Kintu

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

If you must write about Africa, then you write about dictators, ethnography, and war; these are the sorts of stories that confirm what people already “know” about Africa. And if you must write about Uganda, then you place a white character in the middle of the action. You write about Africans who have left Africa and migrated to the United States or Europe. You write about the legacies of colonialism. If you can’t make Europe the hero of the story—and these days, you can’t—then you can at least make Europe the villain.

For one thing, a Ugandan might be someone for whom complex and indefinite extended families are more the norm than the exception, a world in which siblings might be cousins, parents aren’t always parents, and everybody can have at least three different names, depending on who they’re standing next to. A Ugandan might be someone for whom family is a much older and more permanent institution than the nation, and in which nothing is more political than sex and children.

This is part of Kintu’s magic: you will feel more than you know. This also applies to Ugandans, especially those for whom “history” is the story of Europe in Africa.

As Makumbi has been quick to explain, Kintu flowed out of a desire to give Ugandans a taste of their own long and complicated history, to do for Ugandans something like what Chinua Achebe novels did for Nigerians in the 1960s: to make them look at a hill, for example, and know that the Ganda have been climbing it for centuries. To remind them that Uganda’s history did not begin in 1962, when it gained independence from Great Britain, or even a few years earlier, when Europeans first “discovered” them.

Kintu is a response to Things Fall Apart in which the story of a family curse is also a story of survivals.

focusing on the fragile edifice of paternity, she emphasizes the toll that patriarchy takes on the people who happen to be men.

Makumbi is a scholar, and to write Kintu, she dug into the archives, asking questions about names and places and expressions and history. But Ugandan history is filled with stories that the archive won’t tell, places where the historical record suddenly goes silent.

Some of Kintu’s history is invented. Buddu province was not added to the Buganda Kingdom until later in the 1700s, for example, and Makumbi admits to moving a few landmarks to where the plot needed them to be. But then, Kintu is not history, and even “history” is not necessarily true.

them. History as it’s written down in books is one thing, but history as it’s lived is another.

But on the ground, history looks nothing like this clash of nations and empires and states, however true and valid such stories may be on their terms; on the ground, history is the accumulated prejudices, hopes, and superstitions that we carry even if we don’t understand how we acquired them, everything we don’t know that makes us who we are. History is a fabric of memories and fear and forgetting, of longing and nostalgia, of invention and re-creation.

The woman considered herself Kamu’s wife because she had moved in with him two years earlier and he had not once thrown her out.

The only glitch in her quest to become Kamu’s full wife was that he still wore a condom with her. With his seed locked away, she had not grown roots deep enough to secure her against future storms. A child was far more secure than waddling down the aisle with a wedding ring and piece of paper.

Up in the hills, educated Ugandans assumed the same contempt as Europeans had for them.

The word thief summed up the common enemy. Why there was no supper the previous night; why their children were not on their way to school. Thief was the president who arrived two and a half decades ago waving “democracy” at them, who had recently laughed, “Did I actually say democracy? I was so naive then.” Thief was tax collectors taking their money to redistribute it to the rich. Thief was God poised with a can of aerosol Africancide, his finger pressing hard on the button.

It was them, bantu.

Normally, the mother was a binding force among sons, but then again, royals were hardly normal.

Clever women did not declare their sons princes. Cleverer women watched the throne and alerted their sons when it was ripe for seizure.

last. History showed that kings who fought for the throne kept it longer than those who merely received it,

Kintu put the instability of Buganda’s throne down to the women. Unlike commoners, a kabaka’s children took after their mother’s clan. Though this ensured the distribution of the kabakaship to the different clans in Buganda, the custom bestowed immense power to a king’s mother, the namasole.

Tradition claimed that identical twins were one soul who, failing to resolve the primal conflict in the self, split—and two people were born. The older twin, Babirye for girls, was supposedly the original soul. Nnakato, the younger twin, was the copy, the mutineer.

Kintu’s mind lingered on the primal conflict that led to a soul splitting into twins. No matter how he looked at it, life was tragic. If the soul is at conflict even at this remotest level of existence, what chance do communities have? This made the Ganda custom of marrying female identical twins to the same man preposterous. It goes against their very nature, Kintu thought.

Kintu gave in: better to have children with Nnakato’s twin than with another woman. Even though moments with Babirye were few and perfunctory, Kintu felt that she had jumped at the chance of becoming his wife.

The residents marveled, “As a sire, Kintu is chief indeed.” Every time a set of twins arrived, they shook his hand, “A strong man may wake up late and still get to do as much as we who woke up with the birds.”

Babirye’s eight children belonged to Nnakato.

When Kintu was away on kabaka’s duties, Nnakato visited the wives, checking on the children and the state of the land they lived on. When the children were older, she rounded the age groups up and brought them to Mayirika for instruction. She also garnered, informally, local moods and major incidents, reporting back to Kintu. Nnakato made sure that the wives met and visited each other regularly.

In any case, Nnakato was an effective head-wife. She put in place a roster: every wife would have a child at least once in three years, ideally, once in every two years.

However, this sexual journey through his wives, ebisanja, was more arduous than the trek to the capital. Women waited moons to see him. Most were young with high expectations.

He was no Ppookino, Kintu decided. He was a slave to procreation and to the kingdom.

“But the children are mine: not yours, not hers. Mine.” “They are, Mbuga.” “When my children occupied her body, it was temporary. I’ll pay for her services if that is what she wants. Tell all the other wives who might want to cordon their children off with a ‘my’ and ‘mine’ attitude that I will take them away from them.” “They know it, Mbuga. No one has cordoned her children off.” “That includes your sister. She’s not special.”

The Ganda never made identical twins heirs to an office; one could not be sure who was who exactly.

she was female and should not climb trees. Kintu felt for Gitta. He knew the snare of being a man. Society heaped such expectations on manhood that in a bid to live up to them some men snapped.

His father’s head-wife’s tyranny had led to the formation of cliques among the children in order to protect themselves.

was a munnarwanda

As a rule, a child in Kintu’s house was a child of the house.

Unlike the Tutsis who found their way to the capital and who assumed Ganda names on arrival and married Ganda spouses, Ntwire stood aloof.

To some ba kabaka, surrounding themselves with people from different cultures was equivalent to traveling to these places.

Had Ntwire been a woman, mother and child would have been absorbed into the tribe as soon as a man made her his woman. Kalema would marry a Ganda girl: Kintu would give the children not only names, but his clan. However, Ntwire, the real father, was defiantly Tutsi and as long as he was alive, Kalema would be Tutsi in spite of his marriage and in spite of his name.

Nyoro blood still runs thick in them.” “Did you hear that, Ppookino?” Namugala had laughed lazily. “Kyabaggu does not think you’re Ganda enough yet.”

She was of the classical beauty: a long ringed neck, gapped front upper teeth, dimpled cheeks, large happy eyes, an aubergine skin, a wasp waist, and a firm earthen-pot bottom, all well assembled.

didn’t make it past the king mother. Nnabulya decides who goes into his presence.”

Besides, after his ebisanja through his wives at home, Kintu refused to perform in Kyadondo. After all, feeble performances were derided as well. As long as there was no concrete evidence, his “flaccid situation” could only be speculated upon, unlike those governors whose mediocrity was well established.

mpiki

Even in death Ssentalo’s comeliness was still visible. He had been a muvule tree: tall and erect. He was charming, if a bit too good-looking and aware of it. The fact that he was a warrior who made both men and women groan beneath him had propped Ssentalo’s manliness to unprecedented heights.

Do you see what women do when they harvest cassava?” “They replace it.” “Exactly: to avoid famine. As humans, we don’t only replace ourselves, we multiply. Where there was one man, ten boys should grow. It’s the ultimate law.” “I am not planning to try—” “Do you enjoy women?” “One of them—” “Aha, Nnakato. I’ve heard that she was carved for you.” “Hmm.” “The others?” “Sheer labor.” “What agony! This body,” Ssentalo’s hands had swept over his person, inviting Kintu to appraise it. “Was made to be enjoyed.” “Hmm,” was all Kintu could say.

“Displaying his magnificence like that? Only a sovereign should be that tall, that strong, that imposing. I hear Kyabaggu is short on royal looks.” “You read my thoughts exactly. Ssentalo reveled in the reputation of taking his four wives one by one in a single night, of being so manly women were not enough.”

Then there was that obsessive cleanliness of theirs.

The men were such gluttons that they forbade women from eating chicken, eggs, mutton, and pork.

Because of his limited use of language, over the years Ntwire had developed a keen perception of body language.

Nnanteza had played her mpiki better than Kintu had hoped. She had found favour with Kyabaggu and so far she had borne him two sons, Jjunju and Ssemakokiro. Whenever Kintu went for the lukiiko in Lubya, Nnanteza insisted that Kintu’s food be prepared by her own hand.

Baale had lost his heart to the princess then what better way to break out of the cocoon of childhood into manhood than through heartbreak? He hoped that by the wedding day, Baale would have recovered.