KAKALABANDA...By George W Kiwanuka

-
In the backdrop of intense winds and outside rustling leaves, 
You clutched your rosaries and  bibles in grim silent terror
'Shut your Eyes' 'Don't peek or speak'-echoed internally like divine law
You froze to the clack sound of bone and wood against the dorm floor 
And lost faith in the cross you had drawn on the suitcase squeezed onto the side of your bed
You repented and said a silent earnest prayer for miraculous instant sleep.
You instead recalled Muwanga's horrid prescient natter on these creatures
Earlier in the bright sunny secure blanket of day

The uninvited night violent guests - ghastly apparitions
carried with them slappy treats for the naughty boys
and much too often made off with their valuables to the obscure world beyond
Woe unto those who curiosity tricked into opening their eyes,
Legend had it that Kakalabanda liked such rebels the most
and it was said that he was certain to carry them away never to be seen again.

@Georgewkiwanuka


*Kakalabanda is a popular urban myth in Ugandan traditional boarding schools. It was the name given to a ghost which allegedly visited dormitories at night to discipline the naughty or to visit  students with distinct spiritual attachment from home.
*The Muwanga referred to in stanza 1was a good friend and my dorm captain. He succumbed to an unfortunate mob justice incident in 2012. Rest in peace man

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tackling the problem of maternal mortality today: A look at modern and advanced technology based ways to tackle this issue

-
Image
Today the number of people who have expressed an interest in the Millennium Development Goals is overwhelming. The MDGs are development goals identified and fronted by the United Nations [1] in September 2000(the beginning of a new millennium) that are intended to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015 which will probably will never be achieved because the year seems so near and there is still a lot to desire. I, like many people had not come to terms with this until last year in my First year at the Makerere University School of Law when for the Development Studies Coursework we were given the tiresome and partially traumatizing yet revealing task of visiting a slum of our choice, observe and later on write in relation to the possibility of achieving these goals. The situation was way worse than I had ever fathomed. In addition to poor infrastructure, our trip to Katanga was constantly punctuated with tales of frustrated young...
Read more

UGANDANS AND SEX TAPES AND THEIR INSISTENCE TO MOCK THE LOKODO AGENDA.

-
Image
One of the traits majority of Ugandans have persisted to carry from time immemorial is the impressive ability to ignore the serious element of any law. If anything when laws are passed in Uganda, some folks look for the trivial or comic part of  the legislation, laugh it off and then cast bets on how long this would survive. So this is the attitude we flung to the ‘Helmets are mandatory’ and the ‘Wearing seat belts is compulsory’ legislation. And for years we lived in our easy law mockery life with all these rules and laws not existing for long. Then alas Mzee Museveni our President made an appointment. I know Ugandans who laughed at this too and thought this was the same old story…same people in different clothes. This iron lady from the Revenue Authority was a no nonsense lawyer who had come to clean up the city as its new Executive Director. It is still thanks to Jeniffer Musisi that most Ugandans had learnt that when the law states something, doing the reverse has repercussion...
Read more

AFRICAN DRAMA TELEVISION SERIES….a new rising era

-
Image
A few years ago, you would never find any self respecting television fan confiding in anyone that one of the shows that they were ardent fans and viewers of was one that was written, conceived, acted, produced and acted in the cradle of life (read Africa)….an African Television show was another name for low quality, poor props, boring characters and predictable plots and storylines. There was no African show that would get anyone interested enough to feel the suspense that the show team intended them to feel. Even when the show’s villains were plotting on kidnapping and murdering the protagonist, it was not scary at all and even if one was to be that poor ill fated protagonist, there would be no need to worry. However in the Southern part of the continent, the members in their television industry had already decided to tread these seemingly untradeable waters and soon mastered the art. Luckily for the industry, these past months have seen many African drama series cropping up and yes,...
Read more