The First Woman Read online

  Advance Praise for

  The First Woman

  ‘The First Woman is captivating, wise, humorous and tender: Makumbi has come back stronger than ever. This is a tale about Kirabo and her family, and her place in the world as she searches for her mother and a true sense of belonging. But most of all, this is a book about the stories that define us, and those we tell to redefine ourselves. A riveting read.’

  Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

  ‘The First Woman is a wonder, as clear, vivid, moving, powerful, and captivatingly unpredictable as water itself… With wry wisdom, great humour, and deep complexity, Makumbi has created a feminist coming-of-age classic for the ages.’

  Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift

  ‘A magnificent blend of Ugandan folklore and more modern notions of feminism… This book is a jewel.’

  Kirkus (starred review)

  ‘[An] arresting bildungsroman… Kirabo, a strong, empathetic protagonist, reveals a society where women are routinely pitted against one another or silenced. This beautifully rendered saga is a riveting deconstruction of social perceptions of women’s abilities and roles.’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘Magnificent. The First Woman is ambitious and affecting in equal measure. It is that rare thing, a multifaceted novel guaranteed to stay with you long after you read it. Makumbi is indeed a singular talent.’

  Tendai Huchu, author of The Hairdresser of Harare

  ‘Ugandan literature can boast of an international superstar in Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi.’

  Economist

  ‘In The First Woman, Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi takes the classic male quest for identity and turns it spectacularly on its head. Kirabo’s journey toward self-possession is a beautiful, wise, and exhilarating read.’

  Lily King, author of Writers & Lovers

  ‘Makumbi writes with the assurance and wry omniscience of an easygoing deity.’

  New York Times

  ‘In her characteristically page-turning and engaging style, Nansubuga lays bare the complex power dynamics of patriarchy, capitalism and neocolonialism, not through academic jargon but via that most effective tool of education – storytelling. An achingly beautiful tale.’

  Prof. Sylvia Tamale, author of When Hens Begin to Crow:

  Gender and Parliamentary Politics in Uganda

  ‘What a ride! I feel naked while reading Makumbi – because there is so much history, and cultural nuances packed into her novels… In The First Woman, you will be enamoured by the Ugandan folktales with witches, men and betrayal, or sympathize with the coming of age narrative, or find yourself plunged into patriarchy, colonialism, spread of religion and power dynamics. The First Woman is indefinitely layered.’

  The Book Satchel, 10 Best Books of 2020

  ‘Superb. An intoxicating tale that combines mythic and modern elements to make the headiest of feminist brews.’

  Irenosen Okojie, author of Nudibranch

  ‘Makumbi’s tale dazzles… This is Kirabo’s story and she is a wonderful heroine: headstrong, inquisitive and determined. The novel is rich with Luganda words and steeped in ancient Ugandan folklore, making it an immersive read. I loved it. As one character says: “Stories have such power you cannot imagine”.’

  The Bookseller, Book of the Month

  Praise for

  Kintu

  ‘Kintu is an important book. It is also a very good one…inventive in scope, masterful in execution, [Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi] does for Ugandan literature what Chinua Achebe did for Nigerian writing.’

  Guardian

  ‘A multicharacter epic that emphatically lives up to its ambition.’

  Sunday Times

  ‘A highly ambitious, dense and tightly written narrative…Makumbi succeeds in making us feel the emotional importance of uncovering family history.’

  Times Literary Supplement

  ‘A soaring and sublime epic. One of those great stories that was just waiting to be told.’

  Marlon James, Man Booker Prize-winning

  author of A Brief History of Seven Killings

  ‘Kintu is a triumph of east African literature.’

  Financial Times

  ‘Magisterial…epic… The great Africanstein novel.’

  New York Review of Books

  ‘Immediately engaging…as gruelling vignettes of gender injustice jostle with hallucinatory dream sequences.’

  Observer

  ‘Epic both in intention and execution, Kintu contains a vast number of characters, avenging ghosts and portentous visions…the final coming together of the entire Kintu clan, arrived at with precision and intricacy, makes for a satisfying and thoughtful denouement.’

  Spectator

  ‘The most important book to come out of Uganda for half a century.’

  Giles Foden, author of The Last King of Scotland

  ‘Kintu is an entertaining, engrossing, and, crucially, intimate read… an extraordinary novel that is unafraid and beautifully unashamed to examine Uganda’s rich culture. It is a novel that is proudly Ugandan; it is a novel that deserves to be widely read.’

  Irish Times

  ‘Kintu is a masterpiece, an absolute gem, the great Ugandan novel you didn’t know you were waiting for.’

  The New Inquiry

  ‘A masterpiece of cultural memory, Kintu is elegantly poised on the crossroads of tradition and modernity.’

  Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  ‘A work of bold imagination and clear talent.’

  Ellah Wakatama Allfrey, editor of Africa39

  ‘With crisp details and precise prose, Makumbi draws us into the dynamic and vast world of Uganda – its rich history, its people’s intricate beliefs, and the collective weight of their steadfast customs.’

  World Literature Today

  ‘I recommend Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s Kintu, a sprawling, striking epic.’

  Gabe Habash, author of Stephen Florida

  ‘In this captivating multigenerational family saga, Makumbi has gifted us with an exquisite and powerful debut. Written in delightful prose, bold and ambitious, Kintu is easily one of the best novels I have read this year.’

  Chika Unigwe, author of On Black Sisters’ Street

  ‘Impressive… Reminiscent of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, this work will appeal to lovers of African literature.’

  Library Journal (starred review)

  To my grandmothers

  Rakeli, Yeeko, Abisaagi and Milly on Father’s side, and on Mother’s side, Batanda and Kaamida, all of them sisters to my ‘real’ grandmothers. For that thick traditional love, which would not allow me to see that my ‘real’ grandmothers had passed when my parents were very young. Not until all of you had passed.

  To Catherine Makumbi-Kulubya, whose fierce independence, sheer tenacity and quiet intelligence first inspired me.

  Contents

  The Witch

  The Bitch

  Utopia

  When the Villages Were Young

  Why Penned Hens Peck Each Other

  Cast of Key Characters

  Recommended Reading

  Acknowledgements

  ‌The Witch

  1

  Nattetta, Bugerere, Uganda

  May 1975

  Until that night, Kirabo had not cared about her. She was curious on occasion (Where is she? What does she look like? How does it feel to have a mother?, that sort of thing), but whenever she asked about her, and family said No one knows about her, in that never-mind way of large families, she dropped it. After all, she was with family and she was loved. But then recently her second self, the one who did mad things, had started to fly out of her body and she had linked the
two.

  On this occasion, when she asked about her mother, and family fobbed her off again with Don’t think about her; think about your grandparents and your father, something tore. It must have been the new suspicion (Maybe she does not want me because I am…) that cut like razors.

  A mosquito came zwinging. It must have gorged itself on someone because its song was slow and deep, unlike the skinny, high-pitched hungry ones that flew as if crazed. Kirabo’s eyes found it and followed it, followed it, and, rising to her knees, she clapped it so hard her palms burned. She brought her hands to the candle to check her prize. Black blood: yesterday’s. There is no satisfaction like clapping a bloated mosquito out of existence mid-air. She wiped mosquito mash on a stray piece of paper and sat back and waited again.

  Kirabo wanted storytelling, but the teenagers were engrossed in gossip. They lounged on three bunk beds in the girls’ bedroom. Some lay, some sat, legs dangling, others cross-legged, squeezed cosily, two or three to a bed. They had gathered as usual, after supper, to chatter before going off to sleep. Kirabo was not welcome.

  For a while she had watched them, waiting to catch a pause, a breath, a tick of silence in their babble, to wedge in her call to storytelling – nothing. Finally, she gritted her teeth and called ‘Once, a day came…’ but her voice carried too far above the teenagers’ heads and rang impatient in the rafters.

  The hush that fell could have brought down trees. Teenagers’ heads turned, eyes glaring (But who does this child think she is?), some seething (What makes you think we want to hear your stories?). None answered her call.

  Another twelve-year-old would have been intimidated – there were ten teenagers in the room – but not Kirabo. Not visibly, anyway. She stared straight ahead, lips pouting. She was the kabejja of her grandparents, which meant that all the love in the house belonged to her, and whether they liked it or not, the teenagers, her aunts and uncles, would sit quietly and suffer her story. But Kirabo’s eyes – the first thing you saw on her skinny frame, with eyelids darker than shadows and lashes as long as brush bristles – betrayed her. They blinked rapidly, a sign that she was not immune to the angry silence.

  Unfortunately, tradition was that she could not start her story until the audience granted her permission, but she had begun by annoying them.

  On the floor in front of Kirabo was a kerosene candle. The tadooba only partially lit the room, throwing her shadow, elongated like a mural and twitchy like a spectre, against the wall. She looked down at the candle’s flame. A slender column of smoke rose off it and streamed up to the beams. A savage thought occurred to her: she could blow the flame out and turn the room blind dark. And to annoy the teenagers properly, she would scamper off to Grandfather’s bedroom with the matchbox. Instead, Kirabo cradled the fragile flame between her palms to protect it from her breath. Her evil self, the one who quickened her breath and brought vengeful thoughts, retreated.

  Still no response to her call. The teenagers’ rejection of her story gripped the room like a sly fart. Why were there so many of them in her home, anyway? They came uninvited, usually at the beginning of the year, and crowded the place as if it was a hostel. The sheer number of them made her feel like a calf in a herd.

  Kirabo blinked the spite away. Most of the teenagers were Grandmother’s relatives. They came because her grandfather was good at keeping children in school. Also, Great-Grand Luutu had built the schools and churches, and Grandfather was on the board of governors for all schools – Catholic and Protestant, primary and secondary – in the area. When he asked for a place in any of the schools, he got it. His house was so close by they did not have to walk a long way to school. Grandfather’s mantra was ‘A girl uneducated is an oppressed wife in the making.’ Grandmother was renowned for keeping girls safe from pregnancy. All the girls that passed through her hands finished their studies. Still, Kirabo wanted to tell the teenagers to go back where they came from if they didn’t want to hear her stories, but some were her father’s siblings. Unfortunately, she didn’t know who was who, since everyone seemed to come and go during school breaks and they all called Grandmother ‘Maama’ and Grandfather ‘Taata’. To ask By the way, who are my grandparents’ real children? would earn her a smacking.

  ‘Kin, you were our eyes.’ Grandfather’s voice leapt over the wall from the room next door, granting her permission to tell her story.

  Kirabo perked up, her face a beam of triumph. She glanced sideways at the teenagers; their eyes were slaughter. She bit back a smirk. She had worked hard at this story. Told it to Giibwa – her best friend when they were not fighting – and Giibwa was awed. Grandmother, not disposed to wasting words on empty compliments, had said, ‘Your skill is growing.’ The day before, when Kirabo took the goats to graze, she stood on top of an anthill and told it to the plain. The story came out so perfectly the goats stood in awe.

  ‘Once, a day came when a man – his name was Luzze – married his woman—’

  ‘Would he marry your woman instead?’ a boy sneered under his breath. Kirabo ignored him.

  ‘They had many children, but they were all girls—’

  A girl snorted as if Kirabo’s story was already predictable.

  ‘Luzze became sad, as every time the woman had another girl. At first, he thought it was bad luck that girl babies kept coming. But then the woman made it a habit; every time, girl-girl, girl-girl, eh. One day, Luzze called her: “I have been patient,” he said, puffing on his pipe, “but I have decided to bring someone else to help you.”’

  Kirabo took a breath to gauge her audience’s attention; the teenagers were silent, but their ire was still stiff in the air.

  ‘That year, Luzze married another woman. Through time they had many children, but they were all girls. Luzze despaired. Why were girl-bearing women not labelled, so he could avoid them? Still, he married a third woman. She bore him many children, but they too were girls. One day, Luzze called his three wives into the house and gave them an ultimatum. “From today onwards, if you, or you or you” – he jabbed a finger at each woman – “bear me another girl, don’t bring her home.”

  ‘That year, the women worked harder. They fell pregnant. The first one to deliver had a daughter. One look at the baby and she was packing. The second delivered. It was a girl. She too left. When the third delivered, it was a boy. She lifted her breasts to the sky. But wait; there was something left in her stomach. She pushed, and out came a girl. The woman despaired. She looked first at her son and then at the daughter, at the son again and then the daughter. She made up her mind.

  ‘Next to her was an anthill. You know, in those days babies were delivered in matooke plantations. The anthill had a big hole that opened into the ground. The woman picked up the baby girl and stuffed her inside the hole. Then, she carried the baby boy home and presented him to Luzze.

  ‘The celebration! The jubilation!’

  Kirabo was so lost in her story, waving her arms about, making faces, making Luzze’s voice, that she did not care whether her audience was engrossed.

  ‘Luzze named the boy Mulinde because he had waited a long time for him to be born. Meanwhile, every day, the woman crept back to the plantation and nursed her daughter. As she stuffed her back into the hole, she would shush, “Stay quiet.” But as the daughter grew, she devised songs to keep herself company and to make the darkness bearable. Meanwhile, Mulinde explored the villages, fields, hills, swamps, until one day he walked past the anthill and heard a sweet but sad song:

  ‘“We were born multiple like twins – Wasswa.

  But Father had dropped a weighty word – Wasswa.

  You bear a girl, don’t bother bringing her home – Wasswa.

  But a boy, bring the boy home – Wasswa.

  I keep my own company with song – Wasswa.

  Oh, Wasswa, you are a lie – Wasswa.

  Oh, Wasswa, you are a lie – Wasswa.”

  ‘The song tugged at Mulinde’s heart. When he went home, the song followed him. The followin
g day it hauled him back to the anthill. And the day after. And every day. At mealtimes, he kept some of his food, and when he got a chance, he crept to the anthill and threw the food down the hole. Still the song came.

  ‘Luzze noticed that Mulinde was growing cheerless. When he asked what was wrong, Mulinde had no words. Luzze was so troubled he kept an eye on his son. In time, he noted that Mulinde kept some of his food and after lunch disappeared into the plantation. One day he followed him.

  ‘What he saw almost blinded him. The anthill in the plantation started to sing, but instead of fleeing, Mulinde trotted, titi-titi, titi-titi, up to it and fed it his food. Luzze grabbed his son, ran home and sounded the alarm drums – gwanga mujje, gwanga mujje, gwanga mujje.

  ‘All men, wherever they were, whatever they were doing, picked up their weapons and converged in Luzze’s courtyard. Luzze addressed them:

  ‘“Brothers, this is not for shivering cowards. Something beyond words is in my plantation, inside an anthill. We must approach with caution. If you are liquid-hearted, stay here with the women and children.”

  ‘Real men – warriors, hunters, trackers, smiths and medicine men – tightened their girdles and surrounded the plantation. Then they proceeded, muscles straining as they crouched, palms sweating around weapons. They trod softly, as if the earth would crumble, hardly breathing. Finally, they had the anthill surrounded. It started to sing. Luzze put his spear down and carefully dug the anthill. After a while, a girl child emerged. She was fully formed, totally human, only crumpled. The men threw their weapons down and wiped away their sweat.

  ‘Even though the sun blinded her and she had to shield her eyes with her hand to look up at the huge men, even though she was as pale as a queen termite from the lack of sunshine, even though she was surrounded by a vast world she did not understand, the girl sang: