Moses Isegawa: Snakepit

For the first time that morning Bat felt relaxed and he started to enjoy himself. I have a job, I have a job, I have a job, he said under his breath. My dreams are about to come true. My gamble on returning home is about to pay off big-time. He made quick calculations in his head and realized that his financial worries were over. He felt so excited he wanted to scream out loud. He could hardly wait to get started.

“Most intellectuals are abandoning us, I can assure you,” the General began. “I am sure you have met some of them in Britain. I am not intellectual. I don’t understand what they think and I don’t care. I am interested in results, facts. Do you see the Owen Falls Dam below us? And the famous Nile? Some intellectuals say that this is not the source of this river. That it begins somewhere in Rwanda. What difference does that make? It is splitting hairs, I can assure you. I expect you to keep this dam running, supplying us with electricity at all times. Every time the power fails in my home, I will hold you responsible. I want you to keep the phones working, the mail delivered. I am not interested in details, but in results, progress and commitment. It is a mess in the ministry and nobody knows what to do. I place all those educated and non-educated bastards in your hands. You are free to fire anybody, any time, anywhere. If anybody gives you grief, report him to me and the bastard will lose his neck, I can assure you. My trust never comes cheap. Earn it.”

“You can rely on me, General.”

Bat did his best to appear calm and collected, but behind his mask of seriousness he was savouring this moment. The river Nile looked so white, so glorious as it pushed its way north through the rocks, bushes and forests. Lake Victoria beckoned in the distance. He experienced a moment of pure contentment. Here in the air, with no troublemakers in view, with the power to hire and fire faceless minions, it felt wonderful. He could wave his wand and all the backlog and the mess at the ministry would froth away. He hadn’t been this happy in the last two years. Everything seemed to have been building to this moment, his triumphant entry into the bastions of power.

“If you have any questions, call me. Bureaucrat One, your immediate boss, can answer some questions. But he is just a figurehead. You are the one I will be watching. The tour is over. A mountain of work is awaiting you at the ministry, I can assure you.”

THE HELICOPTER DROPPED the General at the headquarters of the Anti-Smuggling Unit and took Bat back to the city. He savoured the luxury and wondered what Damon Villeneuve, his only British friend, was doing. Damon wanted to become a politician and had asked him to stay in Britain. But Bat had known that Britain would make him wait for years if it was going to yield success to him. He wanted to return home where jobs were waiting, where he would be somebody, where his expertise was really needed. He had wished Damon much success. He thought about Mr. and Mrs. Kalanda, the friends who had put him up for the last two weeks. There was another friend, a professor at Makerere University. They were all going to have a big drinking party. Now that he had a job and good prospects for the future, he felt even closer to them.

The Avenger landed behind the Nile Perch Hotel. Bat could see soldiers in the distance keeping guard, patrolling the grounds. His eyes swept over the beautiful greens, the well-tended trees and hedges. He liked this hotel, its four floors, the laid-back greyish colour and its aeroplane windows. Heads of state, ambassadors and foreign dignitaries had slept there. He might also spend a night there some day, for the hell of it. He didn’t like the sight of soldiers, but this was a military government. He would have to get used to them. The fact that he had just been with a general made him feel a degree of contempt for these privates and corporals and sergeants whose futures looked bleak, whose lives meant little. The fact that he was not a politician filled him with confidence. I am indispensable, yes I am. Each successive government will need my services. All I have to do is do my job well.

The Boomerang took him back to the Parliament Building. He looked at the magnificent edifice, its murky history hidden behind a friendly ivory exterior. He walked through the yard, his shoes crunching gravel, and headed for the main gate. Governments were sworn in here, under the arch, near the trees where the new statue loomed. The colonizers had stood here on their last day in power. Milton Obote had stood here on his first day in office. Marshal Amin had also stood here on his first day as head of state. Somebody else was bound to stand here for his presidential inauguration. This was Bat’s first day as Bureaucrat Two in the Ministry of Power and Communications. He crossed the road to the ministry headquarters, to his new office, his entry witnessed by the glum soldiers on guard, cheered on by the pebbles under his shoes.

GENERAL BAZOOKA had carefully studied Bat’s file and had been struck by the fact that although they were born in the same month in 1938, their lives had taken completely different routes. Bat seemed to have cruised through life like a powerful machine oiled by the privileges of his birth. It made the General look back, a rare occurrence, and trace his dramatic rise to power. He kept thinking that in this race the last could indeed come first, and vice versa.

His grandfather had been a traditional warrior turned colonial soldier, in the days when Captain Lugard was fighting wars in the name of the Imperial British East African Company. He had fought numerous battles for the King’s African Rifles, and his bones lay somewhere in a valley or atop a hill here in the south. The General’s father had followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the army. He ground out his life as a sergeant, further promotion blocked by his limited education.

General Bazooka had always been aware of the burden of third-generation offspring. From early on he was determined not just to aim to survive, but to prosper. He wanted to leap-frog his way to the top. The biggest roadblock for him had also been education. He remembered his father’s booze-induced outbursts. He remembered how the old man blamed him and his mother for taking all his money. He had not liked being blamed for exhausting the resources spent on his father’s irresponsible habits. It made him decide to look after his overworked mother. He could not bear the sight of her standing in green swamp water up to her thighs, her back bent, her left machete arm rising and falling, harvesting papyrus reeds. He could still see her splitting the stems, the knife travelling lengthwise with blinding speed. He was afraid that she would cut off her finger or that the sharp reed edges would split her forearm from palm to elbow. He could still see her sewing the dry shrunken reeds together into mats, cutting off the edges and rolling them into cylinders. He could still see her putting the load on her head, braving the sun or the rain and walking the countryside in search of customers. At each stop she would ease the load to the ground, undo the string and spread out the heap of mats for viewing. Then she would roll them again, tie them and put them on her head, sweat running down her back.

General Bazooka had grown up very conscious of the privilege enjoyed by the southerners, their thin presence in the army and their domination of the civil service. They always seemed to be doing the easy part. They always seemed to have everything he dreamed of: the power, the houses, the cars, the land, the style. They were the majority, the dominant culture which everybody else tried to emulate. The schools were full of their children, the hospitals their brothers and sisters, the clergy their uncles. He dreamed of taking what they had. He had always known that salvation lay in the very place his ancestors had sought it: in the barrel of the gun.