In love with my father, Samwiri Mugyenyi

Me and my father, in the absence of anyone else, could be at home, when others are out, or out in the farm doing one or two things for cows, we always have these too direct and and too frank talks. He tells me the stuff that I do or believe, that bother him, and I tell him the stuff that he does or decides, that bother me. He once accused me of  "not loving cows". This is a very heavy accusation if you are a Munyankore-Muhima. Its like telling a Christian that "you don't love Jesus".

We call it "Okukunda Ente" - to love cows, and it is a high virtue among us, the Bahima. So my father accused me in my face of not loving cows! He based this on seeing over time, that I did not know all their names (we've always had between 700 and 1000 cows at any one given time, living in three of four herds in the farm). I admit, I do not match him in his love for cows, seeing that he managed to raise those numbers for the family, making our family the envy of other families in terms of cattle. I admit as well, that I deliberately did not make it my priority to store 1000 names of cows in my head. To make matters worse, I started boarding school in P7 all through to University. So I'd be away to school for most months in the year - during that time cows would reproduce, and the young ones would grow, in my absence. My father expected me to be straight in each herd and learn each one that produced, the colour of its young one, which cows got moved to which herd, and learn all that in the few weeks of my school holiday, so that we talk about it when we're together. I didn't, and so I let him down on that. But he loved my academic credential, I never disappointed on those results. For starters I spoke excellent English at home, and with my young siblings we would start speaking English at home, he'd walk in on us to find English sessions in progress, headed by me. Although he is not the smiling type, he'd later give credit to that.

Not that English speaking was important, but generally school had changed my priorities from cows. I knew we loved cows for generations, and still have special cows from six generations ago, passed on from father to son, but school had introduced new information that was totally foreign to me, and which I thought was important. So I effectively changed my priorities. There was science, there was history, although I turned the glory of stories in history class, towards the study my own tribe, cultural and family, for example this blog, but I admit I missed something on the cows. It is on this change of view that I also accused him of not being modern, and doing things of modern people. Although in that very accusation I also fail to qualify it fully because my father is by all measures a modern farmers. Just because he doesn't farm the way we see it in the movies. Its the movies that introduce wrong realities that we base on.

Anyway, we talk straight - me and my father and get it out of our system. I could never tell my father anything other than exactly what was on my mind. We have had that sort of relationship for the three decades that I'm now old. I did not value this before, I thought we were always quarreling. In my twenties it got hardest, as I went both away physically - to secondary school and later university, and mentally, as I deliberately sought to establish my own thoughts, independent of him. It was important for me to experience the world, outside of his strict guidelines. So for about 10 years, from around 2005 to 2015, I was on a solo path, we were not talking much. During that time I joined and finished university, and also did something things in the world, such as starting a successful I.T firm Nextel Systems Ltd, in whose offices I'm now writing these recollections, and recently an agricultural company Tarra Corporation. Both of these ventures have both surprised him and amazed him. He recently said "people do not like the things they do".

And yet I believe we share a deeply secret, love relationship. For example if we're talking with any of my siblings, about him or our family in general progress, mostly relating to how rich or not rich you have become as an individual, and they seem to think its his fault or problem that some things, I find myself defending his positions, or explaining them, dissuading them from a mindset of blaming someone else. I do believe that whatever we've been given, we need to make it work, in order to have fair judgement of people.

I was home in Kitegwa at my dad's farm for 2016 Christmas holiday week (20 - 30th), and I plan to do the same this Christmas. Long holidays are now my only available time for us to talk. A but there is no single day that I do not amuse myself, in private, of how I have turned out like my father. An ironclad will to do and to make things. What I love about my father the most is consistency. How he was in 1984 when I was born, is still how he is in 2017 when I'm 33 years old. We've grown from a few cows which he inherited from his father and grand father, few owing to the many children (about 20) who shared the family property on the passing of their father, to now a ranch in Kyankwazi, because of nothing but this consistency. We have not even changed our diet since the 1980's. Its an incredible thing to experience such steadfastness. I consider myself lucky to be borne by him.

Above is picture of local; village church, Kitegwa Church

A bit of background
We did not move much, our family moved in early 1990 or so, from our ancestral lands in Bwera, to Kyankwanzi. When we first moved here, our first place of settlement was a village called Kalukwajju, within Wattuba sub-county. Here we stayed for a few years, with our cows from Bwera, a grass and mud house and a kraal next to it - that was our homestead, in the new land.

My father never went out of his way to find fame or with people or riches from trade. He concentrated on two things - raising cows and the family. For the good part of our childhood, that was all we knew. I knew my father and cows - that was all that mattered. Have all the cows got home in the evening from long distance grazing, are they milked, how about the calves in their kraal (Ekihongore)? That was our life from the age of 1 in Bwera to around age 8 in the new land. It is these cows that did everything. From livelihood - food, drink, clothing, education.

People came to him, even from those days, in a new land. After some time, he build a town home for us, in Kiboga town. Kiboga was the big district town. When we moved to this home town, we moved our cows a new land that was near the town, the land called Kakinga. While in Kalukwajju the nearest school was in about 20 KM, Kalukwajju Primary School. I went there for a while.