Davina Philomena Kawuma is the author of The Burnt-out End of a Rainy Day, a short story which won GENERATE’s ‘Climate and Gender (In)Justice in the City’ competition in 2021. GENERATE sits down with her to discuss her story and much more.
Neil: Could you provide a brief overview of your short story; what about the ‘Climate and Gender (In)Justice in the City’ call spoke to you?
Davina: The Burnt-out End of a Rainy Day revolves around Yago, a young Ugandan rural-urban immigrant in Kampala, and how her daily routine is affected by heavy flooding after a rainstorm.
I had the beginning waiting somewhere at the back of my head. I woke one day to what I thought was a truck coming down the driveway, only to realise that it was raining. I remember thinking about how interesting it’d be if this ended up in a short story.
When I saw the ‘Climate and Gender (In)Justice in the City’ call, it seemed like a good opportunity to start a story with rain that sounded like a car; the theme for the call focused, and fleshed out, what happened after Yago had presented herself to me as the person listening to and watching the rain from behind a window.
I wasn’t always keen on themed writing, incidentally; I once managed to convince myself that it worsened my writer’s block. Now, I love it. It challenges me. I think of it as a way to expand my range of writing and research skills. If the theme is one of those I’ve never thought to explore, I feel extra motivated to write.
Neil: What is it about the minutiae of women’s everyday lives, decisions and negotiations that fascinated – or inspired! – you to write this story? Was it a conscious decision to focus on the everyday?
Davina: Increasingly, I find myself wanting (although not always being able) to write about the everyday and the everynight – those pockets in which we repeatedly live and die. I feel led to write more about routine experiences, so.
I started out wanting to write about unfamiliar, extraordinary events, because I thought that’s how unfamiliar, extraordinary stories found you. I was extremely wary of the commonplace. You couldn’t pay me to write about someone’s experience of being in a traffic jam for three hours, for instance. “No, that’s not good material for a short story,” I’d think, “because it happens all the time.”
I have so many incomplete stories about once-in-a-lifetime events. I don’t feel moved anymore to complete them, not least because many of them are incoherent with a longing to please.
It used to be very easy for me to extract meaning from monotony. I think religion helped a lot with that. No matter how arbitrary or pointless I thought a behaviour or pattern was, religion assured me that there was a deeply spiritual dimension to it; that there was a supernatural being that had imbued it with purpose; so all I had to do to arrive at this or that spiritual purpose was to attend to the monotonous without resentment or hostility. (I guess that’s how, as a student, I was able to find cohesion, support, and stability in the idea of a rigorously time-tabled existence.)
The older I become and the further away from religion I find myself moving the more difficult it is for me to lose and find myself within repetitiveness and ritual.
So, perhaps, writing about the everyday is how I’m trying to find my way back to a place where the thought of doing the same thing for a year straight didn’t fill me with dread.
Neil: Do you think your characters share the same feeling about monotony?
Davina: I don’t think so. Why?
Neil: Does migrating to the city offer young women an escape from monotony, or reproduce it in new ways?
Davina: The last time I lived in a village, there was no electricity in my neighbourhood. I had to take a booda to the nearest township every other day to recharge my laptop and phone. But sometimes when I arrived at the township, there would be power cuts, a few of which lasted the entire day. I’d often have to return with uncharged devices. I had many such wasted trips.
After I befriended a young man, a barber who worked nearer to where I lived, I was able to charge my devices at his salon. So eventually I didn’t have to go into the township as often. I’d park myself on a bench and watch him while he worked and scolded his clients as I waited for my batteries to fill.
My friend’s clients were mostly school children. And they had the most fascinating ringworm patterns on their heads. I couldn’t believe some of the shapes I saw! They looked like crop circles, some of them! And, all along, I’d thought ringworms had gone extinct shortly after I’d finished primary school. So, well, I was stunned! But he was unfazed: there didn’t seem to be a shape that he hadn’t seen before. He was always offering one or the other version of how to get rid of the fungus, but I don’t think his customers paid him as much attention as they should.
They would hang around after their haircuts for a few hours, watching movies dubbed in Luganda on the small TV in one corner. Often, their parents or guardians would have to send a sibling to threaten them into returning home.
There was such a wide variety of movies – Hallyuwood, Bollywood, Nollywood, Hollywood movies, name it! – and my friend would play them at full volume! Somedays, I would leave at 9:00 P.M., having spent about six hours watching those movies with the customers! That’s how I discovered VJ Junior.
To this day, he’s still my favourite Ugandan Video Jockey. His translations are so original, and so funny! When I returned to Kampala, I couldn’t watch a movie in the cinema without wishing that VJ Junior was translating the words and actions into Luganda! So, yes, this was my main source of entertainment away from home.
I remember thinking how odd it was that until then it hadn’t occurred to me how much of a difference electricity makes in determining lifestyle. I’ve had several variations of this discussion with friends; we’ve spoken about surprising bodily reactions to unexpected power cuts/load shedding on, say, the weekend – how lethargic that makes some of us feel, say.
Back at home, I read a lot, in my free time, either by candle or lamplight. The rest of my free time was spent listening to a battery-powered FM-MW-SW portable radio, which helped me discover a world of fascinating Luganda programs.
I became addicted to a particular program that aired at about midday on weekdays. This is how the program worked: peoplewrote letters to the presenter, in which they discussed their problems. (I was an avid letter writer as a child so I suppose the letter-writing aspect had a lot to do with my interest in that program.) The presenter read the letters at the beginning, and then spent the next twenty or so minutes analysing the problem.
During the rest of the show, the presenter took calls from listeners. Most of the problems had a witchcraft-like narrative attached to them; invariably, someone – a step mother; a co-wife; a co-worker; a business rival – was suspected to be bewitching the writer, their family, their land, their business, and so on. Listeners often called in with recommendations to visit pastor or sheikh or omusawo omuganda so-and-so for deliverance.
But I’m digressing.
The point I’m making in so many words is that I’m sure many young women assume that the city will offer more opportunities for distraction and amusement, and in a way they are right. But after a while these opportunities lose their brand-newness. I think very few things in this world retain their freshness indefinitely. At least in my life they haven’t. (In which case a traditional lifestyle might be just as monotonous as a modern one, no?)
But maybe once we acknowledge this, how easy it is to fall into long stretches of monotony – then perhaps we start to try harder: we become more grateful for, more fully aware of, certain experiences.
That said, I think it’s important to remember that Yago’s primary reason for coming to the city was to find work.
Neil: For those unfamiliar with Kampala, how would you characterise the relationship between rainfall and the public transport the majority of urban residents rely on? Your story covers some of this in very precise detail.
Davina: We love our rain, here in Kampala, especially when it arrives after a particularly hot month (I’m looking at you, January!). Kampalans typically don’t feel pressured to open conversations with perceptive comments about the weather but on rainy days we take an almost vile pleasure in asking ourselves if it’s also raining this much in the village.
And by ‘village,’ we mean everywhere else in the country! Although this, of course, is a conceit. There are several villages in Kampala, and many of them are located very close to palatial residences. I’ve always been fascinated by how, a few metres from a posh, ultra-modern mall, you’ll find the beginning of life that’s characteristic of rural households and how a few metres from that you’ll encounter a slum proper.
My friends and I discuss this a lot: I think that in the beginning I was more offended than captivated. Because, well, I’d think “How? This is an inexcusable insult to modernity!” I think few things offend modern sensibility more than the sight of a large, permanent, free-flowing stream of sewage.
I used to be one of those who’d wax lyrical about ridding the city of such settlements. Now, though, I say “Let them stay.” I think that I’m no longer the worshipful admirer of modernity that I used to be.
It’s becoming au fait for Kampalans to speak of agropreneurship as a ‘side hustle,’ i.e., to remind everyone that will listen about how you grow tomatoes and goats and Eucalyptus in some faraway district – the more organic your farm practises and the more likely you are to run them via remote control every other weekend, ahem, the more social points you earn – so rain offers the perfect opportunity to wonder aloud if your plants and animals are thriving in the rain. Heh!
But, whatever we grow, wherever we grow it, we are aware that rainfall patterns have become more unpredictable. We’re learning to expect rain in months that were traditionally dry and dusty.
One climate trend analysis report, published ten years ago, concluded that both spring and summer rains had decreased during the past 25 years. (This was a USAID/FEWS NET report.)
However, more recent (2019) research by the Uganda National Meteorological Authority revealed that mean annual rainfall was increasing over parts of eastern, north-eastern and south-western Uganda and decreasing in the north- and central-western parts.
Other research reports decreasing trends, within the March-May rain season and increasing trends within the September-November rain season, that vary across districts.
Rain is the perfect excuse for many indiscretions. I think this might be the only city in the world where “…but you! Didn’t you see the rain?!” is an acceptable excuse for tardiness.
There’s a special kind of traffic jam we’ve come to associate with rain; many of us are mortally afraid of getting stuck in it, so if we can’t drive in the rain we’ll wait for several hours after the rain has stopped before leaving. (Certainly, correlation doesn’t imply causation; it’s not as if there are never any traffic jams on sunny days. But still.)
If I’m out with friends on a day when it rained earlier, I don’t have to explain why I can’t stay out late. As soon as someone complains that it’s too early to consider leaving, I’ll say, “It rained, remember? You want me to reach home at midnight?” “Ayayayah! You’re right! I’d forgotten,” the complainant will say.
Rain also creates many teachable moments. You learn a lot about Kampala when there’s a downpour. One, how much strain there is on our drainage systems. This is more evident in some sections of the city; there are places where you’ll know, long before you smell it, that the small stream of rainwater you must cross to get to the other side of the street contains human waste. A common joke here is that several businesspeople use the rain to empty their septic tanks!
And, two, how much difference a subsidised public transportation system would make. I’m not just talking about buses here; I’m also talking about rail.
I’m deeply puzzled that, in 2022, I can’t take a train from Kampala to Jinja, or Gulu, and back, on the same day. It’s the kind of thing that’s beyond belief and understanding, especially because it seems to me the most obvious way to decongest the city. Over the years, Kampala seems to have become the be-all and end-all of political, economic, social, and legal business: everyone wants to come here.
So, yes, there are spaces whose interaction with rainwater reminds you that Kampala is really ‘two cities in one’; Omolo-Okalebo’s fascinating research into the evolution of town planning ideas and their implementation traces the origins of this division.
I’ve known for a while that Kampala was racially segregated during colonial times – Nakasero and Kololo for Europeans, separated from the ‘African quarters’ of Nakawa and Naguru by a ‘buffer zone’ of Asian settlements in Kamwokya – but I suppose it never occurred to me how much of an impact this history has had on our present lives. (That there was a ‘native city,’ too, i.e. the Kibuga, which was in Mmengo – I don’t care much for that word, ‘native,’ so I’ll just say a city for Africans – startled me. I don’t remember learning about this in school.)
It was instructive to discover the ideas that informed the physical planning of Kampala, one of which was the so-called mosquito theory. Omolo-Okalebo unmasks the origins of a division that persists, to this day, as well as its astounding implications.
Only after reading his research did it occur to me that many of the ways in which planning, in and around Kampala, has remained deeply problematic and political are connected to that division.
It’s now easier for me to appreciate why in some sections of Kampala, a sewage pipe is fixed within hours of breaking, while in other sections a broken sewage pipe is nobody’s concern (certainly not that of city council authorities).
Kampala’s never-ending street vending ‘crisis’ also strikes me as a sign of strains that are rooted in historical/colonial planning ideologies.
Neil: What part does time play in your story? Great attention is given to the precise time of day throughout.
Davina: I guess attention is given to the precise time of day because that’s what the story demanded. The form the story took was suggested by the subject matter. I think sometimes a story does more than offer itself to you; it also suggests how it prefers to be arranged.
But, also, a common complaint from friends is that I typically write short stories that are ‘too long.’ So, for this, I NEEDED a shorter short story, so that I would better fulfil the requirements of the contemporary short (3000 – 5000 words). I didn’t want too many characters interacting, and/or too many things happening to them, over too long a period, as there would have been too many loose ends to tie up.
Neil: I’m always interested in the possibilities provided by limitations, such as, in this case, only having up to 5,000 to work with.
Davina: Yes, paradoxically, sometimes the best way to open up possibilities is to limit yourself. I’m doing this to myself, a lot, these days.
I recently compiled a list of a few of my favourite lines from my favourite, and then assigned myself a task – to write short stories whose titles are those lines. The other day I had another look at the list, especially this line – “Let the boys bring flowers in last month’s newspapers – and I instantly despaired. “It can’t be done,” I thought, “this is too limiting.” But it will be done. I will have to find a way.
Neil: How do you think temporalities are changing in this age of climate change?
Davina: I’d be lying if I said I’ve attended to the ways in which climate change might have affected my relationship with time. It’s something to think about. Meanwhile, I suppose I can extrapolate from my experience with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has had its own catastrophic ‘climatic changes,’ albeit over a much shorter period.
What became very obvious very quickly, especially during lockdowns, was the stark difference between the passage of time in my head and the passage of time outside my head. On the inside, it would seem as if I’d lived through months – I was often unaccountably exhausted – although the clock would keep assuring me that it had only been a few hours since I’d last been outside the house.
I have a handful of friends for whom the pandemic was one continuous episode of bent time. For many of us, there was little talk of the future; it was mostly “You know what?, let me try to get through today.” We had relied for our entire lives on a very structured and standardised and linear way of measuring change, and but now that way was proving useless in the face of a change so unexpected and so extreme that it seemed to demand a completely different way of measuring time.
One of my friends is very interested in the idea of time as a series of loops rather than a linear narrative; during the first lockdown, she shared a link to a TikTok video that explained the difference between monochromatic and polychromatic time/culture, which helped me immensely (if only to remind me that there are other ways to conceive of time that aren’t restricted to scientific viewpoints).
I guess that’s where the connection between the two – a) my experience with time-warping lockdowns and b) my perception of how many of us [mis]understand climate change (and its impacts) – starts. I’ve noticed that most climate change related discussions around me tend to privilege a mostly linear future.
I think many of us, when we’re thinking about climate change, are invariably imagining a scenario (usually a bleak one) so many decades into the future. And then we’re asking ourselves “OK, what do we need to do now, today, to avoid bleak scenarios W, X, Y, and Z?” And we’re being told that we need to do A, B, C, and D, in that very specific order. But, sometimes, because of the time scales involved, it doesn’t seem as if we’ll even be here for the bleakness – which all perhaps makes it extra-difficult for many of us to feel enough concern or interest.
Another thing. More a general feeling than anything else. There’s temptation, I think, to behave as if there isn’t a-long-time-ago that led us to this moment – so intense is our focus on the present and future. But, this is all part of the anthropocentric point of view, of course.
There’s the non-human perspective to consider, but which perhaps isn’t necessarily broadcast with as much urgency. Plants and animals can’t contribute to discussions, during climate change conferences, in ways that we’re used to appreciating. So I think we’ll have to look for their contributions elsewhere. Say, in the drastic shifts of their ranges due to temperature changes.
Neil: The story highlights assumptions made from afar: how the city is imagined from the village; how the tin roofs and plastic sheets of Bushishi are thought of from the multistorey building above; and the way that Kampala’s “lower classes” are viewed by the city’s “self-appointed elites.” What was the thinking behind this? Do you think there is a lack of understanding between those living in rural and urban areas, and also between those living in different parts of the city?
Davina: Empathy is expensive. That’s why stories are important: they make empathy slightly more affordable. Every time a story offers me an opportunity to walk in someone else’s shoes, I find that the costs of empathising with other people are lessened.
I think we’ve all at some point had to wrestle with growing discrepancies between a) our perceptions of what is real and b) what is generally agreed by others to constitute reality. I’m very interested in how we deal with the distress and suspicion associated with that awareness. The conversations I’ve had to have with myself about this, over the last few years, have been instructive.
I’ve had very long discussions with myself about class. I’ve always been wary of standard class categorizations – lower, middle, upper – because I’ve never felt that they accurately describe this society.
I remember reading a list of requirements – what it takes to count as a middle class African – compiled by a multinational company (I can’t remember which one, now) – and being shocked to discover ‘has relatives abroad’ (or a closely-worded equivalent) on the list! (That was back when the ‘Africa rising’ narrative was emerging. I haven’t re-checked that list in a while; perhaps it’s since been updated.) Right then I thought that there was something deeply problematic about such a description of class. Things to consider in relation to this requirement:
Is every Ugandan abroad there because their family can afford to send them to a $15,000/semester university? What percentage of ‘relatives abroad’ is employed in industries that are required by law to pay a minimum wage? How many Ugandans leave the country because they are desperate to find work? How many Ugandans abroad are there ‘okukuba ekyeeyo,’ i.e., to ‘beat the broom?’ (Beating the broom is colloquial for ‘menial jobs.’ Note, though, that a menial job abroad might pay much better than a ‘respectable’ white-collar job here.) Etcetera.
A while back I used to say that, in Uganda, all it takes to be middle class is to own a smartwatch or an iPhone. My friends would laugh this away as yet another one of my ‘jokes.’ But in truth I’ve always felt that the lines that delimit class in this society are extremely porous, if they exist at all.
The other day on radio there was a discussion about pseudo-classist views that we have: how most so-called middle-class Ugandans are a medical emergency away from becoming lower class. It’s one of very few discussions that has tapped into my scepticism about class-based descriptions. I felt so vindicated. Because for so long my contention has been that many Ugandans who refer to themselves as middle class do not actually occupy a position that’s intermediate between what are traditionally known as the lower and upper classes.
If we MUST define ourselves in purely classist terms, then at the very least we should use lists that we’ve compiled ourselves – lists with requirements that account for socio-economic and cultural differences.
Neil: The story focuses primarily on the experiences of young women and their rural-urban migration(s) in search of (better) employment. Yago is central, but we also learn something of those who came before her (Scholastica) and those who will come in the future (Shewri). Why did you choose to centre these experiences? Rather than, say, other sections of Kampala’s poor or working class?
Davina: By 2020, 52.6% of our population was aged less than 18 years and 23.5% of our population was aged 18-30 years. In 2016/2017, the unemployment rate for males and females aged 18-30 years was 11.4% and 14.7%, while in 2019/2020, the unemployment rate for males and females aged 18-30 years was 13% and 13% (all these statistics are available on The Uganda Bureau of Statistics website).
In 2020, The Palladium Group estimated the national unemployment rate at 9.2% and the unemployment rate for youth aged 18-30 at 13.3% but added this caveat:
But the unemployment statistics for Uganda are misleading. In reality, Ugandans, and especially young Ugandans, are highly likely to be underemployed, in precarious and non-rewarding work, or in jobs that cannot offer decent incomes. 83.5% of the Ugandan population aged between 15-29 work in informal jobs, and that figure is 10% higher for young women than men.
I like that underemployment was mentioned, because I often worry that we don’t pay enough attention to this aspect. Youth un- and under-employment has loomed over us for a while; it will likely prove to be our greatest challenge in the coming years.
So, it was easy enough to imagine thousands of young women out there, of whom Yago, Scholastica, and Shewri are merely representative, craving the self-direction and self-reliance that’s assumed to come with employment (moreover in the city). That the reality might prove different is another story altogether. At the heart of it is, I think, that idea of being able to support oneself, and gaining some degree(s) of freedom from the control of others.
As for your question about why not other sections of Kampala’s poor or working class, I’ll refer you to my previous comments about class. I think one of the easiest things to do is to delude ourselves into thinking that our experiences are very different because it was decided by a multinational that we belong to different classes. I think there are many ways in which the experiences of the so-called middle class intersect with the experiences of the so-called poor.
Another thing: I’m not sure that current definitions of poverty are appropriate or helpful. Perhaps the issue is who sets the standards: who decides that if you cannot access a certain amount of money every day, you are ‘poor?’ (There are several people who have made more articulate arguments about this, thankfully, so I’ll say no more.)
Neil: What do you think is next for Yago?
Davina: I suppose she’ll stay in Kampala for the next few years to suss out her options. I think that, despite her discovery that life in Kampala isn’t all it was cracked up to be, she’s still feeling hopeful.
I think she’s still confident that her desires will be fulfilled. Although I hope she understands that she cannot expect that ‘hard work’ is all it’ll take to raise her profile. She has to properly citify herself; she has to learn what it means to ‘network,’ ahem!
Neil: And how do young urban migrants citify themselves? I’m thinking in particular about young women like Yago, and what citifying might mean beyond working on her social capital.
Davina: Citification might mean that Yago will change the way she speaks, depending on which effect she wants to achieve.
She could choose to upgrade to ‘real English’ if she wants Kampalans to think she’s of a high social, economic, or educational status. If she can convincingly simulate an American or British accent, that’s even better! (I’ve noticed that some radio stations here will only employ you if you’re a third culture kid, or at least sound like one. Perhaps if Yago could teach herself to sound like a third culture kid then, well, her prospects might improve much faster.)
Or she could incorporate more Uglish (Ugandan-English) expressions, which are more informal and conversational. ‘Push me’ to mean ‘accompany me’ or ‘thooooose ends’ to mean ‘somewhere very far’ or ‘extend’ to mean ‘push up.’ That sort of thing. There are spaces in which Uglish could do wonders for you.
Or she could adopt what we’ve come to call ‘luyaaye.’ Luyaaye is a language that’s commonly used by young people here. Initially, because it was associated with ghetto life and culture, it was stigmatised. Now, though, you will sometimes find luyaaye words in ad copy on corporate billboards. What fascinates me most about luyaaye is that there are several versions of it.
If you can speak Luganda, you can expect to understand some luyaaye. There are however some versions whose point seems to be to obscure rather than to reveal – to exclude more people than it includes. Yet these are the versions to which I’m most attracted – the ones that remain impervious to all my efforts to extract meaning from them, and which make conversation impenetrable.
I’ve sat in taxis and tried to eavesdrop on conversations, in specific versions of luyaaye, between taxis and conductors. No matter how intently I listen, and I try extra-hard to concentrate, I never understand a thing! The words are familiar – most luyaaye words are structurally similar to Luganda words – yet they sound like encrypted messages!
Luyaaye is generally very dynamic; a word that means X today might mean Y tomorrow. It’s very flexible. New words are coined nearly every other day; words which I consider strikingly original. I’m a huge fan of word play, and if there’s something luyaaye excels at, it’s word play!
Consider ‘okukuba,’ for instance, which means ‘to beat.’ In standard Luganda ‘kirabika obakuba’ means ‘it seems/appears that you beat them.’ But in luyaaye it means ‘it seems/appears that they find/consider you to be very [sexually] attractive.’ For expressions like that, all you might need to do to correctly interpret what’s being said is a) understand the context from which the conversation arose, and b) attend to the facial expressions and body language of the speaker. This would be the version that is easily understood by everyone. But then you might hear the same expression in another context, and it might mean something completely different!
I’m a huge fan of Fik Fameica’s music; it’s filled with that kind of clever word play. I love his unapologetic mix of Luganda and English. How he uses unusual images/metaphors. Of his city being in his blood (“[e]kibuga kyange kindi mu musaayi”). Of a lovesickness that’s akin to the digging of a borehole. Et cetera.
I also find his luyaaye lyrics very amusing, although I often have to ask my younger cousin to translate them! (So many times while I’m listening to his lyrics, I hope that someday I will be THAT creative.) The official video for Midnight Drum (Fik Fameica, A Pass, Rouge ft Dj Maphorisa) is one of my favourite videos shot in Kampala; although it is about four-years-old, several scenes in it strike me as excellent ways to summarise life here.
Citification might also mean slipping into hustler mode – Yago might have to do what we call ‘okuyiiya.’ This probably isn’t the best translation, but I think of okuyiiya as creativity in thought or action; although I understand from its usage in certain contexts that the creativity in question isn’t always meant for good. Sometimes it can mean holding down three jobs or gigs at the same time, two of which might involve underhanded activities.
Which isn’t to say that there are no underhanded gigs in the villages. Sure, they are. But, perhaps, because the cost of living there is still relatively much lower, you might not necessarily feel as pressured to make money at any cost and by whatever means; in the village it is still much easier to grow your own food, I feel, while unless you have a roof-top garden in Kampala you have to buy whatever you eat.
The pace is generally slower the further away you get from Kampala, which is another thing my friends and I discuss a lot, by the way. How, whenever we return to Kampala after only a weekend away in another part of the country, we realise all over again how rat race-y life here is. How you can almost feel the stress quickly descending in a hot and airless cloud the closer you get to the city’s centre.
There’s another common saying – ‘Kampala si kibuga kya ba yala,’ which loosely translates into ‘Kampala isn’t a city for broke people’ – that seems to recommend a preoccupation with money-making activities if you hope to survive here. An old song of Cinderella Sanyu’s – Selecta – speaks to this preoccupation.
Selecta recognises the importance of money-making while acknowledging the extreme stress and difficulties one is likely to encounter in the process – how on one hand you need to work hard so you won’t be broke but how on the other hand “making money is getting much harder…city yeyongera okukaluba” (“making money is getting much harder…[life in] the city keeps getting harder”):
“Money money got me working on a double…tax money, rent money, food money, fuel money, power money, water money, health money…what?!…mmenyeka, sebaka, ntegeka, ntereka, no matter, ssente tezikoleka!” (“Money money got me working on a double…tax money, rent money, food money, fuel money, power money, water money, health money…what?!…I break, I can’t sleep, I prepare, I keep, no matter, money is hard to make/unmakeable!”)
Citification might mean becoming more worldly – less of a ffala. A ffala in this context being someone who can easily be taken advantage of. There’s yet another popular saying here – ‘Kampala si biziimbe,’ which loosely translates into ‘Kampala isn’t [made up of only] buildings’ – that’s meant to warn against being the overly trusting kind. Be careful, Yago. Be vigilant, Yago. Many people here are constantly thinking of ways to exploit you. That sort of thing.
Yesterday, there was an article in the newspapers about human trafficking. In recent years, there have been increasing reports about Ugandan victims of trafficking; if the stories aren’t in the newspapers, they are on WhatsApp or on the telly.
Many of the victims in these reports were/are employed as domestic workers in The Middle East. By 2019, the total number of externalised migrant workers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Somalia, Kuwait, and Jordan was 25,363 (up from 2,539 in 2016). In 2020, that number dropped to 9,026, which I suppose had a lot to do with Covid-19 related travel restrictions. (I wait to see what the numbers will look like for 2022.)
Some organisations, including Migrant Workers’ Voice have petitioned the government to stop the externalisation of labour to The Middle East, pending investigations into workers’ welfare. While a few government officials have claimed that most of the stories about human trafficking are false, and that the victims are to blame for passing through ‘the wrong channels’ to go abroad, some external recruitment companies have been deregistered. There have also been safe labour migration campaigns meant to inform and correct misconceptions about who is permitted to work where, under what conditions, and why.
Several government organisations, including The Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development, have pledged to ensure that labour contracts and agreements with the relevant countries acknowledge and protect the rights of Ugandan migrants. In 2019, a Private Members bill seeking to amend the Employment Act of 2006 was tabled in parliament.
Although much remains to be done, the Ugandan government has been commended for, among other things, identifying more victims and signing the National Referral Guidelines for Management of Victims of Trafficking.
But I don’t think the only victims are those who migrate to work as, say, housekeepers. There must be victims here, too. Moreover, and this is related to an earlier point, I don’t think it’s only the unemployed who might feel compelled to leave in order to improve their standard of living. I think underemployment can be just as demotivating and frustrating.
So, yes, this might be one of several traps for Yago to avoid. She must not think that everyone who offers to get her a job abroad, and is willing to meet all the initial costs – passport application fees; visa fees; air ticket fare – means well. It has to occur to her that a Good Samaritan might actually be a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing; that if something seems too good to be true, then it probably is.
Yago’s citification might also mean changing the way she dresses. It might mean frequenting more fashionable nightclubs, eateries, or boutiques.
Maureen Nantume has a song titled Kampala si biziimbe. “Kampala si biziimbe…twagala money okuba ku mulembe,” she sings. (“Kampala isn’t [made up of only] buildings…we want money [in order] to be fashionable.”) If you don’t have money, you can’t conform to whatever is currently considered elegant or stylish, and if you aren’t elegant or stylish, who will give you their complete attention? And so on.
I suppose, then, that ‘Kampala si biziimbe’ can be double- or even triple-edged (depending on how one chooses to interpret it).
Anyway.
I think whatever Yago chooses to do, how she chooses to reinvent herself, will depend on the public persona she wants to present while she’s in the city.
Neil: The city is presented as having a transitory feel to it: somewhere that can be escaped at any time if needed. Meanwhile, Nongo offers something more assuring, only a bus-ride away, with less intense rain, later-waking birds, and men who don’t make Yago as wary as their counterparts in Kampala. How did you approach the urban-rural relationship when conceiving your story?
Davina: It’s still difficult for me to resist the temptation to idealise rural life. (This is something I’m actively attempting to unlearn, though, so do send that gift hamper to congratulate me.) I’ve always been slightly romantic about life in the places where my parents were born and grew up (Masaka and Luweero) for instance. Those were places we visited maybe thrice a year for one or two days.
Fetching water from a borehole, rather than simply turning a tap, taking baths in the open, say in a hole behind a banana plantation, rather than in a bathtub – as a child, that’s terribly exciting. But as an adult, perhaps not so much.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve visited more often, and yet there remain many things concerning life there about which I have little or no knowledge. As a child, I think my relationship with the unfamiliarity of those settings was ambivalent. Now, I’m being deliberate about embracing it; I’m trying to find useful ways to engage with all the things that still appear strange to me, so many years later.
I think it will become increasingly difficult to escape the city, or at the very least the trimmings associated with city life; the consensus seems to be that we must become more modern, which I feel means that we must citify as many places as possible as soon as possible.
Two years ago, parliament approved the creation of up to 15 new cities over a four-year period. In theory, this will improve service delivery, accelerate urbanisation, and encourage economic growth. In practice, though, this will likely complicate several matters that already pose huge challenges, such as effective solid waste disposal, public transport and traffic management, and pollution control.
Neil: Femicide and violence against women in the city is a theme throughout the story: the domestic violence that takes place in the multi-story building, the disappeared and dismembered “septic tank women”, and Yago’s own decision to stay on for the nightshift rather than risk Kampala’s “lonely and flooded” night streets. Gender intersects with class here, as it is poor and working class women who are vulnerable in these situations, but there are also environmental factors to consider. Could you explain how you conceived these three elements connecting with one another
Davina: I couldn’t explain how, Neil, because I didn’t conceive them as, you know, three elements connecting one with another. I don’t write like that. I deeply envy people who can, people for whom everything comes together during the process. I think it’s a very clever thing to be able to do, and at some point I hope to be able to do it. For now, though, I remain one of those that’s sometimes surprised by what happens in a story that I’m writing, possibly because I’m not always going in with an inflexible idea of what will (or should) happen.
(Of course, there’s a connection between the elements. I don’t mean to suggest that there’s none. Except, I wasn’t thinking of these connections, necessarily, during the writing process. I feel as if that’s the sort of thing one would do before writing, say when one is ‘planning’ the story, outlining ‘plot points,’ and so on. I typically don’t write like that. I’m not a plotter or planter: I’m more a pantser: I write as the story leads.)
I write about things that interest me. That’s the short of it. For me, that’s how stories start. Violence interests me deeply – I think a lot about those who inflict it with pride, and those who humbly receive it, for instance. I especially think about what violence says about us, as a species.
I’ve always been intrigued by the night, and darkness – I’m a proud nyctophiliac – I keep telling friends who care to listen that it will do our species a world of good if we allocate more night hours to ourselves.
I’m very, very, very interested in aloneness, too – how we mostly spend the time between birth and death pathologizing it.
I can’t say I deliberately tie or link together some subjects or ideas – that would be insincere. Nevertheless, I’m not surprised that you picked up on what you picked up on. Consciously or subconsciously, those are some of the things that fill my thoughts; I couldn’t stop obsessing about them even if I tried.
I don’t see how you can be a Ugandan woman reading a newspaper article about the discovery of a woman in a septic tank, or about the stalled investigations into the murders of some +20 women, a few years ago, and not think about femicide. Some of these incidents are reported in such a matter-of-fact manner that I worry. I worry about becoming inured to horror.
Neil: I’m very interested in the methodology and methods of research, and (crudely put) there is often a division between those that have a set out hypothesis who then go out to provide/disprove it, and those who allow themselves to be guided or led (to whatever extent) by what they find. I definitely fall within the latter camp, and it feels like the pantser of the research world.
Davina: The pantser of the research world. That’s interesting. I suppose it depends. I think there are fields that lend themselves more easily to pantsing. I also think it depends on how willing or not one is to collect information that’s not necessarily related to what they are researching – information that might even, at first glance, seem irrelevant to one’s research topic.
I think what I now like best about the field with capital F is what I used to dislike about it – the possibility that so many unexpected things await you there. What shocked me most about my first field experience was how easy it is to return empty-handed if the sole reason you went there was to [dis]prove something. That experience alarmed me into appreciating the importance of flexibility and improvisation.
Neil: The story demonstrates the impact that changing weather patterns can have at the quotidian level. From having to count out candles and select certain items of clothing, to the placement of different basins and jerry cans around the central character’s home. What do you think such day-to-day details can offer readers?
Davina: One of my most recent fears is that I’ve spent the better part of my life wearing a blindfold. That in some way I was trapped within an altered consciousness that made it impossible for me to see beyond what I looked at. I’ve become possessed by the idea that I haven’t paid nearly as much attention to X number of issues as I should have because I’ve been on auto-pilot. I’m trying very hard to, as it were, make up for lost time.
I’m trying very hard to be extra-attentive. It’s very difficult to attend to everyday things. Familiarity breeds contempt and what-not. But I’m trying. And I hope that my readers will also try.
I also think that in many ways our lives are accumulations of bland moments – counting things, re-arranging things – that’s how we get by. In Yago’s case, with the basins and jerrycans, we’re also looking at an issue of space. There isn’t much to begin with; it’s not as if there’s another room in which she might keep them. And she needs to save as much water as she can, otherwise she might have to buy it from somewhere else if there’s an interruption in supply.
Lastly, I think the average woman’s embodied experiences with water – especially with all its domestic uses, i.e. cleaning, washing, cooking, and so on – often bring one to different conclusions about what, say, safety means.
Neil: What do you hope readers take from your story?
Davina: My eternal hope is that at least one other person will enjoy reading my stories. What they choose (or find themselves able) to take from my stories isn’t up to me, I don’t think.
Obviously, I would like it to be said that my story encouraged someone to look anew at issue X. Because that’s what all my favourite stories do: they awaken me to new ways of seeing and especially of being seen. Naturally, I want this for my stories. But I can only hope. I try to write good stories, and by that I mean what I understand to be good stories, and then leave it at that.
Neil: What are you working on now?
Davina: At the moment, nothing. I’m doing what I do when I’m not writing: I’m reading.
Neil: I’ve got to ask – what are you currently reading? Anything good?
Davina: Yes! I’ve just finished Beatrice Lamwaka’s Butterfly Dreams and Other Stories (I chuckled through so many stories in this collection; so many finer nuances that made me think “this is sooooo UG!”) and Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother (I haven’t read a funnier book in a while. I laughed and laughed until I couldn’t breathe! Eh!).
I’m halfway through Robert Macfarlane’s Mountains of the Mind. (This is my introduction to ‘mountain literature,’ a genre with which I’d never interacted before. It was recommended by a friend after I mentioned my plans to climb Mt. Rwenzori. I recommend it to whoever is planning to climb a mountain for the first time.)
I’m also re-reading Dilman Dila’s A Killing in the Sun. I don’t know if this happens to you but, sometimes, years after reading books, I’ll realise that I didn’t read them creatively enough. Perhaps because I wasn’t ready for them.
Creative reading is a skill that one develops with more practice. Years later, when your imagination has matured, when your knowledge base has widened, you will likely read a book very differently. So, I like to occasionally go through the books I own and ask myself which ones I should re-read. I have recently re-read Novuyo Rosa Tshuma’s House of Stone. After A Killing, it’ll be Helen Oyeyemi’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours.
I have also been reading short articles about African mythology, conspiracy theories, ghost-hunting, and werecats because, full disclosure, I have speculative fiction writing ambitions! I had no idea ‘wereleopard’ was a word! Hah! I guess one does learn something new every day, after all!
Neil: What does ‘climate justice’ mean to you?
Davina: I’ll try to answer this in a roundabout way – by asking if you think it’s possible to reach consensus about when, exactly, the phenomenon that we now know as climate change emerged. Was it in the last century? Or did the signs start to appear much, much earlier?
The theme of my reading club this month is ‘incest.’ One of the selected readings is a paper about royal incest within Egyptian kingship(s). What’s really interesting is that the piece is discussing pharaohs and language and symbols but there’s mention of climate change there, too. So, again, how far back does this animal called climate change go?
Amitav Ghosh argues that our current climate crisis is much older than it’s generally made out to be – he traces its origins to European settler colonial violence from all those hundreds of years ago.
Ghosh speaks of a past that became the future and a future that’s quickly becoming the past. What might this mean within a context of deciding what is fair – determining who should be responsible for X proportion of the climate change crisis, or who should be rewarded, and at what time T, for avoiding X amount of future harm to the ozone layer?
Amidst talk about green colonialism, carbon colonialism, and all their near and distant cousins, shouldn’t, I don’t know, the very definition of ‘justice’ change?
