Goodbye, Omukama Oyo.
Your demise came on social media - just like your crowning did. When you were installed at 3 years old in 1995, we heard it on radio and ran barefoot to see the little boy drowning in a big crown, playing with a toy. Now, 31 years later, we heard it again on our phones at 10pm. I closed my eyes, I closed my ears, and I still heard it - that familiar, cold wave of death. That sound we have heard since the Batembuzi.
You have gone at the age of Jesus Christ. 34.
The heavens keep this number for the chosen ones. It is not an ordinary number.
ANCIENT WEEPING WITH US:
- Jesus Christ died at 33, when his work of love was just beginning to be understood.
- Alexander the Great conquered the known world and died at 32, his kingdom too big for his short life.
- King Tutankhamun of ancient Egypt became Pharaoh as a child like you, and left at 19, leaving a golden mystery.
- And in our own blood, Omukama Kasagama Kyebambe IV in December 1928, also left suddenly while waiting for his friend Kabaka Daudi Chwa. Like you, his body had to be carried home from Mwenge to Fort Portal, while the whole kingdom stood on the road crying - just as they stood on Friday to watch your helicopter bring you home.
You are in that lineage now. The lineage of Kings who were too bright for this earth to hold for long.
Goodbye, King. We were not ready for this goodbye. Tooro was not ready. Uganda was not ready. Your subjects at Karuzika Palace who gathered for days waiting for the casket - they saw it and said, "It is true, we were dreaming, and it was not a dream."
You came when Tooro needed a symbol - a baby King to hold a broken kingdom together after your father, Kaboyo Olimi III, left. You stayed when times were hard. You grew from that small boy into a King who did not shout, who championed schools, who told the youth to stay away from HIV, who carried Tooro on your back with humility, not pride.
And now, one friend to many is gone, but leaves many who pretend to know more about and sleep at a village called Wolokoso, as they displace empty ndeebe to sound witless.
Across the hills and valleys of Tooro land, your authority was hidden in love, not in noise. From Karuzika to the Rwenzori shadows, from Kyegegwa where your helicopter first landed with your remains, to Mwenge - your footsteps are still warm.
Now the doors are left open, and the propaganda yappers, the writers of the devil sleeping in social media, are mixing ignorance outside wisdom. They wrote about your private life when you were fighting for life in America. They forgot Obuntu - Obuntubulamu.
But the gods remember.
Let all the gods of Kifuuta and the great gods of the Batembuzi and Bacwezi carry you. Let Isaza, Ndahura, and Wamara welcome you. Let Rukidi Mpuga, the first of our line, give you a stool in the dark white house of Kings.
There are fewer friends beside the Kingdom of Tooro tonight. More empty chairs of knowledge. Irene Nalubula from Kyegegwa said she could not believe until she saw the casket. "It is as if we are still dreaming." That is how deep the cut is.
So I will sit right here with you in my prayers, as my gods in Kifuuta move besides you.
Goodbye, Oyo. We weren't ready for this goodbye.
Thank you for the 34 years you gave us.
Thank you for allowing our younger lives to look upon you and know that a crown can be worn with a smile.
Thank you for showing us that true Kingship is not shouting, it is serving.
Goodbye, Omukama, though your time on earth is done,
As long as one Mukonjo, Muganda, Musoga and Mufumbira in the mountains, one Mutooro child in Fort Portal speaks your name,
You will never really be gone.
To Maama Best Kemigisha - the Queen Mother - the yoke is big. You held him at 3, you guided him at 13, you advised him at 33. Now he has only gone to prepare for you a place to be forever and ever in the palace of eternity. Our Oyo Nyimba is not dead, he is just sleeping, to meet us one day in the dark white house of Kings where all the Babiito, Kings and Queens rest.
Sleep well, King Oyo. Sleep well.
But from that house of Kings, keep looking at those who forgot to be human, at a time they should have remembered Obuntu and being Human.
Omukama, the drums of Tooro are silent tonight but will sound in the eyes of the living God who commands the gods to recognize, receive you as Omukama.
The Oracle of Kifuuta talking in grief
