Moses Isegawa - Abyssinian Chronicles

“Sister, why do you persist in sin? Why don’t you heed God’s warnings to our family?

“God began by sending you your first man, Pangaman, sweetening his lugubrious evil character and making him say sweet things in your naive ears. This man inflated your little ego and led you onto the bumpy path of rebellion and self-destruction. You rebelled against our parents. You drank alcohol. You became unruly. You flaunted the clothes he ensnared you with. You bragged about the sexual sins you committed with him.

“Despite all that, God did not abandon you: He gave you another chance, but you ignored Him. You went on and had other men, sinned as never before, and completely forgot Him. You built a new life for yourself, disowned Pangaman’s son, acquired a new name and lived in safety. To make sure that Pangaman would not pursue you, you befriended Amin’s soldiers and created an artificial security wall around you. It worked as long as God allowed it to stand. God let you walk unmolested through ranks of killers, rapers and robbers, and you felt inviolable. God gave you access to goods and money, and you felt ten feet tall. You watched as women cried and lived in fear of Amin’s henchmen. You wondered why they did not wise up and befriend soldiers to protect them and punish anybody who touched them. God gave you another chance: He spared you the filthy hands of Amin’s henchmen but put the sting in the tail of liberation. He sent you the seven brothers. He struck you with the very stick you thought you could not live without. He drenched you with the very waters you believed to be the elixir of life. He struck you down and let strange men piss down your throat. You now retch at the mere thought of it, why? You pissed down God’s throat too and wiped your bottom on His plans for you. The violation was the last sign, the last warning before the death of the firstborn. There will be no more locusts and no more storms and no more violators. This is your last chance to repent and turn to God.”

Out of frustration, Kasawo asked her sister what she had done about Nakibuka.

Padlock winced for a split second, then bounced back. She had committed that whore into God’s hands. Nakibuka too would get her warnings and her just punishment for defecating on holy matrimony. Everybody got amply warned, Lwandeka too. Up to the time of her arrest, she believed that she was Babylon: big, important, impregnable. God sent Amin’s henchmen to wake her up from the complacency of sin. God would not hesitate to do the same thing again if she refused to change. She knew the rules from the start: a woman who had carnal knowledge of more than one man was a whore, and whores who don’t repent in time get stoned to death.

Kasawo was in tears now. Padlock smelled victory and pressed her advantage.

“You are moaning about your violation because of your apostasy. You are crying about how Amin did this and did that, and didn’t do this and that, and shouldn’t have acted this or that way. A nation of moaners and whiners. A nation of foolish, ungodly people who cry when God raises His big stick, Idi Amin, to hit evil, disobedience, greed, selfishness and vice out of its fibers in preparation for justice, virtue and salvation. Just like you, this nation did not heed the voice of the prophets and the warnings from God’s mouth.

“The white man, thinking that he was God, came, subjugated the land, imposed his laws and way of life on the people, and sat back to relax and enjoy the fruits of his iniquity. He had Indian assistants to help him milk the resources of the nation. Together they shared the milk and honey God gave this nation. They made laws to protect themselves from the wrath of the people. They built bigger and bigger castles. They built higher and higher monuments. They amassed deadlier and deadlier weapons. They flaunted their political, economic and social power. Until God decided that enough was enough. He stirred the formerly docile people. He turned the white man’s black collaborators into his worst enemies. He cut the white man with his own sword. He crushed his huge empire in His fist. White men started looking over their shoulders as they drove through the city, as they walked their dogs, as they went to their godless temples. The white man was no longer absolute master. The white man was no longer in control. The white man had been defeated by Jesus’ words: he who gets much will have much demanded of him. He finally turned tail and absconded like a thief in the night.

“The Indian, imprisoned in his greed, did not heed God’s warning. In 1971, God raised a new sword, flashing with a new wrath. A year later, the Indian was bleeding, whimpering, wallowing in his sorrows. God took away his home, his security, his peace of mind. God turned his former ally, the white man, against him. Suddenly nobody wanted him. He was kicked from border to border like a dirty ball. The black man rejoiced: God had judged in his favor. Instead of learning a lesson and turning to God, the black man took everything for granted. He took over the booty left by the Indians. Muslims and Christians took to eating, drinking, fornicating and indulging the flesh like the white man and the Indian before them. Castles built on sand never survive big storms. The house built on godlessness was shaken by internal storms, and by the wrath of God’s sword, Idi Amin, and it fell on its occupants. From within the ruins, people cried out for salvation, and God heard them. In 1979, the sword was dislodged. But as soon as the sword stopped flashing, the people reverted to their old ways. The nation had not repented or learned from the past. Kasawo, you and the nation have not learned and have not repented and will once again be put to the test.

“Don’t cry, Kasawo; don’t cry, nation. God tests those He loves the most. Look back and you will see that St. Bartholomew was skinned alive, St. Lawrence grilled, St. John boiled in oil, St. Erasmus disembowelled, the Uganda Martyrs wrapped in reeds and burned alive. All of them were God’s beloved, yet He did not spare them. Today’s people act as though they were the first and will be the last to taste the bitter chalice of God’s test. Why don’t you, Kasawo, and all of those whiners out there look at the Holy Land, a land I walked with my humble feet and touched with my humble fingers? I found it in flames, and I left it aflame. During Jesus’ time, the stones groaned and wailed under the feet of Roman soldiers and the air trembled with the deadly clangor of Roman swords. Nowadays, the ways and byways of the Holy Land lament under the steel soles of modern soldiery. The Holy Land is, true to history, still a battleground in many ways. Did God test this nation more than the birthplace of His only son?

“Kasawo, the Lord rewards His own. He rewarded me. He revealed His glory to me in St. Peter’s Basilica. I felt the great walls quake with holy fever. At consecration, I saw chains of white doves dropping from the golden window behind the altar and collecting round the altar itself. I saw the papal chalice and the candles melt and flow in golden rivers down to the feet of the altar. God showed me all these wonders so that you can believe and repent and give up Devil worship. I am your last warning, Kasawo. There will be no more storms, no more violators, no more verbal warnings.

“God saves, God leaves no prayer unanswered,” Padlock said, making her sister believe she was experiencing a trance of sorts.

Kasawo felt something akin to disgust, pity and reluctant admiration. Her sister was so convinced of her righteousness that Kasawo, despite her skepticism, could not dismiss it as mere madness or delusion. Padlock seemed so attuned to the divine that she had lost contact with mere mortals. Kasawo had not come to be converted, and her sister’s conviction only served to convince her that she was on the right path. She would always be a God/Devil worshipper. The combination worked for her, as Catholicism did for Padlock. All the niggling doubts and guilt she felt were gone, buried at the feet of Padlock’s fanatical faith. She could never see the world in terms of black and white. The shades of gray she had negotiated from the beginning felt more real than ever. She had gone to the depths of hell and was now convinced that the worst was over.