5 July 2025
Masaba road
It is a sunny Saturday afternoon, my favourite time of the week. I sit in my corner of the garden, under a leafy tree, surrounded by a hedge I planted for this very purpose, seclusion. Yet as soon as I sit at my desk to seclude, I open my mail hoping for something of interest from the world. There is only one new email from Somebody Lope. The name is enough to make me suspicious. Indeed, it is from a widow in Abidjan, a suffering widow…asking for help. Welcome to the club of sufferers.
I am gathering up the remains of my life, summing up the losses and gains.
Funny how you begin to pick up the pieces of your life like this and start weighing up the gains and losses. It’s as though the season has changed and I need to look at the balance sheet of the last one. We forget the gains, dwell mainly on the losses. This morning the losses weigh me down. The sound of the funereal song ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ flows over loudly from the Tieng Adhola way. There is a funeral going on somewhere that way. The song is sang at every funeral and there are many funerals around us. We are mortals, there is no escaping that fact, but if I can chuckle like the Adhola did, when I interviewed him, how he told and retold stories of the past with glee, I would be content with my own mortality, at 98 years of age, as he is. The person preaching at the funeral on loudspeaker says he is now 83 years old and thanks God.
I resolve there and then to rejoice in life. I will in fact, behave like royalty, bestowing grace and favours and not bothering my little head with little things. I will only spend energy thinking up lofty ideas and stop worrying over small issues. I am born again.
Yet today I am lacking in energy. I feel there is no vigour pushing me forward. I am listless. This must pass, I think. It must not stay, grow roots and take up habitat. I am thinking of the subject of my research, my Uncle James Malilo Ochola, and how he had achieved so much before his life was cut short in such a tragic manner. The work we do, may seem small, we do not know how far, what we start, will go. Sometimes the deeds we sow grow wings and fly. By then, you too have flown away and are not there to see the works of your hand bearing strange fruit. Those that enjoy the fruits of your labour, have not even heard of you. They do not know that at one point, someone’s life was consumed with a project that makes it possible for you to read, write, play, study, travel on good roads, be treated at a good hospital and so on. But this is the nature of good works, the beneficiaries are oblivious of the benefactor.
I am sipping a cup of black tea and eating banana crisps. Life is not too bad. But the story I am writing wears me out with its mood swings. Sometimes it lifts me high like a child on a swing, when I marvel at the wonders of Uncle James Ochola. Other times it throws me down when I wonder how such a great life could have come to such a tragic end. With hot tea and some energy from the crisps, I am feeling somewhat stronger now. Was it because of a bad night, or is it because of a bad day.
I wanted to attend a function and enjoy the company of the good and great yet I declined a wedding at a posh venue in Kampala to sit under this tree and finish my work.
It’s funny what you can hear from under a tree. Everything. Tributes, memories. Someone is saying, ‘he was my mentor, my father, my friend.’ People paying tribute, the mayor, the LC3, people giving 50,000 as mabugo. I am glad I am not away in the City attending a wedding, I am here, in the midst of life and death.
I have spent all morning attending someone’s funeral from under my tree. I am as sad as all the other mourners, especially as I think I now know who has died. Wilson Emagalit, or someone from his home. I hear the name and a cold finger presses on my heart. The funeral is at the Ekatang’s home that I used to pass everyday when going to visit my friend Maggie. Their house was just before Maggie’s house, at the Tieng Adholas.
I get up from under the tree and enter my house and engage VPN, which I haven’t done for a long time and there is it, on Facebook. He died on 31 March in Canada and his body has just been flown home and I am attending his funeral from under my tree.
Even the Noon time Sun that was hot, has given way to clouds. The winds are trying to be blustery but failing, managing only to be breezy. The funeral announcement clashes with a pick-up mounted with loudspeakers announcing a disco. Motorcycles wheeze up and down the main road, as the speaker carries on at the funeral. The speaker announces that Laban Langa, brother to the new judge, and who is standing for MP, is also there.
The funeral seems to be over. The sun in the sky has been subdued. The next day, Sunday, I know they will be going over the estate of the deceased. On Monday evening, I go over with Glyn, to the Ekatang’s to pay our last respect to Wilson Emagalit. Rest in Peace and Power Brother. We sit out in the pleasant surrounding, green lawns, shrubs, smart buildings and converse with Paul Siu and Awan Simon Fred, brothers of the deceased, and his nephews. We remember Wilson.