Fiona: From Gaelic. Means White. Fair. Not specifically Catholic. Common with Anglicans. It is an invented name. Scottish poet James Macpherson is the inventor. Very common and popular in England, Scotland and Ireland. She speaks only English. It is 1998 when I meet her for the very first time. Physically, I mean. Till then, we only knew her as so and sos child. Talked about very much by relatives, admirers and mere rumour-mongers. She is one of the brightest in her class, in her school … there there in Kampala where we do not know. Where they study in English only. Where no Rukiga is spoken. Where success lives. Where wealth lives. Where they eat bread and blue band every morning. Milk tea with a lot of sugar. We know all this because I am occasionally told to work hard so I can be taken to a Kampala school like so and sos child. So and sos child is Fiona. Fiona is an angel. All the good things one can be. The best child we all want to be. I do not intend to meet her when I do. I could have worn better clothes, washed my legs properly, and even won one of my pairs of shoes, if I knew I would chance on her. I do not even know that she is in the village, can be in the village. So and sos family lives in Kampala. They watch television. They wear shoes and socks to school. They go to boarding school. They are rich, they are forward because if you are not everything they are, you are backward, local, villagish like the village mouse in the story Teacher Annette told us in Primary Two. I am not very villagish like everyone else in the village. Michael, Hillary, Ndugu and more are the real village mice. I think I can flow with the town mice. The city mice. I can sustain a conversation in English, although this only happens when my aunts from Kampala visit. They are the only ones who talk to me in English. And the catechist. The rest of the people want me to be a village mouse like them so they keep talking to me in Rukiga. Fiona knows no Rukiga. This is what we are told. Sometime back, there was a rumour that her father was planning to relocate to the village. I started practising speaking only English, that my mother would speak to me in Rukiga and I respond in English so I could be close friends with her on arrival. They never relocated. We do not know yet what the story is now that they have come. It is not holiday time so when I am walking from the shop, carrying a half kilogram of sugar and a packet of buns and I see a tall girl, with braided hair, wearing brightly-coloured slippers, a jean-ish blouse that looks like a sweater and a matching skirt, my head does not connect that this could be Fiona. I stare more than normal and if there were any fast-moving bicycles on the road, the sugar would be all over the road and the buns smashed because I would not hear any bell ringing as I am focussing on this wonder in our Nyanja trading centre. She passes me by and I keep staring. She is walking alone. Carrying a green polythene bag with the calendar in her right hand. I realise this might be Fiona when she enters her fathers gate. I know where she ends up because I follow her after she passes me by. I am eleven. You cant blame me for following a beautiful girl I have only seen in the Sunday newspapers that mother sometimes brings home to teach me how to read English. I do not want mother to know that I already know how to read English however hard the words can look because I like the photos in the children pull-out. I fear that she will stop bringing the newspapers if she realises that I no longer need to learn how to read. I am being raised for the city. My mother keeps saying that I should behave like city people, city children because if I work hard, I will never be a village mouse. We eat bread occasionally, and milk, and tomato sauce and sometimes she also brings packed milk that I drink raw because I must get used to city life as I am going to be a city-person and not a village mouse. I like boasting to my friends about these things, but I have now learnt not to, as they refuse to play with me when I wear my city-mouse shoes, boots my mother calls them, that have nails on the downside, because Michael says they pierce them when I step on them as they play barefoot. I now wear the boots to church on Sunday when I am too lazy to polish my Sunday shoes. When Fiona enters their gate, I turn back and run home. I do not wait for mother to ask why I have delayed at the shops. I find her in the garden where she is weeding potatoes and I ask her if so and so has returned with his children. She ignores me and I wish I were five years younger so I could cry and force her to speak to me. There are casual labourers with her doing the weeding and she continues talking to them and my question hangs in the air with no one willing to grab it with an answer. When I turn my back to return to the house, one of the casual labourers calls me and asks that I bring her drinking water. This is my chance to hit. I ask that I be told if so and so has returned to Nyanja with his children or else I will not bring the water. Mother gives me her gu-eye that hurts more than the cane and I know that I will not have bread from town for the next two weeks for this transgression but I do not relent. Ogu mwaana orikumutesya, another casual labourer tells mother. I want to speak back at her, ask her to give birth to her own children and not spoil them if she is so concerned but I know that will be too much so I stay there pouting. Thinking about my Fiona. Demanding to confirm. I think mother should cooperate because she wants me to be a city-mouse so associating with certified city mice like Fiona should help me in this endeavour. At this moment, I even want to be sent back to the shops to buy something and this time I will wear my best city clothes so that I look more like Fiona. Then she will notice me and we shall talk and talk and these village mice working for mother shall not claim that I am spoiled. I saunter back to reality when a soil particle hits me on the head and disintegrates into smaller particles, some dust entering my eyes in the process. I do not know who has thrown it, and it must be one of the casual labourers because mother does not throw such dirty things at me, as she knows she is the one to wash my clothes. I first think about what to do. Mother does not defend me when other people decide to punish me. If she were not there, I would defend myself by throwing a harder soil particle at all the labourers but I do not want my mother to get disappointed in me yet. I run to the house and once inside start wailing loudly even if the tears coming from the eyes must be because of the soil in the eyes than pain. The thing was painless. Not hard enough to cause me pain. The last time I cried as loudly as this inside the house, the labourers laughed and laughed at me, and when we were eating lunch, food mother cooked with her own beautiful hands, they started talking about me, saying that I am such a coward, I have to hide before I cry. They do not know that I cry without tears. I think that the shame is on them for not knowing my trick. This time, they do not wait for lunch-time to laugh, they laugh and laugh and even end their loud laughters with wuuuuuuuu. I know they are laughing like that so that they do not work as hard as mother but I am a child and cant tell them so. When I get tired of crying, I get my Ladybird Cinderella and start reading. Mother finds me seated on our sofa reading and ignores me. She pours cool boiled water in a bottle and I know she is taking it to the labourer who wanted to send me for it but I ignore her because I do not want to attract her fury. But I am fearing nothing because she is happy that I am reading. It is my secret peace-making trick. When I do bad manners, to make her forget, I get a book and read. She knows that I am happy about being a city-mouse and she forgives me completely when I work hard to please her. I do not know if my mother is a city mouse or not. She buys me books. She knows about city life. But she does not have an educated job. City people have jobs that are only for educated people. I have heard people in the village talk about her as if she is a city mouse but how come she is not a nurse, a teacher like other city mice in the village? I have been thinking of asking her, but I fear now because I have just done bad manners. Maybe if she had answered my question about so and sos coming back to Nyanja, I could have asked properly. I hate that today is a Saturday and I have to stay at home. Maybe if it were a school-day I would have special time with her. But then I would not have seen Fiona. I am busy thinking, because I have finished the Cinderella story and I am happy that the ugly step-mother ends up disgraced at the end when mothers voice comes from the garden telling me to prepare the food for serving. The food needs warming, but I hate the labourers for laughing at me and think about warming only mine and mothers and leaving theirs cold. I abandon the idea because it will take a long time separating the big potatoes and healthy beans in the katogo for me and mother, and leaving the bu-bad potatoes and hopefully spoiled beans for the labourers. I warm the entire saucepan, for all of us. One thing I hate about my mother is how she feeds the labourers. She gives them the best food that we also eat. I am always complaining about it because Teacher Annette and Michelles mother never serve the same food they eat at home to labourers. I almost complained one day about mothers wastage habits but I remembered the time she gave away a beautiful shirt of mine that no longer fitted me and when I complained, she told me that city-mice do not have to behave like village mice. That village mice are the ones who treat themselves specially from other mice. City mice treat everyone similarly. I tried arguing back then. Telling her it does not make sense to serve labourers food they cant afford to prepare in their own homes but I lost the argument anyway. We are sitting down in the sofas and eating, even the three dirty labourers spoiling our beautiful sofas when someone knocks on the door. Mother tells them to come in and guess what? It’s Fiona. I feel very proud that she has come to visit and when Mother greets her in English, I want to jump up and down because now I know mother is a city mouse too, and I want to also add my own greeting but I am eating with a fork, so I am already a city-mouse and Fiona must have already seen this. I do not need to do anything else to impress. I even stop eating …
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 14:53:05 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015