Looking at Memories

Masiko looked out over the tall grassy fields, heat dancing into the air and the soft chatter of the village filling her with a familiar comfort. She gazed towards the south east with her long hand shading her eyes. Something tugged at her bright purple and white chitenge.

‘What are you looking at mama?’ Asked Damba, the youngest of her six beautiful children.

‘You are getting so big! Mama can barely pick you up.’ She said, hoisting him on to her hip.

‘Why do you always stand here and look. There is nothing there.’

‘I look at memories, my boy.’

‘Memories? But you can’t look at memories mama.’

‘Of course you can my kabiite, my darling. You will learn to when you are bigger .’

She watched and smiled as Damba squinted hard at the horizon. He was only five, had fat round cheeks and a full belly. Her eldest daughter, Afiya, walked in the banana groves, trailed by boys she had no interest in, while her other children busied themselves with games or eating fruit from the trees. Their lives were simple, but they lacked nothing and they had peace.

‘What does your memory look like?’ Little Damba asked.

Masiko thought a moment. What did her memory look like? She stared at the horizon, not to see anything, but to remember what had once been there in the distance. About an hour and a half away, if you had a decent car, used to be Kampala, the capital of what used to be Uganda. There were no such things as capital cities anymore, no big cities at all.

She had once envied her friends who left their village and went to Kampala to try to find their fortune and a ticket to America. She had been so jealous and she had resented her parents for having so many children. They could only afford to send her oldest brother to university, the rest of them had to make peace with staying in the village forever, working the little farm, and hope their big brother might return for them one day as a rich man.

But big brother would never return. No, he had been in Kampala when it happened.

‘Do you remember what Mr. Okello taught you in school last week? About the Great Trouble?’ Masiko asked Damba as he played with the heart-shaped locket around his mother’s neck.

He screwed up his face, trying to recall the child-friendly version of events his teacher had relayed to him.

‘Mr. Okello said that a long time before there use to be big cities, big places with lots and lots of people. That one day there was a big, big trouble that came from the sky and then all the people were gone. Now there are only little villages like ours.’

A long time before. Children have such a different perception of time. She wondered if it would be better to tell Damba and his other young brothers and sisters the truth. Afiya knew, but she was almost sixteen now. She had a woman’s eyes and mind.

Masiko had been about Afiya’s age when the bombs came. They had carried something toxic that travelled on the winds for miles and miles.

She had been sitting outside her family’s home with its little rammed earth walls and orange, clay, tiled roof. Back then she had dreamed of a beautiful house in the city with white marble floors, expensive colourful paintings and a view of the waterfront. She spent hours fantasising about meeting some kind, rich man to take her away from the life of a poor farmer’s daughter. She wanted fine clothes, fancy foods and to be envied. But what she wanted more than anything was to escape Kakiri.

She had wanted all those things on the hot, windless day that the roaring planes, dozens of them, came flying low and heavy like pregnant bats. They flew right over her village, shaking the air and the ground with their enormous engines as they hurtled toward Kampala. As she watched them, she had felt a strangling dread and sinking in her heart but she didn’t know why. She only knew something terrible was happening.

Masiko looked down at Damba in his bright green overalls and clean white shirt. When she was a child they had had so little. She had worn her older sister’s clothes and all they ate, they ate sparingly because the rains were unpredictable and the heat grew every year. Now, even with six children, she and her husband had made a good life with many comforts and had money to spare for gifts. None of that would have been possible if the bombs hadn’t come.

‘Did Mr. Okello tell you anything else about the big trouble?’

‘He said that a long time ago most people were unhappy. There wasn’t enough for everyone.’

‘Enough of what?’ she asked, walking through the tall summer grasses.

He thought a moment, stretching his little brain for the right words.

‘Anything.’

‘That is right my kabiite. Many, many people were unhappy then.’

‘Why?’

‘A long time ago, when your mama was a little child like you – ’

‘You were never little mama.’

She laughed. ‘I promise I was, I was even smaller than you. Like a little mouse. When I was young, people were unhappy because they always wanted more than they had. Even very very rich people always wanted more.’

‘Why?’

‘That is a good question, kabiite. It was because the world was sick.’

‘Sick?’

‘Yes, very sick. People were unhappy because they never felt they had enough, they would hurt other people to get more, they stopped caring about their neighbours, their friends, and did not care if they made other people sad. This made the whole world sick.’

‘But that’s not nice.’

‘No my boy. It was not nice. Even your mama was like this. She always looked at what she didn’t have, but she should have looked at what she did have.’

‘That’s silly mama.’

‘I know, mama was a silly girl then, but when the big trouble came, mama realised how lucky she was. All at once, all over the world the big trouble came and put people to sleep and the big cities all disappeared. The big trouble made so many people sad and scared but after a while, things got better.’

‘Like now?’

‘Yes, slowly, slowly they became like now. Now, everyone has more than enough and as long as we remember the big trouble, it is easy to be grateful. You will always have a happy life if you can remember that what you have is all you need and you love those that love you.’

Damba wriggled in her arms. His attention span was finished. She set him down on the ground and he ran off to play with some of the neighbours’ children. Afiya came up beside her mother. She was tall and had elegant features, taking after her father. She wore a beautiful red patterned chitenge that she had made herself. It had carefully pleated ruffles of yellows and greens with shapes on them that reminded Masiko of Japanese dresses she had once seen on TV. In different times she might have sent Afiya to Kampala to study at a fashion school, maybe she would have been a famous designer and traveled the word.

But no one wanted things like that anymore. It was safer and better to stay in the villages.

‘Was life really so different mama?’ She asked.

‘It was. Very much different. If you had grown up like I did, you would be sharing your room and everything you have with all your sisters. You wouldn’t have a closet of beautiful clothes, a bed all to yourself or your smoothies in the morning.’

‘And the people that had all that when you were my age, they were unhappy?’

‘A lot of them. It is hard to love what is around you when you are told it is not good enough.’

Afiya looked back at their home. It was a handsome house with six bedrooms, air conditioning and was painted a bright yellow that Masiko loved. Afiya tried imagining being discontent with her life. Masiko was glad her daughter struggled to understand this emotion.

‘When will you tell Damba what really happened?’

‘Not yet. He is young for his years. Let him be a baby.’

‘There is a big difference between sleep and bombs.’

‘Yes, Afiya, I know.’

They both stood silently for a moment, looking out into the horizon of a world that had become so big again.

‘How many people do you think are out there?’ Afiya asked.

‘I don’t know. Before the news stopped, at least half of everyone were gone.’

‘Mr. Okello taught us that there used to be eight billion people.’

‘There was so much unhappiness.’ Masiko said, shaking her head.

‘Who do you think did it?’

‘Dropped the bombs?’

‘Yes, you saw the planes.’

‘I did but there was nothing on them. They were just dark silver planes.’

‘Do you think people will ever go back to the cities?’

‘The air there is poison now so I don’t think anyone will for many, many years. Now that there are so few people, we don’t need the cities. We don’t need to fight one another to get what we need or even what we want. That was the old way, what cities were for, fighting and envy and jealousy. There is more than enough of everything now.’

‘Do you think it was the right thing to do?’

‘Right?’ She paused to think. It was a difficult question. ‘So many, many lives ended. Your uncle died in Kampala when they dropped the bombs. I don’t know. I don’t know. Right? It is hard to say…but it made life better for those who survived.’