By Daniel K. Kalinaki
Posted
Thursday, January 28
2016 at
02:00
In Summary
I hope you never have your own January 1986. They said it had something to do with stolen elections, bad governance and peaceful handover of power. I hope when you tell your children about January 2016, you will have good bedtime stories to share, and that the only heavy metal they’ll encounter is Led Zeppelin, not lead.
My son,
January 1986 was a month like no other. We’d watched The Sound of Music countless times and could sing along but the soundtrack to our lives was the deep hollow rings of gunfire and the boom bass of mortar shells.
Although removed from the theatre itself, we were children of war. We were fluent in the language of survival; whenever word went around that abantu bbaduka (people are running), instinct took over. We’d pour out of the school gates and make our way across the city, part of the flotsam and jetsam of war, gushing into the relative safety of the suburbs.
January 1986 was different. The soundtrack of death was louder and the gunshots sounded personal, as if our names had been etched into the lead. One day, the call of abantu bbaduka did not come. It did not have to.
Not long after we’d reported for school, the rock concert of death had started with the intensity of heavy metal. As we raced back home, there was something in the air that suggested this concert would be different. And it was.
It lasted many days and brought the stage closer to us, allowing us to see the band members and their big drums and rhythm sticks that spat out lead to a melody of heavy metal.
Oh, the things we learnt! I learnt that 70 people can go from milling around a natural spring collecting water to cramming onto a small veranda designed to hold only 20 in five seconds flat if the gunshots are loud and close enough.
I learnt that many things are edible, including the leaves of yam plants, and that money might be useless if the shops are shut or empty.
I learnt that a fat woman, her big bottom caught in a razor wire fence while running away from gunshots, can offer comic relief for many days after, especially to a frightened cheeky little boy.
I learnt that a toddler, in this case your Uncle T, will choose the worst possible moment to cry, say when you are all hiding in a closet and can hear the loud thud of boots prowling outside. (FYI, not even a breast offered desperately in the dark seemed to help; a firm hand had to be applied to the mouth to turn off this alarm.)
I saw that many band members were small boys, not much older than me, but with a disturbing look in their eyes – good children who’d seen and done very bad things.
Many days later, the rock concert ended and a new government installed itself in power. It was a government of nice people. They said nice things and promised even nicer things. Everything was nice.
We learnt the slogans of the new government and trekked to Kololo Airstrip at every opportunity to celebrate this new dawn.
No more soldiers, we were told. They were going back to the barracks with their rhythm sticks that spat out lead to a melody of heavy metal so that we could be led by simple men in simple Kaunda suits and simple Nissan Laurel cars. Everything would be simple. And nice.
In January 1986, I was only slightly younger than you are today. You are lucky in many ways, unlucky in others. You are expected to live longer than me but will have to pay a lot more for it, in private hospitals. You are smarter than I was at your age, but I pay a lot more for it, in a private school. You are surrounded by technological marvels and things that hadn’t been invented then, but we also had, in our innocence, a few things that worked, like trains and buses that ran, street lights and traffic lights that worked. Some you see, some you don’t.
I hope you never have your own January 1986. They said it had something to do with stolen elections, bad governance and peaceful handover of power. I hope when you tell your children about January 2016, you will have good bedtime stories to share, and that the only heavy metal they’ll encounter is Led Zeppelin, not lead.
Your loving father.
Mr Kalinaki is a Ugandan journalist based in Nairobi. dkalinaki@ke.nationmedia.com
&Twitter: @Kalinaki
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