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| Twilight in Kigumba, Uganda |
Year 1956. A maiden trip is taken by a few Maragoli men to go see the promised land in Uganda. Homes are anxious, hopes are high, adventurous men can't wait to set foot in a steaming metal snake (rigare ryu mwika) for this new land. And their women and children alike. Somehow already uneasy at the crowding homesteads in the quickly populating Maragoli. Some have migrated to Kanyamkago. Others migrating to TransNzoia and Nandi. Others long forgotten for they left Maragoli long before. Before the white man. Must be Maragoli's were in touch with ancestral kins in parts of East Africa. Never not interior of the newly famous Pearl of Africa, Uganda, now by rail on another's bill; the Queen herself.
Kins and kindred start informing each other to register at Vihiga Office for the opportunity to get land elsewhere. VaSaniaga heavily pass it to their clansmen. VaMavi follow grudgingly - could be because the registration office was at Vihiga, iMavi. More clans add numbers and relatives from the neighboring Tiriki, Bunyore and Idakho join the wagon.
No settled and proud man wills to leave. They are ready to buy off pieces from these anxious deserters. Tin houses are expensive. Grass houses are cheap. They have for fact went to school and can speak English. They teach, they preach the gospel of a better land out of Earth above. They can't imagine of bush life when they had cleared gardens. People of light. Tell them that you want to migrate and they call you a nomad. They naively ask, why should I leave the grave of my forefathers? My grandfather, as I was told by my father, asked, _nziaki mburimu?_ Hence this segregated team of migrators - a people of second caste and below.
Ànd there are men who wanted to marry second and third wives but had no land. In 1957 taxes are collected on each house. There are the ones born as bastards, traditionally limited. There are orphans. They have grown up to no home. Staying ivwifwa (in mother's land) was good in childhood. But maturity years says No. You do not inherit a thing from your mother's people. You do not raise your head high. News as of new land you receive with a warm heart. You register your name in Vihiga and wait for the day of travel. You keep time.
It goes às planned and they set foot in what was on the periphery of Bunyoro land of Omukama hereditary king. A thickly forested area infested with what they couldn't see in a short stay. Or what their hearts and hereditary sense of migration would not allow them to see. This curtain raiser journey was of its own high. To go back in disappointment was not a feedback their wives expected of them. To reason that the land had this and lacked that would attract a huge sneer in the back from those who detested this migration or those who boasted of the opportunity. They were on a journey to confirm an available land. Not to like or dislike as it was the purpose of the trip. They liked before they saw it.
They travelled by train, ferry and lorry. A journey that in the unseen near future would be of hardships. None of the three available for some good time. It had rained heavily in 1961, new shores were created, too costly to build anew. Add on crazy struggles for leadership that followed. The welcoming was good, the white man well organized to clear roads with tractors. A food distribution plan was in place till the people had settled and harvested their first crops. Fruits and animals of the bush would supplement diet. Two camps were already set up for their families. One at present day Kaduku and another a stonethrow to the present Kigumba township.
For evidence, as the Israelis spied the fruity lands of their enemies, mwikura Shem Emeri arrived back in Chatamilu village with a humongous cassava tuber that he had uprooted. It puzzled his clan there, vaSaniaga. The courageous were going to be great in the new land. The advent was now of daring men. A land of produce was the gem. You are no longer a lower man with food in your house. And to add, some carried black soil. It was same as that of Nandi where crops nourished. What more? When Emeri roasted the cassava, it was deliciously floury. Best served with mutere, a weed in Kigumba. How good a conspiracy change of fate.
When are we leaving, baba? Children must have asked. When the lorry comes, they must have said in equal anxiety. Maybe their mothers could have asked more realistic questions - who are the neighbours? Are there numerous springs as in Maragoli? Are there herbs in the forests? Are there stable schools as those already established in Maragoli? It must be that because the move was white man patronized then he also planned much more for these fathers and mothers and their children - our people.
The lorry came and the sight of a packing family should be expressed in the future museum/Resource Centre of Maragolis in Uganda. Maybe to give the artist a clue... a lorry is packed at a homestead, the driver impatient. One household of four to five children help their mother and father to ferry a jembe, a pot, a banana sucker, potato tubers, some maize seeds, a heavy grinding stone and even a door freshly gawked from a hut by the father. In a house next and on the fence neighbours elongate their necks to see. Children look as their fellow junior class mates prepare to leave - never to be seen again. The lorry zooms to another family and cumulatively heads to Kisumu at the port (others were dropped at Webuye) for railway transport. The deserted houses at first haunt the families who were not in good terms with one another. Where some agreements were struck, the new owners happily extended their boundaries.
It was a journey to somewhere. about turn. Our ancestors roved these lands before us. And we can at anytime be anywhere where we can breath. Children and women trusted the men and husbands for the new life ahead. The train left the station when the cranks went up-down up-down to allegory Kigumba...
With Thanks
Lung'afa Igunza
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