On what would have been the last day of the operation, a local priest who had hidden in the forest was captured. He was arrested, together with a catechist, and the pair was hanged by the legs on the smoldering rafters of the fathers’ house. Saliva and blood and brains trickled out of their heads until they died, and birds pecked out their eyes.
Rain always followed severe bombardment. Rains poisoned with the wrath of the dead fell, and the swamps swelled, flooding and submerging the surrounding areas. They undermined house foundations and made the ruins rot and crumble. They carried the ooze to the bottom of Mpande Hill in swirling waves and washed away the history of the village. Thunder and lightning struck and, coupled with the relentless rain, broke open burial sites, filled them with water and destroyed what remained of that legacy. Elephant grass eventually took over, growing over courtyards, graveyards, everywhere.
By the time we went to investigate the need for aqueducts to control the mighty Mpande swamp, the village was no more, its memory a dark ooze seeping from the sides of the two hills. Grandpa’s house and the burial grounds were gone. So were Serenity’s house, Stefano’s grand one and the nominal restaurants, casinos and supermarkets of the youthful village. My favorite jackfruit tree was no more, cut to bits by the bombs. There were hardly any returnees.
Aunt Tiida and Nakatu came to salvage the tattered memories of their birthplace and early life but, horrified by the transience of what they had believed to be eternal, fled to the safety of their homes. Serenity came to see for himself what the cycles of history and war had done, and what he could do about it. He too fled, with palms over his eyes: the realization of the vengeful dreams of his youth horrified him. The house of his nightmares was gone. Clan land and its exploiters were gone. His very own bachelor house, with its conquests and less savory memories, had also been obliterated. On his way out, he went to the place where the Fiddler used to live. The remains of the house were invisible, and he could only vaguely make out where his childhood refuge had been. Now he understood why the city and the towns were so swollen with people who, despite the terrible conditions, did not seem eager to respond to government calls to return to their areas. Many members of his trade union fell into the same category.
This time it was much easier to steal a truck or two filled with the cement intended for the aqueducts. The Reconstruction Committee in charge was weak because of the thinness of the population of returnees. Literacy among the committee members was low, and the honorable members got lost in the maze of mathematical calculations required. The records at the Rehab warehouse showed that ten trucks had been delivered. On the ground, only five had been received. Aqueducts were being built in Mpande swamp with less concrete than was required. The pirating pattern was the same, except that those involved in the syndicate had become greedier. I was outraged, and Lwendo appreciated my frustration. “No mercy this time,” I told him. “If we get them, we bury them deep.” He at first agreed, but then realized that this could be our last chance. He did not tell me directly. A few days later, he said, “Don’t get carried away. Don’t let feelings get in the way.”
“What do you mean by that? My village got wiped out. Do you want me to sit back and watch?”
“That is not what I was saying.”
“What the hell were you saying, then?”
“That this could be our lucky break. You know well that we can’t keep on doing the same thing forever. This is our last time. The destruction of the village and the disappearance of the cement are omens. You are the village. It lives in you. The cement will never be recovered, and the criminals will probably walk once arrested. Better take the cash and go than let some policeman or detective blow it away on booze or pussy.”
“No, not this time.”
“Yes, this time.”
Acting on a tip from our Radio Uganda man, who this time wanted to be paid much more — he claimed he was getting threatening letters, dead rats, headless geckos and such garbage on his front door and wanted to clear out — Lwendo got a jeep and a rifle, and we went to Jinja Road, behind the Radio Uganda building.
The house was a fabulous bungalow, hidden by a fence, facing a sprawling golf course and Kololo Hill. Our man was at home: a small, well-dressed, intelligent man who had made his money in the early eighties by speculating on the dollar. It was striking how ordinary these white-collar criminals looked. He might have been a staff member of Sam Igat Memorial College. He looked almost underfed, but he owned warehouses in Kikuubo and had business connections in London and Dubai.
He gave us what we wanted without much argument. It looked almost too easy.
After taking the money, we had to lie low. In the meantime, I took stock of my situation. I did not want to go back to SIMC, whatever happened. I could sit back and do Aunt Lwandeka’s books while making up my mind about the future. I could traveclass="underline" Where? Abroad: there were many young people leaving for Britain, Sweden, the United States and Germany to try their luck at odd jobs in the hope of earning enough money to build houses and buy cars. The trick was to ask for political asylum, since that was the only way they could secure the right to stay in the West. I had no plans to join their ranks. I couldn’t bear the humiliation of the camps, especially because I could avoid it. Maybe I would go as a tourist.
The man we squeezed was no fool. He used his friends in high places to blow the whistle on us, and the padre finally got the news. He called Lwendo to his office one day and, like a father to an erring son, expressed deep disappointment. He said he had had very high hopes for Lwendo and could not understand why he had fallen prey to the hydras of bribery and corruption. Lwendo, like a prodigal son, kept his head down, as though offering his neck for decapitation. The padre, a man of not too many words who knew the temptation of money, said he would not lock him up. Instead, he was going to send him to work as a Rehabilitation officer in the north. In other words, Lwendo was being flung from the Garden of Eden into the fires of the harsh world outside. Already thinking of his escape, he accepted his punishment with a bowed head.
It was indeed Eden that he was being banished from. Living in the south, it was easy to forget the fighting raging in the north. True, big parts of the north had been conquered by the new government, but guerrilla-style fighting was still going on. A hard core of Obote fighters could not accept the fact that an army from the south had taken over power in the north. They tried to stir up the people, and when they failed, they attacked villages and terrorized the locals. Knowing the terrain well, they could move quickly, do damage and disappear before government forces could do something about it. It was ironic that after fighting a guerrilla war against northerner-dominated governments, the southerners were now involved in a similar predicament. And as the northerners had been scared to death in our forests and swamps, the southerners did not know what the dusty, harsh plains would reveal next time they searched for the elusive fighters; but unlike Obote soldiers, they were not allowed to torture civilians. Soldiers who were caught raping and pillaging got shot by firing squads, which made international human rights organizations holler. However, the government remained firm, and when a soldier raped or committed acts akin to those Obote soldiers had perpetrated in the Luwero Triangle, the death penalty remained a very likely punishment.