Too busy for friends and family? Look into the mirror and behold a jackass!

Sometimes we write with the head; sometimes with the heart. Today, have a guess! On April 8, my phone rang. It was Chris Baggya Senfuma, a good friend who I shared a life with, growing up in Jinja, as well as at Namilyango College where he attended O-Level. 

That is where we parted for a while, because while I stayed at Namilyango for A-Level, Chris moved to Busoga College Mwiri for his A-Level, and then onward to the United States, where he spent many years, before returning.  We were two opposites: I was this quiet, disciplined, straight-as-an-arrow student, but Chris…was chatty, cheeky, chaotic and never absent from the scene of a fight. But we loved each other. Namilyango builds strong bonds between students that last a lifetime and our Old Boys association, NACOBA, plus the class cohorts within, are closely-knit. 

So when Chris got terminally ill, our class stood firmly with him, contributing generously to his medical bills every time he was in hospital. The time Chris called, I was driving to Kampala, but at that precise moment I was at Nyenga, Buikwe District, on the Kampala-Jinja highway, 15 minutes from his Sese village. 

He badly needed to see me. I was rushing for a meeting in Kampala and decided I would see him some other time. A few days later, he sent me a message saying he badly needed to talk to me. I didn’t take it seriously, certain that I would see him the following week. 

On April 17, a message came through on our class group: Chris was gone. It tore me to pieces. So I did go to him, the following week after all; but there he lay, in his casket, no longer able to tell me what he had so badly needed to talk to me about. When the MC, Percy Mulamba, a Mwiri Old Boy called me up, I eulogised Chris on behalf of the class and thereafter, put a hand to his coffin, as we walked him to his final resting place that April 18. I was still dealing with that when another heartbreaker came in: Stella Kisakye, a Gospel musician, was gone. 

A few weeks earlier, she and her best friend, Safina Muwanga had called me up, reminding me to take them out for what Kampalans call “lusaniya” – a tray of pork. I had been procrastinating for two years; but this time I told them we’d meet in a week’s time. Four days after, a call came in: the tall, light-skinned, soft-spoken, easy-to-like girl, was in the intensive care unit at Mulago hospital, in coma. Her husband – a cantankerous son of a gun, called Ronnie Ndiwalana was a former child soldier in Museveni’s Bush War. 

Ronnie, who later became a church pianist, found me playing guitar in Jinja in 1993 and forcefully carried me off to Kampala to play with him and Stella, saying I was too good to play “in the village”.  The band died when Ronnie did, six years later, but I stayed close to Stella. The busy schedules of Kampala, however, kept me too busy to check on my brother’s widow as often as I should have. 

After burial on April 26, we got into the car with Safina and as I adjusted the mirrors, Safina reminded me about the unfulfilled promises and then asked, “Now that Stella is gone, how do you feel?”

I looked at her accusing eyes and looked away; then my eyes went into the driving mirror…and I beheld a jackass. At that moment, pondering both Chris and Stella, I realised I had been too caught up with the cares of the world to show love to people who cared about me.

Kampala is fast-paced. We are busy chasing money, another degree, a new job, another car, another house. Like many others, I had not paused to look around, and make time for the things that truly matter in life: friends and family.

Tell people you love that you love them. Take that call or call back; arrange a coffee date. Eat something together. Spend on them. Life is a journey; and since God seldom publishes recall lists for each month, you do not know when your journey or theirs will end.

Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda, [email protected]