My Father and I

For those of you who don’t know much about me, I was born in Kireka, grew up mainly in Kireka but also spent a considerable amount of time while growing up at my grandmothers’ place in Kiwanga.  I had a fabulous education at a really good school, Kamuli Primary School about 2km from where I lived.  I had an amazing role model in a mother who overcame massive difficulties and worked incredibly hard for us.   She worked two shifts; from 8am to 5 pm at African Ceramics and then 7pm to 10pm in a nearby bar. Even then we were as broke as dirt, but I know that she did everything and anything to make sure that I was well fed, dressed and went to a decent school.  I worked from the age of 12 rising through different jobs. Very early on I was vending water in 20-litre containers around our neighbourhood in Kireka.  At the age of 14, I worked as a matatu conductor and by 17 I had started my own business of showing video movies around the villages of Kisoga, Nkonkonjeru and Katosi for a fee. I did not earn a lot of money but it helped top up what my mother gave me and most importantly, I made enough to take me through high school.  While the government paid my tuition through University, I continued to do different menial jobs in various parts of the country to support myself and my mother who had then stopped working.  Rather than bleat and complain, I count myself very blessed to have had the upbringing I did. I was brought up to believe that hard work pays and that to understand that nothing gets handed to you on a plate.   I was brought up to believe that no man or woman is an island and that we are all shaped and formed by the communities we live in.  I was brought up to be proud about my achievements without being arrogant.  My mother taught me to be humble without being timid and to challenge unfairness when I see it.

I have shared the above story more than once and whenever I do, I feel as if there is a loud but unspoken question; where was your father?

My father and I were estranged throughout my childhood. I had heard from my mother at a very early age that my father had refused to pay any child support for me and that no amount of pleading or cajoling would force him to do so.  Everyday I passed my father’s house to go to school. It was a small 3 bedroom nicely finished mud and wattle house with an expansive compound around it.  Probably built in the 1950’s, it was a stone’s throw away from where my mother and I lived in a 3m by 3m room part of a line of similar rooms (mizigo) formed around a courtyard the size of half a football pitch.  Although he drove a white Volkswagen, occasionally I would bump into my father on foot on the road that took me to school and we would exchange greetings but nothing more.  Such was the proximity of our lives and yet we continued to live so far apart.  I never lived with my father although I regularly saw him. He never offered us assistance in anyway, well at least none that I know of.  In a community like ours where I grew up people especially the women talked, and I heard a lot.  I heard that he had money but never looked after his children, especially those outside his two recognized homes.  I did not know what that meant because some of my sisters and brothers who lived with him went to the same school with me.  I always heard my maternal relatives in conversations about him.  That he had arrogantly refused to listen any one of them.  He was rich they said, but didn’t want to support my mother or me, I would learn.  As I became of age, I started getting angry.  Why, if he were rich as perceived, would he let my mother to work so hard without any assistance?

One morning in 1983 while in Primary Six, I chose to take matters in my hand.  I was chased away from school for not having a Nile English Course Book 6.  I knew that my mother did not have money because she was ill and had been bedridden for about a week.   We were skipping meals and there was no way I was going to add to her burdens by telling her that I had been sent away from school.  On this particular morning, I chose to go to my father’s place of work.  He now worked as a taxi driver, having turned his small car (the beetle) into a ‘special hire’ operating from Nakawa stage.  I set off on foot from Kireka and along the way many thoughts were going through my mind.  I was now 12 years old and somewhat mature enough to ‘tell the difference between a flower and a leaf’ like he used to say.  What if my mother had such a bad separation from my father and she proudly doesn’t want to talk to him, what if he is actually sending support and I am being made to believe that he doesn’t, so that he is made to be the bad boy.  I trod on and it wasn’t long before I was in Nakawa.  Very soon, I was going to be face to face with this man, that I have never asked to give me anything, how was I going to ask him.  The fear of being rejected crept in now.  On the other hand, I was excited that finally, I am going to speak to my father about my education, he probably doesn’t know that I am a star performer in class.  What if my mother was keeping all this information away from him, he will probably express his excitement by giving me more than I had come for.  And now his car, the Volkswagen UUN989 was in full view, soon I was to see the man himself standing amongst his friends.

My heart now pounding as hell, I walked closer within about 10 feet of the group of men.  And it was obvious to one of them that I wanted to speak to someone in the group.  He drew his mates’ attention to me and for the first time my fathers’ eyes locked on to mine.  I nervously smiled at him but he did not smile back.  I could not bring myself to starting the conversation of my presence.  I was too embarrassed to discuss this private matter in front of all these strangers.  I greeted them and thankfully, he excused himself and walked to his car where I followed him.  “What do you want?” he asked.   I explained patiently that I had been sent away from school for a Nile English Course and that my mother could not pay for it because she was currently down.  In order to make him feel better (and probably guilty), I further explained that maama had already paid the school fees and that it was only this small matter of the Nile English Course that was in our way.   “Please assist me with some money so that I can buy this text book and go back to school”, I pleaded.  Then the words came out. “I never have money and I am sure by now your mother has told you that I don’t have money”.  These words painfully ring out in my ears to this day.  Here I was standing before this man and he was erasing any doubts that I may have had, he was indeed confirming that he is not willing to support me in anyway.  “Go back and tell your mother that I don’t have any money and if I had any I would bring it because I know where to find you”.  I turned and walked off partly because I was embarrassed that my father had said no to me, confirming all those rumours that I had previously heard and partly because I was too proud to allow him to continue humiliating me by asking for money to pay for a fare back home.  I was so embarrassed, I was so angry and as I walked back home, I decided that this would be the first and last time I ever ask him for help.  I recollected myself and decided not to share this story with my mum because she would have felt so bad, for I knew how much she didn’t want to beg him.  She was always proud and wanted to show him that she was doing well even without his support.   

That was the only time I ever asked my father for money or support.   I now avoided him whenever we were likely to meet and never wanted to see him again.  Then in 1984 he got arrested by the army of the day on trumped up charges that he was a rebel and was released from Makindye Barracks after a few weeks.  This time against my own will my mother insisted that I had to go to his second home where he had now stationed and welcome him back from jail.  That is my mother.  She was still angry with him and probably angrier than I was but she always insisted ‘he is your father at the end of the day’.  No man is an island, she would say.  Once that visit was done, that was it for me.  I had grown even prouder and never wanted anything to do with him.  Those two encounters were the only memories I had of him as a child and they were both far from perfect.

Then one morning in 1991, I was called from my room in Mitchell Hall that there was an old man waiting for me in the parking lot.  I went out only to find a Volkswagen UUN989 parked and on seeing it, I was torn between turning back and proceeding to where it was. For a moment I hesitated, then I made the first step towards the car.  That might as well have been my first step towards reconciliation with my father.  With a lot of apprehensiveness, I walked towards his car and finally we had our eyes locked on each other.  In a way it was that Nakawa meeting replayed but this time, I felt like I had the upper hand.  He extended his hand to shake mine and I shook it firmly.  I was determined not to speak before he does and after a few seconds (which felt like a year to me), he said ‘I heard that you joined University and I know that I had not given anything to you, so I brought these little items to help you’.  He handed me a pair of secondhand bed sheets and a blanket.  I felt like rejecting them. I thought about the rejection and embarrassment he has visited on me before and I thought this would be the perfect moment to revenge. I also thought that now that I had got into university, this man feels that he has to get close to me as his first son to reach university forgetting that he had no hand in getting where I am.    I felt that he was only positioning himself to reap from where he did not sow.  Secondly, he was late, it was about 2 weeks into University life and certainly I already had a blanket and bed sheets (new at that).  But then I decided against all that was playing in my head and I took the items. Since there was not much to talk about, like for most people who have not been on speaking terms for the better part of their lives, we parted ways.  I took what he gave me and although I did not use them, over the next few days, I appreciated the gesture.  I informed my mother about what had happened and unsurprisingly her first words were ‘forgive him and move on with your life, he knows how much of a fool he has been over the years and that alone will haunt him the rest of his life which is punishment enough’.  Around the same time I listened to a song by Mike and the Mechanics, which was written by Mike Rutherford.  In that song he wrote about his relationship with his father, which is not similar to mine in any way, but the most important thing is that his father had passed away without the two of them reconciling.  It is at that stage that I decided that I will not let bitterness last.  Needless to say, I went through University for the five years without visiting him or him visiting me again, but now I started getting closer to some of my siblings and other relatives.  I especially grew closer to my sister Juliet Nakaye (RIP) who was always nicer to me during our childhood and school days.  In 1997, during my graduation my father and mother accompanied me to the ceremonies to pick up my degree and my father attended the graduation party that was held later in the evening in my honour.  He didn’t go through the entire evening because according to him ‘it had been a long day and he needed some rest’ but it was also obvious that he was a little uncomfortable, especially that speaker after speaker not to mention myself were deservedly praising my mum and thanking her for working so hard.

Years later, when I was an adult and I was thinking of formally starting a family in 1999, I found out that I needed to get details about my lineage for use during my traditional introduction ceremony to the family of my wife to be.  He was so excited when I told him about this and he pulled out a lot of records that he had kept about our ancestry.  This is when I realized that I am truly my father’s son.  Even with his limited education, he had kept documents and letters about our family some dating back to the 1930s.  Albeit late, he was now speaking like a father would do to his son, showing me a list of names of kids he had sired over the years and adding that I should always keep records because you will never know when you need them. “Even when I am gone, you should entrust our family records with only that person who can keep them well not some of these negligent souls that I see around here” he added.  It is on that day, that I also learnt the importance of what my mum used to tell me ‘that no man is an island’ especially in our culture.  Somewhere along the stages of life you will need your relatives or at least to know who they are, that is our culture unless one intends to make a complete break.

From 1999 until his death in 2013, I incrementally and slowly but steadily grew closer to my father.  And like I said to my wife Victoria on the night of his death ‘he waited for me to become close to him and then he left’.  At the time of his death, all the veneer had washed away on each side and we were truly confidants of each other.  I thank God that he gave me the wisdom and serenity all those years back in 1991 to accept that I could not change the past but that I had all the powers to change the future however difficult to do it may have been at the time.  I am happy to say that my Dad went to his grave a happier person (and probably even remorseful).  Every year, the second weekend of August, I bring together all my siblings and their families at our family home in Nakafumu to celebrate the life of this great man.  May his soul continue to rest in peace.