I was never good at jumping up and down, so it’d be a lie if I said I ever liked Bob Marley’s music for its rhythm. I like Bob’s music for its aptly descriptive lyrics. When he compares human beings to buffalo soldiers, you get a clear picture of what it involved being a slave.So, what did it involve being a refugee in our time? Admittedly, later we came to hear about Roni (French acronym ‘L’ONU’ or English ‘United Nations’, UN) but where were Red Cross, Medecins Sans Frontières and today’s coterie of other borderless NGOs? Today, even when you pretend to be persecuted, entire regiments are at the border beseeching you to cross and enjoy their extravagant assistance! In fact, I remember that after the genocide against Batutsi, these do-gooder organisations literally took up arms to resist government’s effort to be self-supportive! Yet in our time everyone was for him/herself and God-knows if there was ‘Anybody’ for us all! On 1st November 1959 when we scurried into Bufumbira, Uganda, we didn’t know what awaited us. Knowing how overpopulated the area is, however, you can begin to have an idea. Sure, we had been good neighbours and many had been appreciative of my old man’s ready generosity, but there simply wasn’t any land for an extra mouth. So, it was the road again and, after taking a breather in Jomba, D.R. Congo, we thrust further inside and settled in Bambo, D.R. Congo’s Masisi area. Now, if any place can be called a cultivator’s paradise, that place is Masisi. And if the biblical Paradise was inhabited by only two Adam-suited humans, Masisi of the time was home to only the snake and not a single soul to lure into eating the abundant fruits! Not needing any luring, anyway, we took to the land like hungry lions to your bullock. Soon, we were swimming in plentiful harvest. We ate to our fill and said bye to the hungry days of Bufumbira, knowing that with only minimal effort we could harvest more than we needed. In Masisi you could plant bananas in the wild and harvest without once removing weeds! So, we had landed in the land of no worry, right? Wrong! When the realisation of the implications of living in this land of no inhabitants hit us, it was a bomb! For one, there was no health facility of any description. Which meant that the local brew acted as the cure-all for every ailment. And if urwagwa (the banana brew) was our elixir, our old mama was the physician, dresser, midwife, surgeon, name it. Especially, she was an expert on preventive measures. For instance, you didn’t take your breakfast without taking steps to avoid any likely adverse effect. Your early breakfast of a cold sweet potato was always accompanied by urwagwa so as to kill any possible infection of what we called stomach snakes (inzoka or worms). There were snakes in stomachs just as in forests. Morning rwagwa also did wonders for any probable attack of malaria. Suppose you were in the forest gathering firewood and your machete or a jugged piece of wood tore at your skin. This called for a more potent brew and, usually, Mama recommended kanyanga (distilled brew or gin). All you needed was to swallow a tot (as a painkiller) and then douse the cut with it. Of course, it was an entirely different matter when it came to more serious diseases like ‘pians’(ubuheri?), tuberculosis, leprosy and others. These cases needed the intervention of Magara-arasaza (Life-can-drive-one-mad), a herbalist-cum-witch-doctor whose concoctions killed more than they healed! The common treatment for any seemingly incurable wound was a horrible mixture that will live with me until my dying days. I’d been cut on my shin and the resultant wound was threatening to become umufunzo (incurable wound). So, Magara-arasaza was called in – but I’d gone into hiding! However, where I was crouching in the bush, I felt a sharp sting on my heel and immediately sprang up to check for what I dreaded. Unfortunate me, I saw a retreating rattlesnake. I immediately bounded back to the house amid uncontrollable wails. For information, a rattlesnake has the most deadly venom. When I landed in the arms of Magara-arasaza, he yanked at me like a cat would a rat that’d slipped through its paws. He seized the heel of my foot and sucked hard as he repeatedly spat out the venom. Then he grabbed his bluish concoctions (it looked like copper sulphate) and pressed it against my festering wound. I screamed for a month and, even today, I can hear my own screams. Surely, with all that knowledge, I could as well qualify as a doctor. So, much later in Nshungerezi when I told a then youthful Claude Karemberi “Ndwaye ubuganga”, he had no reason to retort: “Young fellow, while we go to school to study medicine, you only just fall sick and become a doctor?” For information, “ndwaye ubuganga” can mean “I am suffering from doctor-hood” just as it can mean “I am down with malaria”. Today’s Muzehe Claude Karemberi? Maybe you remember the one-time columnist of a local newspaper! ingina2@yahoo.co.uk
