I lost my twin

* They believe that since they shared everything they should also share death I used to think that when you are born twins, you have to die together as twins. Even when I came to terms with the facts, my conscience kept on telling me, "You and your brother are special twins, after all you resemble each other and share everything in life, so why not also share the date of your death?" Wishful thinking you may think, but if you are a twin you know what I mean. But even then, my conscience was wrong. We were born to Mr and Mrs Kibuuka of Nakaseke at Mulago hospital on the chilly morning of September 4, 1974. My parents say only a few minutes separated us from each other. Probably, it was because of this that we resembled each other so much. "You so resembled each other that the mid-wives were forced to tie different coloured strings on you for easy identification," my mother said. Not even our own parents could distinguish us from each other. We were given the usual twins names but it was not easy to know who was who. "You normally cried, ate, yawned and slept at the same time nothing separated you from each other," she said. At four years old, we were taken to Timuna Church Nursery School. This school was under Reverand Lubwama. He says, we never left each other. He said we were the only pupils at school who carried our food in the same container and never fought over it. We always sat together in the classroom and whenever one of the class bullies attacked one of us they got a serious hit back from the two of us. However, in the early 1980s, during the Luweero war, we left our home to take refuge in Kampala. We separated then. Wasswa went to live with one of our uncles, while I stayed with our parents. Though this was the first separation in our lives, we somehow coped with it. We rarely met except during family meetings until 1987 after our primary level. We missed each other terribly, our bodies were apart, but our minds were together. Not even distance could separate the fact that we were twins. While I went for my A-levels, Wasswa did a course in electrical installation at Masaka. By the end of 1994, he was already working. But even when some thought that we should be independent of each other, our minds always strayed to each other. We were just a special pair that could not be separated. Whenever we met, it was not like the usual brother to brother meeting, it was always special. Remember that my conscience had earlier on told me that even in death, we should be together, but when it came, I was proved wrong. It was too swift for me to join him, and it was too far away for me to prevent it. I just received the bad news from a friend, assigned the duty because every other person feared. This was on May 4, 2000. "Wasswa is dead, he died in a motor accident last night," he said and hang up. It was and still is the worst news I have ever received in my 26 years. The death of a twin brother is not like any other loss. There are feelings that since you came together, you should also go together. He was part of you and you were an indispensable part of him. Since you shared everything in life, you should also share everything in death. It is one of the most painful things in a twin's life. Twins are children who are formed after the splitting of one fertilised ovum(identical twins) or when two different ova are fertilised at the same time. Identical twins look alike and fraternal twins do not look alike. Paul Kato of Maganjo says, the death of his twin brother with whom he had spent 21 years was a real turning point in his entire life. "It happened at a time when we were going to sit for our fist year examinations at ITEK, but that was the end of it all," he said, adding that he hated the sight of the room they had shared together at ITEK, and that is one reason he refused to go back for the examinations. "It took me a whole year to recover from the shock. For the first two weeks, I spent hours and hours at the grave every day," he says. When he recovered, he began doing other things rather than going back to that bad school. Kato said that, as a way of helping their fellow aggrieved twins overcome the loss of their other twins, they will soon launch an organisation called the Uganda twins association under which they will share and try to get over this trying moment. Details of the association will come out later this year. Entrance to the association is automatic, irrespective of tribe or sex. Although there are well kept records on twin births in Ugandan hospitals, there are no well kept records about their fatality. In behaviour and relationship to each other, twins are more than ordinary brothers or sisters. "Twins share almost everything in life, it is very rare to find twins who can't understand each other, however, this also depends on how much time they are allowed to spend with each other," wrote American behaviour researcher, Mike Williams, in his book Twins. He, however, explains that if twins do not spend any time in life together, they grow up like any other children. Babirye Margaret, now married with two children falls under that category. "I was just told that I was born with another boy, Kato, but he died before the end of the first year. So I did not feel any special loss and I grew up like a single child," she explained. The late Kisolo's twins, this kind of attachment brought them death at a very tender and progressive age. Their aunt, Namugga a resident of Kyanja, Katumba zone, the two 20-year-olds were so close that they shared a girl friend. Unfortunately the girl was infected with AIDS, and the twins died in August 1999, two weeks after the other. Traditionally, twins are revered and considered different from single born children. In Buganda, the birth of twins brings with it festivities, in form of initiating and cleansing them before they are finally considered as members of the society. Parents who get twins receive a lot of respect. In Buganda, the twin mother is refered to as Nalongo while a father is Salongo. Ends.