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Jackee Budesta Batanda

Aciro cried a lot these days. She had been crying since her daughter Loretta went out to collect raw mangos and never returned. We had waited for her like we did each time she had stealthily left the camp with other women foraging for food because the relief food was insufficient.

I used to join them on these escapades. We took the winding dirt road that led from the camp of hunger through shrubs into abandoned gardens bursting with food growing wildly because no one lived in the villages anymore. I used to walk in the single file of young women, as we made through the grass, laughing carefully like we were afraid that the wind would carry our voices back to the Major, who would send his guards after us. We laughed and talked about everything but the danger we knew lay ahead. We avoided talking about a probable rebel or government soldier’s ambush. Instead we talked about how we used to cultivate sesame seeds, millet, sorghum, and how we had made sheanut butter. We imagined we would find our ancestors had magically cultivated our gardens in the night. But that was only a folktale our mothers had recited to us when as children we had believed that the spirit of fire and not the wind blowing through the grass thatched huts controlled the dancing flames.

I joined in these escapades until I lost my legs to a landmine. "You are lucky to be alive,” everyone said. "Lubanga took pity on you,” they added and the congregation at the makeshift church had prayed for my speedy recovery. But I was angry at the God they praised for my survival for letting me live.

Once some photographers and women from a Women's organization in the big city came to our camp. The women stepped out of four-wheel cars accompanied by a military convoy. They walked in high heeled shiny shoes that left tiny holes on the soggy ground. Their strong perfume filled the camp, suffocating the stench. We envied them. Their organization dealt with women and children in areas of armed conflict, they said. They had come to find women who would need surgical operations and counseling to enable them lead a normal life again. And we wondered what a normal life was, because each day we lived on the sleeve of insanity was another taunt we threw at death. They had said they would take our stories back to the big city to the Parliamentarians. They said that peace would come flowing through the camp like the early morning Acoli-pii sunshine.

We had smiled through our yellowed teeth and had hovered around them like little children who had been promised éclair toffees by the young men that sat around the God's Grace bar drinking malwa and playing board games to pass time. We wondered where God's grace went because it surely didn't live in Acoli-pii. The Women had promised to collect food and clothes for us while we hoped they would bring us peace. We had sung Aciro's song.

You've cut off my hand
Go on and get famous for it
You've cut off my lips so that I cannot talk
Now go and get famous for it

The Women had applauded us and recorded Aciro's song. It would be called “A Lingering Pain” (like our lives in the camp, they forgot to add). They would send it to organizations around the world to put pressure on our government to end the war. That was three years ago. Three years ago, Aciro's daughter, Loretta, was still alive. Loretta, whose bright smile made it seem like the sun rose from her mouth in Acoli-pii. Three years ago, nobody knew that she would one day leave the camp never to return.

The day the Women came had been like the Thursday November morning I had lost my legs to a landmine. It had been a hot steamy day, with the sun threatening to burn us to ashes. We had left camp, because we hadn't received food in a long time and we had grown tired of boiling unripe papaya for our meals. We had taken the footpath behind the Major's hut. Everyone had passed the spot safely but my legs had veered off the path a little and I stepped on the landmine.

That was the day I had stopped going to search for food and Loretta had promised to always bring me provisions. That is why when she hadn't come back by the time the sun was fading into the horizon like the last note in a song; we had started to grow restless. Aciro had asked me if they had gone further today and had to walk a longer distance. I had nodded in assurance even though I had felt something grow in my throat. There had been a lump in my throat after my parents had died in a rebel ambush. It started to disappear when Aciro and Loretta had taken me under their care. Now the lump was growing back and I knew it was Loretta bringing it back. I had sighed and looked down avoiding Aciro's questioning eyes. I hadn't wanted her to see the truth in my eyes as it raced through my brains. So I had cleared my throat and said in a squeaky voice, "they surely have traveled a long distance today.” She had nodded and I had added, “they will be back with the moon tonight.”

She had crouched against her hut and cuddled her grandchildren. The lump in my throat was starting to spill out of my mouth. Aciro had untied the orange kitenge wrapper from her waist and had covered the children. She had sat with her right hand cupping her cheek like a woman in mourning.

The moon didn't bring Loretta home that night. I avoided her eyes when she asked; "Loretta will come back with another moon tonight, won't she?"
We both knew that Loretta was in trouble. The lump in my throat was choking me. Aciro looked to me for reassurance that her daughter would return. She clasped my hand. Her roughened hands felt like scales on my arm. She shook me strongly and asked again, "Will Loretta come back with another moon tonight?" I shook my head. The moon hung in the sky like a big neon lamp. She tightened the grip on my hand. I wanted to tell her that Loretta would return to us and we would smile and laugh together and listen to our transistor radio blaring songs on Mega FM. Songs that took us on journeys to places where lovers broke up and made up. Songs that took us to the big city with the song 'eno city Kampala,” this is Kampala City. Then we sang along and nodded our heads in tune to the music that entered our bodies and made us want to run under the Jambula tree in the middle of the camp and sing at the top of our lungs for everyone to hear. “Min, I don't know," I said. She sighed and sucked in her breath. Lines had developed on her forehead. Under the moonlight, I noticed the greys around her temples. I wanted to say something that would make her feel better. But you don't tell a mother who is anxiously waiting for a daughter who has disappeared in the wind that something will work out. You don't tell her the truth she is intentionally ignoring although you know it is biting at her conscience. And you know that she knows. So you join in the forlorn hope that the lost daughter will rise with the sun because the sun rises in Acoli-pii.

When the first women who had gone out to look for water returned wailing, I was sitting outside the hut. The sun was making slow steps on the ground. The thatch roof created a good shade for me. Aciro sat in the doorway where she had spent the night waiting for Loretta. She had struggled to get up and had landed heavily on the ground. I had crawled to her but she was up again before I could get to her. She ran towards the voices. I had crawled slowly after her. "Where is my Loretta?" she had cried shaking the women near her looking them in the eyes. I think she was searching for a little hope that she could cling to. Someone had taken her aside and calmly told her that the rebels had ambushed the young women.

I don't remember what happened next. Perhaps Aciro screamed so loudly the wind must have carried her voice to the bloodstained ground where her daughter lay. Or maybe she fainted. She might have repeatedly hit the person who had told her the news she had known all night long. Someone later told me that she had been taken to the makeshift dispensary where the camp nurse had given her some tranquillisers.

Later when I was alone, I tried to imagine how Loretta had met her end. I wished that I had been there when Loretta and the women met the rebels. Pressing my eyes shut, I ground my teeth and the prayer on my lips was for death to come gently and take me too.

Aciro came back from the dispensary on a Sunday. It was the first time she didn't go to the makeshift church in the camp. It was also the day Aciro stopped singing in the church choir. We had sat silently outside the hut and watched her grandchildren playing in the distance. It seemed like our lives had stopped flowing. We missed Loretta. She had asked me, "Do you feel a stone sitting in your heart?" I had nodded. She had said she felt the same way. I wanted to say there was a lump in my throat but my tongue was heavy. "It's Loretta sitting in our hearts," she said and squinted her eyes. She had developed that squint after Loretta hadn't come back to the camp. It was like she didn't want anyone to really look into her eyes. Perhaps she was hiding the sorrow that had now become a part of her like the little black mole under her left eye.

Aciro later told me that her life was like a sad song that made her want to cry. She had stopped singing in the church so as not to sing out the little strength left within her frail body. So she sat outside her hut like she was waiting for Loretta. Sometimes she sniffed a little, or her sobs seeped through the metallic door like they did tonight.

I curled up and listened to Aciro's voice. It grew into me. I couldn't cry. I had cried cfut all my tears when I lost my legs. My eyes were dried up like the stream outside the camp. I listened to the voice that reminded me of our loss. Aciro made me sad. I let out a muffled sob. I remembered the Women from the big city who came three years ago and promised us peace. I blamed them for Loretta's death. I blamed them for Aciro's crying. What happened to Aciro's song? I had forgotten the words. Three years was a long time to remember things. It was better to forget the things of the past so that you could live on.

But I still remembered the landmine. I still remembered that Aciro cried because her daughter was dead. I still remembered many things. Some things refused to go away and returned like the night edging out the day. They came each day and forced me to remember. The memories swelled onto me and stuck in my mind like an embarrassing birthmark.

In the morning, I crawled and sat outside my hut. I saw Aciro and discreetly watched her eyes, searching for signs of the previous night's crying. I was afraid to meet her eyes. She turned on her transistor radio and placed it on the ground between us. The voice coming from it was shaky because the 'Tiger' batteries were weak. We watched the sun sweeping through the camp and drying the shit mounds that littered the ground. A red hen passed near our radio almost knocking it over. Aciro shooed it away. She broke the silence. "The fighting is destroying the peace," she said. I nodded. She added that Loretta visited her dream the previous night. She alleged Loretta was fine and would reappear with the moon tonight.

"She knows we are hungry. Just you wait,” she affirmed, "My Loretta will come back to me this evening." She turned to me and smiled. A smile that hung on the edge of her mouth. I wanted to shake her hard and tell her that Loretta was dead. Isn't that why she had buried three stones behind her hut to mark Loretta's grave? Hadn't we prayed for her spirit when the church congregation came to pray for us? I wanted to tell her that Loretta would not return with the moon tonight or tomorrow night because she hadn't returned for six months. Hadn't we asked Loretta not to rest but to haunt her killers? I wanted to ask her but the voice was tied round the lump in my throat. Instead of telling her to pull herself together if not for her sake but for her grandchildren, I sat around with my head hanging down, ashamed that I could not bring myself to tell her the truth.

So I tried to remember Aciro whose melodious voice was capable of making Miriam Makeba jealous. I avoided this Aciro who made up stories of her dead daughter during the day and cried in the night for the same daughter. This Aciro, who lived a lie, because she had numbed her senses to the truth. I forgot this Aciro, who now hung around the God's Grace makeshift bar, and watched the young men that played board games and drank malwa brew. This Aciro who chased away the ojuu insects that sat on the beer pots in exchange for '/usf a little s/p' and came staggering to her hut in the night. But the drink didn't make her forget her daughter. It made her cry even more because she felt the solitude in the night. It made her squirm in longing for the end of the life she said was a sad song that made her want to cry.

Aciro stopped waiting for Loretta to return and started singing again. Not in the church choir. A bar singer. She sang the songs as they came to her head. She sang at the makeshift bar, where the young men and sometimes the soldiers came to hear her sing their lives in her songs. Her voice rang through the camp and earned her pain into the hearts of her audience. She was a star in the camp, a live voice the people could listen to instead of the artificial voices that came through the transistor radios in the camp. She gave music a body.

But later in the evening, she came to my hut and told me there was a song that made her cry for her daughter. The song she wanted to sing but could not find the words. I reminded her of the song she sang when the Women from the big city came to our camp promising us peace. She said that song reminded her of Loretta. "Nobody wants to remember their loss,” she said in a voice husky from singing at the bar, "but I've a loss that sits in my heart,” she added and punched her chest. “Right here and it's growing heavy like the stone that sits in our hearts, "I echoed her words, "it's Loretta sitting in our hearts.” She nodded.

Weeks later when Aciro came knocking at my door and announced that she could now sing the song that had been nagging her because she had found the words, I impatiently asked her to sing it. Perhaps the song would conjure Loretta's spirit I thought. And when she opened her mouth and the words came tumbling out, I was sure Aciro had found her song.