(Prosaic) Ode to a brother & friend, upon his earthday

Every 7th of May, under a sun sometimes late but ever loyally risen – a friend of old, Samuel George Katwesigye, memorializes the date of his nascence. 

Samuel is a portly, refreshingly jovial but rather tough-talking young African, native to the famed Kigezi highlands of Uganda’s southwest.

We went to junior secondary school together, where he, after months of brotherly intimacy, became the big brother boys like myself never had (albeit – admittedly, minus any remorse whatever). 

Above all these things, however, brother George is and always will be, at heart – a good, decent human being. 

The following was a tributary missive to him, scribbled on the 7^th of May, 2017:

***

Where to begin, (my Lord Bishop) George? 

I have toyed with the notion of a deserved thanks to you, for a lengthy while now – but I reckon occasions seldom come more apt than a man’s birth-anniversary, on which his many virtues may be generously extolled. 

Brother George, as you celebrate the rich years of your life today, I invite you, to with me take a leisurely stroll down that littered lane of memory – to the early part of 2004. 

You were an O’level Candidate at the time, studying for your certificate exam at Ntare School in Mbarara. 

Do you recall that day when freshmen (fresh boys?) reported to the ‘great den’ for their senior one, for that year’s intake? 

If you do, you’ll remember a timid little boy hiding behind his exasperated mother’s skirts, and being dragged by a pudgy hand to that dormitory over which you had been elected House Captain a few months before. 

Stomping sweatily ahead of this mother and her boy, and hefting a heavy metal suitcase between them, two unlikely boys (then in their Second Form) led the way. 

One of these boys was a stout, clumsy-looking but remarkably jolly fellow named Allan Nkaragwa. 

His partner, regrettably, I do not quite recall the name or face of.

The two, in their immaculate white shirts – short sleeves clinging to hairy arms and muscled calves sticking out from under neatly pressed khaki shorts – rested the weighty suitcase on the veranda of the long, low dormitory block; and pondered their next step a moment. 

It is at this point that the older boys sized-up the little human, that was I.

To note – the boys, our two kind guides, were principally appointed by self, but also by the school’s age-old reciprocal tradition that required graduating boys (Form Twos graduating from freshman naivety) to take new arrivals under their wing.

They likely saw how short and helpless I looked, and chose on my joining the Cappie’s Captain’s) room. 

You were that Cappie, George. 

I was subsequently installed on the bunk above yours, where you helped lay my bed – and I (for a while at least) became the Captain’s ‘‘musya’’ (freshman). 

A few hours later, I was joined by my fellow newbies – Philemon Aineamani, Abbot Mwebaza and Ainebyona Na'ad – to round-off Nile House Room Three’s freshman quartet, 2004. 

From then on, you became the big brother in our lives, George – alongside your candidate-colleague at the time, Christian Byaruhanga – a rather riotous, fun-loving character.

While many of our classmates and peers were bullied and pushed around in other dormitories round school, you (and Christian) shielded and protected us with a leader’s and father’s unconditional sense of duty. 

I recall once, how you found me struggling unsuccessfully to wash my uniform shirt collar – after I’d been a few weeks in the school. 

Well, you promptly took the shirt from me and showed me how to wash it gently and effectively, without damaging the collar. (I still wash my shirts precisely like that, and the memory returns unbidden whenever I do the laundry).

More importantly, you taught me to say, in perfect Rukiga – ‘‘Nshwere gonya’’ (may I marry a crocodile!), ‘‘Sho Kahaaya’’ (Kahaya’s father!) and ‘‘Ente ya mukaaka’’ (Grandma’s cow!), in addition to a slew of other rich and rib-cracking swearwords peculiar to your native Kigezi. 

And how can I forget your musical ear?

The most loyal of listeners, Bishop – whenever he’d finished with schoolwork and sundry tasks, was invariably tuned in to Capital FM.

Of the station’s innumerable back-to-back shows, one particular favorite was the  late-night through wee-hours music program.

The presenter’s name, ruefully, stands beyond recall.

One particular song however – Phil Collin’s Another day in Paradise – was an unchanging issue from the ‘‘contraband’’ transistor radio Bishop owned, whose sorrowing tone and nostalgic lyrics roused us daily to that much-resented (certainly by I) morning-prep hour.

I am convulsed in the trepidation of memory each time that song plays, in my hearing.

But perhaps I may soon be accused of trying to coat history with the stubborn paint of dishonesty – surely there were some chinks in all our armors?

Oh yes, friend, there were some flares of temper and hot words exchanged infrequently, but what is brotherhood tempered with George, if not bruising truth? 

May you endure on this (and the next) earth, good Sir.

And may your next many years be filled with the chubby, avuncular warmth you endlessly exude.

  George and his ‘Old Man’ pose for a father-son moment, high in the uplands of Kabale, Kigezi

PS:

I remember once, a few weeks into the then for me entirely unprecedented boarding school experience, when the overwhelming weight of homesickness bore down on my twelve-year-old frame. 

In a few days, it was so disorienting that I actually woke up to a wet bed. 

The good Bishop promptly ejected me from the comforts of the corner-bunk (we called it a Zone at the time, probably to imply coziness) and flung me onto the entrance bunk – an indignity of untellable proportions in the intricate subculture of the school. 

This relocation to ‘Kayaga’ (as the entrance bunk was infamously euphemised) was a tacit message of rejection and alienation – a kind of social quarantine for the unsanitary or unpopular pupil, where the victim was consigned into the windswept deserts of draught-buffeted sleep, night upon endless night. 

Indeed, there were ripe rumors doing the school’s rounds, relating how Kayaga-stationed pupils in the shadowy past had fallen victim to battery, theft and other frightful harms. 

The dramatic details of my consequent escapades, Kayaga-related and otherwise, shall flesh the tale of a different day, however. 

Today, I want to celebrate my dear and beloved friend, ‘‘Bishop’’ Katwesigye Samuel. 

*Samuel, if I may clarify, is not a consecrated clergyman. His sobriquet of ‘Bishop’ is one my generation found in place when we became his young charges at Ntare School. 

To tell it true, however – I have yet to meet a man who wears his by-name with a more dignified aptness!