He decided to stay and join the guerrillas. Already he knew the ex-priest called Major Padre or simply Padre by all, who was a prominent personality in the guerrilla movement in that area. He had visited the seminary twice, trying to sell guerrilla ideology to the priests and seminarians. In what to many seemed like a strange ideological turnaround, Lwendo had been the only seminarian to express interest in his message and to hail the guerrillas for fighting the murderous regime. The ex-priest had given him a faded visiting card, the only one he gave away on both occasions, because the others were uninterested. Not one to hold back, Lwendo used the card as his talisman, and boasted to fellow seminarians that he was the only one with vision.
“You are a chameleon,” they said, “with no sense of loyalty or principle.”
“I am a child of the darkness,” he countered. “I sense where the wind blows.” They laughed at him. He shouted guerrilla slogans on campus, alienating even the few priests who believed that he was only suffering from arrested adolescence. Not long after, he said that if he were the leader of the guerrillas, he would have closed the seminary and sent both the seminarians and the staff for military training. Before joining the guerrillas, he visited the padre and talked to him about his intentions. He got the green light: the padre needed people he could trust, and Lwendo, with his big mouth, looked like a perfect tool.
Beset by transport problems, Lwendo entered the training camp at night and almost got shot at the quarter-guard. The soldiers on watch barked at him, ordered him to put his arms in the air and took him in for interrogation. The guerrillas were very wary of sneak attacks from the remnants of government forces they had driven from the town, and of infiltration by spies masquerading as aspiring fighters. Lwendo spent the night in a filthy room guarded by two soldiers, because the padre could not be disturbed at that late hour, not even by those bearing his talisman. Salvation arrived early the next morning. The padre vouched for him, and he was immediately sent for training. Afterward, he did guard duty and patrol, and twice his unit was dispatched to flush out government soldiers who had turned into highwaymen. After lying in ambush for a week, he and his comrades killed four of them. This did not go unnoticed. The padre was happy that his ward could get the job done and appreciated his communication skills, a far cry from those of most Triangle veterans, who only obeyed orders and spoke only when spoken to. Lwendo exaggerated the part he had played in the fight. “When the thugs started shooting, I thought I had been hit. Then I started shooting, and the sound of my gun charged me up and everything changed. It was the best feeling in the world. I wished there were fifty of them out there. I would have killed them all,” he told the padre, who had asked him to secretly report back to him. A shadow of doubt passed over the man’s face, but he said nothing about his ward’s declared interest in killing. He could always use a good story.
On the way to Kampala, when the guerrillas started pushing government forces toward the city, Lwendo had seen some fighting, but only as a quartermaster, supplying ammo. The padre had put in a good word for him. Already that had caused some friction and accusations of favoritism, but Lwendo’s advantage was that he was educated, whereas most of the veterans, especially the child soldiers and ex-peasant farmers picked up from the Triangle, were at best primary or lower secondary school products. The movement needed brains in addition to brawn. He was among the most highly educated, and with his Latin expressions he caused much resentment. When annoyed by his fellow fighters, he would smile and say, “Non compos mentis.” They knew he was insulting them, but not how much, until one sneaked up on him and put a bayonet to his throat and asked for an explanation.
After the war, the padre sent Lwendo to the Triangle, where he fought retreating army forces passing through on their way to the north. He did not do much fighting, but did well the few times he saw action. That was how he had ended up a second lieutenant. Now his benefactor wanted him to keep an eye on goods destined for the devastated areas: iron sheets, cement, brick-making equipment, blankets and the like. Judging by the dedication with which he had handled ammunition and other supplies as a quartermaster, the padre believed that Lwendo could be trusted with larger things.
The post-guerrilla-war economy was in shambles, inflation was very high, there was a chronic lack of production and the thriving black market did not make economic planning any easier. Fighters used to the hard life and discipline of their bush days were now out in the world, open to temptations of quick money and personal enrichment. Many felt they deserved opportunity as a reward for facing death and hardship in the Triangle and elsewhere in order to liberate the country.
Lwendo made it clear to me that he did not intend to stay in the army for long: “I hate being cooped up in the barracks. I hate the lack of freedom, the power of the officers and all those drills. I want to get out early, but with something in my pocket. I have many plans for the future.”
“You mean …”
“I intend to get my cut of the action.”
“What is the padre’s attitude to that?”
“He is high up there; I am down here at the bottom. He can fire me if he does not like my modus operandi.”
“How about the hostility of your colleagues?”
“It is there, but it does not deter me from doing what I want. The sooner I get what I want, the sooner I quit.”
“This whole thing scares me. I am not a soldier. If things go wrong, I will be the bad guy.”
“Let me worry about that.”
“I already have a job …”
“Getting twenty, thirty dollars a month! Come on, man. How long will you stay in that rotten profession?”
“I have no intention of getting beaten and locked up by soldiers accusing me of corrupting you, Mr. Liberator.”
“I need you. The moment the padre appointed me, I knew you were the right person to work with. I need somebody I can trust, somebody who won’t stab me in the back.”
“What if we get caught?”
“Discretion will be paramount. We are not going to do things carelessly, you can take it from me. I am a different man now. I am systematic, patient, wary. You don’t have to worry about that,” he said earnestly. “Think about it and about your future and then come to me. I won’t accept the job unless you cooperate.”
The temptation was huge: the smell of adventure and daring, the exploration of unknown territory, the squaring off against bigger guys! The sense of danger had something magnetic about it, a feeling of beating the odds, a feeling of chopping heads off the hydras left in my garden by the Infernal Trinity. I was tired of teaching and achieving little in my profession. The seduction of piracy was like a lantern to a suicidal moth on a cold, dark night. I craved being on top, not in a little brewery where everyone called me boss, but in the larger world. The prospect awakened old seminary ghosts: the raids on Fr. Mindi and Fr. Lageau. I missed the adrenaline. I had done nothing like that in years. I felt that Lwendo and I could hold our own against security agents. It was a mind game, and my brain was afire with images, moves, feints which would bring us victory.