It is no easy thing to deal with death, for in speaking of one man’s death, we too confront our own. The passing of a loved one reminds us too uncomfortably, too intimately perhaps, of how mortal we are—how transient and ephemeral our sojourns upon this earth are predestined to be. Mortal man is born to expire, ‘tis true—yet while mankind’s universal fate is known—the timing and manner of it, make of that final moment a deep mystery, that bewilders and staggers even the sturdiest of hearts. Humphrey K. B. Ahimbisibwe—our now fallen Lion of Ntare School—with his departure at a mere 69 years, leaves us groping in the dim night of existential uncertainty. A man of many dimensions and countless facets—no one who ever came into the shadow of Humphrey’s influence could claim they left untouched. For that is what Lion Ahimbisibwe excelled at—touching people. Shaping and moulding the clay of infant minds and young souls, into the artful sculpture of upright citizenry and pro...
When I was twelve or so and in my first year of Secondary School, I discovered rugby—or rather, the sport discovered me. A chubby, plump fellow with more energy than talent—I was second to few in the breakneck stampede to the dining hall—I had been tried out and successively thrown off the school’s junior soccer team, the class athletics team, and the dormitory basketball team. Perhaps in what should have been a final straw, even the baseball and woodball captains—theirs’ both then only debuting sports in the school—informed me politely that they’d rather field incomplete teams than risk an ‘‘Achilles’ heel’’ in the formation. ‘ A chain is only as strong as its weakest link!’ the woodball fellow sagely pronounced, fixing me with a gaze more penetrating than a contemptuous laser-beam. This of course notwithstanding that his sport— if I may condescend enough to call it one—was not far removed from a medieval pantomime reenacted in the present-day for little else than the en...