Uganda has existed in my mind for as long as I can remember. Initially, I remember hiding my African heritage at school. It was safe to be of Caribbean but not African descent. For me, even at such a young age, lies were less painful and more exciting than my lack of facts. These were my first lessons in the flexibility of historical narratives. As I grew to learn more about my the immense gaps in my personal history: I knew that one day I would make the journey to my father’s land in search of people who had seen my father’s face and tell me who he had been.
In my early twenties I studied literature and came across post-colonial theory not written by anyone outside of Europe, it was a blur of anxiety and one sharp memory is when my lecturer spoke with zest about ‘otherness’ of the Africans depicted in ‘A Heart of Darkness’ – apparently it was an asset of the text. In my late twenties, in lieu of real experience, I read Fanon, Said and Spivak and came to realise that through my often absent and indirect, personal and historical education I’d come to romanticise Africa, the motherland, and so tried to dispel western mythology about the ‘tragic mullato’, ‘returning to her roots’ and ‘discovering her true self’ in favour of being open minded and aware of my western context and perspective.
So, when in 2018, I was accepted onto KLAART festival’s: Off The Record, I was at once terrified and elated. The wounds I’d licked closed - growing up without a father, having him pass away from illness and isolation, lacking one half of your narrative and most of your family - were about to be ripped wide open.
Earlier in 2017, I’d made some attempts to fill in the gaps in my own personal history, believing that this would lead to wholeness or a calm that might abate my restlessness. This journey began when I met my Jajja in Sheffield, held her hand, listened to her read her bible and tell me she thought she would die before she saw me.
After a few dead ends and false starts, through (what I now see as a typical for a mixed person severed from a lived cultural life) a research-led approach to personal history, I was led to a 40 year gap in the British re-telling of Ugandan history. To be honest, the gap didn’t surprise me. What did, was finding out how easily Britain had changed the historical narrative of half of the world by burning and sinking its colonial records and that this so called ‘operation legacy’ had been public knowledge as of 2013.
May 2018, I decided I was going to go to the National Archives to see the files that Britain didn’t burn or sink before it left Uganda to its ‘independence’. I managed two files of around 2000 papers in one day and on seeing the records, I was stunned at the banality and cold mechanics of the ‘operation’. Hannah Arendt was right. Locked cabinets, recruitment of couriers of ‘non-African decent’, communist watch lists, cyphers, protests led by Ugandan farmers unions and the erasure of any information which might ‘embarrass both Britain and HRH’ due to ‘racial or religious’ intolerance.
As is the case with unchecked trauma, I also projected my own lost personal history onto this larger historical erasure. I made a film about the acts of destruction carried out in the 50s and 60s by the colonial administrators in Uganda but also about being a mixed-race child of two immigrants, paternalistic power, ‘otherness’ and the effects of growing up in Britain knowing you weren’t being told the whole story both within your own home and county.
I can’t really explain what it’s like to exist when the only people who knew your father and one half of your family are either unable or unwilling to tell you, but imagine it’s like being locked out of a room in your own house. Let’s say, the kitchen.
I knew I wanted to make work about the complexity of historical narratives and the loss, trauma and healing available in these realisations. As my plane landed onto the red soil of Kampala, I cried. I cried because I never thought I’d make it to a place that had been so long hidden from view.
In the first few days, I settled, or rather sped-up, to life in Kampala. I found cousins that lived in Kansanga and visited them at their homes. Nothing prepared me for meeting my cousin and seeing my own face and gestures in hers – I had gone 30 years without seeing myself reflected in another in this way. I was met with warmth and openness by her and will carry those memories forever.
I spent time meeting people and explaining that although I was here to meet family for the first time, I was also looking to find people who were willing to share some of their historical knowledge with me for my project. I wanted to learn and listen about the breadth of knowledge from a variety of people about Ugandan history, about my father’s history. People were generous and kind and it’s not possible to thank those who spoke with me, enough.
At a KLAART event, I met a university teacher who was dismayed when he heard I never knew my father or my family history. He told me that there were ways and means and that I should head to the British Council to see if I could find records. I was apprehensive but ready. The next day he texted me to see what I had found, he wasn’t surprised to hear I had delayed my visit. He told me ‘have courage’. The next day managed to get a meeting with the British Consulate. The first few questions were ‘what was your father’s date of birth?’, ‘where was he born?’ and ‘what was the name of your grandfather’. I couldn’t answer any of these questions. I realised how powerless it is be to be alienated from your own history. A message to the single white parents of mixed race children: yes - it is your child’s birth right to know the breadth of their cultural history. And - if you can’t teach them it – at least try to find a way.
The consulate pointed me towards NIRA were I could find birth and death certificates. After a long wait and a two minute meeting I was laughed out of the office. ‘Why do you want the birth certificate of a dead person? We don’t have it’.
A few days before leaving Uganda, I received a call from an uncle that I’d tried to contact in my first few days in Kampala. I was given several numbers of uncles or aunties, sent messages and received no reply. Nothing new. Some said it was probably because of the OTT tax, some looked at me with pity. On the phone, my uncle said, ‘ I understand you are trying to find out about who your father was..’ again I was first interrogated as to why my mother never told me or why my Ugandan family were not able to answer my questions. I had no answers. He said ‘ so I didn’t know your father well but I’d like to meet you, you can also meet your sisters – they live here in Kampala’.
Sisters? I thought I was an only child. ‘You have two sisters – they are in their twenties and live here in Kampala. How come you don’t know?’ History is slippery.
We meet the next day – he eats a lunch and delays talking to me about my family, again handing me questions about why he is the first one to tell me my history. Again, I have nothing to say. I’m patient. When he is ready to talk, he backtracks some of his earlier comments saying, he only met my father at a family event but he knows my auntie and had heard about my sisters. My cousin mediates our communication - to work out the western way of tracing blood lines as opposed to the Ugandan generational family groups. ‘Are you the brother of my Dad?’ ‘No, but I am your Uncle’, ‘Is she my blood Grandma’ ‘No, but she is your Jajja, she is of your grandmother’s generation’. We dance closer to and far from my family history – almost simultaneously. We say our goodbyes and he promises me he will find out more about my sisters for when I come to Uganda again. Later that night, my head buzzes with all the questions I could have asked.
We meet an hour later. He tells me ‘oh, I asked around and I think I made a mistake – I don’t know your father. I know another Kizito but not your dad. I don’t think those girls are your sisters. Maybe your cousins.’ My fractured psyche could only take so much – I told myself ‘nothing gained, nothing lost’.
Perhaps this is now my perspective on history – an obscured history can’t ever be laid to rest, but it also can’t hold you hostage to its finality.
When I left Uganda, I left with my wounds wide open and I’m still not sure if I ever need to close them again.
