to burn as we brought in the year of 1995. Every new year at twelve o’clock people gathered in different squares of Kasubi and burned old car tires to welcome in the new year.  


There not many business in the area that need old tires but the few that would pay for them were handing out the money on a first come basis. The two of us along with a few older boys made plans to begin working when dawn came the next morning. We were going to go to different parts of Kasubi all in such for money and each one of us had a goal for the money. Deo and the other boys have been playing football up at the school and they each needed football shoes. I needed money to catch a taxi to run away because that day I had broken my aunt’s radio and I was very frightened on how she will react