Book Review:  What’s in a name:  Kainembabazi

Author:   Natasha Museveni Karugire

Publisher:  Fountain Publishers

Reviewer:  Barbara Kaija

What’s in a name: Kainembabazi is the life story of a freedom fighter’s child.

Her early beginnings are at the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where her parents are refugees.

One day after Natasha Kainembabazi is born, her father travels to Nairobi for an underground recruitment drive and through her childhood, this becomes the family norm.

Her father, Yoweri Museveni, is either in the jungles of Mozambique, Luwero in central Uganda or in some unnamed place fighting to liberate Uganda. 

All families are shielded in mysteries that only insiders can tell.

To unravel some of the mystery around the First Family, you must read Natasha Karugire’s new book What’s in a name: Kainembabazi. 

It is an intriguing read. Wrapped in a mystical cover page; a black and white scenic montage of grazing cows blended with the photogenic Natasha dressed in splendid pink and an Ankole herdsman’s rod in her delicate hand.

It is a beautiful blend of the nostalgic old and the new. A perfect introduction to her love for nature and cows, a theme that runs through the book.

Throughout the book we meet a traditional family with respected values and yet they still fit into the modern settings of Nairobi, Sweden and London.

It is a fast, entertaining and educative read. It is spiced with nuggets of revelation.

In the opening pages, it is the prophecy of a foreteller, Kakarakashagama, who prophesied President Museveni’s leadership role before he was even born.

Then there is the President’s ‘new’ name Tibuhaburwa. We have always known our President as Mzee Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, but a few months ago we got to know that he had another official name, Tibuhaburwa buzaaranwa; wisdom is innate, it is not taught.

In Kainembabazi’s book, we get to know how he got the name. 

True to his name, President Museveni’s memory has awed everybody who meets him.

Natasha explains: “Once he has come across information... He never forgets dates, facts, faces and names.”

Most people’s memory starts at age three and a few people remember things which happened at two years.

In this book, she makes some fascinating revelation about how far back his memory goes.

If you have read My Life’s Journey by Janet Kataha Museveni, you may already know how President Museveni met Maama Janet, but it is intriguing hearing it from their daughter.

Natasha delves into their meeting with awe.

As Uganda launches into political turmoil the Museveni family starts a life of exile.

The book chronicles a number of dramatic escapes and angelic rescues: on one occasion, Maama escapes through Entebbe Airport with her two young babies to Nairobi.

Then in their land of sojourn, political persecution follows them and they are once again fugitives.

This time they encounter an angel in the form of Mirjam Blaak who rescues them from a tense Nairobi and expatriates them to Sweden.

In her book Natasha exposes the fear, pain and uncertainty of living as refugees, but they are never dejected and the reader is not lost to the gratitude she and her family carry for the hospitality of the Swedish people and government.

The First Family’s experience in exile must have had a role in Uganda’s policy on refugees.

Today, Uganda is one of the most refugee-friendly countries in the world. We host over one million refugees.

Then it is January 26, 1986 and Uganda is finally free! After many years of exile, the homecoming is emotional and magnificent for the First Family.

Natasha reminisces: “...the trauma of many years of war, of fear and uncertainty, was still palpable.

Uganda had endured much. Killings and rape and pillaging by previous regimes had caused a wound in the collective soul of a nation.

There was quietness in the land... it was like the feeling you have when you walk out of your home after violent storm in the night, to see in the light of the day all the damage that has been done.”

They quickly settle back home and start school. Did any teacher lay the whip on the First Daughter or her siblings?

Natasha takes us through the realities of the Ugandan education system to which she quickly adjusts and makes very many friends.

While here she develops a very intimate relationship with Jesus and she experiences strong spiritual premonitions that come from a deep spirituality.

Eventually she goes to university in London.  

The cultural and modern embellishments in What’s in a name: Kainembabazi, beautifully stand out.

One of the fascinating chapters is the Abagina Baija — The Bagina have come; a chapter that centres on her adult life, dating, getting engaged and married to Edwin Karugire.

The elaborate marriage ceremony is not just educative, but nostalgically engaging.  

The biography is unobtrusively laden with the political history of Uganda.

The two ladies called Kainembabazi, Tibuhaburwa, Muhoozi... the First Family names are deliberate and mostly prophetic.

The keen reader will not miss the connection of some of the names with the liberation history of Uganda.

True to Proverbs 22:6 — Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he grows he will not depart from it — the fire of the revolution catches the Museveni children and even grandchildren.

Just like their parents, the children grow up aware of Africa and the injustices against Africa and each in their own way seeks solutions; Natasha fights with the arts: photography, film production, writing and fashion. 

As we get to the last chapters of the book, there is a spiritual awakening not only to the awesome God but mother Africa as well.

Natasha ponders: “I have felt the Lord telling me, and my fellow Africans, to arise.” In self-discovery she concludes: “If Ranghilde, the lady, asked me the question she asked my mother decades earlier, ‘Are you a queen where you come from?’ I would have told her that I am an African, a daughter of the red earth. I would have told her that I come from a line of warriors. I would have told her that the DNA of the Most High is etched into mine... Yes, I am a queen where I come from. I am a queen everywhere I go. I carry it within.”

What’s in a name: Kainembabazi is a biography with deep lessons of life, faith, parenting, culture, love, marriage and Pan Africanism.

The book is illustrated with beautiful nostalgic pictures from the First Family album.

It makes for a gratifying quick read that could inform, educate and entertain you this season.

Get your copy at Fountain Publishers and in all bookshops around town.   

The reviewer is the Editor-InChief of the Vision Group