Somehow we survive
Tenderness frustrated doesn’t wither…
…Somehow tenderness survives
Dennis Brutus
It is quite telling the responses people have had to the impositions of the lockdown and social distancing. The center of our exposition; the internationally acclaimed Ugandan poet and literary scholar, Dr. Susan Nalugwa Kiguli is no exception. Even when we couldn’t carry out a face to face interview, it very much felt like she broke into theatre and verse every time she wanted to drive a point home. In stark contrast to the looming shadow of Covid-19 tensions her humor a welcome delight.
“Oh no! No! I do not play trumpet; I play accordion,” she wrote humorously referencing the Ex-president Idi Amin who is said to have responded thus to a journalist’s query on whether he worried he’d be thought to be blowing his own trumpet. Letting on __perhaps due to her socio-cultural upbringing which frowns on blowing one’s own trumpet, she was hesitant to speak of herself. Expressing to us her current status has not stood without the pressures of social, cultural, and gender dictates, “It is alright for a male person to be bold and pushy. The worst he may suffer from will be people laughing at him and calling him macho but a loud and pushy woman may fetch a lot of displeasure and if that woman is a boss or prominent in any way then she may be totally unpopular…” Whether the woman of Susan N. Kiguli is loud, bold, and pushy may not easily reflect in her responses these are however laden with undertones speaking to who she is.
Dr. Susan N. Kiguli was born in Luwero district, Uganda __in the famous Luwero Triangle. Her childhood was marked by the 1979 War, her teenage years the Bush war, and early adulthood the Northern Uganda war. Explaining the impressions these wars have made on her and her generation as can be seen with some of her notable works. But despite this, like many of us as children, she toyed with ideas from guileless observations, of what she wanted to be when she grew up. In her mid-teens watching the bishop’s wife Mrs. Geraldine Kawuma being chauffeured in a sleek black Benz in Namirembe, encouraged aspirations of becoming one too __beauty and Benzes came from being a bishop’s wife! Later she would be persuaded by her uncle and guardian the Late James Mukasa Nsabirwa, a geography teacher himself, to join the teaching profession.
Now an Associate Professor at Makerere University Department of Literature her career as author/poet and literary scholar is a union that drives her vision to contribute to the Ugandan literary heritage like the legendary Okot p’Bitek. With the implied tone of a patriot, she is emphatic to reiterate that it only matters to contribute in the smallest of ways even to the literary and societal consciousness of the nation. The difference between us and the great men and women we see at a distance, she sells us on the argument, is that they seized opportunities or recognized an essential human problem or need and concentrated on finding a solution to it or were fortunate enough to have talent as well as resources available to them. Sometimes power in all its shades and powerlessness determines our fate.” To this end she is committed to contributing a body of work both in quantity and quality and that draws the attention of both the elite and rural young. It’s important that she writes in both English and Luganda, perform her own poetry, and for these works to be published.
So what can her own work tell us about her reflections on society affairs, cautions, or the impact it inspires?
Her critically acclaimed collection, The African Saga portrays aspects of leadership that were blind to the humanity of the ruled in reference to Ugandan politics post-independence. Her contribution of poetry for children to the collection Michael Eye’s; The War against the Ugandan Child speaks to the role of writers in the face of social-political injustices. The collaborative effort was intended to raise global awareness of the Northern Ugandan crisis involving the LRA at the time. In the following excerpt from My Mother in Three Photographs, she provides a rendition of historical snapshots of political- social developments from the colonial era of the 1960s into the 1990s in Uganda.
My mother in the 1970’s
More somber but her skin
Still flawless
The abrasive years gentle on her youth
Her body wrapped in a long nylon dress
Stopping her ankles and
Full sleeves touching her wrists
Hooded sorrow in her posture
The flowing dress
Is not because
She is a widow (which is by government action)
But it is a government decree.
Her magnificence and elegance
Seems to support the given name of the dress
Amin nvaako
The poem employs a motif of the fashion trends of a woman transitioning through these timelines in parallel to the political social influences then. The final line in the excerpt, ‘Amin nvaako’ translates as; “Amin let me be!” which sentiments were very akin to baby boomers during the Amin era who had come from wearing mini dresses to long ones by decree. Reflecting too people’s desire to be free of the tyranny of his rule.
Her love for sound and images she says may have been something she was born with. It was then honed in school and nurtured by great writers and the strong matriarchs she was mentored by, this crystallising into a love for the art of poetry. She celebrates Alex Mukulu, Byron Kawada, and the makers of ‘The Sound of Music’ among others for their fusion of music and drama in the creation of musical plays that she loves. To this day she recalls Eclas Kawalya’s voice in “Amakula ga Kulabako” not so much the year she first heard him.
Her creative process __one that is so in the strictest definition of the word has been greatly helped her by being an avid reader. The recent Lockdown restrictions allowed her to revisit some previous reads, Goretti Kyomuhendo’s Waiting: A Novel of Uganda at War”, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu, Okot p’Bitek’s White Teeth and Timothy Wangusa’s Betwixt Mountain and Wilderness, and several poems. In developing her works observation fires up her imagination with what she sees or hears inspiring her to sit and write it all down, in one go. Then revision and more revision with some poems taking months or years to be completed. She confesses some of her published works have received revisions with new stanzas introduced for some. Though in the flux of pressing demands, carving out the time and space to write is usually most difficult, a key challenge shared by most of her peers in these parts, to which she echo’s Steve Biko, “I earn my keep by teaching.” Admittedly, she loves teaching and research and finds her dedication to giving her students the lion’s share of her time as a round-about way to her work in advocating for creative writing. Each student creating a ripple in the societal think of literature and other cultural aspects.
She is a founding member of FEMRITE an organisation that advocates for creative writing and promotes female writers and a member of the Advisory board of the African Writers Trust. The notion for women to apply themselves echoing firmly close to home, therefore, it comes as no surprise to note that she is at the forefront of this. She hopes to see more Ugandan Women names feature among the New African’s 100 most influential Africans like Goretti Kyomuhendo’s name did in 2019; more Ugandan women writers sit on influential committees like the Commonwealth Foundation’s Civil Advisory Governors Committee; publishers producing epic books such as Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu; deliciously delightful reads such as Timothy Wangusa’s Betwixt Mountain and Wilderness and Upon this Mountain become household favourites and for terms such as “Orature” which was coined by the late Pio Zirimu and his student Austin Bukenya patented. She would also like to see more opportunities and mentorship for budding writers.
With the articulation of specifics, Dr. Susan Nalugwa Kiguli not only proves the weight of her advocacy for local talent but also frames quite vividly her aspirations for young creatives and emerging writers. She parts with an invitation for the latter to work with her and for more people to start taking reading and publication seriously.”
Alluding to her convictions of the role of the poet in society she asks, “Isn’t it so true that writers live beyond time?” before going on to quote Dennis Brutus in one of her emails to us. It’s not uncanny therefore that she would like to be remembered through the ages as a Ugandan Woman totally committed to poetry and to her students even when they did not quite like it!
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