Many
Ugandans make that traditional journey home in time for Christmas. My family
and I did not make that journey in time for Christmas but rather travelled
through Christmas. For that reason, we
had our Christmas in three different cities – Kampala where I had a pancake and
rolex breakfast with Santa; In Addis
Ababa where injera was served with tsebhi for Christmas dinner; and in
Pretoria where fast food was the mainstay of boxing day.
The
memoires of Christmas in three countries are quickly eroded by my experience
with the Immigration staff at O.R Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg,
South Africa (SA) at entry. In a quite ‘un-african’
way I would say, my wife and I were asked to prove that ‘our children’ were ‘our
children’. This was courtesy of a new
South African immigration law that requires parents or
guardians travelling into or out of SA with minors to present an official
unabridged or certified birth certificate for each child. Because of this law (which is still being
challenged in the courts of law), we spent 6 hours at immigrations proving that
indeed ‘our children were our children’, and that we had not kidnapped our own
children.
After a six-hour wait, my drowsy advice was for the immigrations folks
to install a rapid oraquick DNA
tester as a full-proof fast confirmatory procedure of parentage.
Meanwhile, while I was at it in SA, my brother Julius a.k.a Julio was on
a Christmas expedition in the UK. An
expedition to do all the things that he missed to do when he was younger – one
of those things was to swim. To swim in a kids’ pool – call it euphoria or
hoopla. Well, I’m talking about a 40+
barrel-chested herculean who could take a clean shot at the WBA heavy weight
championship 2016. On one of those compelling Christmas afternoons, Julio did
his characteristic lazy swag out of his Holiday Inn (London) room towards the kids’
pool, right besides the main swimming pool. His waltzing into the kids’ pool
shocked many holidaymakers who were relaxing around the pool area. It was a sight
to see as all water drifted from the kids’ pool to the main pool without
relent. Within ten seconds, my brother Julio was in a water-empty pool –
picture a baby-sitting in a basin without water. He had displaced all the water
in the kids’ pool!
For my six-year old, Kabahuma, there was nothing more exciting than this
particular festive season. Two of her
all-time favorite friends visited well around the same time. Of course a portly, joyous, white-bearded bespectacled man, Santa Claus did not disappoint.
Hardly a few days after Christmas, the tooth fairy yet again had another
reason to visit when Kabahuma lost one of her front baby teeth. Call it double happiness for her!
That aside, at the cusp of my holiday in SA, I did a six-hour journey
north of Pretoria to a small town called Thohoyandou in Limpompo Province. Thohoyandou literally means, the ‘head of an
elephant’. The Venda people live in this
humble town that houses the famous University of Venda. When you take a stroll around the town, you will
be struck by one popular name, ‘Masindi’.
Right from the nametags of the waiters, waitresses, attendants in retail
stores to mega commercial enterprises, you will read the inscription, ‘Masindi’.
Masindi is one of the most popular and common names in Thohoyandou and
among the Venda people. It is in this
little town, located thousands of miles South of Uganda’s Masindi district that
I was told what ‘Masindi’ means. It
means, “mother of all nations”. One of
my relatives who now permanently lives in Thohoyandou remarked, little wonder
Masindi district in Uganda is home to all kinds of ‘nations’ – the Nyoro,
Langi, Acholi, Japadhola, Hima, Ganda etc.
Now you know what ‘Masindi’ means!
One hundred kilometers north of Thohoyandou is the world’s biggest
tree. I saw it. This huge baobab tree, known as the Sagole
Big Tree, is a must see (I wonder why it hasn’t been listed as one of the world
wonders). It is 22 meters tall and has a trunk diameter of 10,47 meters. This
famous tree is estimated to be three thousand years (+ or -) old. In consonance
with its size, its roots stretch as far as 21 kilometers (equivalent to a
distance between Kampala and Mukono town). It is phenomenal! The Venda people have named the tree “Muri Kunguluwa” meaning, the tree that
roars. The name apparently comes from the sound of wind blowing through its
branches.
For my family and I, those were the dying moments of 2015; no wistful
regrets whatsoever. Now that 2016 is
here, we plan to go on an expedition to discover what living healthier means.
Happy 2016!
