The Present Moment. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye

how we all expected that the sky would light up and everyone would pay twice as much as before for whatever he bought from you. Did they now? Somehow in these twenty years we’ve got more dresses than we ever expected then, and shoes. Children of people we know are going to the university. You go on a country bus without picking up any bugs – that’s something, I suppose – there are better jobs for women and all those good houses filled with our own black people. Yes, things have got better, but slowly. Then we were looking for miracles.

      ‘All right, Uhuru! Flags, fountains, shouts and songs. And then you remember what – mutiny! Perhaps it did not sound so terrible to you compared with all the other new words we’ve got used to – hostage, hijack, mugging. But to those of us who had grown up in the military it was like a thunderbolt, the extreme evil, the breaking up of all the rules you live within. Change of flag, picture, tune had not before meant for me the splitting of the framework.

      ‘People in the market had radios. They came to tell me. Yesterday it was a far-off event in Uganda and Tanganyika. Today it was among us. Vitalis was at Lanet. The road was closed. Vehicles were not going through to Nairobi. Trains were overloaded. One of the saved sisters came and handled the money for me. She could see that I was half-blind with tears. It was like a sort of death.

      ‘In fact to other people it was not what I meant by a mutiny. There were no symbols of disgrace and death, and in a couple of days it was all over. Perhaps a new country, I thought, can teach people new rules. For the first time I began to doubt whether I could cope with changes to come. For the army, I was thankful it was no worse. But Vitalis – Vitalis was gone. A deserter.

      ‘I haven’t seen him for nineteen years. He is my only son and I don’t know whether he is alive or dead. But it isn’t just that, you know. Some people’s children go to America and stay there. Or even to Nairobi and stay there. They get a letter now and again or perhaps a photograph. Even if your son doesn’t have money and presents to send you, you still have a son. Even if he doesn’t keep in touch, you have some idea how he is making out. Even if he was buried in Burma, you have the measure of his life. Take my daughter Margaret. She was in another country and we got very little news, but the family carried on. Then in 1975 the border was closed. A little while after that we heard that she had died of cholera. There was no way to go to the funeral. I have grandchildren there that I have never seen. There is nothing they could do for me even now that there is talk of opening the border. I am settled after four years here in the Refuge and there is nowhere I would be better looked after. But Margaret has had her life. One is not ashamed.

      ‘Vitalis has broken his father’s greatest taboo. He must have had reason, I suppose. As you grow older, you find loyalty is more complicated than you used to think. Why should a woman be ashamed before all other men except those picked for her from Uyoma, if there is even that much choice? Why should you hear talk from your daughter’s man that even your own brother would be ashamed to use before you? Why should you not ask the DC, now that he is your fellow African, the same price you asked of the DC when he was a white man? I may perhaps still have an only son. But because of these taboos we taught him he dare not come near us and we do not know where he stays or even what name he is using. As though the taboo means more than being a son. Is it not strange?’

      ‘And Florence?’ asked Mrs Reinhold gently, aloud, but silently asking herself whether it was not better, after all, to be childless and not disappointed. ‘Is not Florence able to help you?’