Chapter 2: The girl child has seen days

The house is an enviably large one for the village because it has three bedrooms and an indoor kitchen. And there is still glass in the windows, though the glass is also kind of white. It is as close to a mansion as you can get in this village, the village of Ggwa. 
In this house a meeting was being held. 

The chair was a thin man in his seventies. He had a thin face, thin hands, thin legs, and a back the same size and shape as his walking stick so he looked just like the snake he was. This man was known as Mukulu.

He was talking to four others. One was round, fat and orange. He was called Muzeeyi Toyi. The second looked like he had been drunk, perpetually and without cease, for over a year. His mouth was always half open and his eyes half closed. He was referred to as Kojja.

There were these three old men. There was also a teenager. He was standing in the corner. So standing in the corner, in fact, that the only way to stand more in the corner would be to stand inside it. He did not want to be here. He was scared of these old men and was trying to be as far from them as he could, short of fleeing the room.

That is why he was squeezing himself into the corner. A spider that was pissed off at how he was squishing its web.
We join the meeting while Toyi speaks to Mukulu the snake.

Toyi: He's an idiot.
Mukulu: Of course.
Toyi: Such an idiot. 
Mukulu: I know.
Toyi: I mean he is so stupid, he’s too stupid to even know how stupid he is.

This was true. On hearing this assessment of his lack of intelligence the boy actually felt that some things were finally beginning to make sense. It had never occurred to him before that he was stupid but now he realised that, oh, that is why he never understood anything until someone explained it a third time. He was glad that someone had just explained that he was stupid. Now he understood. He finally understood why he rarely understood. That was how stupid he was.

Mukulu: That's the whole point. If you are going to get an idiot, why not get the best one available?
Kojja: But he also looks stupid. That might be a problem. Maybe it should not be so obvious that he is so mupumbavu.

Kojja was right. The boy's stupidity was not ambiguous. One look at him and you could tell. First of all, he was in the process of trying to grow dreadlocks but all he had so far were five stems of thick, matted hair sticking out of his head. Instead of giving up, he nurtured them as if he could not count that they were only five and therefore too few. Each of the five was assiduously oiled. Moreover with something that dripped off the bodaboda that rumbled into the village once a week.
He had a basketball vest with no sleeves and his bare arms bore drawings from a ball point pen. The only way he could get tattoos to be permanent was by replenishing them daily. Each arm said “Made In Japan”. Then there was his posture, his facial expression and the angle of his feet. You don’t often think of these as indicators of intelligence until you see them done stupidly. You have never thought it was possible to stand stupidly? You should see how this boy stands.

Mukulu: We can get him to a salon. They can remove the hair. And I have a contact in Kampala. Okay it's a contact in Masaka who has a contact in Kampala. They can import beard wigs and some face lotion.
Kojja: Why are his hands so hairy? Like a chimpanzee. He has wildlife hands. 
Mukulu: I am sure if barbers can shave faces, they can shave hands.
Kojja: He will need some kind of a wife. For respectability. 
Toyi: No. The boy is 19. It's not allowed for them to be married. 
Kojja: Can he impregnate someone?
Toyi: He probably has. This generation impregnates itself a lot.

Mukulu shook his snake head. 

Mukulu: We don't have to make him some sort of respectable family man. He is a stupid man. That's all we need.
Kojja: True. All we need to do is make sure the installation ceremony takes place where she cannot stop it.

Then Kojja took a sachet from his coat pocket and bit off the edge. The village was very remote and the laws of the Republic of Uganda took a long time to reach there. No one there had heard that we weren't supposed to drink sachets any more.

____
Two weeks later, outside the same cottage, the three old men sat surrounded by a circle of other elderly men, who were then surrounded by a small crowd of villagers. All these surrounding circles were concentric to the boy, in the centre, on a stool, head shaven, chin bearded and wearing a kanzu which concealed the tattoos which had failed to wash off. Apparently the constant application of ink results in an infection. Or, perhaps, a scar. Made In Japan wouldn’t wash off anyway.
Mukulu nodded his thin viper head.

Mukulu: And that is it. You are now the master of this estate. Now they shall call you…

Before he could finish, A yell like a grenade explosion blew through the crowd: 

The yell: BAMBOORAT???

The crowds separated in the wake of the force and fury of the yell. 
Mukulu dropped his head into his hand. He had tried to avoid this so hard. He had sent out three separate rumours, one giving the venue of this ceremony as the church across the plain, one claiming that the ceremony was next week, and one saying there was no ceremony. He was sure one rumour would be enough, but he was hoping three would cover things. Evidently not. Somehow, the girl had found out.
Not even the crowd between him and her could stop her. That voice of hers was too forceful. It scattered the crowd and she instantly had a clear path straight to him. 
We shall introduce the girl, source of the voice, by the names of GC.

GC: Bamboorat?

Mukulu clenched his jaw.

Mukulu: The elders have decided. This is our culture.
GC: Keep your culture. I don’t want it. I want my land and my house.
Mukulu: It is not your land. It has been decided by the elders as the custodians of the cultu…
GC: Bamboorat is what you call the culture?

The boy had been transformed by the kanzu, the shave, and the fake beard, but that look like he still wanted to escape fast and far had returned to his face.
The girl roared on. 

GC: My father made it very clear before he died that I was to inherit this land. It was his land, not the culture's land and it is not going to be Bamboorat’s.
Mukulu: Girls do not inherit land. The heir has to be a male. Our traditions are important. You can’t overturn them just like that.
GC: Yes, you can. It is called Parliament. 
Toyi: Those ones, we voted, we ate our sugar, we finished, they left. They have nothing to do with us until next elections. 

Kojja sucked on his sachet.

GC: Bamboorat? You are going to give the land to a kid, and not just a kid, a kid who dad hated, a kid who mum was always slapping? Even the goat hated him. Bamboorat? He wants to be a dancehall singer but he calls himself Bamboorat. He doesn’t even know the word he is mispronouncing or what it means! 

GC sucked her teeth. It was impressive. Thirty seconds straight, no pause.

GC: I knew you were going to try to disinherit me, but of all people, you chose Bamboorat? Was the plan to get someone too stupid for me to manipulate? This land is mine. The property is mine. The house is mine. My father made it clear. It's mine. 

Mukulu stood up and so did Toyi and Kojja. Then the other elderly men stood up. Someone surreptitiously pinched Bamboorat, and he stumbled to his feet as well. 
A small troop of muscled young men with belligerent looks assembled between the old men and GC. Mukulu squared his eyes on her.

Mukulu: What can you do? To whom? With who? Let me just stand here and watch you realise that the answer to that question is ‘nothing’. 

GC wanted to roar but she could not help but admit that Mukulu was right. There was nothing. 
Two of the goons stepped forward towards her, but Mukulu raised a hand to stop them.

Mukulu: Out of respect for your late father, we will not throw you out. But you will leave on your own.

GC looked around her. There was betrayal in the eyes of everyone in the crowd around her, people she had grown up with, called friends, called family, all gathered to watch her, waiting for her to see what she would do. But she saw nothing else. Nothing she could do.
Nothing but leave. So she surrendered and it felt like a boulder falling onto her back, breaking her in two. 

GC: “At least give me one thing. If I have nothing, then just give me enough money to get to Kampala. If you want me to go, I'll go.”

As she parted with a handful of notes and coins, her back turned to her childhood home, shuffling up the path away from the village, no one heard the rest of what she said.

Gc: ..to Kampala, make enough money to hire an army of Kampala psychopaths and then, I’ll be back. Kankomewo.*

*Literally translates to “Let me come back”, though commonly used as “I’ll take my leave now.”