The day I became “Happiness”

It happened during a courtesy visit to a group of women in midmost Tororo District. Let me tell you early on they are ex-victims of domestic violence and abuse. In fact, the stories we heard about them beforehand were stories that engraved my mind with images of sorrow-gnawed women that had long forgotten the meaning of happiness.

Imagine my surprise then when they welcomed us with energetic performance in form of folk songs accompanied by wild clapping and pliable wiggling! Soon the music became whispery and the women took turns sweeping us in motherly hugs. The music then leapt with a fresh lease of pomp, and the women danced vigorously, their breasts bouncing underneath their tops with carefree abandon.

They welcomed us with music and dance

When the lead singer with the missing incisors picked up a new song, the well-rounded young woman with a face lovely like a daffodil and a skin shining like ghee in the sun, let loose her hair like Diana King of old and boogied like no one was watching.

When the music finally came down and the lead singer said it was the tradition of the area to christen me with a local name, I amused myself with the thought that they would add that dancing belle to the surprise! My fantasy was however fleeting, for I began to think of a fast way of graciously rejecting the name in case I was named after some Japadhola millipede.

But when the name "Kisangala" issued from the full lips of the village belle, and she quickly explained with a shy smile it's Japhadola for "happiness", it was my time to smile exultantly. It was a huge relief to my hosts too, for to reject the name would have been rude and their worst embarrassing considering how much they cherish the customs of their ancestors.

So telling them the name was beautiful was the inducement they needed to burst into a new song, to which they danced boisterously, enchanting the ground with their feet, and the neighbourhood with their voices. I remember thinking there's nothing like a country rhythm; nothing like home-baked choreography as the women of Kirewa forgot the horrors of domestic violence.

Music and dance had become their assuaging optimism. They sang heartily and danced tantalisingly on; way into the golden dusk, prompting the fireflies to come out and gild the music and dance with their own twinkling.

Why the Dead Sea is dead

It was a first for me. A young woman in high heels gave a man on the streets of Kampala a half-full bottle of mineral water, and after gulping it down, the man let out a loud "ah" in a way that suggested he was grateful for the water more than he would have been for money.

The experience got the scales falling from my eyes. I realised for the first time that I can always give what I have. There is a tendency in church as everywhere of thinking in monetary terms when it's time to give. People are shunning churches or wedding meetings, and are not checking on the prisoner because they think there's money involved. Yet a mango from your garden, a bottle of mineral water or even your mere presence could do just as fine.

The Dead Sea is sometimes called "Stinking Sea" or "the Devil's Sea"

Consider Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her Sisters of Charity who carried with them only hearts aflame with love. By representing "love in action" as Malcolm Muggeridge writes in Something Beautiful for God (1972), they made all the difference. Working with "the poorest of the poor", Mother Teresa discovered that "being unwanted is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience," and that a loving heart was the only cure.

To emphasise her point, humanity needs more love than money. And how do you love those that need love without getting in close contact with them? Think of the street kids, the despised "little people," the abused prostitutes or the rejected poor. They are human too; they too have a right to respect, love and understanding. They are the neighbours that Jesus asks us to love in proportion to how much we love ourselves.

Now, on why the Dead Sea is dead, a friend told me it's because it receives but does not give back. It receives water mainly from the Jordan River but since it has no outlet, what it gets stays till it's evaporated by the hot desert climate, which unfortunately means all the fish that come in soon dies. Simply put, the Dead Sea is the 'meanest' most 'selfish sea.

Thus we can do better by giving of our time and hearts; sacrificing a little for the good of others. Singer Nneka says beautifully that "love is the heart-beat of life," without which we shall certainly end up dead like the Dead Sea.

The day death lost its sting

I know of nothing that inspires optimism more than Easter; the resurrection of Jesus - the day humanity's greatest enemy, death, lost its sting.

Years ago, I lived with medics that turned their home into a clinic because there was none in the neighbourhood. Once or twice a week, someone in critical condition would be ferried in mostly on a stretcher.

O grave where is thy victory?

I was a keen boy that secretly watched the terrors of day and night as men and women fought long for their lives. The battle often involved kicking and heaving and jerking and guttural groaning and the white part in the eye exerting its prominence oddly while foam popped from somewhere to wreath the mouth. Then the grim reaper would finally win, and silence, as sobering as I can feel it even now, ensued shortly before it was cut through with wailing and screams of grief from the relatives of the departed.

Weeks on end, I had trouble sleeping as episodes of the dying man obstinately replayed in my mind leaving me with unspeakable fright. I didn't want to die like men I had watched die yet I knew that one day whether I liked it or not, death and I would have to confront each other. Sometimes I would see an ugly creature with a pointed forehead written on "death" in capital letters coming for me in the dark and I would jump up with a scream of terror.

When I discovered much later that one of the authors I read as an adolescent, Steven King, was as well terrified and fascinated by death so much that he was convinced he would not live beyond the age of 20, I was relieved. And at the university, I heard an Easter sermon based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and inspired by 1 Corinthians 15, titled, "Death, where is your sting?" in which the preacher argued that for believers, death is just a harmless shadow, and a path to eternal bliss, since Christ conquered it when he rose from the grave three days after burial.

The optimist was fascinated; his fears vanished once and for all. I have since had great times mocking death with these beautiful lines from English poet Alexander Pope: "O grave! where is thy victory?/ O death! where is thy sting?"

Breaking the chains

It has often been said that experience is the best teacher. One man that understands that pretty well is Maj. Gen. Pecos Kutesa. A soldier of varlour who fought like a jungle cat along with those that brought President Museveni to power and wrote a colourful book about it, he literally had the world at his feet but was nearly plunged into an early grave by alcoholism.

Maj. Gen. Pecos Kutesa

He started imbibing at the age 18, and 30 years later, had been reduced to a messed-up hommie, if you may excuse the expression. During the premiere of the latest NTV show, Life Stories, on Monday, he told viewers three quarters of his liver is a donation from his wife after the rest of his original was destroyed by alcohol, removed and thrown away in an operation that lasted 18 hours.

If you don't know, the liver is the largest internal organ in humans, and one of the most important. This he knew but could not break the addiction that he says was "nauseating and challenging to his family." Every drop of waragi was a catalyst for the devastation that soon sent him into coma for four months.

Not even his only brother was willing to risk his life by donating part of his liver to save a man who had shunned advice to quit boozing. But Pecos's wife, Dora, stuck closer than the brother by offering to become the desperately needed donor even when she was aware of the possibility of losing her own life in the process. Thankfully both operations were successful.

It marked the soldier's transition from notoriety to sobriety. He had been sacked from the army 14 years earlier, and now was recalled and promoted from Colonel to Major General because the President knew his former Aide de Camp had learned his lesson and would never stain his decorated uniform with alcohol again.

He has since launched a determined campaign to give optimism to those still enslaved, saying, hey, I was lucky my wife donated a liver, but you might not get as lucky, why not quit the bottle now before it's too late.

Even of more significance, the story of this UPDF soldier and his wife demonstrates that everyone deserves to be understood, prayed for, loved and helped without giving up because they all can break the chains and reclaim their honour in the land of the living.

From Gloom to Bloom

Before I became an optimist I was a pessimist. I remember one night I sat late in my room watching and despising the crookedness of my silhouette on the wall. Before me, on an open page in my diary, I had summed life in two words: "a whip".

Before I became an optimist I was a pessimist

Yes, life had whipped me brutally or so I thought; the inner turbulence, the lusts of the flesh, and the fear of failure had me tramping about in stressing self-pity while aggravating fantasies roved pitilessly in my despairing soul. I hurled blame at everything and everybody: a rootless childhood, friends that seemed not to care as much as I wanted them to, and a government that was blind to the grievances of the citizens. Deep inside I guess I was longing for validation, a peace of mind or anything that would quiet the tumult in my troubled spirit. Then one day, I saw the light that made all the difference.

I was reminded of my past days of despondency on Friday by the news of a young woman that threw herself down from a tall building in Kampala. Is it true she had two degrees? How long had she groaned in despair before pulling the disastrous move? Had a relative, friend, neighbour or anybody at all not seen through her disillusionment and tried to help?

Poor woman; her lonely death reminded me of the high levels of unemployment and the rise in HIV/Aids prevalence that has pushed the number of Ugandans living positively from about 1.8million in 2005 to 2.3million today. Plus consider the restlessness of the affected and the misery of the unloved Ugandans whose parents or guardians are trapped in amassing material wealth instead of dispensing love and friendship to their offspring.

Evidently, we are a weary and heavy-laden people, but being all God's children we should find encouragement in that beautiful verse -"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me" – an attitude that will help us forget the gloom and inspire us to bear one another's burden with love.

Otherwise, that tragic heroine at Workers House should inspire us to renew our spirits and with all optimism find the antidote to our predicaments. Then this country shall cease being the tenth saddest place in the world to live