Office of the Aunt

I first learnt of my tribe as a seven-year-old girl when I put the question to my mother. At home, in our multi-cultural family, with parents from contrasting backgrounds, we usually communicated in English and Kiswahili. My being a Munyole had never come up. I only wanted to know after questions emerged at school: What is your tribe? What district do your parents come from?

I remember telling a classmate one day that I was a Munyole. Days later she told me that her mother had said to her that the Banyole curse people. Her mother hailed from Kasese, a place which was not, I learned later in life, much better than us when it came to this particular stereotype. I can’t recall clearly how I reacted to this accusation by my innocent classmate, but I am sure I raised it with my family members, who mostly laughed about it. They often said that this, the cursing part, was what people said about us, the way other tribes are said to ‘night-dance’ or ‘eat people.’

Words, words, words.

Didn’t William Shakespeare, speaking through Hamlet and others, also wonder about the meanings of words? Words matter, and in much of Shakespearean theater we learn that what matters even more is how the words are said. Words can follow you. Words can take you places good or bad. Words can determine your destiny, your fate.

A lot changed for me when, still a child, during one of the holiday trips to my village in the district of Butaleja I encountered so many stories. Either a man was cursed not to be rich, or to have only girls, or to never progress in life, or to never succeed in marriage. A particular memory is of two contrasting relatives. Although they were sisters, one was very clean while the other was quite untidy and often looked dirty. When the untidy woman came to my grandfather’s homestead she was mostly avoided. A smell trailed her, repulsing people who fled and alienated her. I used to think she had a mental problem. But once, during playtime, one of the children whispered that this wretched relative had been cursed to be dirty. She said this explained the woman’s disposition. Who had cursed her? No one knew. It could have been an auntie, an uncle, an elder. Questions kept sprouting up in my mind as I remembered what my classmate’s mother had said about the Banyole. That we curse people.

At first I thought it odd that any tribe can be thought of like that. But such comments about the Banyole never stopped coming. Even today I still have people asking me so much about the Banyole, about their uncanny ability to impose curses.

‘Are you from that place where people just talk and things happen?’

‘Oh, I fear those people. Banyole can curse!’

‘You Banyole can even curse someone’s garden. Rain will not fall on his garden, yet it will be raining in the whole area.’

So, for me, I carry the fact of my being a Munyole like an albatross on my neck. But I also know that this stereotype, like all stereotypes, didn’t come from nowhere. As a Munyole woman I know that I have to be at my best behavior when interacting with people in my community who wield authority – and aunties rank supreme.

Auntie X, Auntie Y, Auntie Z. And now, as I am one to a few nieces and nephews, Auntie Jan.

Growing up, we called just about any woman auntie because it seemed like the only way not to be disrespectful. There was an auntie everywhere: at church, in the neighborhood, a parent’s friend, a friend’s mother, and so many others. Most of them were really too sweet and kind. What curse could befall children who honored every adult woman in the area with the title of auntie? There were the real aunties, the sisters of my parents, and then there were the artificial ones. So many of them.

The lady who was close to with your parents, the one who baked cakes and dropped them off at home, the one who always carried sweets or new clothes when she visited home, the one who said, and still insists, that you were named after her because of one reason or the other, like the assertion that you behaved exactly the way she used to when she was young. It appears to be a mostly nice, even if superficial, relationship until you grow older and know better. After receiving them with much innocence as a child, and therefore giving them such power, it slowly dawns on you that you aren’t dealing just with aunties but rather a fully functional Office of the Aunt with its many departments.

You have to knock at the door, pay a visit to the office that isn’t as tame as you had once perceived. Perhaps it’s more than a visit and an affirmation of their authority when you drop by. Or maybe there’s a serious, practical issue to discuss when you drop by. They have plenty of questions. Are you learning how to cook? Do you keep clean? How are your parents?

For varying reasons I have sometimes been caught in the crosshairs of my aunties. Once, years ago, one of my cousins was getting married. The traditional marriage, kwanjula, was to happen first. The groom was to visit our home and preparations were underway. I attended one of the planning meetings with our family. The bride seemed to have a clear-cut view of how she wanted things to go. Décor, food, service providers, she had everything nailed down. Tension rose in the meeting because it seemed there was little room for alternative suggestions. The answers from the bride were short and precise. The responses from others were mostly based on what appeared to be a subtle consensus to simply proceed with whatever the bride wanted, if only to avoid upsetting her. But one proposition was not taken lying down by the oldest aunt in the room. The bride, in our modern world where some traditions have been thrown out, had the liberty to decide on most of the issues at hand, but she was not going to be allowed to choose which aunt would preside over the wedding formalities, including being the first to formally meet the groom and then identify and introduce him to the rest of the family during kwanjula. Because the bride picked an auntie who had not previously performed this role, the reaction from others in the room was almost as if she had done something sacrilegious. The aunt chosen by the bride and the one designated by other aunts were present. What happened next was not nice.

The bride was scolded for assuming that she could do anything she wished. The event was going to go according to tradition, at least that was the case when it came to which aunt would preside. My oldest aunt strongly reminded us that there is an ‘official aunt’ for such roles and we don’t get to choose our favorites. The preferred aunt agreed with this stance, saying as if for her own safety that this wasn’t her role and she hadn’t intended to accept it anyway. The room fell silent. I wondered what was so wrong about having your favorite aunt usher you into marriage. These women had no right to dictate, of course, but the fear of the aunt figure was hovering all over the room, suffocating all attempts even to seek a compromise. Needless to say, the aunts took the day.

Why didn’t the bride simply refuse? Couldn’t she do whatever she wished as an adult? The simple answer is that we have to respect, honor, submit and avoid any and all conflicts with our aunts. We must always steer clear of offending adults who have the authority to pronounce a curse upon one’s life. There is the assumption among my people that any person of some authority can make a devastating, and often permanent, utterance against a disobedient or undisciplined child. Aunts, especially, wield a lot of power and can exercise it like adagger.

Growing up, I came to understand that while aunts were ‘good people’ who looked out for your interests and could love you like your parents, you also needed to uphold your sense of honor to them. Their blessings or neutrality more or less depended on your behavior. For in my village in Butaleja, and broadly among the Banyole, curses are viewed as a form of correction for wrongdoing. In the true or apocryphal tales we heard the aunt always featured as the key person who uttered the curse, who imposed fate.

A young woman is struggling in her marriage or raising a rebellious adolescent daughter because, they say, years ago the said woman disrespected an aunt, who in a moment of anger said something to the effect that the offender would suffer similarly one day.

An auntie who wasn’t duly honored during the marriage of a niece is angry. She didn’t get the gift of a cow she had expected.

We don’t hear of parents who curse their own children. You can take some liberties: joke with them, delay a task, fail to extend some favors and it will be alright. You are still their child even with your imperfections and they can make compromises and they will continue to wish you well. But I don’t joke with my aunties. I fear them more than I fear my parents.