AFRICA THE GREAT HALL!

By Robert Bake Tumuhaise

The reporting day came. This time the journey to Kampala seemed shorter. By evening Nyamishana was inside the university. Uncle Gerald had accompanied her to Africa Hall, where she had been allocated residence. The custodian allowed her to choose a roommate and so she ended up sleeping in the same room as Ruth, her villagemate and friend.

Ruth was a couple of years older than Nyamishana, but because she had dropped out of school for some years, they ended up joining university in the same year.

Makerere had eight Halls of residence – Nkrumah, Nsibirwa (Northcote), Livingstone, Mitchell and Lumumba were for boys; while Complex (CCE), Africa and Mary Stuart (Box) were for girls. Of all these, Africa was thought to be the most prestigious. It was a hall for the rich and those who claimed to be rich. Ruth was happy that they had been granted residence in Africa.

Ruth had lived in Kampala since she left Nyamishana in primary school and so she had to orient Nyamishana in matters of city life and how to live like a campuser, as university students were referred to those days.

“It’s taboo for a girl from this great hall to be seen in the dining hall,” Ruth revealed as soon as they had settled in their room. She went on to explain: “You see Nyamishana, Africa is a hall for rich girls and so you either have to be rich or pretend to be.” Poor girls who found themselves in Africa had to either condemn themselves to reckless living to lay their hands on big cash or to resign to a life of ridicule from fellow girls.

“But Ruth, you know my background. I can neither pretend nor get money through evil means.”

“Don’t be childish. Being seen eating that rotten food in the dining hall is a sign of abject poverty and I am not going to allow that. I know you are a good Catholic, but don’t argue baselessly like a married woman who claims to be a virgin.”

The conversation went on and on and on, ending their first day together in disagreement. Ruth believed it was fashionable to sleep with a few rich men to get money to splash around, while Nyamishana believed that was an abomination. They had to pause that discussion and talk about other things.

Some of the other things they talked about was that Kay, the Rib-Cracker, their childhood friend, was in Kampala. Ruth promised that she would take Nyamishana to see him. This somehow distracted the two ladies from the heated argument that was threatening to boil their hearts.

Other than disagreements over lifestyle, the two had a lot in common. They hailed from the same village and both equally valued education. However, Ruth didn’t like Nyamishana’s course, MDD, and so in her absence she would ridicule and gossip about her. Nevertheless, they enjoyed life in Kampala and visited many places together.

Bakiga say: “Don’t tie your good goat near a bad one.” As time went on, Ruth’s life-style started to influence Nyamishana, who had previously believed that city life was terrible. She began to discover that there were also many good things in Kampala. People could do all sorts of businesses. Anyone could travel anywhere, anytime, without road-blocks or any other unnecessary interruptions. Life was being lived.

There were many ‘happening’ places where people could eat, drink and dance till morning without any fear. Such was the Guild Canteen at Makerere University.

Campusers believed that going through the university without having fun was like throwing away your old clothes and walking naked to the market to look for new ones. Ruth and Nyamishana were not about to be the only ones to be left out of this fun. So they started to visit the Guild Canteen to join other students in the eating and dancing.

Much as Nyamishana loved fun, she wanted it decent. But at the Guild Canteen and other places she went to for leisure, she kept meeting people who behaved like they were just bodies without a person inside. They seemed to be shame-proof as if their hearts were made of concrete. She always distanced herself from such people and instead continued searching for true friends in Kampala, especially those that hailed from her home area.

For the first few months, most of the faces she was meeting were new. Generally there were not many people from her village living in the city. The few that were there were too busy to be seen. They worked as house-helps, night watchmen, soldiers or shamba-boys.

Days and weeks passed. Then one day, while walking towards Africa Hall, she saw the face of a man that seemed familiar though she couldn’t remember where she had seen him. He stopped his Mercedes Benz, lowered the screen and beckoned her to enter the car. That very second her mother’s warnings re-emerged in her mind and kept disturbing her until she declined the invitation. She only greeted him and introduced herself as Nyamishana.

“I will introduce myself when I return,” the man promised, with a smile.

“If I may ask; what exactly will you be returning for?” she begged to know.

“You will get to know soon enough,” he replied before speeding his Benz off.

By this time the little money that her mother had given her for upkeep was finished and she was surviving at Ruth’s mercy. As she stared at the Benz that was being swallowed by the distance, she cursed poverty and wished she had been born in a richer family. Maybe Ruth’s argument about the end justifying the means on issues of money contained some water. Her mind was too troubled to make any rational judgment.

Meanwhile most other freshers (first-year students as they were called) were living a wild and reckless life. In secondary school, they had been in ‘prison’ and finishing secondary school seemed like the prison bars had suddenly been broken. With no one to question them, they now felt they could live their lives anyhow.

Later, when Nyamishana started meeting her childhood friend, Kay, one of the passionate conversations they always had was on ladies’ dress code. Kay would make a lot of fun out of it. For instance, he would joke: “While wisdom has it that human beings should dress like they want to be addressed, many campus girls I see these days dress like they want to be undressed.”

Nyamishana had never forgotten Kay’s story of a campus girl who was passing through Owino market dressed (rather undressed) in contradicting attire. Below a T-shirt with the picture of Jesus was a micro-mini skirt. So one man ridiculed her: “Haaaaaaaaa, look at this girl who has given the part from her waist to the head to Jesus, and that from her waist to the feet to us!”

Ruth’s lifestyle worried Nyamishana. She was that typical city girl, the kind you would meet in tight jeans, with her earphones on, listening to loud music and swinging her arms as if she borrowed them from a witchdoctor. She was the kind that would throw a piece of cloth around herself that was nearly the size of a napkin, calling it a skirt.

“Her dressing could tempt the devil himself,” Kay would joke.
One day, Ruth’s dress code landed the two girls into trouble as they entered the old taxi park to board to Wandegeya. At the sight of her dressing, one taxi driver asked: “Is that a net you are dressed in, pretty lady?” a question to which another man quickly answered: “No she’s not just dressed in a net; she’s a net herself!”

As Nyamishana was still looking for a place to hide her face in shame, a third man also pasted himself into the discussion: “Maybe she’s on her way to the beach; she wants to use the net to capture fish. But even then, she might capture the young ones and the Minister of Environment will make noise.” Embarrassed, Nyamishana left Ruth behind and rushed back to campus alone.

In the evening there was a hot argument in their room. Ruth was demanding for an apology from Nyamishana for abandoning her to the crowd of men. “Pardon my villageness, but truthfully speaking those men were right. Somewhere there has to be a boundary,” Nyamishana put across her point. Ruth changed the topic.

Nyamishana had come to Makerere hoping to enjoy life like other students, but also aware of the traps that city life sets before every growing youth. At some points she would find herself in a corner where she was divided between her principles and campus life. But the values planted into her young heart by her mother could not allow her to compromise. They kept echoing in her mind as if an invisible being was whispering them into her ear.

Much as she coveted new fashions that had swept over campus, she maintained her traditional dress code of long skirts and dresses, with no unnecessary openings to show the body parts that should be left private. Billy Graham’s television programs that slammed immorality also helped her to stay on the right side of the moral fence.

Nyamishana defied the common practice of wearing make-up, a decision that Ruth kept laughing at and making fun of. However, Kay always came to Nyamishana’s defence.

Whenever Kay visited Nyamishana at campus, he would give her positive advice: “Never do something you feel is not right for you, even if everyone else is doing it.”
He often used his own example: “I started by drinking little and called it a joke, but now I am bound by alcoholism. Always avoid such traps, Nyamishana. It’s sad that I can no longer control the temptation to drink alcohol, but I am less worried because this temptation is not as terrifying as getting tempted to steal or to sleep with a sugar mummy.”

Funny as it may sound, Nyamishana’s simple lifestyle is what had attracted the Benz man. He knew he had found a treasure that was not like other spoilt city girls. It was even possible that this poor village girl was still a virgin. He wanted to explore the possibility of hooking her up for a wife. So just like he had promised, he showed up again.

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