Places In Public
Finding Something Like Certainty in the Crowds of Kampala
“I console myself regularly with the fact that the problem is not unique to me, that young people everywhere are trying to figure it out.”
My mind is chaotic, different voices telling me the same thing: “stop” as if there is something to be done now that we are floating in air: flying—little creatures in a giant bird. It must be the aftereffect of rereading Akwaeke’s poetic words in Freshwater : “The world in my head has been far more real than the one outside—maybe that’s the exact definition of madness.”
I think of Aunty K, bent over a pot in my parent’s kitchen in Lagos, steam staining her glasses. The airplane smells of her fried rice, but other passengers smell Ethiopian spice and scrunch up their nose. It is difficult to conjure a memory of home—the structure, the features—thousands of feet above the earth, other than a blur of cream walls. I close my eyes. When next I open them, soft and thick clouds blanket my vision. To my left, the Indian man from Onitsha is leaning into me. I shrug him off. I wonder how long it’s been since I passed out from the fear wrapped around my toes. I look at my watch: not very long. I read somewhere that time slows down when you’re afraid.
He wakes up to ask me things about myself. He asks what I do, a question that tightens the fear around my toes. I think about it. After all those years of studying to be a lawyer, breaking my back over layers of law texts, squinting my eyes under dim lanterns, I am having a career shift, exploring several futures, and, more than ever, uncertain.
“I’m an editor in a publishing house, but I’m also a lawyer.”
Lawyer; not because I might not abandon that path like I’ve always wanted to, but because it is sweet to say like tasting dankwa, to see the light in the listener’s eyes spread into a French curve. He berates me like a Nigerian parent on why I’m not practicing. I smile, a polite terse smile raised too much to the left to be taken seriously. My mother taught me this smile, to use when avoiding the truth. I find myself using it a lot these days.
“We have to see each other when next I’m in Lagos,” he tells me, saving my number as “Lagos Ope Editor.” “We can enjoy each other’s company,” he continues, and does not stop talking when I turn towards the window.
The clouds have the thrill effect of sea waves. I get lost in them.
*
Ethiopia is crowded, but night lights like a billion stars stretched across a black sky tell me it is a beautiful city.
My plane to Entebbe is boarding. An adenoidal voice repeats, “Flight ET388 to Entebbe, now boarding,” but the soles of my feet are clamped to the tiles of the café I’m sitting in. I am taking a breather, but my eyes won’t stop moving, not even when I cup them in my hands.
Airports have a sense of urgency that is crippling; too many people hurrying somewhere, running from something. Their incapacity for stillness has always bothered me. But I have never broken under the pressure. To sit and watch as everything moves is unlike me. I would usually join in the traffic, floating in the direction that seems right.
What I feel manifests as rumblings in my stomach: a tightening and unclenching of muscles. I wonder if this is about this trip—the fear of traveling out of the country alone, or the usual fear: uncertainty about the future, or both. Weeks ago, I laid on my lover’s back unable to describe the feeling of hopelessness that made me toss at night. Sometimes language has no weight. Words are not enough to encapsulate the human mind in despair. Or perhaps to use words trivializes the magnitude of the problem. I mumbled into his neck, “I want to lay beneath a tub of water and feel anything else but this.” It is the same now.
The Wi-Fi costs five dollars an hour. My Indian seat partner pays for me, so I send home a text saying I’m in Ethiopia. Home: my featureless father, his broad frame sitting at the dining table reading a book, anticipating my text. It has been six hours since I left Lagos. In two hours, I’ll arrive in Entebbe.
When I stand to leave, my Indian seat partner holds my fingers, his slender, warm fingers intertwined in my stubby, cool fingers. “Have a good time in Kampala,” he says. I nod.
*
The Ugandan immigration officer is not quite like Nigerian officers, whose layered foreheads tell tales of annoyance and impatience. But I can hear him fly off the handle in his passive-aggressive “young lady.” What does it mean to be called a young lady? What does it mean for your identity to be subsumed in something so generic, so impersonal: less than a name, greater than a pronoun?
I have just paid for my visa, but the thumbprinting machine won’t recognize my fingers, as if to say I am not human and do not exist. After a few minutes of swiping and pressing, standing on tiptoes, wiping them on my kimono, it recognizes me, certifies that I am human, complete with my unique fingerprints. The man with his straight face and well-starched uniform stamps my passport and tells me to enjoy my stay in Kampala. I smile.
*
Everything is different yet the same: perfumes smell strange, flat faces have long foreheads, eggs taste different, but have the same amoeba shapes. I rub my lips and skin with Vaseline until I look like I have been dipped in oil. Walking down a road full of red earth and boda-bodas, I think of my newly tarred neighborhood road in Lagos. The differences are as glaring as the sameness.
Kampala is cold. I was informed that the rains could come anytime; I should have come prepared. But I wanted to pack light, to carry a bag or two—hand luggage—and boast about how light I travel. I wanted to show off thighs too; what better time to dress differently than when you’re a tourist in a different city. The dress I am wearing is a black high-low dress that stops mid-thigh.
Kea and I have known each other for two years. We call our friendship, and friendships like ours, one of the important gifts of social media: connecting book lovers from all over the world. This time Botswana and Nigeria. We laugh. Our laughter like smoke wafts up the ceiling, leaving an imprint, a smell, an aftertaste. We grow quiet, swarming in the ease and comfort of old friendships.
I am in Kampala for two things, but maybe there’s more. Three days for the Artist Managers and Literary Activists (AMLA) fellowship organized by the Center for African Cultural Excellence (CACE) who also organize the Writivism festival. My work partner and I are working hard to create a phenomenon out of young creativity on the Continent. It is the one thing I am consistent with. Hence Arts and Africa, a growing collective of young African creatives weaved by us from nothing in 2015.
Two days for the Writivism festival because I have been shortlisted for the Koffi Addo Prize for Creative Nonfiction and have to do a podcast recording, attend a panel discussion, and the awards ceremony where the winner is announced. The last time I won something, I was a fresh high school graduate. I won a national competition organized by a Pan African bank. Unlike this, I expected it.
A third reason is perhaps escape, the reason for most of my trips: run away from the uncertainty, break the monotony, confuse the cycle, lessen the intensity of my grasp on life. My lover said it was what I needed, breathing warmth into my ears. He referred to Camus’ words on how travel awakens us to the living substance of happiness.
We have lunch in a hall in the University of Makerere two floors below the class where we have lectures. Standing outside the building, I find several marabou stork, their necks retracted and wings held flat, flying above the University’s Ivory Tower. Someone notices my fascination and tells me Uganda is a country of birds. Inside the hall, I am introduced to food without spice. The plate from the buffet is colorful. I study the colors of the meal and the sides, learn the names, forget, then write them down in my red travel notepad from Korea. Esther, who works with Writivism, is impatient when I ask for the names, so I ask the server.
“This is matooke,” he says. “It is made from green bananas.”
I try not to contort my face, but I cannot help myself when I taste the pilau. I joke with Nigerian friends that this is why Ugandan “Jollof rice” is not a thing, not worthy of mention in Jollof wars. The meal comes with Irish and sweet potatoes. Pineapples garnish the side of my plate, my choice from the buffet for something certain, familiar and sweet, something that does not need spice.
*
On a tour of the city, I find an interesting tree in an Anglican church. Her limbs, parted in two at the trunk, must have been created with a woman’s thighs and hips in mind. Her leaves teeter to the north like a hairstyle. By her root is an overgrown shrub that leans into parts of her trunk. Pubic hair. The uncertainty is attractive because I’m interested in magical realism. Her leaves sway to baritone singing from the church. I follow the singing to find a male choir rehearsing. I sit at the pew closest to the door and enjoy the strength of their voices.
We visit the Kabaka’s palace, and Kasubi tombs, and are told interesting facts from Ugandan history. We are told that it was an open secret that Kabaka Mwanga II, who ruled in the latter half of the nineteenth century killed princes that refused to sleep with him in allegiance to their new Christian faith, hinting at a historical existence of homosexuality contrary to popular belief and African politician propaganda that homosexuality was introduced by the West.
The sun sets over the city as we drive towards the hotel. There are lots of archaic orange brick buildings. The sloppy roads with little space for two cars to pass remind me of the city my grandparents come from: Ibadan. I was there early this year, in an attempt to reconnect with my roots and trace the steps my great-grandmother from Port Novo must have walked on. But all the time I was there, I was drunk, dancing and screaming out of car windows.
There is something so quaint and ancient about this city that makes me nostalgic for this version of home I never knew. Sometimes, I wonder if I can still call Ibadan home, seeing as my grandparents who lived in Lagos all their adult lives were not returned when they died, as is custom. Staring at the hilly Kampala landscape, a feeling of displacement creeps in. It is a foreign feeling; I have always considered my lack of an existing or known village to be inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. Yet here I feel a longing for home, a longing that complicates my existing problems of uncertainty.
*
On the second day of the fellowship, a kind of clarity hits me while I get dressed: I haven’t always been this uncertain. As a teen, I knew the things I wanted. When I wrote the essay—of the things I would do if I became the Nigerian president—I knew I was going to win, that one day the Pan African bank would call me to tell me I’d won. I wore my certainty like a halo.
The older I got, the less I knew. Studying law came with a rush. It was great for my mind that constantly liked to be challenged with problem questions. A few months into my third year, I knew I wouldn’t practice: a small certain feeling. My excuse was that the Nigerian society and university system was riddled with corruption. By then, it was already too late to leave even though I often joked that I would apply for a transfer to the arts department as a way to kick-start my writing career.
There was a time I sat in a staff room in my high school and told Mr. E I was going to be three things: a lawyer, a reporter, and a writer. He had smiled, spreading his mustache as far back as his ears. Back then, all I saw was a proud smile. What else could it be? He was after all my coach. He taught me all the right arguments and how to convince an audience even with implausible arguments. He said I was a natural when I presented the news on Monday’s general assembly, and when I debated “good luck is better than hard work” at the end of Year 10. Now I think of that smile in terms of my gullibility. He probably felt sorry for me and rightfully so. Adulthood is a whole different reality, and no kind of preparation is ever enough.
I console myself regularly with the fact that the problem is not unique to me, that young people everywhere are trying to figure it out. Though I hate to draw a dichotomy between past and present in terms of self, it is undeniable that there is a zeal and clarity my younger self-possessed that this older self does not. And though I cannot pinpoint when and how it all disappeared, this uncertainty has been a hollowing experience, one that constantly plunges me into depression. I console myself regularly with the fact that the problem is not unique to me, that young people everywhere are trying to figure it out. But even with this consolation, I focus on whatever peculiarity I can draw out of my circumstances.
My skirt has the smell department stores in London have, shipped in bags to Nigeria, thanks to Aunty K. But here I am in Kampala, thinking, waiting. I fall into a short nap on rumpled white sheets in my wait. I dream of my shortlisted story coming to life and chasing me home, to my room with its purple and blue walls. I wonder if the dream is a metaphor for not winning. I wake up to a mosquito that tries to make love to my ears and decide I am done with the worry.
At the university for classes, Dami, a mentor, arrives from Nigeria while we play a game: two truths and a lie. I have a child named Zainab who is six years old. Joy catches me fast because my lie is too specific, too exact. And aren’t these also the problems with certainty? It is “too specific,” “too exact”, static; “it can do little but endlessly reassert itself.”
In the evening after classes, we take a walk from an art gallery—stopping at the Independence Monument for pictures—to a restaurant at the back of the Kampala National Theatre where we have dinner. The ambiance is a bit traditional, reminding me of Nigeria’s Terra Kulture. Kea, Tobi, and Dami are at my table, as are white cats who prefer to curl under our chairs. We talk about Akwaeke’s Freshwater while drinking straight from bottles of Tusker. Is the novel about their life, as in a memoir, or is it fiction? Does slapping the fiction label on it change what it is? From discussing western terminology for certain mental illnesses, specifically multiple personality disorder and its relationship with the concept of Ogbanje, we draw a straight line from sickle cell anemia to Abiku. It is here, in between these conversations, in a moment that seems like it was what I’d been waiting for all day, that I set my eyes on him for the first time. I stare at him with curious eyes. He stares right back at me.
*
Because pleasure sometimes comes when you least expect it, on the last night of the fellowship, I find myself leaning far back into a wall, giggling into his mouth and wrapping my thighs around his hips. Stares can culminate into bigger things. We have just left The Square, where Writivism had an after-party for the opening ceremony of the festival. Earlier I had to present my AMLA project—curating and publishing an anthology with art and literature—in a room full of scholars and Writivism guests. For the entire duration of my presentation, I felt like the self-assured teenager I used to be.
We, the man and I, are now at a club where our bodies melt into each other. Kea is somewhere dancing, but my sense only takes in his senses. He is a fine-boned man, intense, with beautiful eyes. The world splits and breaks under us. Green and blue colors like disco ball reflections fly around liquid eyes and moving legs. We have been drinking. I created these moments from my refusal to break a stare: point and kill, a staring contest. It was only right that my eyes found him after seeing him at the restaurant last night. At the after-party, I stared at the man and his many faces and pulled him out from a flock of women to be mine.
When we spoke, starting with a cliché pick up line, he followed my eyes; I followed his voice, mesmerized by their deliberate sweetness, the reluctance in his words. He said he liked the way I said Nigeria when he asked what country I came from. I told him I was an intellectual property lawyer, like my biography on the Writivism website says; not exactly a lie, but not completely the truth. It is one of the futures I now intend to explore. If I tell myself this long enough, I might get stuck with it.
Now we dance linking our fingers together. The night grows younger. When we leave the club, it seems like the moon is made for us and we dare it with loud laughter and moans of pleasure. I wake up the next morning with a smile on my sunny face and a kiss on my forehead.
*
Home as a place, a structure: a video call shows me the glittery cream wall of my parent’s house two hours behind, the dimly lit kitchen and the mahogany brown dining table filled with siblings and cousins. Aunty K is in the kitchen, predictably. She asks if I’m having a nice time. I ask if she’s having a nice time in Nigeria. We exchange gap-toothed smiles. Home is far, longingly waiting even though I no longer want it. I ascribe its familiarity to the uncertainty that no longer bothers me. Going back to it would be to drown. My lover was right, this trip was what I needed. This place, with the newness of its names and streets, the warmth of a stranger’s arms wrapped around my body, and eyes smiling at me: an acknowledgment of intimacy, the culture shock—walking to Esther at Cafe Javas in darkness on my first night and not getting mugged—feel just right. It could as well be home, where the boda-bodas stop for you without calling for them and where the traffic makes you wish you had stayed indoors.
Before my Writivism podcast recording session with Two Girls and a Pod, I spend the morning interrogating these concepts of home in my head, so it is shocking when Kea, who moderates a panel between the Writivism shortlisted writers, asks us what our definition of home is. I wonder whether to tell her and the audience the version that has been running through my mind: Home is wherever and whatever you find solace and clarity in. But even the other version is true; home as in my body that is constantly remolding itself, constantly teaching me things. Referring to my personal essay on sexual assault titled “Home,” I tell her that home is my body and, though it can betray me, knowing it belongs to me alone is enough.
Home is my body and, though it can betray me, knowing it belongs to me alone is enough. It is the last day of my vacation, the day the winner of the prize is announced. Pius takes Kea and I on a tour of the city that makes me forget because my legs hurt and the sun folds my eyes. He’d probably guessed this was the distraction I needed. We go to a bus park and climb up several stairs of an empty shopping complex to get an aerial view of the dusty white buses on red earth. We pass by men in the market who call us sweetheart and try to pull us into their stalls, but Pius is protective of us. It is Yaba Market all over again. Street sexual harassment is no longer as mind-boggling as it used to be.
Once I’m back at The Square, my hands quiver. I talk to Chisanga and Obinna Jones, both co-shortlisted writers; I ask them how they feel and if they’ve written award speeches. Chisanga shrugs. Jones laughs. I tell myself I’m in good company.
“Everyone’s a winner,” Dami tells me. He’s not the only one. There are others too who compliment my work, who end the conversation with, “No matter what happens, everyone’s a winner.” I can read what their eyes mean when they say this.
I pester Esther to buy me drinks, but she looks at me with bulgy eyes and bats her eyelids in a sly way. I hold meaningful conversations with my mind absent and my eyes fluttering. At night before the closing ceremony, I return to my hotel to wear a white dress and worry about being overdressed, of having too much red lipstick. It’s good for me to have other worries than winning or “losing,” or wondering what home and the rest of life holds after this trip. I do not put on my brown suede heels at the ceremony. Home texts to tell me they’re rooting for me. I feel myself sink into a cup of Tusker, already disappointing them.
*
In the Ethiopian airport, I stand in front of a mirror in a restroom full of people. Alone. I try to focus on the mundane: the smell of bleach that fills my nose at every breath and orange stains on white tiles. Faces and a plethora of languages fill the toilet stall.
Perhaps Yalom is right: “The search for meaning, much like the search for pleasure, must be conducted obliquely.” I did find him from doing a staring contest. More deeply related to my plight, I got shortlisted for a prize from just trying my hands at it on a friend’s recommendation. Perhaps I must continue to wear this uncertainty and embrace spontaneity.
My eyes are red. I have been lapsing in and out of sleep. I only have vague memories of the past six hours, of taking selfies, drinking, crying, hugging people, saying goodbye. I bury my face beneath the tap.
When I come to, there’s a small pang prodding the crevices of my back. Sadness. I always feel sad after trips. When I returned from the Aké Arts and Book Festival in 2016, I sat on my bed crying about nothing. Now, there is probably more than one reason why I should be: not winning the prize, saying goodbye to lovers, and a solace I cannot carry around. But I find myself transitioning from sad to happy, the pain in my back melting; I am light on my feet, almost elated. I am grateful for everything Kampala gave me and love, oh how I loved in Kampala: in white sheets and bar corners, on boda-bodas and a room full of strangers. My eyes, my body, my lips, they made love.
In the toilet stall, I change into my slacks and his shirt. I think of the many ways I have won and lost on this trip and listen to the inaudible voice call my flight to Lagos. This time, I follow the traffic. I float endlessly.
