Tombstones and Banana Trees by Medad Birungi Page A

flowed out we would wait the twenty minutes it took to fill up our pot or our plastic jerrican, and then we would carry it back up the hill to home.
    We would collect the water four times a day. Mostly it was just the children, but occasionally women would join in. But I never remember seeing any men at the spring. I stopped collecting water when I was twenty-nine and married Connie, for that was the time that I became a man. Even today when many houses have iron roofs and water collection tanks that meet some of their water needs, there are many, many families who have to collect their own water from a tap (a faucet) or from a protected spring away from their home. There are some men who do collect their own water if their wife is pregnant or ill, or if they are building something that needs a lot of water, but then they will do it only at night or early in the morning.
    One day a mudslide sliced away the whole layer of soil that led down the hill to the place where the water came to the surface. This transformed our lives. Where there once had been pools of water that only seeped into our cans, now we had a clean, clear, fast-flowing stream that was easy to collect from, as well as bathe in and drink from. That mudslide was a gift to us, although it has to be said that it took away a large area of land from one of our neighbors.
    Water was always our greatest problem. Whenever we were building, we did it by mixing mud with water to make a coating to cover the frame we made with sticks. On these construction days each child would have to carry as many as twenty jerricans weighing anything from ten to forty pounds when full. And since it would take as long as a week to build the house, these periods were exhausting. We would not have to do it often, though, as a house that was properly built would last for many years.
    When I was a teenager we acquired some land and moved up out of the valley of maggots to the very top of one of the hills. It was steep—almost impossibly so—and that was a contributing factor in the land being cheap enough for us to buy it. It was also the area where cattle used to be quarantined when they were ill, and even though it had not been used for this purpose for many years, nobody else in the area thought it was a fit place to live.
    I had chest pains as I carried the water up the hill while my mother mixed the mud together to insulate the walls. Later, as she and I carried up thick, long logs from the valley floor to support the roof, she slipped and dropped one of the logs. It fell on my shoulder and the pain was terrible. But what can you do? What option did I have but to carry on?
    Occasionally when I was younger the day might start with a bowl of maize porridge. Others would be able to afford sorghum or millet, but we were stuck with maize, at least when we were doing well. I generally had only one meal a day, and that was more often served in the evening. During the day, while my mother and older sisters were out working I—together with my younger siblings—had to look for my own way of survival. For five and a half years I would spend the days scavenging for food. I learned to avoid the tops of banana trees and to steer clear of any of the jigger hunters who might see me and decide to hand out an extra lesson in the importance of good hygiene. Quickly I learned to look in dustbins to find food that had been thrown away. If we were lucky we might find a potato, but more likely the food would have excrement pasted over it and we would have to wash it clean at the spring before trying to cook it. My mother always boiled it up in her pot, unless it was a sweet potato, which we could eat raw. But if we found that someone had eaten meat or fish it was a different story altogether. We would take the bones or the fish head back and add it in. The water would taste delicious, and we would feel as though we had feasted on pure delicacies.
    On the bad days, the ones when the hunger