Tombstones and Banana Trees (2 page)

“My children,” he said, standing above us with an empty bucket swinging in his hand, “I am not leaving you with cows or property or anything else. This ash is your inheritance. And just as it has been blown away, may you, too, be blown away with your mother!”

I do not know precisely what happened after that. I saw my father's feet carry him away, heard a truck door slam and three engines cough out their lungs like waking monsters that patrol a small boy's nightmares. As the vehicles pulled away, his remaining wives and their children began to sing and drum their songs of celebration. They had our property. They had left us behind. They sounded happy.

We, meanwhile, started to weep. All of us—my mother, my three sisters, my two brothers, James and Robert, and I—wept with the pain of humiliation, of fear, of shock. But as the noise of the trucks and the victorious wives diminished, another noise broke through our sobs. The onlookers were laughing, cheering, and shouting their own abuses at us.

“Be careful, women: She will steal your own husbands! She's a bad woman—she cannot be trusted.”

“Their time has come at last! She thought she was so superior all those years.”

“Typical Rwandese. Typical Tutsi: always bringing trouble with them.”

I was too young to understand all of their words, but I knew we were alone now.

My mother had fled neighboring Rwanda some years earlier, escaping the start of what would be a continuing campaign of genocide against her native Tutsi people at the hands of the Hutu. We had no family left to depend on, nowhere left to go. And now that our father had so publicly rejected us, we were utterly and completely alone. We were like dead dogs at the side of the road, devoid of rights, denied dignity, and completely worthless. The only difference was that we were still breathing. But what good was that doing us? In that moment it would have been better had we died right there and then.

Those trucks were carrying whatever was left of my own happiness. I was six years old—old enough to know that, as the oldest male in that heap of wretched bodies, it was my duty to do something to help us get out of the horror. For my father had taught me one lesson as he had brought his stick down fast upon me: When a man is consumed by anger and hatred, he can change the lives of those around him in an instant. Anger can rage like a volcanic eruption.

As our tears fell to the ground, it was as if they turned to blood. If you have ever been to Africa, you will understand what I mean when I say this. The soil in Africa is rich and red, stained by time and struggles. On this day, it was made darker by the tears of a small boy who wished he had enough anger and hatred within him to change the lives of his mother and siblings in an instant.

I wished things would change at that moment. I wished I did not have to look at the feet of the few villagers who remained nearby to watch us in our shame. Those feet seemed to taunt me, with their cracks and scars deeper and broader than my own. They had carried their owners through many struggles over many years. What hope could I have of surviving? What hope did I have of holding on to life? I could not even stay on a truck.

There is a saying that was written down by an African: “Time and bad conditions do not favor beauty.” It is true. For some of us, growing up in Africa has brought suffering and hardship, right up close, time after time. Life has been robbed of its beauty.

Yet is that really so different from the American family that is crippled by debt and held back by too many jobs that pay too little money? Or what about the child from the European inner city who grows up with his nose pressed against the window of privilege and opulence—who sees the cars and the money and the ease of living—and knows he can never achieve such wealth for himself? Africa does not have a monopoly on time and bad conditions, any more than the West has a monopoly on health and happiness. Beauty can be taken from us all.

My father had tried hard to take the beauty out of my life. As we crouched on the roadside, ash in our hair, tears leaving trails though the dust on our faces, we must have looked like the ugliest people on earth. Who would want us? Who would care for us? Who would rescue such miserable people? Surely we had been left to die. We were rejected, abandoned, disowned, and cursed. Our security, our self-worth, and our significance were crushed.

Eventually there were no more tears. We begged the ground to take us right there and then, but it did not. At that moment I wanted to die. I did not want any more of this life where one man could cause so much pain. I wanted the earth to become my tomb.

If our lives are seen as stories, then this was the start of the chapter of bitterness that became my staple diet for twenty years. The poverty got worse, hope evaporated, the future was nothing but decay.

But my story did not stay that way forever. It changed beyond all recognition. Everything that was made ugly by pain and anger was turned to beauty by one incredibly simple yet unbelievably revolutionary thing: forgiveness.

These pages that you hold in your hand will show how a boy who begged to die by the side of the road grew to become a man who was able to forgive. These pages will take you and me back to our tombs and our funerals and ask how God might turn them into maternity wards and celebrations. These pages, I hope, will open your eyes to the change that God Himself has in store for you.

Even today I remember that time at the roadside, beneath the tree, and wonder what God saw. Of course I know He saw our pain and our rejection. He saw the hatred that spilled over from our father and would continue to infect the lives of others in the village. He saw the rapid descent in our fortunes, from a family with a future to a collection of outcasts with no power, no voice, no potential.

But I also think He saw us stay with our mother. He saw us hold on tight to one another, remaining by one another, our tears and cries flowing together. It was a small step, and it did not feel as though there were any other choices on offer, but there is power in unity, power in the family. My father migrated and rejected, abandoned, disowned, and cursed us. But not Jesus. He is a caring God who stays closer than anyone else.

Our time at that tree by the side of the road did not last forever. Soon God brought a kind man to rescue us. Years later He would guide people to bring messages about His steadfast love to us in the midst of other periods of pain. And even after that, as an adult, I would one day descend from a bus at this very spot, my life having changed forever, forgiveness staging its dramatic revolution in every fiber of my body.

In time, everything would be different.

Chapter Two

The One You Love Is Sick

I have many names—six in all. Like most people in my country I have a biblical or Christian name, only instead of Paul, Daniel, or David, my parents chose Medad—a minor character from the book of Numbers who prophesied to his fellow Israelites (Num. 11:26). My mother chose that name. It means “loving and compassionate.” Then there is Kanyarutooki, which means “born in a banana plantation.” I suppose it was an obvious choice for my mother as she squatted beneath the canopy of the trees, hoping that this next labor would produce the boy my father so desperately wanted. The women who helped her give birth saw I was a healthy boy and said I was Birungi, which means “good things.” My mother said, “I got this boy through prayer, and he is from Jesus,” so she called me Birungi-bya-Yesu, which means “good things from and for Jesus.” When I became a born-again Christian in the 1980s this name gained more meaning, and it was the one people used most when they talked about me. But I shorten it, so I am officially called Birungi. That is my third name. Like many pastors here in Uganda I am also called Jackson. It is just one of those cultural traditions that has taken root: If you think your son might end up being a priest, call him Jackson and it can only help. My father gave me two names as well—one nice, the other strange. He called me Barisigara, which means “the one who will stay,” and Zinomuhangi, which means “they have a creator.” This last name always confused me: At times I thought it was a reference to the incredible power of God, but knowing my father I think it far more likely he was trying to antagonize his fellow Christians by hinting that there might be more than one creator. I always preferred it when he called me Barisigara. I liked the notion that he felt he and I had a future together.

In our culture we believe that a name shapes a character. Years ago, before I was born, there was a habit among some people of burdening unwanted children with the most horrible of names: Bitanaki (vomit), Rwamiceeno (be cursed forever), Bafwokworora (let them die), Zinkuratiire (sorrow follows me), Zinkubire (trouble surrounds me).

Thankfully that practice died out with the arrival of the East African Revival in 1935. A lot of things changed at that time, and the ripples of the moving of God's Spirit continued to be visible for many years to come. Years later, in 1982, they would even reach a young man on a bus whose life was in desperate need of change and revolutionary forgiveness. My own children have redemptive names: Barnabas Enoch Kiruhura-Taremwa (Jesus never fails), Joel Elijah Kiruhura-Akanyetaba (Jesus answered me), Festo Kiruhura-Nimurungi (Jesus is good), Esther Margaret Kiruhura-Akatukunda (Jesus loved us), and Omega Jabez Kiruhura-Nomwesigwa (Jesus is faithful).

And so I, Medad Kanyarutooki Birungi Jackson Barisigara Zinomuhangi, popularly known as Birungi-bya-Yesu, or just plain Birungi, would sit with my father at the trading post in the village of Kashumuruzi. My father, Boniface, would be drinking beer brewed from sorghum, while my head would drift down onto his lap, wandering off to sleep as he told me how I was his Barisigara, his one who would survive, his son who would remain and outlast all the others. He would boast about me to the other drinkers, calling me his little man, the one who, though only three years old, had a fine future to look forward to. He would get drunk on the beer, but his words alone were enough to make my head feel like the morning fog that sinks itself into the valley floor when the weather has turned a certain way.

He would carry me home on his shoulders, and I would feel like a king.

I doubt there is any truly royal ancestry within my ancient family history, but my mother, Fridah, was a Tutsi from Rwanda. For centuries the Tutsis and Hutus lived happily alongside each other, intermarrying and barely noticing their different tribal ancestries. But a century ago, when Belgian colonists looked for a way to control the country, they chose to divide and conquer by oppressing the Hutu and elevating the Tutsi to fill all the positions of power. Within fifty years the project was starting to come apart at the seams, and the Hutus were encouraged by the Belgian colonizers to exact revenge on their former Tutsi oppressors.

The genocide that ravaged my mother's country in 1994, leaving over one million dead in just one hundred days, was not the first of its kind. There had been many acts of appalling violence against the Tutsis in the decades before, and my mother had fled her homeland in 1952, escaping across the mountains, heading sixty miles north on her own to the safety of Uganda. Behind her the machetes had claimed the lives of most of her family. She was sixteen years old.

In recent years, Uganda has been a safe haven for refugees from many countries—not only Rwanda but also the Congo and Sudan. Of course there was a time when people fled our own country as well, desperate to escape the brutality of Idi Amin, the dictator who brutalized my homeland throughout much of the 1970s. I was born in 1962, so I can clearly remember what life was like in those days. I still have the scars.

My mother crossed the border in the lush mountains near Kabale—a region known for its mountain gorillas, beautiful hills, and cool climate. People call it the Switzerland of Africa—because of these last two, not the gorillas. Once in the town of Kabale she became a house girl for the general secretary of the district, the Honorable Ngorogoza, a man who had power and influence. He did not pay her, but by allowing her to work for him and live in his compound he granted her a degree of security that she badly needed. While she was working there she met my father.

There has been a phobia of the Rwandese for many years. There is real hatred for them among us Ugandans, and the common racial stereotype has put them down as travelers: rootless, penniless, jobless, barbaric, backward, primitive. Many Rwandans have been forced to take desperate steps in order to survive, and in those days of exile and genocide there were stories of men handing over their daughters to marry less-than-respectable men just so they could receive a dowry that would allow them to eat.

My father was not an educated man at all, and I have already told you how he was a trader in animal skins. But he was not prejudiced. In my mother he found someone who was truly beautiful, intelligent, and spirited. Being a businessman he knew that at two cows, the bride price for Fridah Mary Tibanwenda made her a bargain.

By the time they married and moved to my father's home in Rwanjogori it was no longer a place crawling with maggots. It is a fertile land, like the rest of western Uganda, and the climate is perfect, offering three harvests a year. The sorghum grows twice as high as a man, its plume like that which crowns the crane that sits in the middle of our national flag. Sorghum is good for making porridge and alcohol as well as for thatching houses. It is not the only crop we have: Pumpkins, red peppers, Irish potatoes, beans, eggplant, matoke, towering avocado trees, chili peppers, berries, bananas, and marijuana are all intercropped, seemingly scattered and sowed at random. In truth each plot of land is well known by each owner, and just as we know what grows where, we also know where the land boundaries are. Graves are often marked by small, low-growing plants that would probably look to you like weeds. But we know how to read the story the land tells.

Looking after all this land is generally considered a woman's job. It is hard work, but my mother had been used to it all her life. Nevertheless I do wonder whether she had hoped for something better from my father. When they were first married, my father would leave home for a month at a time, taking his skins with him on the back of his bicycle. He had different women in the various towns and cities he would stay in, and my mother knew some of what was going on. I do not know whether he tried to keep it a secret from her or whether he saw it as part of his rights as a man. His own great-great-great-grandfather, Ruhiiga, was the one who had taken thirty-six wives before he died and left over one hundred children. Perhaps polygamy was in his genes. Or perhaps that is just an excuse.

Either way, my mother had no right to complain. She was alone in Uganda, with no parents, no brothers, no sisters, and consequently nowhere to run. That meant my father could do what he liked to her and she could never escape. While he was not racist, his family were prejudiced, and my mother was despised by her in-laws, particularly his sisters, for being a Rwandese. Even today many people blame the Rwandese for any problem that surrounds them. Blame it on the Rwandese, they say. Only today it just sounds hollow and foolish on their lips. Rwanda is one of the best-organized countries on the continent, with great leadership that has dealt well with corruption. They are getting their prestige now.

Being my father's first wife, my mother found life good at the start of their marriage—or, at least, it was better than it was to become. They had about ten acres of land to farm, and my father was able to make good money selling his animal skins around the country.

Yet my father was a drunkard, one often with too much money in his pocket, which is always dangerous. He started drinking more and more when he was away on his business trips, and there is truth in the saying that alcoholism and violence sleep in the same bed. In a culture where women have no rights, a man who fathers only daughters sees himself as something of a failure. With three girls before me, my father was full of rage. Part of that was expressed in his drinking, part in his affairs, neither of which pleased my mother. As she heard more of the details about what he was up to on his business trips, she would fight back. She would tell him that it was wrong, that she did not like it. The Tutsis had been the leaders in Rwanda, and their children grew up as independent thinkers, used to speaking their minds. My mother may have been a woman and a refugee, but in her head and heart she was an individual worthy of respect and with something to say. But she had married a man who expected that if he spoke twice, his wife would speak only once. There was great conflict between them. He wanted absolute submission; she wanted respect.

What brought them together initially? My mother wanted to marry a man who was not married to anyone else. She may have left her family's bodies unburied in her homeland, and she may have been utterly alone in a foreign land, but she did have some self-respect. And in my father she found someone who, generally, was a nice man. He was clever, generous, and friendly. He was an extrovert by nature, and short, slender, and handsome in appearance. But he did not want anyone to boss him about. He did not expect that anyone would question his drinking or his spending, his philandering or his violence.

Domestic violence in our culture never goes by that name. We call it “discipline,” but whatever you decide to call it, the rift between my parents soon became a chasm, one that was full of darkness. Just as he rejected his wife, so my father rejected the children she bore him. And having rejected his family, he then decided to start again with another wife. Violence became a familiar feature of home life.

Usually when a man takes a new wife, the previous wife gets rejected. And when he takes another, the air turns heavy with gossip, slander, and competition. As each wife tries to shore up her position and gain just the slightest advantage over the others, the atmosphere around the compound becomes toxic. The children are often the victims, with blame being heaped upon them as wives escalate petty disputes in the hope of scoring points over a rival. And because all of the wives and children share a compound and farm land, the potential for conflict is great.

My father ended up marrying five wives and had many children: twenty-six girls and six boys. With each wife we lost him a fraction more—losing what little we had left of his favor, his support, his money. And the more he slipped away from us, the easier it was to write him off. Eventually we stopped trusting him altogether. In time he became a foreigner in our home. And that was when the violence increased.

Our father would beat us as often as he wanted. A week would never go by without violence, and sometimes we would be given extra. The smallest of mistakes was enough to cause his eyes to narrow, his breath to turn shallow, and his hands to reach out for whatever weapon was closest. If a stick was at hand, he would use it, but failing that he might improvise with a stool, an iron bar, or just his hands. Like us, my mother was not allowed to defend herself. She had just two choices: either run away to hide in the thickets of the banana trees (and postpone the beating for another time) or cower in the corner, raise her arms above her head to protect her neck, and hope the blows would soon come to an end. If we crouched quietly and did not attempt to shout or look up at him, he would often be finished within about ten minutes. He would beat our mother until his wrath was satisfied. Sometimes he had a lot of wrath to satisfy.

All of us have scars on our bodies that came from those days, each one the result of our father's anger. If we were late bringing back the water or firewood, we were beaten. If he saw my sisters with a boy, they were beaten. If we dropped something, we were beaten. At times he would tie us up in the granary—a raised wooden structure in the compound that allowed us to keep our provisions off the ground and out of reach of animals. Our father would tie us by our hands, bound at the wrists, hoisting us up so that we were hanging, defenseless. Those beatings were particularly painful, and I remember hearing my father shouting at us as his palms, fists, and the backs of his hands struck pain into us. “Your mother cannot help you!” he would scream as she stood by, watching, helpless.

When my father was beating my mother we would make uproar and call the neighbors to come from across the valley. They were happy to come, thank God. They would talk to my father, and my mother would run and hide among the trees. At times we would know that his violence was about to erupt, particularly when we would hear him coming home after drinking down at the trading post. He would shout and curse, and my mother would tell us to be quiet, strain her ears for the faintest sound, and then send us out to hide. If we were too late and he came back to find us eating—or the meal cooking in the pots—he would kick whatever he could, scattering food across the floor. If he was not too tired, and we had run away soon enough, he might chase us out into the trees. My mother learned how to make a shelter that would help us remain hidden in the darkness as well as protect us from the rain. She would get banana leaves and bend them over to make a small canopy that we would all sleep under. At least we were safe from this predator, even if we were exposed to many others: cobras, hyenas, jackals.