Read by Saul Reichlin
General Ssentongo was a fat man. When he was still his sagging jowls settled like the drawn roller blinds in his kitchen, and when he moved they swung violently from side to side.
“Eh, Odongo. Your part of this country: simple, it is simple!” He laughed deeply from his belly.
“Where is the electricity, my red carpet, your tarmac roads? Jesus Christ, my backside. My backside is numb from those potholes!” Ssentongo made a show of grabbing each of his buttocks and laughed until tears welled in his eyes.
Odongo laughed along with him. And stopped abruptly when he stopped.
“Odongo, come now, we live in difficult times but you don't have to live without light!”
“General, no one in this area has electricity, I cannot demand it for my home alone,” Odongo replied.
“Odongo, you need to strengthen that backbone! Or has it been crippled by the roads like my own buttocks?” Ssentongo frowned seriously. “Odongo, you have seen my house. The wardrobes are made of the purest mahogany, shipped from Brazil. The roller blinds glide when you pull them. The rooms shine with the brightest light at the flick of a switch. The shillings I’m paid to be in charge of our country's army do not do me justice. I get justice from the extras. Jesus Christ, they’re part of the deal!”
Odongo looked around his own house, which was the only brick building in the village, surrounded by mud-huts. His wife Mercy loved letting newcomers know that life was comfortable. Odongo heard her sometimes, and pride and guilt would warm his cheeks. “My husband, he is head of the army in this region. Yes, yes, the whole Northern region. We live in the brick house on Masindi Road, you must have seen it? The one made of bricks. Ah, yes, you know the one.”
But, Odongo rationalised, what harm would one generator do? And he could almost hear Mercy’s sweet voice. “Eh, you will definitely know my house. The one with the electricity shining brightly through the windows. Yes, yes that’s right, the bright house, made of bricks!"
“General, perhaps you are right. A generator will help me serve our country late into the dark evenings.”
***
It was two weeks after the generator was installed that Odongo received the first letter. Typed, anonymous and thrown like a hand-grenade through his letterbox.
More than half of the soldiers in Odongo’s region were based at roadblocks, and on the day of the letter he drove through as many as the potholes would allow.
The first was the largest in Apac, on Akokoro Road, manned by six men. Four were asleep in hammocks as Odongo approached; they tumbled out like white ants when they heard of his arrival.
"Colonel Odongo Isingoma!” They saluted in unison before one rushed off to get the roadblock's log.
“Good morning, God bless, I was in the area and thought I would drop by.” They looked nervous.
“Colonel...the…the past week has been incredibly incredibly busy. Two very ... very large incidents, one extended late into the night and took up a huge amount of man-hours …
“Let’s skip these formalities. I want to check how everyone is. The six of you, the regiment generally?”
Silence.
“How are you? That’s all.”
Some shuffling of feet and staring at the red dust covering their battered boots.
“Do you have any requests for the officers, any feedback on your conditions, anything you need?”
“We...we are fine Colonel,” came the reply as all of the men stared firmly at the dust.
Three more checks at Gulu-Kitgum, Arua, and Nimule Roads, and a near-identical response from each. Odongo started to wonder whether it was he who was being tested, played with like a goat before a slitting. The man who sent the letter would surely be brave enough to make himself known?
***
Over the next week Odongo dropped in on every roadblock in his region. Each time he posed his basic questions, received baffled looks and left with feeble responses.
It was more than a week after his final drop-in that a second letter arrived. Odongo read and re-read it under the light of the generator.
“You want to know how we are? We are neglected. I am speaking not just for the soldiers but for all inhabitants of this region. The good schools, hospitals, power supplies are all in the South, where both the President and Chief of Staff’s families live. We have nothing here: no investment, no power, no future.
We have heard good, kind words about you Colonel, and we have watched these past weeks as you have tried to find us. But how are we to know whether you come to help or arrest us? We need some sign.”
***
New Vision’s headline a month later read: “Colonel Odongo Isingoma demands equal investment in his region, and access to the good schools, hospitals and power supplies currently enjoyed only in the South.”
General Ssentongo was furious at the anonymous press leak and Odongo’s wife, Mercy, could not understand why her husband was determined to rock her comfortable bright brick house.
But Odongo’s pen-friend understood, and the third letter simply said ‘1400, Thursday, Aloi Road, by Ogogoro water pump’.
The days passed slowly until Thursday arrived.
Odongo looked out of place as he walked down Aloi Road, surrounded by women and children with their yellow jerry-cans either empty and swinging by their sides, or filled to the brim and balanced carefully on their heads.
“Colonel, Colonel!” shouted a soldier from the shade of a mango tree as Odongo approached the water pump. Odongo recognised him from one of his roadblock visits.
“It was you who’s been sending me these letters?”
“No Colonel, it was us, all of us. We have gathered to discuss our situation. Follow me.”
He walked purposefully and Odongo followed a few paces behind. The rains had stayed away for months and the ground was hot and dusty, creating a red cloud behind each of the soldier’s footprints. After about a kilometre the soldier moved from the road to the bushes which were so wild that they hid him almost completely. It was only when they gave way to a village that Odongo could see his pen-friend marching ahead. The families the men passed looked confused, and hastily huddled into their mud-huts when they saw the pair, leaving their goats and chickens to watch as the men disappeared into the adjoining bushes. This continued until the soldier stopped in a wide clearing and sent a message from his phone.
“Wait, they will come,” he said, as they sat in the clearing.
The rustling began shortly afterwards. One, two, twenty, fifty; more and more soldiers drew the bushes back like curtains and entered the clearing. They gathered expectantly in a circle.
“Comrades, let’s begin,” the lead soldier said when the rustling was dying down.
He turned to face Odongo and talked as if the crowds had disappeared.
“I am Nyankori Katto, and have been chosen by our comrades to represent them. Our beloved country is suffering in the dirty hands of the President and Chief of Staff. Our people in the North are not equal citizens. Their rights to basic investment are consolidated with the privileged few. We are ridiculed by the peoples of the world, as they see our leaders living like this Puff Daddy, with their houses and cars. The leadership is based on a corruption which is killing our hungry, impoverished people. And it can be no more.” The circle of men were roused by Nyankori’s words and nodded in furious agreement.
“I…I don’t disagree with a word you have said Nyankori,” Odongo replied, remembering his own comfortable existence as the sweaty trickle of corruption ran slowly down his spine. "The same thoughts trouble me daily. But I am at a loss as to what can be done.
“King Mutebi II has sent a message to us via his footmen. He's embarrassed by his dirty country. Two fellow heads of African countries and three heads of European governments have contacted him threatening to withdraw all international aid. He wants to find a new Chief of Staff who will stand up for our beloved country.”
“A coup? You want me to stage a coup?” Odongo spluttered, and felt as though the dry, red dust was slowly filling his lungs.
***
The planning took months. Cajoling soldiers, ministers, MPs: Odongo and his new friends were like park rangers herding fat, lazy buffalo.
Odongo felt like every meeting he had with General Ssentongo in those weeks would be his last, that Ssentongo would hear of their plans and dispose of Odongo behind bars.
But, to Odongo’s relief, the comments about the pot-holed roads and Ssentongo’s distressed buttcheeks continued until the date was finally set.
12th July. The President would be in Addis-Ababa and General Ssentongo in Brazil. The plan was technical, and the King had thought it all through with his team of lawyers who sat in their pristine suits in each meeting.
“Do you have more than half of the army on side?” the fussy lawyers asked repeatedly.
“When will we attack the President?” the impatient soldiers responded.
“We want to oust the President peacefully if possible, and we'll amend the Constitution when he's on international duties,” responded the lawyers: it was so much babble to the soldiers' deaf ears.
“I want to be the man who slits the throat of General Ssentongo, I don’t care how, I’ll do it with your goddamn Constitution if you want!” Odongo’s pen-friend told the bemused suits.
***
The truth was, they were all surprised by the lack of carnage. Some of Odongo’s new friends were bloodthirsty so there was disappointment too. But it happened in a way which showed how the new regime wanted to govern: defined by peace.
The King called an emergency session of Parliament where he proposed to dissolve Parliament as temporarily allowed under the amended Constitution. It was approved by 111 to 89. Among those who voted against was the President’s son, who had been groomed as his father’s successor. The son left the room in disbelief, swearing bloody revenge. He was met by crowds of the rejoicing public who had already started their celebrations, and at the front of the crowds were the police officers who arrested him on the King’s instructions.
The President caught wind of Parliament’s dissolution immediately, and flew back to the capital. He too was met by handcuffs. His loyal bodyguards defended him determinedly, and were amongst the day’s few casualties. Eventually the President was returned to his family’s compound where he was reunited with his son, and held under house arrest for five days before being exiled to Juba.
Odongo was more interested in the events surrounding General Ssentongo. Ssentongo had been wardrobe shopping with his wife in Sao Paulo when he heard of the dissolution. He arranged for his son to ship his prized possessions to a new house in Tripoli and never set foot in his homeland again.
And Odongo? Yes, yes, he was offered the position of new Chief of Staff under his country's first democratically-elected President, who was in place within four months of the dissolution. But Odongo declined. He had been too involved, seen too much, and let the trickle of corruption run too deeply through his life.
That first day after the revolution, Odongo drove back to his village smiling like a hyena. It was on that bumpy journey that he decided to devote his days to campaigning for equal treatment of his region.
It took some time, but eventually Mercy grew to enjoy their new life, and she basked like a lizard in the goodwill and appreciation that their neighbours flooded upon them. They worked from the new local library: the only brick building in the village which was brightly lit well into the night, thanks to the light of an anonymously donated generator.
(c) Kassalina Boto, 2014
Kassalina Boto is a lawyer in London and a recent convert to short-story writing. This is her first writing success and she is somewhat over-excited. She is expecting her first baby and her husband is ecstatic that he can soon pass on the job of listening to all of her stories.
Saul Reichlin: Winner of the 2010 & 2008 Audible Unabridged AudioBook of the Year Award, Saul has narrated over 50 TV documentaries for Sky History Channel. Nominated Best Actor in 2001, Saul’s one-man storytelling programme has toured 36 cities in 7 countries, including Off Broadway and off West End, London.
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