He Lives in Her

There's a void where you once were, and it's growing. I sit up late at night and count the kisses we once shared off my finger tips and I get so dizzy because I keep going around in circles. Only that one last kiss counts. My breath is heavy and labored and I could swear I can taste pain on the tip of my tongue. I ask my heart questions in hope that my mind can stay silent enough for me to hear my hearts’ response but then the silence gets even too loud and I can hear the loud swishing sound of blood running through my veins. Have you ever needed silence so much that you wonder why the world is so loud? My Daughter Tisha once asked me. Daddy, why do still waters run deep?” I remember mumbling a jumble of incoherent explanations that left me feeling like the quack doctor out of Jeremy’s Clinic making prescriptions to an illness whose prognosis he could barely comprehend. Do I know why pain is more profound at night? If you asked me that 23:00hrs on a Friday night at Amnesia in downtown Kampala, I might have a myriad of explanations to make- Imagination arises and subsides in a symphony of balance that is the dawning of our lives. However, on the dawn of a new ex, am dumbfounded. I couldn’t know any more than the proverbial good looking girl who took a bus out of Kigali and ended up on the mean, dusty,raunchy streets of Kampala between Kalerwe and Kamwokya. Isn’t that Kifumbira on the Google maps? Well, this Rwandese girl came to Kampala in search of green pastures and ended up in a slum. Every night, she went out and worked at this bar in Ntinda, the void in her grew bigger. Hard work and less rest did nothing to bridge the gap. Instead every new day gave way to the expansion of the void. Days on end, she stood at the taxi stage and watched automobiles come and go and she wondered if any of this life’s wealths would ever fill the void in her. She could never afford any of life’s finer things so she binged on alcohol and cigarettes and the emptiness on the day after was even worse than before. One day she meets me at the counter of the fast food restaurant at Kisementi and we took suspicious looks at each other before we exchanged numbers. As the seasons of the sun changed and new shades of green dawned on the lovely bougainvillea in my compound, I helped her get a job at Chicken Tonight in Wandegeya and her life seemed to change like the pages of my book as I write this piece. She rented her own little place along Sir Apollo Kagwa road but the emptiness still remained. The void haunted her each time the night treated her with its own peculiar shade of silence like a big pile of poo. We all know by now that silence brings with it the pleasures of a lost cause and the horrors of an empty life ahead. Like the flotsam and the jetsome of humanity tossing back and forth along speak road, she decided to fill the void between her legs with something. First, her fingers gave her so much pleasure until the feeling faded into just a simple tingle yet life's insanities mean little Fruitcakes. Then she bought a dildo and next she got a boyfriend. In the beginning one boyfriend was sufficient and then as was with the first finger experience, she got another boyfriend and another and another. The silence grew even louder every time she wasn’t alone. With time, she grew frail and got sick even more often and her performance at her job wasn’t good. She lost the job and so did she her boyfriends. For once again she was lone, again, on the road side watching people drive by, board and alight from taxis. Life had once again slowed down for her to take another look. She woke up the next day on a hospital bed with no one around her except a note in her clutch bag from the drunk driver who rammed into her at the roadside. She was so cold and alone and in her soul, it was snowing. I’ve come to find out that Life as we know it, isn’t precisely what it is. The lights don’t look so spectacular when you look at them from a prostrate position. Friends come and go and the void within can’t be filled by anything material. The Rwandese girl gave her life to Christ on her hospital bed and for an instant before the lights went deem, she realized that this is all she had been looking for all her life. It rains so heavily on the damp souls that are lost out there in the streets. Salvation comes at no cost. Christ lives on.