Lamwaka Achieng’s long name and the challenges of a long life

What has kept me “columning” here for close on 10 years now? This question dawned on me on Tuesday this week as I read Daisy Okoti’s reflections on the first anniversary of her insightful column, “Daisy’s World”. Well, the open secret I would share with Ms Okoti, as I congratulate her on her success, is that the success of a column is ultimately the reader.

Success with readers consists in your making them want to read, and having read, feel that they learnt something. Indeed, writing a column is like walking many tight ropes, since every reader brings their own expectations to the texts and they are entitled to criticising you if you do not meet them.

In my case, some readers want me to entertain them with anecdotes from my youth, some want me to regale them with juicy titbits about the legendary writers and scholars I knew, while the scholars want me to wrestle with topflight theories and hypotheses. Ten years into my column, I am still struggling to integrate people, events and ideas into my writing.

January, however, the two-faced month of looking both back to what has been and forward to what will or might come, is a time of particular poignancy and thoughtfulness for all of us. For me, 2024 is also the 80th year of my life, and you can imagine the tug (of war) in my mind between memories and anticipation.

Anyway, today let us dwell a bit on the past and see if it reveals some of the roots of the loquacious old scribe that regularly stirs your Saturday mornings with unsolicited chats. I am one of 10 siblings of my mum and dad. Born between 1940 and 1960, we all survived into adulthood, although our eldest, Francis, passed away, aged 76, some years ago. Our eldest sister is called Agnes Theresa Noelina Nakanwagi Nakachwa Ateenyi Achieng Lamwaka. We will return to that mouthful of a name presently.

Our last born is now 64. I do not know if this is due to our strong, hardy constitution (good genes) or to the efficiency of healthcare in those “bad old days”, with no fancy medical insurance schemes. We never heard of drug shortages in public hospitals, and admission there was close to a luxury hotel visit. Give the devil his due.

Maybe, also, the cleanliness of the environment in which we lived, even in the then simple burgeoning towns, contributed to our health and well-being. To that you may add the strict discipline and hygiene observed around our homesteads and villages. The water sources, mostly natural springs, were kept spotlessly clean, through regular communal labour.

The mud walls and earthen floors of the houses were regularly smeared with cow-dung plaster. The hedges, bushes and thickets near houses were regularly trimmed, and “littering”, whether in school compounds or on the streets or village paths, was a grave sin. Today, if you ask a person to wash their hands, you are accused of attacking their freedom or violating their human rights. Have we made progress or “prog-less”?

What disturbs me even more, contrasting our “ancient” past with the “smart” swinging present, is the current lack of concern about and for one another. You have probably heard the African saying that it takes a village to raise a child. That was taken and practised literally by both children and adults in our young days. We felt both protected and supervised by everyone in our neighbourhood. There was a stronger sense of cohesion and comradeship than what I sense in our tech-driven societies today.

This leapt sharply to my mind as we celebrated the 81st birthday of my elder sister on December 31st and we reminisced about the circumstances around her birth, as narrated to us by our late mother. The birthday girl, as I mentioned above, is Agnes Theresa Noelina Nakanwagi Nakachwa Ateenyi Achieng Lamwaka. The relevant, and maybe amusing, point is that each item in the name connotes the interest of a neighbourhood group in the new-born girl.

Briefly, Agnes was not born in a hospital. The labour pangs came upon her young mother one afternoon inside the Masaka police barracks, or lines, where she lived with her policeman husband. Unable to get the mother to the hospital, her female neighbours erected a human and kanga (or leso) screen around her, as those who had the skills and experience delivered her of the baby.

Since most of those who helped in the exercise where Luo (Acholi and Lang’o) friends, they immediately called her “Achieng’”, meaning that she was born under the bright sun (chieng’). They also identified her as “Lamwaka” indicating that she arrived on the eve of New Year (mwaka). The first three Latin labels, contributed by her father, obviously locate the baby within a Catholic community. The “Na-“prefaced middle items honour her as a member of her Baganda antelope lineage. “Ateenyi”, which is a pet or endearing name (empaako), came from her paternal grandmother, a native of Bunyoro-Kitara.

Even in this admittedly abbreviated account, you can sense the richly complex environment in which we children of the early 20th century were born and raised. “Nomen est numen,” goes the ancient saying: your name is your fate. You probably noted that to Lamwaka’s name we did not add the patronymics of descent (wuod-So-and-So, Omwana-wa-Fulani) or the honorifics of place origin (nyar-Gulu, al-Tikriti). All these gave us a strong sense of identity, which we struggled to assert and uphold.

The intricate web of relationships, signified by the name, strengthened and sustained us, even in the face of our relative lack of the material benefits of today’s life. Adapting to today’s highly individualistic ways, where everyone “minds their own business” and talks more to their smart phone than to one another, is one of the toughest challenges we octogenarians and nonagenarians face.

A warm, hearty face-to-face conversation, every now and then, may be the dearest gift you can give to us.