Birth of a Dream Weaver Page 3

  Red-gowned students in front of Makerere University’s Main Building

  For a few days, we, the newcomers, in our regular clothes, looked every inch the outsider, ignorami, pretenders to the learning throne, but not a day too soon, we got our share of the red. It felt good. Learning swaddled in red had descended upon us.

  No, not so fast, some of the seniors told us. We had not yet joined the celestial company of the anointed. We had yet to take an oath.

  Oath? To me, a Kenyan, the word conjured death, destruction, and Hola massacres. I recalled the encounters I had had with the armed enforcers of the Emergency laws of Kenya trying to prove that I had not yet taken the oath of allegiance to LFA. But thousands others had taken the oath for land and freedom, and for that, or even on the suspicion alone, they still languished in concentration camps. Jomo Kenyatta and four of the Kapenguria Five,4 convicted of managing “Mau Mau” and administering the oath, were still held in Lodwar despite having served their term in prison. The eleven men at Hola had been bludgeoned to death only four months back because they would not acknowledge having taken the oath. And here, at Makerere, in this high seat of learning, they were telling me I would not become a member of the elect unless I took an oath.

  Even the Queen of England, judges, the military brass, they all take oaths of office, someone explained. Yes, yes, but none had gone to prison or had his body parts severed on account of it.

  The dreaded oathing ceremony turned out to be a grand affair with red-gowned neophytes descending on Main Hall from the four points of the campus. There was an interesting visual division. All the Reds were Africans and Asians; nearly all the Blacks were white Europeans. Whites in black at the front, on the dais; Blacks in red on the floor, facing them.

  The academic registrar, Mr. Paul Vowles, administered the pledge: “I promise to seek the truth and study diligently; to obey the principal and all to whom obedience is due; and to keep the principles of the college.” Simple words, really, which we repeated after him with all the solemnity of a religious vow. A few prep words and we were done, but the vow continued vibrating in the mind: seek the truth.

  What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. This I would read later in Francis Bacon’s “Of Truth,” in my English class. At Alliance the word truth was always in the air. But there, it was a more like a preexisting entity; all we had to do was accept it. In fact, all we had to do to possess it was to kneel before the Cross. No, not possess it but let it possess us, a civilized spirit possession. One Truth for all. Unchanging. Eternal. It was a faith-dependent Truth.

  This one to which we had just committed ourselves felt different, a process, closer to what I would later read in Aristotle: “The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, we do not collectively fail, but every one says something true about the nature of things, and while individually we contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.”5

  Perhaps if I had read about how Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake at a central Roman square on February 17, 1600, for holding opinions contrary to the Roman Catholic faith, or that twenty-year-old Scottish student Thomas Aiken-head was hanged on January 8, 1697, for holding truths contrary to those of the Presbyterian Church, I might have reacted differently.

  For now, it was exhilarating, as if after living in a land of one truth, a colonial truth, I had affirmed the right to ask questions and contribute to a common pool of knowledge.

  V

  There were other rites of passage, social mostly, but nothing would beat my first night at a social evening in Northcote Hall. I would later learn that each hall organized its socials at different times. I assumed it was some kind of after-dinner party with students playing cards, chess, checkers, and table tennis or maybe a concert evening with students performing jokes and stories. I should have asked my seniors, but even then nothing would have prepared me for the night.

  It was not simply the transformation of the dining hall into a dance arena that first ignited the excitement, but even more the sight of a real live band on the stage normally occupied by the high table. Apparently every social included live music, more often than not from Peter Nazareth’s band. Made up of only those students who could afford to buy their own instruments, it was first named Teddy Bear, after Elvis, before members settled on the Makerere Jazz Band. In the tradition of jazz, they had to be innovative and supplemented what they had by making their bass out of a tea chest with a broomstick and a cord attached, an idea they developed from skiffle musicians. But on this night Northcote had attracted a band from the town.

  Northcoters, all men, were the first to arrive, some in three-piece suits but nearly all in ties and bow ties, hanging around in groups, and then, suddenly the excitement. Buses carrying ladies, mostly nurses, from Mulago and Mengo hospitals, had arrived, and the ladies trooped in. The pattern, I would later learn, never changed, year in, year out; only the players changed, graduations replaced by new admissions. The girls would be brought in there in a rented bus, stay for the duration of the dance party, and then be taken back to their lairs in the hospital. Don’t be fooled: the ladies were not in the white uniform of nurses, and the scent that filled the air had nothing in common with the smell of hospital.

  At Alliance the nearest to this glamorous presence were the Scottish country dances on grass lawns. In the village, it had been the feet of young men in their everyday, in huts badly lit with paraffin lamps, raising dust by themselves, so few women there were who would venture to such places at night. One guitar and one or two human voices provided the music. Men would dance in pairs, but mostly it was solo versus solo in moves that were more acrobatic than the feline motions on a ballroom floor. And now, on the Hill, Makerere Hill, this!

  High heeled girls of Mengo and Mulago

  In low cuts of half-sleeved and sleeveless dresses

  Skirts adorned with shimmering beads

  Necks bedecked with glittering jewelry

  The looks of sheer delight on suited men

  Who hold them close in waltz tango and foxtrot

  Oh the grace of solemn pairs gliding on the floor

  After every dance, the men would lead their glamorous partners back to the seats arranged against the four walls. Men remained standing in groups waiting for the next dance. Then suddenly the groups would break up, individuals gliding toward the walls to ask for a dance from a different lady.

  We the neophytes also sat or stood in groups watching all this and daring each other to be the first to make a move. The ladies never seemed to say no, and they all came here to dance, collective guests, of us, the collective hosts, so why not play our role? It took some time before one of us gathered the courage to approach the glamorous presence. The success of the first one to break the self-imposed inhibition emboldened the others.

  I had not taken into account the possibility of my nose becoming captive to the scent of perfume and my eyes that of what showed just above the low-cuts. I fought back the desire to simply stand and stare; and so instead of trying to keep up with moves I knew nothing about, I was soon stepping on my partner’s feet. When the dance was over, she didn’t wait for me to escort her back to her seat. Later when we neophytes exchanged reviews, I was struck by the similarities of our experience. Stepping on the feet of our partners was the common theme. The other was the sheer embarrassment afterward when we tried to go back for another dance with our previous victims and they froze us with icy looks or a slight shake of the head or by suddenly looking down or talking animatedly to their neighbor at our approach! Clearly we all suffered from the same malady. The seniors told us of the cure: MABADA. The Makerere Ball Room Dancing Association.

  Of all the clubs and associations on the Hill, MABADA had the largest membership. The best part was the dance lessons the seniors offered new members. The dan
ces, I discovered, were not in the freewheeling style of our village dances. These were very formalized affairs: from the posture, where and how to stand, to counting steps to the left, right, forward. Initially we practiced with pillows, holding them as if they were our partners. Then came the pairing, one man being the pilot and the other the piloted by turns. Eventually we were ready for the first trial of our skills.

  It was a MABADA-organized event at the Main Hall. Everything about the event, open to all, was in every way larger and more daunting than anything that we had seen in the halls. This time the ladies came from all the women centers, mostly hospitals, in and around Kampala. Faculty, too. Many people came partnered with wives, husbands, or girlfriends. The seating areas were all outside the dancing hall, in the open. My first night of dance as a MABADA graduate was also a test case of nerve and footwork. Once again it was the waltz, tango, and foxtrot that dominated the floor. It was so exhilarating to dance without stepping on your partner’s feet:

  Then suddenly comes samba or rock and roll

  And statuesque pairs break loose

  But it’s the Lingala music from the Congo

  That finally conquers the Ballroom part of

  Makerere Ballroom Dancing Association

  Bodies become loose and float and fly

  As if seeking freedom from gravity

  Even then there were still a few things to learn. If three or more ladies sit at the same table and the first one rejects your hand, then you don’t ask the others, for they will certainly say no. You go to a different table farthest from the scene of first rejection and try your luck there. Nothing personal, just the playing out of group dynamics.

  Having mastered the ins and outs and formalities of the social evening and the Makerere dance floor, it was time to test what one was made of by going to a nightclub: Top Life near Mengo and later Suzana in Nakulabye. The social evenings had been confined to hall membership. The MABADA dances attracted the elite in and outside the Hill. But the nightclub brought together the mighty and the low, Makerere and the city, the partnered and the unpartnered. The resident or visiting band was bigger, with a whole array of instruments. Neon lights added to the intimacy, mystery, and wonder. This was the real thing:

  Triumphant notes of the trumpet

  Saucy sexy sounds of the saxophone

  Cymbals piano xylophone

  Maraca rattles and drum beats

  Guitar strings from the bass to soprano spring surprise

  Haunting calls of horns and clarinet

  They talk they challenge they moan

  Sometimes they go solo

  Each taking the center the others supporting

  Then all come together and cry and groan and scream

  Body captives of sound mass together on the floor

  Winged with desire they swing sway sweat and swoon

  Oh oh oh step up this step

  Oh oh oh this step must never stop

  Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

  Cigarette smoke and stale smell of beer

  Cover bodies crooning in corners

  But soon too soon or so it seems the sound fades to silence

  Reluctant relaxed bodies saunter to the seats

  They laugh and shout and whisper and drink

  Hearts throb for the next round of sound in sync

  Friday or Saturday nights were the best for nightclubbing. One had a whole Sunday to nurse a hangover and, for the religiously inclined, to attend chapels to seek forgiveness for sins committed under the influence.

  VI

  The faculty seemed supportive of the view of truth seeking that we had sworn to. They encouraged us to develop our viewpoints, not regurgitate theirs or faithfully reproduce what we read in books—the difference between high school and college, they added. In school they spoon-fed you; in college, you held the spoon and fed yourself.

  I didn’t need the homilies. I took the vow seriously, and it affected my attitude to books and classes. I would judge myself not by the grade I got but by the bar that I would set for myself. Nothing drastic about this; it was a restatement of my mother’s question: Is that the best? But now I had taken a vow to pursue the ideal, to track down truth wherever it might lead me on the road to the best.

  I soon discovered, within the first year, that not every faculty member held this rosy view of the quest. In the first year, I took courses in history, English, economics, and the optional religious studies. I had had an on-and-off love affair with the Bible, a book in which Blake’s marriage of heaven and hell was consummated in terror and promise. I had also hoped that the course would be a study of religion in general, African and Eastern included.

  Christianity, divided into Catholics and Protestants, was the dominant religion on the Hill. There were a very few Muslims, but they had to borrow space for their worship. There were two chaplains and chapels: Reverend Denis Payne for Saint Francis and Father Paul Foster for Saint Augustine. Payne was Anglican but served all Protestants; Foster was a Benedictine but served all the Roman Catholics. Nothing could be more different than their personalities: Payne, shy, sly, and feisty but seemingly humble; Foster, fast, affable, and flamboyant but seemingly understanding.

  The religious studies turned out to be a study of Christianity only. Lectures for the academic part were shared between the Benedictine Catholic and the Anglican priests. It was the “humble” Payne whose intellectual intolerance first came out, during his discourse on the Reformation. He mentioned the ninety-five theses that Martin Luther pinned on a church door criticizing the abuses of indulgence and other ills, and of course the Counter-Reformation with the 1545 Council of Trent.

  I had been baptized a Protestant of the Scottish variety, but during a discussion that followed Payne’s lecture on the Reformation, I said that on evidence it seemed that the Roman Catholic had the correct position. How could a politician, a king or queen in the case of the Anglican Church, become the head of a religious institution? There were times, of course, when popes commanded crowns, armies, and harems. To me, at least, it seemed a clear case of continued mixing of politics and religion—the very practice the architects of the Protestant Reformation seemed to be waxing angry about. I was not taking sides, but we were in college bound by a common oath in a quest for the truth, right? And this was an academic debate, right? Rev. Payne did not see it that way. He stopped the discussion to give a sermon on how one could become a Catholic if one wanted; he had worked out a procedure with his Benedictine counterpart. I had not told the man that I wanted to change denominational allegiance.

  His attitude reminded me of a similar reaction from one of my teachers at Alliance, who became hostile when, in response to his claim that Jesus spoke very simple English, I pointed out that Jesus spoke Aramaic. I had not taken kindly to Mr. Smith of the Alliance High School, but I couldn’t opt out of his class. In school, all classes were compulsory and the order of knowledge fixed. But did I have to take it at college and for an elective? I never went back to Payne’s class. That was my first exercise of my academic and religious freedom, and it felt good.

  Three years later, it would be the turn of the flamboyant affable Foster to come out of the pages of Plato and fly his true racial colors. He didn’t confine his narrow-minded view of the universe to the classroom. Apparently he never let it intrude into his lectures on Greek thought, or it may have been camouflaged by his social flashiness, but in 1962 he let it all show in a book he titled White to Move, published in the United Kingdom to modest critical acclaim. As if he had read Carothers and Cartwright and imbibed their uncanny ability to read black minds, Foster told hilarious stories of his African students who would never answer a straight question with a straight answer. Asked about that bird on that tree, they would talk about a tree on a hill near their home. It was his way of saying that logic and rationality were alien to the African mind. His students, who had worshipped him as this free, liberal, broadminded thinker and writer, with a strong liking for Africa and Africans, were pa
ined and furious when they read how Foster had seen them. They had hugged him as a fellow human; he had embraced them as black objects of his colonial anthropological gaze.

  In contrast to both the sly shy but feisty Payne, who shunned difficult questions, and the flamboyant affable Foster, who fooled foe and friend alike, was the Reverend Fred Welbourne, who lived out his name in his friendly and sensitive interactions with students and faculty. Welbourne, warden of Mitchell Hall, who joined Makerere in 1948 to lecture in physics and physick the souls of the Protestants as the first chaplain of Saint Francis, could have been lifted straight out of the pages of Graham Greene. Even his sartorial tastes, the white Baganda kanzus for robes and the sandals for shoes, tested orthodox colonial views of priesthood. He was open to all views on any subject, even on religious matters, devoting his energies to a study of African religions and beliefs, which, again, offended orthodox priesthood. How could he call devil worship a religion, much less devote time to study it? But he was essentially a Christian believer. On being appointed to Makerere, he was summoned by the Missionary Society in London to be told that his mandate was to convert the entire country to Christianity. I did not have a chance to take Welbourne’s classes, but I, like everyone else, knew of him. He was a missionary with a liberal mission.

  Intellectual intolerance and narrow-mindedness were not confined to chapels and chaplains, as I soon found out in my class in economics. Economics had two divisions: theory and history. Dr. Cyril Ehrlich, who taught us economic history, was short with a head that carried a shiny horseshoe bald spot. He spent the first twenty minutes of every lecture telling us how intellectually poor we were and warning us against being bigheaded. “You think you are very intelligent, just because you have come to Makerere? You think you know everything just because of setting foot in a college? You know nothing!” Then he would rattle on about universities abroad, the high standards, the expectations. The daily putting down of his students was worse than anything I had ever put up with in school. I felt trapped in Ehrlich’s class. I couldn’t drop out of a mandatory course without incurring the fatal F. At the end of the second year were the terminal exams called Preliminary, and an F in any one of the areas could mean the end of my educational journey. I soldiered on, but his class didn’t feel like the open society that the vows of academic freedom for truth had led me to expect. It was in his class that a vague idea of publishing a book as an undergraduate began to form. I would have loved to have shown him that we had what it takes to be who we want to be.