Reflections on sunday: Today, I am ready to be a believer!

If I’ve been waxing religious these past days, don’t think it’s because I agree with Apostle Paul Gitwaza on the urgent need to change the nomenclature of week-days! If you don’t get my drift, ask somebody who heard him on BBC, the other Saturday. No, I don’t give a hoot whether Monday was thus named to pay homage to the moon god, or whether it was so dubbed in anticipation of man one day expropriating the moon as his backyard mining quarry. …. Which reminds me of Ruhande, our refugee camp cynic of the 1960s. We had just joined secondary school, in 1969, which had turned us into higher species called ‘Abasiniya’, as opposed to ‘junior biological substances’, which was the title designated to kids still in primary school. ‘Siniya’ is, as you may have guessed, the Kinyarwanda corruption of the word ‘senior’. The plural of ‘siniya’ is ‘basiniya’, and therefore referred to students who were in senior secondary school. In an environment of near-total illiteracy, as ‘Abasiniya’, at the time, we were custodians of contemporary wisdom. That is why, wherever we were, we used to discuss weighty issues unknown to lowly souls. If you remember, 1969 was the year that saw man set foot on the moon for the first time. In fact, two Americans set their feet on the moon on that day, 21st July: Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin. To high-flying academics, this was the topic in vogue. I recall one particular evening during the holidays at Ruhande’s, when we were excitedly chattering about this historic event, as we passed round a calabash of the banana brew, ‘urwagwa’, for each one of us to suck, using a straw. Ruhande listened reverently to our animated, high-sounding conversation and then, softly clearing his throat, asked: “Excuse me, you are Basiniya, aren’t you? And you are Basiniya because you are full of knowledge, not so?” To our impatient “Of course, yes, old man!”, he let out an inaudible chuckle and continued: “And so, as Basiniya, can you go to the moon, like those Americans? I doubt it, since the road to the moon is not lined up with cheap bars where you can quench your thirst on local, peasant brew!” The fellow who was holding the calabash almost chocked on his straw, I could hear him very distinctly. However, I don’t remember anything else because I slunk away as unobtrusively as possible. It was later that I learnt that everyone had quietly sneaked away, leaving the old man to delight his palate on our local brew. The old geezer had effortlessly passed his message, and many hot ‘academics’ did pay heed to his lesson. In fact, from that very evening, almost every member of our group stopped their alcoholic misadventures. There are those who later ‘re-orgged’, of course, including yours truly, until only recently when their hypertensive veins threatened to burst. Not to mention, threatened to tear their limbs up, as they have those of many a dear comrade. If I am waxing pious today, then, you can see why. I am especially encouraged by the fact that I’ve got it on authority, from a Nigerian wag, no less, that Jesus was a ‘broathe-oh’ (‘brother’ to those of you who are not schooled in the Nigerian lingo). I wouldn’t have believed my Nigerian ‘broathe-oh’, of course, for obvious reasons, if he’d not assured us that he was quoting ‘New Nation’. This is the paper that describes itself as Britain’s Number 1 Black Newspaper. ‘Black’ does not denote the colour of the paper, mind you: it’d seem that newspapers in UK have different races, like humans! Anyway, my ‘broathe-oh’ assured me that the paper stated that Ethiopian Christianity, which predates European Christianity, always depicts Christ as African. Moreover, said my wag, like African-Americans, “Jesus called everybody ‘brother’; he liked Gospel; and he couldn’t get a fair trial.” The ‘fair trial’ bit which my forbearers must have borne in mind, when they rejected conversion to Catholicism at the advent of colonialism. It especially came with their aversion to the Catholic catechist booklet, which had to be recited before you could be accepted as a Catholic. My ancestors were wary of the catechist booklet because it always answered its own questions, and therefore sounded suspiciously like a trap. They thus called it ‘Agatabo kibaza kakisubiza’, the ‘small book that poses questions to itself, and then gives answers to itself’! For instance, to the first question of the booklet: “What is the catechism booklet?” It gives the answer: “The catechism booklet is a booklet containing the teachings of Christianity.” How more talkative could the booklet be, if it were not a trap? That question, however, was harmless, compared to others. The policy wonks of the Catholic Institution had set other more ominous questions, and provided equally worrying answers for the faithful to chorus. One example: “Who killed Jesus Christ?” Answer: “Jesus Christ was killed by man, because man was born a sinner.” When the long-bearded, be-robed Belgian priest posed the question to one of my forbearers, the old man regarded him bemusedly at length, and then gave a thin, scornful sneer: “Hah! You won’t catch me on that one. You Whites hanged your own brother, and now you want me to name the killer!” Knowing different today, I’m ready to name the killer. Contact: ingina2@yahoo.co.uk