By Dilman Dila
December comes. We get our holidays, and I’m more excited because, as usual every end of year, my mother and I travel to the village up north in Gulu to celebrate New Year with my grandmother. The journey requires three modes of transport. First, we take a multi-terrain passenger vehicle that can travel both on water and on land, since there are too many flooded spots in the Kampala area to make it on land alone. And the flash-floods mean it is safer to use a vehicle that can quickly be transformed into a boat. In Karuma, we catch a bus to Gulu, but it is an old bus with a faulty battery, and just after setting off, though the indicator said it was 100% charged, the battery dies, leaving us stranded in the middle of the road. My mother says that back in the day when buses used fuel, they would have simply sent someone with a jerrycan to buy petrol, but now, we have to park and wait for the sun to charge the batteries. Gulu is nearby and my mother loses her patience. It’s already been eight hours since we set off. She calls one of her brothers, who comes with an electric tricycle, and within thirty minutes, just as darkness is gathering, we arrive home.
But as we enter the village, I notice a new structure. A long white wall fence, topped with barbed wire. That is totally surprising. Who would erect such a fence in a village? I see soldiers walking about on patrol, and I wonder, what is happening? Then we pass a gate, and a signpost says, Amuru Hot-Spring Swamp: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted. Ha! Very strange indeed. I’ve played in those swamps every time I come for the December holidays, so why is it now a heavily protected area?
“People were encroaching on it,” Grandma tells me later in the night, as I relish her specially made welcome-home supper, of malakwang and potatoes. “They were using it for farming, and the government thought it was wise to fence it off.”
She doesn’t sound convincing, and even the tone of her voice says she thinks the government is lying.
Something is up. I have seen the few remaining wetlands in Kampala, and they are protected spaces, but they don’t need wall fences and barbed wire and soldiers on patrol. Back in the day, people filled up the wetlands and built houses over them, so water could not drain, and that partly accounted for the heavy flooding when the climate changed for the worse. So the government passed strict laws, which were unnecessary because people had learned to leave wetlands alone. They did not require such a guard. There’s something more going on here.
“Stay away from that fence!” my mother says. Perhaps she has read the expression on my face and she knows that I’ll surely go snooping around. How can I not?
“I always bathe in the hot water,” I tell her.
“Not this time,” she says. “Don’t go there.”
Is all this protection because it’s a hot spring? I’ve heard of other hot springs whose water is so hot you can boil an egg in it, but these were not that hot. We could bathe in them without getting scalded. It was not even among the most important hot springs in the country, so why guard it like this?
I can’t sleep that night. I toss and turn thinking about the fence. Early the next morning, right after breakfast, I tell my mum and my grandma that I’m going to visit my cousins, maybe we could play together, and they give me curious glances, but I put on my most innocent face and they let me go without much of a fuss. Mum says she will call my aunt to ensure I was there, and I tell her that I won’t be anywhere else.
The fence is about five miles from my home, roughly the same distance as my cousins’ home, and I think I can sneak in quickly, take a look, and go to my aunt’s place before my mother notices I’m missing. After all, I have a spy gadget that can help me take a look without risking my life at all. I don’t even have to touch the fence to know what is behind it.
My mother bought me a drone on my birthday last year. It’s hardly bigger than my fist and I use my phone to steer it. It’s the kind that flaps its wings, so from a distance someone could easily mistake it for a bird — and unless they have electronic scanners, they won’t detect its presence. It’s a huge fenced off area; I estimate about a square mile in total, too large for a swamp! They can’t monitor every inch of it and so they perhaps rely on motion detecting cameras and the armed patrol to ward off trespassers.
I hide behind an anthill when I see the soldiers on patrol, and power up the drone. I watch its camera feed on my phone, as it flies low on the ground, beneath the bushes, to avoid casual detection. The grass here is much taller than in Kampala, a pale green as with all grass that has not got enough water, and it provides good cover for my drone. When it’s close to the fence, I take it up into the air, and over the fence.
I hold my breath, waiting to hear alarms. Nothing. There are no electronic sensors.
I perch the drone on a tall tree inside the fence, and like a bird of prey, it scans the area around, checking for activity. There are buildings at one end, newly built with synthetic wood, and there are people milling about. There are no signs to tell me what they are up to. In the middle of the enclosure, are the hot springs, steam rising off the water’s surface, and there are two people on the banks, throwing something into the water. I pilot the drone closer to the springs for a better look, and perch it on another tree.
Several minutes pass, and I realize that the two men are throwing crumbs of bread into the water. The bread floats like debris. I wonder what they are doing, and just when I’m about to get bored of it all, the surface of the water moves. There are ripples, then a fish pops to the surface.
Or what I think is a fish. It could as well be a crocodile! It has blue-tinted scales, with stripes of red, and its eyes are a bright yellow. Is it a fish with the limbs and head of a crocodile? What kind of creature is this? A spirit? It crawls to the banks, eating the bread crumbs the men have thrown. They do not seem to be afraid of it. Are they offering sacrifice? It crawls out of the water, leaving three-toed footprints in the mud, and the men stroke it, and one begins to pull something out of a bag.
“Hey you!” someone shouts.
I turn to look, and see a soldier coming toward me. There is no time to retrieve my drone, no time to think it through. Perhaps he has not noticed what I’m doing, but I know I’m doing something illegal, and a soldier is now coming at me. Panic! I disconnect the phone from the drone, aware it will be impossible to re-establish a connection later, since it is so far away and its battery will have died, but I have saved all the images it has beamed back. Then I jump on my bicycle and flee. The soldier doesn’t chase, he stands looking at me with a puzzled expression, and I hope he’ll dismiss me as a boy who was lousing around in the grass. I hope when they find the drone, they won’t connect it to me.
I ride fast back home. Ah, in my panic, I forgot about my cousins, and only after I stop my bike do I remember where I’m supposed to be. I find my grandma and my mother on the veranda. Mum is armed with screwdrivers, fixing solar panels. She is handy with electrical things and works as a teacher at a technical institute. They both look up at me, and I think they can see the panic on my face, the fast breathing, and they know where I’ve been.
“But you!” Mum begins, but I don’t let her finish.
“It’s a spirit!” I say, whipping out my phone and showing her the images of the creature. “It’s the swamp spirit!”
“Oh,” grandma says. “Perhaps the ancestors were annoyed about how people were disrespecting the swamps where they lived, and so sent a guard, but what a curious creature!”
And Mama says, “It’s a genetically created organism. Perhaps they are conducting experiments there.”
I look at her, puzzled. I’ve heard of such things happening in outside countries, of scientists modifying new species to survive the vagaries of the climate. Before she switched to teaching, Mum had even worked on such a project before, as they attempted to modify the genes of cattle so that they wouldn’t need to drink water, and would feed on leftover food rather than on grass. The project failed.
But this, creating an entirely new thing, a strange crocodile-fish, what can they hope to achieve?
Perhaps grandmother is partly right, and the creature is supposed to scare people away from the wetlands? Is it dangerous? But one of the men was petting it…. Is it meant to fill a gap left open by the extinction of some animal, since many of them went extinct because of the vagaries of the weather? Is it a new food source? Or is it meant to eat pests? The questions tumble in my head, and my mother’s voice brings me back to reality.
“You disobeyed me,” Mama says. “So no gifts this year. And you won’t leave this compound until we go back.”
I scuttle away from her before she can mete out more punishments. I don’t mind the penalization. I just hope the soldiers don’t come looking for me.
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
- What is happening in the story?
- Who is being affected by the story?
- Can you identify the aim of the main character?
- What outcome or change has been depicted in the story?
- Can you separate fact from fiction in the story?
- Pick a minor character mentioned in the story and imagine what they were doing on the same day.
- Describe the future as depicted in the story. Imagine that you work for a local newspaper in the future depicted by the story. What recent stories have you covered? Write a couple of headlines.
- Describe the new terms, ideas and situations that you have picked from the story.
- What are the real world inspirations and scenarios that the writer used to tell the story?
- Describe the steps by which such a future could come about, starting from now.
Kampala Yénkya 