“They go in the bush?”
“Yeah.”
“But they must designate areas in the bush, otherwise—”
“I think so, yeah. Some of them don’t really care. They consider shit to be part of nature, manure for the land. And this part of their culture—I don’t know whether I’m using the word ‘culture’ properly here—this was part of the school’s culture too. It was a boy’s school. I was put in there. I didn’t understand anything. So when I woke up in the morning and said I needed to use the latrine, people were laughing. I said, ‘Why are you laughing?’ They said, ‘Ah, Emma, you don’t know? You’re supposed to go to Beirut’ [Emmanuel laughed]. Yeah, the place they went to shit they called Beirut! So they said, ‘Ah, everybody goes to Beirut, man, you’d better go there.’ So I went with a group of people in the morning. We walked, we walked, we walked across the school, and I asked, ‘Excuse me, where is Beirut?’ So they say, ‘You’ll find it.’ And sure enough, just as I step outside the main compound of the school I step into a minefield of shit. That’s what they called it—mines. Everyone was using military language. The shape of a shit indicated whether it was a machine gun, a certain caliber bullet, a missile, or—how do you call it, that gas, that chemical they spread in war zones? They used to name everything according to how it looked. Now they told me, ‘Yeah, you’re a new fellow, you’re going into the minefield, and the rest of us are going to the gun ships.’ These were places where the ground was still clear, and you could squat down all right. But where I was, there was nothing but mines. First you had to place your leg, and then—”
By now, Emmanuel was in stitches, and I was laughing too. I did not need to be convinced of his ability to transform a potentially degrading situation into slapstick comedy.
“Well, you get the picture! You had to be careful not to bring more shit back from that place than you took there! And then it would rain! You know what tropical rain is like? Ah, you leave that place in the morning, and you’ve completely lost your appetite. You’re hungry—food is hard to come by, but you can’t bring yourself to eat. And then later in the day, you have to go back. Nature is calling!”
“I’m laughing, Emmanuel, but I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.”
“When I tell this story, everyone laughs, even Nanna. But let me tell you, being in that situation was no joke. No, no, no. When I told my brother-in-law, who is actually Ugandan and has been to secondary school, he could not believe it. I even told my brother, Deo. He couldn’t believe it. A secondary school, senior five, A-levels, where you are preparing yourself to go the university, and you don’t have a latrine!”
“What was the quality of the teaching there?”
“Actually the reason I was sent there was historical. Like a prince going to Eton, then twenty years down the road sending his son there. My school was called Katchonga Senior Secondary School, and my father remembered his older brother having gone there and later getting a very big position in government. Also, Charles Onyango-Obbo went there.23 By the way, that is what mostly influences people. They look at who has been at a certain school, then say, ‘Ah, that’s the school you should go to.’ But the school I went to was not the school they thought it would be, and I stayed only a year and a half before leaving.
“Did you finish your A-levels there?”
“No, I decided to go to a day school, even though my mum wasn’t keen on it.”
“How old were you when you finally finished your A-levels?”
“I finished them in 1994. I was twenty-three years old, four or five years older than anyone else in my class.”
“Yet considering your circumstances, that was quite an achievement.”
“I had to work terribly hard. I didn’t want to repeat or fail a class. With my very poor primary education, I had a lot of catching up to do. I had to work out a system for studying. Coaching and extra tutoring became central. Some of the teachers who helped me have remained friends to this day. One of my main helpers was also called Emma. I could not have passed without his help and advice. I was very good at some subjects, like mathematics, and so I took mathematics, economics, and geography as my specialized subjects for A-levels. But I still didn’t have enough points to go straight to university, and I had to find a college in Kampala. I spent two years there doing a commercial course and paid for my education by doing odd jobs. I was thinking I would become a teacher like my father, so when I finished the courses I got a teaching assistant’s job at my brother-in-law’s school. I used to help in accounting and commercial courses, marking and helping students who were not understanding in class. It was actually my brother-in-law who suggested I go to university.”
“This was Mariam’s husband?”
“Yes. Mr. Kitez. He’s the one who actually said to me, ‘Emma, you have this certificate, why don’t you use it to enroll at university?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that would be okay.’ He said, ‘I can help you get in contact with a university. Would you go there if they offered you a place?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’m willing.’ I went to my mum and presented my suggestions to her. My mum was excited, but the university was private and funded by an Islamic organization based in . . . I think . . . the United Arab Emirates. It sponsors Islamic universities in many African countries. This one was in Mbale, where I came from. The dream of most people in Uganda is to go to Makerere. Makerere is like Oxford in the U.K., or Harvard in America. But even though it would have cost no more to go to Makerere, I really wanted to go to IUIU.”
“Can you explain why?”
“Commitment of the teaching staff. Let me say they are not drunkards—there are no unserious people there . . . no professors and lecturers who look at you and want to give you less marks because you may have shorter hair than someone else. The standards at Makerere University have fallen, because politicians got involved and academics became corrupted. I wanted to go to an institution that was seriously concentrated on helping students, an institution that allowed students to develop their own understanding of things rather than being forced to think in only one way. It was there that I was brought out of limbo. I was happy to be there. If professors gave you 20 it was because you had earned 20; it wasn’t because you were a Christian or a Muslim. And the girls didn’t have to show their breasts to get more marks, like at Makerere. Also, I didn’t want to get distracted. There were no bars, no dance halls at IUIU, so you could focus on your academic work.”
“And no expectation that you should be Muslim?”
“No, no one ever came to me in the three and a half years I was there, no one asked me, ‘Emma, are you becoming Muslim?’ In fact, Muslims don’t do that. They want you to actually admire what they are doing, so you become a Muslim because of their deeds. We mistakenly think that Muslims are like Pentecostals. But they don’t try to convert you at all. I almost married a Muslim girl, but she never once asked me about becoming Muslim. She was willing to accept me the way I was, though probably her family could not have done so. But this is the thing, I was comfortable at the Islamic University because they let you be who you are. You have only to follow the rules: don’t come drunk to school, don’t smoke in class, don’t kiss or fondle females or do anything that makes people lose their concentration. These are rules that would apply anywhere. Anyway, I liked Islamic University because there was nothing to drag me from my goal, and so I succeeded in performing quite well. When I finished my bachelor’s, they actually wanted me to continue with a master’s there, but then I came to Denmark.”
THE SCAPEGOAT
Emmanuel’s story brought to mind René Girard’s work on the scapegoat. I had already noticed the close kinship between Emmanuel’s narrative and the folktale, for despite the deeply personal nature of what was being recounted, the minimalist and austere style of the folktale prevailed, as if Emmanuel were recounting his experiences from afar or through a lens that lent objectivity to what might otherwise have been an unbearably intimate and abject catalogue of misfortunes. It was