By Daniel Kakuru.
I once dated a girl whom my friends called a mosquito. Why? She was short and as close to the earth as a crawling creature. As if that had not been bad enough, there was barely any flesh sitting on her bones. To see her buttocks, you needed both a microscope and a pair of spectacles.
While we lasted, she was my most prized possession. It was us against the world. It was us frequenting coffee dates; our hands glued together, our hearts skipping the beats they oughtn’t. Ironically, it was us doing physical drills together to lessen the fat we didn’t have. It was us swapping saliva, staring into each other’s’ eyes, beholding things the rest of the world never saw in us. We were Helen and Paris of Troy. We were John Lennon and Yoko Ono. We were Bobi and Barbie.
But there was a problem. One day, my friends decided that I was eloping with a mosquito. She was designated as a female anopheles one and I the male one. So whenever they beheld us together, they bawled in unison, “Mosquitoes! Mosquitoes! Mosquitoes!”
Like a steel sword, words can cut abysmally. Whilst we bluffed and wore placid faces that showed no apprehensiveness, we were apoplectic. But this thing called love held us the way glue holds papers together and drowned the trolling voices. Well, until everything flamed out and, as they say, ended in tears – it always does.
When I was ten years old, I weighed a deplorable twenty-one kilograms. I had been longlisted to represent my school in the under-14 interschool soccer gala, but to barge into the shortlist, there was a preliminary test: stand on the ‘minzani’ and weigh at least thirty kilograms.
Incipiently, the gesticulation was auspicious. The pointer ran all the way and hinted on settling somewhere close to the fifty-kilogram mark. But as if it had remembered something, it slid and slid backwards until it rested on the twenty-one-kilogram mark.
The bystanders hee-hawed as I limped off the ‘minzani’ with tears welling up in my eyes. That day meant two things: firstly, it marked the end of my dream to flirt with the grand stage of the game and imitate my then idols Juninho Pernambucano and Alessandro Del Piero. Also, it gave birth to a nickname: Mushwiija; a name that I detested passionately though it would stick to me like a tattoo. The latter name can loosely mean an always sickly person. The dexterous game of football had discarded me because I just wasn’t healthy enough for it.
In the famed TV-Series, Game of Thrones, the dwarf, Tyrion Lannister advised Jon Snow: Never forget what you are; the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you. This bald piece of advice changed Jon Snow’s life forever. The boy who always raged when addressed as Eddard Stark’s bastard suddenly learned to remain calm in every abrasive situation.
Today, the 21st day of January 2022, a taller – than – normal man is supposed to appear in court to face charges relating to offensive communication. His name is Kakwenza Rukirabashaija, a novelist who won the PEN International Writer of Courage Award last year. In December, he took to his twitter handle and among other things, referred to Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as obese, and dissed not only his military credentials but also training.
It is a prosaic habitude for Ugandan high ranking military officers to live sedentary lifestyles and gain anomalous weight, and the first son is no exception. It is common for us to hear of them dying preventable deaths relating to lousy cardiovascular disorders. But what beats me is the fact that they feel offended when one calls them out and mentions their names when discussing truncal obesity. What on earth is wrong with being called short if you are? What is wrong with being called fat or thin or chubby or stupid or broke? I have lived my whole life being called skinny even by those who weigh less than I do, and never has it cut me so deep.
When an ordinary citizen hurls what you call insults at you, their intention is to draw your ire; and Kakwenza has measured up to that. If you are an overweight military officer, you do not need to wait for grassroots’ civilians to remind you to hit the gym and look normal again. Because I am reclusive, I dare not mention that alcoholism is also not a place for high ranking military officers. How will you protect us, the pariahs, if you aren’t sober?
The writer is just a worthless MugOfPorridge. His articles have sporadically appeared in print and online. He drinks and smokes and hopes to die by suicide.
