The Last King of Scotland (1998) (12 page)

The father was stout and distinguished-looking. He retired relatively wealthy, Boniface told me later, having been Chief Headman for the Directorate of Overseas Surveys. Also wearing a long gown, he was sitting on a straw stool when I came in, with a glass of beer in his hand. Boniface introduced us with great formality and I sat down on another stool to talk to his father. We started with politics and I soon learned that he was no fan of Amin.

“That fellow is no better than Obote, let me tell you. It is because of Obote that we had to move away and I believe many will be moving on account of Amin also.”

I learned that the family was Baganda, from near Kampala, and had emigrated down here to Ankole country when Mr Malumba retired. I asked him about the different Ganda words, which had been puzzling me.

This was how it went:

Mu
-ganda (a single Ganda person)

Ba
-ganda (“the people”)

Lu
-ganda (the Ganda tongue)

Bu
-ganda (the land of Ganda).

“It is the same in many places, even Tanzania,” Mr Malumba said. “But sometimes you have to put in a y or even other letters depending on what has come before. So you have Banyankole, the people who live round here, or the Banrwanda over the border. And all these places I have worked in.”

Before long, he was telling me the story of his life with the Directorate, from its early days as part of the Colonial Office to after Independence, when he had helped run the East African tri-angulation project for ODA, the same people from whom I was seconded.

“What exactly is triangulation?” I asked.

He leaned forward on his stool, making gestures with his hands over the straw mats on the floor. “It is dividing an area into triangles for mapping. Distance and height, so you can put hills on a map that is flat. We had to make chains of triangles which would be connected to chains in other countries. The chain had come up from Tanzania and Zambia through to the border of Burundi. Just over there. In my time, we extended it through Uganda and Sudan to connect with Egypt. This was done a long time ago. It was called the Thirtieth Arc.”

“That’s a lot of ground to cover.” I thought of the map in my guidebook and tried to imagine the vast distances he was describing.

“We went from one mountain to another, making stations. I was a helioboy to begin with. I held the mirror and the surveyor caught my light in his theodolite, many miles away. Sometimes as far as sixty miles. Other times it would be dark and we would send lighting parties. Then the surveyor would send the closing-down signal with his light and we would move to the next hill. And the next, and the next, and the next. Until we met with the other party. The other triangle. That was how we made the chain.”

“Hard work,” I said. Mrs Malumba smiled at me over his shoulder. Then she went into the kitchen, leaving me with Bonney and Gugu, who were listening to their father as closely as I was. Though I suspected this story was one he had told many times before.

“Yes,” he continued, “and much walking. And much heavy equipment to carry. We went in Land Rovers and lorries and camped each night. And other things, too, were hard. I began in Karamoja. Up north. It was difficult there. Very rough place. The Karamojans kept taking the wire the beacons were tied with. So we tied them with bark cloth, but they took that too. And also herds of buffalo and elephant would knock them over.”

“It must have been exciting to see them, though. The animals.”

“I suppose so. The soldiers have killed them all now. For food, and I believe sometimes for pleasure also. It was different in those days. Now and then we went up in planes. With the RAF. I had to carry the heavy camera which took pictures of the shape of the ground. The Fairchild K17. Fifty thousand square miles we covered. Very far. Below we could see the white wooden crosses we had put on the ground.”

“What were they for?”

“To mark the points. We paid the wananchi to repaint them once a month or they would become faded by the time we took the shots. And you know, in some parts they are still painting them now, so many years later. I believe they thought we were missionaries. So many of those crosses became holy sites.”

“I don’t believe it,” I said, laughing.

“It is so. But in the work, the films would go to England, and there the cartographers would scale and plot maps from the shots – one-to-fifty-thousand, one-to-twenty-five-thousand – putting the films over. Then the maps came back, when we were already in a different place, and we studied them with joy. For they were very beautiful. Hill shades, roads, rivers, vegetation. All in colour: pink, green, blue, yellow. I can show you.”

He went to a shelf, selected a couple of maps, and spread them out on the floor. One was an old one, the folds nearly developed into tears. On it were notations like ‘Rudolf Province’ and ‘East African Protectorate’. The other map was new.

“We put on the names, we would ask the people and they would tell us the name and why it was used. Like here.”

He pointed. Gugu crept over to look.

“This is Arua. Aru is prison in Lugbara. When the Germans were fighting you in the war, there was a prison camp here and when the African people went there to be guards they would say they were aru-a. In the prison. You see?

“And here is Gulu, where the river makes the sound gulu-gulu as it passes. Then the Nile comes to Jinja. Traders in bark cloth crossed over to Busoga there and when they missed the last canoe (they had to go before nightfall because of the hippos), they would camp on the stone and say to their wives that they had to spend the night ku jinja, on the rock.

“Then to the lake. Entebbe is where you came on the aeroplane. It is the headquarters of the lungfish clan and for some reason the British made it their headquarters also. It is the seat of government, for this” – he stood up and pointed at his stool – “is called entebe in Luganda…Kabarole. That is ‘watch and see’ in Lunyoro, because the king built his palace on a hill there. We call double-decker buses kabandole, ‘watch-and-see-me’, for this very reason. At Kaliro the hunters would build a small fire on a hill to show they were safe. Their wives at home would say to each other, ‘Have you seen the fire?’ And another would say, “Kaliro. We have seen it.”

“Kumuli, that is from ‘small reed’ because it was a place where letters were carried to by a runner, the paper put inside in a slit in the reed. Luwero, that signifies ‘slashing grass’. And Makerere, noise of birds: karere, karere!” He flapped his arms in the air.

Boniface, leaning against the doorpost, looked at me and shook his head, smiling.

“Come, come, come here,” said his father. He stood up, and took me by the arm over to the window, from where we had a fair view of the Ruwenzoris. The Malumbas’ windows, I noticed, had no bars.

“You see the mountains. You see the mist. That is why Kasese is so called, which means morning.”

Then he rushed me back to the map. “Kumam, it is ‘went to the dance but did not get there’. Kololo, that is from a chief who went mad. He was put there in isolation. It means ‘the only one’. Muhavara is from ‘what shows the way’ because we put a beacon there. Mbale is from King Omumbale. In the legends he would fly to that place from the Ssese islands in Lake Victoria and land on a tree there…”

“Father you must leave Nicholas now,” interrupted Boniface. “He cannot be wanting to know all this.”

“Just a few more. It is very important that all people know our history. It has been hiding. So. See this one, Namagasali. When the Uganda Railway came there, the people were amazed at the train. They would go there and say, ‘Namusa gali.’ That is, ‘I am greeting the train.’ Semuliki: ‘river without fish’. When the white men came, we thought you would steal the fish, so that is the name we told you!”

He traced some blue on the map. “Nakiripiripirit. There is a lake there. When the wind blows, the water moves and so from this the name, which means ‘moving shining’.”

“Shimmering,” said Bonney loudly.

His father increased his own volume and velocity as if to compensate for the loss of face. “Mubende, there was a palace on a hill there. Very very steep. So when the king’s subjects came with heavy packs of gifts for him they would be on their knees. Thus, you see ‘kubendabenda’, this bend-down-double climbing. So, you see, even your English language has added to our store.”

“What about Mbarara?” I asked, smiling.

“Oh, that is very boring. It is from the name of a green grass round here. Better is Koboko, Amin’s town. There is a hill there called kobuko, which the story says was blown by a mystery power from Maya, in Sudan. This strange force pushed it in space to Uganda and where it landed it killed all the people who were there before. For kobuko means in Kakwa the thing which smothers or covers you, stopping your breath. I tell you, Nicholas, all things I am telling you are real. Instance, maya means hill also in a Sudanese tongue…”

“OK, OK, but this is more real than your crazy talk,” said Mrs Malumba, bringing in a steaming bowl.

“That smells delicious,” I said. “What is it?”

“It is matooke with goat-and-groundnut sauce,” she replied.

We sat down and Mrs Malumba said grace. “God the Father bless this food which has been given to us by You, through Jesus Christ Our Lord.”

Amen, we all said. I watched the others to see how to scoop up the gluey mush with my hand. As we ate, we soon got to talking about tribes again: the bad-penny topic, black and white.

“Why am I called a muzungu?” My mouth was full, and the word came out scrambled, as if I didn’t properly know the name for what I was.

“It is the same as before,” said Mr Malumba. “Mu-zungu, except you say Wa-zungu for many people.”

“But what does zungu mean?”

“It’s just you European people, like the Asians are just the wahindi. Except that there is also kizunguzungu, which means dizzy. Only I don’t know which came first, muzungu or kizunguzungu. Or if they are connected. In any case, muzungu is what we christened you when you turned up. Only the tribes here have more complex names.”

“And the big men in the Mercedes-Benz,” shrilled Gugu, “at school we call them wa-benzi!”

We all laughed and then Mrs Malumba said, seriously, “Be careful what you say, boy. It could be bad for you in these times.”

Bonney, meanwhile, was looking despondent over his plate. I sensed that he wanted to show me off but also show off to me, and was irritated that others were taking centre stage.

Or maybe I was just imagining it. He put his oar in, anyway: “It’s not always tribes, though. Sometimes ba just means from, or a small collective unit, like the Abanabugerere means people who live in Bugerere. We don’t like to think about tribes now anyhow.”

“When someone’s attacking you, you need to have a tribe. You need to stick together when the knives are out,” said his father sternly.

“You are not modern, Father. These old things, we do not need them now.”

“You will see. When I went back to Kampala I saw all those Anyanya and Kakwa thugs Amin has brought down from the north to put into the police and the army. It is not good. Those people are not like us. Even their bodies are different. They are bony and look angry all the time. No wonder they cut so many people. Even they have brought some here, to the barracks.”

“They are still people, Father, whatever tribe they belong to.”

They broke into Luganda to argue. I sat in silence, trying to deduce something from the ebb and flow of their words. Mrs Malumba smiled at me as she cleared up the plates, and then took them through. Gugu ran outside, the mesh door swinging behind him on its spring.

Irritated, Boniface changed the subject, I supposed, and the language, asking me if I could get him into a university in Britain. “I want to do postgraduate food science at Reading University,” he said, “It is the best place. But I will need a scholarship. Then I can come back here and work for the World Bank.”

As I tortuously went into why there was not much I could do, Gugu saved me by coming back in. He was holding – by the tail – a chameleon. Mr Malumba got up and started shouting. It was apparently bad luck to injure or interfere with them. There was a brittle rustle as the reptile fell from the boy’s hand on to a straw mat. Ignoring his father, the kid got down on his knees and started poking at it.

Mr Malumba shook his head, and went off for his post-lunch nap. “Ah, Doctor Garrigan, never have children. I must go for my sleep now. It is very kind of you to have eaten with us.”

“No, no,” I said, embarrassed. “It’s been a pleasure. It’s been fascinating.”

When he had gone, Gugu said something to Bonney in Luganda, and flicked at the poor animal again.

Bonney replied in a cutting voice. The boy shrugged.

“What did he say?” I asked Bonney.

“He wanted to know what is going to happen. The colours of the chameleon, people think they are all the spirits of your ancestors passing by. It’s crazy – the idea is that you must not disturb them. The bagagga, the magic specialists in the villages, pretend that you can tell your own fate from the changes. Well, they tell it and you pay them.”

We looked at the piebald creature on the floor, motionless except for one moment when it lifted a front leg, like a dog holding up its paw to beg. But its lidded eye seemed oblivious to us, and it didn’t change colour for me, not once, whatever Gugu held next to it. Eventually, Bonney told Gugu to take it back outside.

I stayed quite late into the afternoon. We watched a kung-fu film on the television. It was fuzzy enough already – bad reception – and when the electricity current dipped, everything faded to grey. Walking back, I rehearsed Bruce Lee’s intermittent acrobatic manoeuvres in my head: lots of leaping about and crunching of bones, all in the cause of some complicated and improbable revenge. Hong Kong Phooey. Yet it was fun and, having seen it, I suddenly missed British television. Or perhaps I was really just missing Britain. Or Scotland, anyway. Home.

A
nother Sunday, the week before Amin’s visit. A page or two from my journal, which is in front of me as I scratch away, under these iron skies. My God, do not look so fiercely down upon me! I am too tired to redo it (so tired I nearly wrote,
1 am too tired to read it
), but perhaps copying it verbatim will give a richer flavour of the place. It’s an argument. Anyway, here it is: