HILARY BAINEMIGISHA
Maybe I can start with a story from the Bible. King David had just declared Jerusalem his capital city and he was bringing the Lord God of Israel into it for the first time.
Well, God turned out to be a golden box, in which there were two stone tablets containing God’s law as handed down to Moses at Mt Sinai. By the same laws, God had forbidden Israel to use imagery to represent him, so the law was God’s presence in the community. It was taken to be so holy and classified that only priests were allowed to touch it.
Just as the cart, bearing the covenant box made a turn into the Gate Road, the box stumbled and some civilian thought it was going to fall. He tried to adjust it and realised he had touched it!
He had touched God’s Covenant Box! In that shock, he died. But there are people who know which areas are red hot and still dare to venture, consciously into the danger zone. Take for instance this man who seduced Idi Amin’s wife.
Dr. Mukasa was alone but in the end, he proved a disappointment. He knew he was playing with a dragon’s eggs and for some time, showed bravety but when the dragon showed up, he collapsed like the man who touched the covenant box at Jerusalem.
Mukasa is said to have started an affair with Amin’s wife, Kay, right from when he was still a medical student at Mulago in the late 1960s. Later, when Amin was the president, Kay told Mukasa she was pregnant and it was his. The doctor arranged an abortion at a clinic around Odeon Cinema, now Watoto Church, but things went wrong. He panicked, poisoned his family before attempting suicide. That way, he concluded his pursuit of bravery for love with a sounding disappointment.
One man did it better. The late Peter Kigozi did what some other Baganda could only fantasize about. He married the Kabaka’s mother! Apparently in Buganda, if the Kabaka has already officially gone to Kayunga, no other man is allowed to visit the palace. When Kabaka Daudi Chwa died, Kigozi married Druscilla, his widow and mother of Kabaka Muteesa II.
It was unheard of. Not even the dinosaurs, which walked the Buganda soil, had ever dreamt of a local man eating from the same plate with the king. So that followed a natural uprising among the loyalists.
People wanted his head but the White man, who was governing then, did not understand how marrying a dead man’s wife had any problem.
The Kigozis had to migrate. He never abandoned his project till Druscilla’s death. For love, he faced their fate.
There are people whose love path leads them onto the slopes of Bududa. You love the person but the circumstances are too acidic. Anytime, soil and debris from above can bury you alive. But you just cannot give it up! You resist efforts to resettle you! Life is meaningless without Beloved and that is where you will stay.
That is the kind of love that makes kings abdicate thrones, emperors shed tears and pastors stake reputations. When finally, fate presents you the bill, you face it like the selfless lover that you are. If you abandon your partner, take your own life or chicken out in whatever way, not only will you have betrayed your love and us the silent supporters, but you will have also reminded us of the late John Garang. Some missions have to be followed to the end.
If need be, present your neck for slaughter like an obedient sheep and enter our newspaper front pages as a person who meant it when you said you would rather die than abandon your love. You will not be denied a martyr’s statistic.
However, I strictly do not advise you to try those daring stunts in your own home. Love can destroy lives, careers, money, families and morals. Face it only if you come to a conclusion that you are insane enough to prefer love to life and we shall treat you as such.