Unlocking the Ugandan version of English

BY DENNIS D. MUHUMUZA

 A Ugandan researcher and cultural critic has published a book on something that we have always laughed about in Uganda: the way we speak English. Bernard Sabiiti spent four years figuring out the origin of Uglish (/you-glish/), the derisive term Ugandans use to refer to their weird variety of English. This is not something common only among the uneducated, Mr Sabiiti says of Uganda’s own English. He writes that even some highly educated Ugandans cannot speak Standard English.

“Who of us has never used the phrase “you are lost?” While almost all Ugandans will understand what it means, which is that you have not seen someone in a while, most foreigners will have no idea what that means. The phrase is a direct translation of the local phrase. Most Uglishes like to “dirten”, which means to “make dirty”.

Others, however, are completely created out of the blue. For example, the origin of benching, which might mean the same thing as the American euphemism “making out” or pursuing a woman with carnal/romantic intentions, is not clear.

The book traces the evolution and history of such words and phrases, explains their meanings and gives reasons why Ugandans, when their level of comprehension is fully stretched to the limit, directly translate English words often with no regard to grammatical, semantic or syntactic nuance that is required. As a result, you end up with a phrase that makes no sense to the uninitiated.For example, many Ugandans say, “Borrow me some money,” instead of “lend me…”; “Museveni has ‘won Besigye” to mean “Museveni has defeated Besigye, etc”.

The reason for this, the author observes, is because of our difficulty processing these linguistic phenomena when our thinking is steeped in indigenous language and cultural backgrounds. And this hampers our processing efforts. Lack of regular reading of books or interface with English speakers also exacerbates the problem.

The book has a chapter on the history of the evolution and development of Uglish, and an extensive glossary of Uglish words that will blow you away. Oh, and there is a whole chapter full of pictures of signposts! Yes! Signs written in Uglish that will leave you in stitches.

The author, however, makes it clear that the book is not a laughing matter. He writes that the growth of Uglish is much more than the impact indigenous languages have had on English, or the creativity or lack thereof of a people struggling to learn a foreign language.

He attributes most of the factors for the growth of this variety of English to failing education standards, a poor reading culture and lack of opportunities to regularly communicate in English; issues that the government, parents, teachers, students, educationists and curricula developers need to be concerned about.

For some readers, especially Ugandans therefore, the book is to be taken very seriously as there is a lot to learn from it, even as you have some laugh while at it.

--Saturday Monitor, December 13, 2014

According to the full gospel

Using the case of the missionary founder of Full Gospel Church, Dennis D. Muhumuza illustrates how Christians can devote their lives to living by Christ’s example.

In 1960, Pr Hugh Layzell and his wife Audrey left the comfort of their home in Vancouver, Canada, to bring the gospel to Uganda. They held their first crusade under a mango tree in Nakawa, and the open-air meetings spread to other Kampala suburbs and many people got saved. One of those who got born-again was Princess Muggale, the sister to Kabaka Muteesa I. In 1962, she represented the Kabaka at the official opening of the first Pentecostal Church in Uganda—Makerere Full Gospel Church which the Layzell’s planted on Makerere Hill.

A moment of prayer at Makerere Full Gospel Chruch

Over 50 years later, not only has the church immensely grown, its founder is one of the Christians running their race to win. Pr Layzell, now in his 80s, is still strong and preaching the gospel fervently. Following Layzell’s example, Pr Fred Wantaate says believers must continuously examine their lives and be careful how they live because the times are evil, and the temptations to stray are many. Those who fall during the race should pick themselves up and resume the race instead of giving up.

“When things don’t go according to your expectation as they are bound to sometimes because of the different terrains we run over, stay in the race; run with the patience of a farmer who stays in the field working even when the rain is pouring down because he has work to finish. The rain should not stop you either. Know that you are in this for a long haul and determine to complete the race.”

Wantaate adds that some Christians miss the mark when they start comparing themselves to those who are seemingly doing well. “No need to get discouraged because someone is succeeding ahead of you. God has gifted us differently and the grace He has granted you to run your race is enough to bring you victory if you stay focused and don’t get disqualified for straying into another’s lane hoping it’s easier there.”

The overall secret to winning the Christian race is to keep our eyes on Jesus. Paul the apostle compares the Christian life to a race that we should run and never quit (Hebrews 12:1). Those who know the rigours of training for a race later alone running it understand that Paul is not talking about a walk in the park. Only those who finish the race will win what the Bible calls the “unfading crown”.

So what can I do to complete the race? Lay aside the barriers to progress. Remove from our lives anything that would slow us down and the sin that so often makes us fall,” says Paul.

Most of these obstacles may seem harmless yet they choke the fire in our lives from blazing. It could be a job that keeps you too busy to pray or read the Bible, it could be the weekend movie that keeps replaying images of carnality in your mind, it could be a relationship that makes you compromise your standards of chastity or fidelity is a weight designed by the devil to slacken your progress on the race.

“The devil is very smart,” says Pr Wantaate. “He may not stop you from being a Christian but he may make you miss the best God has for you. If the devil weighs you down enough to finish last or second last instead of first, he has won at least a partial victory.”

When we turn to God repeatedly in prayer, and for wisdom, the tempting things of this world lose their appeal as he helps us to run and finish this race for God’s glory and honour.

--Sunday Monitor, December 7, 2014

Preserving the African culture through books

BY DENNIS D. MUHUMUZA


In living up to the notion that a university should be the hub of academic engagements and intellectual exchanges, Makerere University’s Department of Literature on October 31 launched two books written by two of its staff members.

The first, Gender Terrains in African Cinema by Sr Dr Dominica Dipio, explores the field of African cinema; analysing three categories of women (the girl child, the young woman and the elderly woman) and the various roles they play in relation to their male counterparts.

(L-R) Sr. Dr. Dipio, Mr. Tumusiime, Dr. Mushengyezi and Dr. Danyson Kahyana at the launch

 Dr Dipio began interacting with African cinema as a graduate student at the Pontifical Gregorian University of Roma in 1999, and has never looked back. As a woman from a male-dominated society, she was particularly piqued by the treatment of the African woman by the African filmmaker and other African chroniclers.

It is not surprising therefore that in her book, she brings together the intersections between and among film, literature, gender and popular culture. As a specialist in African film studies, cinema overides as she analyses 14 films directed by male African filmmakers; films spanning the 1970s to 2000s from which she draws general conclusions.

One of the conclusions which was drawn by Dr Consolata Kabonesa, who has already read the book, is that the only way to change gender inequalities in our society is for the mother to model her boy children from when they are still boys to grow up loving and respecting the women. “She also looks at the role of the filmmaker as a transformative agent in society,” said Dr Kabonesa.

The second book
The second book, Oral Literature for Children: Rethinking Orality, Literacy, Performance and Documentation Practices by Dr Aaron Mushengyezi, is the first major attempt at capturing hundreds of texts from the Ugandan oral culture for children – folktales, riddles and rhymes – making them available in four Ugandan languages, including English.

Dr Mushengyezi took interest in local folklore when he was still a little boy, entertaining their home guests with folktales, riddles and rhymes that were all cherished for their cultural and educational value. But the advent of modern technologies that brought the internet and social media, and television with its glut of entertainment programmes, have blotted these cultural materials from our traditional psyche.

Yet these cultural materials are still needed for our identity and overall national value. As the author said, you cannot promote tourism, nationalism and patriotism when you neglect your traditional cultures.
Makerere University’s Prof Austin “Mwalimu” Bukenya, in his analysis heaped praise on Dr Mushengyezi’s book and recited a line from a William Wordsworth poem that succinctly captures how he felt on reading the book: “My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky.” The book made his old heart leap like a young man’s in love.

It reminded him of Rosa, a five-year-old story-telling maestro he fell in love with at the age of four. Bukenya, particularly liked the story in the book about a lazy girl who could not dig and had to call her mother’s ghost to help her. “That is the last story my mother told me before she passed on,” Bukenya revealed, turning to the author, “thank you for bringing back my youth.”

In a veiled swipe at the government, which has chronically belittled the arts in favour of sciences, Bukenya said, “the arts that make us human are not useless.” The guest of honour, James Tumusiime (Managing director, Fountain Publishers) hammered the point further home, “Our own culture and thinking cannot be sacrificed at the altar of science.”

In preserving our cultural expressions, Dr Mushengyezi has given tangible meaning to the words of Ngugi wa Thiongo that “literature is the honey of a nation’s soul, preserved for her children to taste forever, a little at a time.”

Saturday Monitor, Nov. 8, 2014

An anthology of provocative verse

By DENNIS D. MUHUMUZA

In 2009, a spirited woman named Beverley Nambozo Nsengiyunva started the annual BN Poetry Awards, to stir Ugandan women poets to write more and better. In just five years, the yields have got the whole continent feasting. A Thousand Voices Rising –an anthology of contemporary African poetry, compiled and edited by Nambozo herself, is the latest of the yields.

Never before has a poetry collection brought the mighty and the budding, the old and the young, male and female, the bold and the subtle poets of the continent together, as this anthology does. Poets from Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Tanzania, Liberia, Algeria and DRC, tackle all the imaginable and tangible subjects under the sun, with such power as art for social change, in varied styles as will meet the varied needs of the varied readers that will buy the book.

The 122 poems are divided in eight parts comprising poems of related themes. The varied subjects are of course inevitably linked with the temperaments and experiences of their individual authors. For example Beatrice Lamwaka’s “Acoli Dirges” is a barb aimed at the modern generation of Ugandans who have been so influenced by western education that they speak English with a twang in imitation of their British or American counterparts. The poet observes that our mother tongues have become too ‘difficult’ that we now “speak Acoli with a twang like we are speaking English…/We speak English like we are eating sweet potatoes/ No one can defeat us/ We defeat the English in their mother tongue!”  The poem basically laments the breakdown of our cultural authenticity.

Another poem that depicts the poet as a keen observer of modern society is John Kariuki’s “Silenced Forever” about outspoken analysts and critics; often the voices of the voiceless who go silent as the graves as soon as they get jobs from the government or other establishments they had previously severely criticised or spoken up against.

Some poems are about the ugly past or things we would rather forget such as Susan Kiguli’s “I laugh at Amin” or Ivan Okuda’s “Kyadondo, July 2010” which recalls the black day terrorists bombed soccer lovers in Uganda in 2010, while some, such as Eugene Mbugua’s “My Village Crush” brings back memories in some of us who went to village schools. It’s about the poet’s childhood sweetheart whom he meets many years later when she’s married with several children and is shocked at how changed and altered she is from the village beautiful sweetheart she was back then.

The anthology also contains all the winning poems from the BN Poetry Awards, starting with Lillian Aujo’s inaugural winner, “Soft Tonight” (2009), with imagery in all its sensuality. But its erotic nature pales compared to Beverley Nambozo’s highly rhythmic “Sseebo gwe Wange” with its colourful and picturesque lines like “…you pound me like the engalabi/ I slap the wall to your rhythm…I moan like thunder…”

Poetry enthusiasts whose love for the genre was particularly evoked by the classic anthology, Poems from East Africa (1996) will especially love A Thousand Voices Rising, for its significance and relevance. It’s an anthology that is as provocative as is evocative; simple yet complex, plus you will be impressed by the sheer potential of the up-and-coming poets whose works give it its uniqueness. As award-winning Malawian poet, Prof Jack Mapanje lauds the anthology, its “original, fresh and represents some of the best African minds.”

--Saturday Monitor, October 18, 2014

Facing the knife is macho

Dennis D. Muhumuza shares why circumcision is manly and not for the fainthearted.

Don’t be deceived; circumcision remains a macho thing regardless of where it is done. Some say that only cowards go to hospital and real men face the crude-looking traditional knife as used live among the Bagisu. But as I found out on August 19, and in the three weeks of throbbing pain and discomfort that followed, even medical circumcision is not for the fainthearted.

A wooden phallus showing the beauty of a circumcised penis

On that day, which coincided with this year’s imbalu season, I woke up with excitement as I was finally going to do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time—the removal of my foreskin. I was also apprehensive in case the procedure went horribly wrong like the case of a man whose tip of the penis got severed off!

But the doctor who welcomed me that morning allayed my fears saying the circumcisers were experienced experts who had no record of messing up. He held a wooden phallus depicting the beauty of a circumcised male organ. He articulated the rewards of circumcision: it being a HIV/Aids preventive measure, hygienic benefits and better sex. He was so convincing that had he pulled out a knife then I would have faced it without anaesthesia.

Next, I was counselled and HIV-tested by a doctor who asked me to be honest and tell him how many times I have had sex this year, and whether I used a condom. The way he talked you would think I’m a sex machine with unrivalled notoriety for hanky-panky.

After that, I was shown into a small room to remove my clothes and wear a circumcision gown. Therein, I found a plus size boy of about 12 who looked dead-frightened and asked me in a shivering voice if I thought it would hurt. Obviously he had been dragged to face the knife.

I was moments later stunned to discover that the physician who was going to circumcise me was not only female but also a ravishing beauty. My eyes quickly run to her fingers looking for a wedding ring. Alas! her hands were gloved. She looked me in the eye and ordered me with professional authority to lie on my back on the operating table. I lay there in utter surrender, spread my legs and closed my eyes praying that her first touch would not make my body react. “I’m going to anaesthetise you and it won’t hurt thereafter,” she said tenderly, like a mother to her beloved child.

Three times I felt dizzying pricks of injection at the base of my sexual organ and wanted to yelp like a little girl. But I remembered a Mugisu young man somewhere who as the traditional knife descends sharply on his foreskin is not expected to wince no matter the pain. What I was facing in the hospital paled in comparison, and that helped me to face my trial with courage.

The procedure took about 20 minutes. I was then ushered into another room where a doctor advised me to clean my member with salty water twice everyday and to let the stitches come out of their own accord. I was also strongly warned against having sex before six weeks have elapsed, and to use a condom in the first six months after that.

The pain began on my way home. Ceaseless, stinging pain like red ants were mauling me beneath the bandages. For the next fortnight, I could not walk. And I could not sleep. It would get worse while passing urine. The morning erections brought unbearable pain too. I was swollen. In panic, I called one of my doctor friends, who brought me some liquid with which to cleanse the wound and powdered antidote to apply thereafter. This really helped. At the end of the third week, I began wearing trousers again and going about my business without pain.

Today I’m glad it’s all over. The three-week discomfort and pain helped me to rediscover my ability to endure. I feel better, cleaner and stronger. Circumcision regardless of where it’s done is truly a rite of passage that turns big boys into real men.

--Sunday Monitor, September 21, 2014

A poet’s view of society dynamics

BY DENNIS D. MUHUMUZA

The first time I saw the title of the book, it evoked in my mind an image of graceful movement. Poetry in Motion is an eclectic collection of 49 poems grouped in five parts, each devoted to a particular theme. This arrangement creates a flow. It also means a variety of readers are remembered. A lover of sights and sounds will appreciate the poetic techniques used, for instance, in the first part, 'Rhythm and Rhymes' with its vibrantly descriptive nature.

The second section, 'Cakes and Candles', gives you a clue about the kind of poems you find here; poems inspired by birthdays and other celebratory days.

'Riddles of Fortune', the third section, captures everyday struggles in our society, for example what people
“When I got money
I drank wine and gin
dished out to everyone
that hailed my name!
Now I’m penniless
now I’m hopeless
whoever I fed
is laughing at me!”
go through while looking for money and the ramifications that come with reckless spending. This is explicitly depicted in the poem, Lamentations, which begins thus;

In 'Thorns and Roses', the poet, in seven poems, captures the contrasting emotions that come with falling in love; the joys and pains, hence the image “thorns and roses”.

The last section, 'Gospel Truth', has five poems, all inspired by religious beliefs and Christian living.

Poetry in Motion is Ivan Matthias Mulumba’s first publication as a poet and author, and it is a commendable effort. It is devoid of those structural and grammatical errors that stain most self-published Ugandan works because of the 10-year incubation period it enjoyed before hitting the bookstores. Being a member of the Femrite Readers Club, Mulumba used the opportunity to have his poems critiqued by club members, and used their feedback to improve them.

A graduate of Land Economics from Makerere University, Mulumba started writing poetry in primary school, but his interest peaked in high school when he was introduced to the poetry of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965). This is his Number One inspiration, followed by Uganda’s Henry Muwanga Barlow of the Building the Nation fame.

What Mulumba shares with his mentors is a keen observation of society and its dynamics. Some of his poems are written to capture a moment and provoke the reader to look into the life of various narrators and what drives them.

Poetry in Motion can basically be summed up as an anthology that chronicles the first steps of a poet, and captures the beliefs, experiences and some ideologies in society.

--Saturday Monitor, September 6, 2014

A star that lit all corners of the world

Award winning author, poet and civil activist Maya Angelou’s philosophy on life was, “I think you say to life – I am with you kid; let’s go!”. Described as a renaissance, this approach to life took the poet, author, dancer, playwright, director, actor, professor and civil rights activist to extraordinary places. Dennis D. Muhumuza reflects on her life that touched many world over. 

It has been three days but tears of grief stream on down the eyes of millions of people who met her physically or through her works. The pain in their hearts is intense because their icon, Maya Angelou, is gone.

The late Maya Angelou

The African-American author, poet, essayist, editor, composer, performer, director, lecturer and civil rights activist, died quietly in her home in North Carolina, on Wednesday, at the age of 86. Social media immediately rippled with tributes about a woman who came from a broken family, endured biting poverty, cruel blows of racism and childhood rape, but still rose to global recognition as an inspiration to countless people.

“My mission in life is not merely to survive but to thrive and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style,” she once declared, and went on to fulfill it to the letter.

Goretti Kyomuhendo, writer and Founder of African Writers Trust, was won over by Maya’s first autobiographical novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) before she devoured and savoured all of her works.

“For me what stood out most from her writings was that she always wrote from the heart. She wrote her ‘Truth’ - her writing resonated with emotional truth hence making it more believable, more powerful.”

Ms Kyomuhendo also shares what it was like to meet Maya in person: " In 1997, I was invited to participate in the Yari Yari conference which brought together hundreds of African women writers (and women of African descent) from around the world. The conference was held in New York and Maya Angelou was scheduled to speak. I waited patiently as she made her way out of the room after her presentation; and I was rewarded with a firm, powerful handshake and a tender, wise, knowing smile! I felt inspired to go back to my hotel that evening and write some more. The memory of that special moment is still deeply etched on my mind! Sleep well, Dear Sister."

Anyway, that memoir, which ushered Maya into the limelight to the point of no return, captures the author’s early life, including how she got raped at the age of seven; an experience so traumatic that it made her silent for five years.

David Benon Kangye, a literary scholar at Makerere University, says this is the book that paved way for women to open up on topics like rape. “It is argued that the likes of Oprah (Winfrey) were inspired by Maya Angelou, whose works remain central to the study of the poetry of civil rights movement at university level,” Kangye says.

Indeed at one time, Oprah said, “What stands out to me most about Maya Angelou is not what she has done or written or spoken; it’s how she lived her life. She moved through the world with unshakable calm, confidence and a fierce grace...she will always be the rainbow in my clouds.”

It is that ability to inspire the famous and the ordinary that Maya will be remembered for. A Ugandan girl whom she inspired with poetry took to writing that genre as well and went on to win the inaugural BN Poetry Award in 2008. Lillian Aujo, who has since had several poems and short stories published, says of Maya: “Her verse is simple yet nuanced, and beautiful. What I admire most about her is her graceful resilience against whatever was going in her life and society.

If the role of the writer is to educate, heal, explain, portray and examine all aspects of society, as Sudanese writer and academic Michael Baffoka once explained, then Maya Angelou excelled in all.

The prolific genius whom Barack Obama praised as “one of the brightest lights of our time”, may be gone but she lives on. “In your words, in our hearts, you will live on Maya,” affirms Femrite Coordinator Hilda Twongyeirwe.

Her popular works
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
• Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘Fore I Die (1971): The first of her poetry collections.
• And Still I Rise: (1978) The author’s third volume of poetry including two of her most well-known and popular pieces, Phenomenal Woman and Still I Rise.
• All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986).
• On the Pulse of Morning (1993): The poem Angelou read at President Clinton’s first inauguration.
• A Brave and Startling Truth (1995): The poem Angelou read at the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.
• A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002): Her sixth memoir, which describes her friendships with both Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X and her reactions to their assassinations.
• Letter to My Daughter (2008): A collection of essays about her life that notes.
• Mom & Me & Mom (2013): Her final memoir, about her mother who disappeared when Angelou was three, only to reappear a decade later.

--Saturday Monitor, May 31, 2014