By Dilman Dila
It is 2060, ten years since my mother died. I was two years old at that time and I barely remember her. I live in the water suburb of Bwaise, with my elder brother, who drives a water-taxi, and my elder sister, a student at Makerere. Our father raised us alone. He runs a profitable business, for he owns a special 3D printer that uses his own secret formula to generate synthetic timber slats for use in the construction of houses. In the submerged suburbs of Kampala, you can’t build with brick or concrete. You have to use synthetic wood, and Dad is a major supplier of this product.
He says that when he was a little boy, Bwaise was dry. It suffered flash floods in the rainy season, but it was not permanently underwater as it is today. Back then, the government tried to contain the floods with drainage canals, and some people redesigned their houses to prevent water from entering. There was a huge campaign focused on getting people to change their lifestyles, to stop using plastic and to stop all activity on the remaining wetlands. Too little, too late. The big rains poured down, and the natural systems, which drained water from wetlands into Lake Victoria, collapsed. The rains fell in biblical proportions over many years, and, gradually, slowly but surely, Bwaise turned into a lake. People learned to live with it. Our house is built on the water, in the middle of a street with ten other houses. Bamboo frames, tethered to large rocks at the bottom, keep the houses firmly anchored in place, just as if it was land. When the wind is too strong, waves smash against our house and it sways, ever so gently. Yellow buoys float in front of the houses, to indicate to the boats where the ‘roads’ are, and a pavement, which is more of a dock, connects the houses such that you can walk from one end of the street to the other without getting wet. There is a special stop, like bus stops in the dry parts of the city, where we wait for boat taxis. This being a commercial street, the front of the houses have a room that is used as a shop. Ours is a synthetic timber workshop.
It is a Friday, and when the school boat came to pick me up, I refused to go. Dad woke up a little ill, with a high fever and a cough, and yet he has a big order for timber slats. Normally, my sister helps him with the business, but yesterday she went to Masaka to deliver boards to another client and she won’t return before night. I’m all alone, and I have to step up to help, or else the customer will cancel the order and Dad will lose money. We can’t afford to lose the money. We need it!
Dad lost a fortune last week when a huge storm tore off the roof of the workshop and the rain ruined the 3D printer. He got a loan to buy a new printer and keep his customers happy, and so he desperately needs to make this sale.
“Show me what to do,” I say.
“You’ll be late for school,” he says.
We are in his bedroom. He lies on the bed, bright sunlight coming in through the window. His bedside table is full of medicine vials.
“I can help,” I say. “I don’t mind skipping school today. We have only geography class and the teacher bores us with things we already know. Show me what to do.”
He looks at me weakly, smiling, and I know he is happy that I stepped up, but I know that smile. He has doubts. He doesn’t want me to miss school. But he knows he needs my help and I’m not a child anymore. I’m twelve. I can help.
“Can you really manage?” Daddy asks.
“Yes,” I say, though I hear uncertainty in my voice. I’m very good with computers, and I know how to play MoonShot, a complex video game that requires using a virtual reality headset and joystick. I learned it when I was nine and I’m the top player at school. Still, operating the 3D printer is at a whole other level. It’s not like playing a video game.
Unlike the printer at school, which is a small device on Miss Akoth’s desk used to print our class papers, this is a big red cube, as big as a wardrobe, and it has six arms which it uses to mold things. If you want a cup, you design it in a computer program and then the 3D printer will model the cup for you, just as if it were a potter. Yes, I have seen potters at the swamp, making clay pots, and this printer with its six arms is like that, only that it can create anything. There used to be something they called a ‘factory’, my sister once told me, that caused the big rains after polluting the rivers and the sky. They are obsolete now since, whatever you want, whether a new computer or a needle or a new shirt, the 3D printer makes it for you. It is a complex piece of technology and I have only a rough idea of how it works. Yet here I am, begging Dad to let me help him run it.
“Yes.” I give him a reassuring smile, my voice growing bolder. “Yes, show me what to do.”
His smile fades, and he looks away, out of the window, at a sunbird parched on a wind vane. I wonder if he will tell me to forget it, that maybe he should let this order go.
“Those days,” he says, weakly, “when we wanted timber, we would cut down trees.”
Cut down trees? But why? I can’t process the idea, for it is a taboo to cut down trees. Spirits live in trees and if you cut them down…. Why is he telling me all this? How will it help me make synthetic timber?
“Bwaise had trees,” he adds. “A lot. But we cut them down for timber and for charcoal.” He pauses and looks at me, frowning. “Do you know what charcoal is? In the past we used it to cook, and smoke from charcoal enveloped the whole city as there was a chunk of burning wood in every kitchen.” He pauses to catch his breath. “That smoke rose into the air and changed the clouds,” he adds. “And that caused the big rains to come, and it drowned Bwaise, and the water killed off the little remaining trees.”
I bite my lips. Can you just tell me how to work the 3D printer? I want to say, but I swallow the question, and wonder, not for the first time, how cutting down trees leads to more rain, rather than to a drought. At school, they teach us these things, and they encourage us to plant more trees so as to restore the balance in the weather, so that we can’t have deadly rainfalls anymore. We are always planting trees, and our school has a little forest growing behind it, but I know that trees cause rain, so how does cutting them down lead to floods, and not a drought?
“Oh there were a lot more trees than you’ll ever see back then. Big trees, some so big that you could climb one and touch clouds.”
My frown deepens, and I wonder whether he is on a fairy tale. I’m twelve! I know that no tree can ever be that tall! Why would he say such things to me?
“Daddy,” I say. “The printer….”
He cuts me off. “One day, I saw a big mango up on the tree. I wanted it. I climbed, but the branch was weak. I fell and broke my left arm.” He chuckles, as if telling me a joke. “They put it in plaster, and then I saw the mango was still there. So I climbed again, and again, I fell and broke my right arm. Now both my arms were in plaster.” He is laughing hard now, though he is sick, and it makes him cough, and he has to drink water.
Now I’m curious. He has never told me anything like this. I have always wanted to climb trees, but those around our school are short, as they were recently planted, and the branches are weak. I wonder why Dad is telling me all this, and I smile as he laughs at that memory, and goes on about how his mother whipped him real good when he went back home with a second broken arm. She whipped him as she took him to hospital.
“Daddy, the 3D printer. Is there a manual I can read?”
His laughter dies out. He grows a little pensive again. “They should have invented the 3D printer when I was young,” he says. “We would not have cut down trees…. And we cut them for silly reasons. Timber. Charcoal. Sometimes people would cut trees just because it spoiled their view. Can you imagine?” He shakes his head in wonderment. “No wonder our ancestors got angry and sent the water to punish us.”
Some people think it is the Christian god who sent the floods to punish people for immorality, other people think it is the god of Muslims. At school, they say it is nature. Nothing supernatural about it. My brother said the blame is on countries in Europe, Asia, and America, who engaged in greedy economic activities. Yet, since they controlled the media, they make it look like cutting down trees for charcoal and timber caused the rains, and they make it seem like it’s the wrath of gods punishing people for this or that. I don’t want to think about all this. The client is coming in three hours, and I have to generate three hundred planks of synthetic timber.
Dad reaches for a tablet on his bedside table, and he turns it on. He scrolls through the programs, and then he hands it to me.
“There,” he says. “It’s a tutorial. Let’s go and see if you can make slats.”
My heart is pumping faster as I watch the tutorial, which shows me the basics of the 3D printer. It is not very complicated, not as much as I thought. For such a wonderful piece of technology, operating it is child’s play. After fifteen minutes, he gathers up the little strength he has and we go out to the workshop, where the 3D printer is. The street is busy at this time with people hurrying to work, a lot of boats cruising past, blowing their horns, touts calling out for passengers.
Dad keeps the workshop doors closed, because he does not want any other person to interrupt. He settles on a stool, and watches me. I flip on the power button, and the 3D printer hums to life. My palms are sleek with sweat. I bite my lips hard, afraid the trembling will show.
The screen comes to life, and I click on an icon that opens Blender, a 3D software, in which I have created characters for video games. I set about creating a design for the timber slat. The client specified the size, the dimensions, and the colors. They want it red with a pattern of yellow flowers. It takes me only ten minutes to generate a blueprint to the client’s specifications. I send them an email, using Dad’s account, to check if that is what they want, and they reply almost instantly with a go-ahead. They don’t know they are talking to a child.
“I’ve never had a client accept the first design I show them,” Dad says, looking at me with awe.
I smile. Now, the hard part begins.
I go down a trapdoor, to the enormous ink tank, which is underwater beneath our house, and contains a special ink that enables the printer to mold anything. The ink tank is never empty, for it converts the city’s organic waste, and also agricultural wastes from nearby farms, into 3D printer ink. But three hundred slats is a large order. Will there be enough today? I wait nervously for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.
Luckily Dad’s ink recipe has a secret ingredient, which he has never told anyone about. It makes the conversion process less dirty and tedious. Dad is constantly seeking to improve his recipe. Recently he began to investigate another recipe, developed by a scientist in Gulu. She uses algae specially grown to create synthetic materials. It promises to be a much more efficient way to make timber slats. She has made her formula public, so that others can experiment with it and perhaps improve it. Now Dad is wondering if he should do the same for his own secret recipe.
I can see now that the ink tank is half full. It should be enough.
I go back up and reassure Dad that we won’t run out of ink soon. Then he gives me a nod, and I proceed to make my first slat. I click ‘print’ on the computer, and the 3D printer hums as it prepares to mold. Dad bought it secondhand, and so it has performance issues. The arms need constant realigning, otherwise they will print the wrong dimensions, and so I take hold of the controls, just as I saw in the tutorial, and Dad is whispering encouragement and advice into my ears, and the printer vibrates in my arms. ‘It’s just like a video game joystick,’ I tell myself. ‘All I have to do is imagine I’m playing a game, and directing the arms to the right position on the table so they can print correctly.’
It takes about three minutes for the first slat to complete. At the end, your muscles ache from the impact of the vibration, and my bones are dancing with excitement, but there it is on the table. The first thing I have ever made using the 3D printer. I feel my face breaking into smiles, and I look at Dad, who smiles back, proud that I am his child.
“Don’t celebrate too early,” he says. “That is just one of three hundred.”
My excitement dies down a bit, for I have to repeat this whole thing three hundred times. I clench my teeth and begin printing the next timber slat.
Dilman Dila is a Ugandan writer, filmmaker, and social activist. He is the author of a collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun. He is currently working on his debut sci-fi novel, Dreams of a Yellow Balloon. He has been listed in several prestigious prizes, including the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition (2014), the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2013), and the Short Story Day Africa prize (2013, 2014). His short fiction have featured in several magazines and anthologies.
Let’s Follow up
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Kampala Yénkya 