Chapter One

As a tree fully clad in think fiber creeping stems closely attached and growing to the boom, so was a man. Only that he didn’t have leaves but he was masculine and tall enough not to balance with any other human being. His voice was a bang that could be noticed even in the middle of a moon full night of interaction. It was Wakabi the hunter, well known across village reed borders among animals and people. He was also an elder in Busiki.

At the gates of his mushroom compound spears beatified the edges and each mushroom’s entrance of his five wives other spears stood there. In addition, the oldest spear lived at his old Paapa's mushroom who lived as the eldest among the community. He had lived to be known as the Oldman. It was a portioned homestead that depicted Wakabi's brevity, chieftacy and integrity.

Wakabi though a hunter of animals, he was also a hunter of humans next to the spirits of the land just as his Oldman was a great warrior. Wakabi was the village and the village was Wakabi.

Depending on the sun’s bearing that contemporary formed a shade on the necessary side of Wakabi's mushroom, Wakabi would rest on his hide at that one shade side of the mushroom and then at the opposite part a time later. It was a habit he stole from the Oldman and hence the Oldman did the same. Nevertheless, whenever there was no tilt the Oldman would enter his mushroom at noon of the day. At that time of day his son would visit Kamira, a very good friend.

It was told that Wakabi and the Oldman were always in hiding as there mushrooms were in line to one another and parallel to the crawling sun’s course. Therefore, they never got to meet during their relaxing interval, face to face by the mushroom tilts. Little was shared among them, if any it was mainly at the elders’ meetings. Side by side Wakabi's two dogs Uniza and Mugeme also relaxed in their master’s shade. It was that hour of the date when women, girls and boys were at work.

One mild afternoon as Wakabi's women sat down to greet old Paapa-in-law after their daily lethargy in the heavenly hot.

‘If the ground you cultivate wasn’t fertile then you leave it for the sun and you find another…isn’t that true?’ the Oldman told his daughter’s-in-law instead of responding to their respectful greetings.

The women replied that the Oldman's words were true and breathing. Then in no chronological birth order Wakabi's only children who had no sisters saluted Oldman and he repeated the same words as before. The boys too believed him to be right without any lame word.

The women’s Paapa-in-law had offered a shrub riddle they didn’t correctly figure out despite their reply. Many thought he was talking about his tiredness on earth. His chin was pointed and getting sharper everyday which caused wrinkles above his face, for his skin was in itself tired like a rough tree bark about to peel off. The daughters-in-law believed their head remarks. Oldman wasn’t doing a workable thing apart from attending high-level meetings that took him several hours and energy to and fro, with his three legs having got the third one from a hard society deciduous tree. It was a leg without knee, ankle or toe facets, and its thigh’s size equivalent to the rest of itself. Considerably Oldman was almost to fall front wards due to the bending backbone had he without this third leg.

When Wakabi greeted his Paapa, the Oldman told him it was seven absolute seasons since part of Wakabi's land was neither bothered about its fertility nor was it productive. Therefore, such estate had to be detached out of the worth grounds. Evil of the earth resided in such unblessed acres. The Oldman continued that his son’s barren wife Mubika had to return to her descendants before she claimed a rightful position among Wakabi's ancestors. Yet she had nothing but a big debt. Wakabi was told that should Mubika die in his mushrooms while childless the pessimistic omen of barrenness would transcend forever in their clan.

At last Wakabi understood the infertility of land but none of the women knew a clue of truth, for they had disappeared, leaving Paapa and son speaking elderly matters. Women were not involved in men’s congenial colloquy; they were only listeners.

The Oldman didn’t conclude emphasizing his proverb to the son, that Wakabi had not harvested even a single edible gourd. However, the land only sucked the rain from the skies. The Oldman didn’t forget that yet more Wakabi's eldest son Kyeyago was growing rapidly. It was dangerous for his clan to leave the heir with unfertile estate. The Oldman's other talk was that a new estate could be attained but unless the unyielding yard was done away with no luck would he have in attaining fertile yards. The Oldman retreated to his mushroom, he had exercised is elderly duty.

Wakabi said no word during old Paapa's proverb recount but only paradox over took is strength. The earth was turning against his most thought of woman.

Meanwhile Mubika as the facilitating tripod woman of the day brought a pumpkin dish in a calabash for her husband. Mubika had tried to extract edible words out of Wakabi. Though she asked why his face was against a smile, Wakabi only managed to talk tears. Mubika reminded him that men never cried and if so it was done silently not explosively.

Mubika believed that strange news had knocked the mushrooms and that perhaps news called for one of Wakabi's sons to be sacrificed by the riverside in the name of the spirits. Wakabi had past long told is Mubika that his sons were never to appear sacrificial as the village thought of people and the river.

Mubika had had great disappointments over the times but kept strong because of the husband’s fondness in her beauty. Children, women and men were eligible to humiliate her barrenness. Mubika wasn’t supposed to be greeted as a superior woman by children but she had to greet them, customary they were regarded of a better breed than herself. Slander words like, the woman who feared babies; the empty belly, the beautiful ugly, all meant Mubika. She had managed to accept these words and other proverbs as being better than returning back to her Paapa's mushroom, since it would give her multiple humiliations.

The next day Wakabi took his footsteps to Kamira's mushroom. Wakabi had slept in complete openness of the heart and night. He was thinking and wondering how to handle the hole to be caused by Mubika's departure. Now he believed it was Kamira to help him out.

      Kamira had never seen his friend so much demolished in the face with total depression. It was at this moment that Kamira realized that Wakabi had walked alone without is hide to sit on and the defensive spear which he had never left behind before. Immediately Kamira found a spare hide for Wakabi and a spear soon than any person noticed. It was a cultural law for distinguished men and all boys to move at attention.

      Wakabi told Kamira to send off Mubika on his behalf for he couldn’t do it by his mouth. Wakabi had narrated all the Oldman had touched on with his ageing tongue.

      ‘You’re behavior is little like Uniza and Mugeme running away from a cat.’ Kamira accused the friend.

‘The moment she’s gone I will demolish her mushroom on return to my mushrooms.’ Wakabi promised Kamira, in self-defense.

Kamira held his other hide-seat by the armpits and his spear sleeping in his right palm then went off, living Wakabi in his mushroom. As Wakabi kept is silence in pain Kamira's two wives appeared by the mushroom entrance, they sat down and greeted him. He sorrowfully didn’t respond not even telling his troubles. Such matters were unshared between the two sexes. Kamira's two girls sat down and greeted Wakabi and he softly responded. It was these two girls that often conveyed Wakabi to need a girl of his own blood. The relationship between the girls and their Paapa Kamira always knocked on Wakabi's mind. They were like sisters to Kamira. The girls about almost equal seasons of age they could do almost everything their Maama's did without over looking any stage and each other. It was such girls that owned hope from their Paapas and Maamas for future recognizable sons-in-law. In no daunt they were constructively engaging into beauty as the old saying beckoned that beauty came with hard work.

The girls supposed like twins because of their resemblance to Kamira but they were of different Maamas. The younger girl having caught up with the elder sister, people called her mayiga to mean horns, there was striking equality.

Kamira having reached the other mushrooms and having been greeted by Wakabi's wives, he called Mubika back as she was leaving for the well. ‘It is the fifth season when girls like you who never bother to become women went back to their Paapa's unfertile land rather than staying in great Busiki. Even the night mosquito as a better life than your breath.’ Kamira was convinced and courageous in his words. Before Kamira went any further the girl-wife was tearful and only she could do is trace for her bridal pot and get read leave. Kamira had a duty to witness her diminishing with the thin village path, lawfully.

‘Ha! Ha! The animal skin you didn’t come with it,’ Kamira alerted the girl; she had to leave the hide in Wakabi's mushroom. As she walked off with her pot and tears, she gathered leaves and bemusedly covered her empty under-abdominal entrance and exit.

As Mubika passed by Kamira's mushrooms, Wakabi could notice her crying politely as her hands engaged the face. Mubika was in a new less valuable cloth. As Mubika disappeared Wakabi run back to his mushroom and told his boys to follow their Maama until she arrived safety at Bugweri border. He feared for her safety. Hardly any cases of barrenness were evident, that even the elders didn’t know whether the boys were acting legitimately to escort out their Maama. However, in this circumstance Wakabi wasn’t supposed to indulge much with the woman axed.

The boys and their spears caught up with Mubika and politely they trailed behind her sorrowful tears. Mubika was troubled of leaving without a child from the husband she served. Moreover, at other times she thought it was fine but another moment her barrenness troubled the mind.

Chapter Two

Mubika was noticed from a far, her head’s rip sneaking out slowly like a germinating mushroom from the dirt. She had held grief along the journey. She had last traveled the same route two seasons ago. When she had come to the medicine man, without a pot on her head. Now she seemed a stranger in the land she was born and everyone was getting aware that the price of her barrenness had grown protruding strongly than her beauty. She had changed a lot, only her fat breasts showed the diversions, a big girl in leaves clothe. She had returned yet her mind wasn’t thinking of working hard and pay back the seven season barnyards full of peas as compensation for the several seasons she spent with Wakabi's clan without a yield of her own fertility.

Mubika had the greatest sorrow in life. Back in Busiki she could hold it because of a good husband although her beauty brought no its own inheritance. Now the girls she used to head to the swamp and play with, the boys of her olden times in Bugweri were all having their children. She was a beauty so much reckoned in the old days before this intrusion wound of her inbeing. The pain of coming back as barren was germinating by every slide of the sun.

Mubika had no exterior scar by the sword grass of the swamp-way, her skin reflected every other good thing men were born for, the eyes would show her as a goddesses in the dark, more to that her behind could lead a man forget his worries and path and punch to follow her. Sweet! Sweet Mubika, the village used to sing. Her Paapa had attained customary value and publicity for the fruits of his swing.

Mubika found her Maama had past away a few days ago and only her Paapa welcomed her. Nevertheless, her head seemed the mother of all sour water. Her beauty was a hoax and already meaningless. She went to her Maama's grave and wept more tears of barrenness and her Maama's remains. The women who tried hard to unseal her daughter’s sickness but failed and now Mubika had to solely care and cure the pain.

Night fell and night rose when Mubika was silently plague tearful, her eyes grew red and unbeau. Thin and wrest to her Maama's current mushroom. In less than many moons’ appearance and sun’s daily life, the Bugweri village understood her as the crying girl and not tolerantly regarding her in-depth plight. She had at one time gathered men from a far to come and only glance at her beauty. Moreover, others sailed with marriage proposals but now it was no more.

A really wonderful girl wasn’t easy to marry. Tales ago pointed at the chief of Bugweri who was turned down by a girl, beautifully indescribable. When the chief returned to his chiefdom, he was regarded weaker than women and then sacrificed to the spirit because the girl rebuffed the chief’s marital work plan. Beautiful girls were few and had grace to choose on their future husbands. A style that made other unworthy girls respect the heart spiritisses and wished they had that luck too. For many girls ended up in the hands of men without titles in society.

Within a scratchy moment, her Paapa named a temporary piece of land for Mubika to rain on it new breath and determination. Gradually as a snail marking its path without a sap left hind. It took her sometime to pick up her body and soul into earthly reality. More so the planting season wasn’t ready, for the earth was still in disagreement with the sky. Morning connived with her on the plowing preparations, working for her soul alone, no child or husband. Still tears never forgot her crossroad. She was right to pour the watery-eyes into her garden, a teammate to her own infertility. It was inseparable. A sort of barrenness season.

Mubika's Paapa gave her wholesome seeds and kept on trying to console the constant memories out of her politely. Nevertheless, everything around her seemed acting against her will, the ground she ploughed, the Paapa who sought parenthood. She wished not being born at all. Now born and ripe but unable to give birth. Children around the village who would never interact with her own, because she didn’t have any. How would she live?

From time to time memories of her young youthful girlish beau was alive and little was on clutches. The compound that was their playground with almost everything apart from the plummeted mushrooms, which included any she left behind apart from her Paapa's and her late Maama's mushroom. Where Mubika laid her jaw of sorrow. Her Paapa had reluctantly delayed to plug it into soot as if aware of his forthcoming daughter of sorrow. The way forward to the well hadn’t changed although there were a few more fresh galvanized mushrooms here and there. The history stayed still as dumbness.

The smoothful shinny skin was controlled by despair, agony that ate away the good flesh and built a reptile rough body surface. The un-aged was now switching plunges into an ageing symbol of a person. Pain they would say, sickness they would never agree.

As a chief Mubika's Paapa gathered the village, the village’s only tops. He needed a naked truce upon his daughter in society. The daughter who would never have any grave site if her belly wasn’t fecund garden of flesh nativity. Only see her die and be thrown into the river, away to flow to distant lands and spirits. The chief narrated a chronicle length of his daughter like her own spirit among the lord of spirits. The end and beginning in her blood and certain benevolent insults awaiting her. Moreover, here he forgot to speak about her beauty that he had never neglected to phase in among men of authority, wisdom and promise. It had always given him the postgraduate interface of his powers among beautiful women.

Comfort was the only compromise among the chiefs’ brains and circle. Certainly they couldn’t isolate her from memories in her inner being. Nevertheless, the elders conceded adamantly to call their medicine man’s powers to apply. The medicine man didn’t attend the council gathering personally not even sending is prodigy spirits. May be he sent them? I don’t know. The elders dial was never to give up, for their society too, needed a cleanse from profound misindulgive pitfalls.

That who gives birth to neither richesse of martens it’s not of her wish nor the richesse of martens herself-were part of proverbs, phrases and words that captured waves between mouth and ear. From one field of mushroom to another. Adjusting and accommodating sympathetic feel and hope for the sorrowful daughter as long as life lived in her, was the theme. Affinitive rapportious feelings carried goats, cocks, ducks, calabash, seeds, hides, peas and words for her beginning.

Still the richness in her brought more pain than compassion, the apparent knot of having everything without a child was the weighing issue. In addition, although person’s heartfelt lived justifully, still with many Maamas’ Mubika's folk was remodified into a brand children’s tale called the omen in beautiful Mubika. An additional story on her erstwhile.

On the same village a new bride at Mubika's neighborhood was believe to a similar disease of emptiness because for five years the bride’s Maama played marriage without producing even a seed. However, this new bride and Mubika grew up in different generations but same village and so she married a village mate. Little attack was bountiful in her situation but now her neighbor Mubika had crossed to a new village that meant her agony lived beyond every village she had life with. The trauma of why she didn’t marry a Bugwerian was an unmien issue from women and men of Mubika's generation.

One of Mubika's old friends in their childhood past days, lived on and she often came by to share her pain. She had five children and so she lived humanly. One moment she told Mubika to consider the medicine man’s wisdom again as long as she longed for a baby. She had been sent by the chiefs to entice Mubika to the power of the village. However, little did Mubika know about it. Mubika compiled and explained her many trios with the medicine man that failed. Nevertheless, Mubika agreed promptly to try again.

For the first time Mubika talked about the living feelings of her husband. That even though she was hated, her husband never showed up in the same mien and so the greatest human she had found. Now wasn’t anymore. Though she had no children, Wakabi was her child and husband.

Mubika prepared supper for her Paapa as she arranged to exit. By the time Namakiika her friend arrived to convoy Mubika to the medicine man, she had finished cooking and saving her Paapa's dish in a calabash and into his mushroom.

As Mubika and Namakiika walked through the village they could count their history. Remembering fellow girls who married off in other villages and recounting men that loved them. It was then that Mubika recalled the song that brought her fame in voice to sum on her beauty as they went along the way singing their memories,

                     The tall handsome hunter

                     His spear never leaves the hands

                     He gives me sleepless nights

                     If you find him

                     Let him know

                     The girl in the next village

                     Has sent him greetings

                     And the day I will meet him again

                     My flower tongue shall sing his strength.

The song was sang over and over again that a few women who remembered the cadence and children who had learnt it joined in the ode. In addition, as Mubika with Namakiika continued, they would leave a soft sound in different huts were the song was alive. The song that married off Mubika to Wakabi.

It was the first moment from the time Mubika came to her Paapa's village that people saw her smile and happiness. She had taken time off her dirty fate to enjoy the lively earth. It was all because of Namakiika, the old friend.

They bypassed the well and saw themselves in the girls who were fetching water. That well hadn’t dried at all since she left but its trough had only enlarged, Mubika sought through the mind. It had widened just like the route they step-punched.

As they advanced, they could notice the sacred rock of fortune. Only village elders and chiefs were allowed to reach the sacred rock. Moreover, people had narrations that the rock only appeared in daytime and at night it would sink down into the earth. The people of Bugweri believed in the rock and told how it house sheltered spirits of ancestral consultation for the whole Busoga territory. At the entrance of its sacredness stood a spear that a wild animal was always sacrificed by from every visiting elder for the ancestors. The sacred stone could talk to the ancestors who in return communicated to the chiefs or elders who visited the rock.

It was quite a distance. Mubika's friend told her that the son of the late medicine man she had left was now the current powerful herb specialist. Mubika recognized having met him before. The two friends had lived one generation below this medicine man.

As they arrived the dark seeming and scaring environment of the healer’s mushroom, he scandalized elementary charms of the soul-heart out of them; terrific oppressive fear took over. They couldn’t see him but there they sat before his powers and frontier. The medicine man knew Mubika.

After the late Lwazilwataka the greatest of medicine men in times tales, the Bugweri powers never grow stronger. It was told that Lwazilwataka could heal a person who lived sixteen villages away and that he healed the Gganda king of a hydro cell. As he pressed and squeezed a banana stem back in his garden, the king at the thrown was pouring out filth and tears worth a well. From that moment the king respects the powers in Bugweri, for his own wise men were dormant although docile. Lwazilwataka would be buried alive and then rise out of the grave with is might herbs then start dancing. Therefore, he was capable of rising out dead bodies. One time a woman died while pregnant old and it was a crush bother to burry two persons in the same grave. Two different spirits, it was impossible. Lwazilwataka made the dead woman give birth to a dead baby. He gave the woman’s body its soul strength to gas the baby. However, none of those powers did the now medicine man possess.

‘Are you both barren?’ The medicine man voice penetrated the shrine noise.

‘No, am fruitful.’ Namakiika replied softly, while Mubika was lost, how did the man understand what had brought us here, she thought.

‘That’s a dodge but I know you’re fruitful,’ the medicine man said. ‘Let the one you’ve accompanied listen…if a hunter doesn’t know is former mistakes then he dies by the jaws of the animal he hunts it’s better you come back the next day before evening without the fruitful one.’ The medicine man meant to say to Mubika.

It was then that Mubika analyzed the medicine man’s anecdote and understood she had always made a mischief of coming with her Maama to the medicine man. That’s why the herbs didn’t truly experiment. This hour around hope grew in her life a fetus that a baby was to be born of her beauty should the medicineman apply his expertise.

The medicine man escorted the two friends through the thin way. They patched the uneasily seen ground. Through the night in a quick match of togetherness as they seemed the only people alive in the village. Only the night wind touched their presence as they passed groups of huts asleep. Voices of insects that trapped darkness in silence spelt in their head hearers. Only one spear was guarding three humans in the thickest of animal times.

First they reached Mubika's mushroom and then the last leg continued until they found Namakiika's mushroom. Moreover, there stood her husband Balyedusa in waiting. When Balyedusa saw the medicine man his temper froze it had been frenzy mini-seasons ago. Otherwise, a woman coming back in the late night without her man but personally or another male apart from the medicine man, a spear was rightful to cut off one toe for every night this crime was committed until she was toeless and banished.

Balyedusa having been tipped off by is other wives about Namakiika's disappearance in the late hours of noon, he had prepared the spear and outside his hut; sitting and waiting, he later uplifted himself from the hide and continued to linger in lose hope.

During daytime the medicine man traveled in the wickedness of forests, far and wide. Their freedom wasn’t restricted in mobility. Traveling and searching for traditional herbs of society’s needs. Digging out roots, cutting stems with his spear, gathering special anti hill soil and scooping leaves with the same weapon. All these were thrown in his woven bag, in the multiple fingers of the gods. 

Chapter Three

Wakabi was never the original unsubtle man after demolishing Mubika's hut. His muscles sat upon exterior strength of destruction but internal brawn had softened to a womanish heart. No woman equaled her in his life. She was the fifth wife but first at heart. Wakabi believed there was something wrong in the society he was born into. It was attacking him. Culture lived stronger than life. He felt the Oldman was against his wife’s intent at heart. Though they were both elders in the village, Wakabi remained a child, a child to respect the words of his Paapa.

Wakabi hadn’t slept since then, but only thoughts of Mubika's departure propelled him. He hardly said or talked a sentence or two from the last period meeting with Kamira.

The Oldman kept on telling Wakabi that if the desert found them in this village they would certainly need to migrate, unless there wasn’t any other land or the other well-off landowners where confrontational. Oldman was catalyzing Wakabi to find a bride able to transform sorrow into joyful wonders. He had noticed his son’s anguished wrathful behavior. Wakabi hadn’t talked or greeted the Oldman since that past narking moment. They seemed to be undergoing a concession.

Wakabi could bypass his Paapa without a say and silently the Oldman would grasp a lap of saliva through is Adam’s apple throat. He feared the son just like anyone else and yet he did everything due to customary rules and as an elder. Wakabi also resentfully kept his lonely pain because of is Paapa's resigning times. He knew the Oldman's real energetic form deteriorated the moment Wakabi's third wife Mutwala was ill pregnant. The Oldman began curving while his walking stick become taller than him. He was getting tired. It seemed they were born together with the stick; he lawfully had a reason never to carry a spear.

One of the nights Wakabi woke up earlier enough than any other. With his hunting dogs dressed in bell gongs from fragments of Kamira's workshop. Weaponry combated with a hunting net, spears, to his mastery work he moved on. A man overrun by a woman thing and now fitly adjusting to wash away the rich sense of touch that drew into a bitter smell in air. His dog Uniza headed the way into the jungle and Wakabi followed as the other dog Mugeme came as the hind side detective.

On absorbing the gongs pattern, birds would awake and talk to each other and other animals had to either take off or wait for the next danger. The forest was getting kindled by Wakabi who was bewildermently intrepid especially with is dogs and spears alongside his conspicuous brawn in spite of the late nightshade. It was Wakabi’s other mushroom, somehow he knew where to pass or hide when the need emerged.

He began by planting the weaved net made of simple but strong creeping sterns and roots. Through trees in a supposed loose straight line of a wall-like form so as to ease the trapping of running and ignorant animals. Suddenly Wakabi sat down, leaning on the closet trunk; he appeared aimless towards forest circumstances. Uniza and Mugeme stood by puzzled; they too had never seen their master put is stamina to rest while at work. Later the dogs made cowardly mourning. Their master was thinking of Mubika. He didn’t know whether Mubika arrived thoroughly, for the boys had returned but never did they give a smooth return report. In no irony the animals he was trying to ambush could have suck her blood without any resistance. He wondered why, he hadn’t taken Mubika back personally. All in all customary decree disagreed with a man returning the woman. He recalled how Mubika came several years ago as a jubilant young girl in the hands of dignity besides a great warrior and hunter. Now she had returned as an ominous woman.

Only the seven caches full of peas were what would take Wakabi to Bugweri and then he would have a second look on his Mubika. He neither really believed to regain Mubika nor to receive her any more.

Although Wakabi seemed to take a nap the forest whispers always guaranteed is alertness. Though the dogs lived awake their fear had grown thicker and thicker as the woodlands they where in, not even a single loud you could hear of the bucking and spinning but sharp cries alone. Then in a whiz of a wind speed the dogs began to nest their safety and this brought Wakabi's reasoning apparent upon a fierce creature being within their circles. Wakabi's mind grew simultaneously with is strength. He stood up as he held the spear to relay up too, his muscles vibrating with steadiness for any attack. The animal disappeared soon than never. It was a diamond like eyed creature in the night that would never come closure to bright object. So Wakabi knew it was of the leopard family. The dogs had run behind their master, extending slow by slow backwards.

Wakabi adored the dogs as vigilantes and they too trusted their master more than any one other. Wakabi took is former postural stalment, he wasn’t afraid of any breathing thing. A man trying to rejoin mental connection with Mubika.

The leopard didn’t go far, it disordered Uniza and Mugeme again. The dogs strolled hind wards until Mugeme webbed into Wakabi's trap. The leopard stood light fully with strawing noises, Wakabi was obviously clear and aware. He sensed is dog being trapped as Uniza dropped back but Wakabi wasn’t about to change concentration from the beast until it disappeared again. As the webbed dog wailed Wakabi was unable to unwrap it especially due to the unpredictable beast. It kept on returning and retreating. Otherwise, his two dogs knew Wakabi was better than them courageously.

Not until birds began jumping and flying over the earth surface and night screaming woodland rhythmatic insects were dying out. When one side of the firmament was clear than another opposite side that Wakabi freed the then still entrapped and whooping dog, Mugeme. He restructured the hunting net and went off with his friends, scratching and bumping forest materials. The bucking and running started as Uniza sniffed a possible creature ahead. Wakabi was in his senses. In no seconds wasted a spear flew to pierce the animal but missed the target. Wakabi was confronting a lion. As he arrived at tree hanging the spear, he extracted the weapon vigorously and in sharp quickness, and then continued with the dogs. His original javelin had skinned into a tree.

Wakabi's potentiality was awake, moving through bushes of the forest like an elephant and the dogs running ahead of him with their gongs ringing around the inpenetratable, he had started is mastery art of hunting. Throwing steps as long as his leg’s length, it wasn’t alien for Wakabi to jump anthills and several other obstacle shrub points.

With the gongs ding-dinging in the lion’s listener, it was taking off for its life. The forest animal had decoded the noisy chime as a signal called jeopardy. Moreover, hardly could they wait to meet the dog gongs, for Wakabi was quietly rang is spears alongside the dogs. Sounds of scared small animals adjusted through their own mastery escape as Wakabi spearheaded for the beast of beasts. All the main four animals ran through the talls like inhabitants, yes, all that lived inside their mastery reality was experience.

Wakabi could aim for several times unto the bouncing and hurdling beast but he felt numerous lost chances. Moreover, no could he throw a second spear before picking up the other unless is instinct conceded to approve that the lion wasn’t able to counter fight. It was so because Wakabi could cast a spear for more than hundred meters distance. Behind the lion one dog was on the left side and another on the right side. The animals would stretch in a legless format above the ground and whenever they touched the earth it was for less than a second, then they rose above again as if they hadn’t been on the earth before. Gongs toll lived in both ears of the beast that it feared to run either to the right or to the left. In addition, right in between the dogs was Wakabi with one spear suspended by the thigh level, as the other swung above the shoulder, almost aware of its culprit.

Has people told any legend of hunting the one common maxim existing in all, was that every hunter was made of speed and marathon adhered with human toughness. Therefore, it was true with Wakabi.

They had now flown over their village borders and heading further with the lion. Wild thorny green society and others had already scratched Wakabi due to the fast pace. Eminently his body was described in deep dark black skin scars, the hunter’s badge. As the saying traveled, the hunter’s body belongs to the wild earth. It was a manner of telling a great and perfect hunter from the rest of the posse. Moreover, every time Wakabi returned from the mastery art, a calabash of various trees tough saps muddle was laid at his mushroom entrance so that he could smash it on the wounds. To nurse and cure is manly pains before the next hunt. Wakabi always told male striplings that no wound hurts if the consequential animal is killed, however, if they lost the animal, double twinge would yield. One for missing the creature and the bodily pang as the second torture. It was like the brute was hunting them rather than their art being after the beast.

Wakabi again aimed is spear for the beast’s life but he cast it sooner than it lift off from the earth; hence he missed it once more. It was cunningly agreeable heaving any aim to meet the animal in space; then the beast would fall fiercely and by then increasing the spears in-depth was right. By the time he picked up the fallen javelin the dogs were still on the chase path with little to bark at, Wakabi followed in gear velocity yet again.

Watering women and girls got into uttering pierce full shrills, the swamp was mad. Although they had heard the hunting gongs, the lion approached sooner than the dogs surfaced. The tools of watering were abandoned unaware as every female sought for shed but the lion had long passed. The sudden phobia remained intact even after witnessing the dogs and Wakabi at skill. Some women had already reached in the closest mushroom, it was a flash when they never held their breasts while running and you believed they were faster than men. Then it wasn’t a crime swapping into any hut for precaution’s sake.

The hunting of undomesticated swine could make a pregnant maama give delivery as it was always narrated about Wakabi's coming on earth. It was then that completely heavier women were discharged of their earth toiling duties until after giving birth.

By now the rear sun was encouraging and Wakabi having joined a new village it called for other hunters into the hunt. More dogs got engaged in hounding the lion as Wakabi's dogs slowed back. The fresh gong dogs swung around the quest, the speed of hunters was reemphasized and this gave Wakabi more guts, as the beast was apparently scared about the numerous rings that gonged the earth. He knew death was close by but lifeless is what he was fighting against.

In a stressful disguise the lion was warier, beating all possible odds as it began alternate sharp turns to avoid a coming spear. This would call the voices of hunters to turn right or left into the toll road of the running being lion. The dogs too had already twisted their direction. Shouting and shouting the hunting seemed a happy sport.

In all customary policies the hunting oral law was a great social break through that interrelated village-to-village, kingdom-to-kingdom. A person could travel through a handful of villages and hunt in the sixth village or the next-door village. In addition, hunters came to acknowledge one another through this artistic formula of rules and action. The legal reason was basing on a fact that if any early expeller got weakened in the hunting, he couldn’t lose is meal to the hunter who joined the expedition later on. Because at such a stage the beast would have been enervated strengthlessly that it was promptly easy to spear down. Hence, if any intruding hunters killed the creature, it belonged to the original hunter. In most cases of such circumstance the earlier hunter would give the end poachers a quantity of the dead beast. Moreover, hunters kept this rule for if you went against it, the next hunting would probably drive the hunt and you to a different village and certainly you wouldn’t carry back the hunt because he who serves others with distrust deserves not to be trusted too. What you did to the other hunters they did it unto you.

 The implicit popularity of Wakabi was that he never runs behind little worried animals like feral pigs, wild goats, untamed little animals but always stood touching wild plucky beasts; lions, leopards, tigers, wild cattle. This agitated other hunters to enroll with Wakabi, and learn is tactics and spiritually become courageous. He was a man getting into the hunting folks of Busoga village, every hunting season with a banner for brevity. However, people like Wakabi could face a lion face to face and kill it, which too distinguished him from the remnant hunters of the beast animals.

As the hunter searched and moved on against the lion, when surely they knew it was about to feel the spear, songs of hunting citation began;

                     Trap net

                     There it comes

                     Get hold of him

   Chorus:            My family circle will feed on him

                     The hunters too will have a divide

                     Wakabi the great hunter will take the rest

                     Sharp spear

                     There it goes

                     Pierce is stomach

Then the refrain came again before they sang about Muyizi god of the hunters whom they believed he sucked the blood of the beast when it passed away.

It wasn’t quit simple to death-hunt any animal of the beast family. The hunter had to roll over miles and hills again and again if their net didn’t assist them, until the animal was worn out that a spear tapped the animal’s blood spout. And so below the day’s sun, the running lion came to a weak apex that even its roaring was tired to frighten any amateur hunters. Then within that period several zoom flying spears pinned its flesh, blood swam out as it roared its last cry, and it was dying quickly. It happened in a built up throng of song at the outskirts of Bukooli that the four-leg-some king of the beasts was dethroned.

The snuffer tired dogs were already arriving and silencing their gongs as they independently lay down in hard breath that also disjoined their jaws for fast pace inhale and exhale. They couldn’t attempt any other hunting that day, thereafter. Wakabi was by the meal slicing a hind leg and the other hunters lit a fire. Sparkling their spears’ tails speedily closely together and rocklike, sparks would appear and in a cloud of wind with dry shrubs thereby, a hot chemistry was produced.

While sharing a conversation than Wakabi learnt about a white spirit murderer who was going to come to the chiefdoms around Busoga and over, to takeover their institutions. Moreover, that the king of Gganda requested the Basoga chiefs kindly to terminate the white spirit before he reached Gganda to overthrow is kingdom. Stories emphasized that the king went down on his knees to secure is treaty with Busoga chiefdoms. Other said, the king was possessed as the Gganda ancestral spirits were against him. The king had promised to pay sums of women and other wealth in goats, cows and cocks to every Busoga chief; should the white spirit be blocked before arriving in his kingdom. Hunting was away of exchanging ideas and information of agency.

Soon the men’s talk followed, Wakabi was assured how Bukooli had enough virgins that if he decided to have one, he would end up with a ten-some-figure. Young bleed with still hot circulating blood that would heal the most impotent man.

For each bit of roasted meat at the hunters’ disposal, it was consumed there and then. In addition, the innards soft tissue and bones with enough marrow went to the dogs. Meanwhile, Wakabi was thinking of feeding Kamira with news about girls in Bukooli for he deserved another wife. In addition, if he so wished, he needed to build another hut in time for welcoming the supposed bride.

Wakabi had already been joined by his dogs, Uniza and Mugeme, and they too hard their share of fresh bones. Wakabi pierced a spear through the remaining animal flesh and by the support of his shoulder balancing pivotally the scale of his strength and the gore drizzling meat. He started off is journey back to the mushrooms of Busiki as the dogs snuffed backwards through the route that brought them into Bukooli. Though eagles and birds prey birds trembled to their salty saliva’s curiosity as they flew about and swung from one woody trunk to another branch. Some birds reached Wakabi's mushrooms but without ability to snatch a single vein of flesh.

Wakabi having arrived at the mushroom; it appeared different, every bit of components of Mubika's demolished hut resurfaced apparently destructive in the compound. What used to be his wife’s mushroom, where he used to naptail in the night. Mubika's former skin attire also concentrated and connected his thoughts as it lived by the door side of his mushroom. In the light way, Wakabi could easily throw is pupils on the hide wear.

Wakabi only called is boys and ordered them directively to find the hunting net in the forest. After they were supposed to journey with a fore thigh of the dead beast to Kamira's mushrooms. From then he hardly said any multiple sentences but only entered is mushroom. Though by now much attention was walking about how the great hunter had come in with another lion despite is heartache. People only concluded that actually blessed persons never lose but there is always something for them to gain.

Peaces of the animal were now in a casserole pot and boiling critically. Moreover, even though when it was ready and taken to his mushroom to be served by the hunter Wakabi wasn’t ready neither to serve the meat nor to eat. Therefore, the boys on return from the compact timbered area they feasted as their Maamas’ observed the mystery of wild sweetness they had to boil but never allowed to eat.

The woman had grown with strong dismay luck of goodness between each other especially after Mubika's departure. Their husband hadn’t approved any of is wives equivalent to Mubika. So the more Wakabi ignored to eat, the much they hated themselves. It was a tough and rough progress.

Chapter Four

Mubika always went early in dawn to the gardens as not to stay in the mushroom and think of her past in Busiki. Good enough it was now a better season; she had covered enough plowing. Planting was almost in a few days ahead. Mubika was now able to sing a little as she struck the soil breaking it apart. Now her friend Namakiika would send her girls to help Mubika. Namakiika had explained to Balyedusa and also Mubika's Paapa had told lots of dictums to convicely request a hand or several from Balyedusa's compound towards Mubika's capacity. Mubika's strength was germinating out the historical chafe.

Mubika would have a steal on the little girls dreams over the past night. For after subtly greeting Mubika, the girls would narrate their contact with sleep and in the evening she would take the dreams to her Paapa for interpretation. One morning the girls came too Mubika and the eldest sought through memories how she had borne herself and her sister and later she died and immediately after the narration process the other girl emphasized empathetically that she had dreamt the real vision as her sister.

It was then that Mubika gave return answers to the girls former-day dreams elucidation by her Paapa. Then they would advance engage fully in toiling the earth with songs as;

                     This soil will eat me up

                           Even when I dig it

                     It will eat me up

                           Even when I step on it

                     It will eat me up

                     This soil will eat me up

                            Within the bright sun

                     It will eat me up.

It was a common cadence on the gardens and gardeners allover Busoga. In addition, the more tunes transcend through air by voices, the stronger grounds were attacked and divided at a faster pace with the digging tool. It was morale boosting and merriment to the cultivators. As the digging spear went deep the song went deeper. Until the soil under was hotter than the sun above than the day’s work ended.

On completion of the day’s cultivation Mubika would lead back the girls as they sang songs of praises unto their work. Moreover, as easy as they arrived Mubika thanked Namakiika gratefully, smiling and saying the softest words of recommendation to every hand of help. As Mubika left the girls, they would revisit sounds of cultivating music that day, extending their love over Mubika's soprano only that….

Mubika's new fangled life was being refurbished small-by-small, with almost a faintly smile to expose her red spouge holding its white spears; it was a step forward. Mubika would go to the well after reaching home just as she often accomplished in the decrepit times. It was she, the obsolete girl among the pot carriers. On return from the waters she would pick a few sticks here and there along the path, as her pot balanced spiritually on the head. The sticks were for cooking. Sometimes she would meet with the cultivate girl-helpers and she would aid their water fetching and then levering the pots unto their respective nuts.

When she supposed picking sticks that needed breaking, Mubika wouldn’t lever down the pot and then crack the gathered dry coppice. She got addicted to carrying water and the hearth place woods in her hands in chorus. Nevertheless, it was such male work of firewood collecting that abundantly recaptured back her anguish on earth to seem real than pain alone.

This day, during the practice of picking simple wood and breaking it, Mubika's pot got broken, as she was boosting it back on her carrier head. Its strength become heaver than her muscles could hold and speedily it gravitated until the ground where it joined its ancestral earth. With busted  crockery pieces, the water splashed on her and the grounds that resided closer swallowed it. Mubika told herself about growing old without a reason, who would look after her grey age if she hadn’t any offspring. On another eavesdrop; the broken pot meant her Maama had just died that minute. However, she had already past away.

Mubika while holding his head in terrific thoughts and mood walked to the mushroom with only firewood. Soon she recalled the folk her Maama feed her while a little girl and which still glued on the tongue of fortitudes ancient meaning throughout village conversations. The story of an OldMaama who gave her grand-daughters pots so early enough before marriage and told them that whoever broke her pot would marry the estranged village frog. It was the animal believed to have survived since the ages of earth evolution and believed to be the ugliest of all animals. It wasn’t to be disturbed but only respect was adore unto it, for if you found it along the path, you had to secure its way ahead. For even the earth grains that molded the pot were constraints of swampy soil, where the honored frog slept. Obviously the girls kept dear precautions whenever their pot lay. With musical tunes vibrating to and from the well, they would stay sweet and young. One day just like Mubika and faulted on the pot, one of the eldest girls of OldMaama broke her pot. Her sister continued and reached home to report the matter of concern about the broken covenant. The mishap girl had already tempered her way up high a tall tree; she wasn’t steady and ready at all to take care of a frog’s coldness, steam for it, plow for a frog, and give it the night goddesses dance. When the OldMaama arrived at the accident spot to witness the truth she didn’t see the daughter but only evidenced pieces of clay bowels and dying solution of necessity. Until they looked up on the tree that the girl lived at the tip of it. Swinging and swinging as if having a ritual dance in the tree cave. Later the young sister began to sing for the other sister to climb down…

              Namussubo you’re not a bird

            You’re my Maama's child

            You come down

            The broken pots

            We shall model other one

Lonely, her OldMaama came and sang too…

            Namusuubo you’re not a bird

            You’re my eldest grand child

            You come down

            The broken pots

            I will mould another one

The mishap girl started singing as she climbed down…

            Am not a bird

            Am not a bird

            Am sister of my sister

            Am a child of my Maama

            Am a grand child of my OldMaama

            The broken pots

            We will mould other ones. 

By the time she arrived at the roots everybody was happy and they left for the mushrooms. In addition, whenever the pots were broken and the girls climbed the tree, the song always called them back and none of the girls married the frog. That is how I saw them.

By the hindmost of reality of memorizing the old folktale Mubika was aware and willing to mould another pot. Her distress was promptly shifting away as she returned to the well and engaged in pot modeling. Mubika started intermingling the brownish soil cream. Molding circular saucer kind that turned into a modeled calabash shape and as if she deserved to cover the calabash-like top, the mould appeared as the sun’s perimeters then she ended but adding protruding lips and the pot was apt. The exercise was seconded with memories of how her Maama used comparably work of art to adore her. Mubika soon remembered, she was the only alive daughter of the late womb. Her sister had died closer to her bridal season and that moment her Maama's grief was as equal as Mubika's recent lanky sigh.

Its bottom by her abdomen altitude carefully nursing its exquisiteness as they moved to the mushroom she lifted the new pot. It had to relax while dehydrating in the solar rays in order to concrete itself perfectly.

For sometime Mubika's mushroom and her Paapa's were to lack water and firewood. Until a beneficent hand offered a pot to boil a cock or duck. In the same state Mubika would find herself butchering and molting the domestic lives. This regathered the meaningful wound inside her belly. A few teardrops would sink beneath her feet and others would walk along her cheeks. Still a minor courage was emerging out of this pain.

Afternoon was running closed and so Mubika had to reestablish her schedule with the medicine man. Her jaunting began sooner than later. Namakiika had been notified about her going away and the girls were aware of not being at Mubika's gardens the next morning. Nevertheless, that depended on the medicine man’s art and time, Mubika told her helpers.

When Mubika got to the man’s mushroom, she was embraced in a tremendous act of cultural herbist’s comic performance. He jumped up and down, crawled along the ground, ran allover the mushroom demarcations and then shook the stem pillar of his administrative center. Therefore, the head leaves and glass of the hut shambled down on Mubika. She felt a puzzle invitation than never in the past, a sacred movement of ancestors mobilizing their intention in the mushroom. Moreover, due to the great dimness inside the hut Mubika couldn’t notice the opulent truism. The medicine man had already changed his voice into a blunt bubbling installmental speechful ancestral tone as he communicated with the spirits. Mubika knew that the greatest of elders of the earth speaking in a manly ancient rhythm. Then within his vocals the medicine man’s powers requested Mubika forcefully to get a short spear, as the exigency was to stir herbs of barrenness.

Mubika left in good time than twilight. She was petrified but with an understanding that her flesh enigma was at recovery. Especially this time when the medicine man’s performance of panacea was getting involved more than the late chances. He used not to ask for a short spear but some grass of her private hair. Now the spear was a key element in diagnosing her and more so it was a cultural symbol. Moreover, Mubika had heard the coming and talking of ancestors. Mubika was unscruffyly elated and in her nut’s assignment, she was prepared to reach her husband’s friend in order to attain a short spear. She had agreed therewith. Soon after that she would be back in Busiki forever and have children with Wakabi. Mubika magnified her prospects.

It seemed her inner spirit had signaled earlier that she had already discharged her helpers’ morning garden work. Now the next day by the same time of the day, Mubika was sure of being back with a rite spear.

Mubika had to brief Namakiika before setting at her mushroom. Telling intuitions from the medicine man and her absence the coming morning. Mubika told her Paapa too, having reached the huts.

It was then that Mubika asked her Paapa about the new girls dreams. The old Paapa lay is tiger skin and slept himself on it. His head focusing the now dusky view of stars and then absorbed the dreams as his eyes were closed. Mubika repeated the dream’s imagery once more and as his eyes were intrigued in the nightmare and star imagery. He interpreted the visions, meaning that the girls were both to have twins on the same day but it wasn’t completely any good dream because they will soon die on the same day.

The beginning of interpretation had made Mubika gracefully bad; the next words uplifted her in-depth sorrow. Her Paapa ended by ensuring that Mubika never at any one season tell the girls about the last outrageous answer. For they would live with amiss thought about the earth when they were still young. Mubika was caught between happiness for the girls and dismay. She knew they were to have babies of which she had never dreamt of, a teardrop or two scolded down her face. Nevertheless, as she reconsidered the day’s expenses and the medicine man’s practice, a valuable content full of hope restructured her compassion. The girls would never live to see their babies too, twins were a dangerous omen to be thrown in the forest, and it was the only remedy.

Chapter Five

Boys were mentally irritated for not socializing with girls yet together they’re born and grew up in a particular generation. Observing young sharp breasts and the beauty of nakedness that never was a part of their future. In addition, so much isolated the two sexes between social occupations and cultural rituals.

Boyhood was significant in the forest; young males from allover the village would meet here while gathering firewood. Moreover, their gossip or rumor would tour through wind about girls and beauties, their ugliness and boldness. Nicknaming girls was a true game. Another day, Nkuutu named one elder’s daughter an evil girl which hearty hurt the brother in the forest. In less truce exchanging sticks to pierce different sides of the story. Sticks crossed the inner forest as the boys got divided, one side opposite the opponents. The gathered firewood had turned into spears and the defeated side always left sooner than the victors. Challenge engrossed them. Nkuutu and the brothers had won the forest battle but there was another fight ahead with the elders, to prove the erroneous side. No witness was called upon; they had attained the ware news through a young informer. Both sides of the elder’s meeting challenged each other. They proudly assented to reconcile the boys for the village would never collectively survive if a generation grew up picking on one another a vengefully.

Competing in tree climbing started up by a whistle of one boy’s mouth skip tic air. The competitors would vastly strangle in convincing their participants how they reached the hint most point before the rest. The forest was apart of the boys and at such an instance human sounds would overtake the natural tree burting and birds chitchatting. Therefore, the boys would systematically tune their ultra voice boxes,

               I wonder the spirits

               They never give me that girl

               The one I know and who knows me

               That girl now at the well

               …

Somehow the last melodies were co-structured to accommodate a girl’s name the lead singer admired. However, in the light of melodies every beautiful girl’s qualities were seconded with an ugly character of her inner being. Nevertheless, the ugly names stood unchanged for their good deeds went concretely unnoticed. One song could connect to another like the thin infrastructure that operated the village.

      It was in the forest that Nkuutu; Wakabi's fourth son exposed the beauty of his mouth tone. This ultimate male pronounced consideration that some girls owned threatening vocals that would make a man think thrice. Nkuutu could tongue twist languages of birds and so the forest he internally admired, imitating and adjusting bird traps. It occurred that he was embodied deeper into his Paapa's hobbies. Nkuutu would lie dead in the forest as his brothers observed is cunness, with a few seeds scattered on his back and only guarded by a static hand, the birds would end up in his five without finishing Nkuutu's germs and might.

      Nkuutu was liked by is brothers, for his existence met something was being done and time would die by laughter. For not only did he sing and trap birds but also added sweet lies. Nkuutu once told how old women were the spirits’ wives and that’s why they never produced at their age but only satisfied the air around their bodies. Little was there to lie about but Nkuutu always had something new for the flock. Moreover, one of the hottest equivocate to the brothers was that Nkuutu lived as a god of the spirits. Because he could emulate sounds of all animals, trees and everything that had a spirit. The brothers started worshipping and respecting the little Nkuutu to cleanse their transgressions and prepare a fortunate future on earth of hunting and beneath the earth. The prevaricate was taken serious. For every meal share the brothers had to always give a snap to Nkuutu as sacrificial, they would lay it on a tiny rock in his mushroom where they all slept and by morning nothing was seen. “Nkuutu the god has eaten is share,” the boys would whisper to one another.

      The boys believed Nkuutu was a god and the greatest defense he built around his untruth was emphasizing that should any brother tell any human being about his godhood they would never live to see humans but animals alone and so they only had to let animals and trees know of his godhood if the brothers were to live among humans. Nkuutu soulfully conquered is brothers, Kyeyago, Lubbadi and Mugabi by his musical cohesion that animated spirits and others. The boys would leave certain verses in the rhythm to Nkuutu; he had a tender creative imagination that often bridged music with its environmental features. Therefore, he could breath out words compatible to trees, birds, animals, wind and all that made the earth its mushroom.

Sorrowfully elders didn’t acknowledge Nkuutu's sounds and never had they even heard of the forest singers. Moreover, by the time boys were gathering firewood the girls were also toiling with their Maamas or at the well gathering more than a few pot full of water. A singing man wasn’t acceptable as a real man but a woman at heart.

Customary for every firewood butch taken by a particular compound they had to gather another butch that was left in the middle of the forest by the Manly Oak Tree. As contribution for the cleansing ceremony that happened once in a hand-fingers season. The big occasion smelled from a far.

The forest was at many seasons safer during some part of the night than at daytime. In darkness of man’s eyes the beasts were out on the look for survival and so in light of man’s eyes they were ready to rest. Nevertheless, brutal indigenous forest animals came traveling with man’s time. That meant a grill alarm would communicate throughout the village about a mislocative intruder. Men would color themselves in various sizes and heights of spears ready to attack hadn’t the enemy quickly run away at the first call or the next from the viewer alarming. Hence, in no manner could the boys leave their spears while on a trek. In addition, if any brother left behind the safety instrument they all had to return in order to reequip their deterrence. To natures agreement the craven obeys the unpoltroon, some animals had found themselves in various parts of the forest that woods weren’t dry at all to alter their catnap.

The boys would scope huge leaves high above their spears to wall-up their private parts. With another scope of the thin clipping stem that orbited tightly their waist leaves. Their buttocks were always dirty and obvious.