The Story of Lutwama (Day 4)

So many years ago Lutwama was born into a God-fearing family with the head of the house as a catechist and the assistant head of the house as a member of the local church choir. While other normal children in the neighbourhood had bedtime stories told to them every night, Lutwama had bible verses read to him by Nalwoga, the house maid. Lutwama’s parents really had no time to recite the Bible verses to him because they would always be busy planning for the Sunday mass that was upcoming, or they would be praying.

Despite the cameo appearance of his parents in his life, Lutwama grew up with the Bible as his campus and the house maid as his ship captain. Occasionally, the parents would summon him to find out if he had completed his routine of saying the Rosary or if he had gone for confession that evening to which Lutwama always responded with a positive nod.

Years went by and Lutwama crawled his way into adolescence. Discovering this strange but colourful world of adolescence was never the easiest thing for our friend Lutwama. Once in a while Lutwama would wake up in the morning hating himself so much for making his bed wet because of the nature of dreams he had. The dreams often involved Nabunya, the neighbor who lived a few hills away. Her mother visited the Lutwama’s quite often and every once in a while she brought along her pretty young daughter to visit.

And so while these dreams perturbed Lutwama, he was sure they were not the kind of dreams he would openly to talk to the Ship Captain, the head of the house (the father) or his assistant (the mother). So he quietly attempted to figure out what could have been happening in his life.

Lutwama grew old enough to study in a school far away from his homeland. From what he had gathered, the school was a boarding school and it had taken selling off some of the finest goats to raise the tuition for the young man.

Lutwama never took this lightly because as soon as he arrived at this far away school, his first order of business was to focus on his books and keep everything as far away from his mind and life as possible.

Then one day Lutwama met Apio.

From the moment he laid his eyes on her, he knew his life was going to be a mess. He often sat in class, dreamy eyed and open mouthed, wondering what Apio’s skin felt like rubbing next to his. He occasionally mouthed her name, hoping his guardian angel would pick the message and float through the air to Apio’s guardian angel – to deliver the message. Once or twice he was caught writing notes – which he eventually would chew up for fear that the world would realize how whipped he had become.

Why hadn’t his parents warned him about people like Apio? Why hadn’t the ship captain given him a plan of action for such confusion? Why did the teachers even bother telling him about Sine, Cosine and Tangent when all he wanted was to wine and dine with Apio? He had watched a few movies and it seemed like the one thing that two people who liked each other did was wine and dine.

The theory of relativity was no longer relevant to him; Archimedes Principle offered him no important principles, the only geography he wanted to learn was the geography of Apio’s curvaceous body; and quite naturally, the only Biology he was interested in was hers. How could God bestow this much beauty on one human being? Her dark skinned often glowed like the fair skin of a goddess – a dark provocative tone that evoked the wildest confusion in Lutwama’s loins. School for him was only stopping him from pursuing the one true thing he desired – Mbabazi.

It did not help that Apio was the daughter of the school headmaster. And so whether or not he was interested in studying, he had to keep his distance from the school belle or he would risk having his God fearing parents summoned to lash him in-front of the entire school.

And so our friend Lutwama sailed through his days at school completely oblivious and unaware of what was happening in the classroom. By the time school had ended, Lutwama was nearly as green as he had been when he joined – and Apio now had a boyfriend, the new head prefect Tusiime.

So much for destiny!

School, for Lutwama, just like home, offering him nothing of what he wanted. It gave him but a bruise, a bruise that he had gotten from spending all those years yearning for Apio and then eventually losing her to the head prefect – a chubby fella who seemed to ace everything that came his way from exams to school competitions.

Lutwama cursed everything. His parents for bringing him into this world and abandoning him, his captain for not guiding him through the deep waters of adolesence and his school for not making him a better person.

This is the fourth of seven blog posts under the theme ‘Schools Made Me No Better’ as part of the #UGBlogWeek Challenge – a brain child of the Uganda Blogging Community. Feel free to drop a comment, take part in the challenge or share your opinion(s) on the blog or anything you feel like.

“The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.” ― Shannon L. Alder

Bernard
a.k.a Beewol
The Talkative Rocker
Follow @beewol on Twitter

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