When i was a little younger; living through my 20’s, i was sure i had the world figured out, and with that my own place in it. I always managed to tick off all the right boxes, and in all the ways that count, was the first-born African daughter of my parent’s dreams. I passed through school without any major incident; scoring highly in the subjects i applied myself too, engaging in the kind of co-curricular activities that earned me several certificates, and being lucky enough not to get caught in any school scandals that would label me a ‘problem child’. I went on to law school, fulfilling my parent’s dreams for me, and at a time, my own. I got a master’s degree from a top uni from the states, because i could, and because that was all the ways in which i was guaranteed to be successful, and attain the sort of life stability and upward career trajectory that would lead to a top U.N position, or something of the sorts.
During and after school, i found employment easily or rather, employment found me, because somehow i had never had to apply for a job. I was earning over the average young person my age, and had i stayed on that track, i am sure i would still be on that ‘upward rise’ to a mainstream success story. I was the cousin that others were told to aspire to. I should add that i quite enjoyed being ‘successful’, and it was the source of a lot of my pride and self-worth to know that i was attaining and achieving in the ways i was. There were times i’d get inklings about other paths, but at the time i did not have the real need to pursue these further, and lacked enough to reason to break what was working.
You might imagine that this kind of life, which i had been taught to want and attain, and made a lot of other people, and myself (mostly) happy would be quite difficult to upend. And yet, the takeaway from today’s read is that i did indeed end up leaving all i knew and once believed behind, and this is how we end up here; you reading, and me sharing the glorious details of my last couple of years with you, in the hope that if you need it, it will spark your own upheaval. Read On.
As a child i had wanted to be a writer. I would fill my exercise books with stories i spent handwriting when i should have been out playing like the rest of the eight year olds. At ten, i was convinced i had written a best-seller, and my parents, so loving and generous they were with me, obliged. My father, himself a great lover of literature and drama despite the fact that he was an economist, was the more supportive of this my dream. He sourced a printery for the book and got a photographer to come to school and take a few pictures during one lunch break. His belief in my abilities had me thinking myself the missing part in the Mary-Kate & Ashley Olsen book series i was obsessed with. The book I had written was titled, ‘One of a Kind’ and was hugely, if not entirely, inspired by one of the stories i had read in the Olsen twin’s ‘Two of a Kind’. It was a few pages about a sleepover gone wrong, and i do not remember if we did anything with it at the time past the copies that we had at home, and maybe those i shared at school with a few close friends. On occasion as i rummage through some of the storage that contains most of our childhood memories(our parents kept most of everything), i will find a few copies of it. Whenever my siblings or i fish it out, i laugh at the questionable grammar but marvel at great audacity i had back then.
Somewhere along the way, it became known to me that i needed to pursue a more sensible path, and so, enter law. I continued writing passively; in my early adult years, i had a weekly weekend column in a national newspaper, i wrote for teens magazines, i kept a blog, published a short story, wrote Op-eds, that kind of thing. I did all of this on the sidelines of my big-girl jobs and responsibilities. There are many things that happened in between then and now, but i will omit those and fast-forward so that we can get us back to where i am today.
In 2020, the world as i knew it changed. I had just been recovering from our father’s passing in 2018 which in itself was the start of an intense and pivotal part of my life. I had also spent the past year moving and living in another country, far away from all I knew and held dear for the first time in my life. And then, a global pandemic happened. I can remember now the exact moment i first heard about Covid-19. My friend’s mother had been in China on business and in asking her how that was going, she had casually mentioned that there was some sort of virus moving around in some parts, but far enough from her that we did not need to worry. That was January 2020. By March, the world had been declared unsafe, the airports closed to anyone returning, with the day and night news filled with horrors yet unseen and beyond unsettling. I was filled with more fear, grief and uncertainty than i had ever felt before.
I spent most of that time questioning the very foundation of what i had come to believe about the world. I finally had the permission to reflect on thoughts that had been swimming through my mind, quieted down by reminders that this was just the way the world was. I doubted my faith in God. I questioned the very idea of work as i/we had come to know it. I missed my father. The stillness of the world allowed me to want that more for myself. Nothing of what i knew or had thought i wanted made sense anymore, and i was somehow glad for it.
The events that followed the pandemic and all else that transpired 2020-2022 left me changed. The changes were subtle and almost unrecognisable at start. We were after all usually isolated and cordoned off from each other, and i used that chance to spend as much time as i could by myself. I welcomed the silence of my own thoughts and i began to watch myself loose interest in a lot of things, places, goals and people. In my questioning i was beginning to form new answers for myself; crafting a different relationship with the spiritual and allowing myself to form a new relationship with our father, who was now an ancestor. I transformed the idea of God past what i had known(I have written somewhat about this already). I allowed myself to want and believe different things. It was as if amidst the great pause that was forced onto us, i had the chance to form and reemerge; a gift given to me if i wanted it. I wanted it, and i fully gave into whatever i/we were experiencing.
It is those sometimes slow gradual changes that have left me almost unrecognisable, and yet more me than i have ever been. It is what makes me certain that i am prepared for what is coming next in the world, and that i, like many of you, have a unique and specific role to play.
One of the things that began to happen during that time, is i started to find my words again. I had given up creative writing in 2018, after writing and publishing a short story that had hit too close to home; readers who knew me often thought i had written it about myself. I had now relegated myself to political commentary and works that felt safer to explore. I do enjoy that kind of writing too, but in truth, what i was doing was running from anything that could leave me feeling that vulnerable again. I did not know if i had predicted my own future by sheer chance, but i had the feeling that if i continued to write, at least like that, i would be forced to delve and face many truths about myself, the world, and all else that i was content not knowing.
I kept receiving nudges, coming through friends and associates and dreams and and…about pursuing a different path. Somehow, these once dreams i had had as a child, where all i wanted to be was a writer were coming back, and stronger. I allowed myself to daydream sometimes, but more than anything, i fought hard and long against it. There were a million and one reasons why it was the crazy thing to do. Which African quits their ‘good’ job to pursue creative interests! I could not imagine anything more absurd, and i had certainly not ever known anyone in my close circle who had been brave enough and had ‘succeeded’. I can be quite stubborn and nobody has greater resolve than i when i decide against something. I resisted and dug my heels even further. I threw myself into the jobs i was good at, even though i was quite bored and disillusioned by the lies and hypocrices of international development in which i was now an expert. At a point, it felt like a tug and pull for my soul, and finally, I relented. I retired myself from employment, and settled down to write, full time. After i did, i was an eager beaver (i am also the kind of person who when i believe, i tend to evangelise. my friends say i make an excellent pastor). I told friends and colleagues and others that i was now a writer, no more of that corporate girlie stuff. Most were concerned for me. “Well, how are you going to make any money?” “Oh girl, are you sure?”, “I have never known any successful Ugandan writers…except Makumbi.” “Do you think they’ll let another African in?”
I will spare you the details of all the ways i too self-doubted. There was also a lot of support. On many occasion, a friend would read one of my blogs and write to me, saying that they were inspired. My brother, my hubs held my hand and encouraged me to pursue it. I felt encouraged enough to keep on keeping on. I was writing, and learning to trust what felt like a call from beyond myself. By the end of the year 2023, i had written (and eventually published) my first collection of poems. The book, ebyeshongoro bya Debra, is in itself not what i had initially thought or wanted to write. I am a writer of many things, but never had i thought myself a poet. And yet over the course of months, the poems flowed through me, coming in as stories that pulled from history, my own present, and seemed to predict the future. I wrote about Congo, Palestine and Sudan. I wrote about the grief of loosing our father and the anxiety i feel as a Ugandan. I wrote about the ghosts of past; Belgium and Leopold, Omukama Kabalega, Kamaranga of the Bachwezi, and many others whose stories were loud and needing to be told and retold. I wrote carrying griefs, losses and hopes. I now fully recognise that this call is not entirely about me, and i have surrendered to what wants to come through me.
You’d think that once you say yes, the universe lands all you need at your feet. Ha! The journey since i answered this call and committed to showing up in the world to do it has been one of the most challenging yet thrilling ones i have experienced yet. Never before has my will and knowing been as been tested, and yet never before have i been more sure of myself. I look around, and the world is burning. I tell myself that this has always been the way of the world; there have always been wars, poverty, disease, inequality. My spirit rejects this as a justification, for she too is headstrong about what she believes. She says to me, “even if that were true” and she does not believe it is, “ it is not enough to make that okay.” She makes it as though i can do something about any of this.
I try to find other ways to appease her and myself, and make both of us feel better about the world. I tell myself that at least my life is good, better than most; i am loved, i have never gone hungry and the places i call home are safe-ish, for there are no bombs falling from the skies. I daily do my gratitude practice and i sit at my altar and meditate, thanking the ancestors and spirits that hold me, and mine, in all the ways they do. These always make me feel better and i swear by my rituals and practices, and yet somehow, somehow it still does not feel like it is enough.
I sit and ponder about why i am suddenly more prone to uncertainty and at-times even despair about the world and my place in it. I try and put it off to the particular crossroad i am at; after leaving behind all prescribed ideas of security that i was conditioned to want. So many times i have threatened, wanted to even, and yet failed to drop this pursuit and return to what is familiar, “more stable”. I tell myself that these feelings about the world are driven by my own realities, none of which are new or unique to just me. Perhaps this is indeed the artists’ curse and burden, and that is just the way that goes. I tell myself these things, and still, it does not ring entirely true.
I know there is something deeper happening, something that i need to articulate. And so, because writing is a form of spiritual practice for me, i come on here to seek it out, and share it with you. I share it with you because i am also aware that these feelings and questions are not mine alone, and so perhaps you too have been tugging and pulling at me, asking that i seek and write and feel with you.
The world is a strange strange place. Here we are, having lived and survived through a global pandemic, well, what is left of us anyway, and yet we seem to not be so changed by it in the ways we should. I find myself wanting to scream out loud to anyone who will listen, is it just me who thinks that we should not be trying to return to this? Surely I cannot be the only one who believes that spending years in isolation; afraid of the world and each other should have been a wakeup call for us to completely change the ways in which we live, work, and what we consider important.
We seem to have regressed. It is easy to loose track of how many global crises we are living through; the wars are endless, and so are the economic disparities that fashion our lives almost intolerable. The earth is suffering, and even when we are the ones with the power to change it, we do not. We are all actively witnessing a genocide in which the richest and most powerful countries in the world choose to aid and abet the mass murder of a group of people. It is endless, it is endless. It is true perhaps, that none of this is new or surprising, and that most of us while we feel unsettled, also feel powerless to what we can do. This too is my struggle, and still i struggle to simply accept this as our fate.
“We all have a role to play”, my spirit reminds me on the days i feel like it is all too much. “Do your part, and trust that it will be met and amplified, and that it is significant enough to cause ripple effects”.
And so, i continue to write, with the intentions to fuel you, stand in witness to what we are living through, and remind you that we are all we have got. And that we cannot afford to despair. We can dream new things. We can form new things, if only we are courageous enough to answer the call and surrender to it. We all have a role to play, mine at present is to channel, and write, and share with you. I hope that you will find what yours is, or allow it to find you, for we need all of us if we are to conjure new worlds into existence.