At the start of each academic term, I would always make the eight-hour drive from Kabale to Kampala. Uganda has three academic terms, running from early February to late April, late May to late July, and the last term from mid-August to late November. This meant that I had to make six journeys in total each year. During my first year in high school, my father bore the pain of numb bottoms resulting from the long journey with me. At first, we traveled during the day, catching the early morning bus so as to arrive in the capital city, Kampala, in the late evening hours. As soon as we arrived in the city, my father would look for luggage carriers with wooden wheelbarrows to ferry my property across the busy streets to the taxi park. Every time we arrived in the city, I was smacked by its busyness like a strong wave reminding a swimmer at the ocean to be alert. It would be another 2 – 3 hours before we got to Bweyogerere, where we always spent the night.
When I joined the second year, the cost of my father taking me to school was no longer manageable. We incurred double expenses – bus fare from Kabale to Kampala, taxi to Bweyogerere, different hotel rooms, taxi to Lugazi, and my father had a solo journey back to Kabale. After a long discussion, we agreed that I should take myself to school.
I bet that will forever be one of my scariest nights when I first did this. The other bigger change was that I had to use the night bus. This cut costs by a significant amount. First, my father didn’t have to incur transportation costs, and more so, traveling at night meant that I would sleep on the bus and arrive in the morning (cutting out hotel fees). The next taxi I would get on, once I got off the bus, would take me straight to Lugazi (school).
Senior two first-term journey went perfectly, just like we had planned. And so did the second semester. I wondered why I had been scared to make the journey alone. My father’s role was to talk to the bus conductor about me before he could slip money into his hands as an incentive to make sure he kept an eye on me throughout the journey. Thereafter, my father would get on the bus and, using his fatherly senses, detect a perfect seat for me. He would engage with the other passenger to create a quick rapport about me. I would take up my seat, and my father would leave.
Indeed, the devil wears Prada. During the third term journey, I sat next to a responsible-looking gentleman. I imagined he had a daughter or at least a family. When he had engaged with my father, he sounded like those rich intelligible men who were using public transportation by mistake. And when my father left, we continued to converse. He had been to Uganda Martyrs Secondary School Namugongo. I didn’t know the meaning of the word “safe” until after that night. After my father bid me farewell, I drowned in conversation with Mr. Responsible. He had completed high school around 2007. Just like most Ugandans who have been to the top elite private or traditional schools, our conversation revolved heavily around blowing trumpets for our schools.
I don’t know how I drifted into deep sleep before we went far into the journey. We hadn’t made it past Ntungamo (the next district or busy centre after Kabale), but I was dead asleep. In any case, it was around 10ish pm at night when we left Kabale. We were in Mbarara by at most around 12:30 am. I woke up to the noise from hawkers and the busy streets of Mbarara. For a minute, I held my breath and panicked. I was too shocked to scream, but either way, I didn’t know the right way to react. My hand was inside Mr. Responsible’s trousers, holding his pipe. His fly was open, and he used his right hand to hold my hand down to prevent it from sliding over since I was asleep. I quickly pulled away. He smiled it off. I had so many questions. How did my hand end up in his trousers? Why was my hand in his trousers? I was just 14. Throughout my teens, the last thing on my mind was sexual indulgences. I was always either thinking about basketball, soccer, my school, chapati, food, or anything but sex.
We didn’t exchange a word. I wondered if I should tell the bus conductor, but the fear of Mr. Responsible denying what had happened scared me off. The bus had stopped for a bathroom break for the passengers. I was glued to my seat in shock. I covered my head once again to battle with the demons in my head about what had happened. The bathroom break got done, and we continued on our journey. I promised myself not to sleep throughout the entirety of the journey. Stupid me forgot that some things happen without the mind’s consent. Once again, I was drifting off to sleep after 30 minutes. Bus rides at night are boring, or to say, most of Uganda’s highway streets are dark, and there isn’t anything exciting to distract your mind with. Staring into the dark soon becomes a hypnosis for sleep.
I can’t tell how short the dose was, but once again I woke up to my hand in his trousers and his arm holding against my arm so as not to slip off. I felt like a loser. How could I have slept off, yet I had promised not to sleep off?
The journey between Mbarara and Masaka is the longest, at four hours. I once again pulled my hand away and tried to keep distracted by watching the kadongo kamu music on the bus screen hanging behind the driver’s seat. I was too disappointed in myself for letting Mr. Responsible use my hand again. Once we arrived in Masaka, I took a deep sigh, grateful that we had at most two more hours before we got to Kampala. I went out for a bathroom break primarily to wash the disgust off my hands.
Back to my seat, Mr. Responsible tried to make conversation, but I wasn’t having it.
Off, we set off for the last two hours. Armored with the same energy, I fought to stay awake, but I dozed off lightly. This time, I caught Mr. Responsible as he sneakily pulled at my hand. I woke up and turned my head in his direction. He let go of my hand and sat there like the most responsible man God had created. I couldn’t wait to arrive in Kampala and get another seat away from this monster. Usually, when I arrived in Kampala, I would wait for the sunrise at 6:00 am before I could go on with my journey to Lugazi.
Ten years later, I finally opened up to two close friends about what happened to me that night. I opened up because sometimes I wonder where Mr. Responsible is. When he spoke to my father, he spoke of working on big projects in the city with the government. He had sounded like a man of importance – how I wish he were impotent!
Down the road, when I came to the USA and saw how much the society was angry towards pedophiles, I immediately added my anger to the fuel. In fact, at first, I wondered why the USA made it hard for sexual offenders to obtain jobs or live in society. I argued, “Oh, people change. Why label someone a pedophile if they have served their time?” More so, the USA has a website and applications that map out all sexual offenders around you. Not sure if this is still applicable, but in my Juvenile Justice class, our professor told us of the time when sexual offenders were mandated to tell their neighbors, especially if they moved into a new neighborhood. They would be tasked to knock door by door and state, “Hi, I am John, and I am a sexual offender.”
Do I envy the USA for having such systems? YES! I wish we had this back home. I would have reported this weakling of a man. He would have an additional tag to his identity for the rest of his life.
Once again, I always tell people around me that the USA shouldn’t be a benchmark for the standards of living or way of life for our ‘developing’ countries, because itself it’s also not a perfect place. But I emphasize that if we see best practices that we can learn from, why not take them and model them to fit into our society?
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My book, Once I Arrived, will be out this year. It’s time you got lost in a book that tells you about the way of life in Uganda and in the USA through stories. I am excited about getting this book to your shelf.
