The first time I saw her I remember thinking for a second that she had fallen out of the sky. I was fifteen years old and the eldest child in my father’s house. My three sisters after me, Peace, Molly, and Amita, were at school but I was at home as it was the long vacation before the exam results, which would usher us into Senior Five, were released. I’d woken up to find I’d had my monthly visitor overnight and stained the bed. The fact that I could never tell when it would arrive did not bother me until I was much older so, on that day, I simply cleaned up and got ready to do my chores.
Papa always left early to open the store in the market centre and he was absent when they arrived in our compound and walked around like they were looking for something in particular. I had been collecting some beans from the store which was a few metres from the main house and, on my way back, I saw them. Although I was not afraid, my heartrate increased. I had seen Bazungu before but only in magazines and on the television that papa had in his shop. I heard that they had community programmes in some of the villages closer to the main town but, because we were deeper inland, they usually never reached us.
When I saw them, I ran as fast as I could to find mama, leaving a trail of beans that had escaped the saucepan. She was seated on a stool near the kitchen door slicing some tomatoes on a chopping board which was balanced on her thighs.
“Mama, hariho abajungu bary’aheeru! There are white people outside!” I said breathlessly.
She frowned and asked, “What do you mean?” I was the storyteller of the family. Mama always blamed papa for buying me storybooks every time he travelled to Kampala to purchase items for his shop. You’re filling her head with fantasies, she’d say to him as I grabbed my treasures from his hands, hugged him and went to my bed to devour them.
“She has to know that there is more to the world than this small place,” he’d reply.
Mama would simply ignore him as she helped put away his luggage then served him dinner. Some nights, when the younger ones had fallen asleep and mama had insisted on turning off the lights so they could rest, I would go to the living room to sit with papa.
“Don’t mind her,” he’d whisper to me, trying not to let mama hear although she was busy in the bedroom with the radio on. “You know her father took her out of high school before she could finish her exams despite all her protests. They needed someone to look after Kaaka (grandma) when she fell ill and since mama was the only girl…” He shrugged his shoulders and continued, “She wants the best for you but she also doesn’t want you to be so far away in your mind that you forget what real life is like.” He would then smile at me before returning to finish reading the day’s newspaper which he always saved for the evenings.
He was the reason I never took mama’s chastisements to heart and always insisted on telling stories on Sunday afternoons when we’d returned from church and had finished lunch. Papa would listen attentively, bellowing his hearty laugh at just the right moments and filling me with pride at being able to bring him so much joy. Mama would say she was tired and usually went to lie down but she always kept her door open so she could hear the tales I wove that were mostly an amalgamation of all the books I’d been reading. That’s why, on that morning all those years ago, mama thought that I was just spinning another long tale.
Before I could explain, the Local Council Chairman (LC5), Mr. Muwhezi, a short man with a potbelly that papa said he got from stealing money the government sent for community development, stuck his head around the corner and saw us.
“Mrs. Kyomuntu. Oraire ota??” How did you sleep?
Mama stood up and bent her knees slightly in a half-kneel as a sign of respect that was neither in her heart nor on her face. She replied that she had slept well.
After Mr. Muwhezi had adequately inquired after everyone, making a point to ask where papa was although he knew very well where he usually was during the day, he moved on to the reason for his presence. “You see there are these investors who want to investigate the lake to see how they could make it more beneficial for all of us so,” he continued smoothly, “can they come in to talk to you?”
“Talk about what? I don’t know anything. Maybe you should wait for Ssebo to come home.” She called papa Sir when talking about him to others. With us, she called him papa.
“But Madam,” he pleaded.
That meant he was really desperate if he had called mama that. He was not known for having respect for many people and only seemed to have some for papa and that was only because papa’s shop was one of the most successful in town. That meant there were some deals to be made at some point so niceties were profitable. He’d never called mama anything but her Christian name or her husband’s surname.
“You just let them in and hear what they have to say. They won’t take long.”
Mama had no choice. Immediately, she stepped into her role as host. She ordered Matthias, the boy who helped to dig the garden, to call papa and tell him to come home immediately on a boda boda as it was faster than the secondhand delivery truck he’d bought last year and which he liked to drive all the time. I and the house-help, Ruth, were instructed to serve drinks and to add on to the lunch amounts as we cooked since it was almost one o’clock and we couldn’t send the guests away hungry. What would people think of papa if that loudmouth LC5 man told everyone that they came to the Kyomuntu’s house and were not served a meal?
So, I emptied the beans I’d collected into a small plastic container filled with water and went back to get extra. In the meantime, mama opened the front door, which was usually reserved for use by guests only, and ushered our visitors into the living room. The kitchen door that led to the living room was closed but Ruth and I cracked it open a little so we could gawk at the bazungu.
She had hair that reminded me of the yellow of the sun at midday, not of ripe bananas or of the little toy car that Peace loved so much. And in the afternoon light that spilled from the window, she really looked like an angel. A blue-eyed, yellow-haired angel. As we stared through the crack, she turned and looked directly at me, smiling and waving in the way that I later learned was her usual way of greeting almost every child she met. At that moment, rather than wave back, all I could think of was that mama now knew that we were busy staring instead of preparing lunch like she’d instructed. Ruth and I dashed back outside and resumed our tasks as mama closed the door completely to make sure we did not embarrass her any further.
That was how I missed the conversation. Papa arrived shortly and by the time we served the food, what needed to be said had been said and they had all moved on to jokes and news from the city.
Later that day I discovered that her name was Sarah Hutchinson and that she was a Marine Biologist. Over the next few months, as I spent time out on the lake with her taking samples in the capacity of her unofficial assistant, I would learn so much more about her, her family back in England and what she thought of the ‘unscientific and unfounded’ beliefs that our people had about the lake.
I had to wait until the next morning, though, to hear about what they discussed with mama and papa that day. They had locked themselves in their bedroom after supper and that usually meant they were talking about things that they did not want the children to hear. Usually, if I wanted to know something, I would stay up to intercept papa when he went to the bathroom to clean up before bed because he was not very good at keeping things from me. Perhaps the day had been too exciting and the dull ache in my lower stomach that I’d had from morning made me too sleepy to wait up so I went to bed.
The next day was a Saturday and since Peace was around, I could leave her to help Ruth while Molly watched Amita who was only five years old and loved to play with her sister. Mama always left with Papa on Saturday mornings to do the weekly shopping for the home so I had some free time before she returned. I walked the few metres down the road to Sandra’s house. We were in the same class and her mother had a salon right next to papa’s shop. Smiles Always Salon was very popular and it was there that most of the village gossip was exchanged, fueled by Mrs. Mutabazi, Sandra’s mama, who ‘always stuck her nose where it didn’t belong’ as Sarah described her once.
Sandra was at the back of the house when I arrived. I helped her sweep the ground and get the matooke from their garden before we sat down together to peel.
“You mean you haven’t yet heard?” Sandra said.
I shook my head and listened intently as I peeled. Did I remember the stories about the lake, she asked. Of course, I remembered. Who could forget the stories of the girls from long ago who were left there to die if they got pregnant outside of marriage? Sandra continued and agreed that that was the story we all knew but did I know the one about my mama’s family and what happened on the lake? I told her I did not know and she explained that it was because of that story that the bazungu had to speak to my mama. Mama’s grandma, her Kaaka, had a sister who had become pregnant and was taken to the island on the lake. They used to leave them there without food and most of the women did not survive very long but Kaaka’s sister was still alive after two weeks when the small boat which took the girls there came with another pregnant girl. It is said that Kaaka’s sister asked the boatman for news about the boy who had made her pregnant because he had promised to steal a boat then come for her so they could run away to get married, but he had not come after all that time. The boatman felt sorry for her and told her that he had heard that that boy was going to marry a girl from a rich family in a few weeks. It was then that Kaaka’s sister collapsed. She had not eaten for a long time and looked thin and weak. It is said that the boatman was with her when she died and with her last breath, she said that the boy would pay for lying to her and leaving her to die there. As the boatman rowed back to shore, the lake started to make strange noises and the water bubbled up like soda. It had never done that before.
On the day of the wedding, the family had to take boats to cross to the other side for the Introduction ceremony as the boy’s fiancé’s family lived across the lake. There were about three boats which went across a number of times as there were many guests. After the ceremony, the men were always allowed to take their brides to their family home and so the boy entered a boat with most of his people. After some hours, when his people on the other side saw that they had not arrived, they got into other boats to go and find them. Even those ones did not come back. It was only in the morning that the boats, pushed by the lake, arrived back on land and everyone looked like they were sleeping peacefully but they were never to wake up again. Many who were on the hills looking down said that the water had looked as if it had been bubbling all night and even in the morning. Only when they found the bodies did it stop. Other’s said that they had heard a woman crying all night in the distance and had even seen a girl walking on the shore.
“Are you sure you didn’t know this?” Sandra asked.
She continued to tell me that Sarah and her team from the UK believed that the lake had what they called ‘gas pockets’ but the gas was the bad kind, carbon dioxide, and when something natural happened under the lake to disturb the floor, the pockets released the bad gas and that was what killed the boy with his new wife and most of their family members all those years ago. The Mazuku – Evil Wind – wasn’t a mysterious force or a curse, they said, just a natural event that could be explained. And why did they visit mama? Because they wanted to confirm the history of the lake and to also assure her that it all had a logical explanation. They would study the lake, they said, and get evidence that would give mama and her family some kind of peace in knowing their grand auntie, despite her own horrible death, was not responsible for the deaths of others.
Sandra was surprised that mama had not told me these things, but I wasn’t. Mama kept many things to herself and although we spent time with her sisters and their children, I still did not know much about her side of the family. Her parents had died before I was born and no one spoke of them. I had never even seen a photograph of her and her family. What other secrets did mama and her family have?
That night, as I lay in my bed listening to my sisters breathing heavily in their sleep, I wondered if the story that Sandra told me was really true. There was no one that I could ask except papa. I wanted to know if it could be true that a ghost on mama’s side had wiped out an entire family.
Papa sighed and looked away. It was Sunday morning and mama was in the bedroom getting ready for church while Ruth was in our room helping the girls dress up. Papa and I were alone at the dining table having porridge with fresh buns. “Those are things your mama does not like to talk about and neither do I. Those dark things are better left buried.”
After church, Sandra decided to walk beside me for the short distance back home. She said that her mama had already been talking with Mr. Muwhezi and he’d agreed to talk to his bazungu friends about whether they had any small-small work for her daughter. Sandra said that if they gave her any work, she would convince her mama to ask if I could also work alongside her. It was great news and because of all Sandra’s mama’s connections, she was sure to succeed.
What they say about hindsight is actually true because, looking back, if I hadn’t been so naïve and eager to get close to the bazungu, maybe papa wouldn’t have had the time to do what he did since I was the one who always occupied his evenings and weekends. I think that, with me spending long days on the lake with Sarah and being too tired to talk most nights or even on Saturday or Sunday, papa must have looked for something to fill his time. Mama was always busy with the running of the house as the workers in the farm and house needed supervision; plus, Amita could also be a handful.
The thing we hadn’t counted on was the influx of people from the city and surrounding towns looking for jobs. Our small village was full of new faces. Many months later, people would talk and say papa did not stand a chance. A man who was considered one of the richest in the small town because of his thriving businesses was always going to be a target for those city girls who were only interested in a lavish lifestyle and had no concern for the families of the people involved. Papa started coming home less and less until he stopped coming altogether. And mama, who never used to talk much before, was even more silent in his absence.
Those mornings, when I would show up for work at Sarah’s office which was a walking distance from home, I would stand and stare at the lake for a few minutes. It always looked like light blue glass. I imagined Jesus walking on it like we were taught in church except the water he walked on was heaving and swaying. Not our lake. It never heaved or moved or acted like it could swallow generations whole, never to be spoken of again. The only thing that might have given it away was the distant island on which nothing grew except a crooked and leafless tree. It was white with age and neglect, and it stood tall with hundreds of black crows perched on its twisted branches. That place, which had become a tourist attraction with grim tales told of girls and their unborn babies left there to rot, was surely the one thing that spoke of something sinister lurking around or in the water, not breathing or heaving or swaying – just waiting. Back then, I did not know what it was waiting for. Now I know that vengeance is never satisfied and, like a starved beast, it walks around looking for whom it can devour.
***
Today, I sit on the stairs that lead to the now abandoned Research offices and keep my eyes on the water. I don’t know what I am waiting for. Perhaps I’m expecting it to vomit them up, its underbelly too gorged with their lives that it regurgitates them so that they can come back home and live their lives as if nothing happened.
On the shore, a few boats await whichever brave souls want to take the tour. The numbers had been almost nonexistent for many years now and were unlikely to pick up. The whole area was almost deserted. Such a contrast from what it had looked like that day.
I remember how I was meant to go with Sarah to collect some samples on the island. The five months of my vacation had gone so fast and it was almost time to return to school. I had learned so much from her and she liked to tell me that I was her favourite assistant because I had a knack for science. It had always been my favourite subject and after completing my two senior years in which I was specialising in the sciences, my plan was to study Marine Biology just like her, and travel to different countries carrying out scientific research. Sarah encouraged me and even said she would put in a good word for me at her former university in Oxford, England. I only realised that she had indeed remembered to do so when her parents came to pick up her body. They made it a point to see me because Sarah had spoken about me a lot. They said she had wanted to help me and they were going to fulfil her wishes.
Sarah Hutchinson changed my life. If it wasn’t for her, I would have remained in this little village probably for most of my life because the chances of me getting a government sponsorship for the university in Kampala were slim. I was an average student with no real direction until she introduced me to her work and sparked something in me. That spark is what kept all of us going when papa was gone and his shop was grabbed by Muwhezi and his cronies. It had been so hard for mama to keep us all in school but Sarah’s parents were like angels to us. They gave me all I needed to fulfil my dream of becoming a Marine Biologist, and being able to comfortably take care of the girls and mama made it all worth it.
*
I pick up the flowers I had brought with me and walk to the edge of the water. A Heron flies overhead and then heads down at full speed, piercing the water for an instant before flying back up again, out of sight. There are no fish in the lake to hunt for anymore but maybe it had seen something beneath the water; a shadow perhaps? A flash of silver light? A silhouette of a soul?
On that day, I’d woken up to stained sheets, again. The pain usually made me lethargic and foggy which was not a good thing. I realise now that if I had been able to predict the schedule of my monthly visitor, I would have asked Sarah to reschedule so that I could be there. Given enough warning, maybe she would have considered it. However, having planned it for so long, the trip was too important for her to postpone to another day when I said I was ‘sick’. I wanted to cry as I checked their equipment and made sure everything was okay before I waved them off.
I had walked back to the offices slowly and only looked up when I heard loud laughter as a group who I had thought were tourists arrived. There were scantily clad girls walking to the tourist boat and, when I looked closely, I thought I recognised one of the men. My legs led me closer to satisfy my curiosity. Yes, at the front of the group of about ten was one of the men who used to supply papa with goods for his shop.
Looking back, I don’t know if I should have walked away then or stayed like I did. I’ve thought about it a thousand times. Could I have done anything different? Talked to them, maybe?
I turned to walk away because I did not want the embarrassment of speaking to someone who knew the issues our family was going through. That was when I heard papa’s voice. He was lagging behind the group. A girl dressed in a bikini top and shorts was whispering something in his ear. He threw his head back and laughed his hearty laugh that I missed so much. I stood there, staring at him and when he finally saw me, I caught my breath, hoping and waiting. He looked at me then turned away. There wasn’t even surprise on his face or any kind of acknowledgement. My heart felt like it split open and tears flowed down my face. I turned away and walked back to the office to get my bag. I walked back home slowly, wiping my tears away with the sleeves of my sweater.
Sandra’s mama had come to see mama several times to advise her to visit a ‘herbalist’ in Kampala. She insisted that that crazy girl had put papa in a bottle and that was why he was behaving so strange. What kind of man leaves his family just like that, she asked. Do you see how she has stolen him and all his money from you? Mama just listened silently. The prayer group that had started meeting in our living room when our ‘troubles’ started insisted that if papa had been bewitched, only God could save him and not some witchdoctor in the city or wherever.
As soon as I turned into the compound, I heard loud shouts coming from the direction of the lake. I stopped and looked back. I saw some people reach the road that led to our house. They were running slowly, very slowly. Screams were echoing from the distance. Someone came running from the opposite side of the road. He was sprinting right toward me and shouting at the same time.
“Mazuku!” he shouted, breathlessly, over and over again.
He was trying to warn all of us. He pointed at the people coming from the lake. I looked back at them and saw that they had all collapsed in the middle of the road. Mama came from the house with the girls. We all started running away from the lake. I saw Sandra standing at the entrance to their compound. She beckoned to us so mama, me and the girls, along with Ruth, ran towards her. They had a windowless granary at the back of the house which was almost empty. We went in and her mama and siblings were already there. Although the granary was larger than most of the ones in the village because Sandra’s mama was wealthy, it was still a tight fit but we all squeezed in and closed the door. Sandra’s mama didn’t know what to do but thought it was wise for us to hide where the Mazuku could not reach. No one knew how far it would travel but from Kaaka’s story we understood that the evil wind didn’t go too far away from the lake.
Sandra’s mama was getting calls and texts at a furious rate and she updated us as the news of what had happened filtered in. She did not want to distress my mama any more than she already was so she left out the information about papa. Some people who were on higher ground texted to say they had seen a boat with the city girls and my papa float back to shore. All the occupants were dead. Sandra’s mama pulled her daughter close and whispered to her and then my dear friend, not wanting to leave me in the dark, hugged me and whispered the news in my ear. I looked at mama and wished I could tell her but the words seemed to be stuck in my throat. Other texts came that said the lake was bubbling like soda. Sandra asked about Sarah. Any news? Her mama said no one knew and we had to wait.
I don’t know how long we were in the granary. We simply wanted to avoid the outside air in case it was coming for us too. Eventually, we heard voices outside. The police let us out and we were told to leave the area while they investigated. Sandra’s mama drove us to her relative’s house a few miles away and we stayed there for several weeks until my mama said she wanted to be in her own home.
The prayer meetings continued and even Sandra’s mama joined. Many of the women insisted that it was God’s judgement towards all the adulterers and fornicators in that boat. Mama sat silently as always. She looked away when another woman mentioned that Kaaka’s sister must have seen what papa was doing and had to intervene. I didn’t know what to believe. What had Sarah and her team done to deserve such a judgement? Sandra’s mama said maybe they had their own secret sins. Or maybe they were trying to explain away Kaaka’s sister’s history and she did not like it. Who could tell? All we knew was that they had made it to the island and while there something had gone wrong. For the hour or so that they were there, a few team members had texted friends to say that the place had a weird feeling and that they could hear voices and see shadows in the distance although no one was meant to be there. Some of them were even recording the expedition on their phones but, just before the wind came, all the filming stopped at the same time. Sarah’s parents had let me watch it but there was nothing to see. Just smiling and laughing people then a sudden blackness that no one could explain.
I drop the flowers on the water and watch them float away. I close my eyes, say a prayer then turn to leave. My eye catches something in the water but when I look again, I see nothing. It’s a trick, I tell myself, and walk back to the car and to my life.
Authors Note:
Lake Bunyoni in Kigezi District, Western Uganda, is where Punishment Island is located. In the 19th Century and early 20th Century, girls who got pregnant before marriage were banished there and left to die.
Mazuku – This is a natural phenomenon that has occurred before around Lake Kivu in Congo, Lake Nyos in Cameroon and many more. It is highly unpredictable and can reoccur at any time.
