Moses Isegawa: Snakepit

At Makerere University, Bat had taken mathematics and economics. He had continued with the same at Cambridge, ultimately majoring in mathematics. He had chosen those dry subjects from the very beginning in order to combat his impulsiveness, an instinct that had compelled him, back in his secondary school days, to write a letter threatening to kill a boy who had refused to give back his transistor radio. Bat’s father had lent him the radio, which had been in the family for twenty years. He, in turn, had lent it to the boy who had convinced him that he needed it badly and would bring it back soon. The boy, however, refused to honour his promise. As a result, Bat’s father refused to give him pocket money. In an unthinking moment Bat wrote the fateful letter. A few days later a police detective visited his father at his coffee ginnery. Bat and his father reported to the nearest police station. He faced seven years in prison. He was scared shitless. He had had no intention of effecting the threat he outlined in the letter. Luckily, his father knew somebody in the police force and they escaped after paying a large bribe. The radio was returned the same afternoon; everybody was embarrassed, as it looked old and not worth such bother. From then on Bat decided to gain control over his life. He kept few friends and so had little trouble from the outside world.

Now as he sat in his office overlooking the Parliament Building, he marveled at how quickly his life had changed. How apt his choice of mathematics had been! It seemed as if these days every student wanted to study languages and history, probably because they were cheaper and one needed fewer books and none of the very expensive apparatus the sciences could not do without. Yet every employer seemed to be crying out for scientists, engineers, economists and mathematicians, and the ministry was no exception. Here the situation was exacerbated by the large presence of Amin’s uneducated stooges. These former butchers, garbagemen and loafers held on to power by surrounding themselves with yes-men and throwing violent temper tantrums. These were men who could hardly multiply ten times ten. You had to write out the numbers in words for some of them to do it. Bat did his best to keep out of such people’s way, but now and then they cornered him and asked very dull questions about policy issues, the mechanics of running the ministry, things they would never understand even after a hundred lectures. They came to him for help to open bank accounts in the local Commercial Bank. They relied on their thumbprints in order to make sure that nobody would forge their signatures and swindle their money, or because they were afraid they would forget their own signatures. A few came to ask how to open bank accounts in Switzerland, Libya or Saudi Arabia. He turned them away.

Given the state of affairs, it was a miracle that the government was running at all. The little success there was was a testimony to the resilience of the intellectual element that did work behind the scenes and in secret, men and women continually frustrated by Amin’s stooges, who did not give a damn if it all went up in smoke, as long as they were not caught in the crossfire. Operating in the midst of such scum, Bat sometimes felt like a herdsman in charge of perverse pigs, dangerous and bad-tempered animals which shat everywhere and could snap and bite at any moment. His main task was to call for the modernization of the ministry. He wanted to purchase new equipment for the dam, the telephone network, and to train more engineers and specialists. He kept making recommendations and pressing for change. General Bazooka listened carefully, but he often replied that there were no funds. No funds when military hardware kept arriving in the form of new MiG 250 fighter-bombers, Russian TX 3000 battle tanks, AK-57 assault rifles, to mention but a few. While Bat waited for funds, he concentrated on reorganizing the ministry, weeding out unnecessary posts and cutting down on the red tape, which clogged the whole system and made the ministry less effective.

The evolution of a daily routine pleased Bat very much. He woke up early each morning, drove to the city, outraced most cars on the way, and arrived at his office with the high of speed still fizzing in his blood. His day was dominated by dictating letters, attending meetings, and poring over documents. He ate his lunch at his desk, except when he had to attend a luncheon with dignitaries, and drove his team like they were a pack of donkeys. After a twelve-hour day he would drive home to rest. Twice or thrice a week he would go to Wandegeya to meet the Kalandas and the Professor.

Mr. Kalanda worked in the Barclays Bank, his wife in the Uganda Commercial Bank. He was an old university friend with whom Bat used to share a room on campus. They used to do many things together, including double-dating. Between them they had financed three abortions. Now and then, Bat wondered whether Kalanda had told his wife all about their campus escapades. It had been Kalanda who had advised him to try the Ministry of Power and who had read him the rules of survival: “Keep out of politics. Keep democracy and human rights outcries on a tight leash. Keep your passport with you at all times.”

Mrs. Kalanda was a fine cook, and she would often prepare something delicious to go with their beer. They would sit outside on the veranda and talk, argue, joke and watch night fall. If there was no shooting, they would stay there for hours, relaxing, enjoying the cool, scented evening air. If rifles started popping, they would hurry inside and Bat would depart when the commotion ended.

Bat received many invitations to weddings. Preparing for and attending weddings had become the number-one pastime in the land, rivalled only by séancing. The ruling class of soldiers, pirates, gangsters and hangers-on showed a huge passion for it. The fact that many of them were Muslims, allowed to marry four wives, and that they had plenty of money to throw around, meant that there was no shortage of big wedding feasts. Nowadays, a man’s worth was measured by the number of guests invited to his wedding, the length of the bridal train, the number of bands which played on the day and the bulls butchered. There were weddings which lasted weeks, as the celebrations moved from the husband’s family to the bride’s family and back, attracting carousers like flies on rotting fruit. Eating, as a sport, flourished, and no wedding was complete without a group of men vying to put away amazing heaps of offal, roasted lamb and goat, gigantic Nile Perch fish cooked whole and huge platters of cassava, sweet potatoes and matooke. The sight of gluttons masquerading as competitive eaters and ending up drooling, vomiting, and getting their stomachs pumped, became part of the spectacle. Wrestling, for one reason or another, had become an integral part of such occasions, with armies of pseudo-wrestlers moving from wedding to wedding, their oiled bodies on display.

There were many weddings Bat attended because General Bazooka or Bureaucrat One had no time and sent him in their stead. It was at one such gathering that he met Victoria Kayiwa. The reception was in the Nile Perch Hotel gardens. The afternoon was dying away, slowly letting in a cool evening. Bat was nursing his drink while listening to an army officer with bad breath who was going on about CIA infiltration and sabotage, and how all missionaries were secret agents stringing for foreign countries. He had tried to attract her attention on two occasions, but each time she had been talking to a bullish general with medals down to his knees. In fact, he had gotten the impression that she was the wife of a general. For many of these northerners a young southern wife was a status symbol to go with the six-door Boomerang 600 or sporty 300 break horsepower Euphoria. The staunch polygamists often paraded their harems, led by fellow northerner first wives and flanked by the younger southern trophies. Finally, he saw her walking towards him out of the corner of his eye. She was impressive, with a lean, tubular frame that made her cow most women. He could see her breasts swollen under the red cloth of her dress, her thighs carved by the long, flowing garment, her head carried by a long neck. As if on cue, the officer who was lecturing him slipped away, making her arrival all the more pleasing. There was a preliminary exchange of greetings and banter, during which both of them knew that something was going to happen between them.