War or Peace!

War – is a very attractive spouse! A beauty. The nubile call-point of Spartacus heroism. The home of attrition - once you begin her courtship, there is often nothing that might stray your attention from homing in on this target of all targets.

The practiced revolutionaries know the pros and cons of war, warmongery, illicit war trade, industrial and cosmopolitan purposes of war. The Ideological factors. The intelligential and the cadre of the regime! 

In the jurisprudence of war legislature – governments might ‘move’ against one another or against an organized threat… spurred into the act of ‘negation of a [particular] negation’; to react, strategically respond or, cogitatively preempt particular instances of clandestine war footings…

Here, once proven beyond reasonable and, [sometimes un-reasonable] doubts – that actual war were in the offing, then certain [sleepy] national interest safe-guards spontaneously spring into wakefulness… what happens in such events – may be termed as automatic mechanisms long since defined by laws of the particular nation. What therefore happens and, how they otherwise happen – depend on the laws of the particular country and, how an incumbent regime administration either works or don’t.

In fall of Gaddafi in Libya – there was a common interest factor between a handful of exiled, highly educated diasporas – who fronted for leadership change in Tripoli and, the French government of the time who had apprehended the godfather of terrorism himself – Carlos Martinez Sanchez, a Venezuelan – who the French government accused of countless violent murder of innocent French people in Paris and other places in that country back in the 1970s. Something that had included the taking hostage of a whole Olympic team from Israel in Munich 1972 Olympics.

The French regime of the day had it, that Gaddafi of Libya had been funding Carlos’s clandestine terrorism and, often shielded the terrorist – for decades frustrating French legislative and government efforts to bring Carlos to books.

While the equally frustrated Libyan Diasporas living in France wanted the French government of the time to spearhead the violent fall of Gaddafi – thus begins the Libyan part of the ‘Arab Spring’.

Regrettably though, war is a shifty hard to orchestrate dynamic and, horribly fast and destructive state of affair! One might never be able to design and time it to that [war-room] perfection; once on the move, no amount of perfect war planning can place absolute control over mounting battlefield situations.

The Libyan changes were achieved… that included the death of Col. Gaddafi himself. However, what is likely to linger on for a long time, is the traumatic experience! The desolation! The obliterated Infrastructure and the economic and human decline; a huge part of the youth, born mostly after Gaddafi’s  overthrow of King Idris, died [enmasse] along with President Gaddafi – the task, therefore, of rebuilding and psychological rehabilitation of a devastated people – who are sinking all too often in the Mediterranean Sea aboard rickety smuggler’s boats that capsize every now and again – as the traumatized people tersely make the mad rush towards crossing the sea into the safety, comfort, and hope of the European life.

Sub-Sahara Africa has a huge area of foreign experiences to draw from. The Biblical 40 year’s leadership change maxim – is a very valid set of argument and direction pointer – however, prudentially it might also be incumbent upon the potentials… to correctly and prudently assess their national human and material resource interests - that should or should not go [destructively] with the Biblical 40 years change making!

Sub-Sahara Africa, however, has a complication – the components of the African intelligentsia and, the intellectual Concourse are a disjointed and, uninformed often irrelevant [own-goal scorers]. They defeat the very purposes for their own very existence – all but otherwise wish and try to unreasonably shorten their own growth longevity. The [maxim] changes they all crave, have to always be violent – to prove that they all are not going back into their mother’s wombs – the fatalistic Amin challenge factor!

War and Peace are both a challenge!   

   

Radicalization of an Individual & Radicalism of the Individual

Radicalization of an Individual & Radicalism of the Individual

Sam Mwaka-karama

Long, long before everyone was born to what is now ‘Intellectual knowledge’ – especially here in Africa – the British among the developed, had long since formulated the thinking of how to isolate and, victimize an individual.

The philosophy in this conceptualization assumes, actually rather wrongly, that once isolated the individual victim of the process of radicalization – will [always] mentally plunge into the abysmal characteristic of despair and degeneration. Moreover, cut-off thus, from his normal path in life, the individual begins exhibiting unfriendly… even abusive temperament.

How is this so? In the first concept, the victim is a subject of study among a malicious group of either peers or even just plain stigmatizing haters! The practice in radicalizing the individual is formulated in such a way that the victim individual finds himself the subject of ‘practical jokes’… as in palaver.

Be like – you are walking down the street. Perhaps you are bypassing a coffee shop with an apt name like; [(Bamboo) Bicycle Café] in your home town – like mine is Gulu in Northern Uganda. Or even the Abyssinian [chronicle] café.

Suddenly, as you walk-by – a shower of raucous laughter washes after you accompanied by a single clapping of the palms.

It is familiar – more like some common music played on some Fm Radio station all the time – you don’t even bother to look over your shoulder. It is a group of white skinned people. Yah! You always know they hail from the white man countries abroad – an assortment of either trotters, research students or other individual interest travelers – actual NGO workers and group tourists do not behave like that. You, yet again ignore the ‘virus’ load in their loud conversations.

The overly manifested intellectual malaise is actually the ways and means by which [you] the individual is being radicalized – the well-honed technique is supposedly guaranteed to yield a result! In that you the victim would (as in will…) most certainly turn back and annoyed or more appropriately mad! Hurl back a barrage of vile insults in your own mother tongue – or something.

NOW provoked – the real Men would get-up and, the security personnel nearby would be signaled to deal with you – actually [you] are insulting tourism! Because the lunatic you are, you were heard and seen insulting white skinned men and women who were quietly cooling their tired day, taking [their evening coffee] – so you are a disgrace to your country and people. So thus, radicalized by this well-honed intellectual strategy, you were dumped in jail!

This rather desolate battlefield has seen many an African of the writing ethics… ruined! Once you were identified with short-fused temperament, as researched among your kinship, [you] were considered the easy prey! Therefore, the game begins. I don’t have to name anybody, but history has it that many well renowned African writers of very high educational qualifications have been victims in this trade!

Some African political leaders equally, have been molested by this factor – if some leaders were short-fused, at least one might have been heard shouting back [fake news – fuck you]. Such a leader knows the cocoon of ‘supremacists’ malaise.

But then a TALANTA is a TALANTA… what they, the Supremes imagine were their own spirituality guarded fields of inspirations – have been seal-broken. ‘The New, New World Economic Order’ is founded, on the predictions of the version. The analog Millennium is by-gone! And now 17 years into the digital Millennium – it might be vain actually, to still play clearly outdated games of malice.  

Contemporary Africa, in this digital millennium – may have bypassed their way into working directly with heavy weight American or British or indeed European companies and institutions. This is a point of raw challenge to other more ordinary intellects in those countries… but then it is the path!

Africans are hooked to the European and British football betting mania… how do you [a supremacist] stop those betting millions make and willingly lose money on that International Soccer Industry?

You want an African self made and published Author – drop out of that online book publishing and marketing American company, so that you [the supremacist] gain what?

Don’t you see that one way or the other – the individual you want very much to radicalize – is more and more a real or potential significant unit in the income of those who create such online companies?

 In addition, don’t you see that, your radicalization of the individual - no longer exists; What Ngugi or Wole, or P’Bitek lost as misappropriated by the old African writers’ series are now a bygone.

In that [maybe] they did not produce their work by their own hands [Dictaphones and secretary typewriters etcetera…] – that was different from today’s method of manuscript development and production […S3] or [PhD] we all now have the laptops, Hi Pads and Modems. Add that to a smart phone and, you, the supremacist, might never know how the modern African make his “Smart Money”. Why don’t you stop victimization and radicalization? The old game is up!

Even bad as it were, ‘Radicalism of the Individual’ is, as well bygone – those who made themselves radicals and changed governments – might not ever commonly recur! And, not very many people in Africa want to walk that jungle anymore anyway. Only national mayhem makers of anarchy.***        

  

Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

Café Culture – café life – and now, café death?

I consider myself lucky [for once], to have been born about five years after the end of World War Two. Going by what several early writers, I have read, did say of the fifteen years after WW II – those fifteen years were said to have been “baby boom” period worldwide. Populations began to explode – and life style came to be definable. Moreover, among them was the “café culture”.

Sidewalk café had become a big thing. In other words it was the new ‘café life’ style.

Journalists and photographers spiced their newspapers and magazines with [life] loaded pictures that gave business to the sidewalk newspaper stalls. Even here in Africa, where I write from – the sidewalk café became the point of popular contact making…

The spot where deals and multi-million businesses were hatched and clinched. The café was a living place – many marriages were sparked at the café.

Out there in the greater world - the dress code also came to be known as pacesetting fashions. With designers often, scripting or doodling their design outlines on the sidewalk café. Landscapers and architects visualized their concepts from the sidewalk cafes.

Great Novelists, men and women, were often spotted candid, brooding over their many-many book plots on the sidewalk café… in all the leading cities of the World.

The compact American suit, Stetson and cowboy boots – were dropped for a pair jeans and T-shirt [James Dean & Marlon Brando] ‘50s looks changed everybody – as we were growing up – to later consume all that in vast literatures of the world and, the Hollywood movies created out of them throughout the 1960s and 70s. We read and watched them all.

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The Internet Café – did not emerge out of the blue, as the younger generations born after the 1960s seem – not to imagine!

The ‘Café Culture’ has a history… it is therein that writers, authors, thinkers, designers, artists, architects and later software engineers evolved.

In the early days of the [personalized] computer, was the [Java script] – the first time I became aware of that software. I was reminded of Java, which is a place somewhere in the vast Indonesian Islands.

Many fantastic ‘Java [movie] Scripts’ shot by Hollywood groups in Indonesia with lead characters like ‘Brad Harris’ sent us lining up the box-office in Kampala Cinemas – that time run by Asians.

So when some two years or so ago, when I re-visited Kampala and, there it was [Café Java] – where now Kampala’s young enjoy each-other’s company, I was amazed in a different kind of way!

Meaning that, I see a lot more than the average – though I am sure, my type of fellows do exist around the world. Those who have lived and survived through the entire post WW II evolution - that characterize the milestones our contemporary civilizations are actually made of or hooked to.

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I am sure though that if ever they exist anywhere in the world [I don’t want to Google out] – anything called [Café Death or Death Café]. Or even enter into or sit on the sidewalk table of one.

Because I believe completely that, the “Café Culture” has always been pro-life. The World’s Arts and Sciences were thought-out and written by very creative writers and authors who were consumers of the Coffee. If ever there was anything called so… then at the background of the founding mind – is HIV/AIDS. I say this without any disrespect to entrepreneurship ideas and principles. Though, even the mad-mad scientist who created the virus might have been or is a consumer of Coffee. Which perhaps to a certain point - justifies the existence of the ‘Death Café’.

       

The African politics of the stomach… can the AU ride this crazy buffalo herd!

The African politics of the stomach… can the AU ride this crazy buffalo herd!

IDEOLOGY - is an old and odd herd to fathom. In the African context, this factor is complexed-by the ‘eating’ phenomena; Africa is hungry. Insufficient. Capacitiless, Wanting and largely bizarre!

 Preys to the aggressive foreign avians, as it were… because Africa might actually never unite.

The Pan African dream, as conceived by the fore-bearers of the ‘African dream’ lived and died with unfulfilment! Generation of the African Independence leadership peers, thought that they had the African vision and, what remained was only ‘good leadership’ – but hardly had they experienced the sunrise morning, than, the old “Wind of Change” was to blow them away - As a British Prime Minister was to once upon a time, see it, back then!

The Independence politicians knew nothing or very little of ‘security’ beyond the guards outside the gates. Mostly they were outsiders! Furtively at the head of anti-colonialism struggles whose [labor   union] up-rise motivations were triggered by the bully-man-ship of white rulers of Africa that time.

The post Independence ‘wind of change’ was unavoidable, since the category of men that headed the forces and security generally – knew and talked directly to the colonial powers that be, most of them had fought in the Whiteman’s World War Two - so that the figures at the head of the states throughout Africa, were flanked by a variety of forces and security heads, whose attentions were very much progressively divided.

The political leaders became ‘rhetorical’, loud and sentimental… whatever Pan African dreams they had, were to eventually be construed, as unifying Ideologies. In some Anglo-phone countries like Uganda, Prematurely, they – the post Independence administration cut-off from the Cambridge Examination and system of education. Between primary and HSC, they created new curricular-combinations. The exams were suddenly marked locally.

Anti-neocolonialism slogans and words like ‘comrade’ or ‘cadre’ or ‘elute’ now decked their rhetoric and conversations – suddenly, the recipe for the ‘wind of change’ was on the enormous menu. With it, things began to fall apart. The story differs though - from one African country to another… but the underlying thematic was the same or at least similar.

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The African is a miserly character – we shamelessly celebrate when the others sleep hungry! We insult, when we are begged! [Why don’t you work hard, you can’t beg all the time – go and work!] Yet, even the little that we pride ourselves of having achieved – were actually foreign donations. We do not stop to think, that everything we have - come as welfare - from a consortium of donors. This factor hardly ever seem to makes sense to most Africans - even leaders.

The African is a jealous character – we interfere with progressive activities of those members of our country who may hail from faraway places we don’t relate to easily. We summarily regard and dismiss them as either ‘the enemy or the poor’. It is just as well, that political systems and the laws actually curtail our meanness. But, by and large, we are tribalists. However, the cynics of our individualism perforate our tribalism.

In our ‘stomach thinking’, we promote productivity with one hand and, meddle-up productivity with the other hand. So that year in and year out, the story of development is a kind of merry-go round! War and Hunger is permanently on the front pages of African Newspapers. Our domestic animals are charred by the sun-rays – due to cultural practices and behaviors that interfere with our root management!

We are perennially experimenting with a variety of Aid/Grant based activities that seem never to solve the problem of ‘lack’ – Africa still lack so much – so that the negativity of African politics will forever remain in the ‘negative celluloid’ form  – like in the ancient photographer’s studio work. Production of the ‘positive picture’ remains an elusive challenge. That challenge is actually, what shows AU as an in-effective entity. Composed of this group of African [diaspora] minded men and women – designer suits, weird and nice everything theorists.

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If the AU were ever effective, foreign engineers wouldn’t be independently manning Africa’s infrastructure constructions. AU might have taken over direct management of especially, sewage in all the cities and towns around Lake Victoria – to allay the enormous contamination of the fresh water lake.

The AU might also have directly taken over management of solid waste throughout Africa. That is how the ‘negative celluloid’ would be washed [as in the ancient photographer’s studio]. To produce the clean ‘positive picture’ of the African environment and expose the cleaner path to the continental development.

It is safe for us who dare think, that current African Head of States, are direct signatories to all the protocols that engender the AU – they too might have to contribute in creating and cash-supplying some ‘African Bank’ that fund the activities directly managed by the AU.

So that, these African Political Heads remain what they are – Political Head of African States. Even then, the AU protocol they sign, actually take a minute bit of what their executive power is country to country.

In view of the status quo otherwise, the AU officials at their Head Quarters in Addis, might instead cause some of us Africans to hold them suspects for aggitative-indecision and inactivity also – I think it is not far from likelihood that, they, the AU officials may have poured, one too much crude Oil cartel into the fires that eventually [for example] burnt South Sudan – and nearly created difficulty for Ethiopia.

To some of us African indigenous free thinkers, the AU has to pull-up and be properly mobilizing the African Engineers and Economists – for the more committed trans-Africa infrastructure management. I mean the real hardware jobs.

It is not right – hearing of an AU official work-shopping limited ideas… advising [for example] the Nile referral – or Lake Victoria basin countries to [somehow] work towards bettering the hazardous environmental conditions inherent there-in… consultants can talk such vagueness, but not the AU. They are by virtue of their many-many mandates – planners and implementers. At least some of us readers into the purposes of the Union – believe so!   

Individual African countries are struggling… barely scratching for survival of populations. The AU cannot perennially be large [AU] painting on military trucks that are run by a group of sacrificing African countries taming [some] rebellions of the continent.

Uganda [for another example] is almost caught-up in the neediness of war-torn South Sudan! The meager agricultural output by some regions of Uganda disappears into the whirlwind of the current South Sudan situation. It is true that we cannot even [freely] afford tractors to help us roll one or two acres… and how do the experts sit around talking shop! When more than two countries have to share-in on the meager subsistence resource of one country.

Africa is vastly stranded in the politics of political change… leadership change, social services dogmatism - even with all the Universities that have mushroomed all over the continent. The job market [even at AU level] seems to be a pin-hole intake affair…

At the AU level, what are the continental planners doing? Where is the Continental Central Bank, what about the Continental Development Bank  – and, how much do African countries contribute to Africa’s collective financial weight Annually? And what is AU’s Annual Budget.. beyond secretariat funding. 

Otherwise, we can’t avoid the worry – that Africa might be massively contaminated by the sweet-toothed and threatening ‘Fifth Estate’ and the fanatic criminals within the African governments – who are actually by-products of corporate life style and the sweetness of extravagant nightlife – those laughing and ‘dancing’ ones former Apartheid President Botha talked about!               

Fifth Estate

Fifth Estate

In political [power-play] definitive terms, ‘fifth estate’ might be observed as an illegitimate, ambiguity that exists as an intertwine [influence] that network itself within the various structures of government. Parenting absurd corruptions.

Fifth Estate’s main purpose is to leech… on the juicy and nutritious body of the fat governments!

It is an [influence], which would mean that its origin is outside [the box] however, its powerful tentacles twine its way through and into every department of government – including military and other security establishments.

Once homed-in among the political and administrative classes, the fifth estate assumes supremacy…

 Consolidates itself into a very humble, fatally aggressive and money hungry group. The fifth estate is a very difficult entity to identify, relate with and get to know.  Fifteen years ago, this pseudo political -economic crime organization was largely non-existent. However today, in Uganda the fifth estate is also beginning to spread its tentacles. In Kenya, the fifth estate is known as “Mungiki”. In Uganda it might be identified with activities of “Kifeci” though, even Kifeci’s activities might not be influential enough to merit having their tentacles thickly twined into various departments of government, like it is with ‘Mungiki’.

After the recent electoral violence that sent Kenyans into Uganda [as exiles] for the first time – ‘Mungiki’ became a vivid political player… today, the pseudo-political crime based entity has their tentacle in various government offices. It has also gotten various local community organizations under its umbrella and several NGOs and global aid organizations assist their shadowy projects.  The crime-based foundation of these ‘WaOrdinary’ communities is also slowly changing characteristics – so that today, the fattening “criminals” run very legitimate concerns. In Nairobi, the story of the transformation of [Mathare and Kibera] are no longer some shameful shanty of shacks on the backside of [Ngong road, or Thika road].

One area of Mungiki influence is at the Cargo handling Mombasa port. It is also public knowledge that the Labor Unions in Mombasa are cramped with Mungiki Influences… what has for decades affected the handling of Cargo – especially those Uganda-bound – that the criminals leech on them! Is also public knowledge.

After the killing in Kampala of Ugandan AIGP Kaweesi and the acceptance by President Museveni, that “Criminals have [infiltrated] Uganda Police” – it now becomes safe for some of us free and independent thinkers – to also weigh-in with this sort of analysis, to highlight the background of this matter.

It is my guess, that if an equivalent of Mungiki exists in Uganda, it might be at an embryo level… though it is also possible, that the embryo is effective – also considering fact that there are scores of various former fighters or retired members of the forces loose in the country.

As a writer, Book Author and Researcher, this is an area of interest to me.

DIALECTICAL SPIRITUALISM

DIALECTICAL SPIRITUALISM

[Dialectical Spiritualism] – Marx and Engel’s powerful materialism theory has a spirituality root. Though their students around the world prefer and want to expound more on major aspects – especially those of the ‘economic and political rule’ factors.

It appears, we Africans have been meditating too much on the ‘revolutionary’ aspects – for the end game of attainment of political and economic [material] wealth power. Moreover, to get there, it has always been through the over amplified political activism… and mobilized ‘proletariat’ violence – seen as popular and colorful if often violent revolt!

Though Marx and Engels theory plays out as holistic, the early generation students of the nineteenth and twentieth century’s implementing groups, hardly ever looked seriously at the scope of ‘dialectical spiritualism’ – probably due to how the Leninists initially down-graded religion – and, probably thereby creating the negation of ‘dialectical spiritualism’. So that, today, as the world advanced into the digital age, the real root of this enormous thinking still remain hidden.

However, what to me is probably more tenable [in thought] is fact that the dialectical thinking of ancient times… whose unfolding include the solid fundamental revolutionaries and the many-many fanciful and romantic revolutionaries; Lenin, Stalin and down the revolutionary lines to Castro, Che Guevara and the host of their African followers oversimplified the Marx and Engel dialectical thinking to media loaded undue proletariat type African violence…

Simple – the ‘dialectical spiritualism’ factor I am trying to freely visualize and expound seems to me as ruling over all factors including political, economic and militancy factors.

FAUST, the German tragedian grand heavenly play is to me the indicator to the root of dialectical thinking in all its varied components... This to me again, on the other hand seems to manifest itself in that ‘Fine Art Student’ College conflict of Vienna that is historically said to have eventually plunged the world into the two main world wars! So that, in our twenty first century, we should see that vision of the fine artist.

That whole backlog of world literature still does not specifically address themselves to the African Continent. We have therefore been aping, following and part stage [Shakespeare] players – deftly trekking after ideological principles we actually do not know how to identify with.

To get wind of my direction, one needs to sample certain aspects of world history - as supplementary to or actually part play, in the implementation of the dialectics.

In the old East, ‘Dr. Zivako’ captures it very well – while in the west ‘Clark Gable in [Gone…]equally captures the western aspect very well.

The modernist history plays itself out finally highlighted by the Western and Eastern confrontation over the [Iron Curtain] beginning with Gary Power’s U2 [the point of entry for Pan Africanism] with FAUST’ tragedy [Nazi] power-play fitting well in that ‘dialectical materialism’ locking of horns over Nazism... What eventually creates space for the writing of current history?

Two previously missing pieces of the zig-saw puzzle, were Africa’s entry points into the dialectical materialism as played-out between the old ‘Communism and Capitalism’. Seen through the old lenses that focuses on the spy plane U2 politics and, on the other hand, Che and Fidel seen playing golf on the green courses vacated by the Belgians in the old Katanga.

Today – Ugandan political opinionated and discussants, like their brothers around Africa, search for the “Ideological” way-forward; they are looking for ‘theories’ that might help blend our local thinking with that of the International political, social and economic ideologies.

In my own view, I think the African search should start with the understanding of ‘dialectical spiritualism’ as part of the teachings of Marx and Engel that is not so clearly absorbed in Africa. Bearing in mind that, despite the old Curtain wars… actually Marx and Engel theories weren’t exactly Communist nor even Capitalist - but rather theories that exacted the functions of systems based on their material needs and applications.

Africans therefore in my thinking need to be less followers of the old fundamental and even charismatic revolutionaries - but to heck-out newer lines of thinking based on the zig-saw puzzle pieces I observed above. Here, I am open to critical views and challenges on my direction of thinking and interpretation of that ancient dialectical thought. It is only an attempt at looking more closely at life. END

The Girl who Changed a Tradition

The Girl Who Changed a Tradition

Short Story

Sam Mwaka-karama

She looked. Then walked and looked back again her heart skipped… knocked her toe and stumbled two then three steps. She bent forward looking. No blood! A burning hot pain, that was all - must hurry, it was getting dark! Abeca hurried along she should have left earlier. Now you see, she had feared to take her early escape all this time… everybody in the village seemed to be looking at her – and strangely, even to make matters worse, her own aunt Lakwel did not understand.

“What did I tell you Abeca?” Aunty Lakwel had been angry and also doing all she could to keep her voice down and solicitous at the same-time. There were people within earshot… “Nen ba – the elders have already been here and, your issue has now been resolved! You can’t change what the elders have agreed upon: Wife heritage is a tradition. That culture will fight you”.

“A-a it is enough Auntie, I don’t want that man” said Abeca decisively

“Do you know what you are talking about?”

“Auntie I know exactly what I am talking about – my husband died and was buried; I can’t take another man even if he is his cousin brother… well maybe. Just maybe!”

 Abeca fell silent for a moment… bit on her lower lip contemplatively; she shuddered at the thought of having to sleep with Ogil Lajok for the rest of her life!

“Abeca stop playing around, you are not a little girl ‘just maybe’ what! Say it!”

“Maybe if it was someone else and not Ogil Lajok, I might have considered”

“That is a load of rubbish to say Abeca – it is the tradition you have to respect; do you know these people, you could wind-up dead”.

“Auntie, that is exactly what I want to get away from… there seem to be too many of very dark secrets in Larwecce here and I have come to hate this place ever since Ulaa-wiic died”. They fell silent another moment… slowly the charged atmosphere passed.

“Dok cen… go back Abeca – life is not like that; I also need you here which is why I introduced you to Ulaa-wiic… he was such a good looking nice person. A brave hunter - only to be put down by a Buffalo just after fatally spearing it; the short period you have been married to him here, things had become a lot easier for me – please go back to Ugil Lajok… you will get used to each other and eventually live well”.

“I was married to a good looking strong and brave hunter, Aunty, he is dead and gone – it is you who introduced me to Larwecce village people; it is not right to try to tie me down here for the rest of my life – to an ugly, invalid, poetic, lyrical Lukeme or Nanga and Adungu crooner” – what will the crooners sentiments help me? Help me cry all my life?

Auntie Lakwele Ukato - wanted even begged Abeca to stay – she had pleaded with her niece the day before, had tried to wring-out some agreeable commitment from her niece but it wouldn’t work. Things otherwise were falling to pieces between Auntie Lakwel and her niece Abeca.

Abeca couldn’t stand living with Ugil Lajok.

To Abeca, worst problem with Ugil was first of all his hideous looks having been born with a crack down his upper lip and a breakage down between his front teeth to give him a scatter-mouth and then, elongated spread-out front teeth. It was hard for a young woman to look at that face for a long moment. Let alone play a whole lifetime wife…

Even to further compound matters Ugil’s squint eyes were cataract blinded; even though at least his left eye had some small slot and through the thinned-out membranes of the cataract Lajok could see with strain and difficulty.

Ugil Lajok was talented otherwise in a weird sort of way, in days gone-by not long ago when his cousin brother Abeca’s husband Ulaa-wiic was still alive; the guy often played his Lukeme or sometimes Nanga in accompaniment with his haunty songs. The ugly crooner spread his poetic lyrical poverty through sometimes terribly dark nights… at first, as a newly married young woman less than a year before death of her husband; Abeca had even enjoyed Ugili’s crooning. Often in company of her great hunter husband, she had felt elated by the songs of the blind ugly man.

She had walked. And walked. The little numbness she had felt when she knocked her toe had gone. She was walking east then after crossing the Acwaa River, she would head north.

The sun had just gone down over the vast horizon. Crickets chirped. And the Ayweri bird scraped its last sundowner cried; wrrrret, wrrrret, wrrrret, wrrrrret, wrrrrret… she looked. And true the Ayweri bird was perched on top of an anthill a little way from the scanty trail she was following. The bird of the sunset had also seen her. Abeca mouthed her own self-blessing invoking the spirits of her ancestry to walk with her – suddenly, the fears all vanished.

The moon was still high on the eastern horizon at sundown. So that the night was immediately cloudless, clear. She could see very far. Another night bird had started her continuous nonstop song; tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot tot… then the song of the children came to her mind in rhythm with the beat of that night bird; the song “Langwinye ki moo” . Now she really walked.

Her loincloth Udiye’e made of softened animal skin felt loose over her front and and lightly slapped her behind rhythmically.  She had several rounds of colorful beads on her waistline, round her wrists and neck. Abeca was bare feet and had nothing to cover her tiny molds of breasts. She held a small animal skin Kibeggu bundle whose long strap passed over her head to her other shoulder.

Abeca was young in her teenage and was childless. Her husband the hunter Ulaa-wiic died when they had only lived together one hunting dry season. It was in the second dry season that he died in the wilderness. Abeca had defied her favorite Auntie; Lakwele Ukato. And hardly did she know, but as she walked away that night – in her womb was a little fetus, pregnancy of the dead hunter. The man she loved had left her a seed! She was walking away towards another life. A change!

The Writer: Sam Mwaka-karama – Is an Independent Thinker, Author and Blogger