Come here! Nabweteme, stand here! Let me tell you to your face, you, the woman I married for peace and took to Kifuuta Katooke, Kyotera, Buddu.
I am speaking now! The man you have broken! Look at me! Nabweteme!
Naye, Nabweteme, do you remember the man you married? That man who wore clean shirts? Who ironed his trousers like a chief? Who walked in Kyambogo Design Center with his chest out, well-fed, well-groomed, smelling of nice perfume, Dior mixed with Montblanc? Where is he? Look at me now! My clothes are torn! My shoes have mouths! My eyes have sunk! I look in the mirror, and I see a stranger, a stranger you made! Olimba, Nabweteme!
Nabweteme! You are killing me! The very woman I brought to my house to give me peace!
My own home now gives me fever! Yes! My home! At 5 pm, when other men rush home to laugh, I stand at my own gate, and my heart sinks! I start calculating: will you open, Nabweteme? Or will you leave me knocking like a beggar? Like a stranger? Like a thief? Sometimes, I just pass my own gate and keep walking because I am tired of your battlefield! A man passing his own house like it is a police station or Wembuly!
Inside that house, what is there? Is there food, Nabweteme? No! There is bitter Mululuza! Those wild herbs that cut the throat! You cook not with love, but with anger! We eat with twisted faces! No joy! No talk! Every spoon is a punishment! You serve me food like you are serving your enemy, naye, Nabweteme!
Nabweteme! You have mastered insult! Did you go to school to learn insult? You shout! You hurl words! You wear arrogance like a queen wears a crown! You claim you have left my home, yet you are here, only to cook and to quarrel! You say you have abandoned marriage, but you patrol the kitchen like a soldier! You have made disrespect your daily uniform!
And what is this thing of yours, running from shrine to shrine? From healer to healer? Collecting charms, collecting bottles, collecting powers that have no power to give us peace? Look at the trouble you have dragged me into! A house that smells of herbs and quarrels!
You humiliate me in public! You fear nothing! You hate men! What kind of hatred is this you carry in your heart? They say women are gentle by nature, but you, you have become a hammer on my head! Every day, hammer! Hammer! Hammer!
My clan thinks our problem is because God has not yet given us children. But I tell you, children are in God's hands! My wound is not childlessness; my wound is your mouth! Your disrespect! Your pride that sits on the table like another person!
Why did I rush? Why didn't I wait? Younger boys than me are sleeping peacefully! They waited! I rushed like a fool chasing wind! Jjaajja Deborah Nabirye warned me! She said, "Be patient! Look well!" I argued with her! I thought love was enough! Now love has shown me it is blind! How will I face those Jjaajja? What excuse shall I give her? That I chose a jackal, thinking it was a dog?
You have worn my love down to its last thread! You have turned my refuge into my prison! I thought marriage would be shelter from this world's troubles. Now you ARE my world's troubles!
I am tired! Tired of endless sorrow! Sometimes, I wish I could vanish into thin air! Disappear far from you, who clings to me like a curse!
Look at me, a grown man reduced to crying like a child every day! Writing articles because my mouth is tired of speaking to a wall! The only place my heart can speak without you shouting back is on paper!
You, woman! You are killing me!
The very woman I married for peace is now the very storm that will bury me!
The Oracle of Kifuuta, if God ever frees me from these chains one day, I will celebrate a wedding of peace! But for now, I am drowning! And you are watching me drown in our own house! Ask the gods to come back to me!
Kifuuta Oracle said, "YOU! IT IS YOU!"
